The Girl with the Camera
By The Flying Conchord
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Okay so just to clear things up. This is set sometime during the first season. Before Hodgins and Angela, before Sweets, before Zack was Gormagon's apprentice. Before the word "squint" stopped being an insult. I just wanted to right a straight-forward Bones episode. So don't be looking for BB confession of love. Booth and Brennan will not be hooking up, and instead, I will leave you with the same UST as all Bones episodes do. Mwahaha. Oh, so, so much UST.
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If he didn't stop tapping his fingers against the table, Temperance Brennan had no doubt her partner was going to kill the boy.
"So tell us again how you found the body," Booth ordered, attempting to conceal his immense irritation by leaning back in his chair.
The duo had gotten a call that some kid in the middle of Suburbia had dug up a body in their backyard while their parents weren't home. So naturally Seeley Booth, Zack Addy, and Temperance Brennan arrived on the crime scene to see Todd Thomas crying hysterically and Skyler Thomas was acting as anxious as a criminal on death row. Mr. and Mrs. Thomas had been contacted, but neither had shown up at the house yet. The decomposed body turned up to be that of a Caucasian girl between the ages of fourteen and seventeen. Brennan and Addy had already bagged the evidence, and it along with Zack were on their way to the Jeffersonian, when the police informed Booth that the teenager wasn't cooperating. Of course, when Federal Agent Seeley Booth came to talk to him, the boy sang like a canary.
"I didn't find the body," the teenager repeated, just as nervously as before. "I was upstairs and Todd came running in and he was screaming and crying. So I went outside to see what all the fuss's about and saw he'd dug up what appeared to be a body."
"Why was your brother digging?" Brennan asked in her professional tone.
"I dunno," the boy shrugged as his fingers melodically drummed against the table. "He's been going through this dinosaur phase. I guess he thought he'd find something in our backyard. You know how kids get. When he was going through a police phase he stopped cars that drove by our house and asked for ID until the neighborhood board complained to our mother," he finished with a small chuckle at the memory.
"Excuse me but you don't happen to play some sort of instrument, do you?" Brennan asked.
"Yeah drums," the boy frowned. "Why?"
"Oh, it's just that you're tapping your fingers at a very melodious beat," she observed. "It isn't just normal finger tapping. It's almost harmonious, and it is aggravating my partner and he has a very short fuse today."
Immediately removing his hands from the table, the boy looked over at Booth and smiled earnestly. "Sorry sir."
"Don't mention it," he muttered. "You said your mother wasn't home. Wouldn't that make you responsible for looking after him? Why were you upstairs while he was in the yard looking for dinosaurs?"
"I may have had a girl over," the boy admitted. "We were upstairs when he started shouting. She left before I even knew there was a body in the backyard. Could you not tell my mom about that?"
"I don't know, Skyler," Booth sighed. "I think we're going to have to tell her."
"Would it help if I said that I may know who the body was?" Skyler proposed.
"What?" Brennan shouted. "How? Why didn't you tell us in the first place?"
"It's just a hunch and I thought it might not be important," he explained. "I think it might be a girl who went missing from our neighborhood about a year ago, Evelyn Barrett. She was really emotional around the time of her disappearance so the police concluded that she just ran away. I didn't get a good look at the body, but I saw what looked one of those Catholic medallions on her neck, and I know Evelyn always wore one. I don't know which exactly, but she wore one."
"There was a medallion on the girl's neck" Brennan mentioned before asking, "How did you know Evelyn?"
"Our brothers were friends," the boy informed her. "I don't know. I could be wrong, but even though I didn't really know her all that well, I could tell Eve loved her family. That brother of hers adored her. I never did really think Evie would run away."
"We should get back to the lab," she told Booth, who nodded in agreement.
--
"Look at this, guys," Brennan observed. "There are signs that she put up a struggle on her arms."
"Good for her," Angela smiled uneasily. "Have you found the cause of death yet?"
"Her neck is broken," Bones told them as she examined the body, "so my first thought was that her death was an accident and that her unorthodox burial was a poor, adrenaline-induced, heat-of-the-moment choice."
"But there are many factors that suggest otherwise," Zack added, with a satisfied smile. "Such as the stress on her forearms which Dr. Brennan identified as signs of struggle."
"That is correct Zack," Brennan smiled as she continued. "Also the clothes she was found in were torn which Booth linked to a sex crime. But she was clearly quite strong and rather tall for a woman, standing at five ten, which suggests her assailant had to be either very large or had to have been somebody she trusted."
