"You want me to lead an interrogation." Nod. "On my own." Nod. "With a district attorney, a teenage suspect, and the suspect's parents?" Nod. "Without you." Nod.
I looked through the one-way mirror to Nester Olivos' roommate, Tucker something. He had pale blonde hair that suggested he was going for the windswept look and a slight tan. He wore a button-up flannel and jeans. His mother had platinum hair that fell down like an inverted curtain around her face. She had on a black pencil skirt and pink blouse and his father had a firm jawline, slacks, and a business suit with a necktie. The district attorney, or DA, sat on the side of the rectangular table, clean-cut business suit and all, and a black briefcase with a numerical lock was on the floor by his feet.
I looked back to Booth, perfectly confused. The FBI agent wanted me to conduct the interrogation; I wasn't entirely sure what angle he was working at. His reasoning was that I'd been proven to hold my own and Tucker might feel more inclined to answer someone his own age. "You're sure about this?" I asked warily. Although I'd love to be in the crime-solving ranks, I wasn't FBI, and Booth could write a novel filled with just several reasons why I shouldn't be allowed this right.
"Go on, kid. You'll do fine," Booth said, ushering me to the door. I sighed, bracing myself for however this would end, and stepped through, trying to put on a tough air. No way Tucker would confess all to a little girl. I'd likely have better luck if I put on a tougher act. I confidently pulled out the chair across from the three being held for questioning and spun it around, balancing on my knees on the chair's surface, leaning over the table and propping myself up with my elbows.
"Hey," I said. "My name's Holly Kirkland. I'm in alliance with the FBI and I'll be doing the questioning."
Tucker's eyes widened as I said my name. "You're the kid that shot the senator's aid!" He exclaimed, pointing. His mother gave him a stern look and he stopped pointing.
"Yeah. He deserved it, too. He murdered his girlfriend and her fetal child and then tried to light myself and Dr. Brennan on fire," I said firmly, leaving no room for argument and closing the discussion. "So, Tucker. You and Nester were roommates for three months, yeah?"
"Yes, ma'am," Tucker mumbled.
"And you invited him to spend the vacation with you?"
Tucker looked up slightly, but it was his mom that replied for him. "We have a summer home on Cape Breton with plenty of room."
"But for some reason, Nester didn't enjoy rolling with your boys, and he decided to go back home to Venezuela." I fixed a piercing gaze on the submissive teen from Hanover. "What did the other kids say about him?"
"Nester was different," Tucker said meekly, trying to not seem as intimidated as he obviously was. He searched for the right words, trying to be sensitive to the subject, but also trying to convey his meaning. "He used to be deaf, so he kind of talked like…" He paused before saying, "Some kids called him a retard."
His mother closed her eyes and shivered as if she was cold. "Tucker, please don't say retard."
"I never called him that!" Tucker fervently denied, his emotions getting the better of his timid character. He looked up at me for once. "He went to church every Sunday even though nobody made him go. People thought that was weird."
"Did he have a girlfriend?" I asked, raising my eyebrows suggestively. Although I was never involved in sex scandals and… you know, actually never had a relationship with anyone (shut up, I know it's sad, okay?! Most people my age have had several…), I wasn't stupid, and I knew that guys, teenage ones especially, will go to great lengths to get laid. Maybe Nester's girlfriend didn't appreciate that.
Tucker sighed reluctantly but answered. I got the feeling he felt like he was betraying his friend. "He said there was a girl he liked, but he never told me who."
I glared, hardening my gaze and staring into his eyes. "You know," I said softly, but there was an undertone of danger in my voice. Through my life, I'd mastered controlling my tone. The only times I couldn't was when I was under extreme duress. "You're lying to the FBI."
"Careful, miss Kirkland," the DA cautioned, speaking for the first time.
"No, you shut up," I said, not looking away from Tucker. "I'm a minor, not officially in the FBI, I just happen to be assisting them. I have no jurisdiction, and therefore it's just like Tucker's being manipulated. Sad that it happens, yeah, but the legal system can't do a thing about it. So," I said, reverting back to the nervous teenager. "An email was sent to Nester's parents from Nova Scotia, saying what a great time he was having. Only thing about it is that he was already dead."
