Disclaimer: The characters do not belong to me, I'm just borrowing them for a minute.
Author's Note: This is a style of episode that I'd really like to see on Bones. However, I don't think it's ever going to happen, so I decided to write it myself. Unfortunately, I am no expert on criminal law or psychology, and I had to make up some gaps in my knowledge of NASA. Hopefully there aren't too many inaccuracies, or they at least aren't distracting. I hope you enjoy this.
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"An expert is a man who has made all the mistakes which can be made in a very narrow field."
-Niels Bohr
The Woman in Chains
There is a room. In that room there is a table, metal and rectangular. Sometimes that table has two chairs, equally as metal, this time there are three, two on one side, one on the opposite. The table also has a ring sitting atop it, standing straight up, welded tight, immovable, in front of the single chair. Through that ring is a chain, and at both ends of that chain, handcuffs, the best the FBI has, inescapable with any tool readily available, and all of them have been tried throughout the years. Near the ring with the chain is a glass of water, approximately the same temperature as the room. The niceties must be observed.
To the left of the chair and the chain, the wall is nearly halfway covered with a mirror that is not a mirror, at least, not to the people on the other side of it. Near the mirror is a door, locked from the outside, and anyways, the table would have to be disassembled before it could fit through. The rest of the walls are adorned by black panels with ridges that create diamonds. The diamonds are not aesthetic, they trap the sound. Nothing echoes in this room. It sounds dead.
Two days before, it was January 11, 2010, an ordinary day until 2:47 pm Eastern Standard Time. News anchors, talking heads, blogospheres, and water coolers were still reeling from 2:47 pm, January 11, 2010, debating, among other things, by what name history would remember the event. Eventually, they would settle on the Colfax Tragedy, but for now no one has yet heard the name Colfax, at least not in connection with 2:47 pm. The Colfax Tragedy would soon become the topic of discussion in the room as well. The who was simple, all personnel on military installations are required to wear identification at all times. Fortunately for Lieutenant Colonel Lionel Colfax, even though his ID card had melted, his dog tags were still recognizable, unlike the rest of him, although that would have been little deterrent to the team at the Jeffersonian Institute. The how of the Colfax Tragedy was similarly obvious. It was the why that still eluded.
On January 13, 2010, 9:18 am Easter Standard Time, it was a woman in the chains on the chair in front of the mirror that wasn't a mirror in the echoless room. She was alone and had been since she was brought there by a pair of silent men in black suits. Before they left, they'd taken everything but the clothes she wore: keys, watch, hair tie, anything that could possibly be useful to a resourceful person with a mind to deny the FBI their chance to get to the bottom of the why.
The woman's clothes where plain and slightly unkempt, lived in: a short sleeve polo shirt and khaki pants. A thin layer of grime covered them. A small square from the end of one sleeve had been taken along with her freedom, citing a need to check for particulates. Her hair appeared a washed out brown in the harsh light and had a kink part way down, betraying that it had recently been tied back in a ponytail. Her gaze was focused on her hands, which she had clasped in front of her, ignoring the pain. The length of the chain allowed little else. Her expression betrayed little emotion. Insight into her state of mind could only be gained by observing the white knuckles of her hands and the way her gaze occasionally drifted to the mirror that was not a mirror. No one had come to talk to her yet. They were letting her sweat, though not for much longer. In fact, the room was a little cool for her taste.
The door slammed abruptly open and the woman jumped at one of the few sounds she had heard since entering the echoless room. Two people strode in, a man in a dark suit and bright tie with anger blazing in his dark eyes, and a woman, a file in her hands and a visitor badge pinned to her tailored jacket. She seemed to be simultaneously observing the woman in chains and her companion. Neither one of the newcomers looked like they had slept in days, probably since the morning of January 11. Nor had the woman in chains.
The new woman took the seat nearest the door. The man did not sit. Instead, he slammed his hands down on the table, staring down at the woman in chains. She did not jump this time, but stared back. Somewhere along the way her hands had become unclasped. Red blotches stood out on the back of her hands where her fingers had been.
"Why did he deserve to die?" the man demanded without introduction.
"He didn't," the woman in chains replied in a level voice.
"Why did you kill him?" the man continued, the rage in his voice slightly less contained than before.
"I didn't," the woman in chains responded.
"Why did you let him die!" the man shouted. Despite their volume, his words did not echo. It was unsettling waiting for an answer that never came.
