Author's Note: Next chapter. At the rate that I am going, I'm thinking that this fic will probably be about 12 chapters long...but as always, it's never a good idea to hold me to an exact number. :)
I do not own Bones or any of its characters.
Thank you again to everyone who is reading/following/reviewing this. It's always appreciated.
19thpersonality: Ah well no offense taken. You are not the first to wonder where I was going to move with something in one of my fics. Fortunately you are right in saying that I have a plan and you will see it unfolding over the next couple of chapters...You will get some action as far as the case at least in this chapter...
TimeWitch93: Yeah, Daisy can be a lot for anyone to handle...especially a twelve year old Sweets. :) But I wanted to be fair to her, so...VKM was mainly picked for this fic because he always seemed a little too eager to help Hodgins with his experiments...especially the dangerous ones like the one that gave Sweets his amnesia.
Peanutmeg: Thanks for the review. I'm glad you were able to enjoy my mix of Daisy moments with Booth moments. Both of them play their own role in Sweets' life and I think it's interesting to show all the facets of what Sweets' amnesia is bringing about to the people in his life...I hope you enjoy this chapter as well.
Rankor01:Thank you. Again, despite my misgivings about Daisy, I did start to think how awkward it would be for anyone to have their boyfriend revert back to childhood and thus, I thought it'd be interesting to include her in this fic...I agree that there were certain traits about Sweets that had started to show by the time he was this age, something that's a little easier to see once you put him into the FBI/Jeffersonian environment. As to whether or not his memory will return...we will have to see...
Charlotte Thornton: Well I will say this: one of your wishes will be fulfilled in this chapter...
Lives in the now: Thank you as always for the review. :) I will confess that I wasn't entirely sure about trying my hand at crack fic, but this story has been a lot of fun to write. I am thrilled that others are enjoying it as well. As to Daisy, yes I agree that having her show up was a very realistic turn to consider and am glad that you enjoyed how I decided to handle it. This fic does not have a lot of chapters left to go, but I hope you'll enjoy the few that remain.
D: I agree that Daisy can be a little...beyond a PG rating at times. ;) Thus why I could realistically see tension at the idea of Sweets thinking that he's twelve...I agree that the grip of his recently imposed childhood is starting to loosen and it will just be a matter of time and the right circumstances now...As to Brennan, I agree that Brennan always had it in her to be a supportive big sister or even motherly and thus enjoy exploring that side of her personality.
The Confusion in the Duckling—Chapter 9
Booth, Brennan and Sweets went back to the Hoover Building with Booth instructing Brennan to keep an eye on Sweets for a while in his office. About an hour later, the agent returned with Felton's assistant, Martin Wright.
Booth put him in the interrogation room and looked over his notes while standing in the hallway outside. Brennan and Sweets met him there.
"I had Charlie do a little additional checking," the agent said as they arrived. "Looks like Mr. Wright was not entirely honest with us." Booth scanned through some additional papers in the file he was holding before looking up at the two of them.
"Ready to do this, Bones?"
"Can I watch?" Sweets asked. "Please?" Booth rolled his eyes yet again.
"All right, you can watch in the observation room," Booth said. "But you need to keep quiet and let Bones and me do our jobs here, ok?"
Sweets bobbed his head enthusiastically, and the agent got him settled into the other room before going with Brennan to talk with Wright.
"Look, you didn't have to bring me in," Wright scowled. "If you wanted to talk to me again, you could have just called the office."
"We weren't entirely sure you would want to see us again," Brennan said. "Especially after we reviewed some more evidence."
"What evidence?"
"You failed to mention that you contacted Doctor Arnold about some secret meeting that your boss was trying to set up," Booth said. "Care to explain that?"
"It just sort of slipped my mind, ok?" Wright sighed. "Felton told me to call Arnold and give him that message along with a proposed date and time. He didn't tell me anything as far as what the meeting was about. I figured it had something to do with that class action suit."
"But it didn't did it?" Booth asked.
"What do you mean?"
"We also checked out your bank records," the agent said, sliding some papers toward Wright. "Turns out you had lost a lot of money a couple of years ago on faulty investments and were well on your way to defaulting on your mortgage. It was around this time that you suddenly seemed to be getting a lot of 'bonuses' to your income at work. We had a forensic accountant go over the financial records from Felton's clinic, and guess what they discovered?"
Wright said nothing. His stony gaze fixed on the papers in front of him.
"They found that these bonuses correlated with unexplained disappearances of funds from the firm's accounts," Booth continued. "We interviewed everyone else at the clinic and they all told us that you handle the books. So there is little chance that you wouldn't have noticed it…which means you were probably the one skimming the books."
