A/N: Happy Thursday, everyone :) I'm suffering from new-episode-withdrawal. I can't believe we have to wait until November. o_0
Chapter 7
May 30th, 2011
"Well, that's a tragedy," said Dale Orlando, from his position behind the large mahogany desk in the sparsely decorated office. His mustache was huge, almost hiding his mouth entirely, and a tiny scruff of beard curled on his chin. He had thick eyebrows, too, and they hung over his eyes darkly. He was beefy, with a bit of a pot-belly, but he wasn't immensely overweight. He hadn't moved from behind the desk since they're arrival, though, and it looked like he'd been living there. Power bar wrappers littered the floor around his trash bin. Clearly he had terribly aim.
"Yes, it is," Booth agreed emphatically. "Can you tell us what he was working on?"
The manager of the struggling newspaper scrubbed his face thoughtfully, and then scrunched his lips together and shook his head. "No."
"No you won't tell us... or no you don't know?" Brennan cut in, raising an eyebrow.
"The second one," he answered with an affirming nod. "Sorry."
He didn't look sorry.
"Right. Tell us a bit about Mr. Kaminski," Booth tried, going for a different angle.
"Well, he's been working here for quite some time, now... he's got a way with words, even if his work ethic isn't outstanding."
Booth was nodding; the sister had already mentioned that. "What was his focus? Was he in sports, gossip..?"
"Just news," the boss said, tossing his hands up in a shrug. "I mean, we've got people with their own columns... but we need people to hunt down other stories, too. He was one of those."
"So he 'hunted down stories?'"
"Pretty much."
"Can you give us an example?" Brennan suggested.
"There was this meat-packing company he exposed for violating health procedures... but that was over a year ago."
"He liked to cause a stir?" Booth guessed.
"You bet he did."
"So... you didn't ask him what he was working on recently?"
"Something good," Orlando said. "He promised it was worth his time, and I trusted him. He might not have gotten the job done often... but when he did it, he always did it well."
"But there was no other story recently that might have caused conflicts? No threatening messages in the mail? No conflicts on the job?"
"Nothing with his articles, no. But he did have a bit of a problem with Wayne. Well... it was more that Wayne had a problem with him, but regardless... they got into it pretty heavy a little while ago."
Booth turned to meet Brennan's eyes with a raised eyebrow.
"Wayne have a last name?" he asked, returning his attention to the other man.
"Yeah, Falkner. He sits over there," he added, lifting up just slightly in his seat and pointing past them through the glass walls of the office. Both of them turned around to find a broad-shouldered man with dark hair staring at them. He dropped his gaze back to his computer at once, but they were already heading his way. "You're welcome!" the boss called after them.
"Can I help you?" Wayne asked, staring up at them as they stood over his desk. As if he didn't know why they were there. Everyone else in the office was scrambling to make themselves look busy—they had all been trying to hear what was going on, and at the very least they had all been staring towards the boss's office.
"FBI, Special Agent Seeley Booth. This is my partner, Dr. Temperance Brennan. We've got a few questions about your coworker, Nathan Kaminski."
"What about him?" Wayne asked, his posture turning defensive as he leaned back in his chair, attempting to appear unfazed.
"Well, for starters, he's dead," Booth said.
"Whoa!" the other man said, at once leaning forward over the desk, his hands landing palm down and crinkling some of the notes that lay scattered across the surface. "I hated him, yeah. I hated his guts. But I didn't kill him."
Brennan was looking through the things on the desk, picking up his picture frames to get a closer look, and he cut his eyes towards her sharply.
"Hey; put that down," he demanded, moving to grab it from her. She pulled it away from his grasp and gave him a skeptical look.
Booth snapped his fingers, drawing Wayne's eyes back towards him. "Why did you hate him so much?"
"I didn't kill him."
"Yes, you've already said that," Booth replied tiredly. "But, see, a lot of times... people hate other people for the same reasons. So, what did he do to piss you off that might have pissed somebody else off enough to kill him?"
"He was a prick," Wayne answered unabashedly. "Thought he could do anything he wanted, get away with whatever just because he was a smooth talker. Do you know that I did twice as much work as him, and he got paid more because he brought in the views with those crappy stories he magically produced once every eight months or so?"
"Anyone else in the office feel the same way?"
"Hell yeah. We all talked about it. I was the only one to ever tell him to his face. Which is when it got... physical."
"You beat him up."
"We fought," Wayne corrected. "And I happened to win."
Brennan put the picture back, and Booth saw it was of Wayne on a boat with an older man, holding up a large bass.
"And were you reprimanded?"