"Booth," the woman said in a voice meant to restrain. This was obviously not usual interrogation procedure, but that hardly mattered.
"Bones!" the man snapped, heaving almost as much venom at his companion as he had at the woman in chains. For her part, Bones did not cringe at his tone. She remained unaffected, staring up at him from her chair, her expression one of admonishment and warning.
This distraction, however, was no help to the woman in chains, who still had no answer to appease her interrogator. Since 2:48 pm, Easter Standard Time on January 11, 2010, she had been seeking the answer to a subtle variation on that question to no avail. A hundred times she'd asked herself what happened and a hundred times she hadn't known. No suitable answer to Booth's more direction question seemed possible. The options ticked through the mind of the woman in chains as her interrogators finished their silent argument and returned their attention to her.
The woman in chains, however, still had no answer. The closest possibility, "I didn't," was insufficient and, furthermore, untrue. So much had happened at 2:47 pm, Eastern Standard Time, that there was only one answer to Booth's question.
"I don't know."
"You don't know?" Booth hissed, his quieter tone somehow more menacing than the loud one. "How can you not know?"
The gaze of the woman in chains darted between the good cop and the bad cop, but still no better answer came to mind.
"Lionel Colfax was an American hero," Booth said, then pushed away from the table and strode out of the room.
"I know," the woman in chains whispered to herself as the door slammed behind him.
In the seconds that followed, silence fell between the two women remaining, awkward, perhaps, but not unusually so for that room. Bones flipped through the file in front of her, not reading, head cocked slightly as she listened to a voice in her ear. Booth's departure had pushed the table several inches toward the side of the interrogated, so the woman in chains spent those few moments in a minor struggle to push her chair away a corresponding distance without the benefit of her hands.
"That was Special Agent Seeley Booth of the FBI," Bones said at last. "I'm Dr. Temperance Brennan, a forensic anthropologist with the Jeffersonian Institute. This is how we usually start, Booth was very angry at you." The hint of a smile quirked at her lips at the observation. "I don't often get to meet a person with an intelligence comparable to mine," she continued. "I am very much looking forward to interrogating you."
"I..." the woman in chains stuttered, unnerved by the blunt statement. "I hope I don't disappoint."
"Could you state your name and occupation?" Bones asked.
"I'm sure that file already says all there is to know about me," the woman in chains pointed out.
"In your own words, please," Bones replied, closing the file in front of her.
"My name is Dr. Joan Moor," the woman in chains said. "I work for NASA as an engineer on the space shuttle program."
"You are the chief engineer," Bones prompted.
"I am the chief engineer of the control system on the orbiter," Moor clarified.
"Meaning?" Bones asked, looking reluctant to admit that space shuttle terminology was not in her considerable realm of expertise.
"That means I'm responsible for the system which controls the orbiter, that's the part of the shuttle that does the orbiting, not the external fuel tank or the solid boosters," Moor explained. "These days it mostly means that my team and I are responsible for inspecting the system between flights and fixing any problems."
"What parts of the orbiter make up the control system?" Bones pressed.
"Anything that takes an input from the flight computer, astronauts, or ground and requires a reaction from the orbiter," Moor explained. "That includes the maneuvering thrusters, robotic arm, landing system..."
"What about the environmental system?" Bones interrupted.
"We're responsible for making it work, yes," Moor replied.
"And the doors?" Bones continued, peeking into her folder.
"The hatches," Moor corrected, "yes. But that can't be the reason."
"Why not?"
"NASA isn't a perfect organization, but it does learn from its mistakes."
"How is that relevant?" Bones asked.
"I suppose you've heard of Apollo I," Moor said.
"You're suggesting that the incident which killed Lionel Colfax can not have occurred because of a malfunction in the environmental system and the hatches because that problem has already occurred," Bones inferred. "Your logic is flawed."
"That may be," Moor conceded, "but what I'm really saying is that, since Apollo I, every hatch installed on a spacecraft has explosive bolts which are armed at all times until the shuttle reaches orbit. He should have been able to open a hatch and escape."
"But he didn't," Bones replied.
"I can't explain it," Moor said. "I got there moments after the fire started and had no trouble opening the hatch from the outside."
"Lionel Colfax was burned beyond recognition, that takes more than a few seconds."
"I can't speak to that," Moor replied. "What does a forensic anthropologist do?" she asked after a brief pause.