"Was it you, Tucker?" Tucker's mom asked, shifting in the chair to look at her son in concern.
"I'd prefer he didn't answer," the DA advised.
"No Dawn," Tucker's father said abruptly to his wife. "If it was Tucker, he has to admit to it."
I couldn't help but feel sorry for the attorney – why was he even here if no one was listening to him? Granted, that was partly my fault, but whatever, I can be hypocritical if I want. "You know the dodge," Tucker said, shamefully avoiding looking at either of his parents.
I leaned back, relieving the boy of some of the pressure. "You backed him up so he could be with a girl," I said matter-of-factly.
"Tucker!" His mother gasped.
"I know! I'm sorry, but he begged me!"
"What girl?" I interrupted.
"I told you!" Tucker exploded suddenly, hitting the sides of his fist on the table. "I don't know! I thought Nester made her up. I sent an email, that's all!"
"He had a girlfriend?" Brennan clarified from my words.
I leaned over her desk, my hair falling down over my shoulders as I nodded. The mostly-empty room was good for hypothesizing; although I knew Brennan wouldn't approve of conjecture, I had a feeling I could make her at least consider a reasonable scenario.
"So here's what I figure; Nester leaves Nova Scotia and meets up with a pretty girl, who, for some reason yet to be determined didn't really appreciate the gesture. She gets mad, she kills him and stages it as suicide. Strangle him with a rope, use a ladder to shove him into the noose. Knock him unconscious and then find a way to pull him up the tree. Something, it's got to be possible."
"Although it is mere conjecture-" See? "-It may be worth looking into," Brennan decided, nodding at me. "Commendable work in the interrogation, Holly."
Knock knock. I looked up. Dr. Goodman was standing in the open threshold, his closed fist paused up in the air by the open door as if to knock again. "Dr. Brennan, miss Kirkland," he greeted. "Can you spare a moment for the Venezuelan ambassador?"
"Thank you," Ambassador Olivos said to Dr. Goodman as the latter gave Brennan and I meaningful looks and turned to walk away.
"Is there something I can do for you?" Brennan asked curiously as the ambassador approached. I moved to the side, behind Brennan's monitor, so that the woman could stand beside me opposite Brennan.
The ambassador handed Brennan a staged school photograph of her son. "I understand that you are very good at your job, Dr. Brennan," she said cordially. "But I think that you are not a mother, correct?"
Brennan swiveled her chair slightly so she was facing the ambassador more than she was me. "No, I'm not a mother," she answered truthfully.
The ambassador's eyes looked sad and haunted. She passed a DVD to Brennan, her hands trembling as the anthropologist accepted the disc. "Please watch this." Brennan looked at me for a moment, but I shrugged and motioned to the disc reader on the side of her monitor. Brennan nodded and carefully inserted the disc, sliding the little platform back into the system computer. The ambassador continued, excusing the nonverbal conversation. "All a mother wants to know is that she has raised her child well. That he will grow up to be a good man. I will never see this. I will never know." Brennan hit play and I leaned over her desk to see the monitor of a computer. A little child was sitting on a hospital bed, a man in a lab coat standing by the side. Just at the edge of the camera was the ambassador's face and she signed to her son while talking, a note of delirious hysteria in her voice. "Te amo! Te amo!" I love you! I love you!
The ambassador lifted her chin as she heard her own voice through the speakers. "The day Nester received his implant."
"The first day he could hear," Brennan whispered, obviously affected by the show of emotion in the ambassador's on-screen voice.
"And the first thing he heard was my voice. I told him I loved him. The child who has lived through this miracle would never take his own life." The ambassador blinked, holding sobs at bay. She nodded to Brennan respectfully. "You're a scientist. You need more than a mother's reassurance. Fine. My husband and I have many enemies, that is why I sent Nester to Hanover. They promised us that he would be safe. What if they failed? They would not want to admit it. They would do everything they could to bias you towards suicide."
"I promise you, Ambassador Olivos, if your son's death was a homicide, we will find not only that, but the person who did it," I said powerfully. "The Jeffersonian seems to have a knack for it."
The ambassador of Venezuela nodded to me, dipping her head respectfully. "Thank you."
"I want to take another look at Nester's room," Booth said. It took him way too long to explain this to us, after kidnapping Brennan and I for nearly an hour and driving to Hanover before finally telling us why he'd done that.