"Yeah, the boss put us both on suspension. But it was worth it."
Booth nodded thoughtfully. Normally, murderers didn't try to make themselves look more like suspects. But he wasn't ruling anything out.
"Thanks for your help," he said, shaking the other man's hand and guiding Brennan towards the door. She pulled away from his touch.
"We aren't going to question any more of them?" she asked him in a hushed whisper.
"We've got enough for now. And we can always come back. This... was just stirring the pot up a bit. Turning up the heat. If anyone here knows anything, they're going to be panicking soon. That's when they start making mistakes."
She fell silent again, and he held in the heavy sigh that was threatening to escape. He didn't know what he was doing wrong. If she was having a hard time with the pregnancy and everything that was happening... why didn't she just say something? He was trying to make this as easy on her as possible. He was showing her all his cards, giving her every opportunity to handle this whichever way she wanted... and yet that didn't seem to be doing them any good. Because she seemed farther away than ever, and he didn't know why.
They barely spoke after that, and she asked him to bring her back to the lab, which he did before driving himself back to the Hoover. All she had said was a quick 'thanks' as she was climbing out, and then she had turned and headed to the doors, without so much as a look over her shoulder.
It was late afternoon when he next bothered to check the time, and he found it a welcome relief to know that he wouldn't have to hide in the office much longer. The day had been one of those where he regretted waking up in the morning, and it seemed like nothing had gone right.
He had been snapping at his coworkers and generally unhappy since returning from the bakery, and the lack of casework open to him wasn't helping matters. He had gone through the same reports over and over again, reviewing the notes that Shaw had taken until he was sure his eyes were going to fall out of his head.
That's not humanly possible, Booth, his internal Brennan told him. He closed his eyes. Internal Brennan always sounded like that. Light and amused, correcting him about something or other. It was a setting in his brain he could no longer turn off.
It was taunting him, now, because it contrasted so much from the real-life Brennan he was dealing with. She didn't want to talk to him, and it was killing him, because he needed to talk to her.
He was almost starting to think he should go see Angela. A middleman might be the best he was going to get at this point, and the artist always had insights on her best friend. Now that she was in the loop, she was available to him for advice.
But he held off, checking his email one last time before shutting down the computer and gathering together his things. He'd leave the office early today, he decided, and just go home. He was behind on sleep and it was about time he caught up. With nothing changing as of yet in the investigation and no one in need of his contributions... he wouldn't be missed. And he was always just a phone call away, anyways.
Still, it felt wrong, pulling into his apartment building with the sun still shining overhead. He was much more familiar with the stars and the slow trip in to the elevator as he tried to shake out his muscles and convince them to just make the last few steps before he could collapse.
Now, he was awake and feeling tense. He needed to burn some energy, and he jogged up the stairs and changed into sweats and running shoes. He could go to the gym and take out his frustrations on a punching bag, but somehow it seemed more right to pound away everything into the sidewalk pavement.
He hadn't run in quite some time, and it was relaxing, to get back into the habit. He used to go jogging all the time. Hannah had been into it, and before her he had even gotten Brennan to join him on the early mornings. It was a rare thing, because they usually were busy on cases or exhausted from having just finished one—or a fresh one came in at some ungodly hour—but it had been fun, regardless. They used to race to the coffee cart and find a bench, taking odd refuge in the warm beverage even as they were sweaty and tired.
He wondered if she would like it, getting back into the habit. He wondered if they might do it together every morning, if they were actually together.
If that ever happened.
He by-passed the spot where the coffee cart sat and headed into the park, finding the trail he used to follow back before he had met her and taking it with a fresh burst to his speed. The trees rushed past, and stray leaves whisked across the pavement in front of him in the breeze that had suddenly sprang up.
It felt good on his skin, and he didn't stop.
He kept going, until he was too tired to go any more. And then he braced his hands up against a tree and bowed his head between his arm, gasping in ragged breaths before pushing himself over sideways and landing heavily on the grass.
The sky was darkening, more so with clouds than with night, and he stayed there for a while, watching the overhead movements and the edges of the white puffs as they headed across and gave way to the thicker masses.
The first raindrop was his signal to get up and start home.
This time, he walked. The slower rate gave him the chance to think, though, which he'd been trying to avoid. Running was a steady one-foot-in-front-of-the-other process. It was listening to his breaths and evening them, feeling the thrum as each foot touched down and pushed off. It was watching the world wash past and the spinning blur of pavement that greeted his downcast eyes as he moved faster and faster.
Walking was calming, but it did little for him mentally.
