Author's Note: This chapter was beta'd by the fabulous Kat Morning, who joined my team in order to make sure that the forensics I use are at the very least, glancingly accurate. With this update, the story will be caught up to where it is on my LiveJournal, and updates will come, at the very least, every Monday.
There is, indeed, a bed and breakfast in Hoxie, Kansas, but to the best of my knowledge, it is no longer operating. Perhaps I am wrong in this, though? I was unable to find information either way online.
Thank you to all the Kansans and Midwesterners that commented! I'm glad this story passes muster!
Chapter Four: Pelted by Apple Trees
There were more emergency vehicles than Booth would have thought they had in a rural area like this – cop cars and Trooper cruisers and KBI vans and an ambulance ready to transport the remains to the morgue at a moment's notice. And everyone stood around the corpse in a semi-circle, some of them looking busy and important on cell phones and snapping a few pictures half-heartedly, but others just looked... well, bored. Bones pushed through the gaggle of people and approached the body without stopping to talk to anyone, her brow furrowed in concentration.
It was a gruesome site, Booth had to give it that. Like some kind of sick Christ, the body hung nearly crucified on a wooden pole, dressed in the get-up of a farmer. There was little flesh left anywhere on the body that Booth could see – just decomposing and picked-over organs peeking through bone. On top of his head he wore a straw hat, and from every orifice, hay had been stuffed.
"Uh, who is that?" A voice next to him asked. It belonged to a rotund but youthful man, dressed in a police uniform. He looked as though he'd been standing outside sweating for ages, and Booth felt a little sorry for him.
"That's Doctor Temperance Brennan of the Jeffersonian Institution, the foremost leader in forensic identification in America," Booth said, reaching in his jacket pocket for the notepad Trooper Flint had given him. "And I'm Special Agent Seeley Booth of the FBI, her partner."
"Oh. Well!" The man brightened. "Welcome to Kansas! I hear they hauled your ass all the way out from D.C. Ain't that a bitch."
Booth laughed. "Yeah, it was... inconvenient."
"Sheriff Zachariah Brainard," he said, extending his hand for a warm and professional handshake. "Thanks for coming all the way out here."
"Yeah, well, that's what Bones and I do." Booth half-smiled and started when he heard his name.
"Booth!"
He jogged over to her. "Yeah, Bones? What do you need?"
"I'm going to need a larger perimeter than this. I'm finding it extremely difficult to work," she said in an undertone. "I feel as though I'm being observed on all sides."
"All right." Booth clapped his hands together and whistled. "Folks, if we could cut the personnel at the scene down to what is strictly necessary? Give your reports to Agent Donaldson here and then you're all free to go home, except the people responsible for transporting the remains."
"Thank you," Brennan said quietly, and approached the body once more, her keen eyes taking in everything.
Booth returned his attention to the sheriff. "So you got a call early this morning?"
"Yeah, about... oh... six-fifteen or so? Rettinger's boy Hank was out checking fence for his dad to earn some extra cash and noticed the scarecrow in the field was looking a little droopy. The kid had made it for a school project so he was concerned. Jumped off the ATV over there -" the sheriff gestured to an abandoned four-wheeler – "walked over to the scarecrow and had the fright of his life. Said it smelled awful but he didn't realize what it was until one of the fingers fell off. Ran all the way home and had a hell of a time convincing his folks it was real."
"So you drove out from Oberlin?"
"Yeah." The sheriff shook his head. "Don't have much cause to look at human bodies except to declare old geezers dead of natural causes, out here. And a few mangled people in farming accidents, hunting incidents, that kind of thing. I've never seen anything like that."
Booth nodded. "When did you first suspect it was the Senator?"
"Had a BOLO go out from the Topeka field office a few days ago – described the Senator, what he was wearing... the company he kept. I recognized the watch, called in the big boys, and... here you are, fourteen hours later."
"Victim is male," Brennan announced, straightening her spine. "Early to mid-middle age, it's too soon to tell for certain. Victim is..." she pushed aside the fabric of the shirt the remains wore, "stapled or otherwise affixed to wooden pole. Rate of decomp and scavenging suggests time of death was four to five days ago."
"Our guy went missing four days ago," Booth said, raising his eyebrows. "So they grab him from Salina, kill him, drive all the way out here with a corpse and set this up four days later?"
