Title: Six Bodies in the Pasture
Disclaimer: I own nothing but the plot, even that might be borrowed. This is what I call a filler chapter, man I hate filler chapters!! Let me see, sorry it has taken so long to update I had a hard time with this chapter. . . .talk about writers block, it will be smooth sailing from here, I promise. Oh, I looked up all the information took me more time, I hope I don't offend anyone. . .sorry if I do.
Enjoy! And Review please.
Chapter Five: Two Asleep in the Lab
He looked her in the eye again. "Alright, only if she has your looks and my brains." He said holding out his hand to make the deal official.
"What if he has your looks and my brains." She said, trying to challenge him.
He only shrugged. "That would work too." Was his answer as she placed her small hand in his, sealing the deal.
Booth left Brennan's apartment near eleven and returned promptly at five forty-five in the morning. He used the key to enter the apartment, and he was greeted by the darkness of her livingroom. He squinted to allow his eyes to get used to the dark, taking notice the light coming from the bathroom.
He sat the contents in his hands on her table and wandered into the bedroom only to meet his partner, who had a tooth brush in her mouth, in the room. "Good Morning, Bones." He said with a cheerful smile.
"Hi." She muttered, running back into the bathroom. Booth started rummaging through her closet, looking for clothes for the doctor to wear. "What are you doing?"
"I've come to help you get dressed." He said, not turning away from her closet. With a smile, he pulled out her 'Vegas' dress.
"No, Booth. I'm not going to wear that." She said firmly as she sat on the bed, her left arm cradled to her chest and her right resting on her hip.
He shook his head at her firmness, and went deeper into her closet. She watched with a smile, he was taking more time choosing her outfit than she ever spent. Finally he decided on a pair of black slacks and a white button down shirt. "Will this work, your highness?"
"Of course." She said with a sly smile as she pulled off her pyjama bottoms. Booth's eyes grew wide, and this time he actually got to look at her long legs. She pulled up the slacks with her right hand, beginning to struggle with the clasp. She held the pants expectantly, waiting for him to help snap them together. "Are you going to help, or stand there and watch?" She asked.
He flushed, and stepped close. After pulling the pants together and clasping them along her stomach, his hands found their way to her waist. "Happy now?" He whispered, this time causing her to blush. He backed up enough to help place her arms in the white shirt. He started buttoning from the top to the bottom taking his time. "I still think that we are doing this wrong." He said with a slight chuckle.
Her cheeks grew a darker shade of red, only hidden by the darkness. The only light in the room was still in the bathroom, neither of them bothered turning the light on. She didn't know why, but it was probably what had caused the mood, the flirting, the blushing, the shyness.
Brennan shook her head, willing the color to leave her cheeks as he finished the last of the buttons. She turned around, looking for her shoes as Booth looked through her jewelry box. He decided on a simple golden chain holding a single dolphin on it, Russ had given it to her before . . . before he disappeared.
As she struggled to put her boots on, Booth reached over and placed it around her neck, clasping it before she had the chance to protest his choice in jewelry. After that feat, Booth completed the task of placing the boots on her feet. The words from the night before still ringing in his ears.
Booth successfully dropped Brennan off at the lab at seven in the morning, after finally getting her dressed and fed at exactly seven in the morning. Brennan laughed as she watched him drive away from the parking garage, he might be annoying, but he was always on time.
She walked into the lab and sat her bag into her office before she set to work. What caught her attention, as she walked in her normal routine, was the paper which had fallen on the floor. She picked it up with her right hand and read over the contents.
It was only the results of the identification of victims four and five. Three down, three more to go. She read over the names carefully as she wandered over to their bodies. Zooey Carter and Kyah Miller, laying innocently before her.
Brennan walked over to the first victim, who had yet to be given a name. That infant was the youngest of all six, barely three months old, never had the chance for disappointment. She sighed as she began looking for anything to make her stand out.
Angela walked in sometime around eight, with Zack and Hodgins in tow. Her eye immediately zeroed in onto the forensic anthropologist, who hadn't noticed the trio's entrance. The artists eyes went right to her neatly braided hair.
"Sweetie. Your hair looks great, who did it?" Angela asked, startling the scientist.
"Booth did." Brennan answered, it was no use lying to her-it was some sort of best friend radar. Even with her hands the way they were, she still couldn't get her hair to cooperate the way Booth did.
"Booth? As in our Special Agent Seeley Booth?" Asked the artist, looking surprised. She circled around her, like a vulture to prey, and gave a nod in approval. "Wow, he did a good job. Where did he learn to do that?"
