Here we are at the next chapter - just in time for a post-Thanksgiving gift! ;)
Unfortunately, I still don't own them. But maybe if I beg enough, I'll get Booth for Christmas. :D
As it turned out, they didn't have to wait very long. It was early in the morning when Booth's phone rang, waking him up. "'Ello?" Booth mumbled.
"Booth, it's Charlie. I've got something you might want to hear."
The FBI agent was immediately more awake. He grabbed the pad from the nightstand. "Go ahead."
"Well, turns out Joe Avery was both in January 1982, and died the same year. He then reappeared in 1995; and your boy Jimmy fell off the grid in May of '94. Personally, I think they are one and the same."
Booth laughed. "Agreed. Anything on McPherson?"
"Still looking. From what I found, the ex-wife was right and he moved out west for a period of time. I managed to track him back to Chicago, but after that I can't find anything. I'll keep looking though."
"Thanks, Charlie." Booth snapped his phone shut, and rolled over to look at the clock. 4:27. He rolled back over, plumped up his pillows, and settled in. He could wait to tell Brennan until he had slept a little more.
"You were right." Booth said over breakfast that morning.
"About?" Even though she posed the question, Brennan sounded unsurprised.
"About Jimmy – or Joshua. At least, you're most likely right." He smiled at her as he took a sip of his coffee, and then relayed what Charlie had found. "As Charlie put it, they're probably one and the same."
"Really ?" Temperance looked up, a glimmer in her eyes. Just this little piece of knowledge restored her faith in herself a little bit, and made her feel like she wasn't quite as big of idiot.
"Yeah. So I'm thinking we haul his ass in and question him for a good, long time."
Brennan stood behind the one-way mirror in the Chicago field office interrogation room. Joshua Avery was seated inside, looking quite nervous, with Booth seated calmly across from him. The social worker gave a small jump when Booth broke the silence. "So Joshua – or should I call you James Tiller?"
Avery turned a little pale, but otherwise showed no change in demeanor. "I'm sorry? I don't know anybody named James Tiller."
"Right," Booth said, leaning back in his chair. "Can you explain to me how James – aka Jimmy – Tiller ceased to exist after May 1994?"
"I –I don't know," Avery stammered. "Like I said, I don't even know who it is."
"Then can you share how Joshua Avery died in 1982? And then, in 1995 poof! Joshua Avery is suddenly alive again. So that means that either the hospital and family of Joshua Avery were mistaken, and their son didn't die – which seems highly unlikely to me – or you stole that identity in 1995 to make James Tiller disappear. Care to explain that?"
Avery shook his head. "I don't know what you're talking about, really."
"I just don't believe you, Avery. Now we know that Jimmy was a smart kid, so it's not like he couldn't figure out how to use someone else's identity. We also know that James needed to disappear – after all, he killed Barry Finkel and people were starting to get suspicious. An intelligent boy like Jimmy knew that the only way to start over was to be someone else. And who better to choose than someone who was your own age?" Booth paused, and let Avery mull that over. "In reality, I guess we don't really need you to explain that. I guess the only thing we really need is to know why you killed Barry."
"I didn't," Avery murmured quietly. "I'll admit it, I am really James Tiller. I'll admit to stealing Josh's identity. But I didn't kill him."
He stood up, and walked around to stand right behind Avery. Placing both hands on the table, Booth leaned in and got right up in the social worker's face. "You didn't? We know that you two fought all the time, and we know that the night before Barry was killed you two had an especially big fight! So loud that even now – more than a decade later – your foster mom still remembers it! And you're going to sit here and tell me that you didn't kill him?" Booth hissed at the man.
"I didn't!"
"That's not what it looks like to me."
"Listen, it's not what you think. I – I know how it looks, but you've got to believe me. I didn't kill Barry. It's true we fought, but I honestly didn't hurt him." Booth just continued to stand over him and glare, until finally the man broke down. "Barry and I didn't fight because we were enemies. We fought so that we could get sent to timeout."
Booth raised his eyes. "Timeout?"
"At the McPherson's house, when you got in trouble – for whatever reason – you had to go to timeout. The bigger the offense, the longer the time you had to spend in timeout. Mrs. McPherson would lock the door, so that whoever was being punished wouldn't sneak out. She would moniter you of course, but by doing that no one could get in or out."
"That still doesn't explain what you mean."
"Barry and I used to fake big fights, or do things that would get us in trouble so that we would get sent to timeout, because we would be safe there."
"Safe?"
"Safe from Mr. McPherson. He molested Barry and me."
I know it's short, but there will be more soon. Please, please, please leave a review because I really want to know what everyone thinks, and to know that someone out there is still reading this.
Charlotte