Chapter 4

The Mattaponi Police Station, Tuesday at 8:00 am

"Going to be another hot one Sheriff," Deputy Timmy Newton told him as he entered the doublewide trailer.

"How can you tell Timmy?" Skye asked without looking up from the piles of paperwork stacked on the only long table they had.

"Dan's cows are under all the trees. Not a single one out in the open," Newton smirked as he removed his cowboy hat and set it on his desk. The three desks took up much of the floor space and toward the back of the trailer there was a tiny break room. It held a small fridge and a counter with the microwave and toaster. Under the counter was where they kept the extra paper products and cleaning supplies. Directly next to the break room was the restroom. It held a toilet and a small sink. In the front of the trailer, there were two small (hardly ever used) interrogation rooms.

"Then we'd best make sure everyone has got working air conditioning. When Nick gets in, you two head out to all the old timers places," the Sheriff told him as he faced the Deputy.

"You've got it boss. I think I hear his truck pulling up now," Timmy smiled and headed back out the door.

"Morning Sheriff," Booth smiled as he and Brennan entered the trailer from the door that Timmy had just exited.

"Good morning. I went to storage last night and pulled up the remaining boxes that could possibly fit your time frame. Hopefully these are in better shape, organizationally speaking," the Native American smiled.

"Logic would seem to state that they wouldn't," Brennan told them.

"Way to look on the bright side of things Bones," Booth shook his head.

"Let me fire up the air conditioner. It's going to be hot later on and this old unit takes about two hours to get its act in gear," Skye smirked as he walked toward the break room and got the window AC unit to start.

"It works really hard huh?" The G-man wondered.

"You have no idea but once it finally manages to spit out cool air, we'll be in good shape," the Sheriff sat down across from the partners and divided the piles evenly.

"Sheriff I…" Brennan started.

"Please call me Steve. Hardly anyone ever calls me that unless it's my wife when she needs something," he smirked slightly and Booth gave a small chuckle.

"Steve, Timmy said something about cows being related to the weather. I was a little confused by his strange assumption," the forensic anthropologist said. This made Skye chuckle.

"One of our dairy farmers, Dan Prescott, has these cows that will always look for shade under his large flowering trees. When that happens, it usually means we'll be cooking lunch up on the roof," he explained.

"On the roof?" Booth asked.

"Best place to use the heat and the sun for Nick's solar cooker," Skye told them.

"How very economical," Brennan nodded in approval.

"More like we don't want to cook our hot dogs in the microwave," the Sheriff laughed again before they got down to business.

Not long after they started, the phone on one of the desks rang and Skye left his chair to get it.

"Mattaponi Police, this is Sheriff Skye speaking," Booth and Brennan continued to sort the paperwork in front of them and paid little attention to the call until the lawman got off the phone a few minutes later.

"Looks like Sheriff Koch found some useful cases in his batch. I told him we weren't done yet and he said to meet him as soon as we could," Steve explained.

"Great. Don't take this the wrong way but you have computers so why isn't all this stuff in some sort of system?" Booth asked.

"Because no one wanted to tackle what we're doing right now. Besides I know every person here. None of them have ever committed any major felonies and the misdemeanors usually occur over farming squabbles or a few things that have occurred in town," Skye answered honestly.

"So everyone here is a peace loving type of person?" The FBI agent asked.

"Well now I didn't say that," the Sheriff said. Booth nodded thoughtfully before heading back into his pile of paperwork.

The West Point Police Precinct One, Tuesday at 11:00 am

"Looks like you guys came up empty," Sheriff Koch said as he ushered the three of them into his office.

"Nothing here about missing persons. What did you get?" Skye wondered.

"I've got about ten cases in total. Most of which came from the court clerks pulling an all-nighter down in the courthouse basement," Koch explained.

"All ten match our victim?" Booth raised an eyebrow.

"Well considering we didn't have much to go on yet, I had the clerks pull all of them. A few were female but the remaining ten are all males," Johnny said.

"I gave a specific age group and you still had ten missing?" Brennan was slightly alarmed by the number considering West Point's small population of close to three thousand.

"Well forty years ago puts us in the post-Vietnam period. We had boys coming home and their families not understanding what they now call PTSD," Koch said.

"So I'm guessing your crime rate spiked," Booth nodded.

"It did. The Sheriff at the time did the best he could but it didn't seem like there was much he could do. After him, every Sheriff is reminded of those incidents that took place and is expected to teach his deputies to look for the signs as well. We don't have many people here in the war overseas at the moment so I think we'll fair better," the Sheriff was optimistic.

"Well I'd like to send the files along to the Jeffersonian and see if they can't get a match," Brennan said.

"You do that. I'll have Martha help you. I must warn you however. None of the missing men are Mattaponi," Koch said.

To Be Continued…

Sorry if it was slow. The next chapter should pick things up a bit. :)