Chapter 3:
Angela sat at her desk as she penciled in the final touches of her sketch. A smiling ten-year old girl stared back at her. She always drew the victims happy, better to imagine how he or she might have been in life rather than in death. She did not want to think about how or why the victim died. Her job was to find out who the victim was.
Satisfied with her sketch, Angela walked out of her office and approached Jack's station. "Wasn't she beautiful," she asked him as she tilted the sketch in his direction.
Jack set down his huge yellow coffee cup with the Jeffersonian label to peer at the sketch. "A lovely little girl," he responded.
Cam approached them and studied Angela's rendering of the little girl. "It's amazing how quickly you work sometimes, Angela. Good job!"
"Thanks," Angela replied with a thin smile, stuck between wanting to show pride for her work and respect for the victim.
"I found something interesting that explains the blackened fingernails," Hodgins informed them. "A bipyridyl herbicide known as paraquat. Farmers use it to clear land of weeds before they plant their crops. Ingestion of the chemical causes fluid build up in the lungs and kidney failure."
"So the killer would have had to have gotten this paraquat from a commercial farmer," Cam intuited.
"Exactly. Your average gardener would not have the license to use such a herbicide."
"I'll run a search for farms in the area that use paraquat." She turned and started to walk away. "Thanks Hodgins," she added without turning back.
"No problem."
"So lover boy," Angela said once Cam had left. "Where are you taking me to lunch?"
"Oh, I haven't run out of places in the D.C. area to dazzle you with yet," he replied mysteriously. "You'll see."
"All right." Placing her hands on his shoulders, she kissed him tenderly. "Let me run this sketch through the missing children's database, then I'm all yours. After Angela scanned in the sketch the computer found a match within a few minutes. She speed dialed Brennan.
"So did you go to church yesterday?" Brennan asked, trying to make the question sound like idle chat when she was actually probing. She was sitting in the passenger seat of his SUV.
"As always," Booth responded, glancing at her. Brennan hated that he wore sunglasses when he drove. She found it difficult enough to read his expressions normally; the sunglasses made it impossible.
"Then how did you find the time to investigate this case? You had a fairly hefty case file by lunchtime yesterday."
"Bones, I am just talented in that way. And while we're on the subject of Sunday morning, you never did tell me what you were doing yesterday."
Before she could respond, Brennan's cell phone rang. "Brennan," she answered.
"Sweetie, I got an ID for you," Angela informed her. "Heidi Leidel, age ten. She went missing January 2nd this year from Alexandria, Virginia. I'll text the address and directions to your cell."
"Wonderful. Thanks, Angela!" Brennan hung up her phone and looked at her partner. "Angela Identified the victim from the missing children's database." A moment later, her phone beeped, letting her know that Angela's text had come through.
They arrived at the small complex of one-story apartment flats where Emily Gilbert lived. Booth knocked on her door, then a second time when she did not answer. Someone pulled back the curtain to peek at them before coming to the door. A woman in her twenties answered, wearing a waitress uniform. Her long auburn hair was pulled back loosely in a Scrunchy.
"Please tell me you ain't Jehovah's Witnesses," she said. "I got to leave for work in like fifteen minutes."
Booth flashed his badge. "Special Agent Seeley Booth. This is Dr. Temperance Brennan. You better call into work and tell them you'll be a little late."
"Oh crap."
A couple minutes later after Gilbert had called the diner where she worked, they were sitting in her tiny living room. Gilbert was smoking a cigarette to Brennan's distaste. Booth informed her why they were there.
"How awful!" Gilbert exclaimed. "And you don't have any idea how this little girl got up there?"
"Oh, we have some ideas," Booth responded, watching her reaction closely as she narrowed her eyes. "Would you mind telling us who you let into the Crawford house without their knowledge?"
"Me! Why would I do such a thing?" She puffed heavily on her cigarette, obviously nervous.
"Why wouldn't you? You had a big house to play in, no other adults around. Two small boys could easily be preoccupied with TV or video games."
"Ok. Ok. I may have let my boyfriend come over a couple of times. We did a little hanky panky. Nothing illegal in that!"
"On your own time," Brennan said. "You wee remiss in your duty to those little boys who counted on your guidance."
"The Crawfords never found out about the boyfriend?" Booth asked.
