(The Pinocchio in the Planter)

A/N: This story is definitely AU.

I don't own Bones.

Ooooooooooooooo

With the warrant in his jacket pocket, Booth picked the lock so he and Brennan could enter the house that belonged to Pelant in Silver Spring. The house was old, but well kept up and the yard was neat and well cared for.

After Booth entered the living room, Brennan followed him in and noticed a dark stain on the carpet near the entrance to the kitchen. "We may have found our crime scene." Moving into the kitchen, she placed latex gloves on her hands and opened and closed cabinet drawers.

Standing next to the stain, Booth nodded his head. "It's a lot of blood, so yeah I think this is probably where Pelant was killed." Taking his phone from his jacket pocket, he called Marcus Geier and asked him to get his team of FBI techs to the house as soon as possible. Once that call was ended, he called Cam to let her know that their crime scene had been found and that she should send Hodgins as soon as possible. Finished, Booth placed his phone back in his pocket, moved over to the kitchen and leaned into the room. "Techs are on the way. So is Hodgins."

Curious, Booth moved into the hallway and checked each room to see what Pelant had kept there. In the back bedroom, after turning the light switch on he found the room to be well-lit and immaculate. "I found his computer . . . well, computers . . . This just pisses me off. The man wasn't supposed to have any computers and look at this . . . just look . . . I wonder why the killer didn't destroy the computers."

Once in the room, Brennan stared at the computers, printers and a rack of servers. "It does seem odd. Maybe the killer just killed Pelant and left . . . That monitoring company has a lot to answer for." Moving into the room, she observed that there was a filing cabinet next to the servers. "I think we should get Angela out here to look at the computers before we move them."

"Good idea." Booth called Angela. "Hey, we found Pelant's computers. Hodgins is coming here to examine a possible crime scene, so maybe you can ride over here with him. I don't want to move the computers or his servers until you've looked at them."

I'll let Cam know that I'm going with Jack. See you soon.

The call ended, Booth sighed. "We're assuming that Brodsky killed Pelant, but I'm open to the possibility that it was someone else. In fact, I think someone working for Taffet probably killed him. That would make more sense . . . The fact that his body was dumped at the Vietnam War Memorial has to mean something, but we'll probably have to find the killer before we get an answer to that question . . . I'm hoping the techs find something here to point to who did it. If I'm wrong and it really was Brodsky then we have one more reason to find him before he kills someone else . . . this whole thing is strange."

"I agree." Brennan moved over to the cabinet, opened the top cabinet drawer and found several boxes inside. "These boxes are unmarked. We can wait and open them once the techs have inspected them." Opening the next drawer, she frowned. "Some notebooks and several boxes of cable . . . it looks like there are some phone chargers and a few cell phones too. They're probably burner phones." Opening the third drawer, Brennan found pieces of electronic equipment and several more boxes. "Pelant was a genius when it came to computers . . . I am confident that Angela can help us though. I'm sure the computers are password protected, but Angela is a genius when it comes to computers."

"With the money Pelant had, he could afford a setup like this." Booth asked for a glove and once Brennan gave him one, he held it in his hand and opened the closet door. "Another wall of death thing . . . the man was dangerous as hell and walking around like he was free as a bird . . . A lot of newspaper clippings . . . a few about some unsolved murders . . . I hope these aren't more of his victims."

Brennan glanced at the wall and shook her head. "As dangerous as Brodsky is, it would seem that Pelant was much more dangerous . . . his vendetta against the military industrial complex seemed to be all he cared about." Moving back towards the door, she glanced at Booth. "I'm going to look at the bathrooms and utility rooms."

Once she was out of the room, Booth started jotting down the names of the murder victims he was seeing in the newspaper clippings. The victim's bodies had been located in several states, but the majority seemed to be in California and Texas. "Just how many people did that guy kill?" That was a question he needed to get an answer to.

Ooooooooooooo

Entering the house with booties covering his shoes and his hands in latex gloves, Agent Harris noticed Booth and Brennan sitting in the living room near the picture window. "Hey, I'm here if you want to leave."

Glad to see Harris, Booth smiled and moved across the room over to the door. Brennan stopped to speak to Hodgins before joining her partner.

"The fact that Pelant had another house and no one knew it is just a little too much for me . . . I checked and this house is listed as being owned by a Donny Carter . . . I'm not sure what that means, but I plan to find out. We found two computers in one of the bedrooms, some servers, a cabinet filled with electronic equipment and another creepy wall of death thing in a closet." Booth felt that this case was going to be time consuming and complicated.