"Ok, so maybe I took a little extra from Felton's accounts," Wright spat. "It wasn't like I didn't earn the money anyway. Felton never paid well and I needed the money to keep my house. It doesn't prove anything."
"But the way you hold your arm does," Brennan said.
"What?"
"The victim suffered numerous blows to the scapula with a can," the anthropologist explained. "Judging from the injuries, I'd say that it was from someone matching your height. Plus the injury to your deltoid muscle would have caused the irregularities in the strikes."
"We have people going over your apartment right now," Booth added. "They're looking for a uniform, additional statuettes like the ones found around the body, and chemical traces of the materials used to construct the bomb. Maybe they won't find all of these things, but how much you want to bet that they will find at least some of them?"
Wright said nothing as Booth talked, his gaze now set on a photograph of Felton lying near the other files. As Booth reached the end of his speech, Wright ground his jaw for almost a minute before shaking his head and finally looking up at Brennan.
"You want to know how I got that injury?" he asked her.
"I would hypothesize a car accident of some kind," Brennan responded.
"That's exactly right," Wright said bitterly. "You want to know why I got into that car accident? Because Felton called me up one night, in the middle of a blizzard, and tells me that I need to fetch some patient files from his office and deliver them to his house if I wanted to keep my job. The roads were terrible that night I lost control of the car and wrapped it around a pole. Messed up my shoulder. And Felton…not once did he visit me while I was in the hospital. He didn't even send me a 'get-well' card."
Wright pushed Felton's picture away with the tips of his fingers and watched it sail off the table onto the floor.
"All the things I put up with, all the things I did for him," he continued. "And not once did I get the slightest bit of appreciation. I wanted to leave, god I wanted to quit that job. But…I needed the money, so I stayed. I guess…I guess that I was hoping that I'd eventually get a raise or something for all the hours I poured into his practice."
"But he never did give you a raise, did he?" Booth asked. "And then to make matters worse, you lost too much money on your investments."
"I begged him for a raise," Wright said. "I tried explaining to him why I needed the money. Know what he said? He said that this was my life's way of teaching me a lesson. A lesson about being more prudent with my money. I was going to lose everything, and he was giving me a lecture about money."
Wright collapsed back in his chair, his arms sliding off the table to dangle at his sides.
"I was desperate," he said. "I started taking a little money here and there, just to pay my bills, so I could get back out of the red, you know? Initially, I was just going to take enough to make it so that I wouldn't lose my house, but then…But then I decided that it was about time that he started paying me what I deserved for all the work I did."
"Felton didn't see it that way," Brennan said. "He found out somehow."
"I don't know how he did it, to be quite honest," Wright replied. "He hardly ever takes a look at the books. But somehow he found out about the money I was taking. That's what he was going to see Arnold about. He was going to tell him that I had probably taken money from him as well and that I was probably the reason he was getting sued by those other patients."
"Felton didn't tell you about the meeting at first, but you found out," Booth said. "Or…he confronted you."
"I knew something was up, so I borrowed my cousin's uniform from his job at the cable company and went over to his house," Wright said. "I was so flustered; I actually went to the wrong house at first. I just wanted to see…to see if I could figure out what it was he was doing. But I wasn't even able to get inside and find out anything."
"What happened on the day Felton died?" Booth asked.
"Felton had me come to his house," Wright said. "He told me everything: about how he had figured out what he was doing, the reason he had set up the meeting and what he planned to do about what I had done. I thought that maybe he was going to fire me, make me pay the money back. But that wasn't enough for him. He said that he was going to sue me and said that he was going to encourage Arnold to do the same. He said…he said he'd make sure that I'd never get another job in DC ever again."
Booth and Brennan exchanged looks as he talked, but remained silent.
"After everything I had been through…I just lost it," Wright said. "Felton walked into the kitchen and I followed him. I grabbed the first thing I could find which ended up being a can of carrots that he had just opened, and I started hitting him with it over and over. He…he fell to the ground, and kept moaning that he was going to have me locked away. I remember seeing red and picking something else up from the counter and after that…it's like there's a blank of a few minutes. After it was over, Felton was lying on the floor dead, and I had a meat tenderizer in my hand."
Wright stared at his hands which had started to tremble for almost a full minute before looking back up and continuing with his narrative.
