Sorry about the last chapter, I really felt like being mean! ;-) So this is what you guys have all been waiting for... the moment of the truth! (Wait that's the name of the chapter! lol). Anyway have fun reading and don't forget to review.
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Brenda opened the door. She had seen the familiar SUV pull up in her driveway. Why was the FBI agent coming back? She thought that he had asked all of his questions and she was pretty sure she had answered them right. The doorbell had rung and she had gone to open the door. She was surprised to see that Booth wasn't alone. A tall woman stood beside him. She looked at her carefully. The woman looked familiar. That hair, these eyes, she had definetely seen this woman somewhere.
"Ms Prescott, there are a few more questions that I need to ask you. No need to introduce you to this pretty lady. You must remember Temperance?"
Brenda's eyes grew wide. Temperance?
"Temperance?" she whispered.
Tempe nodded. Water filled her old nanny's eyes and her first reaction was to reach out and hug her but one look from Booth told her it wasn't a good idea. Booth asked the old woman if they could come in. They stepped in the house and Temperance closed the door behind them.
Brenda led them into the dinning room this time. Booth noticed that she had cleaned up since his last visit. The three of them sat down at the table, Temperance and Booth on one side and Brenda across from them. Brenda asked them if they wanted anything, something to eat or drink, but Booth declined for the both of them. He would only ask a few more questions to ask her then they would leave. It wouldn't take more than fifteen minutes. Brenda agreed.
"I told you everything I know. I really don't know what else to tell you, Agent Booth."
"All I want you to tell me is how it happened."
Brenda didn't answer.
The solution to this murder investigation had come to him in a dream. Even though he didn't really believe in dream interpretations, that dream had just made sense. Temperance hadn't agreed with him, she had told him so but Booth thought the opposite. The car, the woman, the footprints and the snake gave a clear image of what had happened the night James and Paulina disappeared, just like the pieces of a puzzle coming together to form a nice scenery.
James and Paulina had died of some sort of poisoning. Booth had been tempted to consider Don Edwards as the murder but he had changed his mind. Yes, Edwards could have been capable of killing James and Paulina, he had had access to drugs from the hospital but something in the back of his mind told him that it wasn't Edwards. First of all because the murder didn't seem to have been planned. He didn't know why he thought this, he had been just going with his gut feeling. Second of all, there had been a woman in his dream and this was clearly a "womanly" crime.
He had seen it in his job pretty often. Men were more violent. They were mostly guilty of passionate crimes, using guns or knives as their weapon of choice. They attacked viciously, they made damages to the bodies. Women's crimes, for the most part, were "gentle" crimes. They rarely ever hit their victim behind the head with a hammer. Strangulation, poisoning and even drowning were their common way of killing their victims. Booth had also seen this in suicide cases. Women preferred taking pills while men preferred shooting or hanging themselves. There had been no marks on the body that suggested how the Brennans had died and that was what had caused Booth to believe that it had been a womanly crime.
The snake in his dream had symbolized the method the woman had chosen to kill her victims: poison. And the closer Booth had gotten from Westminster, the more sure he had gotten about his assumptions. There was only one woman in the Brennans' lives who had had both the motive and the opportunity to kill Temperance's parents. Her name was Brenda Prescott.
"Ms. Prescott, how did it happen? Did you plan it? Tell me. I don't know what to think anymore and neither does Temperance. She has the right to know what happened to her parents. If you don't want to do it for me, do it at least for her."
"I don't know what to tell you."
"How did it happen?" Booth insisted.
There was a couple of seconds of silence during which Temperance turned to her partner. Her look told him that she had told him so. Brenda wasn't guilty of murder. But Booth waited.
"I didn't plan to do it."
Temperance head snapped towards Brenda. She felt like someone had punched her in the stomach. It couldn't be, it was impossible.
"It just happened that way."
Booth stayed silent. He could feel Temperance's eyes on him but he didn't turn to look at her. He needed Brenda to tell him what had happened, for Temperance's sake and his own. Too many questions were unanswered. Now was the chance to get these answers.
"Tell me how it happened."
Brenda took a deep breath.
"James and Paulina stopped by my house. They knew I wasn't feeling well. I had called them earlier. James told me on the phone not to leave the house, that they just had to go to the doctor's office for a quick visit and then they would be over. I asked them to pick up my medication on their way. They did. When they arrived I opened the door. We went into the living room, sat down and we started talking."
