A/N: FaithinBones encouraged me to try my hand at a case fic. Here goes.
Disclaimer: I own nothing Bones related except my imagination.
.
*** PROLOGUE ***
.
. . . three more arrests were made today in what is turning out to be one of the largest and most intricate corruption rings ever uncovered. As you'll recall, it all started about a month ago with the arrest of Dr. Glen Durant, stepson of Desmond Wilson who was a close personal aide back in the 1960's to J. Edgar Hoover. It's no secret that Hoover maintained extensive files on all sorts of people during his time at the FBI, but we're just learning that Wilson used that information to blackmail and manipulate an extensive network of people, including politicians, lawyers and judges, doctors, FBI and Secret Service agents, and a whole host of others. Wilson eventually turned over the control of the information he'd gathered to his stepson, Durant, who continued the practice of illegally gathering information and using it to coerce other individuals to perform acts on his behalf, often outside the limits of the law. Today's arrests bring the count up to eight people so far that have been arrested and charged with various crimes as part of what the media are labelling Durant's Web and we don't think this is the end of it yet. Unofficial reports are hinting that we may just be seeing the tip of the iceberg. We're waiting on the steps outside the United States Department of Justice building for a press conference with the Deputy Attorney General that should start in about ten more minutes . . .
The late afternoon news broadcast was being watched intently by a man sitting alone at the end of an uncrowded bar in a local DC neighborhood. It was a nondescript bar – certainly not a high end place where people went just to be seen, but neither was it a rundown, seedy establishment where chances were good most the patrons had served at least some amount of time in lock-up. It was just an average bar at an average grill in an average neighborhood.
The man had been following the news story ever since it broke a few weeks earlier. In his opinion, Glen Durant was a sniveling little weasel and a weak fucking idiot and he was surprised it had actually taken this long for someone to catch on to what he'd been doing and bring him down. Not that others hadn't tried, of course, but Durant's influence had been wide and they'd invariably ended up snagged in his elaborate web, dancing to his tune and performing tricks for him.
Until now.
The man chuckled silently to himself without any real humor. Sayonara, asshole.
When the story of Durant's arrest first broke, it got minimal media coverage and the man almost missed it entirely. Durant was a nobody in the eyes of the media and they didn't yet realize what they had stumbled into. Very few people paid attention to those early broadcasts about how Durant had been caught.
But the man did.
He knew what would follow.
He understood the implications and the immediate need to distance himself.
As such, the man made it a point to discover who had finally had the intelligence and moral fortitude to overcome Durant's elaborate snares. After all, given the illegalities in his own personal history, it was always worthwhile to know about the law enforcement personnel that were on top of their game. To encounter someone impervious to blackmail, extortion, or bribery was a lot rarer than most folks would expect or Durant wouldn't have lasted as long as he did.
His research led him to FBI Special Agent Seeley Booth and his partner, Dr. Temperance Brennan of the Jeffersonian Institute. The man had only just begun to study them and had already discovered several interesting nuggets. She was a scientist and a crime series novelist, famous in both careers. He was an ex-Army Ranger with a history of gambling. She was beautiful and spoke several different languages. He'd recently spent several months in a federal penitentiary awaiting trial in the murder of some fellow agents until the case was suddenly dropped. Her best friend was an exotic looking brunette from work. His best friend was killed by one of Durant's minions just a few weeks earlier. Together, they'd been working on murder investigations for roughly ten years and had a staggeringly impressive success rate at finding their culprit plus providing the DA with sufficient evidence to convict.
What the man found most interesting though, and to his unexpected delight, was that Dr. Temperance Brennan was his old friend Max Keenan's daughter and Seeley Booth, her husband.
Max Keenan. That wily old son-of-a-bitch. His was a name the man would've been happy to forget.
The man knew the role he'd played in the corruption network, Durant's Web, over the years and he wasn't about to let himself be buried in the fall out from Durant's arrest. He wasn't someone Durant had ever had under his control, but the man and Durant had done business together regularly. There were any number of times when Durant had turned to him when he needed some muscle, the type that didn't get squeamish easily and wasn't morally inclined to say 'no' to much, and Durant had always been reliable about paying the man's fees. Those fees weren't cheap, either.
However, the man had been successfully evading the law for almost forty years now. He knew what he needed to do to keep evading it. All it required was a little strategic house cleaning, making sure any potential trails back to him got erased before they were discovered.
With a final swallow of his whiskey sour, he slammed his glass back down on the bar top. He tucked a five dollar tip under the glass and got up to leave the bar. He had work to do covering his tracks and might as well get started. Plus, he wanted to learn more about Seeley Booth and Temperance Brennan. They weren't adversaries right now, but he sensed they could be dangerous, and he always made it a point to learn about potential dangers. After all, she was Max's daughter and he and Max had a history together that wasn't exactly all roses.
A/N: Just a quick tease in honor of Bones-day. I'll post the first full chapter on Saturday. Interested?