1**Author's Note: Hey all, it's been a while since I have received a review so I can't help but wonder if anyone is still reading this. So if you could read and review so I know people are at least reading that'd be great :)
Morkhan- I hope that Krys is growing on you. She's a bit odd but very fun to write. I also hope Vincent is coming off alright for you. He's also a lot of fun.
proudwildcat- Thanks for reading! Any more opinions on Krys? Why do you think she'd be good with Sweets?
TemporalBONES- Haven't heard from you in a while.. I hope you're still interested.
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5CHAPTER FIVE
Lance Sweets exited Krys' office with full intention of attempting to go to his office, maybe to get some alone thinking time or to sneak a peak at some Ninja Turtle dvds that he kept in his desk drawer during the times when he didn't have someone in his office as his visit with Krys had reminded him of. But as fate would have it that didn't seem to be an option.
The Jeffersonian's lab was alive now with blue lab coats and the occasional white t-shirted, black tied cops with badges displayed prominently on their arms and chests. Lance of course, as he possessed the mind of a child at certain points in his life, was thrilled and amazed by the action and though he had previously been overwhelmed and seeking solitude to think, now he just wanted to stick around and see what was going on. That of course meant poking his nose in other people's business, something he had gained a reputation for at the Institute.
Reaching out he quickly punched a four number code into a box that was connected to the railing. The light blinked blue and he moved up the few stairs. Pulling at the edges of his worn, grey suit coat he practically hopped up the stairs skipping one or two on the way and made his way over toward where the action was. On the way he had to show his ID to a cop whom was standing guard right by the coded railing which Sweets found horribly repetitive but judging from the officer's face he wouldn't be in the mood to discuss it. Doctor Saroyan also prevented this by heading Sweets off, arms crossed over her chest looking quite professional and yet giving a stern, unspoken warning to the young Psychologist.
"New victim. Just came in fifteen minutes ago. Doctor Brennan did a preliminary exam on the scene." Cam rattled off, standing right in front of Lance so that he couldn't budge and distract anyone with his mental mumbo jumbo. Turning his head Sweets spotted Hodgins squinting into a mini telescope only to have Doctor Saroyan speak again. "Hodgins is looking into the particulates, Angela is still working on the sketch of the first victim.."
"First?" This caused Sweets to look back at Cam with an intrigued brow. First implied that there was more. More implied that the perpetrator killed more than one which made him a serial killer which kept Sweets in a job.
Cam sighed. "Yes." Glancing over her shoulder she looked to Temperance giving her the cue. "Doctor Brennan.."
The bones had only been in the Jeffersonian for about fifteen minutes and Doctor Brennan was already hovering over the remains. "Based on preliminary examination and other exams conducted by Mister Nigel-Murray, I'd have to say both victims were killed by the same person." Temperance gently lifted a bit of the woman's dress and shined a tiny flashlight into one of the many small holes around the back area that breached onto the side. Her gloved hand reached out "forceps" and wiggled her fingers. Vincent Nigel-Murray handed them to her but then returned to his own personal examination.
"Judging by lack of decomposition I put time of death at Monday morning." Temperance continued on, slipping the goggles off of her eyes and up on the top of her head.
"Yesterday morning." Cam nodded, though a bit surprised. This guy worked fast, especially when there was an article in the paper that morning of them having found the other body. Did he get some sort of kick out of almost being caught? Though truth be told they were no where near almost.
"The particulates match the ones found on our friend over there." He nodded toward the more decomposed and unrecognizable body on the second table which had a bunch of Jeffersonian employees poking at that no one really knew by name. Angela sat on a stool beside the second body, an artist's sketch book in her lap and a pencil in her hand, busy with her own work. Art was where Angela was most comfortable, even if it was around the deceased.
"Meaning that they were both killed in the same place." Hodgins couldn't help but feel incredibly guilty as he glanced at Angela whom seemed to be trying desperately hard not to hear the details of their victims' deaths. She never liked that part and Hodgins never enjoyed putting her through it. Not any more. Not when he loved her. But she didn't love him. Not any more. Ridding himself of these thoughts he lifted the glass and red topped vial in his left hand, shaking it lightly before smiling a forced cocky smile to the rest of the group. Business as usual. "Old cement. Probably from the sixties. Mixed in with certain smooth rocks and dirt. Like in a basement."
