(The Mother and Child in the Bay)

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I don't own Bones.

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Booth felt he had learned a valuable lesson about the Carlie Richardson case. Like most people in law enforcement, he had thought that her husband, Kyle Richardson had murdered her.

Kyle had been cheating on his pregnant wife and on the day that she had disappeared, the couple had been heard fighting by a few witnesses. Kyle had scratches on his body that looked similar to defense wounds and witnesses had seen him down at the marina that night. Kyle looked guilty and he was the only suspect they had, but there no body and no crime scene so the judge had to kick him free.

That hadn't set well with the FBI or Carlie's parents. It was hoped that Carlie's body would be found someday and they could try Kyle for murder, so when her body was finally found a year after she disappeared, Booth took charge of the case and was eager to finally make Kyle pay for what he had done.

With the help of Brennan and the squints at the Lab, it was discovered that Carlie had not been killed by her husband. Instead, it turned out a local veterinarian had killed Carlie, cut open her body and stole her unborn child to replace the baby she had accidentally killed by shaking it.

Frustrated with himself, Booth liked to think he was a fair man, but clearly in this case he had been prejudiced from the beginning and prejudged Kyle without evidence to back it up. He had been quick to believe that Kyle had murdered his wife because the man had cheated on Carlie. To have an affair with someone when your wife is bearing your child just seemed like a gross sin to Booth and if Kyle could do that then it was a mere step to kill her to get rid of her so he could be with the other woman.

"I can't believe I did that." Sitting in the Founding Fathers, Booth drank some beer from the bottle the server had brought him and set the bottle back down hard on the table. "Cam, that was not my finest work. It's my job to investigate crimes, follow the leads I'm given and not assume anything."

"Hey, I thought he was guilty too." Cam wasn't taking it as badly as Booth had. The clues had pointed towards Kyle Richardson and nothing in the year after Carlie's death said that she was wrong. "He was the only suspect we had. He had motive, means and opportunity. He was seen at the marina the night that Carlie disappeared. Come on Booth. He had no business being at the marina that night. His very pregnant wife was sitting at home and he was playing with his boat? That just rang all kinds of bells for me."

He heard what she was saying, but the fact was, Cam had done a bit of prejudging too and they had both been wrong. "Bones was the only one that refused to prejudge this case. She played it by the book and followed the evidence and that evidence took us on a completely different path. If it wasn't for Bones pushing us to make sure we were doing our jobs right Kyle might be in jail right now waiting to be tried for murder and Carlie's baby would be in the hands of a murderer."

Not sure what to say about that, Cam shrugged her shoulders. "She's a scientist not a cop and that places her on a different playing field than we are. Dr. Brennan is great at her job and that might be because she can separate herself from her emotional side. That's not an easy thing to do for the rest of us."

"Bones feels things." Booth didn't like where this conversation was going. "She feels things deeply. I've seen her cry about her mother and I've seen her pay for a funeral for someone she didn't know because she knew the family couldn't pay for it . . . Bones tries to separate herself from her emotions to protect herself and who can blame her. She's helped recover dead bodies from mass graves in foreign countries and spent months trying to identify them. If she couldn't build a wall between herself and that . . . that horror then it might drive her crazy. She feels things Cam."

"Alright, I'm sorry. I get it." Cam could see that she had pushed a button that she hadn't meant to push. Booth could be very protective when it came to his friends and family and he obviously considered Brennan to be his friend. When it came down to it, that loyalty and protectiveness was one of the things she loved about him. He was the knight in shining armor that most young girls dreamed existed. "She did a good job and she proved us wrong. In this case, I don't mind being wrong. If we had arrested Kyle for the murder of his wife that would have left his helpless son in the hands of a woman who had killed her own child then killed and cut up a pregnant woman to get another child to claim as her own . . . damn, I did not see that coming. Dr. Corbis kills her child then kills Carlie to get her baby. Those kinds of crimes are so rare . . . and horrifying."

After drinking his beer, Booth leaned on the table. "Bones really dislikes Kyle Richardson. She even called him a pathetic bastard to his face, but she wanted justice for Carlie and she wanted the right person convicted for murdering her . . . I think Bones gets that more than we do sometimes . . . no shortcuts, no preconceived notions going in . . . she can be a little judgmental sometimes after all she is human, but she can usually step back and look at the whole picture when the rest of us are laser focused on something else."

She heard the admiration in Booth's voice and Cam knew that when it came to his partner, Booth was probably one hundred percent loyal to her and that might be a problem for her. Dr. Brennan was constantly bucking her authority and she wasn't sure she could continue to allow that to happen. There was only one boss at the Lab and in the end it had to be her not her forensic anthropologist. She just hoped that if she had to get rid of Brennan that Booth would let the situation play out and back her up. If he fought her too, she knew that her career at the Medico Legal Lab might be short lived. "She is very good at doing her job." The next few weeks would determine the course she would have to take. She just hoped she had a job when it was over.

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