14. Greed and Fear
He ditched his regulation FBI suit and settled on jeans, t-shirt and a leather jacket. Before leaving his apartment, he made sure his ID was securely in his pocket, his weapon in its shoulder harness. He juggled with the freshly toasted pop-tarts and captured them in a napkin. Once outside, he swung himself into his car where Bones had patiently been waiting.
"Breakfast." He handed her a pop-tart and ate his in three bites.
She took the crumbly rectangle from him "We should have set the alarm, I could have made an omelet with the leftover Chinese food." She bit into the processed pastry and made a face. "You know I don't like my fruit cooked."
"These are a food staple with us single guys. I'll buy you lunch at the diner later." He started the car up and turned toward her "You know, you could have come up to the apartment and waited."
"I know, but I thought it best to avoid the temptation of watching you shower and change. We're late enough as it is."
He laughed, a little embarrassed by her confession, but a lot more embarrassed by how her statement affected him. He pulled away from the curb and merged into traffic, taking turns, looking at her and the street. "How long do you think we can keep this up?"
Bones pondered the question for only a second. "If you're referring to our partnership, our sex life or the deception we find ourselves in, than two of them I feel we can continue indefinitely, the third, I'm not sure of."
"I hope you're thinking of the same two I am, the ones we are especially good at. The third one, it's bound to come back to haunt us. Now the question is, how long do we keep up the charade?"
"Based on the information on hand, the individuals involved and what I know about them, I say Angela will be the first to figure it out." She replied confidently.
"Yeah? My money's on Hodgins." Booth countered.
"Hodgins? Why would you think he would even care about our relationship?" Bones sounded exasperated at the very idea.
"Angela's already tried to get you to 'fess up, Cam isn't going to touch it with a ten foot pole, and Zack is clueless. Hodgins has been there, he knows what it's like." There was a tiny trace of sympathy in Booth's voice.
"Cam has already confronted me and I adeptly avoided her question." A funny look appeared on her face. "After thinking about it, I believe she might be interested in a menage a trois." She was quite pleased, this was a side of herself she hadn't known existed.
He crossed the center line at the remark. "What!? I know Cam, she's not into that kind of stuff."
"If you mean a free spirited sexual experience involving three attractive and consenting adults, I think you'd be surprised." She wasn't the least bit interested in sharing Booth with Cam, but teasing him was fun. Besides, she had yanked Cam's cord... or was that chain... and enjoyed it immensely.
"Isn't that more along Angela's lifestyle?" Booth cringed at the thought of Cam and Bones, it just wasn't right, but Angela...
"Booth! Angela's like a sister to me, it would be incestuous, banish the thought!" She tried to sound stern as she stifled her laughter.
"It is a fantasy, among boys and men in general, to bed two women at once, but I've only began bedding one, and two would be one too many." They both laughed as he pulled into the Jeffersonian parking lot.
There was work to be done.
The only inhabitants of the empty warehouse were rats that darted around the discarded wood pallets and in and out of the cracks and crevices along the bottom of the walls. Large balloon shaped graffiti covered the interior, marking the territory of disgruntled and disenfranchised youth. Their piles of cheap booze bottles and garbage were strewn about.
Twenty years ago, the Port of Baltimore had thrived and this building along with the three others next to it had been storage and transfer facilities for goods going out of the country. A lot had changed since then, and today the Port was terminally ill and the buildings had remained empty and abandoned for over a decade.
Tom Hascall spent a very tense and uncomfortable night trying to sleep on a dirty couch in one of the unused warehouse offices. His only possessions were the clothes he wore and the backpack filled with money. His thin jacket did little to keep the damp air at bay, but his temperature sensors had become numb while his auditory sensors had heightened. Every crackle, every drip, and every rustle echoed in his ears and his head darted nervously about. Fearful of being picked up by the police, the Feds or the people he ripped off, he agreed to hide out in the vacant warehouse. The kindness of strangers doesn't exist when you've stolen their money, and he found himself rocking back and forth, hugging his backpack like an errant child might hold a stuffed animal.
Outside, the sun hid behind a grouping of gray clouds, and the dim light cast a gray sheen on the warehouse and on Victor Ligrano. He approached the building carefully, the number on the door matched the text message he had received and it swung open when he pressed his hand against it. The air was acrid and damp inside and added to his paranoia as he moved slowly through the building.
"Who the fuck are you?" Ligrano yelled, as Hascall appeared out of nowhere, clutching his backpack.
"Who sent you?" Hascall choked out the words. "Are you here to help me?"
Ligrano recognized the man as the motel manager and his suspicions were confirmed when he saw his frightened look. "Give me the God Damn backpack or I'll beat the crap out of you."
He saw the cold calculating look on Ligrano's face as he came closer. A picture emerged in his head and he saw himself on the ground, rolled up into a ball, being kicked in his back and stomach. He held the backpack even closer to his body.
Ligrano was incensed, angry that the money he had desperately been searching for was only steps away in the arms of this intruder.
"No. Please." Hascall whimpered, as he imagined the money snatched away from him.
His cowardice gave Ligrano courage. "I'll kill you with my bare hands if you don't give me the God Damn pack."
Hascall shut his eyes and saw himself laying on the warehouse floor, rats crawling on him and nibbling at his flesh. The vision made him reach for the pistol that had been hidden in the side pocket of the pack.
