The penultimate chapter to this story. I hope you're enjoying it as much as I enjoyed writing it.
When Booth wakes, he is somewhat confused because he doesn't remember actually going to sleep. When he looks down and sees Brennan sound asleep in his arms the events of last night come back to him. She had looked so vulnerable and all he had wanted to do was take her pain away. But he can't do that. No one can. The best he can do right now is gather the evidence to put away Jamie Carlson's killer, especially if that turns out to be Paul Jackson.
Gently, Booth rolls Brennan out of his arms and down onto the bed. She murmurs but does not seem to wake. Booth then carefully gets off the bed and covers Brennan with a blanket and begins to tidy up the paperwork still strewn across the end of the bed. When he's done he orders breakfast and takes a quick shower. The hot water seems to ease his muscles, tense from the weight of this case. As he steps out of the shower he hears movement and figures that Brennan has woken up.
Brennan wakes and rolls over, confused for a moment about where she is. The she remembers Booth holding her last night. I must have fallen asleep she thinks when she looks around and realises she is not in her hotel room but Booth's. The shower is running meaning she has a few minutes to gather her wits before Booth comes out. Something about last night has her uneasy. She thinks it's the intimacy she and Booth shared. She doesn't fall asleep in the arms of just any man. But then again, Booth isn't just any man. She lets a smile cross her face as she rises from the bed. The clicking of the bathroom door opening startles her and she spins around to see Booth emerge wearing just a pair of blue jeans. He could have put a shirt on? She thinks as her eyes focus on his tanned and very toned chest.
"Morning." He greets her as he rubs a small towel on his head to dry his hair.
"Morning." She replies.
"I ordered breakfast." He tells her. "And we need to talk about where we go from here." Where we go? Brennan panics. What does he mean, where we go from here? "I really need to talk to this Paul Jackson." Booth continues.
"So we do that."
"Bones, I don't know if it's such a good idea for you to be there when I do." Booth admits.
"Why not?"
"After what you told me last night, I don't want you to be put in an awkward situation."
"Booth, all that happened a long time ago and I'm stronger now. I'm not going to let him get to me."
"I don't want to compromise the case either. You had a relationship with this man and when we go to court…" he trails off, seeing Brennan's shoulders sag.
"You're right." She turns and moves for the door. "I'll go set up in my room and catch up with what Hodgins and Zach have found." She pulls the door open.
"I'll call you when I get back." Booth tells her. She nods and steps out into the hall leaving Booth wondering if Brennan is going to make it through this case in one piece. It seems to be eating away at her.
xxxx
Two hours later, Booth pulls up at the Jackson home. It is the same home Jackson lived in when Brennan was in his care fifteen years ago and that makes Booth a little uneasy. In a few minutes he's about to be standing in the home which caused Brennan so much heartache and talking to the man responsible for it all. He sucks in a deep breath and gets out the SUV, striding towards the front door. The house seems pretty run down. The front porch has been eaten away by weather and the windows don't look like they could keep out much cold. Lifting his hand, Booth raps sharply on the door. A minute later a petite woman in her early sixties answers the door. Her face shows years of pain; deep set eyes with heavy bags, wrinkles and a sadness in her eyes.
"Mrs Jackson?" Booth asks. The woman nods and glances back inside the house.
"Can I help you?" she asks quietly.
"I need to speak with your husband, Paul Jackson."
"Who are you?"
"Special Agent Seeley Booth, FBI." He flashes her his badge and the woman reluctantly steps aside.
"You'd better come in." she lets Booth inside and leads him to the lounge where Booth lays eyes on the man that hurt his Bones.
"Who the hell is this?" Jackson yells. He doesn't move from the recliner he is in, only scratching his beer gut and swigging from a bottle of beer. Booth can see that time has not been kind to this man. Nor should it. He is almost entirely bald, his skin is deeply wrinkled and slightly yellowed in colour and he looks like he hasn't washed in days.
"Mr Jackson, I'm Agent Booth from the FBI." Booth says firmly. "I'm here to ask you a few questions about a foster child you had in your care fifteen years ago."
"Which kid? There were lots of those rugrats running around here." Jackson mutters.
"Her name was Jamie Carlson. She stayed here for around six months at the same time as another child, Temperance Brennan." Booth searches the man's face for a reaction.
"What do you want to know about the brat?" Jackson shifts in the chair and drinks more beer. Booth walks over and sits down on the edge of the couch opposite him.
"I need to know what happened when she left here."
"What's to know? The stupid kid took off. Just as well, she was trouble."
"What do you mean trouble?" Booth asks. He glances across the room at Mrs Jackson who is hovering nervously.
"Her and that other kid, the smart one. They liked to mess me around, cause me problems."
"And how did you deal with that?" Booth probes, trying to keep his voice neutral.
"Like any father I tried to teach them to respect their elders." Jackson laughs. "Didn't do much good. The kid you're asking about, Jamie. She snuck out all the time, thought I didn't know.
"What about the other girl?" Booth can't help but ask.
"She was too smart for her own good. Pissed me off with all those big words she used."
"Why didn't you report Jamie running away?" Booth asks, switching the subject back to what he came to talk about.
"She wasn't worth it."
"She was sixteen." Booth says, anger starting to rise to the surface.
"Why are you asking all these questions anyway, the girl's been gone a long time."
"Jamie Carlson's body was found inside a box buried in a federal park here in Chicago."
"She's dead?" Jackson doesn't seem to surprised. "Hmm." He nods. "Well, I've told you all I can."
"Do you mind if I have a look in your garage?" Booth asks. He figures if Jackson did kill Jamie, the logical place on this property would be the garage. He couldn't do it in the house because Brennan might have seen the evidence.
