"What exactly do we hope to accomplish?" Brennan glanced over at Booth who was weaving his way through the height of morning rush hour traffic south towards the engineering firm that the two victims had worked for.
"I want to find out what they were working on and why they were out there in the first place," Booth's jaw was set; despite a rather enjoyable morning, he was feeling a little tense. They'd arrived at the Everett field office of the FBI where they'd been greeted by Agent Coleman who had informed them that somehow the press had gotten wind of the case and now they were itching for an on camera interview in time for the mid-day newscast. That coupled with the news that their plans to go out and try and locate where the barrel had originated before it had been washed down the river with the help of the Snohomish County Sheriff were dashed because so many roads were still impassible once you got off the main highway due to all of the recent flooding. Not that they knew exactly where that was anyway.
"Wasn't that information in the original missing persons' report?" Brennan wasn't sure why they needed to drive 30 miles south into Bellevue just to ask a question that they already knew the answer to.
"Yes, it was, but I want a little clarification. There's a lot you can learn from a face to face interview that you're never going to find in a file," He didn't mention that he thought Agent Coleman's report hadn't been very complete. Of course at the time, it hadn't been a murder investigation either. The rest of the drive was in companionable silence and as Booth pulled into the parking garage of one of the high-rise office buildings where the firm was located his demeanor became all business.
A perky brunette greeted them as they walked into the lobby of Lakeview Engineering, "Can I help you?" Her smile seemed a bit forced but she was friendly enough.
"I'm Special Agent Seeley Booth," He flashed his badge and then gestured towards Bones, "And this is my partner Dr. Temperance Brennan. We're here to talk to someone about two former employees."
"Jill Alexander and Caleb Walker," Brennan supplied.
The face of the receptionist seemed to pale, "FBI? This can't be good. I watch a lot of those forensic shows. If you're here, that can't be good." She seemed to have momentarily forgotten that Booth had said he wanted to talk to someone. A full ten seconds went by as she continued to stare at them before the beep of her switchboard interrupted. She blinked and seemed to go on autopilot, "Lakeview Engineering, this is Lacey, how can I help you?" She glanced back up at the pair staring her down from across her desk and held up a finger to indicate that she'd be just a second. "He's out of town, Mr. Lawton. I can give you his voicemail." She smiled as the caller seemed agreeable to her suggestion. "Thank you." She glanced up at the visitors, "I'll get Ms. Mercer, do either of you want any coffee?"
"No, thank you," Booth answered for both of them; they'd hit a Starbucks' drive-thru on the drive down and he for one didn't want any distraction from the meeting they were going to have.
"I'll have a cup," Brennan chimed in, glancing over at Booth with a look that withered his frown. Her brows shot up, "What? I'm a little tired this morning." She couldn't hide the smirk that flitted across her face at the smug grin that began to steal over Booth's.
"Ok, so one coffee then," The receptionist still seemed flustered as she disappeared behind a partition wall and could be heard talking softly to someone presumably in an office around the corner. Her nerves were evident as she came back and gestured towards a conference room across the lobby to the right, "Ms. Mercer will be with you in just a minute. If you'd like to wait in the conference room, I'll bring your coffee in."
"Thank you," Brennan smiled thinly as she regarded the young woman. She wasn't sure if the woman was flustered because they were obviously there as part of an investigation or if she was simply affected by Booth's sexy grin.
They had just settled themselves in the conference room when the receptionist rushed in with a cup of coffee for Brennan, "Sorry for the wait." Just as she turned to leave, a professional forty-something woman stepped into the room.
She smiled as she noticed Brennan, "Temperance, it's good to see you again."
Brennan smiled and stood, extending her hand, "Sarah, this is my partner, Special Agent Seeley Booth." She gestured toward a befuddled looking Booth who had an eyebrow quirked in her direction.
"Nice to meet you Agent Booth, I'm Sarah Mercer," She had a kind smile and her brown eyes crinkled in the corners as she shook his hand before they all settled into their chairs.
