"Mr. Garfield, why did you wait two days to file the Missing Person's report on your fiancee?" Booth asked, crossing his arms on top of the conference table in an FBI debriefing room. It wasn't like we needed to interrogate Marni's fiancee; I suppose the conference room is much more comfortable for the person under scrutiny.
Marni's fiance wasn't as thin as she herself was, but he wasn't overweight. I'm a bit ashamed to say that I had expected him to be portly, although I only realized that expectation when I saw that he wasn't. I blame the Garfield comics, with the orange cat that loves lasagna and sleep. His short, dark blonde hair was ruffled by his hands running through it in stress. "Marni is a documentary filmmaker…" he had to pause to correct his verbal tenses. "Or, was. She was very dedicated to work. She immersed herself in each project. It's not odd for her to stay out in the field without coming home."
"When you get invested in your work, time has a way of getting away from you," Brennan acknowledged wisely, nodding slightly in agreement to the fiancee's words, validating it to Booth.
"That's what Marni…" Garfield started, sniffed, and raised his hand to cover his mouth and nose, elbow on the table, as he finished on a quieter note. "... Always said."
"Kleenex?" I offered tonelessly, shoving a cardboard tissue box over the table.
Garfield glanced at me, but whatever he thought, he kept it to himself. He pulled a tissue from the box and folded it in half, but didn't use it. I suppose it served as something to do with his hands.
"You didn't worry about her down there?" Booth asked. He was doing the majority of the questioning - not for a sudden desire to talk over Brennan or I, but simply because I wasn't feeling very talkative and I think Brennan was watching over me too closely to concentrate on covering all the bases.
"She's been all over the world," Garfield answered honestly, with a pathetic little smile of pride. "Rwanda, Latin America, the Balkans, the Middle East." Like Brennan, Marni had been an adventurer; although they had explored for different reasons, Marni being a documentary filmmaker and Brennan a cultural and forensic anthropologist, they were both women going to dangerous areas of the world not particularly known for their equality towards the feminine sex or the hospitality of the natives. "I was just glad to have her home."
"You two were engaged," Booth stated softly, subtly pressing for the details.
Garfield nodded, his eyes clouding slightly as water pooled over his irises. "And we'd finally set a date."
"I'm very sorry for your loss," Booth said with a respectful dip of his head.
The sentiment of a respectful moment for Marni's memory was ruined by Brennan's continuation of the conversation. "Was it her work that took her down to the tunnels?"
"Her latest project the last couple of months was about the maze of tunnels beneath the city." Garfield shook his head like he was ridding himself of the vestiges of grief and leaned forward to the remote to the small television set by the wall. He hit play; the volume was so low that I couldn't really hear an audio, but the film was of Marni and the camera's perspective of a short blonde woman in a furry warm jacket moving through a tunnel with a collection of seemingly random homeless people in the background, huddling by the wall and away from the cameras aside from the few who didn't mind as much. "That's what she'd put together so far. I told her to be careful." He looked away from the tape and back to Booth and sighed. "You know, a lot of those guys are pretty nuts."
"Well, if you had to live underground in a system of tunnels where city workers periodically came down and went through your things claiming to be social workers making sure everything was going alright, I'm pretty sure you'd be a bit pissy to the upstairs world, too," I quipped with a roll of my eyes, playing my role of the flippant and insensitive consultant perfectly.
It wasn't that I particularly wanted to be a bitch; but it was what I had been used to. So much had changed for me recently that I'd gone from having sleep issues to a panic attack in an environment I felt safe in. I can't just ignore all of the changes - I can't forget that Booth is my father or that Hodgins pretty much claimed me on a family plan with Cantilever or that Brennan is acting as my doctor to watch over me or that someone I trusted kidnapped me and stabbed me - but what I can do is make it easier for me to adapt to those by compensating with the familiarity of other things.
