While Amy was recovering from the biopsy with her parents, we continued our active field investigation, looking further into the origin of the cancerous graft. Because the surgeon hadn't been able to provide us with the information we wanted, Brennan found the person a rung higher on the power ladder and we went to him; Dr. Peter Ogden, an administrator with a medical degree who now specialized in making deals to bring in harvested body parts for timely transplant. In a section of the hospital that was reserved more for the staff than the patients, we found him in a surprisingly large room behind a surprisingly large desk, a new computer laptop in front of him with his personal assistant, Alexandra Combs, in the side room sorting files.
Thankfully, we didn't have any red tape in getting to actually speak to this doctor, who let us talk to him when we walked in. If I had to guess, it's mostly because of his reputation and the fact that Booth is in the FBI, but far be it from me to question when things work well. Knowing my luck, I'd jinx the luck bad all over again.
"You're a popular man, Dr. Ogden," Brennan stated. Her expression was hard to read, her tone only minimally less so, and anyone who knew her would understand that that wasn't necessarily a good thing for the person under her scrutiny.
Ogden was not aware of this, and while leaning back and reclining in his chair, he smiled at her, a polite but somehow not very pleasing expression. "Well, when you're responsible for finding body parts that save lives, you have no idea! I had one gentleman offer me his cattle ranch in Montana."
Booth nodded once, equally polite. "Well, people, they get desperate, right?" Ogden nodded, still amused by his own story, and Booth added, "Did you take him up on it?"
Ogden paused, tipped his head to the side, and evaluated Booth's sincerity in the question. The agent wasn't at all bemused, instead completely serious, and the doctor seemed to realize that. Pursing his lips in irritation, he forced a small smile. "That would be dishonest, Agent Booth," he said. "If anything, this office is built on the goodness of people."
His assistant came out from the neighboring file room with her head down, double-checking and rereading the name on the tab of her folder. "Cullen, Amy A.," she called aloud. Alexandra was an Asian woman in her twenties with long, straight black hair and taller than her boss. She looked up as she stopped next to Ogden's desk and held it out. "Bone graft number four-four-two-nine."
Ogden reached up to take it with a cheap smile to Alexandra, opening the file up to the first page while reaching for wire-rimmed reading glasses on the desk. "Alright," he said slowly, scanning over the page. "According to my report, the bone that was donated was harvested from a… twenty-five-year-old."
Which was nothing that we didn't already know, so Brennan leaned forward slightly, her hands clasped in front of her for lack of anything else to do with them. "Can you give us the name of the donor?"
Ogden leaned forward to place the file on his desk with the front flipped shut. "I can't provide you with that information."
Booth's expression tightened just for a second and then he tried again to get information to continue the investigation. "What about other recipients?" He inquired. "Any other patients here get a part from the same body?"
Again, Ogden wasn't very sincere in his response, but I don't think he was lying when he was replying to Booth. "When I said I couldn't tell you, it's because we have no way of knowing." While a system like that didn't seem all that great to me, apparently Ogden just saw it as an unfortunate circumstance. "You'd have to ask the tissue bank for that – BioTech Tissue Services. We've been using them for a long time, and never had a problem."
Never had a problem? How can he say that when he knows that we're here because there is one? It pissed me off to high hell that he was still acting like nothing had gone wrong with his business when lives were being ripped apart because his business fucked up and made an error.
"I'd say that Amy has a problem with them now." I hoped that my glare felt as cutting as I wanted it to, because there was no way that I could just let the man's casual, calm attitude fly when my friend is dying. "She's dying of mesothelioma originating in a grafted bone."
Ogden planted his forearms on his desk, elbows at the edge and hands clasped with his thumbs on top. "Through no fault of this office, I'm sure." The fake smile made me shake my head, glowering in disgust at how little he seemed to care. Dismissing me, he looked over to Booth. "If we can be of any further assistance, don't hesitate to call."
If I weren't already in a bad mood, I would be pleased to see Booth's reaction to Ogden's dismissal; expression becoming more forced, the tone of his voice became almost cold. "Thanks for being so… sympathetic," he replied with effective use of sarcasm. "We'll check into it."
"This is awesome," I said softly and sincerely, grinning at Angela's computer while she ran a color enhancement program on a scan of one of Amy's colorful meadow landscape experiments. "We have to show this to her."
