There was none of the acidic joviality there had been the previous week when they'd gone to take a nice juicy chunk out of Carolina Witt's perfect little world. The first time Beckett spoke was when they got out of the car, Adam with the official tablet with the warrant tucked under his arm.

'Let me do the talking this time Adam.'

'Sure.'

They stayed silent once more in the elevator to one of the two-floor penthouses; this time it was Adam who broke the quiet when they approached the front door.

'If he lets us in, you want me to stay here and roust the place with Watkins and another uni?'

'Yes. Sarah Ritter and Ashley Archer need a mother figure. As good a daddy as I'll think you make when the time is right, I've got three kids already. Other parents can sense that.'

'Fair enough. Besides, Watkins listens to me really well and she'll be a little RJ for another uniform.'

'Little RJ?' Beckett repeatedly with a slightly withering stare.

'I see how RJ looks up to Alexis and Shane and how proud he is to know the answers when Jojo asks him a question, or he writes it down and asks someone who does know. I see that when I work with Watkins. She'll be a good detective when she's ready.'

'I agree. Now shut up.'

Beckett pressed the doorbell and to her surprise it wasn't a classic English butler that answered but the man matching the DMV photo she'd pulled of Cesare Tomasi. He was a spare man, his wiry hair once black was now a rich pewter colour that matched his eyes. He wore the at-home casual of the super-rich in a pair of ralph Lauren chinos and Eddie Bauer cashmere sweater in forest green.

'Doctor Tomasi? I'm Detective Beckett, this is Detective Brennan. We have a warrant to search your son's room and the common areas of the premises.'

Adam handed the weary man the tablet, wasn't surprised when he read it and his narrow shoulders slumped in depression. 'I wish I could say I'm surprised, but my son is a troubled boy, he...clearly the help he is getting is not enough. Please, come in, do what you need to do.'

Beckett was a little thrown by Cesare's willingness to let them do everything they needed to, but she didn't decide to question it. She entered with Adam, pulled out gloves from her jacket pockets. 'May we start with his room?'

'Sure. This way.'

Cesare led them upstairs to a room that had it not been coated with posters for rock bands and water sports - water-skiing in particular - it could have been a guest room in a model home. The bed was made with near military precision, no clutter on the desk, not even a dish for loose change and marbles like every normal person did. There was a wall mirror, a calendar on the desk, a desk lamp, but all of it was straight out of a catalogue, there was no personal style.

'Man, if I'd kept my room this neat when I was seventeen, my mother would have thought I was either possessed or body-swapped,' Adam commented.

'Me too.'

'You?'

'Hell yes. I had a busy an active socail life I didn't have time for things like bed-making and putting dirty clothes into a basket.' Beckett gave an affable shrug. 'That changed when I went to university and Mom wasn't in the dorm to tidy up after me. I'll take the desk, you take the bed and table.'

They split up the duties, searching for something - anything - that would help them nail Nicky's sorry little ass to the wall. Beckett eyed up the boy's laptop and sent a text to Harold in the CSU lab that she would be bringing it in for evidence exploration within the hour. She opened the drawers, sifted through papers and books but found nothing like a diary or journal, anything that would point towards planning two homicides, one of which had become an attempted homicide. Such was the digital age, she thought with a sigh. Everyone blogged, tweeted or updated their status to share their innermost thoughts and feelings.

'You got anything yet?' she asked Adam, who shook his head.

'Found your typical teenage boy spank-mags in the drawer of the bedside table, apparently our guy likes them busty and blonde,' Adam commented, holding up the copy of Babe-alicious Monthly for them both to smirk at, 'but so far no peanut oil products.'

'Keep looking, you might find smoething else useful.'

Adam nodded, tucked the boy's porn back into his not-so-secret hiding spot. 'Hey Beckett,' he asked as he flattened himself to his stomach on the floor to search beneath the bed.

'Yeah?' she called back, having wandered into the walk-in closet.

'When this goes to trial, will Nicky be tried as an adult? He's already seventeen and to see him in juvie for a year over a murder and attempted murder seems like a very unfunny joke.'

'That is a good question, Adam, and it's one I don't want to think on right now.' Beckett shoved aside rows of clothes - sweaters and polo shirts, all neatly organized, even the spaces on the closet were labelled. The kid was clearly mentally ill, she thought, then looked at the laundry hamper. She lifted the lid and with a grim smile, called out to Adam once more.

'In here, Detective Brennan.'

'You got something?'

Beckett nodded, waited until he'd joined her in the closet. She lifted the lid on the hamper again and pointed. 'Pay-dirt.'

In the hamper was Nicky's school uniform, and partially wrapped in the pair of pants was a half-used bottle of peanut oil.

'I'll grab the kit from the car,' Adam said quietly, left Beckett so she could talk to Cesare.

She wasn't surprised that he was in the living room reading a medical journal; Cesare Tomasi was one of the country's best-known neurosurgeons. Beckett only knew who he was from listening to Cam George wax poetic from the times he'd had a chance to work with the man. But right now he wasn't a man whose hands and skills were valued into seven figures; he was a father, more specifically he the father of her suspect.

'Doctor,' she said quietly, firmly in her maternal way and Cesare's head lifted. Beckett knew in that look he gave her, sadness mixed with acceptance and resignation, this man would give them whatever help he could. 'We found some things in your son's room that need to be checked into evidence. Do you-'

'Take what you need.' Cesare set aside the medical journal, leaned forward so his elbows rested on his knees as he put his hands to his face, dragged them down. 'Take what you need and get my son the help he needs. He's...he's not well, he hasn't been since his mother died. There was so much chaos, so much blame and many in her family hinted in that awful way family does that it was my little Nicky's fault.'

'I know the feeling,' Beckett replied softly, thinking on Adam and Lindsay. 'Sir, I have to ask you a question. It will become more important once we make an arrest and bring the lawyers into things but I'd like...I need to ask it first myself.'

'Of course Detective.'

'Your son is only seventeen. If the ADA asks to try him as an adult, will you attempt to stop that?'

'No.' Cesare shook his head sadly. 'As I said, I know my son, and I know there is little his therapies and medication are helping with, so perhaps what he needs is to go away for awhile.'

'Do you know why he would want to hurt Professor Hill or Sarah Ritter?'

Now Cesare's face went ashen. 'Sarah? His classmate?'

'Yes, she was taken to the hospital by ambulance this afternoon, after she drank a beverage we believe he'd spiked with peanut oil.'

'Take what you need,' the man said once more. 'I'll call my attorney and put him on hold. The moment Nicky asks for my lawyer, you call me here straight away and I'll have him sent over.'

Beckett nodded, then looked at her incoming text and frowned. 'Adam,' she told her partner when he came back in, 'call in Watkins to help you transport this stuff. I have to head back to the hospital.'

'What happened?'

'Getting Sarah's stomach contents,' she replied, 'so we have more nails to pin Nicky down.'