And all the secrets I'd kept had put me in a position where, around Booth, Brennan, and the squints, I was selectively insensitive, impulsively violent, and - probably one of the best things for my mental state - spoke my mind most of the time. It's never been that I won't speak if I've got something to say, but around them I was deliberately trying not to get too close. By turning off that brain-mouth filter I was subtly trying to keep them from seeing too much of my emotions, and it was a great relief to say what came into my head, so long as it didn't interfere with the misconceptions I fostered.
If I can make these transitions easier for myself by acting the way I used to, then why shouldn't I? Obviously I can't completely avoid the changes - nor do I necessarily want to, per se - and I can't push them away, but if I give myself the time to adjust before trying to take on everything else, then maybe I'll be less prone to the anxiety that had gripped me in a vice at the Jeffersonian.
"That's fascinating," Brennan said, in reference to Marni's documentary clip playing on the screen. "A fully-functional shadow society." Although everyone knew they existed, they were something that people don't often want to talk about; they aren't publicized, and so you don't see them often. The anthropologist turned to Garfield. "Did you ever go down there with her?"
"Who did she work with?" Booth asked at the same time as Brennan.
Garfield looked between the two adults in a momentary confusion of who to answer first before he responded. "Marni worked alone. She did her own camerawork and sound. It was very raw. That's her style. She never appeared on camera in her own work. She thought the documentary should be about the subject, not the filmmaker."
"That's true." Brennan told Booth, nodding her head vigorously. "As an anthropologist, you try to immerse yourself in a culture without distorting it with your own presence. It's another reason to work alone."
"Be that as it may, Marni was a filmmaker, not an anthropologist," I reminded Brennan firmly. It used to be that I would think twice before trying to contradict her, but after the fiasco where she allowed Jesse Kane to confuse her priorities and judgment, we had an unspoken agreement where if I felt she was irrationally allowing her judgment or objectivity to be untrue or swayed, I could help keep her on track without repercussion.
Garfield took a deep breath, pushing back his grief once again before it could make a surprise appearance, and cleared his throat. "So, you found her at the bottom of an air shaft?" He asked, just to be clear on the details. His eyes flickered to the video. "You think that one of those people-"
"Her skull has some unexplained damage," Brennan interrupted him before he could finish asking his second question. "The shattering on the right-"
Booth stepped in this time before any damage could be done, although Garfield was already flinching back as though the words themselves were assaulting him. "We're still investigating, Mr. Garfield."
Brennan's eyes remained fixed on the small television set and without warning she started moving, leaning forward in her chair and reaching for the remote. Her eyes were still on the film and so her grabbing motions were clumsy, her hand slapping the table just past the remote before she found it. "Wait a minute, freeze!" She found the pause button eventually. "That's the man I saw in the tunnel!"
She had frozen the image at a good moment. There was good lighting, illuminating the platinum blonde hair of the short woman in the coat. She was probably someone from the city's services who had served as a guide for Marni so she didn't get lost. She stood next to a tall African American man with squinty eyes and a shifty persona, his shoulders rolled forwards defensively, coat shrugged up high over his neck.
Booth took Brennan's word for it, not conducting his own analysis of the man before looking directly to Garfield. "Did Marni ever mention this particular guy to you?"
"No," Garfield denied, staring intently at the screen before shaking his head reluctantly. "But the blonde woman is a Helen - uh, something. She's a social worker, I think at the shelter over on twenty-sixth street."
"Marni came to the shelter." Helen was a social worker from the twenty-sixth street office; Garfield had been correct about that. She had a nice, crisp way of speaking that probably came from deliberate enunciation to the people down in the tunnels. I imagine a lot of them are lacking in literacy and fluency skills - a bit of a pain, I imagine, but it's not their fault. "She heard I worked with what she called 'the mole people.' She asked me to introduce her to them."
