Chapter Three: The Chief in the Photograph

Sometimes in the dead of night, he could still hear the screaming. Parents fought. It was one of those fact of life things his Pops was always telling him about – ranked right up there with bad refs and spilled milk. But even as a toddler, Booth knew that the kind of fighting his parents engaged in wasn't normal. On the blue moons when he was allowed to go play at a schoolmate's house, their moms didn't have bruises and flinched at the slightest of noises like his did. And, their father's definitely didn't have the glazed eyes and whiskey breath. Most of the time the fighting started after he had gone to bed, but as he got older his father drank earlier and earlier in the day until the point where the arguments were already heated by the time he got home from school. He was seven the first time his old man laid a hand on him. And, well, after that he never really stopped…


Staring back at him were four cherry red, irregular shaped circles lined all in a row with a tinge of purple around their rims. Even to an untrained eye, it wasn't hard for one to tell that they were from a handprint extending the length of a small forearm. Flip. Busted top lip, the blood dripped over two front teeth in need of braces. Flip. Angry lines the color of spicy brown mustard, faded yet never truly healed, spanning from one boney shoulder blade to the other. Flip. Thin, crisscross bands of puckered scars as if a thread had been sewn underneath the skin reaching from across two backs of twiggy thighs. Flip. Flip. Flip. He couldn't look at any more.

"Thanks, Mr. Basak. How much do I owe you?" he asked as he fished into his back pocket for cash to avoid looking the man directly in the eye. The convenience store was small, but held an eclectic array of items. Not that he saw any of the merchandise now. Right now he didn't see much of anything. However, it was well known Mom'n'Pop business run by a family of Indian immigrants. They had three kids, two of which went to school with him.

"No charge for you." The man said in heavily accented English, briefly looking up from sorting change. "Not today."

Booth knew that Mr. Basak had to know what was going on. After all, it wasn't all that hard to piece together. The pictures spoke for themselves. He tried not to think about what the man must think when he was alone in his dark room. Watching as the chemicals seep on paper, watching as an ugly cliché of a broken family slowly developed. The bitch of it was that these didn't even show the worst damage. But, his mom never allowed him to photograph her.

The Basaks often didn't let him pay when he came in with film to develop. It made him feel terrible that he kept coming back. He needed to save all the cash he could though. Moreover, they thankfully never pried or asked questions. He didn't need someone going to confront his father on their own and making a bigger mess of everything. Or worse, dragging the police into it – again – and having to listen to his mother spew out ridiculous story after ridiculous story as if she wasn't always a baseball bat swing away from death. Pulling out a wad of dollar bills, Booth placed them on the counter. "I can't do that. Please –"

Suddenly Mr. Basak's wife came out from the back room and quickly slapped his hand, cutting off his speech. "You're money not good here." She stated in a swift, clipped tone. Then she smiled, her eyes showing not pity, only sadness. She shoo-ed him with the ornately printed cloth in her hand, "Go, go."

"Thank you," he stated, wishing there was more he could say. "Thank you."

Exiting the corner store, Booth made a mental note to sign up for the volunteer group their daughter was the leader of. He continued walking, venturing across the street to where his car was parked. It was a '79 Chevy El Camino in faded steel blue with a trunk lid permanently missing and a sketchy radio. It had been gifted to him for his birthday from Pops and by far the best present he had ever received. Pops had bought it off his friend who had kept the over decade old car in good running condition.

The ride to the precinct was fairly short as all the traffic seemed to be going in the other direction. The parking lot was packed, forcing him into the second to last lane from the back. Tucking the packet of pictures into his inside his jacket, he clipped his ID badge to the outside before jumping out of the Shelly.

"Seeley! Don't forget to give me your new work schedule. You know that school starts in a few days." Mrs. Cooper called after him the instant he walked through the door. Whoever said that the elderly had less than spectacular memories didn't know their shit. Pops and Mrs. Cooper didn't let him get away with a thing.

"Please don't remind me, Mrs. C. I promise I'll get the schedule to you, but I'm still in denial about the school."

She grabbed him by his coat sleeve as he went to past the desk, effectively holding him in place. "Why is it that young people are constantly hurried?" She asked with her eyes dead upon him. "Take things slow. You should be reveling in your life. This is your last year of high school. One day you'll wake up with knees that pop and arms that won't go above your head. Enjoy being young before you have to grow up and have responsibility."

The stash of photo's in his pocket suddenly felt incredibility heavy. He didn't have time to enjoy being young, carefree. He had to fight. Without his fists. It was something he was just recently realizing was possible. "It's on the to do list. Smell the roses." He quipped with a faux smile.

