Chapter 10
The Hoover Building 12:00 pm
"Mr. Snyder, I'm Special Agent Booth. I'd like to thank you for coming down to D.C. on such short notice." Brennan watched from the other side of interrogation room's glass. She was confused at his approach.
"No problem, Agent Booth but I guess I'm a little confused as to why I'm here." Snyder said as he folded his hands on top of the table. Brennan watched his movement and realized that she needed to get a glimpse of the hands laid out flatly. Picking up her cell phone she made a call.
"Excuse me." Booth smiled and answered his phone.
"Bones?" He asked.
"I need to see his hands laid out flat." She told him.
"Will do." Booth told her and closed his phone.
"Sorry about that. I called you down here because I was hoping for some insight into a former prisoner by the name of Luke Walters. I understand you taught him in your history class." The FBI Agent said.
"Yes, I did but I thought Walters was released a short time ago." Snyder wasn't giving him much.
"Well, Mr. Walters is dead and now so is his cell mate so you seem to be the last link to our dead inmate." Booth watched his reaction at the mention of Walters' death. Snyder didn't even seem to flinch.
"He didn't have any family or anything?" The suspect asked.
"No, and we can't find a trace of a girlfriend so we were wondering what kind of man he was." Booth told him.
"I guess I don't know why you couldn't have asked me this over the phone." Snyder avoided answering the FBI Special Agent.
"After I set up a meeting with Jimmy Briggs and came all the way to see him, only to find out he was dead, Warden Simpson was all too willing to allow me to do whatever I felt like. Besides I bet it was nice to be getting paid for this." Booth smiled and Snyder smiled back.
"Then I appreciate it, Agent Booth. Walters was a good student. He loved to learn about history and I told him he should try to go to college after he got out." The suspect told him. Brennan watched the curious interview with great interest.
"Did Walters ever talk about friends or who he had on the outside?" Booth asked.
"He did talk about one friend who had promised him a real job when he got out but I can't remember the friend's name, sorry." Snyder said. Booth pulled his lips tightly across his teeth and carefully asked the next question.
"Do you know any other kinds of plans Walters had?"
"Other than staying out of prison, no I don't." Snyder said. At this point, the suspect flattened his hands on the top of the table. Brennan looked at them closely. His hands were big and muscular. They went pretty well with her approximated height of six foot four as she watched him stand up.
"I have a one more question." Booth said.
"Do you mind if I stand up? My legs hurt from the ride." Snyder wondered. Booth nodded and asked another question.
"So you have no idea why there would be a message attached to Walters' body that said 'the dead walk the earth'." It was a flat out lie but he wanted to see how Snyder would react. The man turned his head and stared at the agent.
"No, I wouldn't." Came the reply. Brennan watched from the other side of the glass and watched his body language and eye movement. Booth had caught him slightly off guard but Snyder's perfectly innocent response showed that the suspect was smart enough to control himself.
"Well then I guess you can return to Maryland. Thanks for your time." Booth stuck out his hand and Snyder shook it. The two left the room and Booth watched him walk down the hall. Brennan went into the room and quickly took handprints off the interrogation room table. Snyder might not be as smart as she thought he was.
"You ready?" Booth asked poking his head back into the room.
"I got the prints. Lets go." She smiled.
The Jeffersonian Medico-Legal Lab 12:45 pm
"We have to analyze every spot that a body was found. There has to be a common link between them. The FBI team is trying to match the unknowns from inside Walters' home to the handprints I took from the interrogation room. " Brennan said.
"The recent body was found at a bus stop but we concluded that Walters' killed the victim." Zach said.
"Yes, but Snyder had Walters write the note so we should assume he told him where to dump the body as well." Cam told him.
"Ok, including the recent body, three were dumped at bus stops. Two were found on playgrounds, and the last two were found out in front of the police station. I'll say this, the guy has a set." Hodgins said.
"He certainly does." Booth agreed.
"What links a bus stop, a playground, and a police station?" Angela wondered.
"Maybe at some point in his life something bad happened at either the bus stop or a playground; something that required police attention." Cam said.
"Sounds plausible but how is that going to help put him away?" Booth asked; his patience was wearing thin. This guy was good and he knew it.
"We need to see if there are any crimes linked to bus stops or playgrounds in either West Virginia or Maryland." Cam told the group.
"Did Snyder have any siblings?" Angela asked.
"According to his file he had a sister, Mary." Zach told her.
"What do you mean had?" Brennan took the file away from the student and read it. Booth quickly placed a call on his phone.
"Sam, I need any information you can find about a Mary Snyder from Charleston, West Virginia. Thanks." The FBI Agent said.
"Say something did happen in West Virginia. Why cross state lines and then have people killed in Maryland?" Hodgins asked.
"I don't know. I also don't understand why a guy like Walters' would step up his crimes from assault to murder either." Booth said. Suddenly his phone rang and he answered it.
"I don't like all this conjecture. There has to be something here in the evidence that will tell us what we ant to know." Brennan told them. Booth snapped his phone shut and turned to the group.
"Mary Snyder was strangled to death in August of 1994. According to the police report, Mary went out to ride the bus to work and she never came home. They found her body in a playground. The police never found her killer but where Mary worked was a block from the park." He explained.
"So she might have been taking a short cut through the playground and someone followed her and killed her. That still doesn't explain the gap or why he would remove the organs." Cam said.
"Michael's file says that in 2001, he got a job at the prison." Zach told the group.
"So he stopped killing and moved to Maryland from West Virginia." Booth said.
"Why take a job that far away from home?" Angela asked.
"Enough!" Brennan shouted. Everyone turned to her and stared.
"We have handprints from Snyder. I want Zach to see if there is any way of digitally matching the handprints to the marks around the victims' necks. Angela you help him with that." The two quickly grabbed what they needed from the examination table and headed off to the forensic artist's office. Hodgins waited for his assignment but it didn't come. Instead of giving him an assignment, the forensic anthropologist just stalked off the platform and went into her office. Hodgins quickly raced off to Angela's office to help his team members out. Cam started to head toward Brennan's office but Booth stopped her.
"Let me talk to her." He said. The Head of Forensics only nodded and headed to her office while Booth tried to see what was bothering Brennan.
To Be Continued…
Well I hope you enjoyed this chapter. I hope to have one more up before Christmas but just in case I don't, I'd like to wish evryone a very Merry Christmas. 18lzytwner