Author's Note: Next chapter. A bit of a shorter chapter, but I hope you enjoy it anyway. :)
I do not own Bones or any of its characters.
Thank you to everyone who is reading/following/reviewing this.
Lives in the now: I kind of agree with others in that I think Daisy's heart is in the right place, but sometimes she is still human with her own set of flaws. Still, I imagine that there is a reason why Sweets is s close to her, and wanted to explore that. And thank you, I kind of miss the heart-to-hearts that Booth and Cam would have at times. :)
D: You are definitely onto something with the case...As for Cam's advice, I agree that it would apply well to the both of them. And yes, I agree with you that Daisy is probably what Sweets needs right now and thus, could draw much from her...
Charlotte Thornton: Thank you. I do like how you pointed out the way that both Booth and Sweets sought that differing perspective. I was sort of going for a mirror/contrast with the two of them. Anyway, I hope you enjoy this update as well.
The Incandescence in the Reflection—Chapter 14
The next morning, Booth sighed as he hesitated outside Sweets' office door. The agent had spent much of the morning catching up on paperwork and office emails and was now ready to resume work on the triple homicide that he was facing. Earlier, he had contacted Sweets' secretary, Becky, and had asked her to let him know when the therapist would be available. She called Booth about ten minutes before she went to lunch and that all led to where he was now: standing outside the psychologist's door, trying to figure out how to approach this talk with Sweets.
Booth scowled a moment later and knocked on the door. He had never been one for elaborate apologies or for over-thinking the relationships he had with those closest to him, preferring to meet any difficulties head-on and with minimal complications. Upon hearing Sweets acknowledge him; the agent walked in and found the psychologist sitting in his chair across the couch with a notepad on his lap. Sweets stopped writing and looked up as Booth walked in.
"Agent Booth, good morning," Sweets nodded, his tone neutral.
"Hiya, Sweets," Booth replied, sitting down on the couch. There was a moment of tense silence until Booth cleared his throat.
"Ok look, I've got Delaney in custody," Booth said. "And right now, everything we've got points to him being the murderer. But…something isn't right. It's too perfect. Too neat. Just like you said." The agent then leaned toward Sweets.
"I want to know what happened to these women," he continued. "Whitmore, Lessinger, Perkins…they deserve justice and to have their murderer put away. If it's Delaney, then fine, case closed. But I want to be sure. Those women do not deserve anything less than the absolute truth. And I'm asking you, please, help me get to that truth. Help me put their killer away."
Sweets stared at him for a full minute without saying a word, and Booth was starting to wonder if the therapist was going to turn down his request. But soon Sweets' features softened, and Booth was able to detect a glint of wistfulness in his eyes.
"All right," Sweets said quietly. "What do you need me to do?"
The two of them ended up moving to Booth's office and studying all of the files from the case there. They mainly worked in silence as they pored over everything for over two hours.
"Maybe we should be looking at Delaney as less of a suspect and more of a connection," Sweets suddenly said. "In fact, he may even be another victim of the murderer's rage."
"What do you mean?" Booth said, as he leaned back behind his desk. "You're thinking that the killer is targeting Delaney?"
"It makes sense," Sweets nodded. "We know that the killer is intelligent and methodical. He plans ahead so that he doesn't get caught."
"And yet he leaves behind enough evidence to implicate Delaney," Booth added.
"Exactly," Sweets said. "The murderer wants to lead us in that direction. It is possible that Delaney is the true source of his rage."
"So why not kill Delaney?" Booth asked. "Why kill these women instead?"
"I don't know," Sweets answered. "Perhaps Delaney has some kind of leverage over him or Delaney's death might be detrimental to the killer in some way. Either way, I think the key has to be in the first victim."
Sara Perkins," Booth replied. "Right, because it was something involving her that drove this guy over the edge."
"Yes," Sweets said. "We need to find some other connection between her and Delaney. Someone else who might have wanted her dead and Delaney implicated for it."
"And I think I know just where to start looking," Booth said as he picked up his phone.
An hour later, Booth and Sweets were sitting in chairs in Booth's office across from Sharon Birlew.
"You found Sara, didn't you?" Birlew said, looking into her lap. "Everybody on campus is talking about it. She's the one who you found in that creep Delaney's backyard, isn't she?"
"Sharon, we need to know more about what was going on in Sara's life before she disappeared," Sweets said softly.
"I don't know how much I can tell you," Birlew shrugged. "I knew her better than a lot of people, but she still kept to herself for the most part. Sara, she was really committed to the whole college thing. She was always hitting the books instead of going out. Her idea of fun on the weekends was taking a few hours off from studying and grabbing a pizza with friends."
"Was Sara having problems in her classes?" Booth asked.
"A little at first," she replied. "But then she got serious and her grades got better." Birlew lifted her head.
"I know what you're thinking: that Sara slept with Delaney in order to get help with her grades," she said. "But it wasn't like that. Sara never cheated. That's something she would never do. I…I just think that she spent time with Delaney because she was still getting over her old boyfriend, Terry."
"Terry?" Booth said. "Terry Lipton?"
"Yeah, that's right," Birlew said, confused. "How did you know?"
"When did she know Terry Lipton?" Sweets asked.
"She…she met him during her senior year in high school," she said. "She was working as a volunteer at one of those places that helps people learn to read and stuff. Terry was also helping out there and the two of them hit it off. Sure, there was an age difference, but Sara liked older guys and she was over eighteen. Anyway, things were good between them for a while, but then, I don't know. She even applied to this college as a way to keep seeing him, but things fell apart and they broke up not long after she started attending classes. After they broke up, that's when Sara got all gung-ho about her studies and making changes in her life."
Birlew swung her legs back and forth and looked back down into her lap.
