Chapter 4 – In Between
AU: So to give ppl more time to vote I added a chapter in between (thus the chapter name) to kinda work more with the plot. Hope you enjoy!!
After a good night's sleep, both teams decided to meet back at the Jeffersonian around 8 the next morning. Seeing as both Mac and Stella had been able to get company cars, they were able to drive themselves over.
"Hey guys," Lindsay said taking a seat at the table in the break room. Danny and Hawkes took seats next to her, while Flack and Stella, who were once again arguing, stood a couple of feet away.
"Hey," said Angela sitting down in the remaining empty seat. Excluding Minnie and Zack, everyone else had arrived.
"Umm," started Stella, who had managed to win the argument, "where's Minnie? She wasn't at the hotel last night."
"Oh," started Mac, "apparently Zack had some weird hunch and Minnie went to go help him with it. Wait, are you saying that they were here all night?" Brennan got up quickly and started to walk away when she realized that no one was following her.
"Normally when Zack has a hunch, which isn't often, he's usually correct. So let's find him, and ask him what his hunch was." This was followed by a long string of "oh"s, and the rest of the group followed her. When they finally arrived at the lab, however, Minnie and Zack were no where to be seen.
"Okay, where are they?" Flack asked as he walked in.
"How cute!" they all heard Peyton exclaim. "I think I found them!" With their backs against the wall, both Zack and Minnie had fallen asleep, her head resting on Zack's shoulder and his resting on her head, an open case file lying on their laps.
"I almost feel like leaving them there," said Lindsay quietly. The rest of the girls agreed.
"Really, cause I don't," exclaimed Booth. He swung his leg towards them, which hit the edge of Zack's knee. "Hey lovebirds, time to get up." That instantly woke the two of them up. After realizing the position they both were in, they instantly stood up.
"Booth," said Brennan among the laughter, "you ruined it before we could get pictures!"
"That's not funny!" exclaimed Minnie in her own defense. "Since you were mean to us we're not telling you what we found out!"
"We're not?" asked Zack confused.
"Yes, we're not. Even though we may have possibly solved your case, we are now not telling you until you apologize," she paused, "and one of you buy me a doughnut."
"Why a doughnut?" asked Danny.
"Because I'm hungry and want a doughnut," answered Minnie, which was soon followed by a round of laughter.
"We apologize for laughing at you," said Peyton, "now just tell us what you found out."
"Apology accepted. Okay, so Mr. Genius over here figured out that the bones may have been bleached after being roasted. Apparently, even after a human has been burned, or roasted in this case, the bone chars not disintegrates, but seep into the bone marrow. If our killer bleached the bones after he was done eating the body, it would explain why the bones were so white! Anyway, so Zack tested the bones to find any evidence of roasting that may have been left behind, and he found high amounts of Sodium, Potassium, Calcium, chlorophyll, and hemoglobin, which are some of the main ingredients in ash." She stopped for a second to breathe, which Zack took as his cue to continue their lovely little story.
"After we confirmed that the body had in fact been roasted, Minnie was able to check to see if the bones had remnants of bleach on them. It seems that every type of bleach has a different chemical structure so that if it is ingested Poison Control can give them the correct medication to counter each chemicals affects. Our Vic, thankfully, was bleached in highly rare bleach called Mighty White, which is only used by major cleaning companies. Guess what bleach the cleaning company the Jeffersonian uses?"
"Oh, please tell me it's Mighty White," said Stella.
"It is," said Minnie, "so we thought that maybe that was how our killer seemed to know every move we were going to make. He actually worked at the Jeffersonian! When he realized how close you guys were to revealing his identity, he placed the body in New York, hoping that it would send you guys off track."
"This means that we have a suspect list. All we need to do is pull up all males working as janitors who recently traveled to New York!" exclaimed Brennan. "Great job. I will definitely buy you that doughnut Minnie!"
"Yay, because after no dinner and no breakfast, I'm freaking starving!"
After Flack was able to pull up a list of every male janitor working at the Jeffersonian, only to find that none of them had any access to bleach what-so-ever, so that lead ended up turning into a dead end. He'd called the rest of the team back into Brennan's office to see if they could possibly come up with a new lead.
"Are you serious!" exclaimed Minnie angrily, "I stayed up like all night and it was a dead end!" Lindsay and Minnie were seated on the floor, due to the lack of seats, while Stella, Flack, Mac, whose lap Peyton was sitting on, sat on the couch. Brennan sat at her desk, while the rest of them remained standing.
"There was a high possibility that our findings were miscalculated," said Zack quietly.
"Zack," said Booth, "seeing as your IQ is in the stratosphere I doubt you miscalculated."
"Okay so all we know is that the body was roasted and then bleached. Did you guys figure out what temperature she was roasted at?" asked Angela.
"Between 200-300 degrees Fahrenheit," answered Zack quietly. He was silently recalculating every thing they had done last night to try and find an error he had made that could possibly give them another lead.
"Which means that anyone could have killed her," said Lindsay. They sat there in silence trying to figure out any thing they have missed.
"A temp," Minnie exclaimed jumping up from her seat on the floor. "Maybe they sent a temp to work for the cleaning service. The temp broke into where they stored the bleach, stole a couple of bottles, and then got himself fired. He wouldn't be listed as an employee because they wouldn't have officially have hired him yet."
"Zack, you better come up with something real fast because I'm starting to think she's replaced you as Mr. Genius," said Booth.
"That would be Ms. Genius to you," Minnie replied.
"It makes sense," started Zack, "her theory is completely probable and logical. The only problem is that there's no science to back it up, which makes the evidence circumstantial. The company also didn't report any bleach being stolen."
"Obviously," countered Stella, "bleach can be dangerous stuff. They obviously want to tell the police department that there's about 6 bottles of the stuff missing."
"So," said Mac taking charge of the situation, "why doesn't Flack try to get a list of temps who worked for the cleaning company and Booth pay a visit to the company to see if anything was stolen."
"Fine with me Mac," answered both Flack and Booth. They were currently at an in-between stage. Until they had proof that bleach had been stolen, they were in-between guess work and evidence.