"I have not definitively identified these remains as Senator Williams," Brennan said.
"Yeah, Bones, I know. Just trying to wrap my head around everything, okay?"
The sky cracked with lightning, the wind picking up a little. Brennan returned to her task. "Booth? The distal phalanges of this victim have been removed... whoever did so cut through the bone."
"Great," Booth muttered.
"Completely unnecessary as there isn't enough flesh to pull a fingerprint from anyway."
"Well, maybe we've got a careful killer this time, Bones." Booth made a mark in his notepad.
"Possible," Brennan said, rolling the word around in her mouth. "I can't make any suppositions, however. Booth? I'm also missing several teeth."
"Is this going to slow down the identification process?" Booth asked.
"It depends on whether or not there are any other distinct markers Senator Williams has which can be used to identify him," Bones said.
"Right. Yeah, of course."
"Doctor Brennan? Agent Booth?" Donaldson approached them cautiously. "We've been under a tornado warning for some time and the locals are telling us we might want to get moving."
"Tornadoes are extremely rare," Brennan began to say, but Booth cut her off.
"Yes, but thunderstorms can be just as dangerous, Bones."
"Especially out here. There's no wind break for miles, ma'am. Storms like these often bring hail and seventy-mile-an-hour winds. We'd better pack up and get moving."
"All right," Brennan agreed reluctantly. "Take everything," she instructed the borrowed KBI techs. "Do not remove the remains from the pole. My assistants back in D.C will do that."
"Yes, ma'am," they muttered and set to work under her watchful eye.
Booth, for his part, kept one eye on Bones and another eye on the sky . He'd been all over the country – in Oklahoma and Texas and New Mexico and Louisiana ... but there was something terribly beautiful about a thunderstorm breaking over the horizon on the plains. The sky was an eerie grey-green, casting everything in a washed-out palate. The clouds picked up speed and height until every other second, it seemed, the sky cracked with lightning or boomed with thunder.
Just as the first fat raindrops were beginning to fall, Brennan allowed herself to be led away from the crime scene, still talking into her voice recorder. They climbed into the backseat of the Ford F-250 with the unflappable Trooper Flint and were soon back on the road.
It was late in the evening when the phone rang again. Parker was in bed, all of the lights were off, and Rebecca was enjoying a small glass of red wine and a good book. The sound interrupted her, but she sighed good-naturedly.
"Rebecca Stinson," she said into the receiver.
"Rebecca? This is Lance Sweets."
She smiled. "Oh hey."
"Listen, how is Parker doing?"
"He's disappointed and a little angry," Rebecca said honestly. "Like we all are, I think."
"Yeah." Lance sighed, on the other end of the line. "This was totally ill-timed, as far as Parker's development is concerned."
Rebecca laughed. In the year since Seeley had been gone, she'd gotten used to the young doctor's odd way of mixing the colloquial with the professional jargon that slipped so easily from his mouth. Booth had asked Sweets to keep an eye on Parker and Rebecca, and Sweets was as loyal to Booth as a cocker spaniel, Rebecca thought affectionately. Booth did tend to inspire that in the people that worked for him, so she wasn't too surprised.
She had been, however, a little surprised when, three months into Seeley's absence, she had needed Sweets' help. She'd been a single parent for all of Parker's life. There had been men that came and went, but she'd never let any of them really become her full partner. She was much too independent for that, so needing someone else's help – especially when that someone wasn't Seeley, who would fly across D.C in a minute if she'd asked him to for Parker – that had taken some getting used to.
Parker had been angry. And he was not, by nature, an angry kid. He was generous, warm and loving, almost to a fault. Adventuresome and outgoing and happy, that was Parker. But when Seeley hadn't come home: when Afghanistan had turned out to be further away than Parker had realized, and he didn't come back like he'd come back from being in a coma or being shot... well, Parker had been, for lack of a better word, pissed.
He took his anger out on toys and friends and Rebecca and finally... she'd called Sweets. A few sessions later, they sat down.
"Parker blames himself for his father's absence," Sweets had begun without prologue. "He feels that if he had not encouraged Booth to leave for Afghanistan, Booth would still be here."
Rebecca felt her mouth go dry. "Booth and I explained to him, though..."
