The Face With Two Skeletons
by Tropicwhale
disclaimer: I am not the owner of the characters but the situation and the story...
Warnings: Bad language. Violence.
Author Talk: CHAPTER FIFTY! Chapter L, the big 5-0 woot! Never thought I'd write this much. Thank you for sticking with me!
Chapter 50
Booth walked up to Sweets and the tact team captain more than a little shaken. He believed that Cam really would beat him if he led Zack on...then she would tell Bones and he'd end up in Limbo for the rest of forever. That was a scary prospect. Good thing he had no intention of hurting the younger man. Seeley felt something deeper than just mere lust for Zack. He knew that it could work out for the both of them if given a chance. Yes, it was scary but no more scary than going to war or becoming a father or working with Dr. Temperance Brennan and her squint squad every day. The big things in life, Seeley knew intimately, were terrifying and irreversible. But, if you didn't do your best to chase after them; if you let the fear keep you from taking the risk...then you didn't really get the chance to live life to its fullest. That risk to take would have to wait, however, until they could find Zack. Then Seeley was going to take the kid out on a real date and...figure things out from there. God, that made him nervous. Seeley supposed that...if Zack was not a blip in the data...then Seeley would have to first admit some things about himself that scared the shit out him. He'd have to admit, to himself and others, that he liked men. He still liked women. Ho-boy did he like women; their curves, soft voices, gentle hands, their -hem- womanhoods, their smell, the curve of their buttocks...Seeley blinked rapidly.
He needed to stay focused. Zack was kidnapped by a murderer. Seeley needed to save him. That was what was important right this second. He readjusted his thinking; less sex, more logistics. What did he know about the possible kidnapper? Shultz was smart. Smart enough to get out of jail and go to Alabama? That was strange. Booth could see leaving Michigan but to go to the out of the way swamps of Alabama? And why kill Olivia Oscarmann? Why leave her bones on the steps of her house? Why travel up to D.C? Why kill Anne, take the time to remove the flesh and, then, just throw out her bones? There were a lot of parts to this case that didn't make sense. What was the connection to Zack? Was it because Bones referenced him in her more recent books on forensic anthropology? No. That didn't fit. Was there a connection to Zack? Or was it a coincidence? Booth didn't believe in coincidences when it came to murder and criminal activity. He rubbed his eyes and sat on the steps to the forensic platform. Sweets noticed the movement and Booth held up his hand, shaking his head. All the pieces were there. He just needed to figure out how they fit together. Brennan was doing what she did best, figured out the facts, and now it was his turn.
Shultz was smart. He was a strong, athletic young man. Resourceful. A lost young man who, while in Detroit (which was a tough town for anyone), sold himself and drugs to get by. He was a survivor. He didn't like talking about his past. Trauma survivor. Hardy. Stole. But, it was always cash or credit cards. Means. Not food or alcohol or more drugs. He worked to survive. Ok. Carried a shotgun. Well, in Detroit surrounded by drug dealers and pimps, a kid had to protect himself. But didn't kill. He had birdshot and not buckshot. Better at warning off potential threats. So, was Olivia's murder accidental? No. The blast radius blew way part of her sternum.
Booth mimed holding a shotgun at the ground and then bringing it up to about sternum height. Sweets gave him a look. "I am trying to figure out the moments leading up to Olivia's murder. Don't look at me like that."
"I wasn't. I was just-" Sweets stuttered and stopped.
"Shut up." Sweets nodded and Booth went back to his thought processes. Shultz knew how to handle a gun. The angle of entry that Angela figured out matched the story that Booth was forming in his head of the murderer. The attack was sudden, unexpected by either Olivia or her murderer. Otherwise, why use birdshot? So, it followed that Shultz was carrying a gun to protect himself, possibly hunt small game. Which he didn't learn out of a book. You didn't learn to handle a gun by reading. You learned it by doing. So, somewhere in Shultz's dark past he had learned to handle a gun. Someone taught him. He never got caught using it but that might be because Detroit isn't policed as well as it could be. So, smart, well behaved, gun savvy trauma survivor looking to stay mostly under the radar.
