The Woman in the Water, Part 2:
"Good morning" Doctor Brennan said as she walked into Angela's office where we were waiting for her. She moved over to Agent Booth who was examining the holographic display. "Does Booth know how it works?" She asked as she walked past him to stand next to Angela. "I'll explain it just in case. This computer program, which I designed, accepts a full array of visual input, processes it and then projects it as a three dimensional holographic image."
"O-kay." Booth said, I smiled. I was pretty sure he didn't understand a word Angela had just said. "Did you get that?" Brennan asked him. "Yeah."
"Brennan reassembled the skull, and applied tissue markers."
"Her skull was badly damaged, but racial indicators, cheekbone dimensions, nasal arch, and occipital measurements suggest African American." With that Angela started typing variables into the program. "And.. We have our victim." She said as the image of a young woman appeared in front of us. "Wow." Booth said as he stuck his hand through the hologram. "I must admit that that's pretty cool."
"Ang, rerun the program substituting Caucasian values." With that the hologram changed again. "Does she look familiar to anyone?" Brennen asked. Booth shook his head. "No."
"Split the difference, mixed race."
"Lenny Kravitz or Vanessa Williams?" Brennan raised an eyebrow at that. "I don't know what that means." Angela shrugged and mouthed Vanessa Williams as she changed the hologram again. "Angela, reduce tissue depth of the cheekbones and the jawline." After this Brennan asked again. "Does anyone recognize her?"
"Not me." Zack said, looking at me as I stepped forward. "Wait. Is that who I think it is?" I said, looking back at Zack, who seemed to understand where I was going. "The girl who had the affair with the senator?"
"Exactly, yeah." I crossed my arms and stepped back. "Her name is Cleo Louise Eller. Only daughter to Ted and Sharon Eller. Last seen approximately 9 AM, April 6 2003, leaving the Cardinal Deluxe gym on Bay street. She didn't even make it to her car." Brennan raised an eyebrow at Booth. "Very good memory."
"Yeah, well it's my job to find her."
"In that case congratulations on your success." Hodgins said, crossing his arms in front of him. "This isn't exactly the way I wanted it to end." Booth said as he walked out of the office with Brennan following behind him.
During our lunch break we all decided to sit outside on the steps of the museum building on the opposite side of the Jeffersonian. I loved being outside after working in the lab all day, it made me feel refreshed. As I took a seat on one of the nearby steps, Zack sat down next to me and handed me my lunch from his backpack. "Thanks." I said as I opened a small bow of macaroni and cheese, the same old meal he made for us every day. I never complained though, I knew how much he loved it. "Cleo Eller wasn't just some missing girl." I turned around when I heard Booth approach the stairs. "Yeah, she's a senate intern who was boinking Senator Alan Bethlehem." Hodgins remarked as he took a bite from his sandwich. "I was secondary in the investigation to the disappearance of that girl and we couldn't confirm that." Booth said as he handed Brennan a picture, which I assumed showed Cleo. "How did you recognize her before she even had her own face?" He asked. "I recognized the architecture of her features, the rest is just window dressing."
"I'm not an expert but shouldn't he be happier?" Zack asked me. Before I could answer, Booth spoke up. "No, no. Believe me I'm happy."
"You seem happy to me." I said with a smirk on my face as I took another bite of my macaroni. Booth sighed as he started walking down the steps. "I need this kept quiet."
"Ha! Cover up!" Hodgins yelled after Booth. "Stop it with the conspiracy theories." Angela said and punched his shoulder. "Really? Is it paranoia that Monica Lewinski was a KGB trained sex-agent mole?" At that I rolled my eyes. Hodgins overthought things way too much.
"There are stab marks here, and odd markings on the distal phalanges." I said pointing out the places that needed to be photographed. Zack nodded and got to work. "Very good, Miss Rhonin." Brennan said as she and Hodgins walked into the bone room. "So, in a nutshell? Anxious, distressed and nausceous." I raised an eyebrow at Hodgins comment. "Take a sick day?" Hodgins sighed. "Not me, Cleo Eller. Tox screen showed that she was on Lorazepam, chlordiazepoxide and meclizine hypochlorite."