"You think she'll like it?" The artist asked, maximizing the viewer. Although the computer was still running its program to enhance the overall image, it was still clearly Amy's, and it was incredible to think that she'd done the whole thing all on her own without stencils or stamps or anything.
"She loves her art. Of course she will."
Our quiet was interrupted by Hodgins as the entomologist came in while holding a clipboard with several papers pinned to it at the top. He dropped a couple so that the one on top was actually on the top again, having been rereading them. "New osteologic scans to input, as requested," he announced, dropping the clipboard lightly on the table beside Angela's keyboard. He was already turning around to leave, completely missing the art on the computer screen.
Angela reached out, stretching her arm back behind her to grab for the man's arm. "Hey, check this out," she invited.
Hodgins turned back around at the urge and looked over the digitized art appreciatively. "Monet?" He guessed, looking to her to see if he was right.
"Amy Cullen," I corrected with a grin.
Hodgins' eyes went wide and he stepped even closer to the back of Angela's chair, leaning over her shoulder to look more intently at the drawing. "You're kidding!"
Angela's smile brightened as she denied it, beaming proudly. "No! I ran it through the digitizer." Hodgins showed he heard by making a sort humming noise as he considered the color palette. "She's a good kid," Angela added, less enthusiastic but no less genuine. "I wanted to show her that computers don't have to be the enemy."
The entomologist smiled at the sentiment and he turned his head over her shoulder, looking at her sort-of sideways. "Not bad, for a certified member of the geek squad," he teased.
Angela looked back to the computer, pretending to be put-upon. "I'll take that as a compliment."
"Well, you should."
Brennan paced slowly behind Zach's chair, and I stood to the side of the other intern, looking at the computer's enlarged biopsy results curiously. It was one thing to see it on an x-ray, but seeing it in so much more detail was both intriguing and disturbing; intriguing because of the educational perspectives, but awful because this thing is what's really in Amy's leg, not a healthy bone. It was off-colored, porous, with larger circles over the smaller, normal ones in the bone to show how bad the graft actually was.
"This is a cross section from Amy's bone graft. Zach, what's the ratio of primary to secondary osteons?" Brennan asked, flipping the pages in a file. I wasn't sure what was in it, but whatever it was only had half of her attention. Zach had the other half.
Zach scanned his eyes over the graft again, a slight frown pulling on his lips slightly. See, he may not seem normal; and, okay, he's not, in the conventional sense of the word. But being a high-functioning genius doesn't mean that he doesn't have feelings, too, it just means that his are expressed a bit differently. I don't think anyone was unaffected from this particular distraction from our work, seeing as how a teenager was dying because of cancer she shouldn't have.
"I only see secondary," he said, looking back at Brennan over his shoulder, fringe falling over his forehead. "Exactly what you'd expect to see in an older decedent."
"And accompanying data?"
Angela was bent over another computer that had been pulled up to the main platform in the lab. Instead of sitting down, she was leaning over the desk to work as quickly as possible to get back up to whatever she'd been doing before. "Well, I'm no expert, but I think it supports as well." I didn't understand most of the writing on her screen, but the lines were moving quickly.
Brennan stopped pacing behind Zach and flipped her file shut quietly, leaning over her grad student's other shoulder and sliding it onto the table. Zach moved his arm to give her the room to do so, but otherwise didn't acknowledge it. "So, based on this one sample, it's clear that the donor bone came from someone in their sixties."
"But how do we know that it's the bone that gave Amy cancer?" Questioned Booth, standing against the rail on the other side of Angela's computer and occasionally looking over the edge to the level floor.
"Because of this," Brennan said. "Magnify," she instructed Zach. He zoomed in, blowing up the cross section. Up closer, the bone looked even worse; there were clusters of abnormal growth caused by multiplying malignant cells, and the degradation was clearer and easier to see. "The graft is riddled with cancer."
"Just like we'd guessed," I added bitterly, rolling my eyes and having to look away from Zach's computer. I never thought I'd actually want this, but why couldn't we have been wrong?!
"Cancer consistent with morphology origin in the pleura, most likely mesothelioma," Zach added softly for extra confirmation.
Booth may need some things translated for him, but there was no way he missed what kind of cancer Amy had. Still, I felt the need to say it out loud to establish it and make it concrete. "Just like Amy."
