The Face With Two Skeletons
by Tropicwhale
disclaimer: Not mine
Author Talk: So, my cashews, you still love me right? Zack's kidnapped and then there is this chapter…. So without further ado
Chapter Forty-Two:
The Answer to Everything
(could not resist, how often am I going to write a chapter 42?)
Brennan stared across the table at Hector Oscarmann in the FBI interrogation room knowing Booth was watching from the other side of the two way mirror. He had mumbled something about being currently unable to be in the same room with a man who shot his own son and at Zack. So Brennan was conducting the interview along with Special Agent Charles Marsters. Marsters had recently worked with Zack on an remains identification. Marsters was average height with blond hair, a broad forehead, and a wiry frame. Brennan felt flickers of attraction for the man but discounted it in favor of interviewing the overweight man across the table from her.
"So," Brennan took a moment to compose herself and glanced at Hector who was glaring at her with what she could only assume was contempt. "let's start with-"
"My son's murder." Hector spoke and Brennan ignored him.
"Your wife's disappearance. When was the last time you saw her? When you saw her alive, I mean. " Hector leaned back and observed her.
"You honestly think that my wife's murder and my son aren't related?" He asked then leaned forward again. It was a classic dominate male pose to aggressively gain ground in a defensive situation.
"Honestly? No."
"That's when it all started. That night…." Oscarmann said, leaning back again. He was shifting his weight. Brennan glared at him. Marsters put his hand on her forearm. He was "touchy-feel-y" like that. Booth had warned her.
"Are you going to tell us a story, Hector?" he asked, his voice surprisingly deep given his small frame. Hector sneered at Marsters and Marsters raised his eyebrows, face blank. "Let's start in the middle, and then you can go back and tell us about your son." Distantly, Brennan heard something hit the wall. Booth was agitated and probably had punched the wall or the table. She dismissed that and focused on the interview.
"When was the last time you saw your wife alive, Hector?" Hector's face grew haunted.
"New Year's" He said.
"Now Hector," Marsters said, complacently. "We can't help you if you are going to be sarcastic." Brennan observed that Marsters' interrogation technique was very different than Booth's. He cajoled where Booth demanded. His demeanor was not that of an alpha male but of an intimate friend, leaning forward and trying to make eye contact. Brennan found that interesting on a scientific level.
"I'm not being sarcastic, little man, last time I saw Olivia was New Year's Day. She went out to get more booze and never came back."
"Seven months." Charles confirmed, writing that down on a notepad in front of him. Booth never took notes. That was another difference in their interrogation techniques. Brennan was fascinated, anthropologically speaking, how two individuals alike in social hierarchy approached a situation in very different ways.
"Yeah."
"Why didn't you go looking for her? Why didn't anyone in your community notice she was missing?"
"Oh, they did. I told 'em she ran off with another man. Said she got tired of me coming home late and drinking too much…things like that happen and I was a respected man. They believed me."
"Why didn't you go looking for her yourself?"
"I did. Searched. There was no trace. After awhile, I assumed she was dead." Hector crossed his arms over his chest and looked off to the side. According to Brennan's recent research into body language that meant that he was hiding something and on the defensive. Agent Marsters also seemed to pick up on the nonverbal cues.
"But that's not all, is it, Hector?" he said quietly. "You did find clues to her whereabouts."
"You mean besides a box of her bones on my front porch?" Hector snapped. Charles shifted, his demeanor suddenly aggressive, staring the other man down. A contest of wills started and the minutes seemed like hours to Brennan. Hector's body language suggested anger, a hot sort of energy that burned. Marsters' was cooler, calmer; slowly, patiently bearing down on the inferno until it broke and sputtered out. Hector looked down, although his arms remained crossed. "There was a park, a bench that she would go to…to contemplate our son and our situation. She would go about once a month, from dawn until dusk and never speak about it. Olivia liked it there. It was on the edge of the swamp and it wasn't uncommon to hear that there had been a gator sighting. When she didn't come back from the liquor run I thought that, maybe, she went there. There was blood on the bench, shotgun hole about half the size of my fist."
"You knew she was murdered." Brennan said. Hector nodded. His face contorted and he covered his eyes with his hand. He let out a sob.
"When that cardboard box showed up at my house I knew it was Olivia." Hector moved his hand away from his eyes. They were watery but tears hadn't fallen yet. "Who else could it be? I…I'm not a good man. I know that. I have fits of anger and can be violent and Olivia was the only good thing in my life. The only good thing. She was always so patient with me especially after…."
"She helped you escape from prison?" Brennan wanted to know.
"Parole. It was easy to with her help. We came back down south. I knew it was a mistake…going north like that but she was so happy to have a chance…..I couldn't resist that smile of hers. When she said 'please' I turned the world around to make it happen."
"You went to Michigan to make her happy."
"Uprooted my family, left the force just so she could have a chance…for what? For some stupid little fairy to taint my boy, my only son, and lose everything that I had worked so hard to build? She knew it was her fault. She knew that we had lost everything because of her curiosity." Brennan sat up.
"Her curiosity?"
"She found out that she was adopted and tracked down her biological family to Michigan."
"The Addys."
"Yeah, we bought a house down the street from them in the hopes of one day being about to tell them that we were some long lost relatives. Hell, Olivia orchestrated it so that our son and that genius brat of theirs became friends."
"Bradley and Zack were third cousins." Temperance began to understand, the pieces falling into place.
"Which makes what they were doing that night even more ungodly." Hector's anger was back. He was leaning forward again, trying to intimidate them. Brennan and Marsters wouldn't let him succeed.
"And you thought that a shotgun was the answer?" Brennan asked. "Murder is just as much of a sin as sodomy according to the Christian bible." Oscarmann sat back with a scoff.
"Atheist."
"There is no empirical data that suggests a God." Brennan shrugged. Marsters pointed at her, without looking.
"Actually there is, if you know where to look." Brennan looked at him and it was his turn to shrug. "I'm just sayin'." He said and turned back to Oscarmann. "A shotgun? Really?"
"My only regret is that I had only birdshot in it." Brennan sat up a little straighter and then realized that it could have been misconstrued as a tail* and carefully mitigated her posture.
"Point blank to the sternum? It says your son's body was never recovered."
"No, I was too far away. I missed and then that brat was out the window."
"Zack?" Brennan asked. Hector cast her a sour look. Like it offended him that she had named his son's lover.
"No." He scoffed. "Bradley. He darted out the window after his little bedmate."
"He escaped?" Marsters confirmed.
"Yeah."
"Then what happened?" The federal agent seemed to sense blood in the water. His entire body language changing. "You run after him? To the woods behind the house?" Brennan knew that Booth had briefed Marsters of the situation with Hector Oscarmann.
"No. I called the police."
"I don't understand." Brennan looked between Marsters and Oscarmann.
"Don't you?" Marsters gave her a grim smile. "He didn't kill his son." Marsters looked back at him. "Didn't you, Hector?"
"I have no son. I fired the gun and as far as I'm concerned that was the end of my son. He died the second he decided to become a sodomite." Brennan looked at the two way glass where she was sure that Booth was still watching, shocked as she was. Marsters smiled a small, tight smile.
"Excuse us for a second, would you? Dr. Brennan? A private word?"
Author After Talk: So, there's that little bit of revelation. And also? Chapter 52 is being a bitch.
(AN: tail*: This was not a mistype. She means tell, misconstrued as a tell. Booth isn't there to correct her in her own head. She thinks her body language is giving her thought process away)
Love From the Dorkside;
Tropic