(After "The Change in the Game')
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It had been three weeks since she'd had a bout of nausea and for that Brennan was grateful. The aggravation of not being able to eat breakfast and to suffer from bouts of vomiting anyway had made her short tempered and impatient. Now that her body had accepted the fact that she was carrying a baby, her mornings had returned to normal and she could enjoy eating breakfast with Booth.
She entered the kitchen and found Booth flipping a pancake onto a plate.
"I made you pancakes."
"Thank you." Brennan sat down at the kitchen island and pulled the plate towards her. After tasting a small piece, she smiled. "Banana pancakes? This is a new recipe isn't it?"
"It is, Cam gave it to me. She said she got it from her sister. Felicia's on some fruit and vegetable diet, but Cam says she's not a vegetarian . . . it's Felicia, so we'll just go with it." Booth found Cam's sister to be a pill sometimes, but he knew that most of Felecia's problems were because of her rivalry with Cam. He wished she would stop competing with Cam, but he didn't have a say in the situation and tried to stay out of it. The last time he was pulled into one of their feuds he had been turned into the bad guy which both confused and pissed him off at the time. "Anyway, Cam says the pancakes were pretty good and she told me to try it out."
Taking another bite of the pancake, Brennan nodded her head. "It is very tasty. I must thank Cam for giving you the recipe."
The last pancake on his plate, Booth placed the four strips of bacon he had made for himself and poured syrup on his pancakes and the bacon. "So, you're doing okay? You're not . . . you know . . . nauseous?"
"No, I'm fine." Brennan cut off more of the pancake, dunked her piece in the syrup on Booth's plate and popped it in her mouth. After swallowing, she smiled. "I find I am enjoying food lately, more than I normally do."
The syrup bottle in his hand, Booth poured a little on her plate next to her cakes. "Nothing wrong with that. You lost a few pounds because of the throwing up, that had me worried."
"It had me worried too." Brennan dunked another piece of pancake in the syrup on her plate. "I know this is just maple flavored liquid sugar, but it is delicious."
"Yeah although honey on pancakes is pretty good too." Booth continued to eat, enjoying Brennan's company. "I ran the reconstructed face that Angela sent me yesterday in missing persons and came up with two possibilities. I'm going to make a few phone calls today and see if I can identify the guy that was found in Savage River State Forest."
Brennan swallowed her bite of pancake and placed her fork down. "With Hodgins' help, I have confirmed that the victim died from an arrowhead striking the femoral artery in his left leg. The arrowhead struck the bone and it appears that someone pulled it out of the victim's leg and took it with them. That is why no arrow or arrowhead was found in the vicinity of the victim."
"With Hodgins' help? Another experiment?" Booth wasn't thrilled with Hodgins experimenting with arrows at the Lab. "Cam let him shoot arrows at the Lab?"
"Not in the Lab, Booth." Brennan chuckled. The experiment had been fun and she had found it to be enlightening as well as entertaining. "We set up the experiment in the gardens behind the Lab. We had ample security to keep visitors and gawkers away while we performed the experiment." She saw the frown on Booth's face and sighed. "It was safe, Booth. Hodgins and I are scientists and we try to minimize risk when doing any experiment."
He knew arguing about Hodgins and his experiments was a losing proposition. "So, hunting accident or murder . . . if a bow hunter shot our victim, pulled the arrow out of his leg and didn't try to render aide or report it the authorities, he could be charged with manslaughter." Booth tore up a piece of his bacon. "When I find out who the victim is, I'll find out if he was a hunter, that might aim me in the right direction . . . I hope."
"Angela tried to identify the victim, but he isn't in any database she has access to. Apparently, the man didn't have a driver's license or a criminal record." She found that odd, but she knew that there were some people that didn't own cars and therefore didn't require a driver's license. "I would have thought he'd need at least a State identity card for voting purposes or to cash checks or to get a hunting license."
"I'll probably get the answer to those mysteries when I find out who he is." Finished with breakfast, Booth drank his coffee then carried his dishes over to the dishwasher. After he loaded them in the racks, he took the fork, plate and cup that Brennan handed him and placed them in the appliance as well. "Okay, let's boogie, Bones. I have a meeting at nine with Fairburn and he hates for me to be late."
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Since their victim didn't show up in any databases that Booth had access to, he forwarded a copy of the picture of the victim to the Garret County Sheriff, Matt Guzzardo. He hoped that someone in his office would recognize the young man or get the word out that they were looking for his identity. He received a phone call 45 minutes later. "Booth."