"His father was a barber and picked up some things from him." She responded, still looking at the bones intently when something caught her eye. She looked up at Hodgins, who was sitting at a microscope, listening to their conversation with a slight grin. "Have you looked at this scratch on victim one?"Angela wandered to her office.
The etymologist rolled his chair to her, looking at the anomaly closely. "It looks like someone chipped their nail polish." He commented, pulling out some tweezers to grab the chip. "I'll run some tests to see if I can narrow it down." And he rolled away, back to the microscope.
Brennan looked into the file again, reading over the notes from her team as Cam came to join the team. "Anything new?" She asked.
Brennan shook her head, and walked over to Zack who was working on the third victim. She watched her ex-assistant work diligently, as he had when he was her assistant, only adding a tie. "Victim three, age four months, cause of death is the same as the others."
Both Cam and Brennan nodded. "How did talking with Amalie Jacobs family go?" She asked, giving her the once over, taking note of her outfit-striking her as a familiar look that she couldn't put a name too.
"As well as to be expected I guess, we just told her that her daughter was murdered after they put her to bed. Booth is coming by later and we are going to talk to the other victims, maybe we can pick up a pattern." The pathologist nodded, turning around to question the artist in her lab.
Brennan sat in her office, she had pulled in the dry erase board and began looking at the descriptions that she had been given. All six were Caucasian females, under the age of two and at least half showed traces of nail polish, ethyl alcohol, acetone and resin on the bodies. She gave an angry sigh turning her chair away from the board as Angela stepped in.
"I finished two more facial reconstructions, Sweetie." She said, unsure of what mood the doctor was in as she sat in the chair in front of the desk.
She turned the chair back around and took the pictures from the artist. "Did you match them with Missing Persons or Amber Alert?" She asked, trying to keep the anger from her voice.
"Yes, I did. Victim ones name is Ember James and victim threes name is Alexandra Dawson." Said Angela. "I am having trouble matching number two though, I'm going to start over on the facial reconstruction I've might have missed something."
"Have Zack check the skull first. Booth and I rebuilt it, but I might have made a mistake somewhere." She said. Angela raised her eyebrow, Temperance Brennan admitting to a mistake didn't happen very often. "I'm going to blame it on using my right hand, it uses the other side of my brain. You can call it a momentary lapse of judgement."
"Right." Said Angela with a grin growing onto her face.
"Or you can blame it on Booth, take your pick." She said, a smile gracing her delicate features.
"Blame me for what?" asked the agent walking into the office, followed by Cam and the rest of the team.
"She blames you for her making a mistake." Said Angela before Brennan could say anything. Brennan glared at her.
Booth flashed his charm smile at her. "I must be that good then." He said, wiggling his eyebrows suggestively.
The glare went from the artist to the FBI agent. "No, I had a momentary lapse of judgement on putting the skull together. Why am I taking the blame? It could be your fault, Angela." She snapped and crossed her arms, careful not to irritate the broken one.
"Alright, if we can act like adults now." Butted Cam, before an argument started. "We've got four families we've got to find and tell that their babies are dead."
"This will take the rest of today, if it's just me and Bones." Said Booth, who found his way next to his partner. Coincidently he was wearing a white button down shirt, with a normal black tie, black pants and his jacket rested in his hands. "Just this one time Cam and Angela, will you two go talk to . . . "He looked at the files and chose the two closest together. "Alexandra Dawson and Zooey Carter's families. Bones and I will talk to Kyah Miller and Ember James' families."
The artist and pathologist nodded, Hodgins and Zack looked as if Booth took their candy away. "What about us?" Asked Hodgins.
"You keep looking for any particulates that can narrow down a suspect." Said Booth, and Brennan interrupted.
"Zack, will you check the second skull and fix the tissue markers?" She asked, getting an eager nod from the young doctor. She stood up and Booth held out her jacket so she could easily slip into it and they stood side by side, wearing the same outfit.
It didn't go unnoticed by the pathologist, artist and the etymologist, all three didn't say anything. "We'll meet back here when we're finished." Said Cam.The partners nodded, as Booth's hand went to the small of her back, leading her out of the office as he had done many times before. As they made it out of ear shot, Cam leaned close. "What the hell was that?"
"What?" asked Zack, looking in the direction of Dr. Brennan and Agent Booth, trying to pick up on what he missed.
