It's My Life Chapter 79: The Graft in the Girl, Part Four, a bones fanfic

"We've traced all these grafts back to the donor and still know almost nothing." Frustrated, Zach pushed one hand through his bangs to keep his hair out of his face, bent down over the backlit exam table with Brennan.

"Not exactly nothing," the anthropologist corrected slowly. Instead of having bones on the table, they were x-rays from the graft recipients at the hospital. "Zach, look at the slope of the sciatic notch in the pelvis." She pointed to the exact place she meant on the x-ray sheet.

I looked down to my fingernails, elbows planted on my knees. I was seated by the desk with the computer a couple of yards away from the table, my legs underneath the chair and my ankles hooked around the front legs. How am I going to fix this? I wondered, only half paying attention to the two scientists. My conscience was dwelling on Amy, not willing to let me focus on working.

Zach nodded as he saw something else, his fingers drifting over the tops of the paper to point it out to Brennan. "And the non-elevated auricular surface."

"He was definitely male," the anthropologist concluded.

"The osteon count in the femoral joint confirms the donor was over sixty," Zach supplied, looking up to Brennan for approval or instruction. While a male over sixty was definitely a good place to begin, there were still far too many people that that general description could fit.

"It's a solid start," Brennan agreed, "But we need a lot more."

Lowering his eyes down to the x-rays in place of the bones, Zach sought out any potential tells to narrow down the identity of the victim – or, in this case, the murderer. He saw something else after a moment. "Osteophytosis with narrowing of intervertebral spaces indicates consistent heavy lifting. Construction worker?"

"It's hard to say exactly," she said, pursing her lips as she looked it over again. "Definitely a burly type." But she didn't say that he was wrong. "If we keep guessing about what he was like on the inside, then Angela can hypothesize about his appearance, size, weight…" Brennan trailed off. There were obviously other factors, but Zach and I both got the general idea.

Zach nodded once, dutifully. "I'm on it," he promised.

"Holly?"

My name made me jerk my head up. "Hm?" I asked, humming, still not quite with it. I unhooked my ankles and let my feet drag against the floor, sitting up straight and lifting my head on my own.

Brennan tipped her head to the side. Instead of being annoyed at me for drifting off into my own headspace, she just seemed concerned. I suppose it's one of those things where if it doesn't happen often, it's alright and cause for worry – like someone doing something ridiculously out of character if they don't feel well. "You don't seem to be paying much attention," she noticed.

"Sorry," I apologized, scratching my fingernails against the outside of my wrist. "I'm just… distracted, I guess."

Angela stood back with Booth, Brennan, Hodgins, and I in her office, using her tablet to operate her computer and the large-screen projector so that all five of us could see the process as it was happening rather than crowding around her normal monitor.

"I scanned in the x-rays of all of the graft recipients, as well as the pieces from the exhumed bodies," Angela informed, showing a digital remake of the bones we had and the ones that she filled in based on the x-rays and scans done at the hospital's testing operation. The victims who had already died had been exhumed like Kelly DeMarco, and we had removed the grafts for complete accuracy. We were left with an older skeleton with a curve in the spine, as if the victim had slumped.

"Okay, now what?" Booth asked with a disturbed frown, looking over the projector with a motion of his hand. Stressed parts of the skeleton were highlighted in red. There was no outline of anything else. "Connect the dots?"

This was one reference that Brennan did get, and she was happy to further ruin my opinion of a time-killing game. "More like, connect the body parts," she revised for him.

"Think of it as… sculpting." Angela offered, trying to relate it to something that we all understood. "From the inside out." She pointed to the screen and then tapped her stylus on the outside of the touch screen tablet. "The more that I know about our donor, the better I can guess what he might have looked like."

Booth nodded. When Angela put it like that, it was a pretty easy idea to get, and having it explained always made things seem simpler.

"The fragments of skeleton we collected originated from nine sites on the donor's body." These highlighted in yellow, even those that had been previously marked with red. "If we connect the graphs…" the computer started to fill in, taking the input data from the real bones and very slightly altering the digital ones to make them seem more appropriate to the donor. "Now, input all the anatomical factors and core anomalies."

While I was thinking, wow, the technology we have access to is amazing, the outline on the computer screen faded in around the skeleton to create an overweight, balding senior in faded jeans and a worn blue flannel button-up. His spine was hunched over, like the skeleton had indicated, and what little hair he had was white. "Guys, meet Donor X, the man who caused all of this pain." Angela introduced solemnly, watching the recreation as it brightened.