"You can get all of that from rock?" Agent Seeley Booth poised skeptically, hands in pockets as he strode onto the scene, only after flashing his badge to the officer standing guard before walking up to the group.
"That would make sense." Doctor Brennan commented in the midst of her work standing up for Hodgins in the face of the FBI Agent. "It would explain the dilated pupils on both victims." She finished, now moving to gently pull back the deceased woman's eyelid to show Booth what she meant so that he could keep up.
Booth immediately bit down on the inside of his lower lip and looked to the floor. But not before Cam patronized him with her usual knowing tone: "You should know better by now Seeley." A smug little smile from her, one that Booth witnessed quite often (even when they were dating), and she moved over toward the opposite end of the slab.
Agent Booth however tried to maintain control, especially when he saw Hodgins smiling like the twit he was. There would be none of that, especially from the shorter, scraggly man. "So far we've got her being strangled, stabbed, poked, prodded, drugged..." Everyone quieted as they listened to the never ending list, Booth however kept going. He had to maintain some respect, especially when he was outnumbered by all of the squints running around like chickens with their heads cut off. "A lot of stuff to fit into an afternoon."
"Sick bastard." Angela whispered, speaking up for the first time since she had sat down next to the bodies and had begun her sketching. She could never understand how anyone could do something like that, hurt another person... Physically anyways.
"Honestly it's probably just a usual Tuesday for this guy. He comes home after work, feels the urge, sees the paper with the headline on his kitchen table, which brings him out to the car, drives around the block a few times patrolling for the perfect victim, snatches them, and... Well..." Sweets rambled on, letting his eager psychologist's brain get in the way, but as he looked around catching all of the different negative looks everyone was giving him, he decided to back off. "You know.."His cheeks blushed ever so slightly and he bit his inside cheek, falling silent.
"Perfect victim." Angela repeated quietly, shaking her head in disbelief as she looked down at the drawing on her sketch pad. "There's no such thing as a perfect victim. How could anyone be perfect to die?" Frowning with a heavy sigh she grasped the edges of the pad and held it up for everyone to see. She was finished. "Look at this face."
The sketch of the face on the white pieces of sketch paper was a bit smudged from various erasings as Angela seemed to have found a difficult time concentrating with everything that had been going on around her. But the face was there. A balding older man, of skinny build, but with a pudgy face. His eyes were big and looked so very open. Angela had even given him little bits of shadow to provide color in the cheeks. He even had glasses that rested on the top bridge of his noise. In his fifties, aging like a man constantly on the go and worn, but friendly... This was the first body. The pieces of bone and mess that laid on the second slab.
"This is not a perfect victim." Angela concluded seriously, handing the sketch over to Seeley. "He looks just like a regular guy."
Seeley only had a good few minutes to look at the sketch and then Angela before it was taken right out of his hands by Cam Saroyan whom passed it along to one of the many nameless interns. "Go have Krys run this through the system." The scared little intern nodded and scampered off leaving the rest to their means.
"Alright then." Booth clapped his hands and rubbed them together to warm them up for no apparent reason. "Bones, you're with me. We're going to head over to FBI quarters." Seeley turned to leave but Temperance didn't budge.
Bones looked up suddenly at the order Booth had given her with surprised eyes. "No way!"
"Just because you say it in that definitive tone does not mean that's the way it's gonna be." Booth countered, quirking his brow playfully at his partner not at all expecting her to follow but he would play the game anyways. Anything to lighten the mood, even if momentarily. If she wasn't going to come willingly, he might have to drag her.
"I'm not going to go to your quarters just because you're bigger built than I am." Temperance declared defiantly, still not moving.
"I'd go to his quarters all the time." Angela spoke up in her usual sexual inuendo used around Booth that caused Hodgins to go rigid and look away, something Sweets and everyone else picked up on. You'd have to be blind not to.
