(Judas on a Pole)

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I don't own Bones.

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With Caroline's car on the way to a repair shop, Booth was left with his partner's invitation to ride back with her to the City. They remained silent during most of the trip and once they were inside the beltway, Booth finally turned to look at his partner. "Drive to your apartment, Bones. We have some work to do."

Confused, Brennan glanced at Booth, slowed down and stopped as the traffic light in front of her turned from yellow to red. "Why? We need to hand over the evidence that Max gave me to Caroline. I need to drive to the Hoover and we need to talk to Caroline before we both go home."

"It can wait, Bones." Booth hesitated to bring it up, but he knew that he had to remind Brennan about an awful truth. "We have to go back to your apartment and call the FBI from there. There's a big blood stain in the middle of your living room floor. As an officer of the court you and I are both obligated to call that in and report it. They'll probably send out some techs to take samples and search your apartment. Maybe try to pull some fingerprints . . . We also have to come up with a good story as to why we just 'found' it. It has to be a good one and we need to stick to it . . . alright?"

"Alright." She really hadn't thought about the blood until now. When they had found the blood in her apartment, they had left without calling anyone. Booth had assured her that if they had called someone, they would have both been taken into custody and they would have been unable to pursue their case. Deputy Director Kirby would have seen to that. "I suppose I can say that I haven't had time to come back to my apartment until now . . . you took a sample of the blood to the Lab to give to Cam. Won't she report that to the FBI?"

He had thought of that and he knew he had to call Cam. "I know, but it takes at least 4 to 6 hours to run a DNA test so it's still processing. I'm going to call Cam and tell her to stop the test and I'm going to have the FBI handle it. No need to get her involved in this. She did have time to test it for type when I brought the sample to her. It's AB which is why she knew it wasn't Russ' blood since you and Russ have type O positive, the same as your mother."

"I see." The light now green, Brennan continued to drive. "Alright. Do we think that the blood stain in my apartment belongs to Kirby? We haven't heard from him since he fired you and the blood didn't belong to Russ."

"Yeah, I think it is." Booth had thought about it when he'd borrowed Caroline's car to track down Brennan and he could think of only one person it could belong to. "Before I got to the seminary and saw Max, I thought there were two possibilities. The blood could have been Max's blood or Kirby's. We know Max is alive and I haven't heard anything from Kirby, so I think . . . I think Max killed Kirby and got rid of his body."

Careful making the next left turn, Brennan waited for a jaywalker to run across the street before she continued. "Yes, that makes sense . . . My father has already killed a man that we know of, Delaney . . . my father is a murderer, Booth."

"Come on, Bones. We shouldn't jump to conclusions." Hating to see the look of sadness on her face, Booth tried to fix it. "I mean, we're just guessing that Max killed Delaney and Kirby. We don't have solid proof one way or the other."

Realistic, Brennan shook her head. "But you believe he did it." It wasn't a question but a statement.

He wanted to be truthful with Brennan. He knew that if Kirby was dead then Max would be blamed for that death and a warrant would be put out for the man's arrest. "Yeah . . . But he did it to save you and Russ. Kirby was a murderer. He killed Agent Harper and probably some other people, who knows . . . Max killed two very bad men."

"But he did kill them and that makes him a murderer." Brennan didn't want Booth to go easy on her father. Her partner was a good friend and she knew he was trying to console her. She might not understand the motives of most people, but when it came to Booth, well that was a different story. "It doesn't matter if Kirby murdered someone else. Max shouldn't have appointed himself judge, jury and executioner. Vigilantism is illegal."

"Yeah." Since Brennan wasn't interested in what he was saying, Booth decided that he'd said enough for the time being.

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Once they were in her apartment, Booth placed a call to the FBI while Brennan entered the kitchen to make a sandwich for Booth and herself. They hadn't eaten for hours and she was hungry. After she handed her partner a cheese sandwich and a bottle of water, she sat down at the dining room table and ate her sandwich.

Feeling a little odd eating a sandwich near a large pool of blood, Booth turned his chair to face the bookshelf along the back wall. He hadn't realized how hungry he was until the sandwich was gone. The bottle soon empty of its contents, Booth took his used napkin and bottle in to the kitchen, threw them away and checked the cookie jar on the counter. Pleased to see some oatmeal cookies, he grabbed a few and carried them back to the dining room table. "Hey, you made cookies." Handing Brennan one, he kept the remaining two for himself.

"I wonder what Max did with Kirby's body." Brennan finished her sandwich and took a bite out of her cookie.