"Hell no." She flicked her ashes into an ash tray on the coffee table. "I woulda got fired!"
"You no longer babysit for them," Booth concluded. "Why is that?"
"Why would I want to after they moved out of that mansion? I stare at apartment walls all day." She spread her arms to remind them of where they were. "Why would I want to work in one?"
"So you didn't grow an attachment to the boys?"
"Those brats? Hardly!"
Booth cringed at her attitude. He couldn't spend enough time with his son, Parker. It really irritated him when other adults were disrespectful toward children. "Miss Gilbert, we need the name of your boyfriend."
She sighed as though it pained her to say his name. "Brian Lewis, but he ain't my boyfriend no more."
"Why's that?"
"He liked another girl better than me." A silence crept between them as the implications of her accusation sank in.
"How young was this other girl?" Brennan asked.
Gilbert hesitated, not expecting the question. "A lot younger than me," she responded. Was that jealousy in her expression? Booth wondered.
"Over eighteen, under eighteen," Booth prodded.
"Under, definitely. I was an old maid to him."
"Was Lewis molesting this girl?"
"How should I know!" she yelled, taking affront. "Do you think I'm some kinda sick freak who'd watch?"
"Do you know Lewis' whereabouts?"
"Nope. And I don't care to know. He's the biggest jerk in the world. He really knows how to make a girl feel like second best." Not only was she jealous, but Booth was now convinced that she thought the girl was a willing participant in her molestation.
"We'll need a picture of him then."
"Ya'll be lucky if I still have one." She snuffed out her cigarette, then got up to go into another room. A minute later, she returned with a photo album. She set it on the coffee table and began thumbing through it. Here ya are!" she exclaimed, peeling back the plastic to remove a picture of a tall, scruffy man in his late twenties. "Keep it. I'll just burn it if ya give it back."
"Thank you for your cooperation," Booth said. He said this to mollify her, while silently questioning her honesty. "We'll be in touch if we need any further information."
The worst part of the job was visiting the family of the deceased, especially when the victim was a child.
A woman of about forty answered the door and Booth introduced himself and Brennan. "Mrs. Leidel, is your husband home?"
"He's at the office," Samantha Leidel replied. "This is about Heidi, isn't it?"
Nodding, Booth said, "I think you better call your husband and ask him to come home."
By the time her husband had arrived, Samantha Leidel had made a fresh pot of coffee and baked a batch of sugar cookies, the kind that came premade from the store. She needed to play the role of the dutiful hostess to avoid succumbing to the overwhelming grief inside her.
"Samantha?" her husband said as he entered the living room. He looked straight at Booth, expecting the agent to answer.
"Mr. Leidel," Booth said, "If you would please have a seat beside your wife."
Leidel walked passed his wife to sit to her left on the burgundy sofa. He grasped her hand and they waited anxiously for the expected news.
"Your daughter was found in the attic of a house on the east side of D.C. She'd been there for six months."
"She was molested, then poisoned," Brennan added.
The father broke down first, sobbing into his hands.
"The other girls came back after two or three days," Samantha Leidel informed them. "We just thought Heidi–"
"What other girls?" Booth asked.
Mrs. Leidel looked toward her husband, bewildered. She could not understand why an FBI agent would not know about the other girls. "Three other girls from Heidi's school were taken before her–but they were all returned. They had been molested, but physically, they were fine. Then Heidi was taken and days, weeks went by. Why didn't he return our little girl to us?" Finally, breaking down, she covered her tear-streaked face against her husband's chest. He placed an arm around her.
"I understand how difficult this is," Booth apologized. "I have just one more question for you: Did you ever receive any ransom demand?"
Both parents shook their heads. "For a while, we had hope," Mr. Leidel said. "When she didn't come back after weeks, I knew my little girl was gone."
"When will we be able to bury Heidi?" Samantha asked.
"Soon," Brennan promised. "Let me know the funeral home you wish to use and I'll make the arrangements for them to pick her up."
"Thank you."
Once they were back in Booth's SUV and before they were back on the road, Booth called FBI headquarters in D.C. and requested I.D.s and photographs of the other girls kidnapped from Heidi Leidel's school, which the other agent promised to fax to the Jeffersonian. "Let's go see what the squints have uncovered," he said and pulled onto the road.