So, Shultz leaves Michigan to start over. He doesn't have a home and Michigan is cold. He heads south. But why Alabama? He had gone to Florida before. Alabama is an open carry state. A young white man carrying a hunting shotgun would be commonplace, correct? Maybe he was back on his way to Florida. But the town he was picked up for prostitution is out of the way of the major interstate arteries. How does he get to an out of the way town? And, technically, there was no evidence to suggest that he killed either woman or blew up Zack's apartment. He was, so far, only guilty of kidnapping Zack and being in a town close to where Olivia was murdered. Booth tabled that line of thought for the moment.
What about the explosion? How did that fit into everything? Why Zack? Why not Brennan or Booth? They were the leads on the investigation. There was also the little matter of breaking into Hodgins' property with how security obsessed the bug scientist was. The arsonist when out of their way to target Zack's home. How did that fit? The timing of the explosion too, right as Zack was coming home. The arsonist was close. He had to have seen Zack and Angela pull through the gate and then waited a time, assuming Zack was going to go straight up into his apartment. Angela had said they had parked and talked for a few minutes. That probably saved their lives. So, did the arsonist want Zack dead? Or seriously injured? Out of commission anyway….out of the way of the investigation. So, he knew how smart Zack was and knew how not having him involved in the investigations of the murders slowed them down. Familiar with Zack.
And Anne's murder was out of the way. She was sent pictures of Zack and Zerbrowski having sex. The person or persons responsible had to know that her lover was going to hand them over. He waited. Watched. He followed her to the cemetery. He actively targeted her. And he had a vehicle.
Booth stood and ran to Angela's office. "Not now, Booth." Brennan said without looking away from the Angelatron.
"He has a car. Take that into consideration." He said. "They may not be in the city." Brennan turned and looked at him. They had narrowed down where they could have gone to four areas on the map of D.C.
"Damn." Angela cleared the search parameters with a tap of a manicured nail. "Square one."
"How do you know?" Brennan wanted to know.
"He had to have followed Anne from the spa to the cemetery." Agent Booth explained.
Hodgins blinked. "Huh. I am shocked you figured that out." Booth, in a rare moment of unprofessionalism, flipped Hodgins' the bird.
"Bite. Me. Brennan?"
"No. That is important data to consider. Now leave, unless you have something else?"
"Shultz is a survivor. Probably a hunter. He'd want an environment he could control." Booth said. "It's what I'd do if I needed to hide. High ground but near a water source." Brennan nodded. Angela typed quickly to add the parameters to the search. Booth ducked out while they discussed other narrowing factors. He sat on a bench along the wall of offices.
The killer targeted Anne and Zack. In fact, he targeted Anne using Zack's affair with her husband to lure her out. Why? Because she looked like his first victim? A sense of guilt? But, if guilt, why kill her too? No. guilt didn't fit. The killer was following Zack around, not Anne. If he felt guilt over Olivia's death he would have focused on her identical twin not the man her husband was having an affair with. So, trying to get Anne to see the truth about her husband. Zerbrowski wasn't the type of guy to leave his wife for Zack. Zerbrowski knew it. Zack knew it. Anne probably knew it. So did the killer. So, he was trying to force Zerbrowski and Zack apart. Booth kinda of agreed with him on that account. Zerbrowski was bad news for the littlest squint.
But, maybe, Anne refused. She didn't want to leave her husband either. She wasn't going to force the issue. She didn't do what she was suppose to do and wounded dead. So, Shultz comes to DC after killing a woman in Alabama and encounters Zack in some way. Maybe visits the Jeffersonian after reading Brennan's books in prison. Takes the tour. Sees Zack at work, becomes curious then takes to stalking him. Realizes that Zack was having an affair with a married man, moves to remove that obstacle...fails...kills, freaks out, gets rid of Anne the way he got rid of Olivia. He is scared that Zack will figure it out and move to remove him from the investigation with the explosion. The investigation carries on, he kidnaps Zack. Shame that it was all conjecture. Wouldn't hold a conviction. And there was still the matter of Olivia's murder. How did that fit into everything?
