I don't own Bones.
Chapter one.
Booth sat in his office, he lent his elbows on the desk while propping his head up on both his thumbs, fingers interlocked in front of them, the perturbed look on his face always causing his left eye to half close into a squint and his brow to furrow, the look he now wore was well known to his fellow agents that worked in the large room just outside his office and seeing him wear it through the window they left him alone in his thoughts.
He pulled his hands away from his face, closed his eyes lent back and exhaled loudly through his nose, when he opened his eyes again he saw the familiar face of Dr. Sweets through the glass door, again he was wearing that awful half smile half smirk on his face, Booth became aggravated by Sweets, as he preferred to call him, every time he wore that expression because it seemed like a dog's begging face just wanting to be liked and approved of by his colleagues and friends.
He knew Sweets was great at his profession and well respected for his ideas and insights of the people Booth investigated, but he also knew that Sweets could never do what he does, Sweets was an encyclopedia, a search engine, a Dummies Guide To... of human behavior, a tool to be used like Bones and the rest of the squints at the Jeffersonian, they were his friends and extremely intelligent and the best at what they do, but in the end they were only hard data, just knowledge, and that alone couldn't catch criminals, cops did, determination, instinct and a little intimidation were his tools and they have solved crimes to more effect than any squint had.
As Sweets approached the door to Booths office, he too could see the hard expression on Booth's face but he wasn't deterred, he had to talk him about a case but that wasn't the only reason why he wanted to go in there, he sees the Get Lost! expression, and the body language of his colleague is even less inviting, but that's more of a reason to enter now, to try to find out the cause of Booth's foul mood.
He reaches for the door handle and without even making a gesture of knocking and he enters without invitation, as he enters he makes a point of turning and shutting the door behind him, knowing full well that it would be next to impossible to get Booth to share, if he left it open, knowing Booths fondness for the persona he projects to the other agents of a no nonsense, non feeling alpha male, talking within earshot of them about his worries or his feeling was a definitive...
"Not going happen Sweets!" Booth's tone was as always either curt or play full and this time it was definitely the former.
"I'm sorry?" was Sweet's very unconvincing attempt at looking innocent, but giving his guilt away by smiling inanely and pushing his hands deep into his trouser pockets.
"Its not over a case, and its not about Bones, therefore its none of your business, so don't ask."
Booth looked into Sweet's eyes as he spoke, but then turned his eyes to a small foam football on his desk and picked it up, squeezing it hard and passing it from hand to hand told Sweets not to attempt to find out what was bothering him, and just turn to the original reason for his visit .
"Okay," Sweets held up his hands in apology. "Um, do you remember the Natalie Brigman kidnapping case from a few years ago?
Booth shook his head while trying to remember the details of the case, he never worked on it, but it was well publicised.
"Not really, she was taken from a tennis club in Tacoma and missing for over three weeks, then suddenly turned up at home, all i know is what i read."
Booth shrugged, and gave Sweets a questioning look.
"Well i was asked to have a talk with her about her ordeal, apparently while she was being held captive they forced her onto drugs and that combined with the stressful circumstances she was under, made it nearly impossible for anyone to get any details of where she was or who was responsible".
Sweets as always delivered the information in cold hard statements, with a coldness that Booth didn't like from him or from Bones, everything said in that sentence would fill most people with empathy, others with tears, but not Sweets just facts and figures like he was reading a shopping list.
"Well i know it went unsolved but they had to have had some leads?"
As Sweets expected Booth wanted to hear the details as soon as possible, his need to hear everything was as always in hope that he could see something that would help in some way, to see something that someone else missed, so he could give resolution to those left behind, and in pain.
"Well we know she was taken from a tennis club car park near her home in Tacoma, she can remember that when she was first taken, she was put in the back of a van, and was in there for hours before they finally stopped, she knows there were three of them, and they took her to a small shack in a large wooded area, and thats the problem, Tacoma is only an hour or so from Wenatchee National Forest, an area covering over four million acres of woodland."
Sweets held his hands up for emphasis that was not needed, Booth stood, still clutching the foam football in his hands while staring into nothing, while taking all the details in, assessing what else he needed to add to the picture forming in his mind. He lifts his right hand still holding the ball and points to Sweets with his index finger.
"How did she get away." He was still looking into nothing as he asked.
Sweets returned his hands to his pockets and continued with an alarming lack of details needed for Booth to get everything he needed.
"She drove all the way to her home in a van that is thought to be the one used in the kidnapping, it was later found out to be stolen a month prior to the attack, but because of the amount of drugs in her system coupled with the obvious shock she must have been in, she cant remember the route she took.
Booth slowly returned to his chair and again raised his finger giving it a slight wag as he wanted the story in more detail.
"No, how did she get away in the first place, how did she get to the van and why didn't they stop her?"
"Well even though her family is quite wealthy, for the entire three weeks she was gone no ransom demand was made," Sweets head ducked to the floor indicating that the next detail would not be easy to hear. "and it was evident that she had been raped and beaten repeatedly , the theory was that they used her for that purpose and left her for dead."
"But that's not what you think." Booth was now in complete detective mode wanting everything that Sweets knew, and what he suspected, Booth knows that any opinion or theory that Sweets had was worth hearing.
"When she was first interviewed by the F.B.I. and other annalists she was reluctant to relive the events, but at the insistence of her father I've been trying to push her to see if she can remember anything else."
