14.
"So did we solve the case?" Hodgins asked when Cam & Sweets emerged from the office.
"I think it was quite worth it." Cam said waiting for Sweets to nod and agree which he did. "It would seem that Agent Wittner and Commander Mahaffey were both at the shipyards and know of this Lumiere guy pretty well."
"Lumiere, we believe is the guy who was at the boat docks." Sweets filled in. His stomach growled as he looked at half a sandwich that was left on the counter. Cam pushed it over to him as she kept speaking.
"So what I'm thinking is that Lumiere somehow got our unknown man onto Mahaffey's boat." Cam explained and noticed Sweets had already devoured the sandwich.
"He must have done it there to really stick it to Mahaffey." Hodgins said.
"Or to send a message." A muffled sound said from Sweets who was talking with his mouth so full he had chipmunk cheeks.
"What did he say?" Hodgins asked.
"He said it could have sent a message to Mahaffey and Wittner." Cam said. "But what was the unknown man's role in the whole thing if Mahaffey and Wittner were still trying to cover it up as well?"
"I have something." Arastoo said joining them but he stopped to look around for a missing object. "Where did my sandwich go?"
Sweets gulped as he brushed the crumbs off his shirt. "That's a mystery." He said pretending to look at files.
"I'll get you another sandwich Dr. Vasiri." Cam promised. Arastoo smiled and continued.
"When Dr. Sweets was brought in yesterday I noticed on his finger a small chemical burn." Arastoo explained.
Sweets looked down at his finger that he had paid little attention to, the others looked at it as well - they had missed it, having concentrated on the rest of Sweets medical conditions at that moment.
"I noticed a very slight trace on it." Arastoo continued. "I figured that Davenport had taken such ill care of Dr. Sweets that the burn most likely came from the shipyards."
"It did!" Sweets announced. "I touched a box, while I was hiding, it was broke, there was a liquid! A green liquid coming from out of it!" Sweets was proud that he recalled a memory of the shipyard incident all on his own.
"Why didn't you remember that in the session?" Cam asked.
Sweets seemed bashful at answering. "All I could think of was the running…the uh, shot." His stomach soured at the memory, the pain.
"It's okay, I'm glad you remembered it now." Cam reassured him.
"So what is the substance?" Hodgins asked eager for the missing detail.
"Good question." Arastoo answered. "It's definitely a bio waste. The chemical components though are practically uncharted combinations. I have indications of sulfur, oxygen, aluminum and a dozen other compounds, which is why I would classify it as a waste."
Sweets nodded along but then he noticed a half-eaten bag of chips in the trash among papers. He smiled as he grabbed them and began to eat them.
"Hodgins, when you mentioned the Philadelphia Experiment you said something about a green fog." Cam said then turned her head at the loud crunching of chips. She looked at Sweets. "Did you get those out of the trash?"
Sweets mouth was full of chips. "Uh, no, I think they just fell down." The starving man lied.
Cam shook her head. "Do we have some food around here so that Sweets can eat? Something that isn't trash?"
"I'll check." Angela said heading to the small kitchen area.
"No it's fine. These are fine." Sweets assured them not wanting a fuss.
"Sweets I threw those away because Hodgins was using them for one of his bug experiments." Cam explained.
Sweets looked at Hodgins. "What's wrong with you? Is everything an experiment?" Sweets however wasn't completely deterred from eating them.
"Yes! Thank you! Am I not the only one who sees this as a problem?" Cam said glad Sweets had taken her side regarding Hodgins experiments.
"Dude, they were in the trash!" Hodgins said. Sweets looked in the rest of the bag wondering if what doesn't kill you makes you stronger.
"Here." Angela said handing over a bag of popped popcorn. "I found that and a roll of mints. Now can we get back to the case?"
Cam opened her mouth to speak but immediately heard Sweets munching on popcorn. Damn that smells good, Cam said aloud of the hot and freshly popped corns. She cleared her throat but she couldn't stop staring at it. Sweets held the bowl out to her and she took a handful.
"If you two are done eating." Arastoo said looking at his report and trying to hide a smile. "I can tell you that the chemical compound does contain a slight amount of water, particularly a sample that matched a sample off the coast where the shipyard is."
"How do you know that?" Angela asked.
"For environmental reasons water samples are taken around areas where boats are docked to be sure that no excessive amounts of oil or other chemicals are released into the water." Arastoo explained.
"Are those kept on record?" Angela asked.
"Yes." Arastoo answered.