"Hell yeah." Jackson sits up. "I ain't done nothing wrong and you ain't poking around my place." Booth senses this is the time to go so he rises to his feet.
"Woman, make sure this man goes and don't let him back in." Jackson calls to his wife. Booth is appalled that he referred to his wife as 'woman' but he holds it back and makes his way across the room to Mrs Jackson. She nods at her husband and leads Booth out of the house. Once back out on the porch she steps forward, close to Booth.
"I can let you see the garage." She whispers. "You might find what you're looking for."
"I'd appreciate that." Booth replies warmly. He believes Mrs Jackson knows exactly why he's here and that she knows what happened to Jamie.
Mrs Jackson lets Booth into the garage via the side door. Booth begins to look around and immediately feels uneasy. In the corner of the room, partially hidden by some chunks of old wood, there is a worn brown stain on the floor. Mrs Jackson looks at Booth and nods to the stain. Booth walks over and crouches down beside the stain. He's no expert but Booth believes this is blood, probably Jamie Carlson's blood.
"Do you mind if I take a sample?" he asks. Mrs Jackson nods that it is okay and Booth removes a penknife from his pocket. He scratches away at the concrete until some grains with the stain on it are pried loose. He tucks them safely in a handkerchief and rises to his feet. Next, he eyes the wood and realises it looks similar to the wood the box Jamie was in was made of.
"How long has this wood been here?" he asks.
"A long time, my husband used to make fences. He hasn't done that in over twelve years though." Booth pulls a few splinters off a piece of wood and adds them to the handkerchief, keeping them safe for Brennan or the squints to analyse.
"Thank you Mrs Jackson." Booth says as he makes his way across the room. "If you need anything you give me a call." He hands her a business card.
"Agent Booth."
"Yes?"
"For the record, those two girls we had back then. They were good kids. Jamie was a little troublesome but she didn't do anything any other teenager wasn't doing. The other kid, Tempe, she was sweet. Quiet and shy and never a bother to me. I just hope she had a good life after she left us." She hangs her head, feeling guilty about the abuse the girls suffered at her husband's hands.
"I'm sure she's doing just fine." Booth nods.
Xxxx
Brennan is pacing her hotel room anxiously, waiting for Booth to come back from his visit to the Jackson's. In a way she is glad he wouldn't let her go with him. She isn't sure if she's ready to see Paul Jackson again despite what she told Booth. I just needed him to confirm it for me. Her cell phone begins to ring, startling her from her thoughts. She rushes across the room and picks it up, answering quickly.
"Brennan."
"It's me." Booth's voice comes over clearly. "I need you to come meet me at the FBI lab. I have something for you to look at."
"I'll be right there." Brennan hangs up, grabs her bag and rushes out of the hotel room.
A short taxi ride later she reaches the FBI office and is escorted down to the basement lab she had worked in their first day here. Booth is waiting with Agent Wright. As Brennan approaches them she desperately wants to ask Booth about his visit but Wright doesn't know her involvement so she doesn't want to bring it up here and now.
"What do you have?" she asks.
"Samples of wood I think might match the box and some scrapings of concrete I think might have been stained by blood." Booth gestures to the table where a white handkerchief sits alone on a cold steel table. Brennan picks up a pair of latex gloves from a box on a side table and approaches, her mind switching to science mode. She leans over and pokes the concrete scrapings before lifting the wood.
"I need to get Hodgins online." She says, not lifting her eyes from the wood.
"I'll sort that out." Agent Wright says before disappearing from the room leaving Booth and Brennan alone.
"So you saw him."
"I saw him Bones." Booth sighs and crosses over to stand at her side. "He was everything you said he was." Brennan just nods. "His wife, I think she knows what happened."
"Did she say something?" Brennan asks, finally putting down the evidence.
"Not really. Jackson wouldn't let me look around the garage but when I was leaving she let me in and told me I might find what I was looking for."
"She never stood up to him, never protected us from him. But it wasn't her fault. She was always nice to me."
"She had nice things to say about you." Booth smiles a little and rests his hand on her shoulder.
"She did?" Brennan looks surprised.
"Yeah, and she said she hoped you turned out okay." Brennan just nods her head.
"If this is blood, I'm not sure I'm going to be able to get DNA." She states, changing the subject. "It's probably too degraded. But Hodgins can probably confirm a match between the wood samples."
"Good." Booth nods.
Xxxx
Half an hour later Brennan is set up with a link to the Jeffersonian and is working with Hodgins on the wood and concrete sample. Booth hovers in the corner watching with Agent Wright at his side.
"She's good." Wright nods.
"She is."
"How long have you been working with her?"
"About two years." Booth knows to the day how long but that would seem odd if he recited years, months and days since he met Brennan.
"Booth!" Brennan interrupts the two agents with an excited call. They both walk over.
"Whatcha got?" Booth asks.
"Look." Brennan points to the screen. Booth leans over from behind, his breath tickling her neck.
"What am I looking at?" he asks, not sure what he is seeing on the screen.
"The wood sample from the garage matches the wood of the box Jamie was buried in." Brennan states.
"Okay." Booth nods.
"And here." She changes the image on the screen. "I was right, the blood was too degraded for DNA but it is blood and it matches Jamie's blood type." Brennan sits back on her stool, satisfied that she has accomplished something.
"I think this is reason enough to bring Jackson in for questioning." Wright smiles. "I'll get a warrant." He adds. Booth rests both hands on Brennan's shoulders.
"Good work Bones." He whispers in her ear.
Last chapter next. Will Jackson get his what he deserves?