"At this age, his sense of time is still developing – and a year of his life is a much more significant chunk of that time than it is of yours, for instance. So when you say 'it's just a year'..."
"Oh." Rebecca crossed her legs. "So what do we do?"
"Well, he's his father's son." Sweets shrugged his shoulders. "You and Booth have instilled a sense of responsibility and compassion in Parker that's really admirable. The problem is channeling that responsibility and that compassion outwards, rather than inwards."
"Excuse me?"
"Tell Parker often that... this is the kind of man his father is: when his country asks him to do something, Booth simply doesn't say no; that adults make up their own minds and they're responsible for their own decisions."
"Oh, okay."
"Allow him to make plans for what he'd like to do when his father is back. Encourage frequent and positive communication." Sweets shrugged. "Mostly, you do what you're doing now."
"And that will help?"
"Totally. The thing is, Rebecca," Lance leaned forward, kindness shining in his eyes,"every parent – single or otherwise – they want to protect their kids from the worst of the world. This isn't the first crisis Parker's had to face and it probably won't be his last. Let him be angry for a while, as long as he's respectful about it. Let him experience those emotions and help him identify them so that he can work through them. People leave, and people come back. Parker's used to that happening on a much more frequent scale with Booth."
Rebecca winced. "How much did Seeley tell you?"
"I honestly can't talk about it." Sweets shrugged. "Client-doctor privilege."
"I worry sometimes, about... if those early years have hurt Parker." Rebecca shook her head. "Maybe if I hadn't been so... angry, all of the time, at myself, and let Booth have Parker more often... It's just that..." she sighed. "You're going to think I'm nuts."
Lance smiled. "Probably not. Remember, my office hours are sometimes reserved by serial killers."
Rebecca narrowed her eyes but laughed. "Right. Well. It's just that Booth is... Larger-than-life, you know? Never lets up on himself. Works all of the time. Is good at... well, everything. And..."
"Parker's relationship with his father is not your relationship with yours." Lance crossed one leg over the other. "His relationship with Booth is hero-worship and emulation, and then it'll be adolescent frustration, but... Parker's going to turn out okay, Rebecca. You two are doing the best you can."
Months later, the sound of Lance's voice on the phone was somehow reassuring. "I told Hacker he had to fix it."
"He did," Sweets said reassuringly. "If it's all right with you, I'll fly Parker out to Kansas this weekend."
"Really?" Rebecca raised her eyebrows. "Lance, you don't have to..."
"No, it's totally cool. You probably need a break from the fatigue of daily single parenting and I would like a way to surreptitiously gauge how Booth's adjusting to civilian life."
"Dr. Sweets, are you using my kid as an in?"
"Yes, ma'am."
Rebecca laughed at Lance's serious tone. "Well, all right. At least you're honest about it."
"Good. If you'll meet me at the airport Friday morning at ten a.m.? Our flight leaves at noon. We'll be with Booth and Brennan by six p.m., eastern."
"Okay, good." Rebecca took a sip of her wine. "Lance?"
"Yeah?"
"Seeley's really lucky to have a friend like you."
She could practically hear the blush on the other end of the line. "Thanks, Rebecca."
The truck jerked to a stop, jolting both Booth and Brennan awake with a start. "Well, here we are," Trooper Flint announced, pointing at the large Victorian house in front of them. "Ethan and Danielle Hoake run the place, but they've gone to bed by now. Your keys will be under the front rug there. There are three bedrooms and three of you, so you'll have to fight it out for who gets what room."
"Have you stayed here before?" Brennan asked.
"No. Went to school with Breanna Hoake, their middle-daughter," Trooper Flint said. "I used to do the odd chores around here. I called earlier when it looked like we wouldn't make it away from the crime scene at a decent time."
Booth opened his door and walked around to help Bones out of hers. Of course, she was already halfway to the ground and gave him an odd look, but you couldn't fault a guy for trying.
They were strangely quiet as they made their way inside the darkened house, up the only flight of stairs and into the wing with the guest bedrooms. Booth opened the first door and, on discovering the pink quilt, quickly moved on. Bones might not take it out of some feminist principle, and he sure as hell wasn't sleeping on pink sheets. The bedroom next door was some soothing color of green, so he stepped inside and shut the door without saying goodnight.
His evening ablutions were quickly accomplished and he was about to tuck himself in when there was a knock at the door.