Brennan crossed her arms, surveying the inconspicuous man on the projector like she was trying to decide if he really looked capable of doing so much destruction. "So that's our serial killer."

"God, he probably had no idea how much damage he was gonna cause." Booth whispered, already deeply affected by the sheer number of victims. Somehow, having the culprit humanized only made it worse. It gave it a face, something to relate all the misery to – not to mention that it sunk in further that another human had done all of this to other people like them. Some of us humans are real monsters sometimes. "Do we have enough to track him down?"

"Hodgins?" Brennan asked, turning to the entomologist for his input.

Hodgins shook his head, eyes fixated on 'Donor X,' as Angela had nicknamed him. I thought it seemed fitting, hitting the nail on the head. "Maybe with L.I.B.S.," he suggested, looking back to Brennan finally to see what she thought.

When Brennan nodded to give him the go-ahead, Hodgins ducked past Booth and left the room to go back to his lab. Booth turned to watch Hodgins retreat and questioned, "Who's Libs?"

"L-I-B-S," I corrected, explaining for him now that Hodgins was gone. "L.I.B.S.. It stands for Laser-Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy. He'll take the grafts we've taken from the deceased victims and run for the particulates. Then Hodgins will find the location where all of them coexist."

Brennan confirmed it for me. "Angela told us what he looked like." She nodded her head back towards the screen. "Now Hodgins can tell us where he lived."

Booth shifted, nodding and tucking his hands away into his pockets. "Well, we'll find him," he decided to declare, looking at the image as if it were his nemesis. In a way, it kind of is our enemy. It seemed silly to think that one small, frail old man could have done as much harm as his bones currently were, yet the context and the case seemed anything but amusing.

"We have to," Brennan agreed, staring at the picture determinedly.

The results of L.I.B.S. showed up on a black graph on Hodgins' computer screen in his lab, the spikes in different colors of thin lines. The colors were labeled underneath of them, showing what they were made of. Hodgins read them easily, while I paused and tried to pronounce them in my head. Most I got, but there was one that I didn't recognize. Booth narrowed his eyes at the small print, trying to read, but it was probably better that he left it to Hodgins, Zach, and I, who were all closest to the computer – Zach and I looking over the entomologist's shoulders while he was in the office chair in front of the monitor.

"Strontium isotope levels suggest Donor X lived in the last twenty years on the east coast," Hodgins said aloud. Booth nodded to follow along, although I wasn't sure either of us knew what strontium was.

"Extremely low levels of fluoride in the cancellous bone," Zach noted, blinking and sounding earnestly surprised.

"Unusual," Brennan commented, supporting Zach's surprise at the readings. "Since most tap water is fluoridated, except for parts of the Appalachian Mountains."

"A few of the Hatfields and McCoys still have no teeth." Only Hodgins would say something like that in this context or with that tone. What he'd said meant nothing to me, but I rolled my eyes at him anyway because it seemed like the right thing to do.

Everyone else ignored him, with Hodgins was sadly used to. Brennan checked a mental map of America and then slowly listed the places where the water may not have enough fluoride. "So, we're looking for someone from… Tennessee, West Virginia, or North Carolina."

"Oh, great." Although it actually was progress, Booth wasn't happy. I wasn't, either, but it was hard to tell if the FBI agent really meant that it was great and was just still in a bad mood, or if that wasn't good enough for him. For people who don't have an actual corpse to work off of, I thought we were being pretty damn impressive. "That narrows it down."

I told him as much. "I can't tell if you're being serious or sarcastic."

Hodgins clicked on the label of a sort of salmon-pink line with the usual white pointer of the mouse. "There's a high level of C-8," he mused. "That's a key ingredient of Teflon."

"There's a Teflon plant in Parkersburg, West Virginia." Zach offered, being helpful. Given that I'd never heard of it before now, I was willing to assume that Teflon plants weren't all that common. We could probably assume that the donor had lived in West Virginia – maybe somewhere near Parkersburg.

"And…" While Brennan craned her neck and squinted her eyes to try to read, because apparently Hodgins wasn't going through things fast enough for her, her eyebrows raised, finding something she hadn't been expecting. "Miniscule traces of nuclear sub-particles."

