God Only Knows, The Beach Boys
FBI agents find his body stuffed into a storage closet in the basement of Brennan's building. In life he was FBI Special Agent Ryan Paxton, formerly of the U.S. Marine Corps, the bane of their working lives. In his death they discover that he was uncle to three boys who thought highly of him and the ex-husband of a woman who did not.
Agent Paxton solved cases, not the riddle of how to work with the scientists of the Jeffersonian. In spite of their tenuous working relationship, Cam and the others would much rather not be investigating his death. Too much has already been lost in his death.
Their silent fear is they will lose more.
The FBI agent in charge refuses them access to the crime scene, but delivers Paxton's body to the lab in the hope that they can gather evidence to point to his killer. But this is the finest forensic lab in the East, probably in the country. Dr. Camille Saroyan and Dr. Jack Hodgins begin to process the body with the hope that it can tell them where the other victim of the home invasion has been taken. Agent Paxton, who told them so little in each case that they sometimes resorted to blackmail and threats when arguments did not work, is now an open book. An open corpse, Dr. Brennan would tell them, correcting their metaphor.
She is on all their minds.
Both Cam and Hodgins return to a lab they'd left behind only hours before and try once more to get Agent Paxton to give up his secrets. They have no arguments, no threats, no blackmail schemes to persuade him.
Only cold, hard science.
oOo
Booth stands like a coiled spring in the back of the small theater, his poker chip in constant motion in is right hand. The briefing covers the basics: what happened, who it happened to, where, when. He's already been informed he cannot work the case of the abduction.
He's been temporarily assigned to the Jeffersonian.
He listens as an agent recites information about Dr. Temperance Brennan, forensic consultant to the FBI, that has been supplied over the years in his own reports and by Sweets. He listens as someone supplies a short list of why she is valuable to the FBI and to this case against the Hong Chois.
She has been their finest weapon against the Chinese clan.
The agent in charge begins to close the book which signals an end to the meeting, but Booth knows there is something else they need to know. Because the report is all too clinical and all too objective, he supplies something that is not in the briefing book that has been hastily assembled.
"Bones is a fighter," he tells them as he steps forward along the wall. "She won't give up. She found a way to leave clues at the apartment."
It is too much to hope she has laid a trail of bread crumbs for them to follow.
"Dr. Brennan has already told us that one victim of the Hong Choi's torture survived as few as 6 hours. The longest survived 72 to 75 hours." The agent in the front shows no emotion. "That is our window." His voice drops to a murmur. "Let's hope she can fight that long." The speaker closes the book.
Booth turns to leave, but the speaker is not done. "Dr. Brennan gave us the evidence to bring down the Hong Choi clan, people." The lead agent looks directly at Booth. "She's probably our best hope of getting her back."
oOo
Dr. Saroyan can tell that Agent Paxton ate no lunch which suggests he didn't stop off with Dr. Brennan, but took her directly home. Dr. Hodgins makes the calculations and they now know approximately when she was taken. A starting point. The defensive wounds on the man's arms, the broken bones in his hands and the pre-mortem bruising on his face, chest, back and stomach suggest that he fought hard, probably against several attackers. Brennan, who is an expert at telling them which hand could have inflicted what damage, would have liked how they measured bruises to help determine hand or weapon sizes.
Dr. Hodgins can tell from particulates recovered from the agent's clothes that he was showered with broken pottery shards, consistent with the 12th century Peruvian cooking vessel in Brennan's apartment. Only one blood type is evident on the fragments. Cam runs the DNA knowing it is not Brennan's blood on the pottery.
Fibers in the gunshot wound track suggest that he was shot using pillows or cushions as a silencer. He would have died instantly.
No bullet is recovered from the body.
They quickly run out of evidence. Paxton, who had been so stingy in life with sharing evidence, is just as stingy in death. And since the FBI is not sharing information with them, they build a scenario based on speculation and what scant evidence they have.
They speculate even though they know Brennan would disapprove.
oOo
Angela waits in her office, breast feeding her baby, tears held at bay as she tries to think of something she can do to help. There is almost nothing for her to do since the FBI has released little information to them. Her skills as an artist with the pen and the brush as well as the computer are not needed as yet since there is nothing for her to reconstruct, nothing for her to research.
But she waits here because to wait at home is unbearable.
Angela knows she does best when she thinks of the victim as a living person rather than a body. With no body, that is easy.
Because it is Brennan, her best friend, that is essential.
When she puts the baby down for its nap, a question takes shape and she grabs the baby monitor and rushes toward the Ookey room.
"Why would Paxton be in Brennan's apartment?"
"He walked her to her door? Then they were surprised? Or the bad guys were inside?" Her husband is stumped why the question is so important to her.