"There would be no point to it. If the time frame is correct we can be expecting a body relatively soon and without an exact location and DNA from our killer I'm needed here." Temperance argued, her eyes locking on Booth's harshly and for a moment he hesitated, much longer than he should have.
"Bones. We have to go." Booth repeated. Lowly, quietly, as if the others couldn't hear him just because of the tone even though they could.
"Oh.." Exclaimed Vincent as he leaned over the young woman's body, his gloved fingers gently prying open her mouth, his other hand holding a mini flashlight which now rested at his side.
"What do you see Mister Nigel-Murray?" Cam asked, everyone's attention now on the brown haired, brown eyed intern whom was transfixed on the body.
"Did you know there's the saying 'you are what you eat' but that's not really true, it'd actually be more appropriate to say 'you are what your body absorbs'." Vincent began only to have Cam give him a warning look which caused him to get to the point. "This woman's throat shows clear signs of an acid being dumped forcibly down both around the edges of the mouth.." He pointed to the small rashes around her mouth and then placed the flashlight near her opened mouth. "And burn marks all down her throat."
"Which is all very useful, especially if you know why..." Cam began, but Vincent just gave her a rather stupid, dumbfounded look and remained quiet. Bones was there to catch the 'ball' however.
"With the acid burning her throat that would make it impossible for the victim to scream and therefore would not be heard." Temperance began, removing her gloves she moved to the initial first victim. "The previous victim showed no sign of this." She added matter of factly before Sweets spoke up.
"He's modifying his technique and learning from his mistakes, meaning this is a new thing for him." Sweets stood between the two bodies, massaging his chin with his fingers so to look more adult. "He probably practiced with animals before, he wasn't counting on running into the challenges that human beings present. Mainly: vocalization."
"Should I have known that?" Vincent asked shyly, cringing a bit as though he was about to be hit.
"Way to go Mister Nigel-Murru." Booth commended, nodding in approval without even looking at the intern.
"Murray." Vincent corrected in a soft, defeated voice as he went back to studying the inside of the woman's throat. The young British man somehow doubted that the FBI Agent would ever get it right. At least this time he had attempted.
"Decent enough for a grad student anyways." Hodgins stepped up to the plate, if only to intimidate the boyish brit, which caused Vincent to look up with his puppy dog brown eyes.
"I graduated with first class honors from Leeds." Vincent reminded with a smile his hands folded in front of himself, bent at the elbows.
"Ooo.. Are we whipping them out and seeing whose is bigger?" Came Krys' ever sarcastic voice from behind the group and they all turned around. For most of them this was the first time that they had seen her today, let alone heard her speak again. Under her arm was tucked a few files with papers sticking out, no longer in her pajama pants. To everyone's amazement, including Sweets, she was now wearing blue jeans and a button up striped sweater with white undershirt, looking like an actual human being!
Krys moved to approach the group and nearly tripped, but managed to steady herself with one of the interns who then raced briskly by. Krys tried to compose herself and maintain her sarcastic air. "Fun. Me next."
"Watch yourself." Booth warned quietly, though he was smiling a bit obviously entertained by her ballsy-ness.
Vincent seemed the only one not off put by such displays and bouncing on the balls of his feet as he leaned on the silver slab. "Did you know he blue whale has the largest penis at eight feet, most likely more when mating?" Krys seemed a bit confused and raised her right brow, Cam's jaw meanwhile dropped and everyone else seemed to share the same opinion.
"Ah." Came the little realization that he had definitely said too much this time and he put his hands up in a stopping motion before allowing them to rest at his side. "Sorry." Vincent blinked rapidly a few times looking quite unsure. "Wow." He needed a cup of tea, immediately so that he could occupy his mouth and stop saying stupid things. Especially in front of the ladies.
"Right then." Krys nodded, dismissing him before handing the files to Agent Booth. Though Krys was good at what she did, very intelligent, and one of a kind she didn't seem to trust much of anyone at the Jeffersonian. In fact she seemed to avoid handing them any information that she gathered and gave it to Booth, a member of the FBI, instead even though it would be handed to them right after. And it wasn't like no one noticed. One way or another, they all did. "Got a match."