I don't know that much about West Virginia. I've been a lot of places while I was in the foster system, but I never lived there, nor did I go there on a trip, but part of being responsible for my safety, to me, means being educated on current events. Some things – like incidents at power plants – don't get forgotten very quickly, so I thought I might remember something relevant. "Hey, isn't there a power station somewhere around there?"

Zach nodded to me in answer. "There was a problem about fifteen years ago at Brant's Cliff Power Facility."

"Yeah, just a little one," Hodgins agreed with a derisive tone. That tone of voice was the warning before he went into his paranoid-conspiracy-theorist mode. "Employees there were growing a second head. Can you say 'cover-up?'"

"Can you say 'paranoid?'" I shot back at him with a measured raise of my eyebrows, looking down at him from my height advantage.

"What you call paranoia, I call being educated to the events hidden from the general public."

"I have no doubt."

Booth mimed slashing his hand down in between Hodgins and I like he was putting up a wall so we'd stop going back and forth. "Okay, where's Brant's Cliff?" He interrupted.

Brennan's lips were quirking into a victorious smile. "West Virginia, also."

Booth nodded, growing more optimistic as everything came together to indicate a single place. "So then we're trying to I.D. a guy who's sixty-some years of age, roughly two hundred pounds, lives in West Virginia, and died of lung cancer within the last year. Hm?"

"Narrowed down enough for you?" I asked, crossing my arms and smirking with pride.

With the bureau's records and resources, we were able to narrow down the list of possible suspects to three men that all fit the description. Hodgins, Angela, Zach, Brennan, Booth, and I all split up to go check out each one to see if their bodies had been donated for grafts and/or transplants. The adults spent the time talking to each other, occasionally pausing to listen to the radio, but I stayed out of the conversation. I was in a touchy mood, and I knew it, so instead of conversing, I plugged in a set of earbuds to the phone Hodgins had bought for me and went on mobile data to listen to music.

It was when I was listening to 3 A.M., by Matchbox 20, the second time that I remembered the song was about cancer. I faltered, looked down to my phone, and changed the song.

After driving for a long time to get to West Virginia, we finally crossed the border from Maryland and Booth started to go into detail, picking up a paper that had been folded in half between the driver's and passenger's seats. In the rearview mirror I saw his mouth moving, him trying to make eye contact with me, so I pulled the earbuds out to listen. "There are three potential West Virginia donors we could be talking about. There's Lester Blake, out of Tague. There's Blair Simmons-"

The minivan beside us honked loudly, a short burst of pitch, and Booth almost swerved the car when he realized he was drifting into the wrong lane, paying too much attention to the paper.

"Hey, lady, watch where you're driving!" He yelled, slamming hand down onto the center of the steering wheel to honk back at her.

I rolled my eyes, twisting the cord of the earbuds around my wrist with one hand. I had a lot of mobility back in my left, which was great. "You're the one driving into the wrong lane, idiot! Stop trying to read while you drive!"

Brennan leaned over and snatched the list away from him before he could crash the vehicle. Next time he brings papers to read, I vowed, I'm driving. Even though I'd gotten my license months ago, Booth still tends to do the driving.

"I'd rather not be a donor myself," she said sharply, glaring at him for his recklessness before she scanned down the page and found his spot. "Blair Simmons, out of Dailey, and William Hastings out of Beard's Fork." What kind of name is that? "All three men died of mesothelioma last August."

"Okay, we'll be in Beard's Fork," Again, what the hell? "-Within about an hour." Brennan's phone started to ring, and Booth started to reach for his before he realized that he wasn't the one with the phone call. While she looked at the screen and then accepted the call, he asked me, "You're sure Zach and Hodgins are on the other two, right?"

"This is Brennan," the anthropologist answered promptly into the receiver.

"Absolutely," I answered Booth, looking down at my hand and slowly unwinding the electrical cord. "Hodgins drove himself and Angela drove Zach." One of Zach's greatest fears, odd as it seems, is of driving. While he seems fine with cars in general, he's afraid of learning to drive, so we'd had to get a chauffeur the one time that the two of us had investigated a crime scene on our own. That had been before I'd gotten my license, so I hadn't been able to drive us instead.

