Health and Healing
She set the coffee cup down with what could only be termed a bang.
"You know that's not how it is supposed to work, Dr. I've-got-a-psychology degree?" She looked the man up and down and tried again. "Our whole job is to uncover the truth, not cover it up to suit our purposes."
From dead bodies that looked like the ground beef from the local grocery to others that were rejects from the horror houses of Halloween, she'd seen it all with this team. But this? She turned her wrath on Booth.
"I know you've had a couple of blows to the head, cher, but when was the last time you had full control of your sensibilities?"
Standing in the basement workroom turned into some kind of killer headquarters, she had thought they would be informing her of a significant break in the case, she would put the wheels of justice into motion and then they could go out to celebrate. A little wine—all right, more than a little wine, thank you very much—and an opportunity to put aside work and whatnot and simply relax and take in the end of another case for Mr. Studly and his squint-star wife.
But this looked like one of those war rooms on TV with boards showcasing each victim and the ugly trails they traveled. And from what they were telling her, this was a Hail Mary pass and nothing else.
She had a few tools at her disposal—the law, of course, her Southern upbringing that meant she didn't suffer fools lightly, and the good sense that God gave her—but this? This?
"You're all damned fools if you think this is a solution to your problem."
She also had the strength of her glare, that long, slow burn of a look that could skewer a defendant from 20 paces and make witnesses tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but, and she favored her favorite FBI agent with one of her best, yet the man did not break.
"We have to try something," the bug man was saying. "This has a chance of working."
So far the count was lawman, psychologist and genius scientist for the plan, one AUSA against leaving a few undecided votes out there. She turned her attention toward the other certified genius in the room.
"Well? You think we should do this?"
The one thing the other genius had going for her was that she seemed to be hanging back.
"Well?" She tried to tone down the intensity of her gaze. "You've been pretty quiet about all this."
This one looked over to the artist-turned-computer geek and then back again at the group.
"It has a chance of working when you combine it with the other things in play."
There she had it. Or she had had enough of it. Either way, she harrumphed royally and skewered the woman with her glare. "What other things?"
But Brennan, so rarely at a loss for words, had the question usurped when she hesitated by the original bearer of weird news.
"It just made sense to let people think that Howard Kessler was dead from an apparent suicide." Sweets was young and that sometimes made him brash, but he was far from stupid. "In fact, those were the preliminary findings, correct?"
He was directing the question toward Dr. Saroyan, who should have more sense than this, but the woman looked like someone had caught her picking food from between her teeth. ""Yes," she said slowly, weighing the words with some caution, "both Arastoo and I missed some key indicators in the initial examination of the body and the labs."
She didn't look happy about it. "We're sure he was murdered?"
"Yes."
Dr. Brennan had finally been able to supply an answer.
"This isn't why you're upset," Booth put in. "It actually buys us some cover."
She had a mind to add another harrumph to the conversation, but she only turned toward Booth and gave him the look, eyebrows raised, expecting an answer to the obvious. "Do you know who killed Kessler, or is that not important?"
The big man hesitated for just a second and she wondered if he truly understood the political climate at the FBI. Time enough to set him straight later if he didn't.
"We haven't eliminated Denton Bentley yet," Booth offered.
"Grizzly Adams might have done it?" she countered. "I hope you didn't play fast and loose with that one like you did Kessler."
That earned a carom of looks bouncing between squint and G-man, but they both landed on her.
"He's a rabbit," Booth said. "He's been off the grid 17, 18 years so he knows how to . . . ."
She held up her hand to stop the new storyline for the old man. "You don't know where he is."
Booth's head swiveled from one side and back, his expression grim. She didn't need to berate him because he was doing a good enough job on his own even if the locals were at fault.
"And he gave you all this?" She could see the boards, a good old-fashioned show-and-tell with photos and Post-its and an assortment of file boxes under each. "
She wasn't so foolish as to not see where this was headed, but she had hoped. "All right, geniuses, what else are you doing to locate the heads of this big, bad conspiracy?"
"He gave us a name and we took it from there."
It was impressive. From the little she had seen, they had made connections between a number of different people and Cahill, the sleazy lawyer who had the best office and apparently used it as headquarters for his nefarious ways when he wasn't looking like an attorney. But it didn't explain her presence and the secrecy and. . . oh hell, they had the tip of the damned iceberg and they were stuck or else they wouldn't have asked her there, right? She shifted her weight and gave them all her best prosecutor's gaze. "So if we've lost Bentley, have lots of pretty little pictures, what do you need me here for?"
"We needed to provide you with an update away from the Hoover and share with you something that we've been doing for some time under the collective noses of the FBI and the Justice Department."
Dr. Brennan could cut out the crap better than anyone else she knew which drew a few smiles from her colleagues. Caroline tried to keep her own demeanor neutral.
"It. . . it was Brennan's idea. We started looking at patterns in newspapers, companies that were under investigation or were potentially facing an investigation into their practices. We expanded our search to governmental databases and whatever internal documents we could get our hands on. Then I designed an algorithm filter to coax binary arrays. . . ."
Now Angela needed to start talking English, but she let the woman go one because at least the people around her—at least Brennan, Sweets and Hodgins—seemed to understand the bits, bytes and balderdash of it all. Cam was just looking at her, beseeching her to accept this all as necessary and Booth was. . . well, Booth was giving his best Stone Mountain expression, unreadable even in the best of light.
"Just give me 140 characters or less on this one."
It was Dr. Hodgins who came to her rescue. "Patterns of potential abuse of the system and those who somehow got around it."
"Not all of those who got around it are bending the law," Angela added. "But it's giving us a list of businesses that are skirting regulations."
