October 12th, 2010.
Friday, 10:30 A.M.
"Tell me everything you know about Seeley Booth and the Ray Rogers case", Agent Kelly Caulfield said. She smiled with all of the sincerity in the world, but it still didn't matter. I was stuck in a hot, sticky room with an agent I didn't know. I closed my eyes, looked up at the ceiling and finally spoke.
"Well, Booth and I… we were sort of, partners. Yeah, so anyway, we were working together for almost five years, when I found out that he would be transferred into a different field office. I believe it was Kansas City. I never really understood why, but we were both very upset." I said all of this with my eyes closed. Caulfield nodded and scribbled down a few notes on her yellow pad. She gestured for me to continue, as I closed my eyes and spoke once more.
"The final case we were going to solve together was a murder outside of Long Island, NY. You know what happened Agent Kelly." I said. She shook her head and told me to tell her once more. "Well, Ray Rogers was a baseball player for the New York Mets. He was a pitcher for a few years, but he went missing in 2006. There were no leads in the case, so the FBI wasn't really brought in. That was until a cadaver search outside of the D.C. area found a skull and vertebrae." I said.
"No other skeletal remains?" Caulfield asked.
"Let me finish please." Pause. "Well, no. Not in the beginning. They brought me in to examine the bones, so I did. The dental records showed that the skull and vertebrae belonged to Ray. Booth and I flew to Kings Park, New York, so we could tell Ray's wife and kids."
"I see. Did Agent Booth continue to find the killer after the body was found?" She scribbled down some more notes on her pad. I nodded.
"Of course he did. That's his job… was our job." I closed my eyes and smiled. I couldn't believe what I was saying to this woman, but I couldn't help myself.
"You know Dr. Brennan, that you're a forensic anthropologist. Not a police officer or a special agent."
"I know. I didn't mean to say it was my job, persay. I meant that I helped Booth as much as I could. Going on, after an intense search for the rest of Ray's body, we found the rest of the skeletal remains about 20 miles away from the initial site. I did a thorough-examination with Jack Hodgins and Zack Addy, the workers at the Jeffersonian."
"Jack Hodgins… he is?"
"An entomologist. Zack is my assistant. Jack found traces of a special tar on the skull, which was originally a painted orange color. The only tar that existed the way this one did was found in Shea Stadium."
Agent Kelly sighed. She was now writing a mile a minute. I took a sip of my water by my chair, and allowed her to catch up. She smiled at me and told me to keep going. I got up out of my seat and opened the blinds. Caulfield squinted at me, almost looking directly in the sun. I stared at the open window and began to tell the rest of the case.
"As time went on, we went to Shea Stadium to look for anything. Anything." I smiled and shook my head. "Anything means nothing in a baseball stadium, Booth explained to me. He said that baseball stadiums were full of thousands of fans every week. The chances of finding any evidence tracing to the Ray Reynolds case five years ago, was like finding a subatomic particle…"
"I get it." She laughed. "It was difficult to find any evidence. Did you and Booth stay in New York for long?"
"We didn't. We interviewed a few of the players and coaches, but it turned out to be just as pointless as finding evidence at the baseball stadium. One player, I forgot his name…"
"Tom Glavine? Billy Wagner? Who?"
"He was a pitching coach. I don't remember his name; it might be in the case folder. He told me Ray was experiencing troubled problems with the Yankees."
"The Yankees? I thought Ray was a Mets player."
"He is. Well, he was. Booth was also confused. We all were." I turned away from the window. I paced around the room a few times, noticing the maroon colored carpet below me. I closed my eyes again, and went back to the window.
"So… about the Yankees…"
"Well Ray's contract was just about finished with the Mets. He was going to sign off with the Yankees in early September. His pitching coach said Ray didn't have much of a chance after that."
"How come?"
"Ray wasn't… a 'people person'. Just like me." I laughed out loud. Kelly didn't realize what I was laughing about. I was more of a dead-relationship person then a living one. It didn't matter with Booth though. He treated me like a homo sapien, a real human. I always appreciated and respected him for that. "Well Ray didn't get along with one of the pitching coaches. He complained to his friends that he was going to 'get murdered' one of these days. He did say it in a kidding way, so his friends thought he was joking. The next thing they knew, he ended up in a casket with no face or flesh."
I heard Caulfield gulp. She wrote down more facts on her pad and told me to take a break. I paced out of the room and saw my friend, Angela Montenegro. She greeted me with a warm hug and a cup of coffee.
"Baby, I am so sorry about this whole thing. We are all trying to get the court to favor in your side. It's just hard, you know? The evidence points to you sweetie." Angela hugged me again. I felt some tears along my shoulder, then nothing. All of a sudden, I exploded. Tears were streaming down my face, down my neck to my chest. I hugged Angela tighter, as she rubbed my back up and down.
"Ang, I don't know how anything like this could happen. I trusted Booth with my life."
"And he did the same for you. He loved you."
I shook my head and let go out of our embrace. I smiled to her and cried once more. "Love isn't rational… Love isn't something I can explain. Whatever love is, he didn't feel towards me."
"Sweetie, you know in your heart Booth loved you. He wouldn't have saved your life all of those times." She smiled to me. "You know he cared for you…"
"I know. I cared for him too. He was my partner."
"Yeah sweetie. That's why we're gunna make this through together."
"If you know this, and I know this… how in hell can I be arrested for the murder of my best friend?" I cried once more.
Please comment/review on how you feel about it. Sorry there wasnt a lot of information in the beginning. This story will get much stronger. Its hard to start it this way! R&R...
Jess!