This time, Booth's phone really was ringing when the next tone started to blast, loud and tinny in the car's confined space. He sighed and reached into his pocket for it, flipping it open and driving with the other hand. "This is Booth… what? What do you mean, frozen?" He demanded of someone else, whose voice I couldn't hear.

Brennan leaned back a bit. "So, if Blake isn't our donor…" she trailed off, looking over at Booth when she realized he was on the phone, too.

When Booth heard what she'd said, he looked at her while responding to his own caller. "So, if Simmons isn't our donor…"

Bill Hastings, our donor, left behind a widow when he died. She remained in the home that they had shared for the last couple years of his life, in a small, one-story house in the suburbs in between neighbors. She was an avid gardener, with plants neatly trimmed and planned around the sides and front of the house and porch. Brennan, Booth, and she all sat down in three metal lawn chairs on the porch, while I stood between the two parties, leaning with my back against the house.

For someone in her sixties, she looked pretty fit and healthy. She wore a flannel with the top button undone, and faded, worn jeans with grass and paint stains, and her hair looked dyed blonde, held out of her face with a plain brown headband.

"Mrs. Hastings," Booth said, settling down and making himself comfortable in the chair next to Brennan and across from Donor X's wife. "What did your husband do for a living?"

She was leaning forward. One arm's elbow was on one knee, and her forearm was touching the other. "Ah, this and that." She rolled her eyes, looking up at the sky for a moment in exasperation. "Bill worked in construction for a time… did the night shift down at Brant's Cliff… opened a roofing business a few years back."

"Roofing?" Brennan jumped on it curiously, prompting for more specific information.

She shrugged her shoulders in reply. "Shingling, and fireproofing and such," she offered, making a face at it. I guess she didn't see the appeal.

Brennan nodded slightly, thinking on it to herself. "So he handled asbestos?"

The widow nodded. "Doctors say that's what finally got him," she said reminiscently, before shaking her head and snapping herself out of it. "Why are you all so curious?" She asked, looking between Brennan and Booth. She was only really recognizing them as authority figures. While I had no direct power over her, I still thought I deserved her respect, what with my job and affiliation.

"Uh, Mrs. Hastings…" Booth coughed, trying to tactfully lead into the questions and statements to get an idea on the woman's attitude. "I mean, your husband did time for petty theft and fraud. I mean, you lost your home, your cars. He left you with nothing."

While he was an irresponsible man, he was also Mrs. Hastings' husband. Mrs. Hastings clearly didn't see past the first part. She raised a hand up to her face and waved it off like it was no more important than rainfall, or a mosquito buzzing by her face. "Bill Hastings was an old fool who deserved what came to him," she ruled callously.

While I was a little bothered by her apparent apathy, Brennan wasn't deterred. "You needed money," she stated factually. "Did anyone approach you about selling his parts after he died?"

Mrs. Hastings blinked. Twice. "Pardon?" She asked, turning her right ear towards Brennan slightly. "I'm afraid I don't follow."

Booth cleared his throat and folded his hands on his legs in front of him. "Well," he said, trying to come at it from an angle that seemed more reasonable, rather than accusing her of outright murder. "His family has a cemetery plot in Kincaid, yet you cremated him. Are you hiding something?"

The woman stared at him coldly for several long seconds, in which I half expected her to explode like a volcano until she looked down, shaking her head. She seemed calm. "I did that because the guy at the funeral home said it was cheaper," she explained. Brennan hadn't been wrong about the Hastingses being in need of money. "We couldn't afford a proper burial."

"What funeral home?" Booth asked. While normally this could be passed off as a routine question, as it was, I knew we'd be going there to corroborate and confirm, as well as potentially question anyone who happened to work there last year.

"Um…" she frowned as she tried to remember, tapping two fingers against the outside of her opposite thigh, right over the outer seam of her jeans. "It was called Martin's, I think."

"Where are the ashes?" One day, Dr. Brennan, I thought to myself, looking at the anthropologist mournfully, I'll teach you how to ask questions like that tactfully.

The senior jerked her thumb over her shoulder, nodding to the side of the house. "Out back, in the yard," she responded.

"Do you mind if we take a sample?" Brennan asked, being courteous and leaning forward in the metal porch chair.

Mrs. Hastings' answer was not what I expected. Although she had been fairly even-tempered until now, that changed rapidly and to my surprise. "I sure as hell do," she said flatly, leveling a suspicious glower at Brennan, who leaned back. "I don't like what you all are accusing me of doing."

