Hunting the hunter
Epilogue
Season/episode: Season 7 – episodes 13 - "The Past in the Present"
Warning(s): Remember that this story will NOT have a B&B happy ending.
It's been five years and I still remember those horrible days. I still remember the fear and the anger. Sometimes I even feel that fear. I can still remember the aftermath as if it only happened yesterday.
Hacker walked in front of us towards the stage in his tailored suit and with his stupid smile. The guy was having way too much fun with this press conference thingy. After more than two weeks of processing endless amounts of evidence and putting together twenty-five skeletons that had been completely torn to pieces we had finally closed both Pelant's and Brennan's cases. These cases had created a media mess, and so here we were Hacker, Flynn, Cam, Brennan, and me to give a press conference. We had a memorandum ready for release and we had promised to answer all of their pertinent questions. I personally hated these things, and would pay good money to be anywhere else, but Hacker loves them. Sometimes I think that the only thing he likes about the FBI is giving these press conferences.
"Good morning ladies and gentlemen of the press. I'm Assistant Director Hacker of the FBI. I'm here to inform you about the Pelant case. Yes, I know that you also want to know about Dr. Brennan's situation, but I'll let her boss, Dr. Saroyan, from the Jeffersonian Medico-Legal Lab, to inform you about it later," Hacker started explaining. He directed his voice to the microphone, and talked slowly and vocalized properly. His stupid smile reappeared after every sentence, and I swear that the guy was enjoying every second of this torture.
"Now, allow me to start right from the very beginning. Christopher Pelant was born from Eleanor Pelant in D.C. in 1982. When Christopher was seven, his mother got married to Daren Philips, a widower with a two-year old boy, James. Mr. Philips never adopted Christopher and therefore, he kept his name until now. In 2002, while Christopher was in college and James was still only fifteen, both Eleanor and Daren Philips were killed in what looked like a tragic car accident. Now, we know that it wasn't just a car accident; they were in fact Pelant's first victims. He made a cut on the tube of the break system insuring that the liquid was leaking eventually leaving the car without breaks at the beginning of a complicated and curvy road. We know this because he kept his account of the process and a piece of the tube with the cut as souvenirs."
The press gasped in horror hearing Hacker's words. Pelant was a real piece of work, and the journalists were just starting to understand this. The worst part is that this was only the beginning of the story. Christopher Pelant had killed thirty seven people in total, and had attempted to kill another two, one of them a baby in his short thirty-year life.
Hacker knew that he had the complete attention of the press and continued talking. "James Phillips was transferred into the Foster Care System, while Pelant continued with his college education much more comfortable thanks to his part of the inheritance. James' part, half of the family's money and a house, was managed by Mr. Phillips' lawyer until he turned eighteen in 2005. At that time, James was handed everything. Sadly, Pelant killed him, dismembered his body, and buried him in his own backyard. He then stole his identity and made it look like James was still alive, going to the extreme of earning another degree and finding a job as James Phillips."
Again the press gasped horrified by the fact that Pelant killed his entire family. It was really horrible. He planned it thoroughly, and then executed his plan, killing his family to obtain the full inheritance and gain a house under a fake identity that allowed him to continue killing. Pelant was a psychopath. He found pleasure in killing, and he enjoyed doing it without getting caught. But he couldn't stop himself from keeping some souvenir from all his victims, in most cases their bodies. And when that wasn't enough anymore, he found pleasure in playing with us, in taunting us, daring us to prove that we could get him. In his arrogance he made mistakes and we got him.
"From 2005 to 2011 he killed twenty-four women. The scientists of the Jeffersonian Medico-Legal Lab reconstructed their bodies, and identified all of them. We have already released this information to the families, and you all have been given a file with their names and photographs that we ask you to make public."
I interrupted Hacker, got near the microphone, and explained it. "We want his victims to be remembered, not him." Hacker gave me a dirty look, but I didn't care. I glared back.
