[A/N: I am LOVING the angst of Bones S6. Hope reading not so fluffy stuff here won't make enduring current events tougher on you guys. I do so very much appreciate your reading and reviewing!]
Chapter 7: The Fear in the Father
"If you had found him in time, none of this would be happening. He hurt me, and it's high time you paid for that, Agent Booth."
All eyes shifted to Booth as the message was read. Temperance watched him closely, concerned by the lack of movement or speaking on his part. Booth was never still or quiet. The fact that he was now both was terrifying. Booth stared at the page as if he might obliterate it with his vision alone. Temperance shivered remembering how guilty she'd felt during the copycat murders staged to follow the cases in one of her books. Booth's guilt complex and sense of responsibility were abnormally intense, and bearing the weight of the five murders already committed plus future ones the killer was planning would be extremely difficult for him.
Patterson had placed a hand at Booth's elbow and was attempting to pull him aside to pick his brain about the message and what it might mean. Hodgins had already begun swabbing the paper for particulates and gleaning information from it so that he could hand it over to the bureau for further analysis by the team waiting at the base of the platform.
Booth stood eerily still—lost in thought and seemingly oblivious to the activity and concern of those around him. Knowing that he did not want to have to face such worrisome news with an audience, Brennan grasped his other elbow and announced to the room at large that she and Booth were going to discuss this latest evidence in the privacy of her office. She nudged him none too gently away from Patterson and then led him down the stairs and into the relative privacy of her office, pausing only to glare at Patterson to indicate that she was not invited to follow them.
THE HEART IN THE VISE… THE HEART IN THE VISE… THE HEART IN THE VISE…
As soon as he'd crossed the threshold to her office, Booth pulled out his phone and dialed a number, pacing impatiently until there had been an answer. Brennan had listened as he spoke to a man and asked to speak to Parker.
"Hey, Bub. I know you're gonna have a great game. Just remember all the things we practiced and what Coach told you, okay?" He had paused, obviously listening to something Parker had said.
"That's great, Parks. Listen, you remember our password, right, buddy?" Booth had nodded when Parker assured him that he did. "That's great, pal. Yeah, don't say it to anyone—not even to Coach. Listen, I'm going to send two agents out to get you after your game and then to pick up your mom. It might not be people you know."
Brennan watched as a flash of pure agony crossed her partner's face as he lied to his son. "No. No, nothing's wrong. Just like a test for safety like a fire drill, okay?" Booth paused, relieved slightly that Parker seemed to be buying his story. "Listen, Parker, I need you to be really smart about this. The bureau needs to know that you'll follow the rules and stay safe. I'm not telling the agents our special password because only you and Bones and me know about that one, and I like to keep it super secret. Today, the agents coming to pick you up will have a new password."
"Max was Christopher Columbus… Can you remember that, bub? Good... That's great. Hey, if it's not two guys with badges who know today's code words, don't go with them. Tell Coach if they don't know the code. He has numbers to call. He'll take care of it, okay?"
"Hey, Parker, I love you. I'll see you soon, okay?" Booth sighed as he hung up the phone and prepared to make another call.
"Hey, Bones. Do me a favor. Go tell Patterson that I'm taking care of Parker. I know she's calling Hacker and other people at the bureau to put Jared and Pops and people on notice and to assign them security. But tell her I've got Parker covered, okay?"
Brennan nodded and rose quickly to leave the room. When she returned, she heard Booth going over the instructions for the third time with the agents. He'd called people he trusted and sent them personally. Still, he was taking extreme caution in confirming that they'd leave immediately to pick Parker up. "If it's safe, let him finish his game, Hudson. Then bring him in. Hacker will tell you where to take him. Thanks, man."
"Patterson has alerted the bureau and discussed the situation with Andrew. They're setting up plans to move people to safehouses, Booth. They aren't taking any chances." Not quite relieved, Booth nodded before turning around and falling hard onto the sofa. Temperance walked around behind the sofa and sat down more gently beside him. Neither of them spoke. But he was grateful for her support.
After sitting for a long while on the sofa with his head in his hands, Booth stood and began pacing the width of Bones' office. Brennan sat and watched him think. Her concern for him was almost smothering—for her. Booth was so caught up in his own disturbance that she doubted he even noticed how much she ached to help him. She was overcome with the need to calm him, help him, protect him. She hated seeing him this overwrought with guilt—especially when none of this was his fault. She knew that telling him that wouldn't matter. Booth took responsibility—it was just something he did naturally. There was no way that he wouldn't feel responsible for each of the deaths so far and for any others that might happen because of this killer.
Temperance sat stewing in her own hatred for the perpetrator of these crimes. Whoever had done this was mentally ill or absolutely without conscience. The fact that this killer was knowingly taunting Booth this way was horrifying.
She knew that Booth needed time to wrestle with this development, so she tried to catalogue evidence while she waited impatiently for her partner to start talking to her. The only conclusion she could reach based on this note left for Booth was that The Taker (as he had come to be known by the team because he or she seemed to "take" victims without warning and disappear to kill them) was related somehow to a former case of Booth's. Brennan started calculating the number of cases they had in a year in an attempt to estimate how many potential cases they might have to review to look for evidence. Booth worked other cases without her and he had worked many before they became partners. She postulated that there could be hundreds of cases for them to sort through.
