The Face with Two Skeletons

By: Tropicwhale

Disclaimer: Mine? Who's been saying that wonderful lie? oh...ignore them, they lie like rugs. Bones and all things associated with the show belong to other people...dammit.

Author Talk: I had relatives come in from India and two of my cousins graduating high school and a great-uncle's birthday plus homework. I'm sorry I didn't update. Next few days I'll catch up though.

Chapter Thirteen

Zack prepped the main lab for the corpse, informed Dr. Saroyan who told him to inform Angela and Hodgins which he did. When all that was finished he decided to take his lunch break. He had macaroni and cheese with a baloney sandwich and an apple juice. Hodgins slide into the seat next to him at the cafeteria and Angela slide into the seat across from Zack. Zack looked up at them then swallowed his mouthful of food. "Hello."

"Hey Zack." Angela said, putting Italian dressing on her walnut and brie salad while Hodgins nodded around a mouthful of burger. Hodgins swallowed as Zack took a bite of mac-and-cheese.

"So, I'm glad to see that Booth didn't kill you this past Friday." Zack glanced over at his friend's smirking face and Angela who was smiling as well. Zack went back to eating his mac-and-cheese.

"How did your date go?" Zack asked. Hodgins' smile became a little strained as did Angela's.

"How'd you hear about that?"

"I was in the car when Booth called you on an update of the rules and the passcode." Zack put down his mac-and-cheese and picked up his sandwich. He took a bite of the sandwich and wasn't looking at Angela or Hodgins.

"It went fine."

"I didn't hear you come home Saturday." Zack chanced a glance at Angela. She was looking at Zack and took a sip of her raspberry flavored water.

"We decided to go to New York for the weekend. We didn't get back until late last night." Just then Dr. Saroyan walked up and sat next to Angela. Zack noticed that she also was having flavored water but it was lemon-flavored and she was having a broccoli side-salad with a sausage and mushroom pizza slice.

"Tough case." she said. "The skeleton? Partial and part of a sculpture…and rusted. It's on its way here now."

"Partial?" Zack attempted to confirm that his hearing didn't need to be checked.

"A sculpture?" Angela was intrigued.

"Rusted?" Hodgins asked, incredulously.

"Yes. Yes. And yes. Booth said the artist found the skeleton in a dumpster, painted with special paint that rusts and turned it into his thesis." Dr. Saroyan confirmed all three at once.

"Cool." Angela said.6t

"Definitely." Hodgins agreed.

"Define partial." Zack stated.

"Partial as incomplete."

"What parts are missing?" Zack asked.

"I don't know, Zackaroni. You'll just have to wait and find out with the rest of us." Zack sighed through his nose and started to calculate ways of removing rusting paint from a skeleton. "Zack…I wasn't aware that sandwiches are eaten with the help of forks." Zack started out of his mathematics induced trance. Zack looked down at his lunch. His sandwich was decimated. His friends started to laugh. Angela snorted which caused Zack to grin with the rest of them.

"I'm trying to figure out how to remove the paint." He explained.

"You better not! I want a crack at the rusty skeleton first!" Hodgins sounded shocked.

"Of course. I wouldn't want to interrupt protocol." Dr. Saroyan pointed her fork at Zack.

"See, that is why I like you, Zack. Unlike these two who would have sex in the storage room." Zack got the feeling that comment was less about him and more as a dig toward Angela and Hodgins.

"That was a good sex tape, though. Like celebrity quality." Angela added.

"Really? Seen a lot of celebrity sex tapes?" Hodgins asked jokingly.

"You have heard of the internet, right?" Angela smirked and popped a grape tomato into her mouth. Dr. Saroyan rolled her eyes. Jack shifted and smiled. Zack tried to figure how to removing rusting paint from a partial skeleton and how to salvage his perforated sandwich. Without a spoken word between them Hodgins pushed a quarter of his fries over to Zack's tray, Angela moved half her salad and Dr. Saroyan gave up her broccoli salad. Zack looked at the offers and the smiles of his friends feeling the same frustration he felt Friday night when Booth was upset with what their waitress had said and discovering Zack's bisexuality.

"I wish you wouldn't do that. I'm not a little kid that needs looking after all the time." Zack stood and walked away. He would regret it later when his stomach growled and his concentration wavered from lack of nutrients but right now Zack was so angry that he really wasn't thinking straight. He banged his way down to Limbo and quickly got out the woman whose bones he had been examining for the last week. It seemed that every time he felt he was close to a breakthrough with the remains one of his well-meaning friends would come in and swept him away to make sure he didn't pass out. It was very frustrating.