"You two know each other?" Booth had a way of stating the obvious as he smoothed his tie down. Despite the fact that he had originally come out to Seattle to provide Bones with security for her book tour, he had brought a couple of suits just in case. Well just in case he took her out to dinner that is; he hadn't planned on working a case.
"We met on the plane, on the flight out from DC," Brennan offered. It really was a small world that the woman who she had talked to for nearly six hours just so happened to work at the same firm that the two victims of their murder investigation had. "Sarah is a nationally know expert in water quality."
Booth cleared his throat and tucked that little piece of information away, "Ms. Mercer, we're here because of Jill Alexander and Caleb Walker." He was carefully studying her reaction.
"Jill and Caleb disappeared last spring while they were doing field work," There was a hint of trepidation on her face as if she didn't want to really know the answer to the question of why they were there.
"Unfortunately, we've identified their remains," Brennan's tone was gentle. She knew how she would feel if she had just learned that a colleague was dead.
Booth interjected, "Ms. Mercer, we're going to need to know what they were working on and where exactly the field work was supposed to take place."
"Call me Sarah, Agent Booth" She seemed to be trying to gather her thoughts, "And of course you have our full cooperation, but we gave a statement to another agent when the missing persons' investigation was opened."
"Yes, and we've read the file," Booth wanted to take advantage of the fact that Bones was on this woman's good side and try and get as much information from her as possible. "Dr. Brennan and I are from DC, however, and there are nuances between the lines so to speak that we might miss since we're not from the area."
Sarah Mercer seemed to read between the lines very well herself, "Can you tell me how they died?" She suspected that if a world renowned forensic anthropologist and her FBI partner were talking to her, that it wasn't a simple case of someone falling down a ravine in the woods.
"They were murdered," Brennan volunteered, glancing over at Booth to make sure that she hadn't overstepped her bounds by sharing exactly what sort of investigation this was.
"What we're trying to establish is where exactly they were when they disappeared," Booth really hoped that the woman didn't answer his question in squinty-speak.
"The Sultan River Basin. It's northeast of here about 30 miles and they were collecting water samples." Sarah seemed to be cataloguing her thoughts to share in the most sequential manner.
"Is that anywhere near the Skykomish or Snohomish rivers?" Booth looked at her with a quizzical expression.
"Yes, the Sultan River feeds into the Skykomish and that feeds into the Snohomish before emptying into Puget Sound." Clearly the pair sitting across the table from her had already gained some familiarity with the area geography.
"Why were they gathering water samples in that location, Sarah?" Brennan knew that as a scientist there were probably specified locations that had been designated for sampling and that the samples were probably tested for a specific panel of things.
"The water sampling itself was routine; we've got an on-call agreement with the county to test the water in the Sultan River where salmon spawn to make sure that the habitat isn't compromised." She let out a sigh as she continued. "They were supposed to be taking samples just below the dam specifically because the dam is up for recertification and we're helping the county with the permit process."
"Isn't that a pretty remote area? What's the dam there for?" Booth knew that dams in the Pacific Northwest were sometimes used to generate power and that salmon were an endangered species; of course he found it ironic that it was also the only endangered species you could regularly buy off of a menu and eat for dinner.
"It forms a reservoir that provides drinking water for eighty percent of Snohomish County," Sarah Mercer was a smart enough woman to know that the information that she was sharing had some relevance to the case. "It doesn't impact the salmon habitat; we can prove that scientifically with the analytical data we've gathered from previous water samples, but there are still some groups that are opposed to the idea of dams in general because they believe it alters the natural structure of the ecosystems."
"And what exactly are you implying?" Booth wanted a little clarification.
Sarah looked across the table at both Temperance and her partner, "I think that it's possible that they encountered someone who doesn't want the dam recertified and was willing to take extreme measures."
"Eco terror," Brennan mulled thoughtfully as she locked eyes with Booth; it was certainly a realistic possibility.
Booth had the sudden sinking feeling that the can of worms this case had opened had just gotten messier.