"I examine human remains with the objective of determining their identity and how they died," Bones explained. "Forensic anthropology is required when the remains are so decomposed or mutilated that other forensic techniques are useless."
"Makes sense," Moor said to herself.
"You do realize how much trouble you're in right now, don't you?" Bones pointed out.
"I was apprehended on a military base and brought to the FBI in connection with the death of a decorated war veteran," Moor said. "No one read me my rights because I don't have any. I'm not arrested, I'm detained in a matter of national security. That means no lawyers and no phone calls. If you decide I'm responsible, you don't even have to give me a trial, I'll just disappear, and no one will ever know what happened to me."
"That's right," Booth replied from the doorway.
Both women jumped, having not heard him come in. At least he seemed to have cooled off a little.
"Here's a question for you," Booth said, taking his seat next to Bones. "Why do you still have your job?"
"Sorry?" Moor stammered, taken aback.
"I've done some checking," Booth replied. "You've been chief engineer of that control team for two years. You were a member of the team for five years before that. The shuttle program is dead. Why haven't you jumped on that hot new ticket, whatever it's called."
"Orion," Bones supplied when Moor did not.
"So how about it," Booth pressed. "Seems to me you haven't done much progressing, career-wise. Why is that?"
"The shuttle program isn't over yet," Moor explained, looking stung. "Eight years ago I was a student. It's practically unheard of that I would be named chief engineer already. Besides, the space shuttle is the most complex machine ever created, I'm proud and satisfied to be responsible for its care."
Booth didn't seem the least bit deterred that he hadn't managed to draw out an argument.
"Have you ever wanted to be an astronaut yourself?" he asked, taking another approach.
"You scratch my back and I'll scratch yours?" Moor offered.
"Really?" Booth snapped. "You are in no position to try and strike a bargain, here."
"Yeah, that was dumb," Moor admitted. "Yes, I wanted to be an astronaut. Still do."
"Have you ever applied?" Booth pressed.
"Yeah, they rejected my application," Moor explained. "They said I was too valuable in my current position."
"Did that make you angry?" Booth pressed. "Are you jealous of astronauts like Lionel?"
"No," Moor insisted. "It was a long shot in the first place." Getting heated, she continued. "This really doesn't seem relevant. I want to help you find out what happened to Li- what happened-"
"What was that?" Booth interrupted. "Paging Dr. Freud!" he added, pointing to the mirror that wasn't a mirror.
"You know, even among psychologists, Dr. Freud's theories have been largely discounted," Bones pointed out.
Booth, however, was listening to the psychologist in his ear and Bones paused to join him. A moment later, Booth muttered, "Thanks Sweets, not sure what we'd do without you."
"Did you hear the second part of what he said?" Bones asked her companion, who ignored her and turned his attention back to Moor.
"How well did you know Lionel," he asked.
"Pretty well," Moor admitted. "Better than most people, I suppose."
"Were you having an affair with him?"
"No!" Moor insisted hurriedly, then she caught herself and added, "If you ask his wife you may get a different answer, though it would probably be in jest."
"How so?" Booth asked.
"I suppose you could call it an intellectual affair," Moor explained. "There was nothing romantic about it, but we were good friends, we enjoyed each others company. I've even met his family a few times. Sarah, his wife, isn't the untrusting sort, but Colfax said she sometimes seemed worried that I had more in common with him than she did. Has anyone told her yet?"
"Why don't you let us worry about that," Booth replied. "Did you love him?"
"What!" Moor yelped. "No, of course not, not like that, anyway, and even if I did, I'd never do that to his wife."
"But you spent a lot of time with him," Booth pointed out. "I'm seeing a scenario here: you develop feelings for Lionel Colfax and engage in what you call an intellectual affair with him. You ask him to leave his wife so you can take things to the next level, he refuses, you get angry, lock him in the shuttle, and start a fire, killing him. How'm I doing so far?"
"Not good," Moor sighed, sounding defeated.
A phone chimed. Bones reached into her pocket to retrieve it and looked at the screen. "It's Hodgins," she declared, and left to answer it.
"Are you in a relationship with someone else then?" Booth pressed.
"I was engaged until about a year ago," Moor explained. "Didn't work out so well." Her eyes flicked to the side. Two people noticed.
"Bit of a side thought, there?" Booth asked.
