Paper Locks

A/N: Yeah, yeah. . . I know. Poor Booth, Bad-Bad Pelant and Way-to-go Max. Story #2,447,778 on the finale. But wait. . . .

SPOILER ALERT! I have a few theories. (I didn't get anything right, did I, on Candle in the Storm? So what makes anyone think I could be close now?)

But, really. . . how could I know ANyTHINg about the coming season except that, barring those pesky Mayans and their calendar, it's coming. (Maybe Pelant and the Mayans get together. . . naahhw!)

I don't own Bones, but I sure would like to buy a piece of it, if only to get a sneak peek.

Long after she signs off on a case, some images linger. Usually it's only a face, a look captured in a photograph that offers up some sense of the personality lost. Sometimes it's the image of the horror the victim faced while still alive.

Sometimes it's the most immediate horror that refuses to disappear and almost becomes part of her DNA, like the body of a young man lying apart from an island of broken glass within a sea of red on the forensics platform at the lab. Or a young man who goes off to war and comes back changed so much that he joins forces with a cannibal serial killer.

Most images aren't that horrific, but they're always about the victim, a life lost, a brief memory as some small tribute.

Over the years, she'd been able to let go of those images, to allow them only a temporary stay in her mind's eye before releasing them, like leaves in the wind, to scatter before the next whirlwind brings in another victim.

But this particular image she cannot let go. It haunts her days when she sees the emptiness in the office and the lab, and it haunts her nights as she lays in bed wondering.

The woman stands at the head of the table, her hands gently picking up each bone with a kind of reverence one only sees in church. Each bone has already been carefully examined—X-rayed and photographed and scanned. But that kind of examination is nothing next to this examination. Each bone deserves to be studied, and she does, with critical looks and a sure hand. And each bone is remembered.

While she is good at her job—a federal coroner has to be—she became better in the presence of the very deliberate, the very objective, the very exacting forensic anthropologist she inherited when she took on the job as head of forensics at the Jeffersonian.

That woman is part of her DNA now.

She imagines there have been changes in the woman's appearance to disguise the best selling novelist. Perhaps changes in her voice and mannerisms as well. But she hopes that someday she'll see her again and that wish is something that will not change.

The weeks certainly will have altered the baby. She knows that babies grow and change almost daily and this flight will most certainly have changed both the woman and the child in the same way that her absence has changed what is happening around her now.

"We've got a white female, mid-30s, dead from what? Gunshot probably. You got height? Weight?"

Dr. Clark Edison sat back on his heels and looked over the body with a practiced eye. "Between 5'7" and 5'9". Weight, about 130 to 140."

She's waiting for her return, but this is not the way she expects it to go and she draws attention to the lower portion of the skeleton. "Has she ever given birth?"

Agent Flynn, who has been conducting the investigations with the Jeffersonian for some time now, is certainly not aware of the significance of her question. But Clark is.

There's an almost imperceptible shake of his head. "No, there's no indication that our victim gave birth. No. It's not. . . ."

He leaves his statement hanging, but that's how it's been of late. Everything is hanging, waiting expectedly for something to happen to change the way things are. Everything seems to be on pause despite the fact that everything seems to be moving forward.

"Great. That narrows things down a bit." Agent Flynn gives no indication that he is aware of the silent communication that goes on between herself and Dr. Edison, but that's understandable. They don't really talk about her, but when they do, it is done with more silences than words.

"If there's nothing else you can tell me, I'll make arrangements for the body to be transported back to the Jeffersonian. ID this afternoon?"

She watches as he nods—his version of goodbye—and then heads off toward an area spotted by the dark jackets of the FBI techs.

"He's not as, what's the word, lively as Agent Booth, is he?"

Clark's assessment, made when Flynn is safely away, hangs in the air between them for a moment before she can offer up an answer. "No. No, he's not." He's not Seeley.

But nothing is as it seems. There are adjustments. Just having Dr. Edison on the scene of a crime like this is just one of the many things that are different these days.

"You know, Nora thinks there's a certain corporate mentality to working at the FBI. You've seen one FBI agent, you've seen them all. They dress alike, sound alike. Cookie cutter professionals. But as I was telling her just the other day. . . ."

She listens as he expounds on his theory and while she is adaptable, she misses being on the sidelines of a different couple's life. Clark and Nora seem entirely too. . . too normal.

oOo

She runs the vital statistics into the missing person's database and waits as the computer runs through the possibilities.

If she didn't have any work here, she would have told Hodgins long ago that all she just wanted was to pack up and leave for Paris and paint and make love and raise Michael. But running information through databases and creating visual scenarios for murders and cross-referencing murder weapons isn't really work these days.

Trying to crack an impossible code is.

Once she has a name for the latest victim, she returns to the code that has frustrated her for weeks. The FBI has taken it to experts in artificial intelligence and braniac mathematicians, but everyone is stumped.

And her million dollars worth of computer equipment is just as stymied.

"Ange?"

When she turns from staring at the face of a young woman who smiles despite her horrific demise, she sees the look of concern that seems permanently etched on her husband's face.

"I was thinking it might be nice to go to the zoo tomorrow with Michael."

"What?"

"The zoo." Jack smiles and steps closer. "You know, the place with all those animals."

"I know what the zoo is." She sighs and lets him close the distance even further and wrap her in his arms. "I think I've been there before."

"I've okayed it with Cam. Just a couple of hours, okay?"

It's in the middle of a murder investigation and except for nursing breaks or doctor visits, she—no, they—never take time off like this.

"You know, a trip to Paris would be better."

"If we went to Paris, Ange, we'd never come back."