"After she disappeared, I stayed around," she said. "Hoping that she would come back. Hoping that maybe I'd figure things out. But now that I know she's dead…I guess all of that seems kind of pointless now." She then sighed and looked back up at them.
"I'll try to help you anyway I can, and I hope that you nail Delaney and whoever else is behind all this," she said. "But…and I know this sounds bad…I can't help but think that it's not going to really matter in the end, you know?"
Booth and Sweets glanced at each other, their eyes meeting for a second before returning their gaze toward Birlew. Neither of them wanted to say it, but both of them wondered if maybe a part of them agreed with her.
After spending another thirty minutes talking to Birlew, Booth and Sweets decided to move everything over to the conference room. They gathered up their files, papers, and notes and spread them out onto the table. Deciding that lunch was in order, Sweets went off to order some Chinese take-out while Booth went back to his office so he could confer with Brennan and Cam at the Jeffersonian via webcam. By the time the agent was done and had returned to the conference room, Sweets was arranging cartons of food for the two of them on the table. They sat down and ate in silence for a few minutes before Booth started to speak.
"So I was able to pull Delaney's medical records," he said as he picked up a carton of fried rice. "Apparently he had been on the name brand sedative for a while before the doctor switched it at Delaney's request. I was able to check with the local pharmacy and found out that they kept records with signatures every time Delaney's prescription was filled. Check out the signatures." The agent nudged a file Sweets' way and the psychologists picked it up and flipped through it.
"The signatures are different," Sweets said as he scanned it. "It's Delaney's name every time, but the hand writing changes."
"That's right," Booth said. "Also, he has a prescription that Cam says is usually used for arthritis. I talked to Bones about it, and according to her, there is no way that Delaney would have the strength to throttle the victims the way that they were given his condition."
"So it had to be someone with greater physical prowess than Delaney," Sweets said around a mouthful of egg roll.
"Yeah, and guess what?" the agent responded. "It turns out that Terry Lipton used to weight train and was on the wrestling team both in high school and for the first couple of years he was in college. My guess is that he kept himself in shape after that."
"It all makes sense," Sweets nodded. "Lipton could have doctored Perkins' papers since he would have access to them, and given how Delaney treats him like a personal assistant, it's possible that Lipton had access to Delaney's personal things, possibly even his house."
"Problem is though, we don't have any hard evidence," Booth frowned. "I mean, sure we have a motive tying him to Perkins' death, jealousy over her sleeping with Delaney, but there's nothing connecting him to Whitmore or Lessinger other than Delaney himself. So why kill them? I just don't know if we have enough for a warrant so that we can look for more evidence."
"True," Sweets said thoughtfully. "Although, I am wondering if there is more to it than just the fact that Perkins slept with Delaney. Something tells me that there has to be something more. But what?"
Booth nodded as he chewed on a piece of crab rangoon. He could sense Sweets' frustration, and shared it. The agent knew that Brennan and everyone else at the lab did not have much more to offer as far as revealing who the murderer was, so it was up to them to find some way to tie all of this together.
The agent watched as Sweets scooped up some sesame chicken with his chopsticks. Even though the two of them were working smoothly as a team within this investigation, he could still sense the tension lingering between himself and Sweets. It had also become clear to him that Cam was right and that he would have to make the first move with Sweets in all this, but booth found that it still irritated him to some extent.
'Sweets is the one refusing help and cutting himself off,' he grumbled to himself. 'So why am I having to be the one to reach out and make amends? For all his talk about working through feelings and all that, he sure is adept at avoiding any discussion of his own.'
Booth frowned and snatched up a pot-sticker. He thought back to the times when Sweets did try to divulge more of himself. Usually it was related to April or Daisy or some other traumatic event that he had endured. Booth could tell during all of those times that it had taken a lot for Sweets actually saying anything to him about what was in his mind and heart. But the more he thought about it, the more Booth started to detect a pattern.
'Here recently, he's been clamming up more and more, and letting less of himself out,' the agent mused. 'Especially after that whole thing when Taffet got killed right in front of him.' It was then that a new and disconcerting thought occurred to him.
'Is this some kind of trend?' And is he getting worse?' he wondered. 'What if there is something wrong and that thing with Larson just pushed him closer to the edge.'
Booth gulped down the rest of his pot-sticker and picked up a glass of water to wash it down. He tried to study Sweets as best he could without being noticed. He wasn't looking forward to confronting Sweets over all this, and was more than willing to put it aside until they wrapped up the case.
Besides, there was one last errand that Booth needed to attend to before he could go over things with Sweets.
Instead for now, Booth decided to go back to looking over the papers in front of him, hoping that inspiration would strike.
'If it's not just about Perkins, then what else is it?' he thought to himself. 'What else is so important to Lipton?'
Booth reached over for a fortune cookie, but he hesitated when something Lipton said came back to him.
"Yes, my doctorate in philosophy…with all that going on, there's not a lot of time for me to really get to know any of the people in his classes…"
"Sweets, we need to talk to him again," Booth said suddenly, sitting upright.
"Who? Lipton?" Sweets asked, confused.
"No, Delaney," Booth answered. "It's just like you said, he's the key to this all along. And I'm thinking that he's the answer we've been looking for as to Lipton's motives."
The two of them stood and Booth gathered up the files while Sweets threw away the empty paper cartons. Once the table was cleared, Booth reached over and placed a hand on Sweets' shoulder.
"I have a hunch," the agent said. "And if our talk with Delaney pans out the way I think it will, I think I've got a way to approach Lipton. Are you up for a little subterfuge?"
Booth clasped Sweets' shoulder and was happy to see the psychologist's eyes light up in response.
"What did you have in mind?" Sweets asked with a slight smile.