"I'm telling you it's the Mulder and Scully complex." Said Angela with a large grin.
"No, it's the government trying to draft Doctor Brennan into the Federal Bureau of Investigation. They need her brain to help take over the world and the only reason they haven't done it yet is because they don't want to lose our brains yet." Said Hodgins, with a smile on his face as if he had solved a conspiracy.
"Shut up, Jack." Said Angela, tossing a pen at him. She stood up and she too left the office, followed closely by Cam.
When Booth and Brennan reached the lab, nearly four hours later, Angela and Cam were sitting in her office reading over the files on the small coffee table. Both looking unnerved as they sat down on the other couch across from the pair. "Did you find anything?" Asked Booth warily.
"Nothing really." Said Cam, looking up from the file. "Both have a similar story, though."
"Each have an older son, the daughter was the youngest who were kidnaped from their bedrooms after they were put to bed. Both mothers took their children to the park or shopping, put the kids down for a nap, dad came home then they went and got their nails done that day at the same salon at different times of course, and then made dinner, bath time, then bedtime. And they haven't ever met the other women involved with this case."
Booth and Brennan looked at each other and sighed. "That's pretty much what happened with the two we just talked to." Said Booth, his hands went to his eyes. He was tired.
Brennan stood up and walked over to the dry erase board, with her right hand-she carefully and slowly began to write the details onto it. It took her twice as long to write it, but she stood there staring at it.
Cam yawned behind her. "Lets call it a night, its been a long and hard day today." She said, Angela agreed. Booth had his eyes closed, quietly agreeing with the women.
"Alright," Brennan concluded. "I'm almost done here."
The two women left and Booth made himself comfortable on the couch, waiting for the remaining woman who stared intently at the board. Making little notes on the side, to sort out her brain.
When Brennan turned around to ask Booth a question, she noticed that he had fallen asleep on the couch, breathing softly with his arm under his head, acting as a pillow. She sighed and with a smile covered him with the comforter that was resting on the back of the couch, turned down the lights and sat at her desk.
Her computer screen sprung to life as her hand went to the mouse, researching for anything that could place the missing pieces into the puzzle. Cross-referencing the nail polish residue that Hodgins had narrowed it down to a certain nail salon was like finding a needle in a haystack, apparently Revlon was a very popular brand in the nail salon industry. For the sake of her brain, she looked at the file one last time, getting the name of the salon each mother had attended. Fifth Avenue Salon and Nails on fourteenth street, no more than five miles from each of the families.
She clicked on the website for the salon, and came up with pictures of hair do's and painted nails. As she clicked on the employee profile icon, though struck it funny that such a business had employee profiles. At least half of staff looked to be of Asian decent, and if she had to pinpoint it-Chinese; the other half looked uptight. And as if all of her years of traveling, studying cultures, schooling came flooding back to her, the idea hit her.
Brennan looked up from her computer, to tell Booth what she had discovered. She stood up and guiltily tapped him on the shoulder. "Booth." She whispered, "I've got an idea."
He opened his eyes slowly, and looked around in confusion. "Idea?" He said, consciousness coming slowly. "What?"
"In attempt to control the population in China, the communist party put a 'one child' policy on the nation." She started with a grin, he sat up on the couch, allowing for her to sit down next to him. "And when they did have children, the mortality rate for a female infant is very extreme, because they received little to no attention or care. And that is because in rural China, males have the advantage in life, because they can lift more, you know the normal gender stereotypical things."
Booth tried to comprehend her anthropological rambling, it was way to late at night for that. "What?"
He asked.
"I think the employees from the salon, each of the mothers went to, is behind this. I know its all conjecture, but I think they are trying to enforce the 'one-child' policy." She said, her eyes were glowing brightly.
He pondered over the information. "It might be conjecture, but it's the only thing we've got to start with. Every family member has an alibi, no enemies, and no connection to each other except the salon." He said, closing her eyes. "I'll call Cullen tomorrow and let him know where we stand on this, the press has been riding him hard about this case."
"We can't just storm in on them, Booth." She said, leaning back on the couch. "For all we know, I can be wrong."
"Well, how do you propose we do that?" He asked, copying her action and leaning back against the couch, rolling his head to the side to look at her.
"Undercover, Booth. I mean, if I'm wrong I get a manicure out of the deal. It's a win-win situation." She said, her eyes growing heavy and her head finding its way to his shoulder.
"Your doing my job, Bones." He said with a yawn. She didn't respond, she had fallen asleep.