Booth gave her a tense, faked smile and stood up from his chair, pulling at the hem of his jacket. "Well, we'll just come back with a warrant," he said pleasantly, as if we hadn't just been rudely shot down in flames. "That's all."

I shrugged my shoulders, pushing off of the side of the house and stepping past the widow. She remained sat down as the three of us passed to go back to our car on the street, but she twisted and looked over her shoulder. "You'd better bring some dogs," she called rebelliously. "And bring those trigger-happy agents of yours, too, 'cause this conversation is over."

Booth held his arm behind Brennan's shoulders, ushering her down the front steps to get her away from the aggressive suspect. "Come on, Bones, let's go," he said hurriedly to her, then threw a sarcastic grin at Mrs. Hastings. "Have a nice day."

Personally, I hoped that the rest of her day sucked.

"Look, she insists that her husband wasn't the donor, but the evidence is overwhelming." Booth told Cullen as the four of us stood in the hallway outside of Amy's hospital room. I looked in through the window and saw the girl drawing with what looked like a charcoal pencil. I looked away quickly.

The thing is, I know a thing or two about anger. I know that half of the time when it comes out, it's not actually directed at whoever is on the receiving end. I know that things said in the heat of an argument aren't usually meant. I also know that anger is a prime reaction to being upset. It's like hurt, pain, and anger are all connected in a cycle. One leads to another. The problem was that I didn't know if Amy was still frustrated with me.

Brennan took her hands out of her pockets, readjusting her limbs. "If I could get my hands on a soil sample, I know there are bone fragments still intact that we can possibly identify him with." Hopefully, her certainty would give Cullen reason enough to issue a warrant and those gun-toting agents that Mrs. Hastings had asked for. I'd love to see her face when we do exactly as she asked and parade through her property with sniffer dogs and trigger-happy FBI agents.

Cullen was mostly focused on Booth, which sort of made since, seeing as Booth was his employee. Brennan and I weren't his underlings. Still, it wouldn't have killed him to outwardly acknowledge Brennan's claim.

"Was there an insurance policy in place?"

"None," Booth denied, shaking his head in the negative. "More reason to sell the illegal grafts. But the funeral home had to have been in cahoots with her."

"So all we have to do is connect the widow to the funeral home." Cullen gathered, looking between Booth and I in case he was missing an aspect of the case. This one, with his daughter being a victim, made him pretty close to it. It would be harder for him to see it objectively when he had to live with knowing that his child was suffering because of someone we had likely talked to by now.

I nodded. "Which we should be able to do through payment records from when her husband died." Somehow I doubt that the Hastings couple had enough money in the bank to pay for it with a check.

"Then the home to BioTech," Brennan added finally, just giving the reminder.

Two white-coated doctors, both brunettes, one male and one female, spoke to each other under their breaths as they came down the hall towards Amy's room. Cullen paused, looking over Brennan's shoulder at the approaching duo, and the anthropologist stepped to the side for ease of the three's communication.

The woman looked solemn, even a little bit sad. The man cleared his throat seriously. "We need to speak to you and Amy's mother privately," he said to Cullen, completely ignoring Brennan, Booth, and I.

The adults dismissed themselves quickly – or, rather, Booth dismissed himself and Brennan and then urged Brennan to move out of the way. "We'll go," he murmured to Cullen, excusing the two of them from a private conversation. "Come on, Bones…"

I raised a hand in a lame attempt at a wave and backed up towards the wall, intending to poke my head into Amy's room – partly to tell her mother that she was needed in the hall, but mostly to see Amy.

Poking my head through the door, I leaned in with my shoulder against the doorframe. "Mrs. Cullen," I called. Amy looked up at my voice, but then went back down to her art. It looked like she was working on a canvas rather than a sketch pad. "The doctors want to talk to you and your husband."

With a murmured thanks for delivering the message, I stepped inside the room and moved to the side so that Amy's mom could pass by and out the door, and she pulled the handle to the door on her way out so that it clicked and shut when she was through, leaving Amy and I alone.

"Hey," I said, calling out to Amy and moving slowly towards her. I wanted to give her space if she needed it. "I'm… I'm sorry about…" What was I apologizing for, exactly? When she'd yelled, she'd seemed angrier at the situation than at me, but I had no idea where to begin when issuing sympathies.

