A/N: So, this is my response to The Pain in the Heart. I was extremely unhappy with it. I love Zach and still do, but at least it was a different way of getting rid of a charater - instead of killing him. I hope you enjoy and please leave a review.
Disclaimer: I do not own it. If I did Zach would never leave. Or be tricked with logic. I always thought he was to smart for that.
Suspect
Doctor Jack Hodgins was still trying to wrap his brain around the fact. Someone in the lab, someone he worked with everyday, was a killer. Not just a killer, but Gormagon. Gormagon was the killer. He was the one that they had been fighting against for months. He killed and ate people. Prominent people in society who, for some reason or another, were chosen because of specific body parts they used and were considered important.
Hodgins' computer dinged. He looked down. The computer really had not done anything except for finish loading the data, so Hodgins went back to his thoughts.
He really could not imagine who it would be. People keep telling him that he would be a good candidate. And looking at the whole thing objectively, Hodgins guessed he would be a good candidate. He was a paranoid conspiracy theorist. He went on about different organizations and all the things they do or don't do. And he was a very good forensic scientist who could leave very little trace at a crime scene.
But Hodgins knew he wasn't the killer.
Angela couldn't be the killer either. Hodgins knew Angela. Really knew her. He spent a lot of time with her. They talked about everything and he almost always knew where she was. Not to mention Angela couldn't hurt a fly. He knew that it wasn't her either.
His phone rang. Speak of the devil. It was Angela.
The conversation was only a couple minutes. Angela was on duty at Zach's side and wanted to check in. She also updated him on Zach's health and how it was going. Zach was asleep and in a lot of pain. But that was to be expected. He had some really bad burns on his hands. Angela also wanted to be reassured. She knew as well as Hodgins that Gormagon had to be someone they knew. Someone they worked with.
After Hodgins hung up he looked at the phone for a good five minutes before going back to eliminating suspects.
Dr. Brennan. It couldn't be her either. Brennan was to logical and held human life in too high esteem to actually kill someone unless she had a damn good reason. Unless she was completely crazy and had multiple personalities. But that was unlikely. Brennan was one of the most sane people he knew. That was one of the reasons she and Booth worked so well together. Brennan was completely logical.
Which led Hodgins to the next person. Booth. He could not have done it either. At least Hodgins didn't think so. Booth was completely loyal. Besides the fact that he worked to put bad guys away. Not that he would be the first person to put bad guys away during the day and kill people at night. Although the eating them could be a new twist. No, Booth wasn't Gormagon.
Hodgins smiled when he thought about Booth and Brennan at their therapy sessions with Sweets. Man, what he would give to be a fly on the wall at those sessions. Hodgins could only imagine how they went. Sometimes, especially recently, Sweets will come by and he imagined that their sessions went something like that, only better and more entertaining.
Sweets . . . No, Sweets wasn't Gormagon either. Well, actually, he could be. He came in at the time that they started working on the Gormagon case. He did profiling and had access to all the results. But wait, he wasn't a chemist. He wouldn't know the first thing about mixing chemicals to create an explosion. At least, Hodgins didn't think so.
Hodgins decided to keep Sweets as a pretty good suspect. He'd be a really good suspect if his neighborhood still had lead pipes. He'd be an even better suspect if he took lots of chemistry classes in college.
His computer dinged again and Hodgins looked down excitedly. Just an email alert. It was just junk mail.
Cam came to his mind next. No, it definitely couldn't be Cam. She just seemed to be so . . . something. Hodgins couldn't put his finger on exactly what it was that made him dismiss Cam as a suspect so quickly but there it was. The scientist in him wanted desperately to know how he knew it wasn't Cam but thinking about it, he came up with no logical excuse.
So he scratched Cam off of the list of suspects. That left just Sweets as a suspect. Except, Hodgins forgot about Zach.
Hodgins paused for just a second to think about Zach before laughing aloud. There was no way it was Zach. Except . . . Zach could rationalize almost anything. And he did have access to the entire lab and anything that would be needed to be Gormagon. But he got blown up in an experiment. He wouldn't do that to himself. If he was a killer he would have just let Hodgins dump in the additives and avoided the pain and injury altogether. But he did care for Hodgins, at least Hodgins thought he did.
Hodgins was just realizing what he was doing, making Zach out to be Gormagon, when his computer dinged for a third time. This time he looked down slowly almost afraid of what he would see. There it was, in front of him.
His house was right in the midst of the area where there were still lead pipes. Someone must be trying to frame him or Zach. There is no way that Zach is the killer. No way.
Expect for all the things he already thought about. Zach made a much better Gormagon than Sweets. And maybe he actually listened to Hodgins spit out facts about secret societies. Oh man, that would make this whole thing his fault.
The pages were printing and Hodgins still could not come up with a good reason for why it couldn't be Zach except for: how?
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Hodgins walked into autopsy to tell Cam his findings but he was feeling kind of weird. Deep down he knew it was Zach. He was trying to convince himself otherwise but deep down he knew.
He said nothing to Cam. He almost threw suspicion onto his self by pointing out that he could have faked the results, which he really could have done. When he had walked in, he could see Cam jump and he knew that she was trying to decide who Gormagon was as well. He also knew he would hold the top spot. He seemed way more likely to be Gormagon than Zach.
The whole time he was talking to Cam, he knew she was trying to see any hidden meaning or movements. He would have felt offended but he was still in too much shock from finding out it was Zach who was killing and eating people.
By the end of the week, everything had played out. Zach had been outed and had made a deal. He pled guilty and was now going to spend the rest of his life in a psychiatric ward in some hospital or something. As much as Hodgins believed that killers should be put away for good, he was happy that Zach had been spared prison.
Hodgins still cared for Zach. It was kind of weird and he still had trouble wrapping his brain around all that had happened but there it was.
Cleaning out the apartment above his garage was the worst. He didn't actually clean it out. Mostly he just put everything in its place. The whole time he was in Zach's apartment though he couldn't help but think, this is where someone was killed. Or this was where Zach boiled the bones.
Hodgins hoped that one day he would be able to think about Zach and remember the good times and forget the way things ended. However cliché that thought was, he still hoped it would happen.
Finis
I hope you enjoyed it! Now tell me about it.