"What, exactly, do you hope to find?" Brennan asked, humoring him as we entered the bright lighting of the stairwell.
I looked up, trying to guess how long it would take to scale all the stairs to Nester's dormitory. My eyes locked with a stranger's. He wore a dark blue suit and had cropped hair. His eyes widened when he saw me. "Booth!" I shouted, getting the idea that the man maybe wasn't supposed to be there. I pointed up at him and he started to turn, running away, confirming my theory.
On automatic, I shoved my way past the FBI agent, who sprang into action about a second later. I took the steps two at a time, vaulting myself up the staircases. When I came to a landing, I grabbed the banister and used my momentum to swing around and continue the pursuit. Booth was hot on my heels, and Brennan ran after us just a little bit slower.
"Stay back!" Booth called up to me.
If possible, I only increased my speed as I saw a door closing. I shoved it open. "No chance," I muttered, walking into Nester's dorm room. So this was why the man was here – the window was ajar. That must be how he got in. But… where was he? I got here maybe ten seconds after him…
Movement flashed at the corner of my eye. I turned and assaulted the man as he dove for the window. He jumped up and lashed out at me, his hand striking my face. The single ring he wore sliced at my cheek in passing and I felt the sensation of warm blood sluggishly rolling down my skin. I socked him in the jaw. His head snapped back as he kicked out at my shins. I jumped out of his range and lashed out, kicking him in the stomach. His hands went down and twisted around my ankle, so I pulled back my leg. He followed, pulling back, and I shot my leg out again, uncoiling the muscles, and because he'd been pulling, it was no trouble to land a solid hit in his stomach. Shocked, he let go and stumbled back.
He came back for another round after a second, trying to fight back, but he was dazed and I was on self-defense mode. Once I get like that, it takes a bit to calm me down, and my vision is sharp but my rationale is shaken a little loose. I've been in so much danger before, that now when I feel threatened, I blast into a defensive, and from that, I usually go on offensive. I fisted the man's collar as he came back and fired three solid hits to his face with my fist. The third time, he stumbled. I let go and he fell down, eyes rolling back into his head.
A hand landed on my shoulder. I whirled around, hair flying out around me. The hand on my shoulder was joined by another on my opposite shoulder and held me in place for a moment. I blinked rapidly; the contact wasn't aggressive. I recognized Booth, watching me in concern, while Brennan nudged the unconscious man with the toe of her shoe. "You alright?" Booth asked me.
I nodded, feeling reason wash over me again. Booth reached up to my face and wiped a thin stream of blood away. The whole situation seemed pretty paternal; I wanted to be angry at him for touching me, but I wasn't. He'd acted out of concern, and aside from that, if he hadn't temporarily restrained me, I might have attacked him or Brennan if they'd gotten too close to me before I regained my bearings.
Booth's eyes lingered on me for a moment before he seemed to take my word for it. He pulled his arms back and joined Brennan by the unconscious body. Brennan had a billfold out and was looking through it. "His name's Tovar Comara," she announced. "He's security at the Venezuelan embassy."
"If he's security, then why did he run?" I grumbled, feeling the slice on my face. The blood kept dripping and my normally pale skin was probably stained light red. See? This is why I don't usually wear jewelry.
We called in the incident, and before we knew it, the ambassador was at Hanover's headmaster's office. With her were two security guards, and, of course, Comara, who was looking worse for wear, with bruises forming on his face and a black eye already starting to show. They, accompanied with one of Hanover's maids, were in the office with Brennan, Booth, and I. The headmaster and Sanders were absent, taking care of affairs with the bureau.
The ambassador sat at the headmaster's desk, her security on either side. I was seated in the chair across from her, the maid attending to my injury. She was on her knees with her back straight and a first aid kit by her side. Booth and Brennan were standing so that I could have my cut taken care of with more ease.
"What we would like to know is what Mr. Comara was doing in Nester's room," Brennan said, her arms crossed.
I hissed. "Ah! Ow! F***, that stings!" The maid didn't flinch back, but just kept the hydrogen peroxide-soaked cloth at my cheek. Usually I can tolerate pain from peroxide without complaining, but this time it'd been a while since the skin had torn, and so all the particulates from the air had gotten into the cut, so it was about three times as worse as normal. Not to mention the maid didn't give any warning.