This is Sheriff Guzzardo from Garret County, Maryland.
"Yeah, did you get a chance to look at the picture of the victim? Do you know who it is?" Booth hoped it was a simple yes.
No, sorry. No one has reported this guy missing in my county. I showed the picture to the deputies here in the office and no one recognizes him. I have a departmental meeting scheduled for 8 tomorrow morning. I'll see if anyone at the meeting knows him. If they don't, I'm going to place an ad in the local paper and see what happens. I can check with the Medical center and we have five public libraries in the county. I'll check with them. Maybe the high schools. He doesn't look very old so he maybe he's a recent graduate.
"Sounds great, Sheriff." Booth felt like the Sheriff had it under control. "If you find out his identity let me know. My forensic specialist thinks he was shot with an arrow and it hit an artery. The guy bled out. Since your deputies didn't find an arrow or arrowhead, I'm going to assume that the killer took it with him."
I'll keep that in mind when I have my deputies ask around. I really want to know who this is and why his disappearance wasn't reported.
"Yeah, me too." Booth was alerted that he had an email, checked it and closed it. "Thanks for getting back with me."
Not a problem.
The call ended Booth knew that he'd have to put this case on the back burner until Sheriff Guzzardo came up with a name. He hated to wait, but the young man had been dead for quite a while and it didn't look like anyone missed him. He had time to solve this mystery.
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Waiting for their lunch, Booth watched Brennan as she poured sugar in her iced tea. "You still doing okay?"
"Yes, stop worrying, Booth. I'm fine." She hoped Booth didn't plan to ask her how she was feeling every day. She could see that it could turn into an annoying habit very quickly. "Stop asking me if I'm fine. I'm pregnant not sick . . . alright?"
"Yeah, sure." He could see that Brennan was being defensive and he knew that if he pushed her too much it would turn into a war of words. He wanted to avoid that since neither of them won anything doing it. "What are you working on?"
Glad Booth had changed the subject, Brennan took a sip of her tea and replied, "I am working in Bones Storage. I am working on identifying a set of remains that was found on a farm in France two years ago. The remains are old enough to have a connection to World War I. The uniform the victim was wearing disintegrated but the buttons survived since they were made of brass. They're United States Army buttons, so that is why the remains were sent here. There was also a pair of wire rim glasses found with the body along with the remains of some leather boots, a pocket watch and a few French and American coins."
Interested, Booth listened to her describe the damage done to the skull and how the fractures in the cranium had told her how the man had died. The soldier had died from a bullet to the head. The remains belonged to a young man, but that wasn't surprising since in general, war was a young man's burden. Once she was done, Booth changed the topic again. "We need to decide on what to do about the baby's room. We've talked about it, but we haven't made any final decisions. I think we should convert the bedroom next to ours into the baby room and leave Parker's bedroom alone. I don't want him to think we're pushing him away and if we change his bedroom and make it the baby's bedroom, he might resent us and the baby."
"I think I understand." Brennan hadn't thought about it from Parker's perspective, but she could see that forcing him to move to another room might make him think he was less important. "The room next door is spacious enough. We can start looking for baby furniture and I want to be clear about this, I don't want the walls to be painted blue or pink. I would like a neutral color like yellow or mint green."
Since he didn't care what color the room was, Booth nodded his head. "Fine by me. That way we don't have to wait until we find out what the sex of the baby is. I can paint it now. Why don't you look around and see what furniture you think the baby should have? I want to pay for some of the furniture so don't pick furniture that costs a fortune. The baby won't care what his furniture looks like so we don't have to be fancy. Just make sure it's solid wood and durable."
"I agree." Brennan wasn't going to buy cheap furniture, but she saw no reason to spend a small fortune on furniture that would only be used for a few years. She hoped to find a baby bed that converted to a toddler's bed. That would be practical. Any dresser she chose should last through out the childhood of their baby so it should be sturdy and the changing table would also need to be sturdy. "I think oak will do. It's sturdy and can be stored away for future use."
"Are you saying you might want another baby down the road." Booth smiled. The thought of a third child made him happy. He loved children and wouldn't mind having more than two.
Not sure what she had meant, Brennan shrugged her shoulders. "I don't plan to have another child, but this child wasn't planned for. We're not as cautious when we have sex as we should be."
"Yeah . . . okay, so not planning on another one, but be prepared if that happens." Booth knew he could store baby furniture in the garage.
Exactly." Brennan leaned back as their food was placed on the table. Once the server was gone, Brennan picked up her spoon and scooped up some of the French onion soup. "I really am hungry."
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