Mrs. Cooper's cold, bony fingers took hold of his face. Her grip was gentle yet surprisingly firm. "Promise me, Seeley. Promise that you'll use that big heart of yours to beat out of control for pretty girls and to run the pigskin down the football field. You'll have plenty of time later to save the world."

The image of the girl from the other night, the one he dubbed Roxie, popped into his mind like a flashbulb. There was something he couldn't put a name to that made her keep cropping up in his brain. He tried to tell himself it was merely her air of mystery that he was drawn to. It had been about a week since that night she was brought in and he hadn't thought up a way to ask what happened to her without seeming too interested. Because really, he wasn't all that interested. Really.

"I promise, Mrs. C. But you make it sound like I'm some kind of saint, which is far from the truth. Saving the world isn't even on my radar." His words were honest. He had to save his family before he even thought about the rest of the screwed up planet.

Her fingers slid down to tap the pendent at his neck. "Although you may not be a saint, they watch over you," she smiled. She then reached beside her to heave a stack of papers at him that had been rubberbanned together. "Here are some pawn shop inventory lists. The Captain was hoping you could take the open burglary cases and match up some valuables. He said that if you managed to find a few he'd let you have some Window Time with Saroyan."

Booth took the stack and made his way to his "office" to work. Underappreciated and overworked, the precinct didn't exactly have a spare space to stick him in when he came to intern for them a year and a half ago. And none of the officers wanted to share what little room they had with some tetchy high school kid. As grunt work, he was put in charge of cleaning and organizing the jam packed, closet-sized evidence room. He spent so much time in there that one day when he showed up someone had wrote Seeley Booth, PITA Intern in sharpie on a piece of masking tape over the evidence room plaque. To others PITA might seem like some obscure department of law enforcement, but Booth learned quickly that it was meant to stand for pain in the ass.

Nonetheless, the joke gave him claim on the room and it was enough to convince the captain to let him move an old beat up desk with drawers the never closed right from the basement into the space. He pilfered a lamp that had four layers of dust on it from a rarely used archive room. Mrs. Cooper also kept him stocked with any office supplies he needed. Most of the time being an intern for the police station was essentially a glorified secretary. He did a lot of filing, highlighting, and organizing. Every now and then he'd get some Window Time, getting to observe real interrogations from the dark side of a two way mirror. And when someone was in an exceptionally good mood, they'd sometimes let him attend one of the training classes they sent their rookie cops to.

He was a third of the way through the pawn lists when a familiar face passed across the small window his office door. He jumped up, knocking his chair over in the process. He ran from the room in determination to catch her before she left or disappeared into an endless hour meeting.

"Caroline," he yelled with complete lack of sanity. All the staff whipped their attention to his voice as if he had just screamed fire in a crowded theater.

The woman turned and Booth braced himself for the backlash. "Seeley Joseph Booth, get over here," she stated taking a step toward him, almost predatorily. "I know that you did not just holler at me in public. Not only did not just holler at me, you did not use my first name. Right?"

"Ms. Julian, I'm sorry! It's only that –"

"Right?" She glared.

"Right," he repeated. "I did not."

"And what didn't happen will never happen again, ya hear?"

"Yes ma'am, of course."

"Now what happened for you to lose your ever livin' mind?"

"Pictures," he said reaching into his jacking and producing them with a flourish. "New ones."

"Son, I'm starting to think that tape on your door is a warning rather than a label." She motioned for him to follow her outside to get away from the hustle and bustle. "We've been over this. The pictures help but we have more than enough as it is. And there is a time and a place to discuss your case."

Booth shuffled his weight from one foot to the other. "I know, but I can't just wait around and do nothing!" He said, exasperated. He didn't want to yell, especially in of Ms. Julian, yet it was so hard for him to keep from screaming. "These are from last week, Jared paged me. It was… it was so bad. He's getting worse. You know it was bad if Chief contacted me."

"I want to help you, Cherie. I do. Someone needs to come forward—"

"Momma, she wouldn't let me look at her." Booth interrupted, unable to hear the same spiel he's heard a hundred times before. "Chief said that there are burns all over her back though. He thinks it was a cigar."

"We can try to get you mother to the hospital again, but the last time she went in with burns she said it was an accident with the iron."

"He's going to kill her. Everybody knows she's in danger, but because she's lying he's going to kill her." Booth squeezed his eyes shut and took a deep breath. He wasn't going to cry. He was nearly grown, a man. He wasn't going to cry. "I should have stayed and protected them. I'm a coward."

It was moments like these that Caroline really hated her job, when everything that was wrong with the system was so blatantly obvious. She hated having to watch children be adults because the actual adults weren't strong enough. She would never pretend to know what it was like to have an abusive spouse, but that didn't make it easier to watch mothers stay with beating husbands out of unrequited love, fear, and a misguided attempt to protect their children. She hated knowing all of these things and not being able to do enough about them.