"Nausea.. Show me those bone fragments again, Miss Rhonin." Brennan said, pointing at the petri dish containing the frog bones. Brennan placed the bones underneath the microscope and examined them further. "These aren't frog bones. Cleo Eller was pregnant."
"Fetal remains." Zack said softly. "Maleus, incus, stapus.. These are fetal ear bones." Brennan said, looking up from the microscope. "She was pregnant.." I sighed. "Poor girl, she wasn't very far along."
"Want me to get DNA readings? See if we can get paternality? Zack asked Brennan as he picked up the petri dish. "We can try. Let's hope there's enough genetic material to test."
"This senator.. Oh, he is smart. He gets an intern pregnant, then murders her when it threatens his career. And he has the connections to get away with it." Brennan chuckled. "I hate it when you make paranoia plausible. It's like sliding off a cliff." "Normally I wouldn't agree with his assumptions, but Hodgins does have a point with that one." I said. Hodgins smiled at me as he picked up the report from the table. "No way Brennan's FBI pal heads it up unless the dark powers in charge are convinced he knows where his political bread is buttered. Either way, that's where this investigation ends."
Zack sat down next to me at the dinner table where I was reading through the case file, and placed a plate of lasagna in front of me. After a few seconds of talking to me without a response, he sighed. "You haven't heard a word I said, have you?" I looked up from the file and got out of my trance. "I'm sorry. This case has really got me on edge." Zack moved his hand over to mine and gave me a slight smile. "Is it because the of the victim?"
"Cleo. The victim's name was Cleo." I remarked quietly. "I just feel sorry for her. That's all."
"I see. I don't know what to say to that." Zack said, looking a little defeated. Zack never really was good with emotions, though I could tell that he was trying to understand how I felt. "It's okay." I said as I stood up from my seat and walked over to the bedroom. "You didn't even touch your lasagna." Zack said as he turned in my direction. "Maybe I have a different kind of appetite." I winked and walked into the bedroom. It took a few seconds for Zack to understand exactly what I meant. "You mean.. Oh." With that he happily walked over to me and as soon as he reached me, he pulled me into a passionate kiss. I smiled and slowly tugged him toward the bed. I unbuttoned his shirt and slid it of his shoulders. We broke the kiss as I quickly pulled my own shirt over my head. "Accelerated heartbeat, heavy breathing along with dilated pupils." He said as he pushed me down onto the bed. "And they say science isn't romantic." I smiled as we started kissing again. We were so going to be late for work in the morning.
"This is a rough composite, but you get the idea." Angela said as she started up holographic monitor again, motioning Brennan to begin. "The skull trauma was not the cause of death, Cleo was stabbed first. She was stabbed five times with a military issued K-Bar knife."
"And I just completed this rendering. The defensive wounds to the bones of her hands suggest that it wasn't until the third or the fourth penetration that.." Brennan interrupted her and pointed out one of the stab marks. "There. That's most likely the fatal stab."
"After which Cleo stopped fighting back." I said crossing my arms in front of me. "I believe that the distinctive damage to her distal phalanges, the tips of her finger bones, was caused by the murderer using a knife to remove her finger pads. Cranial fragmentation suggests that a 20lb hammer struck four to five times while the victims head rested on a cement floor containing traces of diatomaceous earth. That's the best explanation for the particulates found in her skull. This was not a crime of passion." Angela sighed after Brennan stopped talking. "Cleo never saw the first stab coming, it didn't arise out of an argument. Why smash Cleo's face, why whittle away her finger tips, remove her clothing and her jewelry?"
"Sink her body." Zack said in response. "The murderer put more effort into hiding the victim's identity than he did into the murder itself." After that Hodgins walked into the room. "In case Cleo was ever identified, the murderer planted evidence. The little book that Brennan got from Cleo's stalker matches the cellulose I found in Cleo's hand."