He arranged her bones carefully, calming down in the process. Anger wasn't rational. It did nothing but distort the facts as they presented themselves. He was lucky to have friends now; a lot of friends. When he was little Zack remember doing nothing but schoolwork and whatever activity his parents had enrolled him in to integrate him socially. Each attempt failed until he had to tutor for book money which was when the Oscarmanns hired him. Zack's intellect had not served him then either and he lost his only friend, his best friend. His concentration was wavering as he expected it to. His emotions were not under control and he would need his wits about him if he was expected to help at all in the death of the partial skeleton. He straightened a femur and then looked at the body from the foot end of the skeleton back up toward the skull. There was something odd about the pattern of the hemorrhage stains on the ribs….mainly that there appeared to be a pattern. Zack took one of the ribs and carefully laid it under a high-powered microscope. There was chipping along the ribs that coincided with the staining. There was something else odd. The bone didn't look as old as it should…Zack supposed it was because of the ultraviolet light that the Jeffersonian treated the specimens down here in limbo with. Zack removed the rib and picked up another. There was the same chipping and the same atypical pattern to the staining. Someone tapped Zack on the shoulder. He…yelped and turned away from the microscope to see Angela. "Alright, Zack" She said, thankfully ignoring his yelp and crossing her arms with a smirk. "What's the matter?"

"I don't think this woman died of drowning." Zack frowned back at the skeleton to hide his embarrassment at being startled by Angela.

"Uh-huh. I meant what happened in the cafeteria, Zack. That outburst was completely unlike you."

"I know. It wasn't rational. I'm sorry."

"Zack, you don't have to turn into Brennan. You don't have to rely on logic all the time." Zack sighed and tried to focus on the skeleton but Angela wouldn't let him. "Zack, we're your friends…you're allowed to blow up at us sometimes. It's normal to. Come on…the skeleton sculpture is upstairs."

"I'll be up in a minute." Angela nodded and left. Zack put the skeleton back in her box and went upstairs to join the others. He ran his card through the identifier and walked up onto the platform. What he saw was a blackened and rusted skeleton with a five foot wingspan and bolted together about five metal rods through the base off the statue.

"Zack." Dr. Brennan greeted. Zack got a pair of gloves out and walked over to her and the examining table.

"Wow. This is so cool. I like the hellish representation of an industrialized culture through a tortured soul crying out to heaven. The artist should get an 'A' on his thesis or I'll eat my left shoe." Angela said, sketching the face onto a notepad.

"You got all that from this?" Booth asked, pointing at the remains. He was standing in a corner of the platform as far from the creepy peice of art as he could get.

"Well, I think it's creepy." Dr. Saroyan said. Zack examined how the wings were attached to the scapula.

"These wings are bolted on. Three-Quarter inch bolts." He said out loud.

"Everything is bolted together." Dr. Brennan informed him. That was frustrating.

"We're going have to unscrew every bone." Zack stated, with no small amount of disgust.

"And unglue the feet from the base." Angela said, looking up from her sketchpad. Zack groaned. Hodgins patted him on the back comfortingly. Zack was the one who was going to have to unglue and unbolt the statue. "Okay." Angela added. "I sorta did a non-gender specific sketch."

"Without the pelvis, it would be impossible to identify the remains as male or female." Dr. Brennan informed the room. Hodgins was taking a scraping of the paint to analyze.

"Well, either way….this skeleton used to be a very attractive person." Angela showed the sketch to everyone. Zack stopped cold and started to back away from the remains.

"Alright. Run it through the database to see if it matches any missing person." Dr. Saroyan said. "Zack? What are you doing?"

"I'm backing away from the remains."

"Why?" she asked. It was a valid question.

"The picture won't match anyone on the missing lists." Zack said. "She's not technically missing."

"What do you mean, Zack?" Brennan asked. "Do you recognize Angela's sketch?"

"Anne Zerbrowski. She's suppose to be visiting her sister for two weeks….but really she was at a spa."

"You knew the victim?" Angela asked.

"Yes, she was very nice to me." Zack was still backing away from the examination table. He didn't want to get yelled at for tampering with evidence.

"Wouldn't you want to help figure out what happened to her?" Hodgins asked.

"I can't. It would impede the investigation." Zack well remembered what had happened when Hodgins didn't tell anyone that he knew the victim and his wife. Zack turned to look and looked at Booth. "I'm going to be your prime suspect, Agent Booth." Booth looked confused and wary.

"Why?"

"I have something to gain if Anne's dead." Zack explained. Booth was starting to look angry now.