"I am truly sorry," Comara apologized again to me. "I did not realize your intent and purposes of appearance until after the moment."
"I asked Mr. Comara to go to Nester's room to prove the point that suicide was not the only possibility," the ambassador explained patiently. "I assure you, I did not send him with instructions to assault anyone that found him, and your injury, miss Kirkland, was not anticipated."
"You wanted to prove that an outsider can get to your son," Booth nodded, understanding.
"The school informed me that Nester's death was most certainly a suicide and that anything else was impossible."
"We proved them correct," Comara said, sounding distressed as he nursed his sore stomach. "I failed to escape without being detected."
I sighed, clenching my fists as the maid pressed a cotton swab against the luckily clean and shallow slice and held it in place by taping a band aid over it. It should be healed in a few days, and in a few hours I could take off the band aid and cotton. She rubbed my bloodstained cheek with an alcoholic wipe, scrubbing off the lingering color from the blood.
"Your intentions were honorable, but the way you went about it was not," I said to the ambassador. The maid stepped away and I brought my hand up to cup my face. It stung slightly. "Firstly, intrusion and hostile assault wasn't the only way for your son to be killed. He could have been caught alone, off school grounds or in the forest, by someone he trusted, which is a likely possibility. Also, you should have consulted with the FBI about our investigation. The school lied to you. We've already ruled it a homicide."
The ambassador looked startled before nodding slightly. "I apologize. I was misinformed."
"I won't press charges," I said, shaking my head slightly. Not only could I not afford a lawyer, but it was just a silly scrape. Besides, it wasn't worth going to court with Venezuelan officials just for a bit of satisfaction.
"Thank you," the ambassador told me, negligent of eye contact, which told me she really was sorry. She stood up. "Please excuse me. I must prepare my driver to depart back to the embassy so that you may continue with your reasons for being here initially."
She left the door open behind her as she left. Booth looked to Comara smoothly. "Do you think Nester was killed by outsiders?"
"Not Venezuelan insurgents," Comara confessed after a moment. "They would make a statement. Not fake a suicide. This is hanging." He sniffed slightly, rubbing a bruise on his jawbone. "Willa mala."
"Hmm," Brennan hummed.
Booth sighed exasperatedly. "Sure you know someone says, you know, 'it smells' in a Spanish accent and all of a sudden you're like, 'hmm, interesting!'"
"What are we looking for?" I asked, looking around Nester's room.
It was pretty calm, color-wise. He liked more dull colors; the walls were all a tan cream and his sheets were white, with a grey fuzzy blanket. The pillow was fuzzy and dark blue, and the bedside table and bed were the same color brown. The mattress was just a normal white, a little less bright than the sheets due to aging. The carpet was soft but not extravagant. It was plain, a shaggy silver rug. The cabinets were polished excessively. Touching one, it was very smooth. I couldn't feel the general bumps that came with department store wood. He had lots of CDs and a very basic radio/CD player on the floor. His desk was neat and organized. This told me he preferred extra stimulus to make up for needing an implant to hear. He would rather have excessive sensory input through touch than to hear everything all the time. I could understand; people are conditioned for loud and sudden noises as they grow through infancy. Nester was older than three when he had the implant.
"I talked to a few of Nester's teachers and a few students that he hung out with," Booth said, looking around. "He was a loner. Well, I mean he went to his classes, but, you know, mainly he just stayed here in his room. That's it, so I figured we'd come here and you could do your little anthropologist things."
I sighed, looking around further. "He liked to feel things. They were distracting from the overwhelming auditory stimulation. No matter how long he had it, he couldn't hear for the time when people become conditioned to auditory stimulus. He liked music, too," I mentioned, pointing at the bookshelf. Then I pointed over at the desk. "He liked to keep things tidy because he didn't want to feel inferior to his life like he had when he felt disabled and controlled by his inability to hear."
Brennan moved slowly to the music shelf. She pulled out a few albums. Three of the four she pulled out were things with lots of percussion, like tribal music. "Heavy procession, low frequencies for the most part. It's the stuff he probably liked before the implant. He could feel the vibrations in his chest." Brennan put them back and moved her hand further down the row, selecting other, lighter-colored CD cases. "After the implant, he started enjoying stuff with more melody. He was growing, he enjoyed it."