There was nothing to distract him from the confusing and frustrating place that was his life right now.
So he picked up the pace as he rounded a corner, and he made it all the way to the park entrance before he slowed again. He was physically fit, but he was getting older. He couldn't run like there was no tomorrow the way he used to.
He coughed roughly, his throat numb with the cold of the air that had been rushing in and out on each breath.
The rest of the walk home, he counted the raindrops that hit him, until there were too many to keep track of. And then he climbed in the shower and closed his eyes with his face under the torrent.
It was still raining when he shut the shower off—he could hear the steady thrum against the windows. Sighing, he toweled off and yanked on just a pair of boxers before heading straight for his bed. Forget supper, he wasn't hungry.
He was just tired.
It was from more than the run, too, and he knew it.
~BxBxBxBxBxB~
The world was fresh and crisp when Brennan stepped out of her apartment building in the morning. Water droplets hung from the blades of grass and the window ledges, and the sidewalk was that odd color that it turned when it was mostly dry but still recovering from the torrent of the night before.
Her shoes squeaked as she climbed into her car.
They still hadn't identified the murder weapon, and she knew it was largely her fault. She was distracted; her lack of focus was hurting the team. Cam and Wendell had watched her with obvious concern on the platform, and she had resolutely avoided meeting their eyes.
Thankfully neither of them had said anything about it.
Hodgins would have, if she hadn't so forcefully sent him home early with the security tapes Booth had acquired for them with a warrant that had finally gone through. Angela had wanted something to do, and Brennan had found something for her. The team needed to focus on the how—it would be helpful if their technology expert would look into the who for them.
The fact that she could use Hodgins as a currier was just a lucky bonus.
Last night, though, she had gotten very little sleep, regardless of how well she thought she'd kept herself isolated the day before. No one had asked any questions about her, but that didn't mean she wasn't asking them herself.
And they were haunting her.
She had been unfair to Booth the day before. That wasn't something she could deny. It was frustrating, of course, that he was so self-sacrificing. But she had no right to be angry at him because of it. She should have made herself clearer; told him she wanted him to be the one making the decisions. He'd have understood that, surely. And then they wouldn't be in this mess.
She was halfway to convincing herself to tell him this the moment she saw him, but something was still stopping her. She didn't want to have to bring it up, naturally, and she suspected he wouldn't want to bring up uncomfortable issues in the light of the new day. If he seemed okay today... she would just proceed as though everything was normal.
Prolonging the inevitable, of course, but it was the only way she could comfort herself. The very idea of discussing yesterday, and the entirety of the pregnancy, with Booth once again... was enough to set her heart pounding. She didn't want to let herself dwell on it.
It was early enough, when she arrived, that there was limited activity in the lab. Other sections of the platform buzzed with the minimal morning activity, but Cam's office was dark and there was no sign of either Wendell or Hodgins. Sighing with a small amount of satisfaction, she headed straight for her own office and unlocked it, flipping on the lights and un-shouldering her bag. While the computer warmed up, she tied her hair up into a loose ponytail and pulled out the files they had so far on this case.
She set the documenting images out on the desk and then reached for the mouse as the login screen finally came up. The file temporarily her second focus, she went through her emails with hardly any interest, taking note of the book signing that was coming up next month and the three messages asking for her consultation on a TV show, a reference book, and a confusing skeleton that had been found in Iowa. She opened the one from Iowa and read the information that her fellow anthropologist gave to her before shooting back an email promising that she'd look into it sometime in the next week and see if she could come up with anything that might help. All the rest, especially those asking her to lecture or travel in any capacity, she ignored. Eventually, she would have to tell Cam—so that her boss could plan accordingly for the time off she would need as well as notify the various people associated with the Jeffersonian that she wouldn't be available—but right now she didn't want to think about that anymore than she wanted to think about how to fix things with Booth.
One step at a time, she told herself.
A box appeared in the bottom of her screen just as she was about to return her attention to the file, and she turned back before clicking on the 'Accept' button and bringing herself to the web-chat program the lab used.
Angela appeared on the screen.
"Good morning," Angela greeted her, smiling brightly despite the deep circles under her eyes.
"Good morning?" Brennan replied hesitantly. "Ange, when's the last time you slept?"
"Honestly, I don't remember," the artist said simply, as though it wasn't a big deal. "I have some info for you from the tapes you sent Hodgins home with."
"You didn't have to look at those last night—"
"Oh, I know. But I was awake anyways," Angela answered tersely, finally giving away that she was far more exhausted than she was behaving. Her smile was too wide. "Anyways," she continued forcefully, "We've got four people coming and going out of that apartment in our time frame. Here."