Booth turned to his partner and locked eyes with her.
"The thing that caught your attention on your mother's lap, could it have been medication?"
Temperance closed her eyes for a minute and replayed the whole thing in her head. She tried to focus on what her mother was holding. Everything was blurry. She had tried so hard to push this sad event out of her conscience that parts of her memory had been erased.
"Focus Brennan. Try to remember." A voice told her.
She tried even harder to remember. She saw her mom holding something. A plastic bag? Yes. It had been a plastic bag. Suddenly her eyes shot open.
"I remember. My mom was holding a plastic bag and there were bottles of pills inside."
"They were anti-depressants." Brenda added. "I had seen a doctor after I lost my baby and he said that I suffered from depression. He gave me a prescription and told me to get the medication as soon as possible. But I didn't want medication."
She stopped for a second or two. She looked tired, Brennan noticed. She didn't remember her nanny like this. The last time she had seen her, she didn't have those dark circles under her eyes, she hadn't been this skinny and fragile, and she didn't have this irrational spark in her eye.
"I gave them a drink and we got to talking. They asked me how I was doing, asked me what the doctors had said and asked me how I was holding up. Paulina was nice. She sat down with me and comforted me when I started crying. We talked 'til the wee hours of the morning. It was maybe 1:00 or 2:00 when they finally decided that I should get some sleep. It was late, both of them were tired. Also, James didn't like to drive after having a couple of drinks, I knew it, so I offered them a room for the night. They accepted. I gave them the guest room upstairs, Tempe's room. I never told them that it had been her room though. They didn't need to know.
They were getting ready to head to bed when it happened. The voice spoke to me. It told me to take them out of the way, that it was the only way to get my children back. Paulina and James had a weird habit: they couldn't fall asleep unless they had had a glass of water."
"So you slipped something in their water?"
"Yes. Sleeping pills. I had some in my bathroom cabinet and I went to get some while they were getting ready for bed. I crushed a few of them and mixed it in the water."
"How many did you put?"
"A few. Maybe three or four in each. Maybe more. I don't remember."
"Did you mix them with anything else?"
Booth wasn't a doctor but he hardly doubted that three or four sleeping pills diluted in water would be enough to kill a person.
Brenda nodded slowly.
"Yes but I can't remember what else."
Booth was pretty sure she was lying but he didn't press it. There would be plenty of time to get her to confess what else she had put in the water. Booth motioned to her to continue.
"I wanted to make sure they would fall asleep and wouldn't wake up. I heard them coming down the stairs. I ran the water and pretended to be filling their glasses but really I was cleaning up a bit so they wouldn't see the residue of the sleeping pills on the counter. When they came in, I handed them their glasses.
James thought the water looked funny since it was all white but I told him I had a sulfur problem and that lately my water was like that. It seemed to convince him and he drank it anyway. So did Paulina."
Booth could hear Temperance sniffling. He knew she was crying and as much as he wanted to comfort her at the moment, he needed to focus completely on Brenda's confession.
"They went up to their room and fell asleep immediately. I waited a while downstairs. An hour, maybe two, to make sure they were really asleep. Then I went back to the kitchen, grabbed two plastic bags out of the pantry and walked upstairs.
The moon was shining inside the room. I remember like it was yesterday. I could see them lying there. They hadn't bothered to get under the covers. They must have fallen asleep as soon as they had hit the bed. I slowly walked up to them. I sat down beside James. He didn't move. Then I noticed that his chest wasn't moving. I checked his pulse and there was no heartbeat. I went over to check on Paulina. Same thing. I knew they were dead and I felt relieved.
Booth felt himself shiver. He remembered the cold room upstairs. James and Paulina had been died in there. He didn't believe in ghosts but that room had been way too cold.
"I took the keys out of James' pocket. I went to the master bathroom and I took some gloves out of the cabinet. I tied my hair, went in my room to change, put on the latex gloves and got out of the house. I drove the car to a semi-remote area. There was a lake there and I threw the keys in it. Then I walked back home. I arrived around 5:00 am. Nobody saw me."
"What did you do with the bodies, Ms. Prescott?"
"I kept them." She answered somewhat proudly. "I put them in my basement in the cold storage. I locked the door and hid the keys."
"How long did you keep the bodies?"
"In my house? About three years. Then one night, I saw Paulina and James standing in front of me. I got scared and ran down to the basement. I unlocked the door, grabbed what was left of them and went outside. I dug a hole in the ground and buried them.