Booth spread his arms, smiling widely. "And enjoyment is the opposite of suicide!"
Brennan scowled, putting the CDs back where she found them. "You've decided this isn't a suicide, so you're collecting evidence to support that. By closing your mind, you're missing important indicators!"
I sighed. Really, a blind idiot could tell there was some definite sexual tension in between them. Even though Booth supposedly has a lady friend already. Booth fished through the trash, letting Brennan's words fall upon deaf ears. With a little puff of triumph, the FBI agent pulled out a CD. "Oh yeah?" He asked, smirking at Brennan victoriously. "So why did he throw this away?" He looked at the cover of the disc. "I mean, hey, it's flute music, that's reason enough, but where's the case?"
Brennan looked back to the shelf and scanned through with her eyes before frowning. "These aren't organized."
I walked over by her and looked through the shelves, recognizing the pattern of organization. "Ugh. Girls usually organize things alphabetically, chronologically, or by color. Guys organize things by their worth. He threw that away?" I looked up to the top left. They were kept in pristine condition; further along the row, one of the CDs had a crack in the case and they weren't as well kept. I went straight to the bottom right and found the CD title with a flute instrumental and pulled it out of the line, popping it open. A plain disc, burnt from a laptop, was innocently inside.
"If he threw it away, why did he re-burn it?" Brennan asked, looking at the CD.
I squinted at the disc. It was thicker than most CDs, and just barely even fit in the case. "It's not a CD," I decided. "It's a DVD."
I hid my rosy face behind my knees, wrapping my arms around my legs and trying to disappear into the floor. Moans and gasps came from Angela's sound system and I frantically tried to keep my eyes from meeting the computer monitor's projection across the wall.
"I should have known," Booth sighed, disappointed. "It's a fifteen year old boy. It's just porn."
"Just porn? You mean it's not bad enough?! I'm a minor! I don't want to watch other minors have sex! This is literally illegal! Why do I have to watch it with you perverts?" I wailed miserably, closing my eyes tightly and covering my face for good measure. Everyone ignored me dutifully, dismissing my miserable shouts.
"Wait," Brennan said as Booth started to get up.
"That's our hanging victim," Angela declared, having run recognition programs to get a positive match.
Zach was staring at the screen in earnest captivation. "This is pretty kinky stuff."
My cheeks flamed again. "Can we just shut up about the DVD, please?!"
"I need to know where and when it was shot," Brennan told Angela, not seeming too affected by the lewd noise coming from the speakers. "What kind of camera, and anything else that might help."
"I'm going to need stills and close-ups of the girl's face," Booth told Angela, loading onto the woman's workload and time with the forsaken sex tape.
Hodgins lurched forward slightly and choked, coughing. "Thanks a lot, Booth," he groaned. "My seven organ soup is repeating on me."
"Well, you ordered," Booth said helplessly. "You should have left it to Sid." He looked up to Brennan. "Let's see what the school has to say about this."
"Yes!" I jumped up, maybe a little too enthusiastically. "Out of here! School! Van! Let's go!"
Sanders crossed his arms as the sex tape was paused on the headmaster's desk computer monitor. "We've seen this kind of thing before."
"Illegal pornography?" I asked, skeptical. Maybe it wasn't weird for kids to sleep together in this day and age, but it was still illegal to tape it.
"Young people are more jaded than they used to be," the headmaster said, not really giving the impression that he cared. "Sometimes they swap these tapes."
"I've had it tough, but I've never had the urge to tape myself having sex. At all. Not even a remote little thought at the back of my conscience. I have a hard time believing that your excuse will hold up against the law," I pointed out, scoffing.
"I'm surprised to see Nester," Sanders confessed to Booth, completely ignoring me. I sighed.
"But not so surprised to see the girl?" Booth asked, raising his eyebrows at the unspoken sentence.
"How is that relevant?" The headmaster laughed the slightly wheezy chuckle of an uneasy man.
"You know what's a better question?" Brennan asked, annoyed with the two of the men who kept interfering in our leads. "What makes you think you get to decide what's relevant? You're basically the principal of the high school.