The screen switched to a fixed camera image aimed down the hallway. The woman who appeared first, Brennan immediately recognized as Liz.
"That's one of the girlfriends," she said.
"Alright, so that's one identified," Angela's voice said from off-screen. "She came in at noon, which is before our timeline, but she left at five. It puts her close to the beginning. But she's unlikely, because we've got so many others coming and going and none of them behave like there's a dead body in there."
"Go ahead," Brennan instructed, watching as Angela fast-forwarded to show Liz's departure and then moved forward once again, stopping to play as a woman that Brennan didn't recognize came up to the door. She had her own key, and she disappeared inside quickly. This time, the fast forward was much shorter, showing only ten minutes of interval between the arrival and the departure. The time stamp said she had come at seven.
There was a large gap now as various people came up and down the hallway at the exaggerated speed from the fast-forwarding, disappearing into the elevator or other apartments in the hallway. Angela finally slowed it again at around nine. Another woman, this one with thick curly hair and tanned skin, knocked on the door, and called something. After she got no response, she fished under the mat and came up with a key, letting herself in and shoving the key back where she had found it.
A half hour later, she, too, left.
At nearly ten o'clock, someone in a hoodie, their face obscured, went to the room. Finding it locked, they knelt down and went to work with what looked like a thin strip of wire. A moment later the dark figure vanished inside. The door stayed propped open, and only a moment later the figure returned, something clutched in their arms.
"Is that the laptop?" Brennan guessed.
"Looks like it," Angela agreed. "That was my first thought for what it could be, too."
Brennan glanced up at movement outside her door, and saw Hodgins heading past on the way to his own office, his lab coat slung over his shoulder. He waved as he saw her look up, and she returned the gesture.
"Your husband is here," she told Angela, who had reappeared on the screen.
"I figured he'd be arriving," she said. "I'll let you get back to work... unless you want to talk? How are things going? How's junior?"
She laughed, a short, almost humorless sound. "The baby isn't even a baby yet, technically, Ange. You know that—you just went through this. And... I am mostly fine."
"Mostly fine isn't fine," Angela pointed out, ignoring the rest of what she'd said.
Brennan sighed. "I'm coping," she said at last. Trying to cope, you mean, her brain corrected automatically.
"Okay, sweetie. Call me, though, if you need anything. Have you looked through those books I gave you?"
"I glanced," she said. It was a white lie. "I've been busy with the case. Thanks again, though. For giving them to me."
"No problem. Call me," she intoned firmly, and then disconnected.
Brennan sighed and leaned back in her chair heavily. She had barely looked at the books, let alone flipped through them. She'd put them in the corner, out of sight, and had tried to avoid them. To be honest, she wasn't ready to go in-depth on this. She was pregnant, and she'd already been to a doctor's appointment that had made it feel very real... but she still wasn't really accepting it yet. Avoiding it helped her cope, and the last thing she wanted to do was start making plans for names or birthing methods or Lamaze classes.
The case. That helped her cope, as well, and so she forced herself to lean forward again and flip through the sheets she had spread out in front of her.
The murder weapon was a knife, that much was certain. The exact wound pattern, though, had been hard to match. The thrusts had been at an upwards angle, as opposed to a downwards thrust, which meant the killing had been done underhand, with sharp forward thrusts. Likely while the victim was already on the ground, although one of the non-fatal wounds showed signs that it might have been what caused Kaminski to fall to the ground. That, and of course the fact he was also heavily intoxicated at the time.
It all fit the pattern of a female killer, which they had already suspected.
Booth had seemed interested, yesterday, in the fact that Kaminski had been working an angle for the paper. If that were the case, she would have guessed the killer would be male. It changed things considerably, if this wasn't a case of jealousy or betrayal, but a cover-up.
The knife itself, though, was elusive. It was at least partially serrated, and very sharp. The damage it had done to the flesh around the entry suggested it had been removed with trouble. Another indicator of a female killer, one with little experience using a weapon, as well.
But from the angle, it would appear the knife had been removed, each time, by jerking back at an angle, pushing the handle towards the body so that the blade lifted upwards as it was pulling out along the angled track it had entered at.
It was odd, at the very least.
She was looking through the images of the scarring to the ribs again when a knock at her door drew her attention up. This time it was Cam, not Hodgins, and she motioned for her boss to enter.
"Angela sent out a mass email, with pictures from the surveillance tape. She mentioned that she had spoken with you about it this morning, and you could fill the team in on the details."
