Lesser Evils: Open Case
by MattK
The next few weeks were bad ones for the women of UC Sunnydale. For the first thing, Phi Kap had a big party to celebrate Darren being cleared of all charges. Bad enough. But there was worse to come.

*

"Two dozen. In the last three weeks," Willow said, hitting one last key on her laptop, then turning it around to display the colorful screen to Buffy and Riley. "That’s a spike in the graph, even for Sunnydale."

Riley leaned across the table—one of the round iron ones outside the student union—then leaned back in his chair and sighed. Buffy kept looking intently at the graph Willow had drawn, one where a red line came to a sharp peak while a blue line remained flat. "And *all* of the extras were female students here at UC Sunnydale?" She asked.

Willow nodded. "The program allows for the standard background level of deaths, disappearances, and random badness in Sunnydale. It only shows deviations from the norm."

Buffy nodded in acknowledgement. "Any connections?" She asked.

"Other than they’ve all disappeared?" Riley said. "Just one that we know of. They all left very similar notes: ‘I’m sorry, I won’t be back, don’t come looking for me’—something like that. I can get copies from the evidence locker if that’ll help."

"It may," Willow said, turning her laptop back around and starting to tap at the keys again. "I’ve tried everything else, and I haven’t found a single common denominator. They’re all different races, different economic classes, different physical types, different class years, a couple different nationalities…I’ve looked and looked, but they don’t share a single factor."

"They do share one," a voice from behind them announced.

All three of them whipped around.

"Parker! Hi!" Willow greeted him. "We’re just—uh, we’re—"

"That’s okay," Parker said, sitting down at the table. "I won’t ask you any questions, so you won’t need to tell me any lies."

The other three fell silent and watched him warily. Without a word, he pulled Willow’s laptop over and examined the screen for a few moments, grim, unsurprised confirmation on his face. When he was done, he pushed it back to her. "You two are freshwomen," he said, nodding at Willow and Buffy. They both scowled, but nodded back. "And you, Finn, you just transferred in this year. That’s why you don’t know." He pulled the laptop back over and turned it around to face the other three. "Every one of these girls," he said, tapping on the screen. "Is someone that Darren got to."

Buffy, Riley, and Willow gaped first at him, then at each other in astonishment and horror.

And realization.

"Oh, my God," Willow breathed.

"Thank you, Parker," Buffy said, in a way that was clearly a dismissal, if a grateful one.

"Glad I could help," Parker said, rising to his feet.

"Parker," Riley called before Parker could go far.

"Yeah?"

"How long did you eavesdrop on us?" Riley asked.

"Just the last couple seconds as I was walking up. I was coming to talk to you about that anyway."

"Why?" Buffy asked.

Parker shrugged. "It’s hard to miss what’s been happening around here. I just figured that this was the kind of helping people you were good at." With that he turned and left.

*

"Willow?" Buffy said as she watched Parker go.

"Yeah?"

"Remember when Sung told us that Darren sent her across campus, by herself, at four in the morning?"

"Yep."

"When she said that, I wondered if he was hoping she’d get eaten, so she wouldn’t cause him any trouble later."

"But she didn’t," Willow said. "So she did. Get eaten. Cause trouble. I mean—oh, you know what I mean."

"Right," Buffy agreed. "So now that he’s got real trouble for the first time, just how far would he go to make sure it went away? There’s plenty of Hellmouthy things that like money just as much as anyone. Vampires come to mind. Maybe that barbecue fork was *paid* to stab her in the neck."

Riley frowned doubtfully. "I don’t know," he said. "Darren’s definitely a suspect, but why take it that extra step? Not everyone in Sunnydale knows about HST’s. Especially not people like Darren who just came here for college."

Buffy shrugged. "Call it a hunch." She paused for a moment, looked at Willow, then grinned sharply. "Better yet, call it a hypothesis. Now I go out and start gathering data, see if the evidence supports it."

Riley was momentarily dumbfounded. Buffy put her hands together and bowed to Willow, who did the same in return.

"I, and High-school science, have taught you well, young grasshopper."


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