After the night they died, I had trouble sleeping. My doctor gave me stronger sleeping pills but I didn't take them. Sometimes I would spend days not sleeping."
"Did you see Paulina and James often?" Booth asked.
He was beginning to see that this woman wasn't quite right in the head and shivers ran down his spine once again as he thought for the second time about the bedroom above his head. Brenda had a couple of screws lose in there, he thought to himself. Who would be able to keep the bodies of two people in their basement for three years?
"Every night they would come in my room. Sometimes I would talk with Paulina. Other times she would just glare at me. James never talked. He stood silently in the corner of my room and waited until Paulina and I were done talking."
Booth turned to look at his friend. She was wearing a disgusted look on her face. He could see in her eyes that she simply wanted to reach over to Brenda and strangle her. Booth dropped his hand on her lap and gave it a squeeze. He heard her breath stop for a split second but he didn't remove his hand.
"Why did you decide to move the bodies, Ms. Prescott?"
"One night, Paulina came to me. She was alone and she was angry. Her hair was on fire and I could see her eyes sparkling with anger. I got scared. I asked her to leave me alone. She simply kept walking towards me. I ran to the kitchen, grabbed a garbage bag and ran outside. I dug out the bones, put them in the plastic bag and tied the opening. I got in my car and drove outside of Westminster. I knew the area. The Brennans lived there for about ten years. They moved when Tempe was just five years old. She probably wouldn't remember the place."
She turned to Temperance but Tempe looked away. She couldn't look at her anymore.
"I threw the bag in the wood and drove back here."
"How come there were no fingerprints on the plastic bag?"
"I wore gloves. Always. From the day of the murder until I actually moved the body. I felt dirty. I thought that wearing gloves would protect me from the dirt. The doctors who followed me just thought I had an obsessive-compulsive behavior."
"I'm just curious about something. When was the last time Paulina and James visited you?"
"The night before yesterday. Paulina was angry, angrier than she had ever been. She really looked like she was going to kill me."
Booth remembered the pale woman who had answered the door the previous day. She had looked really tired, even more tired than she looked at that particular moment.
"Ms. Prescott, would you mind if we took a quick look in your kitchen?" Booth asked.
Brenda nodded and showed them the way. Booth led Tempe into the kitchen.
"Look for the garbage bags." He whispered to her.
Brennan nodded.
They searched for about five minutes and Booth finally found them in the pantry. He called his partner over and asked her if this could have been the garbage bags that was used to carry the bones.
"Yes. It's the same type of bag."
Booth nodded and walked out the kitchen.
As he walked in the dinning room, Brenda looked up to him and locked eyes. Booth slowly lowered his hand until he grasped what he had been reaching down for. He slowly walked up to her as he recited the words he knew so well.
"Brenda Prescott, you're under arrest for the murders of James and Paulina Brennan."
And as Booth read her her rights, Tempe leaned against the wall separating the kitchen and the dinning room and watched as Brenda, her second mother, got up and as Booth, the only family she felt she had left, handcuffed her nanny.
She followed them as Booth walked her to the door. Just before she stepped out, Brenda turned around.
"Tempe, you have to understand. I was your mother. Paulina was just your biological mother. I'm your real mother, I'm the one who raised you. I did this for you, for you and Russ. I wanted us to be a family again. You didn't belong with them, you belonged with me."
Booth forced her to turn around and led her to the SUV. Several neighbors looked out their windows, some came out on their porch. Booth ignored them. He opened the door of his truck, helped Brenda in and slammed it shut.
He walked back inside the house to find Temperance sitting in the stairs, weeping. He simply stood in the doorway. He didn't know what to do.
As if sensing his presence, Brennan looked up at him.
"Bring her to the headquarters. I'll call a cab."
"Are you sure?" Booth asked, concerned.
He didn't want to leave her here all alone.
"Yes. There is just something I have to do."
She saw that Booth looked frightened. She forced herself to smile.
"And it doesn't involve killing myself, if it can make you feel any better."
Booth nodded and went back to his car. Brennan watched him leave by the window. Once he had turned the corner, she turned away. She slowly walked up the stairs, down the corridor and opened the door to her old room. She collapsed on what had been her bed, on what had been the spot where her parents had died and cried all the tears from her body.
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TBC... because yes, it is not over yet! There is more to come! Stay tuned!