Sweets's voice had a distinct crackle when mentioning the girls father, and Booth knew Sweets too well to let it pass.
"What is her father insisting?" Booth's vague question told Sweets that he wanted to know his involvement with Sweets and the case and everything in between.
"He's very rich and involved in politics so he has a little weight to throw around, he came to me through a friend he has in the F.B.I.'s higher ups, in an attempt to find who's responsible, and as far as i can tell, that's all it is. He may push Natalie a little harder than she can handle sometimes, but that's what I'd expect of any parent, he just wants someone he can blame and point his rage at."
"And did you find out anything when you talked to the girl?" Booth now just wanted to get to the meat of the case and would leave the little details until later.
"She's still very fragile, she still wont leave the grounds of the house so I've had to travel to Washington State to talk to her,"
Sweets saw the look in Booths eyes, he knew he didn't like seeing his resentment at having to fly to the girls home on the other side of the country.
" Most days she wont leave her room and nights are even worse, she has had nightmares every time she goes to sleep since it happened, it was through those nightmares that i was hoping to find some clues to her abduction, and i did,"
The look of triumph on his face wasn't at all hidden, but Booth new that that was only due to glee at finding some way to catch the people responsible.
"When she started telling me about her nightmares i realized that they were in fact repressed memories locked in her subconscious trying to come to the surface, in all the versions of the dream she is in the shack unable to move and she can feel the presence of the men near her but she could never see their faces, they were always hidden in the shadows and as they got closer the fear got too much for her and she woke up every time before she could see any detail that might help."
As he continued Sweets got more and more animated, Booth just listened and urged him to continue with a quick nod and a flash of his eyes.
"So after a lot of sessions and gaining a little trust i asked her to try a type of hypnosis which would allow her to re-enter her dream and hopefully with me there, less chance of fear taking over and ending the dream prematurely.
When she was under the dream followed a similar path, unable to move, sensing the cause of that fear nearby, she became more and more agitated as she felt them getting closer and closer, but with a little reassurance she managed to carry on, as they were just about to touch her, her head tilted up to the right.
I asked her what she saw, she said she could see a blinding light and the figure of a fourth man, i asked if she could see anything noticeable about him but all she could see was the light surrounding him, i asked her about the other people in the room to see if their features were visible in the light but she could only concentrate on the figure in the light, she said he went quickly towards the other men in the room but she couldn't see what was happening.
I asked her what she could hear, she said it sounded like fighting, they were screaming at each other then the sounds of fists on flesh, she heard a loud crack and then some banging over and over again, then it fell silent, she moved her head from side to side then she screamed.
A face was right in hers, looking directly at her, i asked her to describe him, she said he had short brown hair, his jaw was clenched shut, his face smeared with blood, his eyes were dark but filled with fear and sadness, and then he spoke to her "I'm going to get you out of here." suddenly her hands were free and she ran towards the light, she found herself outside and not far from the van, as she ran she heard two loud bangs from inside the shack, she quickly jumped inside it, the keys were in the ignition she started it and drove off."
Booth looked at Sweets with a sceptical expression on his face, the words dreams and hypnosis taking the validity of her accounts into the realms of wishful thinking after years of paranoia and fear locked in her room.
"I'm sorry Sweets i don't want to dismiss your methods, but hypnosis doesn't fill me with confidence, and shiny white knights with deep soul full eyes sounds more like an escape than anything else."
Sweets nodded his head in agreement and gestured foreword with his hands
"I know, i know all to far fetched for me too, but in the next session i tried again, but this time i had Natalie concentrate on the route she took from the shack, to her home. After a long process of asking about the sights and sounds she saw along the way, i was hoping that if i took the details of the session to someone who knew the area we could retrace the route she took, and her family introduced me to a Wildlife Marshall, who was an old friend of the family and asked him if we could try and retrace the journey back into the forest, after a few mistakes and endless retracing our steps we found a withered old shack in the middle of nowhere, just like the one Natalie described."
"You found it? You and this Wildlife Marshall drove all over Washington State looking for a tiny shack? And found it?"
Sweets tilted his head up and sighed.
"It was a dead case no one from the F.B.I. was going to search through millions of acres of land on my say so, and Ted, the Wildlife Marshall was a friend of the families, so we took it upon ourselves, and yes i think we did find it, when Ted went in, he found two bodies inside, both of which are heavily decomposed." Sweets tilted his head to the side and raised his eyebrows in response to the look Booth now gave him.
"Ah, i see, so you weren't bringing the case to me, but rather, seeing as those bodies were found in a national park and the F.B.I. has jurisdiction, and i, as a member of the F.B.I. could take the case and bring with me the foremost authority on dead things, namely Bones. Is that about the size of it there Sweets?"
"That, and the fact that after telling you the story you could, and would make Dr. Brennan go, even if she didn't want too."
He made a small apologetic smile to Booth, saying sorry for using his good qualities against him, he knew if he told the whole story first, then Booth would have to find the answer, that's why he brought it to him first not to Dr. Brennan.
"Alright I'm in," he announced without much of a pause to think about it, he grabbed his coat off the back of the chair and made for the door of his office when he turned, faced Sweets and pointed at him.
"You were wrong by the way, if you had asked, this F.B.I. agent," Booth used his thumb to point to himself. "he would've looked all over creation on your say so to find who did this."
With that they both exited, only for the door to reopen and have a foam football launched across the room and land in a bowl on the back shelf of Seeley's bookcase.
Next chapter will have Bones in it.