"I…I knew that no one was expecting Felton at the office that day," he said. "So I…I started cleaning up. I took his body out to the back lawn and straightened everything up inside. Then I mixed up some stuff I found lying around to make a crude explosive. I had a friend who was into demolitions and he taught me a few things...After I was done cleaning, I showered and got out of the clothes I was wearing. I had my gym stuff in the car, so I switched into that and put the clothes and all the other stuff into the shed. I set up the bomb with just enough delay so that I could high-tail it out of there."
"Why the statues?" Booth asked.
"I…I figured that the police would be looking into Felton's death," Wright shrugged. "And I had just read a book about real-life murder investigations and about how they often used some kind of profiler to read the scene. I thought that the statures might make the cops think that there was some kind of cult-like thing going on, especially if they did use a profiler. I was hoping that they wouldn't look too hard at the people who had to work with him."
Wright leaned toward them, his face defeated, but his eyes pleading.
"Look, I know that I have to pay for what I did and…and I'm not proud of it," he said. "But believe me, five years of working for Felton could make anyone a little crazy."
After taking down a full confession from Wright, Booth and Brennan left him in the custody of another pair of agents. While they stood in the hallway, Booth's cell phone went off and he answered it. After a couple minutes of silence, the agent gave a quick set of instructions and hung up.
"They found the uniform and more of the statues at Wright's place," Booth said. "And guess what? Those little statues? They were from a shop that Felton's brother ran. Felton had actually told him at one point to buy those things to 'spruce up' the office at some point."
"He should have just quit his job," Brennan said. "It was clear that Felton was never going to be a good employer, and there are plenty of other jobs in a city of this size."
"I know that Bones," Booth said. "But for some people…change is more terrifying than the personal hell they've already put themselves into."
Brennan nodded while she considered his words, but her line of thought was soon interrupted by Sweets bounding out of the observation room and heading straight for them.
"Agent Booth, Brennan, that was awesome," Sweets gushed. "The way you got that guy and then got him to confess. That was…that was mega-cool."
Booth and Brennan smiled back at him, the two of them finding it hard to not be touched by the psychologist's sincere praise and enthusiasm.
"I'd love to do this kind of thing," Sweets said wistfully. "And…and to work with all of you."
"You will do this kind of thing, Sweets," Booth said, placing a hand on the therapist's shoulder. "Once you get your memory back, you'll be doing this with us all the time." Sweets' face suddenly fell, and his shoulders slumped.
"If," he mumbled.
"What?" Booth asked.
"If I get my memory back," Sweets said, hanging his head down. "Memory doesn't always come back with retrograde amnesia. And, and nothing we've done so far has helped me to remember. What if…what if I don't get my memories back?"
Booth looked over at Brennan, who had a concerned look on her face. He then clasped Sweets' shoulder a little tighter while Brennan took him by one of his arms.
"Listen, we're not giving up that easy, and neither should you," Booth said. "And if it comes to that, if it comes down to you not remembering…we will cross that bridge when we come to it. Together."
After picking up some files and papers in Booth's office, the three of them took off in Booth's SUV and headed for the Jeffersonian. Drained from the events of the day, Sweets quickly began to lightly doze in the back seat.
"Booth, what if Sweets is right?" Brennan said. "What if he never does remember? What will he do then? He has no family to take care of him. No way to support himself without his knowledge and training."
"Technically he does have some family," Booth said as he shifted in his seat. "Sweets gave me this card once, in case there was some kind of emergency or something. Apparently he has a cousin in the Army, who he still keeps in contact with, and Sweets told me to contact him if anything you know, happened to him. We could always try getting a hold of him."
"But would he be able to take care of Sweets while he went back to school and received his education again?" Brennan asked. "It might not take as long for him to get multiple degrees again as it would most people, but it would still take years."
"Yeah," Booth sighed. "And then there's all the other stuff to think about."
"Other stuff?" Brennan asked, her brow crinkling in confusion.
"Growing up is not just spending some time in a classroom, Bones," Booth said. "There's stuff that parents, family have to teach a kid. Sweets would need to have people around who could teach him about the world, about people and about how to figure out the best way to lead his own life. None of that is something you can learn from a book."
"While a statement like that cannot be proven scientifically, anthropologically speaking…you are correct," she said. "Children are usually indoctrinated by their families into the larger society."
"Right, so…" Booth said.
"So how do we do that for Sweets?" Brennan nodded. She turned her head so she could watch the psychologist sleep. After a couple of minutes, Booth noticed her staring and her worried expression so he reached over to take her hand, causing the anthropologist to face the front again.
"Hey, we'll think of something Bones, all right?" Booth assured her. "We won't leave our duckling behind. I promise."
Brennan smiled at him, and the two of the rode the rest of the way over to the Jeffersonian in silence, their hands locked together for most of the way.