Amy flicked her pencil. I was right – the tip was black, charcoal, and there were dark smudges on her fingers from the end. Art doesn't always end up being the cleanest profession, but there was something about the way she rotated the pencil around in her hand that spoke of ease and a long familiarity.

"No, I'm…" she interrupted me before I could find the words, which was weird, because Amy was actually pretty easy for me to talk to. I guess we could understand each other without necessarily needing things to be said out loud. "I know they can't take it out," she sighed, casting her eyes down to her paper. I walked around to the foot of her mattress, peering curiously at the canvas to see what she was working on. "It's just… I feel like I'm still being poisoned, and the worst part is that it's actually true." She looked back to me while I inched around to take up the seat her mother had vacated. "Are we good?"

It would be extremely hypocritical of me if I stayed angry at Amy for her outburst, especially when I sympathized and had done the same several times before. "Of course we are." I sat down next to her, folding my arms over my legs, and looked at the white canvas on her thighs. It looked like she was drawing a portrait of her parents standing side-by-side, and while it wasn't done yet, it was already remarkably realistic. "So what's going on?"

The girl looked out to the window. Her mother was holding onto her father, whose shoulders fell as the female doctor continued to talk. We couldn't hear their voices, but I could see how defeated they both appeared.

"She's telling them the treatment didn't work," Amy said evenly, looking back down towards her art. This being the first time I'd heard of it, I instinctively reached to Amy's side, holding my hand out without thinking on the action. "There's nothing else they can do." I had been preparing myself to hear that, had known the whole time that the odds were against Amy beating the advanced cancer, but it was still painful to hear. "I hate seeing them so sad."

I hadn't realized that I didn't move my hand, but Amy slid the hand she wasn't drawing with down to lace her fingers through mine. It hit me then that I really didn't mind.

A search for the funeral homes turned up only one that fit the criteria of having "Martin" in the name in the West Virginia area; Martin's Funeral Services, a facility established in ninety-six, owned and run by Nick Martin. We went on another road trip to interview the man in person.

But when we came into the funeral home with no notice ahead, we found ourselves accidentally awkwardly sticking to the back of the room while a small group dressed in black mourned around a coffin. One man held a clipboard with papers and an ink pen, as well as a nametag on the lapel of his jacket. Bad timing…

"Bones," Booth was whispering to Brennan, like he thought she actually needed to be told how to behave during a service in a funeral home. "I know that you find dead people intriguing, but just try to put on your sad face."

Brennan looked over at me like she was trying to decide whether or not it was worth expending the energy to be aggravated. I held up one hand and tipped it side to side – I could see it going either way. The scientist shrugged and opted to let it slide.

Booth coughed loudly as we hung back towards the end of the room, giving the grieving group a respectable distance, and he held up his badge to the man with the clipboard, assuming that he was the funeral home's manager, and he inclined his chin in acknowledgment before murmuring something softly to one of the attendees before parting with the service to come attend to what we wanted from him.

However, it didn't take long for it to become evident that he was far from the most patient person in the world. Before he was even within five feet, he had opened his mouth and, while his words were reasonably polite, his tone wasn't quite matching with the phrases. "I'm sorry, I'm in the middle of a service."

"Well, this will only take a minute." Booth promised, although I knew he wouldn't care too much if it took longer than just a moment. Generally when people are approached by the FBI, they at least show them the respect of not trying to dodge out of it for a service they're not actually doing anything more than supervising at. The attendees are not children; they won't kill each other while he's not looking (I assume). "He's not going anywhere," he added, gesturing vaguely up to the coffin.

I nodded wisely. That particular quip was amusing, but I knew better than to laugh. This was the setting where I was more likely to be kicked out on my rear than be laughed with. "Yeah, you really don't have to worry about that."

He shifted most of his weight to one leg and lowered the arm with the clipboard. "What's this about, exactly?" Reigning in tension and making an effort not to react to the unappreciated remarks about the dead person's status of "not moving" is apparently the best he can do, attitude-wise.

"William Hastings," Brennan responded.

The mortician's eyebrows went up and he looked to Brennan specifically, expecting for her to answer again. "Is he someone you've lost?"

"More like… somebody we found," Booth corrected.

Brennan glanced at Booth, and as she talked her eyes slid back to Martin. "He passed away a year ago. You cremated him, but somehow his bones were illegally harvested prior to the procedure." She was getting better about not letting her tone get accusatory without a good cause, but the implications were there.