Angela repeats the question for Cam when she walks into Hodgin's lab. "Paxton wouldn't have gone there for a social call." She looks hopefully at her husband and at her friend and hopes that this is something significant. "Mostly he drops her off and races off as quickly as possible. But he doesn't walk her to her door."
"He wanted to make sure she went inside?" Cam looks mystified, but it is Hodgins who makes the leap.
"He knew she was in danger. He was going to get her to pack a few things and leave with him or. . . ."
"Stay with her until a protective detail arrived." Cam finishes Hodgins' thought, but none of them take any comfort in their deduction.
"He was going to take her someplace." Angela knows the information is important, but it will not recover her best friend. "A safe house of some sort."
While they have no tangible proof, they have one piece of the puzzle.
And with little else, there is nothing left for them to do but wait.
oOo
Booth drives toward the Jeffersonian trying to remember the last conversation he had with Bones.
He'd been short with her, taking everything she said to him as a personal affront.
She had broached the subject as she usually did, with a blunt directness that was her hallmark. "Why do you call me Booth if all you are going to do is find fault with everything I say?"
"Well, maybe if you didn't try to, I don't know, demonstrate your superior intelligence every time we talk lately."
That had earned him silence.
And finally another comeback.
"None of the words I used in that sentence was longer than 3 syllables, nor were any words beyond your level of comprehension, Booth. In fact, nothing I have said could be construed as inflammatory. Therefore," she had paused, "I believe that either you are still quite frustrated over the progress in the fraud case or there is something else outside of our relationship which is causing you to act this way."
"I think Sweets would call that displacement."
He'd sputtered and he'd retreated, but he had not been able to deny that what she said was true.
He had answered her in silence.
"Maybe there is a third possibility," she had said, finally breaking the silence. "Maybe you want to end our relationship."
Had she whispered the words, they still would have cut him.
"No." He'd stumbled for words to reassure her. "How can you say that?"
He wonders as he pulls into the Jeffersonian parking structure, if he could have been more emphatic. More reassuring.
"Then we are at an impasse," she had said, a certain hesitancy still in her voice, "unless there is something I have done to anger you, I'm not sure what else to say."
"I can't help unless you talk to me, Booth. I wish you would tell me why you are so angry."
oOo
Booth strides into the Jeffersonian and without asking, Cam tells him everything that Paxton's body has told them. Angela stands by her husband, his proximity essential because she is afraid without something to hold onto, she might collapse.
"We know there was a struggle," Booth says in a clipped tone. He has seen the apartment—it was his call that set all this into motion. He will not share with them the impact of seeing the wide-ranging destruction in the apartment. No. His report concerns the government's reaction: a team at the FBI is looking for someplace where the Hong Choi clan would take Brennan. Another team is in the field canvassing witnesses.
"The FBI in conjunction with other local agencies were preparing to cast a giant net and serve arrest warrants on all the members of the Hong Choi clan," says Booth. "Bones was going to be taken into protective custody until the arrests were made."
They know what happened next.
Hodgins is the first to crack the silence. "And they didn't tell us? We worked the case as well. Did that mean our lives were in danger, too? When was the FBI going to tell us about this?"
His rant includes a few choice words about Paxton in particular and about the FBI in general.
But Booth is not Paxton. He is not regular FBI. They are reminded that he is the exception and not the rule as within minutes, Angela has access to the FBI files on the Chinese Hong Choi and she begins to program her computer to look for patterns in the sites of the torture/murders that might lead them to Brennan.
Hodgins is given access to the FBI crime lab's analysis of particulates found at the scene. Within seconds he is at his old station off the platform, pulling up photos of the crime scene and the particulate reports.
Cam takes another station and brings up Brennan's reports on the murder victims. Each is marked only with a letter of the alphabet to hide their identity. It was Paxton's system, one more way for him to control the information, to keep them in the dark.
By Paxton's system, Brennan would be case file J.
She sees something odd in the reports. The original seven reports are accompanied by an eighth she's never seen before. Thinking that it is a mistake, an extra document that sometimes gets duplicated or added in by mistake, she opens it and begins to see just why the Chinese saw Dr. Temperance Brennan as a threat.
If she uses Paxton's system now, Brennan would be case file T.
oOo
"We need a timeline, Cam," Booth says, fully aware that they will always be a step behind the FBI on this case when it comes to information.
"We have that," she says, pulling up a screen on her computer. "Between 1:30 and 2:00, Brennan was abducted." She takes a breath before she finishes. "Your call came at 6:18."
"We lost over four hours there."
Hodgins' words lay heavy on all of them.
Booth feels the coiled spring inside him beginning to tighten more, if that is possible. "It's almost nine now."
No one reminds them it's been almost eight hours.
"We have particulate analysis that suggests one of the Chinese had been at some kind of factory, warehouse with heavy concentrations of carbon dioxide, magne. . . ," Hodgins begins, but Booth cuts him off.