He's still holding her close, so she cannot see his expression, but she knows that tone.

He's serious.

oOo

She's heard them all.

The whispers in the hallways seem to be louder these days, bolder, as if people don't care if she hears.

But that's how it is when you've got one foot out the door—people figure you've grown deaf as well.

She's still under a cloud of scandal, just off a performance review and an intensive check into her finances and she should know by now if she can afford early retirement.

Because surviving this is just pure hell.

She came clean, told her superiors everything: transposed numbers on the search warrant to give the squints time to clear Dr. Brennan, visited Brennan's house to warn her about the arrest warrant, offered up advice that the good doctor turn herself in.

Was it her fault the woman transferred $150,000 into her account and then rabbited?

Booth backed her story, but do they really care to believe a man who's standing under his own cloud?

The bar association has her case under review and she's seriously considering finding a job at that big, multi-partnered law firm over the border in Virginia and becoming lost as one of a billion law clerks employed there if and when the bar yanks her license.

"Miss Julian?"

She's been a federal prosecutor for years and she knows that tone.

Turning from the pile of file folders on her desk, she notes that sweet little thing who's been circling her office like a ravenous vulture just waiting to pounce. She's carrying a file folder from the Jeffersonian and opening it as she's approaching, sure she's going to get an answer without even asking permission to talk to her.

Yeah, that Aamer to Zurkowski law firm's looking good these days.

"How much is it going to hurt our case that this Dr. Brennan is now a fugitive with an arrest warrant out on her?"

"Are you asking if the fact that she went on her murderous spree before Dr. Sawyer's murder is going to sway the jury?"

She's losing her touch. The sarcasm was practically dripping and this Harvard-educated lawyer, Grace Something-or-other, isn't folding like a cheap cot.

"Dr. Clark Edison did his own examination of the remains?"

"Yes."

"Then what's the problem?"

Grace Something-or-other stands there on the other side of her desk and has the audacity to look worried. "From all of the notes and the reports, Dr. Brennan was all over this case. She initially identified the. . . ."

She's read the case files and she knows. Hell, she's got it practically memorized. She was all set to prosecute this case when it was pulled from her like the other two dozen cases she was working. That was before.

This is the after.

"Dr. Saroyan and Dr. Edison will back up the evidence. Dr. Brennan's present troubles aren't going to do much except muddy the waters a bit. Put those two up on the stand and they'll calm the waters."

"This is no longer a slam dunk. The Jeffersonian's reputation is a bit tarnished these days."

IF she were a violent woman, she just might slap the impudence from the face of this Grace come-lately who is taking her hard work and efforts and shoving her own tarnished reputation in her face.

"You just never mind what the defense says about Dr. Brennan. You just go in there, head high and you tell them that that sorry son of a bitch killed that young woman and you show them the pictures and not one, I tell you, not one of those jurors won't be but teary-eyed."

She's come from behind her desk and is slowly walking the young lawyer from her room, step by agonizing step backwards and she doesn't care if her impassioned speech earns her a mention that evening at the local watering hold.

"Those squints are the best and they're the reason why you're going in there with the kind of evidence you've got."

She sees it, finally; a hint of respect and fear and she's about ready to go in for the kill when a fresh-faced clerk stands at her doorway and looks about ready to swallow his tongue.

"What do you want?"

"Uhh, Miss Julian?" Even his freckles are quaking at her tone. "The chief federal prosecutor wants to see you in your office. As soon as possible."

The message is delivered with a tremulous voice and she realizes she's trying to slay the wrong dragon.

"I'll be right up, cherie." Grace Harvard-educated-interloper stands to the side, still in awe at the magnificence she can still muster when she needs to. "And you? Don't underestimate the Jeffersonian's squint squad. They were trained by the finest forensic anthropologist in the world."

But Grace just isn't living up to her name; there's shark in her DNA. "They seem to be breeding a better kind of sociopath over there. First that young forensic anthropologist who joins up with a cannibal and their star forensic anthropologist who kills a nut job after she releases him from the loony bin?" The young woman is eye-to-eye with her and not backing down either. Self-righteousness has put a bit of starch in her backbone. "Seems to me that there's a high probability of becoming a murderer if you're into forensic anthropology at the Jeffersonian."

But she likes getting the last word, and today, when her own career is careening out of control thanks to a hacktivist-turned-serial killer and a certain forensic anthropologist and her criminal father, she would get in the last words.

"Cher, let me tell you this. If Dr. Brennan killed that poor man, I can assure you there wouldn't be any body left to find."

oOo

He's been awash in a sea of reports for some time when he finally looks up.

"Hey."

He's not used to visits from profilers these days unless he counts the psychologist who questioned him after Brennan's disappearance and drops by occasionally to seek additional insights. "What are you doing here, Sweets?"

"I'm kind of at loose ends tonight." Sweets's voice has that soft edge that only serves to remind him of why he's riding his desk instead of riding around in his official, government-issued SUV. He's got enough guilt and sadness, thank you very much.

"Daisy's working on a paper for class. I was wondering if I could interest you in dinner. My treat."

There's been quite a bit of that lately: the sympathy dinner.

"I don't know, Sweets. There's that game tonight."

With 200+ channels, there's got to be a game somewhere tonight. Tiddlewinks, for God's sake, dominoes, checkers—anything might be preferable to dinner and sympathy.

"A quick sandwich. A chance to catch up."

The soft edge has decidedly become sharper, and he can tell the emotion behind it.

"Yeah, sure." He's got to eat, doesn't he? And eating alone is almost as bad as dinner with a side of sympathy. "Name the place and time."

And he doesn't realize it, but that's when the next chapter of this mess that is his life begins.