Helen motioned around to the small community in one of the larger, more occupied tunnels under the city. She wore the same jacket she had in Marni's video, a brown coat with long sleeves and soft fur linings on the inside. Her blonde hair was the same color that mine had been right after I'd dyed it, give or take a few shades, and her brown eyes were accentuated by her makeup, which used darker and earthier colors. She didn't use much, preferring to look more natural than dolled up, which made sense, considering she spent most of her time underground with men and women who didn't care enough about makeup to notice.
The pajamas I wore kept me both comfortable and warm, so I had absolutely no qualms with being down in the underground again - well, aside from the cursed stairs that seemed hell-bent on straining me into surgery again, but Booth and Brennan, who would probably do something irrational and upsetting about it, didn't need to know that. I understand they don't want me hurt, but they don't seem to understand that I'm not made of china. I won't break because of a little bit of pain.
Actually, I could argue that some strain is good - it builds up muscle endurance, which I'll definitely need.
"Do you spend a lot of time down here?" Booth asked, looking over his shoulder at people against the wall. It was easy to tell that we weren't exactly welcome down here. The thing about "mole societies" is that they're very isolated. Outsiders take time to trust; groups of them even more so. Helen came here often and didn't cause trouble, so they likely didn't have a problem with her, but Booth, Brennan, and I were representing the government which had so far failed them, if their location was anything to go by. There would be some animosity. Hopefully if we don't bother them, they won't bother us.
"Mmm." She hummed noncommittally and followed Booth's eyes to a couple of men around a box of miscellaneous belongings eyeing the agent distrustfully. "It's kind of my beat, I guess you'd say."
Brennan crossed her arms. It seemed that the not-quite-hospitable reactions we garnered from the inhabitants of the system didn't bother her. "Did you resent Marni's intrusion?"
Helen tipped her head to one side. "Why do you ask?"
"It's an ordered society." Brennan held out one hand in a wide gesture. "Marni and her cameras might have been disruptive in some way."
"Well, these people are here for a reason." Helen admitted. "And, in my opinion, they have a right to their privacy. I respect that. I'm… not sure a documentary filmmaker does."
"Was she disruptive enough to make any enemies?" I asked, shoving my free hand in the pocket of my sweat pants. It was a deep pocket, so it fit my entire hand up to my wrist, which worked well for me, because it kept my entire arm warm. "I mean, I get you may not know a lot of the people down here, but surely you noticed any altercations?"
"Perhaps." Helen gave me a long look, trying to survey me and decide how best to deal with me in particular. I must have looked quite interesting in combination with Brennan and Booth. "I haven't heard of any fights or murmurs, if that's what you mean. It's tough to know these people."
I just nodded, not specifying.
"Well, isn't that what Marni was trying to do?" Brennan questioned in confusion. "Get to know these people? Explain them to the rest of the world?"
Helen smirked at the thought. "No offense, Dr. Brennan, but I find that a bit naive. Her job was to sell her films. What she was doing was exploitive." Brennan looked startled by the information. I wish that her idealistic society could be real, but it's sadly not. She overestimated Marni's empathy for the homeless civilians living in the tunnels; maybe Marni cared, but her priorities wouldn't have changed. "Maybe one of these people agreed." She sighed and looked over Brennan's shoulder before her interest was caught by someone she saw. She raised her hand to point but kept her arm low. "There's the man you're looking for - Harold Overmeyer. Marni called him the mayor of Mole Town." Helen rolled her eyes in contempt at the nickname. "I imagine she thought that was clever."
Overmeyer looked the same as the man we'd chased through the tunnels, further supporting that he was the guy. He stood between two other males; he wasn't the tallest, but both were nodding reluctantly and listening. He held something in his hands. One of the other men was bruised on his cheek.
"He'd mediating a dispute," Brennan realized, before moving to nudge Booth on the other side of me. "He has alpha male status."
"How did Harold respond to her?" Booth asked Helen, 'her' being Marni.
"My impression was he liked her," Helen offered, with a shrug of her shoulders. "But, again, nobody really knows these people." She brought her shoulders forward to prepare herself mentally for the ensuing conversation, and then started walking forwards to Overmeyer for the introductions. "I brought you some food, Harold," she said softly, interrupting the argument between the two fighting men. She gently patted the bag over her shoulder in indication.