I don't know what I expected. Maybe I thought I'd feel better if I acknowledged out loud that this had already happened, and that there was so little we could do we might as well be doing nothing.
"Whoever this is," Brennan said, sighing and pointing to the computer. "They had terminal cancer. And now… so does Amy."
"She went in for a broken leg, and was poisoned." Zach murmured, eyes half closed. One brief look to him told me what I needed about how he felt about this circumstance. He was horrified that it had happened, empathetic that it was happening to someone we knew, sad that someone was dying when they were supposed to have been healed.
Angela shook her head, dropping her eyes from her own computer screen and bracing herself against the edge of her desk. "She never even had a chance."
"Someone knew that bone was infected and they gave it to her anyway!" Brennan was the loudest. When she got upset, she didn't usually lower her volume; instead, she got louder, so people heard, so people knew there was something to be upset about, and to make sure that whatever it was was being addressed.
Although we now had some of the answers that Amy and her parents had been lacking, I felt even worse than I had when I'd realized Amy was actually dying. Like, not possibly dying, like when I'd been in exploratory surgery after being stabbed, but actually dying, her body slowly killing itself with a more-than-likely degree of certainty that it wouldn't be stopped.
"Right," I snorted, shutting my eyes for a moment and walking away from Zach and Brennan. It was really nothing that either of them had done, but I just needed the space I was more used to. "Just… fantastic." Glaring at the safety bars, I saw the opportunity to vent and brought the heel of my right hand down as hard as I could on the top bar of the platform rail. It hurt. That was okay.
"What's wrong?" Zach asked, concerned – actually, legitimately concerned, when he should be more worried about Amy, who's dying because someone didn't do their damn homework.
Hissing slightly, I turned back around to the group with my back to the edge of the platform and I raised both hands up to my front, pressing the thumb of my left hand into the lower palm of my right to soothe away the ache I'd caused. "The cancer cells were terminal," I stressed, because I don't think they were quite realizing how bad this was. "They've been spreading through Amy's body since last year. There's no way to treat it or cure it unless, by some miracle," I threw my arms up to indicate exactly how likely I thought that was. "Her viral chemo starts to work. This is going to kill her!"
"Well, in that case," Booth said grimly. "It's murder."
We arranged a meeting with Cullen in his office at the FBI.
Okay, so I say arranged. What I actually mean is probably more synonymous with ambushed. But this was information he needed to know, and damn it, he had a responsibility to Amy to learn it, and learn it well. I didn't ever imagine myself stomping into that office with so much purpose, but apparently miracles never cease.
Until it comes to pediatric cancer, that is.
"Your daughter's cancer originated in the bone graft," Brennan informed, tactfully keeping her voice at a reasonable volume and her hands to her sides. The three of us were like an assembly line adjacent to the director's desk, Booth in between Brennan and I, while Cullen himself had his nerves too wracked to sit and listen, so instead he was walking back and forth like it would help him to make sense of things. "The test confirms it."
He covered his face with his hand, pausing his feet, and turned around, sliding his hand away to blink at the anthropologist. "It was the operation?" He sounded so weary and tired that my sympathies went out to him.
"The operation went without any issues," I corrected. For once, I got no emotion out of amending something he says incorrectly. No matter how we'd interacted in the past, now I'm friends with his daughter. No matter how we get along with each other, Amy is a mutual concern. I respect him a bit more for it. "It was the transplanted graft that caused the problem. No matter how the surgery went, the only thing that mattered was that she survived long enough for her body to adapt to and accept the cancerous cells."
"Not only was the bone contaminated by malignancy, it was significantly older than documented," Brennan finished, and that was about it on the list of Depressing Truths to State Regarding Amy's Impending Horribly Slow Murder.
Cullen frowned at her. Again, for once, it didn't seem normal. Instead of being out of aggravation, it was just honest confusion. "It was expired or something?" He said it like it was a silly concept.
"Bones can't 'expire,'" I put in.
"It just came from a much older donor." Booth explained quickly before his boss had to ask for an answer, then, at the last minute, nodded respectfully and added the honorific title. "Sir."
"Someone in their sixties," Brennan elaborated.
Cullen's lips twitched like he was fighting back on a wry smile, and he scoffed, looking down to his shoes against the carpeted floor. I knew that look… like he thought he'd been wronged. Not necessarily by anyone, but just by the way life had played him. I recognized it too well. While I haven't been seeing it very often anymore, I'd still know it anywhere.