"You are a lot of things Booth but you and I both know that a coward isn't one of them. We worked hard for you to live with Pops so that Jared could live there half time. I know the situation isn't good, but the split custody thing we have going is nearly unheard of. I'm doing everything within my powers as your case worker, but I'm not a lawyer. Lord knows if I was a prosecutor I would have already nailed your father's sorry ass to the wall."

Booth managed a weak smile at her comment. He knew Mrs. Julian went above and beyond for him. "There has to be something more I can do."

Opening her bag, Caroline knew that she was too invested in the Booth family case file. It was one of the few cases she carried around with her around the clock. Partly because this wasn't the first time Seeley had accosted her outside of her office doors, partly because it was so obvious that the father was an abusive bastard. "Alright Cherie, I'll make you a deal since there is actually a little project that I could use your help with. Here's the card of the congressman that says Jared is too young to be a credible witness against your father. I want you to take those photos and mail them to his office with a heart wrenching letter."

"Done."

"Cherie, you love to jump into the fire without knowing how hot it is first. One day you're going to get yourself burned." She quipped. "I'm not done. Jared needs to write a letter of his own. Look over it, but it doesn't need to be perfect. I want it to be real. Also, see if you can get something from his teachers at the school saying that he's intelligent and mature." Digging in her briefcase, she fished out a blank notepad and a pack of cigarettes. She put one between her full lips. "I want a copy of those letters by Friday."

He eyed the stick in her mouth with distain. "Those are bad for you… ma'am."

She took a few deep puffs before dropping it to the group and stamping it out with the toe of her shoe. "The Surgeon General mentioned it, which is why I better neva, eva see you with one. Those letters?"

"Mine, Jared's, teachers', Friday." He affirmed.

"Now for my end of the deal: if I was looking for a kid about your age that I didn't have a name on, where would I look for them in a newspaper?"

Booth scratched the back of his neck and kicked at the dead cigarette with his boot. "A kid about my age, any more information than that? Why do you think they'd be in the paper?"

Caroline laughed. "Y'all are always in the paper for something. Mrs. Cooper updates your latest football clipping pinned behind her desk every week. And I can't give you any more information, client confidentiality."

"Ms. Julian," he grinned, pouring on the charm. "You know that I'm extremely trust worthy. I could help you a lot more if I knew what this guy was like."

"Saroyan needs to let you shadow him more often," she grinned back. "She's a mousy looking thing, book club president type."

His mind swam for a moment. The girl with the laser blue eyes and confusing vocabulary was too imprinted in his mental image. She was already put into the system? Her air of mystery just got a whole lot bigger. "You mean Roxie?"

"Who?"

"There was this girl that Mullins brought in last week in the middle of the night. He tried to manhandle her and Mrs. Cooper sent her to the Captain to settle it."

Booth watched as she mumbled some fast French under her breath and he unconsciously took a step back. He knew she only tended to do that when she was seriously pissed. "I've been running my butt around town trying to track down this girl when she blabbed to you a week ago." She produced a Polaroid with a flourish and Booth had to smile at the shocked look on Roxie's face. "Is this is girl you mean?"

Even though he knew it was her, Booth took the photo from her hand to study it closer. He noticed the familiar wallpaper of the Children's Institute from his own short stint there. Despite the surprised raise of her eyebrows, there was still a defiant set to her jaw. "Yep, that's her. I don't know if name is really Roxie, I just kinda started calling her that. I thought it fit." He glanced down again at the picture. "Why was she sent to the Institute?"

Abruptly, the photo was ripped out of his hand and she whopped him upside the head with her file folder. "Oh no, no, no, Cherie. Absolutely not. Booth, you really are a pain in my ass. You are not allowed to develop some puppy love crush on this girl. It's my job to find out what happened to her, not yours." Her small speech was emphasized with some finger pointing. She looked him straight in the eye so he'd know she meant business before briskly turning to walk away.

She made it half way to the end of the block before he called out her name, her surname – he had learned his lesson well. She spared him a glance over her shoulder with a hand on her hip in impatience. "In the newspaper, try where they post the State Rally awards. The girl is really smart." He didn't know that for sure but he had a gut feeling about her. "Wherever they put chess club tournaments or science fair winners," he flashed his best smile, "I'll betcha on it."


AN: It really, really wasn't supposed to take this long to update this. I've had most of it written for a good while, then the muse for the ending peaced out on me without notice. Next chapter… Booth and Brennan meet again… : ) Reviews are like unexpected hugs!