I wanted to straighten the press out. This arrogant son of a bitch would love to be famous for his crimes, and the best payback we are going to get is to forget about him and concentrate only on his victims.
"Yes, like Agent Booth said, it's the victims that should be remembered," Hacker added knowing that if he ordered me to shut up he was going to look really bad in front of the press and the public.
Hacker cleared his throat and continued talking as if the interruption never happened. "In 2011, Christopher Pelant was convicted for a crime of hacking and he spent six months in prison. He was placed on house arrest upon his release from prison. From that moment on, his ankle monitor, that informed us of his location every thirty-eight seconds, and his lack of access to internet gave him an airtight alibi until Angela Montenegro from the Jeffersonian proved that he was capable of accessing the internet using the library net and the chips on the books. This way he was capable of hacking into any system that he wanted including the company supervising his ankle monitor readings. It was after mastering this that he started killing again, and the FBI and the Jeffersonian Medico-Legal Lab were brought into the investigation.
"I'll let Agent Booth, as the leading agent of the investigation, continue," Hacker said forcing me to talk to the press probably to get back at me from interrupting him before because when we discussed this press conference, I was clear that I didn't want to have anything to do with it. Obviously, he had decided to ignore my wishes after I interrupted him during his precious press conference. The guy really loved this circus. I groaned in annoyance, and cleared my throat to cover it up. Then Hacker and I exchanged positions, leaving me in front of the microphone.
"Good morning. I'm Special Agent Booth, and I was the FBI agent assigned to Pelant's case at the beginning of the investigation. Like Assistant Director Hacker said, once Pelant was in house arrest he found a way to bypass the restrictions of said arrest and started killing again. This time killing wasn't enough though. He designed a game to play against the FBI and the scientists of the Jeffersonian Lab. He killed and dared us to catch him leaving clues and riddles for us in the crime scenes and with the bodies."
I could see that I had the complete and utter attention of the media. Every journalist in the room wanted to know what I was going to say next. And to my surprise a certain blonde reporter that I dated sometime ago was one of them. I really didn't have the time or the energy to think about what was she doing here and not in the middle of some war zone, so I just continued talking. Later on, I discovered that she came only to cover this story and to see for herself that we were all safe and sound. After seeing the news, she had been worried for us.
"His first victim of this period was Inger Johannsen. Inger was a young woman who was house-sitting for a family that was out of town for a while. Pelant chose her because no one would miss her for a while. He killed her, made a code out of her spine to take us to the rest of her body, and left her skull and spine on the Lincoln Memorial.
"He also manipulated Ezra Krane, a reporter, a colleague of yours, to direct our investigation where he wanted it, and then when he had no more use for him, he killed him too. The FBI and the Jeffersonian Lab did their best to prove him guilty of these murders but at the time were unable to do so. But it was as a result of this investigation that a number of wrongdoings of the FBI were discovered, and are now being investigated by Internal Affairs."
Krane's name was going to be tied to his investigation into corruption in the FBI, and we needed to make sure that the press understood that we were investigating them or the name of the organization would be trashed in the papers and on TV. Those guys in those files abused their authority. They should and would be punished once the Internal Affairs' investigation was over. I was sure of it. Hell! I was doing my own investigation just in case. I'll make sure that they pay for what they did. I hate crooked cops!
"He then stopped killing again until the time for his appeal at the Parole Board came. He killed Ethan Sawyer, a mathematician of genius level and an old friend of Dr. Brennan. Ethan Sawyer lived in an asylum because he suffered from delusional schizophrenia and he was in a secure ward, but he was also the person that discovered how Pelant was cheating his ankle monitor. It was because of that, that Sawyer was a threat to Pelant and he killed him. But he sought a double purpose with this murder. By framing Dr. Brennan with Sawyer's murder, and manipulating the rest of the team, myself included, he threw us out of the case and obtained complete freedom.