"Of course," Brennan said, catching the implication there and gathering her things together as she stood up. Out in the lab, she could see Wendell and Hodgins on the platform, talking as they stood over the body. And then, as she moved towards the door, she noted two other figures standing by the railing in suits.
Booth and Sweets were here now as well.
She and Cam joined the group on the platform, and Cam pointed out the pictures on the largest monitor to her before she began to explain their arrival and departure times and how they had entered the apartment.
"So it could be any of them," Booth reasoned. "Since all of them after the first entered by their own means. He didn't let them in... meaning he could have been dead when the next woman arrived."
"We don't know the last one is a woman," Cam reminded him, nodding towards the figure in the hoodie.
"Right. Whatever. The point is, we've got four suspects, and we only know who one of them is."
"Facial recognition is started in Angela's office," Cam assured the group calmly, "But in all likelihood... we aren't going to get anything from it."
"If we showed the pictures around at the apartment building, perhaps his neighbors could identify the women whose faces we can see," Sweets suggested. Booth turned to him, and Brennan felt her gut twist at the psychologists use of 'we.' As if he and Booth would be doing the investigation. She hated herself for the sudden wave of irrational jealousy, when she was the one who had been treating Booth like a pariah on and off so much recently, but she couldn't help it. She wanted to be investigating this, she realized. She wanted to be out in the field with Booth, even if that meant addressing things.
And if he brought it up... she would be honest with him.
If not... she would act as normal as possible. Try and go back to their friendly banter and their shared theories about who could have done it. With any luck, they could get through this case without any more troubles from their personal life. And maybe, by then, she'd have figured out how to ask him the important questions.
The questions like 'do you still want a relationship with me?' or 'has your heart healed yet, after what I did to it?'
He had said, while they were trapped in that elevator, that he needed time. She had hoped that meant that he would be the one making the first move. That he would tell her when he was ready. If that ever happened.
The fact that it hadn't, that he'd made no move towards anything with her even right after discovering she was pregnant, or before that, after they slept together... it made her wonder if he'd changed his mind. If he'd realized she'd done too much damage.
And just like that, she was back on the thought-path she hadn't wanted to go down. The one where she was left wandering in circles wondering if he could ever love her, or if she was an obligation now that he halfway hated. His kiss told her he loved her. Everything else made her fear the opposite.
She had never been the hopeful type. Never the optimist.
Love was a dangerous web. And she was already tangled in it, waiting for the spider to come. That was her view on things, and it wasn't likely to change anytime soon.
But she'd keep trying, because while she was no optimist... she was also no quitter.
Booth's next words inspired some confidence on that front, though, and she felt the spark reignite in her, and the fears dwindle a bit; not gone, but definitely pushed aside. "Yeah, Bones and I will go see what we can stir up. A lot of them saw faces, they just didn't know names. If they recognize them, maybe they can give us some sort of direction for where to look next."
Sweets looked put-out, but Brennan barely paid him any mind. Booth had glanced towards her as he spoke, and she smiled at him, which inspired a similar reaction from him. He looked relieved. She felt the same way.
"Alright, so you two are off to investigate. The rest of us... we're not leaving until we get an ID on that murder weapon. So, let's get cracking," Cam delegated, clapping her hands together sharply.
Booth and Brennan met each other's eyes again, and then both headed for the stairs. Sweets followed, but they outpaced him and he stopped at the bottom of the stairs. Brennan could feel his gaze, and could practically hear the questions buzzing around in his head.
He knew something was up, of course. Something that had nothing to do with the case.
Booth, like her, was fully aware that it was in their best interest to get as far away from him as possible. At least they were in sync on that level—no matter who they each might want to inform, the shrink was not on the top of their lists.
He was a good friend, sure. But he was also FBI... and things were complicated enough as it was.
"So, do you think these are all spited women?" Booth asked, waving the handful of pictures that he had paper-clipped together in his hand.
"Good chance, given what we know about Kaminski," Brennan suggested. "But, there is merit to the theory that someone wanted to keep him quiet, as well."
Booth nodded as they entered the elevator together.
Neither of them brought up the day before, and the silence was safer for it. There were no questions hanging there. Just the relief-scented air-freshener that was probably going to fade far too quickly.
I wanted to get to an actual conversation between Booth and Brennan just as much as all of you did, but it just wasn't in the cards for this chapter. My outline told me I was trying to get too much done at once, and so it will have to wait until next chapter.
I hope you are still enjoying this story; let me know what you're thinking, and feel free to share thoughts on the show as well. The title for the season premiere is 'The Memories in the Shallow Grave.' Does that sound ominous, or is it just me?