"Combustible engines, small gasoline generators."
Angela shakes her head, barely able to contain her pain. "That's over 130 in a 200 mile radius."
"Over a hundred?" Cam looks toward Hodgins. "Isn't there any way of narrowing this down further?"
He swipes a hand across his forehead. "I'd do better with the actual particulates." He looks to Booth. "They might have missed something, man."
"Is there something they haven't processed yet?" Cam asks.
Hodgins shakes his head. "I got nothing."
They all take in the crime scene photos Angela has blown up. She's cross-checked them against the evidence recovered at the scene.
"There."
At the foot of Brennan's table, someone has placed a marker, No. 22, to indicate a smear of blood and liquid with bits of something embedded in it on the floor. "What the hell is that?" Booth asks.
Cam has the evidence report open. "Number 22, blood, tea and metal shavings."
"What kind of metal shavings?"
Hodgins practically flies to his computer and begins to comb through the files. "Nothing," he announces, a bit of hope edging into his voice. "They missed it."
Booth is already barking orders into his phone.
"I'll narrow down our choices," Angela says as she sprints toward her office.
Cam touches Booth's arm as he closes his phone and lets it slip into his pocket. "Booth, it's still a long shot."
He turns to her, blinking past the doubt that burns his eyes. "Ten minutes." He turns back toward Hodgins' station. The scientist is searching databases as he waits for the FBI lab's analysis. "I told her I loved her." His eyes have the look of a man who has seen too, too much. "You know, the last time I talked to her. I told her."
Then he walks away.
oOo
"That leaves 34." Angela leans back heavily on her stool. "We have to narrow it down further, but I. . . we don't have anything else."
"Tempe would say there's something else that hasn't been considered yet."
They all turn to the familiar voice to see Max Keenan striding toward them.
His face is grim, his expression hard. This Max is not the affable, charming old con man they have come to know. This Max is the one who could drive away from his children to protect them, the Max who would murder.
His look is steely and his words to the point. "We need a location of where they have taken her. They won't negotiate."
He listens as they outline what they know about the Hong Choi operations and he interrupts and tells them simply, "Tell me about the torture sites. Where did they take them?"
Booth lists them. New York. Pennsylvania. Virginia. "The FBI looked at bank records, Max. Each site was foreclosed on by a different bank. There's no connection there."
"The FBI lost her," Max says. He holds Booth's eyes with his own. His meaning is clear to both men.
"He's right," Cam says, breaking the deadlock. "There's something we're not seeing."
Max is the first to turn back toward Angel's computer. "Look at the banks again. They hold the papers on the foreclosed factories," he says. "Those places are still owned by someone."
Before he can finish the thought, Booth is on the phone with a forensic accountant and he outlines what needs to be done and the urgency with which it needs to be done.
"Is there a database of foreclosed properties?" Cam asks. "One's that have been empty for some time?"
Within minutes, the numbers are halved then halved again.
They have seven choices.
"Where the hell is she?" Hodgins asks.
"God only knows," says Angela.
oOo
By eleven they have been joined by Sweets.
"The tortures are committed to elicit infor. . . ," he offers, but Booth cuts him off quickly.
"We know that." Booth's voice almost shatters with pain. "We need something to help us narrow down the number further."
Sweets regroups his thoughts. "The pattern," he says finally. "There's a pattern to the tortures."
They crowd closer to Angela's computer screens as she pulls up each victim and the time Brennan has calculated it took the victim to die.
"Each victim is mined for information," Sweets says. "Six hours wasn't enough time for the first. They need to make it last in order to elicit as much information as possible."
Sweets' suggestion creates a new timeline.
And a new hope.
And a new horror.
"A remote place," Max says. His eyes never leave the screen. "Off the beaten path."
"They need to run a generator to produce their electricity," Cam adds.
"Generators are noisy and they'll need to insulate the noise somehow." Hodgins turns toward Max. "Especially if they want to use the site for hours." He wants to add something to ease the man's suffering, but the old con is as impassive as his daughter.
Angela's computer runs through the seven foreclosed businesses.
The list narrows down to four, then three.
Three.
Angela sends information—floor plans and site diagrams—about each onto her divided screens. Cam and Sweets pour over one while Angela and Hodgins take on the middle screen. Max reads through the third.
Booth calls in the addresses.
"It's this one," Max says, almost in a murmur. "It would be perfect."
But Max's musings are lost by a loud BAM and the splintering of Angela's stool against the brick wall.
Booth stands with the one leg that survived in his hand.
"Booth?"
"We're too late," he says as he slams the leg to the floor. "They've begun to sweep up the Chinese Hong Choi clan."
In their shock and in their silence, they all know that this is a death sentence for Brennan.
"We're too late."