"We just figure out how they're doing it," Sweets concluded. "If it seems to magically disappear. . . ." He shrugged his shoulders and gestured as if he were throwing up a small cloud of confetti.
The Justice Department had a whole unit devoted to looking into potential corruption of the system, but these eggheads had put their fancy computer to work on it. "You come up with a list?"
That's when the uncomfortable looks went around the room. "I have to reset the parameters of my search to. . . ." Angela tried.
"Thousands," Sweets clarified.
"Three thousand two hundred and seventy five since 1950."
Leave it to Dr. Brennan to be exacting. Too exacting.
"So it's working well for you?"
Another dose of sarcasm didn't hurt; it kept them sharp. She took another sip of her coffee, but it had gone cold.
"We need some files from Justice to narrow down the search," Booth suggested. "I'm not sure you're going to like it."
In for a penny and all, she thought. "If it can bring the miscreants to justice, then I'm all in." She had a thought. "Unless it's illegal, cher."
She got another big shake of the head from Booth. "Not illegal."
"Then I'm all ears."
The pause was uncomfortable, and it was the boy wonder who braved the silence to offer up what they needed.
"We'd like access to the files that Pelant broke into."
oOo
He really missed landline phones.
Rotary dials, touch tone—hell, he'd just love to go back to phones having a place in the home and not in your pocket where it followed you constantly with reminders of how you were breaking your daughter's heart or disappointing your son.
He might be a hard man, but his children made him soft.
Sighing, he put the cell phone back in his pocket, the mailbox still full if only to discourage additional messages from Tempe and Russ. Their missives were variations on the same theme—call your daughter—with increasingly emphatic mentions of time either in words—soon, as soon as you get this, immediately if not sooner—or tone. But calling her when he had nothing to offer?
He had a few things to ease the waiting, a book, a sandwich and some fresh veggies to keep him feeling full—and keep his daughter happy that he was eating healthy—a jug of water, and a mad desire to throttle someone.
The phone trilled again and he considered tossing it from the car and being done with it, but curiosity won out and he made a bet with himself before retrieving it and checking the caller ID.
He lost the bet.
"Derek? Derek Seltzer?"
The voice was as he remembered it, rich with a drawl dripping with Southern charm.
"Haven't been called that name in a long time, Maxwell."
"Haven't needed to use it in years," he admitted. "I wouldn't have reached out. . . ."
"If you didn't need my help." The man on the other end of the conversation had elongated his vowel so much that the last word sounded more like hell. "This involve that pretty little filly from the Jeffersonian?"
"No." He hesitated, his daughter's voice quarreling with him in his head. He took a deep breath and explained the situation. "If she sees something she doesn't like, I'm afraid she might run."
"If you showed up at her doorstop, she probably took off already."
A real fear, thought Max. "I just need someone to keep an eye out for her."
"You mean 'keep an eye on her?'" The vowels were drawn out. "Make sure she doesn't end up in Oregon somewhere?"
"No." Of this he was certain. "Keep an eye out for her." He paused. "She's vulnerable."
The silence on the other line was unnerving, but he waited. "But you don't want me to let her know a ginger-haired devil is her guardian angel."
"I don't want her to take off to Oregon at the sight of you."
"Is this some kind of health and healing initiative? Pay for your sins of the past and all?"
He didn't often think of himself as a sentimental man, but the idea of making amends did hit him. Swallowing past the emotion, he gave one final direction.
"Keep her alive."
oOo
He watched her down a couple of fingers of the best single malt before the verbal blow came.
"Is this a Hail Mary or is there something you aren't telling me?"
He watched the condensation trickle down the side of his bottle. Night had claimed the others and scattered them to their homes. Continuing the conversation with Caroline had become mandatory—she had insisted, actually—so he had sent Bones home while he and the prosecutor headed over to the Founding Fathers.
"I think we covered everything, Caroline. Angela and Bones came up with a way to look at the patterns in public records. . . ."
She had already raised her hand, signaling for another drink while cutting him off. "I got it all the first time. Your eggheads have got some kind of magic pattern figured out, you think that this whole whatever-it-is is set up like some kind of resistance cell in which if one cell gets exposed it leaves the others just fine to keep doing their nefarious shenanigans without losing a step and you want to look at classified documents from that psychopath Pelant because you think he might show you how to get to some of the other cells if you can trace his activities." She attacked the newest whiskey, draining it and setting the glass down with some emphasis. "I got it all the first time, cher. Just enough to leave me with a headache."
His thumb wiped across the beer label. "So what's up, Caroline? You didn't ask me here for a review of our review."
Caroline wrapped her fingers around the third drink. "Booth, you know there are few people I enjoy working with and I don't want to see you pushed out the door."
"What?" His hand tightened around the beer bottle. "What the hell are you talking about?"
"It makes me sick, cher, but I know that they were giving you a wide berth, thinking that all you needed was some health and healing and you'd be back to your old self, but the powers that be are more than a little worried about you."
Pushing aside the beer, he leaned in toward Caroline. "I am back to my old self, Caroline. I'm doing my job and trying to solve this case."
"Cher," she drawled, "I know that you are going to look under every rock to find the scum that's just sitting there, but there's some thinking that you are looking for scum in places where it doesn't exist."
Something stronger than the beer appealed to him just then, but he fought back the urge. He sure as hell didn't want to numb himself no matter how tempting. "When did you ever listen to scuttlebutt?"
"When it's about someone like you," she said. She then drained the third whiskey, then slid off the stool. "I wouldn't be surprised if they put someone on you to keep an eye on you."
"I'll be fine, cherie," he countered, pushing away the half-finished beer. "I know we're right about this."
"That may be," she said as she put some money on the bar, "but being right about something isn't good unless you can prove it."
And with a wave, the woman walked away.