"It wasn't relevant," Moor replied.
"Why don't you let me be the judge of that," Booth said.
"Alright," Moor began, straightening, "it just occurred to me that this is a very odd time to channel When Harry Met Sally."
"You mean the debate over whether men and women can just be friends?" Booth guessed. Moor nodded. "You were right," Booth muttered, "that wasn't relevant."
"Sorry," Moor said, "nervous habit. I'll try and keep it under wraps."
"So you and Lionel were friends," Booth continued, shrugging off the tangent. "How much time did you spend together?"
"Some," Moor explained. "Once or twice a week we'd have lunch together, talk shop, sometimes we'd go out for drinks. He said I have a different perspective than most people he knows, which he appreciated, and he was full of interesting stories about the things he's done, which I appreciated."
"Did you ever argue?" Booth asked.
"We had some differences of opinion," Moor admitted with a shrug. "That made for some lively discussions, but never anything heated."
"When's the last time you saw him?" Booth asked.
"That morning," Moor replied. "I was heading up tests on Endeavor and he came by to ask if he could come back that afternoon and poke around inside."
"And you said he could," Booth inferred.
Moor nodded.
"Should you have?" Booth pressed.
"Technically, no," Moor admitted. "No one is supposed to enter the orbiters without permission from the higher ups."
"So why did you?"
"Colfax was to go up in Endeavor in a few months," Moor explained, "but all he'd ever seen was simulators. He and I are the same that way: no matter how good the simulators are, they're no substitute for the real thing. Even going inside and looking around makes a difference. He just wanted to get a better sense of the craft he would be flying."
"Did you see him go inside?" Booth asked.
"No," Moor replied, "but I could tell he was in there. We were testing the gyroscopes using some very sensitive instruments. It registered when he moved around."
"Then what happened?"
"I'm really not sure," Moor said. "There are supposed to be safeguards."
"So you say this was an accident," Booth said.
"He shouldn't have gone out like that," Moor breathed.
"He shouldn't have gone out at all," Booth hissed.
"I meant he shouldn't have gone out on the ground. He never even got his wings."
"Answer the question," Booth demanded.
"Accident or malfunction," Moor replied, looking distraught. "That's my best guess."
"Not good enough," Booth snapped. "You are responsible for that machine. It is your duty to make sure it is safe for the astronauts. You failed. As far as I'm concerned, you killed him."
With that, he swept out of the room and the woman in chains was alone once again.
Dr. Joan Moor sat quietly, attempting to get her breathing under control and trying not to think of how much she agreed with Agent Booth's assessment. After a few minutes of this, her attention was drawn to the pencil lying on the other side of the table, near the file that Dr. Brennan had left behind. It was out of reach, but by using her feet she was able to lift the opposite side of the table enough to roll the pencil over and catch it. Savoring her small victory, Moor used the pencil to scratch at an itch on her back which had formerly been out of reach. She had barely returned the pencil to its former position when the door opened once again and someone new stepped through, a young man in a black suit.
"Can I get you anything?" he offered.
"Saw that, did you?" Moor inferred.
"Yes I did," the man replied. "Very clever."
"Are you the psychologist who's been observing?" Moor guessed.
"Dr. Lance Sweets," he confirmed, sitting down.
After a moment's pause, Moor asked, "So, am I crazy?"
"I find you to be very rational," Sweets replied.
"Thanks," Moor said.
"That's not always a good trait," Sweets pointed out. "You've shown incredible patience, however, and that will serve you well today."
"I don't think getting angry will serve any useful purpose," Moor said.
"The incident which killed Lieutenant Colonel Colfax was very traumatic for you, wasn't it?" Sweets continued.
"Traumatic?" Moor stammered. "I don't really...I mean..."
"It's alright," Sweets intervened, "you don't have to answer that. Your friend died, it's natural to be upset. My point is, you will have to describe what happened, in detail, perhaps many times."
"I knew that before I got here," Moor sighed.
"I suggest that, in addition to attempting to find the truth of what happened, you use the opportunity to sort through your feelings surrounding those events," Sweets said.
"I think I'd prefer to do that on my own time," Moor replied.
"As you wish," Sweets said. "But if I might make another observation, you're an engineer."
Moor's eyebrows crinkled in response.
"Engineering is different from other fields of math and science, "Sweets continued, "it's more applied, certainly, but beyond that there's a certain amount of art to it."