"Military cemetery, military knife. Both of which implicate her own father. More misdirection." I said, thinking aloud. "Sound like any conniving, son of a bitch senators you know?" Hodgins said as he walked over to the holograph. "You expect me to declare war on a United States Senator based on your little holographic crystal ball?" Booth said as he approached the holograph as well. "It's not magic, it's a logical recreation of events based on the evidence." I said, feeling a little insulted. "No more valid than my gut." Booth said, disregarding my comment. "A good hypothesis withstands testing, that's what makes it a good hypothesis." Zack commented in my defense. "It's not a hypothesis, you have a dead girl and a United States Senator. This is exactly why you squints belong in the lab. You guys don't know anything about the real world." At that Brennan glared at Booth and walked out of the room. "Come on, guys. We're done here."
"So, what happened after that?" Sweets asked as I got up to get myself a glass of water. "Well, after talking to Brennan again later that evening, Booth admitted to her that she was right about Senator Bechlehem and got the warrant to search his place where surprise, surprise, they found the a sledgehammer."
"You know, it's interesting how you can recall this case in such great detail after, say, 3 years." I smirked at him as I sat back down. "I have eidetic memory."
"That explains it." Sweets said as he leaned forward again. "So, in the end, was it Bechlehem that killed Cleo?"
"They won't even arrest him?" Zack said as he sat down on the couch next to me. "Don't worry." Hodgins said. "If that's the hammer used on Cleo Eller he'll get arrested." At that he picked up his glass and held it in front of him. "A toast, for getting the murderous bastard." After toasting I took a sip from my glass and cringed. "What the hell is that?" Before Hodgins could answer me though, Brennan spoke up. "The hammer is not enough. He's going to get away with it. Maybe Booth is right, maybe outside the lab we're useless."
"Hey!" I said aloud. "Don't talk us down like that."
"Let us take guidance from the lives of the saints." With that Hodgins held up the small prayer book Brennan got from Cleo's stalker. "Albertus Magnus, Patron Saint of Scientists." Zack raised an eyebrow at that. "I thought Magnus was the Patron Saint of fish mongers?" I ruffled his hair and set my now empty glass down onto the table in front of us. "They were two separate entities. Albertus Magnus was a 13th century philosopher, the fish monger saint was a.."
"Fish!" At that everyone stared at Brennan in disbelief as she interrupted me. "Hodgins, you said that diatomaceous earth could be used as a filtering agent, correct?"
"Yeah, for swimming pools, water filters.."
"Or tropical fish." Brennan said as she interrupted Hodgins. "The stalker said that Ken Thompson, Cleo's boyfriend, kept fish." As she finished speaking again, Brennan turned to walk away but she soon as she put on her jacket, she turned back and continued to talk to us. "Thompson read the warrant, he knows we're looking for diatomaceous earth. Get in touch with Booth and tell him where I'm going, okay?" I nodded and took out my cell. "She didn't actually say where she was going, did she?" Angela asked us, to which Hodgins just shrugged and took another sip from his drink.
"Now after Brennan left for Thompson's house, she shot him in the leg to keep him from destroying the evidence. After which Booth arrived and arrested him for the murder of Cleo Eller. She had a lovely service, you know." Sweets raised an eyebrow at me. "You attended her funeral?"
"Of course, we all did. Why is that such a surprise?"
"It's just that at first glance, you seem to distance yourself from other people. But I think that deep down, you care more than you'd like to admit." I rolled my eyes at him. "Whatever. Can I go home now that I finished the story?"
"Sure." Sweets stood up and held out his hand to me, which I ignored. "You know, I think we made good progress today. I'll see you tomorrow at 3. Don't be late."
"It's not like I have anything better to do anyway." I said as I closed the door behind me.
Author's Note: Thanks to Laura for the fastest review I've ever had on a story.