"Already?" Came Hodgins' voice in disbelief, arms crossing over his chest as he dared to approach Seeley and get a look to be proven incorrect. "Impossible."
"Yeah. Who would have thought I would be good at my job?" Krys feigned with a smile, turning serious in a milisecond she turned back to face Booth.
Booth's eyes ran over one of the papers as he read. "Brian Letmer. Fifty four. A school teacher." Booth sighed, shaking his head. A teacher, like one of Parker's. Who would kill a teacher?
"Yes sir. The code you found is also running through the computer still." Krys informed everyone turning to look at Vincent when she mentioned the code. He smiled a lopsided closed mouth smile and Krys didn't return it, but she seemed intrigued by the action and had to make herself to turn back as she slid her hands into her jeans pockets she tilted her head. "Anything else you need or can I check out for the day?" She seemed insistent as she looked to Cam. Did she have somewhere to go?
"You can go. Just be back tomorrow morning bright and early." Cam nodded, brushing her off right away though she had to admire how quick this girl was, not socially but she was an ace with computers. They needed that around here.
Krys nodded and brought her messenger bag over her shoulder and turned, this time toward the direction of the body and she grimaced. Dead bodies she couldn't deal with. Especially ones with skin still on them. She dealt with computers, numbers, data, not people. Not ever people. Her face contorted into a mixture of sick and surprise it wasn't until she felt a hand on her shoulder that she blinked and stepped back, right into Booth.
"You alright there?" Booth asked calmly. He knew the feeling even as everyone was staring and drawing their own conclusions. It took him a few weeks to be able to be on this floor for longer than ten minutes and even today he still got a bit shaken by human remains. His fingers gently squeezed her shoulder.
"Fine. Yeah. Alright." Krys turned away, still blinking, a bit shaken she grasped the strap of her messenger bag before moving away from the group. It took a moment for everyone to return to their work, especially Mister Nigel-Murray who kept watching her, and Sweets whom was now following her down the stairs and across the lab.
"You're not alright." Lance announced, following her still from behind pointing his finger in a single wave.
"Oh I get it. You're doing the whole psycho-analysis thing. That's nice." Krys shrugged him off as she moved, nearly tripping over the laces of her converse sneakers and cursed under her breath though loudly enough for people to hear and Sweets to smile. He couldn't help himself. He stuck close behind for some reason he couldn't explain until Krys spun around and he nearly bumped into her. "Stop it."
"Stop what?" Sweets asked, glancing over both of his shoulders as though confused.
"Trying to figure me out." She laid it out on the line, her arms moving over her chest as her bag slunk down to her waist. And when Sweets opened his mouth to argue otherwise she cut him off. "And that's exactly what you're doing whether you like it or not." Sweets furrowed his brow, very confused and yet trying to maintain some sort of understanding, after all it was his job.
Krys sighed, for some reason she actually felt bad, maybe it was the almost confused look in the large suit he was sporting. Either way she found herself speaking again. "Tell you what. In two weeks if I'm still stuck here and you're still as... Curious as you are... I'll give you my whole history." Was this a joke? Was she being serious? Or even nice?! Either way Sweets smiled as the young woman turned around and moved toward the door.
But Sweets just couldn't let it go, especially after the banter session earlier in the day. Really it was more of Krys catching him at every turn with her wit, but it still had left a mark. And so he was practically jogging beside her in order to keep up, wanting answers.
"What happened to your uh... Pajama pants?" Sweets panted, doing his best to keep up.
"Those were my work clothes. I'm about to go home. Therefore these are my casual clothes." Krys finally stopped at the open exit, Lance could feel the fall breeze and it messed up Krys' hair a bit more. Reaching into her bag she pulled out a hat and pulled it over her brown hair.
"I think you got it backwards.." Sweets frowned, still very confused as to how this girl's mind worked. But he didn't get an answer because Krys just flashed a smirk, shook her head, and walked out.
He didn't have long to wonder though. Because in about an hour he had to be ready for his dinner date with Daisy. Lunch date. Anniversary date. Break date. Dinner date. That girl had a lot of dates.