"We call it engineering intuition," Moor confirmed.
"Exactly," Sweets said. "Engineers have a knack for being able to look at an idea and determine immediately if it will work, of seeing through the problem to the solution, without needing to do a single calculation. You have a sense of how things fit together."
"Your point?" Moor asked.
"You obviously haven't slept in two days," Sweets replied. "You haven't even changed your clothes. Every moment since you got here, you've been trying to figure out what happened."
"Unsuccessfully," Moor muttered.
"I know you want to find out what happened as much as Booth and Brennan," Sweets concluded. "You've been answering their questions so patiently because you want to help them, and because you're hoping that they'll say something that will jog a thought in you. That is admirable, but don't forget that you are still an engineer, use your intuition."
"I know something the rest of you don't," Moor said, "or at least you haven't realized it yet."
"What's that," Sweets asked, straightening.
"Forensic anthropology won't solve this. Dr. Brennan may be able to discover exactly how Colfax died, but nothing about his bones will say who killed him or why. Those answers are in Florida, if there ever were any."
"A solution exists, Dr. Moor," Sweets said, then he stood and left the room.
The woman in chains nodded in agreement, contemplating his words.
A few minutes later, Dr. Brennan returned with Booth in tow. She took Booth's former seat and he took hers.
"My people have determined that Lionel Colfax died of smoke inhalation," Bones began. "All other signs of injury match his medical record or can be explained by the heat of the fire. Incidentally, the fire was much hotter than we would have anticipated, given the limited amount of combustible materials in the habitable section of the orbiter. Either an accelerant was evenly dispersed over his entire body, or there was a higher than usual concentration of oxygen in the cabin, approximately 30%." Moor raised an eyebrow. "We suspect the latter," Bones concluded in agreement. "Unfortunately, none of this gives us any indication of how the fire started."
Moor sighed. That much she already knew.
"NASA is still refusing to release Endeavor to the Jeffersonian," Bones continued.
"They'll never allow an external investigation on an orbiter," Moor replied. "You may get a chance to look inside if Endeavor ever ends up in your museum."
"Told you so," Bones muttered, looking at Booth.
"They released you just fine," Booth pointed out.
"NASA is very good at investigating technical problems, not so good at interrogating murder suspects," Moor explained. "Besides, I'm less valuable than an orbiter."
Whether or not Moor intended her statement to strike the others dumb, that was the effect it had, on Booth at least. In the meantime, Bones picked up the trail.
"The point we're driving at is that you are our best chance for finding our who killed Lionel Colfax. We need you to tell us exactly what happened, from the beginning, every detail you can remember."
Moor nodded. She had been waiting for this.
Bones continued. "If you lie, not only will you reduce your chances of find out what happened to your friend, but we'll be able to tell. I mean, I may not, but both Agent Booth and Dr. Sweets are quite adept at discerning that sort of thing."
"Alright," Moor began in a clinical tone, clearing her throat and sitting up straighter. "I got in at about seven thirty that morning. Five members of my team and I were scheduled to check out the gyroscopes. We spent the first hour in the orbiter, setting up the interfaces, after that we were in the control room."
"Did you notice anything unusual in the orbiter?" Booth asked.
"No," Moor replied, "and neither did anyone on my team. That's something we have to make note of. Of course, the orbiter wasn't flight ready, a number of systems were partially disassembled for diagnostics, but that was normal for the stage of flight preparation. Anyway, we started in on a series of tests, I can go into specifics if you like..."
Bones looked interested, but Booth jumped in before she got the chance to express it. "We can come back to that later."
"Alright," Moor continued. "As I said before, Colfax came by at around ten o'clock to ask if he could stop back that afternoon and have a look inside the orbiter. I shouldn't have agreed, but I let him anyway. Do you want me to explain why again?"
"That won't be necessary," Booth said. "Why didn't he just go inside when he came by that morning?"
"He didn't say. I assumed he was busy and just happened to be passing by so he decided to come in and ask, so he wouldn't have come back just for that if he asked in the afternoon and I said no. That was the last I saw of him until...after, but at 2:01 pm we started getting some readings which indicated someone was moving around inside. That was Colfax."
"You know the exact time?" Booth asked.
"I made a note."
"You let an astronaut on the orbiter against regulations and you made of note of it?" Booth pressed.