"Can we compare the results of any recent samples to ones in years past?" Angela asked. "See if any of this material was in the water?"
"Excellent suggestion Angela!" Cam said. Hodgins turned to pull up the data.
"So the Philadelphia Experiment was the idea to make a ship disappear and then reappear in another location." Cam said thinking aloud. "Why would it give off some sort of green liquid - if it did work?"
"It could be the chemical residue is a byproduct of the ship dematerializing." Arastoo proposed still having a slightly hard time imagining the process could actually take place. "Some of these chemicals would match what would be on a naval ship."
"I've got a match!" Hodgins explained excitedly. "The components of what Arastoo found would match several of the high markers of the components of a military vessel. I'm also comparing the water samples over the years….and….bingo! Every six months the water is testing at higher levels than before – and with each of these compounds present."
"So the chemical residue was being removed from the water, but some trace was still in it?" Angela asked.
"Yeah but not enough to alert the EPA." Hodgins said. "Which is why they could continue their work."
"The green substance would most likely have a high density, allowing it to float on the top, almost like oil. Being green it would also have been easy see and skim off the top." Arastoo phathomed.
"And then they stored it in the warehouse." Angela proposed.
"Does my breath stink?" Sweets asked looking at the package of mints.
"Sweets have you been listening at all?" Cam asked irritated and then concerned the psychologists attention span had been damaged.
"No Sweets, it was the only thing I could find besides the popcorn." Angela explained.
Sweets ate a handful of mints and Cam began to worry a bit more at how anyone would want to eat a handful of Life Savers all at one time.
"Yes, I've been listening." Sweets answered. "I think they figured out how to get the ship to disappear but they didn't get to it reappear in the same condition. The same problem they had fifty some years ago. The residue left behind is what they should be studying but they are leaving it only as a waste product."
"And then there's the other 'waste' product, the afflicted sailors." Cam recalled the worrisome state of those left at Davenport.
Sweets looked at the bag of popcorn.
"Geez if you want more just ask." Angela said grabbing it.
"No, but thank you." Sweets said. "It gives me an idea. How would you make an item disappear? You would have to have some sort of charge to get the molecules to move enough to transport it. Like the popcorn, what causes it to go from a kernel to the puffy ball?"
"Heat. Duh." Hodgins said.
"Right. Einstein's theory the experiment is based on is combining the forces of electromagnetism and gravity into the same field."
"You would need something like a large electrical generator to bend light around the object or as Einstein worked to understand anti-gravity." Hodgins explained. "But what does this tell us about our unknown man?"
"That you would need scientist to finish the project." Sweets explained with a smile.
"You think he was a scientist?" Cam asked.
"If he was a scientist working for Mahaffey, getting them what they needed to know, Lumiere gets involved from another country, he wants the info and kills the unknown man to get it." Hodgins proposes from Sweets theory.
"But he doesn't give it to them." Angela surmises. "He takes it with him."
"Because they would rather have him dead and the Americans unable to finish the project if they were unable to find the information." Arastoo assumes.
"What makes you think he was a scientist?" Cam asked Sweets directly.
"I think he was a theorist actually." Sweets said going to the evidence table. "In his bag was that stencil kit. I don't think he was drawing sketches of ships as a spy. I think he was writing out his theory equations. I think Mahaffey has them and is continuing to work based on what he has from the unknown man, even if he doesn't completely understand the man's work." Sweets ate the rest of the package of mints.
"But I thought he was a spy, for the FBI?" Cam asked.
"That was an idea. I still think he has some sort of FBI ties." Sweets said.
"We ran his image thru the FBI database, no matches." Angela reminded them. "All databases actually, this guy never got a driver's license."
"Curious." Sweets remarked.
"How does someone not have a driver's license?" Cam asked. "In the modern world it's pretty hard not to have some form of ID."
"But the way this guy slid under the radar I'm thinking he had very little by way of ID. The vouchers for the bus, the lack of labels, he didn't want to be tracked." Sweets referenced.
"Okay, so how does someone get around everywhere with no ID?" Angela asked.
"Well if he was an agent they could have supplied him with cash, vouchers when needed." Hodgins proposed.
"There's an answer in the evidence." Sweets explained looking at the autopsy result. "Wedge shaped toes and highly developed calves." Sweets repeated from the report earning curious glances from the rest. "Bicycle."
"Well developed legs and curved toes from the cycle shoe sleeves." Cam put together.
"Now he doesn't need a car." Sweets explained.