Dr. Temperance Brennan chose that moment to walk up to him with print outs. "We figured it out." she said, looking grim. "There is only one location they could be." Booth stood and the tact team captain straightened. Dr. Brennan handed one of the papers to the captain and he delivered the address into his walkie talkie, already walking out of the lab.
"I gave him the profile on the suspect," Sweets said "and his team has been updated as well." The psychologist held up his smart phone. Cam, Hodgins, Wendell, and Angela walked up all looking worried.
"I love technology." Booth said and the looked at Dr. Brennan's team. "We'll bring him home safe." He promised and then sent up a quick prayer to St. Michael the Archangel for it to be true. He and Bones left the lab and picked up speed until they were practically racing through the Jeffersonian to his black, issued SUV. He jumped in the driver's seat and had the car out of park before Temperance could properly shut her door. She was practiced at Booth's emergency driving and shut the door and was buckled into her seat as he flashed his gumball and ran the sirens. She had the address typed into the GPS before they hit the main streets of the city. She informed him when he was going to have to turn and when perpendicular traffic might be a problem. She was a good copilot.
Booth for his part didn't buckle up. Cops rarely do when they run the sirens. Emergency situations require fast action and seat belts, while a major safety precaution, cost major seconds in high adrenaline situations. Booth's vision also tunneled to directly in front of his vehicle, relying heavily on his partner's cool reason to deal with the extraneous details of the drive.
The location was a storage unit at a marina in Annapolis, Maryland. It was almost an hour away, Booth made it in less than 40. The tact team had already made it and dealt with the dockyard management. They had narrowed down the actual storage unit using infrared heat detection. There was one unit, close to the road, furthest from the water, had a hole in the fence not 5 yard from it. It, at one point, was an office building and so it had running water, electricity, and a bathroom. It light up in one corner by a small heating unit and two bodies. The tact team surrounded the area and got between the suspect and the escape routes. Booth went in backed up by Brennan and the tact captain.
They were silent through an unlocked side door. Brennan had stopped asking for a gun the second they had hit the building. She had won the fight to go and help to rescue her assistant. She was a woman who knew when to pick her battles. Booth swept the area, listening to the tactical team's squint talk over his ear piece. The two people in the corner were not moving, and seemed unaware of their presence. Booth motioned Brennan to stop and stay down. The tact captain motioned that he would cover Booth. After some mild timing logistics, they rounded the corner, guns up.
Shultz was between Booth and Zack, a shotgun laying at his side. Zack was naked, wrapped in a blanket. Booth saw red. "HANDS UP! ON YOUR KNEES! YOU ARE SURROUNDED!" Zack's hands went immediately to his head, fingers interlaced. Shultz just looked at him and glanced at his weapon. "Don't even think about it, Shultz." Booth had him trained in his sights.
"Agent Booth. Don't." Zack commanded, then moved to the suspect's side, naked, on his knees. "You don't understand." Dr. Brennan rounded the corner carefully. "Dr. Brennan."
"Zack. Are you ok?"
"Yes." He glanced at the other law enforcement officer. "You should call off the tactical team. You figured out our location much more quickly than I had thought you would."
"Zack. Come here." Dr. Brennan glanced at Booth who had not wavered.
"No. You don't understand. We were going to turn ourselves in. This kidnapping was a misunderstanding."
"Explain." Dr. Brennan ordered. Booth kept his eyes on Shultz who still hadn't put his hands up and was still glancing at his shotgun.
"This is my friend, Bradley Oscarmann." Booth glanced at the squint then retrained his eyes on the suspect. "He was never dead."
"He is in the penitentiary system as Brain Shultz. His father confessed to not killing him." Brennan stated. That got the other man's eyes away from the shotgun.
"I don't believe you." His voice was deep with a southern drawl. "That man is a liar to his dying day."
"I got him to confess." Brennan boosted. "Well, actually," She corrected "Agent Marsters did."
"Did he bury my mother?"
"Is that a confession?" Brennan wondered.
"No. That's knowing that she was dead." Bradley looked at his gun again. This time Zack noticed it.