"Hospital error," he snorted, like he couldn't believe that after fifteen years, his daughter's life was being snuffed out by a stupid mistake.
"The next step would be to find out where the graft came from, and how it slipped through the system." Although we all had to know this already, I understood what Booth was doing by verbalizing it; he was giving Cullen a choice. No matter how he answered, I wanted to find all the answers possible. I wanted to know who was responsible and make them pay for what they've done. But Amy is his daughter, and if he doesn't want to open an investigation or press charges against the hospital, then he shouldn't have to look too far into it. Subtly asking for permission to continue would either get us a red or a green light. If it was green, great, and if it was red, then we just had to be a little sneakier.
Cullen stepped forward to Booth. It was almost funny to think that Booth was… well, maybe not intimidated, but deferred to someone shorter and less physically powerful than he was. Comical, maybe, in the right circumstances. "This is not FBI jurisdiction," he reminded.
"But," I started to point out as earnestly as possible. "Amy is suffering from it, and that does make it a legitimate investigation for justice under charges of malpractice, at the very least, should you choose to make it that way."
He looked away to the window, the wooden blinds drawn shut against the sunlight from outside. While looking away, he asked, with a very measured tone, "Does this, in any way, change my daughter's prognosis?"
Brennan and I looked at each other from around Booth and I took a deep breath, looking down at the carpet. "No, sir," I admitted, grudgingly offering up the respectful title. For what he was going through and the decisions he was making, he deserved it. At least for now. "All it means is that we now know why she's sick."
"So she's still gonna die of this cancer."
"Barring spontaneous remission, the likelihood is significant," Brennan said carefully, her tone soft and her voice quieter still.
Cullen heaved a breath and then looked up, nodding once like he was firming his resolve and finalizing a decision. "The FBI's not my personal police force," he said, with a note of concrete sternness. "I appreciate what you've discovered." He looked back to Booth. Although the gratitude was directed at the three of us, the instructions were just for his employee. "Call Charlie Hammond, C.D.C.. Tell him what happened. He'll continue the investigation."
"My team can still-" Brennan started to object and offer, but Booth cut her off calmly.
"We'll notify C.D.C. right away," he swore.
"So that's it?" Brennan asked in frustration over the steady sound of the air conditioner, blasting semi-cool air up to the top of the car to circulate through Booth's vehicle while he drove. "Whoever did this to Amy Cullen just…" she tossed her arms up. "Gets away."
"No way in hell," I said fiercely, shaking my head and glaring out the window of the back seat.
"No," Booth agreed sincerely, but a lot more calmly, which was weird, because Brennan and I were usually calmer than he was. "What we do now is we find out a way to make this a legitimate FBI case."
Brennan stopped, letting her head fall back against the headrest for a moment as she considered how that could happen. Would it happen on its own, or would we have to twist arms or pull strings? I crossed my arms, leaning against the window and pressing my forehead to the glass, taking a deep breath and trying to calm down. Booth let the silence reign for a few minutes after the light went from red to green and the traffic started moving again.
Brennan broke the temporary quiet with a sigh, looking back to Booth instead of the windshield. Even though he couldn't meet her eyes, what with being the driver, he was still paying attention. "If one graft is infected, there's no telling how many others are out there."
Booth shook his head. "Geez. You know, I feel like I'm on a serial killer case, just waiting for another victim to surface." I saw his expression in the mirrors – scowling, uneasy and a little bit anxious but unwilling to let that show. He adjusted his hands on the wheel, holding on tightly.
"In a way, we kind of are," I pointed out to him, uncrossing my arms and crossing my left leg over my right instead. I pulled at the collar of my light jacket uneasily. It snapped up the front instead of buttons or zippers, but it had full sleeves and gave me more fabric cover, so despite the unusual style, it still worked for me. I pulled at a loose string on the thigh of my sweatpants. "There are hundreds of harvestable organs and grafts that can carry cancer over to other recipients."
"What if BioTech makes a habit of selling diseased parts?" Brennan wondered aloud, the trepidation present and evident in her voice alone. I didn't even need to look up to guess what her expression was. That sort of thought is scary. If the organization does it commonly, then forget the hundreds of potential victims from Amy's donor – add in the hundreds of other potential risks from other tainted grafts from other donors, too.