"Okay so that answers that anomaly but what about the rest, who is he, how did he die and what did he do?" Arastoo asked.
Sweets looked at the rest of the clues on the table - Juicy Fruit, vouchers, comb, Kensitas cigarettes in the Army Club case, box of used matches and the now reunited cufflinks. Sweets looked them over. Many of them made sense, matches to light the cigarettes, gum to mask the breath. But wait, why Juicy Fruit, why not a mint flavor? Perhaps he was impartial to the mint.
"What's he doing?" Arastoo whispered to Cam as they watched Sweets pour over the evidence. Before Cam could answer Sweets pulled a stick of gum out. Cam assumed he was going to eat it.
"Sweets! If you're hungry we'll get more food but let's not eat the evidence." Cam said stepping next to him. He handed her the gum wrapper. Inside read the address, 1717 Park Lane.
"That's where we had the address to that other book." Cam said finding the others were now interested.
Sweets pulled out another piece and unwrapped it. "That's the address of the shipyards." Cam said recognizing it. The next revealed the address of Davenport State Hospital then Sweets unwrapped the final piece.
"That's the Library of Congress address." Hodgins said.
"We had the clues here the whole time?" Angela asked.
"We still found the places, this may have gotten us there sooner." Cam realized.
"It was a fail safe." Sweets proposed. "In case we didn't find the other clues. This was his back up."
"So now what?" Hodgins asked. "We're out of clues."
"Maybe not." Sweets said picking up the box of matches. He slid the small box from its case and removed the matches.
"Address?" Hodgins asked trying to see. As he leaned forward he knocked the bag holding the cufflink to the floor. Hodgins reached down to pick it up.
"Yeah it's the address to the bus stop, I went there at the beginning of the case." Sweets said wondering why this clue was separated from the others.
"Uh, oops." Hodgins said realizing he had broken the cufflink evidence. "Wait a minute, what's this?"
Hodgins stood up having removed the top of the cufflink. Beneath the opening was a hollow center with a tiny chip inside.
"What is that?" Angela asked leaning forward to look more closely.
"A microchip of some sort." Hodgins said examining it. "If it's buried in this cufflink it's got to be important."
"Which one is it?" Sweets asked.
"The one from the boat." Hodgins replied.
Cam & Sweets looked to each other with the same thought. "The unknown man didn't want the others to find it." Cam said aloud. "Let's say Lumiere lured the unknown man to the boat, gives him the pastry, maybe it's poisoned, they try and get him to talk, he refuses, drops the cufflink so someone knows he's there - particularly the cufflink with what could be information about the experiment on it."
"Lumiere brings him to the park and dumps him." Sweets says.
"Yeah, but the witnesses said they thought he was only drunk there. They couldn't have killed him on the boat." Angela reminded him.
"A slow moving poison in the pastry?" Arastoo asked.
"If that poison hit his stomach he would have vomited, there was nothing at the scene." Cam reminded them. "I don't think it was in the pastry."
"Either way what now?" Angela asked.
The group turned to see Sweets writing out one of the clues from the man's pocket on the white board, MLIABOAIAQC. He put a strike thru each letter as he used it. He stepped back to reveal the word he formed from the second to last clue.
"Claim Bag A10." Was written on the board. Sweets explained. "I think the Q is a sloppy G. The I,O is a 10. That's where his bag was pulled from that they brought here."
"Any more clues wonder boy?" Angela asked and Sweets nodded. He began to write the third from the last clue, WTBIMPANETP. "Patient MP WB." He said finishing. "I'm betting that is someone at Davenport we need to see. I'd guess MP for a military policeman, probably someone from the shipyards who saw or knows something, initials WB."
"Without records of the asylum we don't know. And I doubt they want to see us again." Cam reminded Sweets.
Sweets stared at the last clue on the page, ITTMTSAMSTGAB. His dry erase marker glided across providing a couple of clues but he erased them. Finally he wrote one and backed up. "MIT, SGT Bamsatt."
"MIT?" Cam asked. "Massachusetts Institute of Technology?" She shrugged her shoulders. "Well if he is a theorist."
"So who is Sgt Bamsatt?" Arastoo asked.
Hodgins pounded away at the computer then backed up to reveal a younger image of a man they had seen the photo of many times. "I don't know but he looks a hell of a lot like Commander Mahaffey."
"So why did he change his name?" Angela asked.
"I'm guessing it's probably to cover up this." Hodgins said revealing a newspaper article. "Apparently Sgt Bamsatt was a soldier for the Soviet Union."