"Eh…" Overmeyer looked at her through squinted eyes, like the colors were too bright - which was weird, considering the boxes behind him, cardboard and plastic, had some brighter colors than the ones that we were wearing. An old but intact American flag was held up against a wall; although he didn't have much 'personalized' space, he had made sure that none of the flag touched the floor. "I have enough food," he said, brushing it off after a moment of consideration to her motives. "What do you want?"
Booth stepped forward and loomed over Helen's shoulder - he was taller and altogether bigger. If it came to a fight, Booth would crush Overmeyer with the ease of stepping on a roach, unless Overmeyer was deliberately appearing frail. Sure, the guy could probably pack a punch, but he looked light and wiry. "I'd like to ask you a few questions."
"Well, I'm not required to answer any questions." Overmeyer looked away from Booth and took a couple of skittish steps backwards, like he was prepared to run if it actually did come to a fight for his freedom. "I'm not required…"
"That's correct," Helen agreed, keeping herself between the two men and shooting Booth a look over her shoulder. "Harold has rights."
I shot her a dangerous glare as a result of her attempt at interference. We don't want to kill the man, we just want to talk - I don't understand how that warrants her involvement. She's a social worker, not a saint. "You're going to have the right to an attorney if you don't take a step back and refrain from interfering in a federal investigation," I threatened testily, cranky on sleep deprivation and already in an irritable mood from several other factors.
Affronted, Helen scowled at me, her lip curling in distaste, but she knew better than to provoke an argument and so she stepped back grudgingly, slipping off to the side.
"Did you know Marni Hunter?" Booth asked Overmeyer, using his height advantage as an intimidation tactic. He shoved his hands in his pockets and took an unnecessary step closer. Overmeyer didn't immediately answer and that sometimes indicates guilt, so Booth continued. "You saw what happened to Marni, didn't you?"
"Oh, since when is it ever this easy?" I murmured under my breath, surveying the man I'd formerly compared to a television psychotic. We never get the bad guy that fast, and Booth should… my eye caught on a glint of silver under the baggy jacket that had likely at one point actually fit. Now it was a size too large on the man. Booth should know this, but he should also know that Overmeyer was a veteran.
Dog tags. American flag. Veterans tend to qualify for army pensions and compensation and whatnot, but sometimes even after they come home for good, they can't scrape up enough money for good housing. Booth was treating the man as a criminal; whether or not he meant to, he was unfairly judging Overmeyer by allowing his erred misconceptions of underground societies to color his perception of the suspect, when, in reality, he probably had a lot more in common with the man than either of them currently realized.
As I could have predicted, Overmeyer didn't respond all too well to Booth's slightly aggressive demeanor. "You guys are trespassing. Go away."
Well, he's blunt. I like that.
Booth's thin patience ran out. "Okay, buddy, that's it." He stepped forward too far and grabbed at Overmeyer's wrists, pulling them around and forcing Overmeyer to shuffle so his back was to Booth. "Let's go."
Wait, so he's the one that wants to rudely arrest people and I'm the one that thinks he should chill? … Oh my God, have I stepped into the Twilight zone?
"Booth!" Brennan scolded him regardless of the presences of the person who he was intimidating and the social worker's fairly obvious amusement. "This man is obviously someone important down here."
Booth turned his head around and stared at us. I stood next to Brennan - closer than usual, now that I thought about it, but I supposed that it was probably her being more defensive of the wounded child. Or maybe it was me, subconsciously seeking out safety. Who knows? I don't particularly appreciate either. Booth looked like he was seriously questioning whose side we were on.
I pursed my lips and sighed deeply, blinking several times. "I can't believe I'm about to say this, but…" I paused, just to see if it would seem less surreal if it sunk in a bit. "Booth, you should calm down, take a step back, and ask questions first, arrest later." I stared at the American flag directly over Overmeyer's shoulder, scowling. "No. No, the pause didn't make it seem more real."
