The Mystery of the Man

Brennan pressed enter and saved the new paragraph of her book, she had been enjoying describing the way flesh falls off a suspended body. As she finished the phone rang.

"Brennan, we got a new case!" Booth said a little too excitedly, they hadn't had a case for a week or so now, so it was understandable. "Some guy set on fire in a field, I'll pick you up in ten minutes."

"See you then, Booth."

"The farmer found the body at seven this morning, saw smoke and came to investigate," Booth rattled off, like he did at every crime scene.

As Brennan pulled on her gloves her eyes examined the body. "Male, mid to late thirties. Preliminary cause of death, fire. No signs of a struggle."

"So the guy set himself on fire in the middle of a field. This has got to be the weirdest suicide case I've ever had." Booth stated a little too cheerily. Turning to a random forensics person, he said, "scour the area for what could have started the fire. Bones, how much of this do you want taken back to the lab?"

Brennan considered this for a moment, "all burnt vegetation and material as well as soil samples for a 10 metre radius around the body."

"You heard the lady," Booth said, clapping his hands towards the puppy-like forensics team.

Back at the lab Mr Nigel-Murray was staring at the body, his hand rested on his chin. "I could have sworn that skin on his elbow was more charred before," he stated to Hodgins as he approached.

"You're imagining this, remember last week when you thought me and Angela broke up?" Hodgins replied cynically.

"Well, maybe you're right. In any case Dr. Saroin needs to hurry up and take samples, Dr. Brennan was not in a good mood last time I saw her and a fleshy body would not help."

"Mr. Nigel-Murray, why is the body still fleshy?" Brennan asked as she entered the lab. She could have sworn that the tissue surrounding the eye socket was completely burnt off.

"Well, Dr. Saroin took tissue samples to check the DNA, and she said there was an anomaly and I wasn't to even think about cleaning the bones…" Mr. Nigel-Murray blurted out.

"What sort of anomaly?"

"She didn't say…"

"Right, I am going to talk to her, she needs to do her job so I can do mine," Brennan said. She spun on her heels to storm off when Cam appeared behind her.

"Dr. Brennan, when I say there's an anomaly, and not to touch the body, you do as I say."

"Get out of jail free? I just wish to know the anomaly, then I'll get on with examining the x-rays."

"Well, it has to be a computer error…" Cam's voice softened and she moved closer to Brennan, "the DNA's not reading as human… It appears to be… Alien."

Brennan jumped slightly at this, she had heard Hodgins' rants about aliens, and even believed there was something out there… But in her lab! It was overwhelming! "I-I'll see to those x-rays," she spluttered.

Angela's hips swayed enchantingly as she entered Hodgins' lab. "Did you hear?" she asked.

"Hear what?" Hodgins obviously knew already, but he would do anything to hear Angela's sexy voice.

"The body found this morning- it could be alien!" her serious face then morphed into a cheeky smile, known all too well by Hodgins from their fantasies… "and a really hot alien at that!"

Hodgins took a second to stop staring wide-eyed at Angela so he could look at the facial reconstruction she'd just put up on the screen: a thirty-something white male with tousled brown hair and a gorgeous jaw line. Hodgins had to mentally shake his head when this thought popped up- did he really just describe a guy's jaw line as gorgeous? And a dead guy's at that!

"Gorgeous, isn't he?" Angela asked in an incredibly alluring tone.

"Uh-huh, sure," Hodgins stammered, rubbing the back of his neck while a faint blush appeared on the tips of his ears. Angela laughed to herself upon seeing this. "What's so funny?" Hodgins asked defensively.

"Oh, nothing," Angela replied, still smiling. "What can you tell me about the guy's clothes?"

"Ah, that is the interesting part!" proclaimed Hodgins, once again in his comfort zone. "There are fibres and a button from a circa World War One military coat! Do you have any idea how rare they are? There are also clips and melted elastic that appear to have been from suspenders. The last weird part: coffee grounds in a plastic bag."

"So the guy liked a decent cup of coffee, what's weird about that?"

" The fact that they had been used," Hodgins replied exasperatedly.

"So he was a really hot alien who wore a World War One military coat, suspenders and carried around used coffee grounds?" Angela blurted out, still somehow managing to sound sexy.

"Pretty much!"

"I'll let Booth know," Angela said, scrunching her eyebrows sceptically.

"I'll come with you, I want to give him some info on the ignition source," Hodgins added, tagging on behind her like an excited little puppy.

"Cam, can we please go home? Just for the night? Dr. Brennan found no signs of trauma or struggle on the bones, you found no drugs in toxicology, I found ignition and the fire was limited to a one metre radius. This had to be a suicide! No crime to solve here!" Hodgins was nearly on his knees.

"Dr. Hodgins, this man could be someone's husband, boyfriend, son, brother, father, it is our job to identify him," Cam stated in her most professional voice. She, too, wanted to go home, this was 99% likely to be a suicide.

"Cam, there were no matches on missing persons," Angela added in, in an attempt to help her husband.

"Oh, fine, but tell Dr. Brennan first," Cam said exasperatedly.

"Will do." Hodgins mock-saluted as he said this.

A manly scream rang out through the medico-legal department of the Jeffersonian. Hiding behind one of the great pillars, Micah Leggat the night watchman urgently dialled 911.

Author's Blah:
So what do you all think? I came up with this fantastic idea (although havn't really even gotten there yet…) and I had to write it down! This was originally just going to ba a one-shot, but upon realising it was so long I decided to make it a multi-chapter. Hopefully I'll post the next chapter later today, provided I can be bothered to type it up (yes, I have six hand-written pages).