"I didn't say it was a paper note," Moor admitted. "So we kept on going with the tests. After a little while we start getting more noise in the readings than the specs allow, and we're all focused on trying to trace it out because if we can't then it means the gyros need a physical fix, and that involves taking apart a section of the payload bay. We're all working the problem, trying to find a way to isolate the noise when there's this huge jolt in the data and two caution and warning alarms go off. At first we think it's something we've done, but they're environmental codes, so I grab the error book and look them up. They're alarms for heat and smoke, it means there's a fire in the cabin.
"I don't know if I say it or just think it, and a second later I'm off running and other people are pulling alarms and grabbing fire extinguishers and the orbiter is less than a hundred meters from the control room but I think I could have gotten there faster if I'd walked. Finally I'm up the stairs and at the hatch and it's hot but I grab the latch anyway and pull it open and air rushes in and fire flares out but I know it will so I duck behind the hatch and a second later Chi and Turner are there with fire extinguishers.
"It's not enough to put it out but it helps a little so I run in and Colfax is sitting there in the pilot's seat and I turn off the oxygen and grab him and everything is black from the fire and white from the extinguishers, including him, and he isn't moving but I grab him anyway, I don't know how, but I can lift him, but I...it...he feels like he's going to fall apart in my arms. I pull him out and Chi seals the hatch. I lay him on the top of the stairs and I'm screaming for him to breath and wake up but I can't even find enough skin to feel for a pulse and he's not breathing or waking up.
"Next thing Holmes is there with a defibrillator but...but we all know it's no good. The EMTs tell us the same when they show up a few minutes later."
Moor cleared her throat and took an unsteady breath. "So they took him."
Somewhere along the way Dr. Sweets had entered the room. He was standing near the door.
"By then the fire had burned itself out, so I went back inside. There was a lot of smoke and it was hard to breathe. It made my eyes water."
Her eyes were watering again.
"I didn't see anything that could have started the fire. All of the switches were in their default positions and the hatch was working perfectly. He should have been able to escape easily. I don't know why he didn't."
Moor looked up at the other three people in the room, waiting for an invitation to stop. Hoping for one. None of them said a word.
"There are very detail accident procedures that we have to follow," Moor continued. "That's what we've been doing since: documenting every single detail so we can determine what happened. That's what I was doing when I was brought here."
She fell silent again and no one else spoke up to occupy it.
"Has anyone told his wife yet?" Moor finally asked in a shaky voice.
"We haven't been able to get in contact with her," Booth replied. "She's not answering her home or cell phone."
"She's a journalist, a foreign correspondent," Moor pointed out. "She's...she's in London. Her cell phone wouldn't-"
All the blood drained from her face.
"Jake!" Moor cried, jumping to her feet so fast that the chain snapped tight and the table jumped with her. The glass of water tipped and spilled its contents onto the floor and part of the table. The chair fell backwards.
"Who?" Booth asked.
"Jake Colfax, Lionel's son," Moor yelped. "Does anyone know where he is?"
"Does he have a nanny?" Booth suggested, an odd edge in his voice. Sweets caught his eye and they shared a very long look.
"If Jake was with her and Lionel didn't come back and didn't make prior arrangements, she would have started calling people, trying to find out where he was," Moor pointed out. "He's not with the nanny."
"Calm down," Booth encouraged, standing and crossing to the other side of the table. "We'll call the nanny and make sure." Bones seemed aghast at what he was saying.
"No!" Moor exclaimed, the chain artificially restraining her panic. "You need to call Canaveral and get them to search Endeavor, especially the airlock. It was sealed and we never checked inside."
"Endeavor?" Booth asked, righting Moor's chair and forcing her to sit with a firm hand on her shoulder. "What would he be doing there?"
"Colfax said that Jake was nervous about the flight," Moor said, watching Booth cross back in front of her. "Lionel probably took him to see inside the shuttle, to look at where his dad would be. That was the noise we saw in the readings, it was a second person. Jake isn't trained in shuttle operations, he could have flipped the wrong switch and caused a spark."
"It's more likely he's with his nanny," Booth said, not looking at her.
"Booth!" Bones exclaimed, shooting the man a penetrating look.
"I know you don't trust me, but you don't have to," Moor argued. "Trust that I want to see the sky again. The environmental controls are turned off. A little boy's life is at stake."
