A/N
I'd like to publicly thank Afalstein for the lovely review. If you like POI crossovers, you should definitely check out his stories. I especially recommend "New Guy", a POI/ 30 Rock mashup. It is hilarious.
See, people, this is the reward for being brave and sharing your thoughts. You read my stories, and I'll read yours. But if you don't review, I have no way of knowing who you are. You're just numbers on a pageview tracker. Be more than a number. Stand up and shout your opinions for the whole world to hear.
Temperance Brennen spent the rest of the morning in the hotel's conference hall, listening to a lecture on racial and regional identification markers found in bones. Once he was certain that she would be occupied for a while, Reese strapped Bear into the service vest he always kept in his coat pocket for these occasions, lifted a master key from the bellhop, and let himself into her room.
Bear took his time smelling everything thoroughly but didn't turn up anything. No drugs, no bombs, not even a gun. Reese had no more luck. She'd taken her laptop to the lecture. There were just clothes, toiletries, a book on Norse mythology, and a notebook filled with obsessively neat handwriting. He read a few pages from this last item and discovered that it was a rough draft of her next novel. She was a good writer, as far as he could judge. Her sex scenes were especially…imaginative. (He made a mental note to try that move on Zoe.)
"Mr. Reese, are you there?" said the voice in his ear.
He cleared his throat and quickly shut the notebook. "Yes, Finch. Please tell me you have something because I'm coming up empty."
"As a matter of fact, I've found something very interesting. You recall she mentioned a Grandpa Max when she was talking to her daughter?"
"Yeah. Her father or her husband's?"
"Hers. His full name is Max Keenan, and the FBI has an impressive file on him. Apparently, he and his wife, Ruth Keenan, were quite the criminal duo in their day. Very Bonnie and Clyde."
"Except that they didn't get gunned down by the police."
"No, they did not. Instead, one day at the height of their career, they simply disappeared together with their two children – seven year old Kyle Keenan, and two year old Joy Keenan. At about the same time, Matthew and Christine Brennen bought a house in Chicago."
"Let me guess. They had two children."
"A seven year old son name Russel, and a two year old daughter named Temperance."
"So they tried to give up their life of crime and start over. How long did that last?"
"Almost thirteen years. During that time, there were no crimes that matched their MO anywhere in the country. But in December of 1991, they disappeared again, and this time they left their children behind. Just went out to do some Christmas shopping and never came back. Russel was a legal adult by then, but Temperance ended up in foster care for the next few years."
That had to be traumatic, Reese thought. No wonder the girl had devoted her life to identifying faceless, nameless corpses, giving strangers the closure she'd never had. "Since she now calls her father by his real name," he said, "I assume she found out the truth eventually."
"Yes. About eight years ago, she identified her mother's remains. After that, it didn't take her long to put the rest of the pieces together. Her father resurfaced a few months later. It appears that she actually assisted the FBI in apprehending him."
That didn't surprise Reese. She might have been willing to bend the rules for a father who'd raised her and cared for her. But for a man who'd abandoned her to the notoriously uncaring foster system, she had no reason to feel loyalty. Still, if she now trusted him to babysit his grandchild, they must have mended their bridges. "You think the threat might be from one of her father's former criminal associates?"
"It's certainly possible. Interestingly, he wasn't tried for any of those crimes. There wasn't enough evidence. Instead he was charged with murdering the Deputy Director of the FBI."
"Wait, I heard about that. Robert Kirby. The guy was found crucified on top of a hotel in D.C. It came out that he'd been part of some kind of conspiracy within the Bureau." He'd just joined the CIA when the whole thing hit the news.
"Yes," Finch said. "A conspiracy centering on a bank robbery task force from the 60s."
"The task force that was chasing Max Keenan's crew." It seemed that Temperance Brennen's life was a lot less boring than it appeared on the surface.