"Agent Flynn was then placed in charge of Sawyer's murder investigation, and he issued an arrest warrant against Dr. Brennan. This led Dr. Brennan to run with our daughter in a desperate attempt to protect herself and the baby from Pelant. She ran away with her father's help and against my wishes. Sadly, Pelant was prepared for that. He killed Max Kennan, the only thing separating him from Dr. Brennan, and left his body for us to find. Kennan's body held a photograph with an address, Douglass Santora's address to be specific."
I made a pause for effect. I wanted my next sentence to be burned into their memories. I wanted Pelant's victims to be the stars of their articles, not their murderer. "Santora was a retired FBI agent, with years of exemplary service in the Bureau, and he will be buried with full honors beside his wife's grave tomorrow."
After another short pause to make sure that my message was clear, I continued. "What we found in Santora's house was his body and an elaborate crime scene that made it clear that Pelant had every intention of killing Dr. Brennan and our daughter. Fortunately, Pelant's arrogance was his downfall. He was so sure that we would never be able to discover how he connected to the internet that he left the library net full of clues, including the program that he used to monitor two GPS trackers: one on Kennan, another on Christine's car seat.
"We found them in New York, they had already been kidnapped by Pelant, and a SWAT team rescued them and killed Pelant. And that's everything that there is to know about the Pelant case. It took us more than two weeks to process all the evidence, but it's finally closed and done with."
I hoped that they would pass on doing questions, but I knew that it was false hope. I hadn't finished telling them the story and a reporter was already asking his first question. "Agent Booth, is it true that you were part of that SWAT team and that you were the one that killed Pelant?"
"Yes, it's true," I answered simply. There wasn't anything else to say. I wasn't going to lie, but I wasn't going to elaborate on that.
"And is it true, that Pelant was ready to kill your daughter when that happened?" the reporter pushed. I was livid with the question, so I just nodded, unable to answer with words.
I was extremely grateful to Cam, when she stepped up to the podium forcing me away from it and started talking. "That's enough questions for now, people," she said firmly stopping the reporters in their tracks.
"I'm Dr. Camille Saroyan, the Chief of the Jeffersonian Medico-Legal Lab, and Dr. Brennan's boss. I can tell you that Dr. Brennan was cleared of the murder charges completely. She did NOT kill Ethan Sawyer. The charges of evading justice and kidnapping and endangering the welfare of a minor could not be denied though. Dr. Brennan did evade justice when she ran away after an arrest warrant was served against her and by taking her daughter at that time she committed kidnapping. However, these actions, even if wrong, were the actions of a scared mother trying to protect her daughter from a psychopath. This is the reason why the DA's office, the FBI, the Jeffersonian Institution, Agent Booth, as Christine's father, and Dr. Brennan herself reached an agreement.
"Dr. Brennan won't do jail time, but she won't be allowed to work for any police force or government agency again, with one exception. The Jeffersonian Institution will allow her to continue working for them as long as she doesn't participate in any cases that we're entrusted with. She will continue identifying the thousands of skeletons stored in the Institution, and she will continue working in other areas of her discipline of forensic anthropology that are not related to any police force or government agency."
"Thanks, Dr. Saroyan," Hacker said seeing that the coroner wasn't going to continue talking. Turning to face the reporters, he opened the round for questions, asking them to pose their questions in order and one at a time.
Like I expected, their first question was about our relationship. They wanted to know if our relationship survived the ordeal. It really annoyed me, with everything that Pelant did the only thing that worried them was our relationship or more accurately Brennan's love life. But compared to her, I was the image of calmness; I really thought that she was going to punch the guy that asked that question. I had to tell her that the last thing we needed was more charges against her. I felt real relief when I saw her calm down.
In the end I had to explain that the trust issues created by the situation had in fact broken our relationship. And it was true. She didn't trust me to protect my family and I couldn't simply live life like that, plus now I couldn't trust her not to run every time things got rough. We also had to explain that the custody judge had given me primary custody, and allowed me to decide the time that Christine spent with her mother, while at the same time forbidding Brennan of making trips out of the state without my written consent. I offered her a half time deal, and she immediately accepted, so Christine will be spending half of her time with each of us.