"Give me a phone number," Booth said. Moor did, written on a scrap of paper torn out of Dr. Brennan's file. Booth rushed out of the room with it.
Moor was left again with her anxiety, denied even the comfort of pacing, but this time she wasn't alone.
"Can I see your hands?" Dr. Brennan asked.
Moor stretched them out to her but couldn't seem to hold them steady. Bones took them gently and turned them palm side up.
"This looks painful," she said, observing the burns there. Moor's fingers wouldn't unroll completely. "You should see a doctor."
"An orbiter airlock is about 2 cubic meters," Moor said.
"How old is Jake?" Bones asked.
"Nine."
Bones released Moor's hands.
"I'm sorry," she replied.
"What about if there was a higher ratio of oxygen?" Moor asked.
Bones hesitated. "Maybe," she finally said, looking away.
"I should have realized sooner," Moor said to herself. "I was the only one with all the pieces. This is my fault."
"Stop," Sweets said. "Don't do this to yourself. You did everything you could."
"What am I going to say to Sarah?"
"They found him!" Booth exclaimed, partway through the door, his phone hovering near his ear. "He's unconscious, but alive."
"He...he's okay?" Moor breathed, uncomprehending.
"EMTs are checking him out now, but he should be fine," Booth confirmed.
"Oh thank God," Moor cried, collapsing on to the table, her head on her arms, her breathing ragged.
A careful hand took her forearm and tried to pull it away. Moor yanked it back but the hand was insistent. A moment later there was a click and the handcuff fell away. Moor sat up in surprise.
"For the record," Booth said as he released her other wrist, "you ran into a burning space shuttle to rescue that man, I trust you."
"They must have been in the science bay when the fire started," Moor guessed, attempting unsuccessfully to step the flow of tears with her wrists. "Colfax must have sealed Jake in the airlock and gone to the cockpit to try and put out the fire. Colfax would have flooded the airlock with oxygen to make sure Jake had enough to breathe, but he was panicking, he must have also hit the controls to the cabin, and the extra oxygen sent the fire out of control. He died trying to save his son and the orbiter."
"Why didn't he just escape?" Bones asked.
"Agent Booth said that it's my duty to protect the astronauts from the shuttle," Moor replied. "It is the astronauts' duty to protect the shuttle from themselves. Perhaps he shouldn't have, but that's what he did. He went out a hero."
"Not so bad after all," Booth said. "You're free to go. I suggest to head to the hospital on Cape Canaveral, there's a little boy there who will need someone familiar until his mom gets back."
"Right away," Moor replied.
"There's an agent right outside who'll get you on your way," Booth said.
"Thank you," Moor said as she at last stepped out of the room, into the bright light of the hallway, "all of you."
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At 5:18 am, Eastern Standard Time, on January 13, 2010, an innocent woman was not arrested in a hangar on Cape Canaveral Air Station. She was brought to Washington DC by the same route the unrecognizable body of her closest friend had taken less than two days before, but that was where their paths diverged. He was laid out on a table in a secure section of a museum and she was handcuffed to a table in a dark room with a window that only looks in.
At 10:24 am, Eastern Standard Time, January 13, 2010, a young boy was rescued by a woman in chains who was a thousand miles away, who hadn't been able to save his father from a distance of a hundred yards.
At 10:26 am, Eastern Standard Time, January 13, 2010, the chains were removed and the woman released.
Three people remained in the room where she had been.
"She'll be alright," Sweets said, taking the woman's seat and picking up one of the handcuffs, idly spinning the rotating arm around and around, causing a series of metallic clicks. It was unclear who he had spoken to. Were he the one observing, the psychologist might have found his own behavior interesting. As it was, he didn't seem to find it anything at all.
Booth and Bones looked similarly deflated. Never before had they been so nearly the cause of a needless tragedy.
"If she hadn't been brought here and forced to answer our questions, would she have realized Jake was there sooner?" Bones asked from the ragged edge of her vaunted rationality.
"I don't know," Booth admitted. "But she spent a day and two nights in that hangar and didn't think of it there. I think we ought to be happy that things worked out the way they did and not start questioning all the what ifs."
Bones, however, was a scientist, her life dedicated to asking exactly that, and it was not a habit easily broken, even in the name of sanity.
"When you came in here, you were convinced she was a murderer," Bones said to Booth. "All she wanted to do was find out what happened to her friend. She never even lied, not even once."
"She lied," Booth said.