"Well," Booth said slowly. "Then it becomes FBI business if one of those tainted grafts is sold across state line."
"You can spit into four states from where we are right now," Brennan reminded us in an attempt to be optimistic.
She just got a confused, mildly disturbed glance from Booth. "What?"
"Not literally," she told him, disgruntled that she'd had to clarify, and it was kind of an odd instance when she had to tell him not to take a figure of speech as it sounded.
Booth shook his head. He wasn't about to get any further into that. "Okay," he said thoughtfully, going with it. "First, we've got to find out if this tissue lab is servicing any other hospitals."
"Let's see if they've killed anyone else," the scientist agreed darkly.
Something in my stomach twisted unhappily. "Amy is still alive, Dr. Brennan!" I snapped, raising my voice too loud and getting dangerously close to a shout. But how could she say something like that?
Luckily for me, Brennan didn't associate yelling with much worse than an argument, so when she gets yelled at, she handles it a lot better than I tend to. "I'm afraid there's a degree of inevitability." She maintained, turning to look at me over her shoulder. I met her eyes and then sighed, looking down. "I'm sorry," she offered, quieter.
"I know," I responded heavily, going back to picking at the thread on my pants. "I'm sorry I yelled," I apologized, already guilty over treating her badly. Really, it wasn't a big deal – circumstances considering, I think I'm allowed to have a bit of a temper, but I should have the self-control not to take it out on people who I don't have a problem with. Brennan just touched a raw nerve. I'm already fearful of Amy's impending death, and she just reminded me of that before I had completely accepted it.
"It's okay," she told me, turning back around and pulling at her seatbelt.
"You're gonna love this," I promised Amy over my shoulder, twisting the rod attached to the blinds at the window. They drew closed, blocking out the extra light from outside, leaving her hospital room significantly dimmer. Angela adjusted the wheeled table, pulling it out to the middle of the room and backing up before taking off the cap of the projector.
Suddenly, the blank, off-white wall of Amy's hospital room was no longer the dull, blank off-white – instead it was her meadow drawing, with the flowers and fence and wheelbarrow and clouds, the details enhanced and colors digitized. With the projector, there was still some room to spare on the wall, but if it was backed up any more than it was, then the quality of the projected image would start to degrade.
Amy gasped, her eyes flying wide as she stood up from the edge of her bed. Her hospital gown fell just past her knees – while not short, I was taller than she was, so the dress went further down her legs than mine had. She walked towards the wall in bright pink socks, the most colorful thing on her person.
"It's pretty excellent, huh?" Angela asked with a gentle, kind smile and yet a bit of pride. She deserved to be proud of herself for coming up with this idea.
"Is that mine?" Amy asked uncertainly, her voice awed. She raised a hand to the wall, brushing her fingers against the orange and yellow shadings of enlarged flower petals. Where her hand covered the wall, the drawing was instead projected on her skin.
"Uh-huh," Angela confirmed, her smile broadening.
Her hand ghosted over the different aspects of her work, slow and deliberate like she just couldn't quite bring herself to believe that this was really hers. "How'd you do that?" She wondered.
Angela didn't quite reply to that in detail, but there was probably more than I knew to explain that just enhancing and digitizing. "Most of the time I restore and enhance old bones," she reminded the teen. "So this was a lot more fun."
"It looks incredible." I praised, tilting my head to look at the colors on the wall and finding that I really, really liked it.
Amy let her hand fall from the wall, finally convinced that she wasn't just seeing it and that it was really there, and it was really her work. She took a deep breath that I could hear from by her bed.
"It's hard… you know?" She asked, her eyes darker than they had been when she turned around, her shoulder almost touching the grass of a pasture while her gown was covered in greens, browns, and the colors of carefully penciled flowers. "One second, I'm at school and I'm gonna be an artist, and the next…" Longingly, she trailed her eyes across the wall. It was almost like the art represented the life she'd expected to be given. "My friends don't know what to say. My parents are scared. Things change, I guess."
Not smiling anymore, Angela nodded soberly. She was almost too emotional to keep her feelings in check. As the self-proclaimed Queen of repressing my emotions, I easily identified when she was trying to cover hers up. "Yeah," she agreed, sounding very slightly choked. "Yeah, sometimes they do."