Screw Kenton for screwing up reality. Much as I'd like to think, I'm not the only person whom his actions affected; obviously, I was affected the most, but I can't both say I can handle it and disregard the repercussions on everyone else. So I have some sort of trauma result - I can deal, it's just anxiety. Find out the stem, eliminate the stem, and it's good. Well… until I find another stem, but that's not the point. Plus, if Cantilever's paying for prescriptions, then I could justify an anti-anxiety medication.
The biggest thing, though, is that Booth is my father. And that's not all it is; it means for me that my absent father is the man I trust the most and I hadn't even suspected it, but it means for Booth that I'm his daughter. It's one thing for me to be in danger by the cases as his consultant: my decisions, and he has no way to justify a sense of responsibility. But he's a good man and even if he wants to see me the way I want him to - the same as he did before - it's not really going to happen. Now I know he's going to second-guess letting me on cases, he's going to want to protect me, and he probably feels responsible for a lot of my injuries I'd sustained since meeting him. Although it was the best thing to happen to me, I've been more beat up in the past couple of months than I have been since I moved in with the Kirklands.
So, yeah, it wasn't just my world that had been shaken on its hinges and then been turned from blue skies and green grass to purple skies and orange grass - Booth's had, too. And while it wasn't as personal to anyone else, I could respect that the squints had an emotional attachment to me. I wasn't sure what kind or how strong, but if it wasn't there, then they wouldn't have made a shift schedule just in case I got lonely at the hospital. It undoubtedly alters their perceptions of myself, Booth, and the past experiences.
In short, I'd have to forgive him for being a little short-tempered. Also, it would be awfully hypocritical of me. Call me whatever you want, but I do try to practice what I 'preach,' so to speak, with minimal exceptions - and yeah, I'm honest enough to admit that there've been times when I haven't exactly taken the high road.
"Important?" Booth protested, his voice going dangerously close to a whine. He leaned back and made an effort to whisper, but it was a failure since we were several steps away. "He lives in a cardboard box underground!"
"Well I don't see any mansions down here - or am I blind as well as handicapped?" The quip slipped out of my mouth before I signed off on the paperwork for it, and I regretted it almost immediately. "Down here, with this society, he has the same authority as you do," I said after, trying to make up for the unjustified rudeness directed towards one of the people who least deserved it. "I know it might not seem rational, but you have to understand that different societies have different hierarchies, different qualifications for them, too."
"Give him his due," Brennan urged softly, making her eyes big and emotional in a plea. Well, that trumps my explanation with the sad look alone. "Treat him with respect."
Booth took a deep breath, trying his patience, and released Overmeyer from his grip, stepping backwards until he was on my right side again. With obvious doubt, he tried to go about this diplomatically. "Okay, Mr. Overmeyer, we got off on the wrong foot." On the wrong brand of handcuffs, more like. The joke, however bad, made me smirk. "I'm Special Agent Seeley Booth from the Federal Bureau of Investigation and these are my partners, Dr. Temperance Brennan and Miss Holly Kirkland and I would appreciate it very, very much if you would grant us the…" He sucked in a breath of reluctance before he continued. "Advantage of your expertise as we investigate Marni Hunter's death."
Overmeyer eyed Booth for a moment but he seemed to realize that if he said no, then he'd be dragged around and downtown anyway. He shrugged his shoulders, pulling his jacket back up where it had fallen when Booth manhandled him. "Fair enough," he allowed, keeping his eyes on Booth warily.
The agent in question was taken aback by the affirmative response and the civility of it. He was visibly embarrassed as he stated quietly, "Oh."
A tiny smirk played over Brennan's lips before she humbled and began asking her own questions. "Mr. Overmeyer, I saw you in the tunnel over near where we found Marni Hunter's remains."
The accusation was plain and Overmeyer wasted no time in shooting it down. "Checking the tunnels," he asserted defensively.