"I don't know. Maybe it's in Russ' truck, although that would be a dumb thing to do and Max isn't stupid." Finished with his cookies, he turned his chair to face the blood stain. "It's a big pool of blood and the shower curtain is missing in your bathroom . . . Kirby shows up here looking for Russ, Max is waiting for him and kills him . . . He probably stabbed him. Someone would have called in a gun shot . . . That much blood, Kirby bleeds out pretty quickly. Max rolls the body up in the shower curtain. Most of the people are at work, but he takes the staircase to avoid anyone seeing him. He drags Kirby's body to his car, dumps it in the trunk and drives off. The parking garage doesn't have cameras, so he knows no one can prove he did it."

It was logical and fit the pieces of the puzzle that they had. "Yes, I think that's probably what happened." A knock on the door interrupted her.

After Agent Charlie Burns and three techs entered the apartment, Booth and Brennan sat on the couch and answered Charlie's questions.

"So, you and Booth came back here to eat something before going back to the Hoover." Charlie read his notes aloud to make sure Booth and Brennan could verify the veracity of his notes. "You open the door, see the blood and call the FBI. The shower curtain is missing so the body was probably covered in it so that there wouldn't be a trail of blood away from the apartment . . . You don't have a guess as to whose body it is?"

Since the truth was easier to remember, Booth nodded his head. "It's probably Kirby . . . Have you seen him around the Hoover today? I saw him yesterday when he fired me, but I haven't seen him since and I have proof that it was Kirby that took the shot at Russ. He might have come here to finish the job, but Russ wasn't here and someone else killed him."

"Wow." Charlie didn't know what to say. He had known that Booth had been fired, everyone in the Hoover knew about it, but he hadn't realized that Kirby had been implicated in the shooting at the Royal Diner. "Did you kill Kirby, Booth. Is this a confession?"

"Fuck no, Charlie. What's the matter with you?" Furious, Booth stood up and glared at the agent. "I can account for all of my time today and if I wanted to kill Kirby do you think I'd be stupid enough to kill him here in my partner's apartment and leave clues behind?"

Embarrassed, Charlie glanced to the left and the right before looking at Booth again. "You were fired, Booth. I had to ask. You know that." The anger on Booth's face seemed to be a warning that his life was going to be hell unless he fixed this. "I mean, no, of course not. I don't believe you'd be stupid to do that . . . I do need you to write down what you've been doing today, who you saw, where you've been . . . just as a formality to eliminate you as a suspect. Dr. Brennan too. You know I have to do that."

Since Charlie was doing his job, Booth decided that being angry with the man wouldn't accomplish anything. "Yeah, okay, you have a job to do." Pulling his notebook out of his jacket pocket, Booth began to write. "We don't know if the victim really is Kirby, that's just a guess on my part. It might be someone else."

"Who?" Charlie was sure it probably was Kirby since Booth had a natural instinct for things like that.

"How the hell would I know?" Irritated, Booth finished writing and handed the notebook to Brennan along with his pen. "The techs are going to have to run a DNA test. That takes about 4 to 6 hours, so we'll know then."

"Okay." The techs, done collecting samples of the blood, taking pictures of the crime scene and checking for fingerprints on the front door and in the bathroom packed up their gear and left the apartment.

Not sure what to do next, Charlie placed his notebook in his pocket. "You need a ride to the Hoover?"

"Nah, Bones can take me in a little while. We need to clean up this blood first." Booth took his notebook back from Brennan and handed Charlie their notes. "Don't worry Charlie. I'm not going to leave the District. I didn't kill Kirby. I have to check in with Caroline this afternoon and probably see her boss. It's going to be okay."

Since he trusted Booth, Charlie slipped the papers in his jacket pocket and headed towards the front door. "Once the blood is cleaned up, you're going to have to strip the floor. Blood stains wood."

"Yeah." Booth looked at the blood and shook his head. "We may have to refinish the whole floor. That is one big blood stain."

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The blood now removed from the floor, Brennan knew she'd have to spend the next weekend stripping the wooden floor or hire someone to do it. After she dropped Booth off at the Hoover, she drove to the Lab to let Cam, Angela, Hodgins and Zach know what was happening. After she was done with that task, she went downstairs to Bones Storage, removed one of the boxes and prepared to examine the remains in hopes that she might be able to identify them.

The room was quiet except for any sounds that she made moving around the table. While she examined the bones, she thought about her family and why it seemed that they didn't want her in their lives. Her father had come back with a new face and identity. He stayed around long enough to kill two men and fled with her brother. Her father had abandoned her as a child and now after just a few days he had abandoned her again. She didn't know why she was so unlikable and she knew that she probably would never get an answer to that question. She was one of those people that weren't allowed to have a family and she would have to live with that fact. At least she had friends that she could count on like Booth and Angela. They might not be family, but she hadn't had one for seventeen years and she was used to it. She didn't need Max or Russ. She had been alone for a long time and she knew that was alright. It had to be.

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