"What's that?" he asked. Booth was gearing up from a neutral to his federal agent persona. Zack was sort of afraid of that persona.

"I have been having an affair with her husband for a year now."

"You were having an affair with the victim's husband?" Dr. Saroyan asked for clarification. Zack turned to face her.

"Yes. He's on my basketball team and we're friends. It was a natural progression due to our mutual physical attraction."

"Mutual physical attraction?" Dr. Saroyan asked, her voice sounded a little close to cracking.

"Friends?" Angela added.

"Basketball team?" Hodgins finished.

"Yes. Yes and yes." Zack answered all three questions in the positive.

"Since when do you play basketball with a lawyer?" Hodgins asked. He looked confused and betrayed.

"Since I came to D.C to study under Dr. Brennan." Zack said. "There is also a biology major, a zoo-keeper, a English professor, an EMT, and a policeman on the team as well."

"Diverse group." Angela said.

"Yes. We are. We're also really good." Zack was starting to feel the same way he did when the police knocked on his door asking to talk about the disappearance and apparent murder of Bradley Oscarmann. Zack hadn't even told his parents about his attraction for both males and females then, in less than four hours of the police starting to ask him questions, his and Bradley's faces were plastered all over the local evening news. "Is any of this a problem for any of you?"

"That you play basketball or sleep with married men?" Brennan asked.

"Either. Both." Zack clarified.

"No." She went back to her job of studying the remains.

"Uh…no." Dr. Saroyan looked a little wide eyed. "Now, if you all will excuse me. I have to make a few calls to find your replacement for this case, Zack." She walked off the platform.

"Not at all sweetie." Angela walked over and gave him a kiss on the cheek and a hug. She then also returned to her office.

"I'm a little disappointed." Hodgins admitted.

"How so?" Zack was curious.

"You're a jock, man. And here I thought you were smarter than that." Zack smiled at that. Hodgins was very vocal with his dislike of athletes.

"I'm a jock. And I used to play basketball." Booth interjected. Hodgins snorted and waved him away.

"Yeah, but that's expected." Booth gave him a look that, in Zack's opinion, asked whether or not Hodgins was serious and whether or not Booth ought to risk punching him. "Besides how good could Zack be?"

"I'm very good. The Copperheads are second in the league and favorite to win the Championship."

"Really?" Hodgins still wasn't convinced.

"I play forward and help with tactical stratagem." Zack insisted.

"He's actually really good, Hodgins. The Copperheads won in overtime this past Saturday." Booth came to Zack's rescue.

"You saw him play?" Hodgins was incredulous.

"Yeah. He invited me." Hodgins looked from Booth to Zack.

"How come you never invited me?"

"You never asked." Zack said.

"I didn't know you played." Zack shrugged.

"I'm going back down to Limbo to continue examination of Remains PX0-336, Dr. Brennan. Is that okay?"

"Of course, Zack." Zack nodded and left. As he was leaving he heard Dr. Brennan tell Hodgins to examine the make-up of the paint to find out what was the best way to remove it from the bones. She then remarked that she was going to require a ratchet to remove the bolts. He was out of the doors to the main lab when Booth called his name. Zack stopped and turned around to see Booth running toward him.

"Yes?" Zack asked. He was feeling very…upset right now and the last thing that he wanted was to deal with Special Agent Seeley Booth. Seeley stopped when he could speak to Zack without having to raise his voice.

"Come with me."

"Why?"

"Because I want you to help me tell Zerbrowski that his wife's dead." Zack shifted uncomfortably.

"The investigat-"

"Bones and I'll take care of that. But informing the family isn't really part of the investigation now is it?"

"You and Dr. Brennan ask questions when you tell the family."

"And I'll ask the questions. Since you're a….friend of the family I'm going to need to ask you stuff as well. Might ask well be all at once." Zack nodded. That was logical.

"Should I call all the Copperheads and tell them to met us at Zerbrowski's house if you're going to be asking questions of everyone?"

"Nah, besides, you said it yourself. You and Zerbrowski are the primary suspects. Everyone else isn't really that pressing to question." Zack resisted the urge shove his hands in his pockets. He knew it would looked like he was hiding something.

"I didn't do it. Just for the record." Zack said. Booth wrapped an arm around Zack's shoulders as they started to walk toward the exit.

"Zack, for the record, I don't think it's in you to kill anybody." Zack agreed...it didn't mean that he wasn't the reason people were dead.

"But you have to do your job."

"Exactly." Zack understood. Sometimes, no matter how unpleasant, you had to do what you had to do.

Author After Talk: There you go. More to come.

Tropic