The apologetic smile that Brennan received wasn't sincere, and if anything, it was a little condescending. "Well, not here."

"What do you mean?" Booth questioned suspiciously, automatically not trusting the man who seemed confident for no reason. Even if they don't turn out to be the killer, people like him aren't known for being very easy to get along with.

"Well, this is my mortuary." He motioned vaguely behind him to the service going on and the mourners in the front of the room. Yes, we noticed. "I've been in business almost a decade, and I have no recollection whatsoever of a Mr. Hastings."

My eyebrows rose, and I issued the challenge smoothly. Martin was already making me dislike him, and we've barely been talking two minutes. "Do you have an eidetic memory?" I asked seriously.

"Well." He coughed into the long sleeve. "No, but I-"

I interrupted him. He'd already lost my respect by boasting about how he'd know everything that went on without having any proof to back it up. That was arrogant and uncalled for, and thinking he so perfectly knew everything off the top of his head was both unrealistic and proved that he had a high regard for himself. Everyone has room for error; Martin didn't want to admit that even he was no exception to the rule. "Then whether or not you recall his name means nothing to me."

"His wife mentioned this place specifically." Brennan offered for our side of the argument.

The look that Martin sent her, recovering from my rebuttal all too quickly for my liking, was nothing short of patronizing. By the displeased look that Brennan adopted, she recognized it and didn't appreciate being treated that way. "It's unfortunate, but the bereaved are often confused."

"Oh, right," I said sarcastically, drawing out the vowels and nodding in disbelief. "Because grieving always turns people stupid." Seeing an opportunity for a good insult, I put on my best sympathetic expression and folded my hands in front of me. "Sir, I know that all of your losses must be really overwhelming for you, but you really have to work to get those few brain cells working for us now."

If he's going to treat us like we're stupid, then I'm more than willing to return the favor. Who can blame me?

He tried to fake a smile at me, but it was too obviously feigned, tense and just shy of being sarcastic. I returned it with a bright, smug smirk. Gripping his clipboard so tightly that his knuckles were turning white, he looked up to Booth, straining to remain polite. "If you'll excuse me, I have mourners waiting."

Pointedly, Booth tapped his foot on the carpet. The thump on the floor was audible and Martin paused before going back to whatever it was that he wanted to go do. Booth forced a smile. No one could accuse him of being unprofessional, as this? This, in the face of such rudeness, is giving the man more respect than he's receiving, which I've just never been able to stand doing.

"Well, maybe you can just double check your records and get back to me." Holding his card in between two fingers, he held out his hand to the owner.

Martin sighed. He sounded put-upon, as if we were asking him something totally unreasonable, and that just pissed me off. Hasn't he ever heard of full cooperation? "I would," he said, as if he were regretful that he couldn't. Swiping the card from Booth's hand, he tucked it up his sleeve. "But my records are impeccable." He lifted his shoulders in a shrug. "There's nothing to double check."

"Okay, then you won't mind if we ask you to fax your records so we can take a look ourselves." Smiling pleasantly, I watched as Martin faltered in response to my suggestion. Tipping my head to the side, I pulled a hand through my hair, bored already. "Look," I continued to the disgruntled manager. "Those records are going to get looked at. If you won't do it, then we will."

I had backed him into a position he wasn't going to get out of, and he knew it. He shifted and clutched his clipboard. "I assure you that no William Hastings was ever cremated here," he insisted stonily, shooting me a narrow-eyed glare. "I will look again, but I assure you that I'll come up empty-handed."

As he turned away, I pulled my hair back behind my shoulders and pulled a hairband from my wrist to tie my hair in a low ponytail while Brennan frowned, standing up onto her toes to see the family of the body currently at the funeral home for their service. I felt pretty smug for having gotten the upper hand.

"Well, that was… quick," Booth ventured, rocking back on his heels and whistling as Martin politely excused himself from the family to slip into the side hallway.

"That's one word for it," I half agreed.

Brennan turned towards Booth, all business. "I need to get those ashes from her yard," she told him, her eyes alight with the stubborn persistence that I admired. The sooner we got access to the ashes from Hastings' cremation, the sooner we could confirm identity, and then bring down Martin if he turned out to be the bad guy. And if he wasn't… well, his day will still have taken a turn for the worse, and I'll just have to live with that if I can't get anything else.