"We need to see all the sex tapes that you've confiscated," Booth declared, rocking back on his heels.
"Absolutely not," the headmaster said, folding his hands on his desk and wearing a small smile of innocence.
Booth's eyes narrowed for a moment before he shrugged. "Oh, well. I'll just go get a warrant and, in the application for a warrant, I'll include your admission that you allow your students to swap homemade sex tapes."
"The headmaster is not refusing to provide you with the tapes," Sanders denied peacefully, with a bit of mirth.
"'Absolutely not' sounds like a refusal to me," I argued, holding my hands up in the air.
"When we confiscate the tapes, we immediately turn them over to local law enforcement," Sanders elaborated, tilting his head to the side arrogantly. Damn… they obeyed law, and so we couldn't do anything to them.
"Sheriff Roach knew about this?" Booth looked slightly stung, like he'd trusted the sheriff who then put a knife in his back.
"No need to issue a warrant." A ghost of a smile passed over Sanders's face. "We are cooperating completely."
"Was the girl also a student here?" Brennan inquired.
The headmaster shared a look with Sanders before saying airily, "Given your hostility, it's time we bring in a lawyer to advise us."
I twitched, my hands balling into fists at my sides. "Or you take my advice – if you don't answer our questions, I'll handcuff you to the rear bumper of Booth's van and literally drag you down the highway to the FBI headquarters via automobile," I threatened, taking a step forward challengingly.
Sanders looked amused while the headmaster looked only mildly disturbed. Brennan nodded seriously at them. "She'll do it. She doesn't like you," she explained needlessly. I shook my head at them to confirm what she said and raised my eyebrows. You wanna go, pal?
The headmaster seemed to not want to risk it. He sighed heavily, making his opinion on the situation crystal clear. "Fine, Agent Booth. Her name is Camden Destri."
"Nester Olivos?" Camden looked up through long, mascara-soaked lashes at Booth. "I knew him. He's kind of famous since he died."
"Poor kid, to take his own life." Camden's mom sighed, shaking her head in sadness as she blinked rapidly.
"Were you romantically involved?" I asked Camden, keeping my gaze straight on her.
"No," Camden denied, putting on the voice of a sweet child. If I didn't know better, I would probably actually believe her, too.
Mrs. Destri crossed her legs, folding her hands neatly on her lap and sitting up straight, obviously proud of her daughter's views. "Camden is too young to date seriously."
Booth made eye contact with me and let his head roll to the side. He picked up the remote to the TV set at the front of the room. It was a small TV on a rolling cart, but when the agent pressed the little red power button and the screen brightened, playing a lewd, scandalous video of Camden, it sure did its job. Camden's light hair was slung back over her shoulders, tangling in itself as it flew around when her head jerked back. "You know, if anything good comes from this tape, at least you know that you have exceptional balance," I told Camden as the recorded version of herself managed to stay on her knees without falling back or forwards at all.
"Tell me when you've seen enough to start telling the truth!" Booth shouted irately.
"This is outrageous, Agent Booth!" The lawyer protested, leaning forward in his seat and moving his hands, vehemently gesticulating with his protest.
Camden's eyes widened and her lower lip started trembling. Her breath caught and she shuddered violently. "Oh my God!" She cried. Although she was horrified by the recording, she couldn't seem to tear her eyes from the television set. "I can't believe this." The on-screen Venezuelan boy dipped his head to bite on the on-screen Camden's jugular. Although I understand that this is supposedly a big turn-on, it looks more like a death wish to me. I mean, really, bite down and pull hard and you're dead. "Oh my God! Where did that come from?"
The lawyer took his glasses off, wiping the lenses with a little handkerchief. "Really, Mr. Booth, Miss Kirkland, I must protest."
"I am tired of being lied to, so excuse me if I'm indelicate!" Booth shouted at the lawyer, not calming down. Either way, he seemed to get that Camden's expression was abhorred and his conscience made him turn off the TV again. "Okay, let's start over, shall we? Did you know Nester Olivos, and were you romantically involved?"
"Why would he do that?" Camden had tears streaming from her eyes and down her tanned face. "Why would Nester tape us? I loved him!" She covered her face in her hands. Sorry to break it to you, Destri, but I'm guessing he didn't feel the same.