"I got a gun, stay back. I already killed someone…" he cried out.
The threat bounced off of Ligrano as he looked at the slightly built man who was cowering with fear. He squeezed his hand and the switchblade that had gone unnoticed, zipped open. He waved it in front of him.
The sight of the knife blade shouted 'shoot him!' in Hascall's head. He dropped the backpack, and with an unsteady hand he pointed the gun at Ligrano and fired.
His aim was off and the bullet hit Ligrano in the shoulder. He reacted as if he had been injected with a dose of adrenaline directly into an artery and he threw the knife as hard as he could.
Hascall looked stunned to see the knife embedded in his chest. His arms flailed out to his sides but before he fell back, he pulled the trigger again and the wild shot, incredibly hit Ligrano in the head.
Ligrano lay crumpled like a rag doll on the cold cement floor. His shocked expression was frozen on his face. Hascall lay next to him, a pool of blood growing around him as he bled out. He felt his life leaving him at the same time he felt the backpack slide away from his body.
Inside, the rats scattered in every direction and outside, the only witnesses were perched on the cornice of the building. The sound of gunshots sent the birds in flight, they circled the sky and eventually settled back on the wire above the building. They watched, as the figure of a person with a backpack slung over one shoulder, came out of the building, tossing a gas can back and forth, while fuel splashed on the ground.
A single wooden match was all it took to ignite the gasoline. The flames raced into the building and across the floor, bursting into a firestorm and engulfing the two bodies and the wooden pallets that had been dragged next to them.
Bones knelt over the charred remains and with a gloved hand she pulled a knife out of one of the victims. "This is most likely cause of death. The wound was inflicted prior to the fire." She looked up at Booth, wondering what scenarios he would come up with, before bagging the switchblade.
"Let's get the remains back to the Jeffersonian." Booth ordered, trying to make sense of the scene. They had been called in after the first responders found the two charred and unrecognizable corpses. The interior of the warehouse was gutted by the fire and water dripped and puddled around the victims.
"This isn't some random event, preliminary findings show this as arson. I don't think it's a coincidence the building is owned by Nicholas Villareal, and my guess is, we aren't looking at two transients." He looked disgusted and shook his head.
"This gun appears to be the weapon that shot and killed this victim." She pointed to the blackened skull and a hole left from a bullet, she lifted the revolver gingerly and placed it into an evidence bag. "You believe one of these victims is Tom Hascall?"
He shrugged. "I can only speculate, but this much I do know, a gunshot wound to the head and a switchblade in your heart could be the by product of an argument. Arson and setting fire to the bodies is not. That was premeditated."
"If any evidence has been left behind, we'll find it." Bones wanted to be optimistic for Booth's sake, however, she knew doubt was the logical conclusion.
"Wait for me" she instructed the cab driver after they arrived at the Silver Springs Days Inn. She went to the room at the motel and knocked on the door. A woman in her early thirties answered. "Hey there, Megan" she winked at her and took an envelope full of cash that was handed to her. She counted out fifteen one hundred dollar bills, and in return gave her a manila envelope.
"This was just the change I needed." Shannon Meyers thanked the woman and returned to the cab.
"Dulles airport please." Once she settled herself in the back seat, she opened the envelope and found a California driver's license, a passport, a social security card and a birth certificate for Megan Miller. The photos looked good, the make-up had covered up the bruises on her face. She tucked the driver's license into her wallet and replaced the other documents in the envelope and zipped it into the carry on bag that sat next to her. She took her little wire bound notebook out and carefully noted the fifteen hundred dollar expense for her new identity. She had a running total going. One hundred sixty for haircut and color, three hundred for tortoise rimmed prescription glasses, one hundred for a carry on suitcase with a matching shoulder bag, and a thousand to the man she had hired to retrieve the backpack and set the building on fire.
Shannon paid and tipped the cab driver and went into the air terminal where she paid cash for a one-way nonstop ticket to San Francisco. She made it through the security checkpoint and headed to the ladies room, where she entered a stall, took her cell phone apart and flushed the sim card down the toilet. She left the restroom and went to the McDonald's where she bought a burger, fries and coke. She ate about half of it and discreetly wiped the disassembled cell phone clean and tucked it into the leftover burger, and then placed it back in the bag and threw it in the trash on the way to her gate.
Shannon was now Megan Miller and ready to start her new life. She sat in a chair and thought about the last four days. She had been very careful and as each day passed, she felt a little more confident that her plans and goals might actually come true. In truth she would always be haunted by knowing she caused the death of Victor Ligrano and Tom Hascall, but she took solace in knowing she didn't pull the trigger, throw the knife or light the match.
Megan heard the attendant call for boarding and joined the gathering line. She felt a prickle of apprehension, as though she was being watched and felt herself grow clammy and pale as she saw two armed policemen walk towards her. They suddenly broke into a run and ran past her, apprehending a middle-aged man who tried to round a corner. He protested his innocence while being led away.
"Poor son-of-a-bitch, I wonder what he got caught doing..." the man in front of her remarked.
Megan nodded her head "People shouldn't try to get away with murder, ya know?" She handed the gate attendant her boarding pass and I.D. and in less than a minute she was walking down the ramp toward the airplane.