Amy remained by the wall, enamored with how her artistry had turned out. I couldn't blame her, especially since it was one of the few things she was still allowed to do. "Angela? Is the Louvre just unbelievable?"
Angela nodded quickly, but Amy wasn't looking, so she expressed her answer verbally instead. "It's the most beautiful place you'll ever see," she swore. I don't think I'd ever heard her sound so certain of anything.
"Maybe… you can tell me about it sometime," Amy suggested hesitantly with a longing smile I don't think we were supposed to see.
My phone – my phone! – vibrated in my pocket for an incoming message. Cursing the bad timing, I looked down and tried to slip it out of my jacket as fast as possible. "You'll go there yourself," Angela was saying insistently. "I know you will."
I sighed sadly. I don't ask for that much personal time, but now that I'd actually want some to spend with Amy, I have to go do something else. I'm finding out why she's being killed, I tried to remind myself. If I started feeling bitter towards my job, then I wouldn't be good at it, and I couldn't be useful to anyone, much less Amy.
Pushing my cell away again, I started to back up, sliding the soles of my shoes across the floor slowly. "I'm… I'm sorry, really, but I-" I started to say, trying to think of a way to make leaving seem like less of an offense.
"You have to go." Amy finished for me. She didn't seem upset, just matter-of-fact, which was a lot better than the alternative. I still felt bad.
"Yeah." Yep, definitely still felt bad. "Look, I'll come back, it's just work," I promised. When I make promises, I keep them. They mean a lot to me, and making them to Amy, in my opinion, just showed how sincere I was.
"I understand," she said with a shrug of her shoulders, like she was saying, 'what can you do?'
I nodded slightly, telling myself that my conscious would just have to be happy with that. "I'll return with peace offerings!" I threw over my shoulder as I turned around and pulled open the door, fully intending to make good on that one, too.
I met Booth at the address after giving it to a taxi driver. I like that I'm not expected to constantly ride with someone he knows anymore. It's not that I have a problem with riding with someone on the team, it's just that it means he's being more amenable to letting me have my own space and travel on my own.
"Two seventy," the FBI agent read off of the plaque in front of a wooden door at the end of the hallway. "Here's BioTech's office. We get in there, we sweat the head guy," he told me, turning just enough to look at me as he raised his fist to the door, knocking soundly. No one responded immediately.
"Storm inside?" I asked hopefully, only partly joking.
Booth gave me one of those semi-patient, that wasn't too funny but I'll indulge you looks that generally expresses that he's not all that impressed with whatever it was I'd just proposed. I raised my shoulders in a shrug while he moved to open the door.
"Hello?" He swung the door open inwards. "F-…" He trailed off. No one was inside. And I did mean no one. It wasn't just that everyone had the day off; BioTech wasn't even a real company. If they had been one, they had long since packed up and moved out. The office was large, but completely barren of furniture. There was no sign it had ever been inhabited in the first place. "…BI," he finished.
I stepped inside, looking around the corner curiously and seeing that no one was hiding. The room was truly empty.
"Well." I said after a few seconds of looking around. "I guess it's a good thing we didn't try to call ahead. Can you imagine how long we'd be on hold?"
Booth turned away from the manager after shaking his hand while I closed the door behind room two seventy, the former office of BioTech. While the agent shook his head while walking back to me, the manager started off in the opposite direction to go back to his floor.
"Alright," he sighed, sticking his hands in his pockets. "Building manager says BioTech went belly-up two years ago. They couldn't even pay their last month's rent."
I felt a frown pulling at my lips, and I didn't even bother trying to stop it. "Did they move to another location, or were they just shut down flat?" I wondered, hoping that it was the former despite knowing the likelihood of it being the latter, which didn't bode well.
"He doesn't know," Booth replied, motioning after the manager, who was out of earshot by now.
I took a breath and crossed my arms. "So… assuming that the hospital keeps their records recent, then this address is still listed as the people who gave them Amy's graft." I pointed down to the tile underneath for emphasis of both the building and the lack of BioTech.
"Exactly." Booth pulled his right hand out of his slacks long enough to snap his fingers. "I mean, Amy Cullen's graft was transplanted at Washington General twelve months ago."
"But if BioTech isn't around to do business, then who used them as a cover?" Oh, yes – this was bad. Someone with the resources to pull it off had been selling tainted grafts under what used to be a reliable name, so who knew how many cases like Amy's there were?