"Pardon me," Hodgins said as she moved out of his way. "I need to get my sample so I can get you her time of death."
Angela frowned. "So maybe she was sitting with a guy friend who wanted to be more then friends. Then when she reject him, he's not gonna take no for an answer. So being Wonder-Woman, she manages to get away until he pushes her down a flight of stairs."
"One of many possibilities," Brennan stated. "If she's Evelyn Barrett like Skyler Thomas thought she was-"
"Wait, you guys think you may know who the girl is?" Hodgins interrupted as he screwed the lid onto the sample container.
"It's only a theory," Brennan insisted as she looked over the body. "Based off the fact that the missing person and the body both wore a medallion."
"But they're also both Caucasian girls in their mid-adolescence," Zack pressed. "So it is plausible that these remains could be hers. I'm not saying we should jump to that conclusion, but it's not entirely impossible."
"We can't know for sure until we get the tissue markers down so Angela can do the facial reconstruction," Brennan reminded her assistant.
"Hey Bones," Booth greeted as he entered the lab. "Could you tear yourself away from your newest best friend and talk with me?"
Rolling her eyes, she stood up and faced Agent Booth. "Don't call me Bones," she corrected him. "And yes, we may talk."
There was a moment of silence as they stared at each other.
"Well?" she demanded.
"I meant in private," Booth clarified.
"Fine," she sighed, exasperated with having to leave her work. "Zach finish the tissue markers and Hodgins get the time of death."
"Will do," the boys chorused.
--
"I've been looking into it, Bones," Booth mentioned throwing down the papers on the desk, "And I think that boy may be onto something."
Temperance picked up the files. "Evelyn Barrett, age 15," she read. "Reported missing November 22nd. Never found. Evidence lead to believe she ran away and was not kidnapped." She looked up. "It does match what the kid said, but it still doesn't prove our body is Evelyn."
"Read on," Booth muttered.
"Member of a peer counseling group at her high school," she continued. "Volunteered for several charities. Talented photographer, her photos won several contests. In the National Honor Society. Happy home life. Gym membership."
"Doesn't sound like a runaway," Booth hinted, "Does it?"
"Not at all," Brennan shook her head. "Her test scores are phenomenal. She could go to any college to which she wanted to go."
"Why would she run away, then?" Booth asked.
"Well higher intelligence could lead to social isolation," she reasoned. "For an adolescent girl, social acceptance is crucial for happiness."
Booth slid a small picture in front of the file. "That was taken a week before she disappeared."
Brennan stared at the picture. In the foreground stood a redheaded teenage girl with a stunning smile on her face. She had that perfect figure and yet her clothes were still modest. Her ivory skin was free of any blemishes and her blue eyes were the color of the ocean.
"That girl is not socially isolated," she admitted.
"So why does Miss America's Sweetheart run away from her happy suburban paradise?" Booth mused.
"I don't know, but it still doesn't prove that she's our body," Bones insisted.
There was a knock on the door and Hodgins stuck his head into the office. "I got the time of death. Hey and get this. It was around last Thanksgiving. This girl has been buried in the Thomas's backyard for nine months and all this time nobody knew."
Booth gave his partner a look and Brennan sighed, "So maybe it could be Evelyn. We still need Angela's facial reconstruction."
"She's working on it as we speak," Jack informed her.
Turning to Booth, she asserted, "Then we'll know who our body is."
"We'll see Bones," he smiled, confidently. "One of us is wrong."
"I'm not saying it's not Evelyn," she protested. "I'm just saying that's not the only option."
"Twenty bucks says it's Evie," Booth proposed as he pulled out his wallet from his back pocket.
"Are you seriously betting on whether a beautiful and intelligent girl with a promising future was possibly raped and murdered?" Brennan chastised.
His confident smile slowly faded and he put away his wallet, ashamed.
"That's what I thought," she muttered as she turned back to the door, leaving Booth humiliated and Hodgins absolutely giddy.
"That was just brilliant," he laughed. "That was beautiful."
"Shut it, Squint," Booth snapped.
"Leaving!"
--
Yes, I very much dislike the word "said". I think I may have used it once in this entire chapter.
Love it. Hate it. Tell me. Click that review button. Just please remember that I encourage criticism, but only if it's constructive. I would like to remind people it's my first Bones fic so please excuse any OOC-ish behavior.