"Checking the tunnels?" Brennan repeated skeptically, raising her eyebrows. "Or… checking on Marni?"
Overmeyer shook his head firmly, raising up his hands to chest level and shaking his finger at Brennan before making clasping his hands together, almost like he was sending a prayer. "I warned her." I pride myself on my people-reading; I heard a bit of guilt in his voice, but more so of grief.
"So… you two were friends." Brennan decided, going off of his reactions. Plus, why would he warn someone he didn't care about? "Beyond being observer and observed?"
"You talk like her," Overmeyer said suspiciously, his attention fully on Brennan. "Are you making a documentary, too?"
"No," she said truthfully, picking out carefully how to phrase the justification for the questions. "But… there are things I need to understand."
Booth roamed away from the three of us, trusting Brennan and I to handle ourselves, and moved around Overmeyer, giving him a wide berth. He stopped and leaned over the boxes of the man's personal effects, his eyes catching momentarily on the flag before drifting down the the lime green plastic box on top of a couple of others, one cardboard and one clear plastic. Something caught his focus and he moved the contents.
"That's my stuff," Overmeyer told Booth, his voice more agitated as the noise drew his attention.
"Holly." Booth held up a fairly large recording camera that looked fairly new and seemed to be in good condition. "Harold, is this Marni's video camera?"
"You'd better go now," Overmeyer said, shifting and glaring at Booth. "You can go now!" If that didn't scream that he was hiding something, then the clothes that had been underneath the camera did. Without the camera covering them I could see how they were stained in a way that was beginning to be worrying familiar to me - they were all bloody.
"There's blood all over that clothing," I told Brennan, feeling a fair level of disgust rear up in my stomach both at Overmeyer for hiding the evidence and for the blood. I've never been queasy - but I underwent first involuntary and then emergency surgery, so I think I'm allowed to not like the sight of blood.
"Give him his due, huh?" Booth repeated Brennan's words with a snort, only reminded that his initial impression - to arrest Overmeyer - had turned out to be correct.
"I think it belonged to Marni Hunter," Brennan decided, losing interest in questioning Overmeyer. It was a given he'd be interrogated anyway - and while she respects people no matter how different the culture, I know that she wouldn't respect someone she thought killed another human being.
"You know what?" Booth cocked his head, a bit too happy at being able to make the arrest. "I'm afraid you're going to have to come with us, pal."
"What?" Overmeyer shook his head frantically, backing up only towards me. "No, no - I can't leave!"
"If those are Marni's clothes, then given the state of her skeleton there could very well be bone fragments with them. Hodgins could analyze the particulates and Zach could piece together the bones," I suggested. I wish I could do something. Without the use of both hands, there was little I could do individually at the lab. I was better off with fieldwork, but I can't run or fight, and since that's the advantage I gave the team, I was quite useless compared to how I was before Kenton hospitalized me.
Brennan snapped her fingers to get Booth to hurry up and she rushed to pick up the plastic green box. "Let's get this back to the lab," she said more to herself than to anyone else, happy with the new evidence.
Booth turned Overmeyer around so that he could pull the veteran's wrists behind him and he slung a pair of handcuffs out from his belt, snapping one over one wrist and then locking the opposite cuff around the other. Overmeyer shouted, struggling weakly - it was more like he was doing it for the principle of the thing rather than a genuine attempt to escape. "No, you don't understand! She would have wanted me to have that stuff, she would have wanted me to have that!"
"Yes, because all anyone wants is for someone else to have their video camera, their bloodied clothes, and some pieces of their bones," I deadpanned flatly, far from impressed.
The interrogation room was much more comfortable for me than the underground tunnel system. It was familiar, and there was no place for the suspect to run, although I doubted Overmeyer would.
"You know, I find scrap metal. That's all. That's why I go deep." Overmeyer had his eyes squinted so small that they were practically closed; his head was bent to the table, his shoulders brought up to shield his neck.