I was really happy when the torture ended, and I could leave the room and go back to the FBI daycare where my baby was.
Most days however, I don't feel the fear anymore and I'm just grateful that my daughter survived the ordeal, and became a happy five, almost six year old girl. I thank God every day for that blessing.
It was complicated at first. A big adjustment for everyone. Brennan and I broke our personal and professional relationship, and we sold our house, I moved to a new apartment with three rooms. She moved too. She worked in limbo, and I worked with the squints. Then, not even two months later, I was promoted and put in charge of D.C. Field Office, so Perotta took my old job, and started working with the squints.
If that adjustment wasn't small, not even a year later, Rebecca was back from England, and she offered me to sign a better custody agreement now that Parker had a little sister. Of course, I accepted as soon as the words left her mouth, and soon I was juggling two kids, with two different custody schedules. I have Parker the first two weeks of every month, and Christine on alternate weeks. Meaning that the siblings shared me the first week and that I needed to do everything with two kids of very different ages, which was a challenge in and of itself. Only going for groceries with both of them was an adventure. I'm surprised that I'm still sane. On the other hand, the last week of the month I was on my own. At first, I missed them like crazy, missed playing with them, missed the noise, even missed the stress… But with time I adapted to it and I started to see the advantage of having an 'off duty' week. I could relax, go out with friends, and even date.
Through all these complications, Brennan and I were capable of keep being friendly to each other. We weren't friends anymore, but we were friendly. Surprisingly, the squints split their time between both of us. I would have bet that, with the exception of Cam, I wasn't going to see much of them again. I was happy to be mistaken, really happy.
I see enough of Brennan to know that she isn't happy. She works in Limbo way too much, and only comes out to spend time with Christine or for an occasional date. She never sees one man more than four or five times though. She refuses to have any kind of romantic relationship. I talked with her about it or at least tried. I'm no longer in love with her, but I still love her, and I'll always love her, just like I'll always love Rebecca, and she is the mother of my daughter so I want her to be happy. She told me that our time together taught her that she is unable to have long-term, monogamous relationships because she is unable to trust people completely. She blames herself for how our relationship ended, and while I tried to convince her that it wasn't her fault, I know that I wasn't capable of convincing her. I still think that if she had trust me then, we could have make it.
But life is the way it is. Brennan is not happy, she's just content, but there's nothing that I can do for her in that aspect of her life. She's the only one that can change that, and she doesn't seem inclined to at the moment.
And myself, what, you'd probably ask yourself. Well, I meet a beautiful woman in the store when I was buying groceries with Parker and Christine, two years ago. Her name is Isabel Booth. Yes, we did get married, a year ago. She's an Air Force's pilot but she's currently working at the Pentagon because she's five months pregnant. So I'm extremely happy. Even more than normal because today we are having a big dinner to celebrate Christmas, both of my kids are here, and so are their mothers and the squints. Hank will be here soon too as Jared and Padme are driving him here, and my beautiful wife is seated by my side watching Christine being fascinated with the lights and decorations of the tree. The love parents feel for their kids is something special, different to any other kind of love, and if I learned something out of all this is that it can change everything. It can destroy the strongest of relationships or it can strengthen them until they are unbreakable. The actions Brennan and I took due to our love for Christine destroyed our relationship, but I know in my heart that now it would be different. Isabel and I won't suffer the same fate, our marriage will be strengthened by that love.
Thanks for readying. I hope you liked it. Please let me know what you think about it.
A/N: Okay, so here is the end of this story. I hope you all liked it.
I want to thank to everyone who put this story or its geeky author (AKA myself) in their alert or favorites list, and to all the reviewers. You people had been really encouraging.
And like always I have to thank to my beta for her excellent work, so Whatever55, thanks :D