Quietly, he padded over to the door and opened it. It was Bones, of course, dressed in a white t-shirt three sizes too big for her and running shorts. It was more than a little hot.
"I just... wanted to tell you." Bones coughed and looked down, and somewhere in all of that, he could see the fifteen-year-old-girl that she must have been. "It was really good to be back working with you today, Booth."
"Yeah. It was. Good, I mean. To, uh... work with you." He grinned at her, unable to stop.
She still didn't raise her eyes to meet his. "And I wanted to tell you that... it was really hard not to see you for a year."
Just like that, his heart fell from where it had been flying high, shattering into a million pieces on the floor, because... she had to know what something like this would do to his hope. Previously dead, it fluttered back to life, and Booth wanted to curse.
"I missed you too, Bones."
"I wish that our plans hadn't been interrupted. I miss Angela and Hodgins and Cam..." She shook her head. "It seems silly."
A year ago, this is when Booth would have invited her inside – helped her work through what she was feeling. Maybe he would have tortured himself by touching her hand, or her face. He would have reassured her that her emotions weren't ridiculous, but by the end of the night, she would have been soothed, but he would have been a mess. The desert had done a lot for him – thrown some things into sharp relief – chiefly among them a resolution to be the best friend he could be to Bones without existing in a state of constant pain. So he gently pushed her in the right direction. Away from him.
"No, Bones. It's not. Go ahead. Call Angela, surprise her. She's going to want to know everything, anyway."
Her eyes dropped to the ground but she smiled. "Yeah, she is." Her hand reached out, grabbed his, and squeezed. "I'm so very glad that you're okay."
He couldn't help but squeeze her hand back before he dropped it, just a bit too quickly. He saw the look of hurt flash across her face. "Thanks, Bones. Go call Angela. Have a good night."
And he shut the door.
She crawled into her bed, mortified. No matter how many times she practiced emotional exchanges, they never seemed to go her way. She was awkward, ungainly... socially inept, and no time apart had ever done anything to change that about her.
She needed a friend. Someone to remind her that she was good at something, that she had figured out much tougher things than how to get her best friend back after she'd single-handedly destroyed that relationship. She needed Angela.
Looking down at her watch, she sighed, but she reached for her cell phone anyway. Angela would probably pick up. The phone rang three times, but eventually... there was a gasp and then... "Sweetie!"
"Hello, Angela."
"Oh my gosh, it is good to hear your voice when I know you're on good American soil. How was Indonesia? Was it awful?"
Brennan laughed. "It wasn't, actually."
"I'll bet there were huge bugs and no running water."
"Safe assumptions, both."
"See, sweetie, that's the definition of 'awful'."
Brennan felt her heart growing lighter by the minute. "Maybe for you, Angela, but I'm sure that sounds like heaven for your new spouse."
"Not if he knows what's good for him," Angela growled, and Brennan sank back against the covers, already feeling more steady.
"How's Booth?"
"I can't be certain," Brennan said, wrinkling her brow. "I think... I think perhaps his time in Afghanistan was hard for him."
Angela hmmed in agreement. "Well, yeah, sweetie. War zone."
"Yes, but Booth has gone to war before."
"The first time you met Booth, he'd had years to deal with what he'd done. It's your turn to be patient, Bren. Booth will come back to you."
"He's here, though, Angela."
"I meant metaphorically. Sometimes when you go away – you come back in pieces. You know about that. Like when you've been to Guatemala and you accidentally break your ex-boyfriend's television with a baseball bat because a piece of you is still in Central America."
Brennan laughed. "Ange -"
"I'm just saying. Your Booth is in there. He came back from a coma, he's been shot, blown up..."
"Ange -"
"And he's always come back, right?"
Brennan sighed. "Right."
"So just wait, honey. He's been waiting for you. Whatever... revelations you might have had in that godforsaken jungle can wait, okay?"
"I know." Brennan sighed. "I know, it's just... hard."
"Yeah, well. Love stinks."
Brennan laughed, and rolled over on to her back. "Are you and Hodgins moved back from Paris completely?"
"Yes, but I have so much to tell you..." Angela started to talk about paintings, life in Paris, the return trip, the cost of shipping and... Brennan slowly fell asleep to the sound of her best friend's voice.