The lawyer, a calm, grey-suited man in his thirties with glasses, cleared his throat. "You don't have to say anything you don't want to, Mr. Overmeyer."
"You're not here because you scavenge," I stressed with a roll of my eyes. Booth sat across from Overmeyer and his lawyer, but I stood by the door with my free hand in the pocket of my sweatshirt. "You know that, sir."
Overmeyer shook his head, ignoring the rather tactless prompting, and shielded his eyes further from the windows with his hands. "I - It's too bright in here!" He stumbled over the words at the beginning - it's too bright in here hadn't been what he'd started to say. "Too bright in here!"
I sighed, testing my patience. "Mr. Overmeyer," I said slowly, tersely. "You're more than welcome to go back to the tunnels after you've answered the questions. So please, cooperate and we'll all be done much faster."
"I know you have a distinguished military record, Harold." Oh, yeah. Booth had done the background check and I hadn't been surprised at all when I'd been right; Overmeyer had been a veteran in a special forces unit. He had been publicly recognized upon return to America, but instead of living aboveground, he had actually forsaken his real estate and moved down to the tunnel system under the city. Booth was now trying to connect with him on that level. I respect the level, but I don't like that it's one I can't really understand. "Tenth Special Forces Group. You know, I was with the Rangers."
Overmeyer lifted his squinting stare up to Booth. "What, so, you - you gonna tell me, "Harold, I know what you been through, I been there too, you know, I know how you ended up how you ended up."" The bad paraphrasal ended on a hint of a challenge. "You tellin' me that?" His English was fine, but his grammar was choppy; he'd been under in the tunnels for quite a number of years.
Booth gave Overmeyer an answer that the man hadn't expected. "Yeah," he replied seriously. "I'm telling you that." And Overmeyer hadn't thought Booth would actually proceed to say it, since he'd made it seem like he'd take it as an insult.
"I killed people," Overmeyer whispered stonily to Booth, as though maybe the agent had missed that part.
"You saved five of your men," Booth offered as a counter.
Overmeyer stared in shock at how Booth wrote it off and he yelled, "By shooting a pregnant woman!"
"She had a grenade in her hand," Booth emphasized the word grenade to drive the point home. He was solemn, serious, and quiet… I wasn't used to hearing him speak with such a dark tone. I decided then that I didn't like it.
Overmeyer locked steely gazes with Booth like it was a competition. "She had a child in her arms. I shot her and… the grenade went off. She died right away." He looked away from Booth and refused to even look in my direction. I don't suppose looking delicate, pale, and young helped with his lack of will to communicate with me. "That kid… he took a while." He shook his head; his hand moved back and forth like he was batting away an insect repeatedly, an odd nervous tic that might have something to do with post-traumatic stress. "He kept looking at me, but I…"
Booth's face was hard and it was hard to determine what he was feeling, even for someone who had known him for a while. I guess it's because they're discussing war; he was a soldier - but at the same time, he has a kid - two of them, actually, and Overmeyer's actions brought on the death of a child and a fetus. "You did what a soldier had to do."
I definitely caught how he didn't say whether or not he was good or bad.
"Yeah," Overmeyer agreed without hesitation, leaving me a bit lost on how he was making the distinctions between his character. "You know, I was a good soldier - I was a very good soldier - but a pretty bad human being. Pretty bad human being…" he repeated, his voice trailing off to a lower volume.
"It was a war," I stated calmly. It was a complicated line to walk without having personal experience, but I felt like it was worth a shot. "You were a soldier. You saved the lives of your men and you saved the lives of others, too. Wars cause damage. It was tragic and you'll never forget it - but you can't let something done out of necessity dictate how you respond to situations with no relevance."
Neither man responded to me, but I was fairly confident that if I was wrong in principle, then they would have either corrected me or grown more agitated, so I called it a fair play.
"What happened to Marni?" Booth questioned, his voice calm and soft but loud enough to hear in the quieter interrogation room.