"Oh goody . . . I can't get over the fact that Pelant was supposed to be under house arrest. I checked and so far the company monitoring him is still insisting that his monitor showed he never left his house once his house arrest began . . . What a joke . . . a sick joke. Caroline is mad as a hornet and she wants you to call her when you get back. She's in a bad mood so be careful."

"Yeah, no kidding." Booth wasn't looking forward to talking to the prosecutor. He still didn't have enough information to answer her questions, of that he was certain. "Besides the six victims on the wall in his house in D.C. there are more murder victims listed in this house . . . If he was killing people associated with companies doing business with the Pentagon then you'd have thought someone would have noticed the murders were connected before now."

Harris didn't have an answer to that one. "Well, we know now and once we're through we may end up closing a lot of cases . . . You do know that if we had tried to arrest Pelant for these murders the fact that he was under house arrest would have stopped us cold in our tracks."

Brennan shook her head. "Sometimes our reliance on computers is a hinderance. Apparently Pelant was a genius and computers helped him get away with murder. He found a way to remove his ankle monitor and not alert the monitoring company that there was an issue . . . Whoever murdered him helped us prove he was a murderer, intentional or not."

Ooooooooooooo

Sitting in Booth's office, Agent Brian Holtz was reading over the report that Booth had written closing Jeremiah Waverly's case. "A bang stick . . . Poor Marcus tried to figure out what had killed Waverly, but he couldn't . . . well, he did his best. At least we can close that case. Waverly's wife has been calling me an incompetent buffoon in the news and I was getting tired of it. Last week, she compared the FBI to the Keystone kops. I didn't have any idea what was used to kill the man. His home security system had been interrupted and the cameras in the back and front yard weren't working at the time Waverly was killed. His neighbors had security cameras and those were shut down at the time of his death too. In fact, no security system on that street or the next street over was working at the time. No fingerprints in the pool area at Waverly's house or at the front or back door that belonged to strangers . . . No threatening letters or phone calls except by a couple of angry customers who had airtight alibis. No witnesses at the home when he died and no clues to point me to where to look. His wife claimed her husband was a saint who didn't have an enemy in the world . . . Pelant was a psycho as far as I'm concerned."

"No shit." Booth leaned forward on his desk. "We found clues that make me to believe he may have killed more people besides Waverly and the ones listed in Pelant's other house . . . He had a one man crusade going on against Defense contractors and no one knew it until Pelant was killed."

"Harris told me that Angela is still investigating Pelant's computers. She's having a hard time getting past the password protections." Brian crossed his arms against his chest. "Hodgins is going out to the spots marked on Pelant's maps tomorrow to see if there are any bodies buried there. If it's okay with you, I'd like to go with him . . . The Waverly case is closed and I'm still waiting for the autopsy on Bennett Truax to be finalized before I can continue my investigation. I'm not even sure if he was murdered or not."

Booth didn't see a problem with that. "Sure, go ahead. If Hodgins finds anything, call me . . . If he does find some graves and it proves to be victims of the Gravedigger we might be able to close some more kidnapping cases . . . This is wild. One man's death and we may be able to close several murder cases connected to him and some others connected to Taffet."

"The press is probably going to crucify us for allowing a murderer to kill that many people before he was stopped. It won't matter that we didn't know the man had found a way to get rid of his ankle monitor and we sure didn't know that he was a serial killer." Holtz didn't have a lot of hope that this was going to turn out well for the FBI. "Oh well . . . I sure would like to know why he was interested in the Grave Digger . . . Angela thinks it was because Dr. Brennan was kidnapped by Taffet and escaped alive with Hodgins . . . it's a strange obsession."

Slowly nodding his head, Booth agreed with his agent. "I think he was worried that Bones was going to be assigned to one of his victims and since we're pretty good closing cold cases he might have been worried that he was going to be caught."

"Okay, but did he plan to kill Dr. Brennan or you or was he just keeping an eye on her and you just in case?" Holtz sighed. "Have you heard about any sightings of Brodsky lately? That man worries me."

"He worries me too and no, no one has seen him lately." Booth sighed. "I don't know if Brodsky killed Pelant or not, but his picture was on the wall in Pelant's house for a reason. I don't think he did it, but . . . well, we'll see."

Checking his watch, Holtz stood up. "I have to meet my wife at the Founding Fathers in twenty minutes . . . I'll let you know if Hodgins finds anything tomorrow."

Once he was alone, Booth turned to face his PC and checked for emails. He was hoping someone would report seeing Brodsky soon giving him an idea if the assassin was in the area or not.

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Let me know what you think of my story. I appreciate it.

A/N: The Keystone Kops were an incredibly incompetent police force, dressed in unkempt uniforms, that appeared regularly in silent film from about 1912 to the early 1920s.