She'd long since accepted Booth's theory that this string of brutal murders had been perpetrated by a serial killer. She still hadn't been convinced that there hadn't been a team of collaborators working on this, but the more cases they found with strange similarities, the more she accepted the theory that this was all the work of one demented individual. The note just left for Booth was further evidence that at least this murder had been an act of vengeance by a lone individual.
There had been at least five murders linked to this case so far in just a few short weeks. The first victim had been found dead with his heart crudely carved out and missing from the badly damaged remains. Karl Godfrey's heart had later been found linked by a vise to the body of the next victim, a female who had not yet been identified. That young woman's heart had also been removed from her body and had later been found in a vise connected to the femur within the remains of Khalid Assan. Khalid's heart had been savagely ripped from his body, and he had been decapitated. The first three bodies had been from victims who had been killed years ago. Mr. Assan's skull had been found compressed in a vise attached to the clavicle of Jessica Sung, a six-year-old girl of Mandarin descent. Jessica's heart had been found compressed in an eerily small vise that had been linked through part of the ribcage of a woman they strongly suspected by had not yet confirmed was Carlita Juarez, an 86-year-old grandmother who had emigrated from Mexico 55 years earlier. The last two victims had been killed more recently—within the last few weeks. The latest victim's heart had also been removed violently and had yet to be found. At first, Brennan had suspected that her heart had been in the box they'd just found, but it remained missing.
The team had worked desperately but had been unable to identify a link that might lead them to the killer—aside from hearts (and occasionally other body parts) cut out of their bodies and placed in vises alongside other remains-between the victims. The bodies had been in varying levels of decomposition in different parts of a three-state area. All of them had been located in areas different from the ones in which they'd died. The killer had worked for years and killed people from different places. The first three victims had been young to middle-aged adults. The killer didn't alternate between men and women in any recognizable pattern. The victims were from different parts of the country, and Karl Godfrey had been kidnapped while on vacation from Canada. None of the victims appeared to know one another or to have similar backgrounds or interests. There was no apparent connection to any of the cases aside from the fact that each person's heart had been removed violently and that it had later been found connected with a vise to another victim's body.
As she sat there unable to help her partner, Brennan tried again to find any small hint that might indicate who the killer was and found nothing. She was so caught up in her thoughts that she hadn't realized that Booth had finally stopped pacing. Upon noticing the fact that he was still and facing her, she looked up at him expectantly.
"We've got to pull old case files and look for a link. My gut tells me that this is from a really old case," Booth said as he looked at his partner intently.
"Do you remember something specific? What evidence compels you to think it's an old case?"
He snapped at her in response, barely able to regret his ill temper, "My gut is not your brain, Bones. It's just a feeling. I can't prove it to you. Let's just start with older cases."
"Booth, you must have had hundreds of cases... It's not logical to go back to very old cases without a reason."
"I'd have a feeling about a newer case, all right? Something would nag at me. I'd see some connection. But I'm blank. Nothing at all comes to mind—except my gut's sense that it's an older case."
Brennan was tempted to argue with him, to push him to find a more rational basis for where there research should begin, but something about the look on his face stopped her from doing so. Booth was so distracted that he didn't even notice how quickly she conceded, "Fine, we'll start with the older case files."
"I'll call and have them pulled," Booth said, pulling out his phone and dialing the bureau's records department.
Brennan listened as Booth made the call to the bureau. She watched him stretch his neck and rub his hand on the back of it as if that might alleviate some of his tension. Overcome with an unbearable sense of foreboding, she watched as he clicked off the call and turned to face her. Suddenly finding himself with nothing productive he could do in that moment, without a course of action or a lead to follow that might distract him from his guilt and frustration and darkness, Booth looked as helpless and forlorn as he was. He simply wasn't able to hide his fears from her. Without saying a word, Brennan rose and crossed the small space to him, wrapping her arms around his torso and relishing the fact that he instantly wrapped his own around her back. He'd told her long ago that he'd ask her to hug him when he was frightened. Although he hadn't asked, his fear in the face of this killer was extreme enough that no request for that badly needed hug had been necessary.
After a long moment, Temperance pulled back to look at him and then leaned up to plant a tender kiss on his cheek. Then, without saying a word or expecting him to do so, she stepped back so that she was beside him and looped her arm through his. "We'll stop by the diner on the way to your office," she suggested, leaving no room for argument. Booth's tense smile reflected his understanding that she was taking care of him in precisely the way he needed—in the way he'd done for her on too many occasions to count.
Her glance up at him briefly confirmed that knowledge, but she looked away quickly. She was just doing what she knew would help her partner. Socially challenged and awkward as she was, Temperance Brennan wanted no thanks or recognition for doing what she had felt compelled to do. Her ache and determination to be and do what Booth needed had taken over. She'd deal with the repercussions of that decision later. For now, she had to get Booth to eat something.
The partners ignored the concern-drenched silence that fell as they emerged from Brennan's office as well as the stares that followed them as they walked arm-in-arm out of Brennan's office, through the lab, and out into the cool, dark night. Even though the sight of the partners linked together physically stirred different thoughts and emotions in each of them, all of those observing the pair had only the best of intentions and felt genuine affection for the FBI agent now pulled into the center of this ordeal and respect for his partner who was determined to hold there in the center of the storm with him.