"Stop that. You are making Agent Booth nervous and I already told you that he is an excellent shot." Bradley's eyes snapped to Zack's. "I am not losing you again." Zack looked back at Booth. "I told him that there was no need to kidnap me...after he already sent the random note. He's been a bit off all day."
"Have not." Bradley shot back.
"You keep insisting we run away together when the far more reasonable option is that you come home with me. It's not logical. You are reacting emotionally and stupidly and now we have guns pointed at us. You were in charge the last time I was naked with a gun pointed at me. It's my turn. Now, put your hands on your head like Agent Booth said." Zack finished off this rare display of dominance with a glare. Bradley obeyed like a scolded puppy. Zack kicked the gun toward the agents and reached for his pants. He dressed quickly, unplugged the heater, then placed his hands back on his head. "Technically I am an Accessory After the Fact but that is mostly because I was trying to keep my kidnapper calm because he was acting like a crazy, stupid person. He occasionally does that. I blame the fact he is from the South." Booth let out his breath and pulled out his handcuffs.
"Bradley Oscarmann, you are under arrest for kidnapping, suspicion of murder, arson and other crimes. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be held against you in a court of law. You have the right to an attorney. If you cannot afford one then one will be provided for you. Do you understand the rights I have just read to you? With these rights in mind, do you wish to speak to me?"
"Zack?" Bradley looked over at his friend.
"I'll provide a lawyer. Don't say anything. Our normal prosecutor is very good. Once you have a lawyer, then you should confess." Zack grabbed Bradley's face and kissed him. "I don't care. I am just glad you are alive and I forgive you."
"Zack, shut up or I'll have to arrest you too." Zack looked up at Booth.
"Maybe you should. I promised him I'd stay with him." Booth helped Bradley to his feet and they all marched out of the storage unit.
The boys rode in the backseat of the SUV and the car ride back to the Bureau was long and silent. They walked side by side to an interrogation room and sat down next to each other. Booth sat across from them. Brennan was banished to Observation. "I waive the right to a lawyer for this interview." Bradley said suddenly then looked at Zack. "I am sorry but I can't hurt you like this." Bradley looked back at Booth. "Zack only knows what I told him and he was in no way a part of my criminal activity."
"Ok." Booth had his hard stare on, and his arms crossed. He was still wearing his tact gear.
"I...may need some psychological help…"
"Definately. You definitely need help, Bradley." Zack corrected. "I still say you need a lawyer."
"And you need to know the truth." Bradley looked at Zack. Zack looked at Bradley. Bradley looked at Booth "I killed my mother."
"Why. How." Booth demanded.
"We….I was in prison for drug dealing….and...I was in the same prison as Hector Oscarmann. I knew it but he didn't. We were in different cell blocks. The entire prison was abuzz when he got out. I was angry. He had killed me. Maybe not for real but by confessing he took away my chance to have a normal life. If I didn't live on his terms than I was dead, ya'know? I knew where he went. The town he ended up in...his daddy took him fishing and hunting at when he was young. So, when I got out...I….hunted him down. He was lying again. Got them to believe he was legit. I wanted to find a way of proving that he was lying...but my ma saw me first….she told me to go meet her at that bench. She told me that she helped him...that...she was sorry that he had ruined my life….I-I-I…." Zack grabbed Bradley's hand as he cried. "I told her that I want him to serve justice...that just because he didn't manage to kill me doesn't mean he didn't try. He fired that gun at me that night. If he had had grabbed buckshot I would be dead. She said that she was going to tell him that I was in town. I got scared. I raised my gun...and shot her point blank. Didn't mean to. Just instinct...I got scared and...Zack used to tell me about forensic sciences...getting flesh from bone? And…" he looked at Zack who nodded. "I felt guilty...so I cleaned her bones up and left them on his porch to bury."
"He didn't. He had them sent to the local university under false pretenses. They ended up in Limbo. I identified them." Zack told him. Bradley smiled.
"Shoulda known he'd lied. Will she at least be buried now? Please? I hated her but she's still my mother." Booth nodded. Bradley exhaled.
"Tell me about Anne." Booth got him back on track. He was a stone wall.