Booth threw the door to Ogden's office open so far that it hit the wall. "Where is he?" He demanded, scanning the room for the doctor. The only person there was Alexandra, his assistant, standing by his desk and flipping through a hospital report.
Alexandra dropped the papers she'd been holding, stunned by the sudden and somewhat violent entrance. She tried to force a smile on quickly to cover up her surprise. She crossed her arms in front of her at the wrists, clasping her hands. "Dr. Ogden had to oversee the transport of a liver to Baltimore. He won't be back until morning."
"Oh, a liver?" Booth strode to the desk. He was taller than the assistant, and I could see her shrinking back from his temper. "Where'd he get this one from, huh? An alcoholic at a corner bar?"
"Booth," I called, my own fury quelled slightly by his. Someone has to be calm and reasonable, and if he's going to be doing the yelling, then I have to be doing the reasoning. Either that, or he has to be reminded where he is and who he's yelling at.
Alexandra's expression became shakier. "We've dealt with BioTech for years," she assured, stepping a little further back behind Ogden's desk. "They're very reputable."
"BioTech doesn't exist," I told her. Although I was trying not to shout, it was a hard battle to fight, especially since this case was made personal to me. Damn it, it seemed like Alexandra should already know this! "They haven't for two years."
She smiled patiently, but just underneath that there was a flicker of uncertainty. "That's not possible."
"Oh? You wanna bet?"
"You know what I think?" Booth cut in, stepping back when he realized Alexandra was quite thoroughly spooked. She relaxed, and he gestured furiously at the computer on Ogden's desk. "I think Ogden's in on this whole thing – a little biomedical payola. He buys third-rate parts in exchange for a condo in St. Croix!"
"Dr. Ogden is a very good man." Alexandra was struggling with the situation, I could see that, and she loyally backed up her boss. "I know there are problems in his past, but that's just-"
"Oh, you mean there are skeletons in his closet?" Booth rephrased fiercely. "Well, I can't wait to see this guy's record!"
I went from looking at Booth to Alexandra. Evidently this felt personal to the agent, too. I mean, he'd met Amy before, right? "Miss Combs," I tried civilly. "Do you have any records of other patients who would have received transplants from Amy Cullen's donor?"
"Only the tissue lab knows for sure." The assistant looked down, raised a hand to rub her forearm through her sleeve. "But, after you left," she started to add tentatively. "I was curious, and…" she trailed off and looked down. Her demeanor changed, became a bit like a kid with her hand caught in the cookie jar. Looking through files unauthorized wouldn't typically be allowed for her, since she wasn't officially a doctor.
"You can't just withhold information," I urged, putting on my best please answer me because I need help expression, fishing for empathy. "This disaster might as well have…" I scraped my teeth over my bottom lip, swallowing as my throat felt dry. "Might as well have already killed Amy, but other lives can still be saved."
Alexandra's shoulders fell slightly as she gave in. "A woman named Kelly DeMarco," she said, looking down. She shook her head slightly, mostly in a nonverbal comment of how sad the case was. Booth pulled his phone out in only a couple of seconds, dialing the FBI again. "It was a car accident," she told me while Booth waited for someone to pick up.
"This is Booth. I need a phone and address for a Kelly DeMarco in the Potomac area."
"Two grafts," Alexandra elaborated, giving full disclosure. "On the same day as Amy. Both grafts also came from BioTech."
"When? You sure?" The FBI agent's voice went from loud with repressed anger to low and grave. It silenced Alexandra and I both, and I looked to him to see what was wrong.
"Booth?" I asked, voice too quiet to be heard by the other person on the phone line.
"Thanks." He swallowed, pulling the phone away and hanging up on the call before waiting for a response. "Kelly DeMarco… she's dead."
Alexandra raised a hand over her heart in shock. "Oh my God," she exclaimed. It seemed pretty adequate.
I sighed. So much for that lead! I started to turn around, heading for the door to leave Ogden's office. "I'm stepping out to call Dr. Brennan," I informed Booth flatly. It was hard to feel anything but a bit of defeat. If one person had already fallen to the transplant, then how bad did that make Amy's odds seem? It just made it feel more real. "She'll want to get an exhumation warrant. We can't link the two together unless we know that she and Amy both got mesothelioma."