Booth nodded, turning around and signaling that it was time for us to leave. "You've got 'em, alright," he promised vehemently. "I'll get the warrant."

"Don't forget the dogs," Brennan muttered, in reference to Mrs. Hastings' demands. Apparently, having dogs and guns were a necessity in order for us to get the location of the ashes from her backyard.

Rolling my eyes at the memory, I huffed. "Or the 'gun-toting agents,' as she put it," I quipped.

The FBI agent whistled as we left the front room of Martin's Funeral Services, out to go get warrants, dogs, and armed agents with preferably shorter tempers. "Oh, believe me," he chuckled. "Trust me, I won't forget that."

"So, I looked it up on the internet… you can get ten thousand dollars for grafts on the black market these days." Brennan stepped up onto the platform after sliding her card through the system. The lights stayed green until several seconds after she was already up the stairs.

Booth whistled. "Ten grand," he repeated, before he shook his head and declared, "Geez, my bones are worth more than that."

Jaw dropping, I crossed my arms. "Arrogant!" I accused lightheartedly.

Brennan narrowed her eyes at Booth skeptically. "What makes you so special?" She asked, also a little on the side that he shouldn't be making claims that he may not be able to prove. And ten thousand is a hell of a lot of money.

Pleased that he was being listened to at the very least, Booth proudly leaned against the rail. "Three glasses of milk a day, I work out…" He mimed lifting weights. I raised my eyebrows, reluctant to give him any credit. After all, we didn't know if the black market had any care for the quality of the bone grafts, so comparing his to the ten thousand dollar ones was a moot point. "…And I eat right."

Hodgins piped up from the desk he was seated at while he was reading analyses from the mass spectrometer. "X-ray micro-fluorescence shows a high concentration of calcium carbonate."

"Oh, that's a revelation." Leaning back, surprised by Brennan's sharp sarcasm, I reminded myself not to state the obvious if I valued being on my current peg. Calcium carbonate being a key ingredient in bone, the "revelation" wasn't surprising, but it also didn't help progress. "Seriously, Hodgins, is there anything that we can link to William Hastings' medical records?"

Hodgins shook his head, scratching the back of his neck and twisting around in his chair. "Everything tracks!" He said defensively. "I mean, the cremains are consistent to those of William Hastings. The question I keep asking is, if the widow is guilty, why keep the remains so close to home?"

"To keep an eye out?" I suggested, trying to be helpful. "So she knows if someone finds out or gets close?"

"What if she didn't know about it?"

Booth, Hodgins, and I all looked towards Brennan when she posed the question. Hodgins was surprised, Booth didn't seriously consider it for a second, and I wondered about the merit. An angry person like Mrs. Hastings was probably not going to be the nicest towards anyone who suggested what she didn't want, and anyone could figure that out just from talking to her, if they said the right things. What if the criminal had done the harvesting without consent because they knew she'd refuse?

"Oh, come on, Bones," Booth complained. "She hated the guy! My guess is she's got ten "G"'s stuffed in her mattress back in Trailerville."

While Trailerville wasn't what the place was actually called, it sure sounded better than Beard's Fork.

"No, I mean it," Brennan argued against the agent. "There are no unusual bank records, no deposits. What if they took the grafts, gave her back the ashes, and she was none the wiser?"

Chuckling, Hodgins exclaimed, "Man, is she going to be pissed!"

"I say screw the handcuffs," I agreed, setting back to lean against the side of Hodgins' desk. "Let's just sic the widow on the bad guy, then shove him behind bars if there's anything left."

Finding the sincerity of the claim questionable, Hodgins looked up at me knowingly. "Is that you saying that you don't want a crack at them, too?"

"Didn't I specify?" I asked, feigning confusion before explaining, "The widow's getting second call. I have first dibs… um… or second, depending on how violent Amy's father's feeling." Besides being agitated about the crime in general, I have the right to be mad about what's done to Amy. Father, however, trumps friend.

"Alright." Booth uncrossed one leg from over the other and stepped away from the rails. "Plans of illegal violence aside," he inserted a glance at Hodgins and I here. I shrugged like I was innocent. "If it's not the widow, I'm doubling down on the mortician. Everybody in?" He looked between Brennan and Hodgins while I nodded my agreement.