"I came up to DC. To check on Zack, ya'know? He was always not taking care of himself proper so I was happy to see all these people lookin' out for him. Accepting him for the sweetheart genius that he is. But then I saw him and that Zerbrowski guy screwin'...I...took pictures. I-I know his type. I used to take money from his type. Drugs, Hookin'. They're all the same, with the same wife...so I watched her. Saw she had a lover too...and I took pictures of Zack and her husband….I thought she would break them up. Zack deserved better. Instead, I follow her to the cemetery and she's praying at this headstone. I confront her. She tells me that she's not leaving her husband. She doesn't care that he's screwin' Zack because that means she can have her own affair. I got mad and shot her. Debridled her bones. Threw her out like the trash she was...then…"
"Then?" Booth prompted. Bradley looked at Zack.
"Did you blow up Zack's apartment?"
"Yes."
"Why?" Bradley was still staring at Zack.
"I don't know...I just did. I was friendly with an arsonist in prison...he told me how to-to make bombs...I climbed over that wall and picked open the lock and set the explosive and waited in a tree until he came home. I made sure he wasn't in the building when I did it, though."
"Why, Bradley?" Zack wanted to know.
"You didn't leave him. He was a bad man. You deserve better. If you were in need, he wouldn't come to your rescue. I wanted to prove that. If you were hurt...he wouldn't come to you."
"No. He did not." Zack glanced at Booth. "Tell him about Zerbrowski."
"Him, I killed outright. I busted into his home and shot him as he slept." Booth sat up. "I'm going to jail for a long time."
"Yes." Zack agreed. "But, at least I'll know where you are." Bradley smiled and nodded.
"I debridled his skeleton and left it in his garbage can in a black plastic bag. He's at some dump now." Booth looked at the two-way mirror. "I'm not sorry about him. He was evil like Hector Oscarmann."
"Why did you kidnap me?"
"I decided you weren't happy."
"You were wrong."
"Yeah, I know that now." Bradley looked at Zack. "I'm sorry. But I'm not going to get to stay with you."
"I will visit you. You killed three people, Bradley. How did you think this was going to end?"
"I don't know."
"So, you had no clue that Anne Zerbrowski and your mother were twins?" Bradley looked shocked then shook his head. "They were separated at birth. Their birth mother is still alive and living in Richmond. I should also tell you that you are related to Zack. Third cousins." The boys looked at each other. Bradley couldn't tell if Zack knew this or not. "Their birth mother was a related to Zack's paternal grandmother. Olivia knew this and that is why she moved her family to Michigan in the first place."
"I killed my aunt and uncle? As well as my mother?" Booth nodded.
"Well. I'm going to hell." Bradley pulled his hand away from Zack.
Zack stayed with Bradley until transportation came to pick up the murderer/arsonist. As Booth escorted them through the Bureau's lobby, Hector Oscarmann was also being escorted out. Hector Oscarman recognized his son immediately. Bradley just looked at him coldly; reason and justice finally weighing down his soul. He stood calmly as Booth let the other agents lead his father pass him. They would both go to hell. Both he and Hector Oscarmann would burn in hell for their sins and that made Bradley smile. Hector saw him smile, reached with his cuffed hands for his escorting officer's gun, pulled it, undid the safety and shot the smile off of Bradley's face with two shots to the chest. The last thing Hector Oscarmann saw was the shocked look on his son's face before Special Agent Seeley Booth pulled his service weapon and fired. Hector Oscarmann took one bullet right between his eyes and was dead before he hit the floor.
Zack caught Bradley as he went down as all hell broke loose around him. He shook his head to clear the ringing in his ears. "Bradley." His friend's mouth was filled with blood. His chest cavity must be filling with blood and his lung was ruptured.
"Zack...I'm sorry."
"No. It's not your fault. It's his."
"Zack, I'm going to burn."
"No. You won't. You can't leave me again, Bradley, please don't leave me again." Bradley reached up and pulled Zack's mouth to his. They kissed.
"Did you love me?" Bradley asked and then was dead.
"Bradley? Brad? Bradley? No" Zack applied pressure to the wounds but it was too late. It was just another corpse.
Tropic