"I… I hadn't seen her in days, you know?" I hate when people say 'you know' when they're answering questions. Obviously, the person they're answering doesn't know, otherwise they wouldn't be asking in the first place. "That's why I went to go take a look. Rats were all over her, man." He shuddered, his shoulders shaking in both horror and disgust. "All over her."
Booth tilted his head to one side in nonverbal agreement to the sentiment of Overmeyer's gesture. "How did you end up with her things?"
"Oh, you know," my hand twitched into a fist but other than that I stayed silent. I can tolerate it happening a couple of times, but this guys says it a lot. "I was going to sell them. I mean, she would have wanted me to have those."
"Uh-huh." Booth said it flatly, unimpressed with that particular plan of his, and the accompanying defense. "So you had nothing to do with her death?"
"I, um… I…" The stuttering had me standing straighter and I paid closer attention. He slouched over, his shoulders rising, looking down at the table and refusing to make any more eye contact with Booth. Shame. "I gave her something," he said vaguely, toeing the line between full disclosure and withholding information. "And that's why she died."
Obviously the shame was nice to see - no one should be happy they were involved, however indirectly, with someone's death - but even the emotional display, which seemed sincere enough, wasn't going to get us any closer to finding who killed Marni Hunter.
Booth knew this, too. "What did you give her?"
This time the lawyer responded, advocating for Overmeyer's legal safety. "Mr. Overmeyer, I'm advising you not to say anything else."
Normally I tune out the lawyers, but Overmeyer chose to listen to his. Although that's what people are actually supposed to do, it's far easier when the suspects do the same thing I do. "You know what, I think it's best, um, if I not talk about this anymore." Harold turned in his seat to stand up and leave. "Not cause any more trouble. I got to go."
"No, Harold, you can't. Alright?" Booth stood up as Overmeyer did, but he was still working to keep Overmeyer a willing participant in the interrogation session. "Not yet. You've got-"
"Too bright in here!" Overmeyer spoke up loudly and likely on purpose to drown out whatever Booth had been trying to say. "I got to go!"
"Harold…" Booth sighed in disappointment, his eyes going up to the ceiling.
Overmeyer moved in a rush to the door. I took a swift step to the side to use my body as a barricade between the former soldier and the escape from the room, but what I didn't take into consideration was that I was far more easily hurt than I used to be. Than I should be. Overmeyer grabbed at me frantically, one of his hands grabbing at my right forearm and the other closing around my wrist through the sling, pushing me off to the side.
I screamed out and leaned against the wall, pulling my arm in tightly and gritting my teeth to prevent any other sound from coming out. A sprained wrist was many things; painless was not one of those things. I was okay so long as it wasn't stressed. There was still another week to go before I could actually see a physical therapist for regaining range of motion. By forcing my wrist to move, Overmeyer had not only agitated the ligament that had torn, but he had also managed to force stiff muscles into moving suddenly. It was like moving with a crick in your neck, except more painful and in my wrist.
"Hey, that's my daughter, pal!" Booth grabbed Overmeyer with anger in his eyes and an impatient demeanor, his attitude changing quickly. One hand planted against his back and the other with a fist curling around Overmeyer's shoulder, Booth dragged the other man back to the table and slammed him down over the side until his chest was on the table.
The lawyer rose to his feet in alarm at the change in events, but Overmeyer prevented him from making any noise by shouting himself, trying to stand up straight. Booth wouldn't let up, keeping him down. "I never wanted her to die! She wouldn't listen! I warned her!"
I shut my eyes tightly and willed the spasms of pain and discomfort to pass, but the moisture burning behind my eyes was from a completely different cause: Booth had openly referred to me as his child. He acknowledged to other people - basically strangers - that I'm his daughter, and he actually assaulted Overmeyer for hurting me in turn. They aren't happy tears - because for Booth to make that distinction from partner to daughter, then he's accepted it, accepted the commitment that comes with it.
And one thing I'm not okay with is familial commitment.
So where does this leave me?