(Bones/Criminal Minds) The Be-all and the End-all for xover_exchange
Title: The Be-all and the End-all
Author: verying
Fandoms: Bones/Criminal Minds
Reid, Hotch, Prentiss; Brennan, Hodgins, Wendell
Pairings: none
Rating: PG
Wordcount: 2,900
Spoilers: Very limited spoilers through season 2 of Criminal Minds, character(s) from season 4 of Bones.
Warnings: Death of a minor character.
Disclaimer: Criminal Minds and Bones belong to their respective creators
A/N: Thank you to languisity for reading multiple versions of this story and providing feedback, suggestions, and cheerleading. Also, thank you azurejay for being my test audience.
Summary: A dead body, a handful of party guests, and a locked room.
When the back-up generator kicks on and the emergency lights come up, Spencer’s as surprised to see the body as anyone. He’s taken aback by how much it startles him, and he can’t shake the feeling that he should have reacted more calmly. He doesn’t shout like Dr. Brennan, or rush to check for a pulse like Hotch, but he chokes on a strange, shapeless vowel sound and flinches back, putting a hand over his chest like a 19th century maiden.
Dead bodies don’t repulse him anymore, in and of themselves. Death is sad, lifelessness is creepy, and of course, he’s seen the results of torture and violence too many times and never stops being viscerally upset by them. But the presence of a dead body in the room with him, its existence alone, hasn’t been enough to upset Spencer in years, now.
It’s just that Wendell had been laughing when the lights went out, and now he’s dead on the floor. And it all happened so, so fast.
He doesn’t need to hear Hotch’s pronouncement that there’s no pulse; Wendell’s face is pasty gray and his eyes are unblinking, even as Dr. Brennan slaps his cheek. She looks like she’s trying to wake him from an especially deep nap, and her eyes are glassy. Dr. Hodgins steps over and stills her hand, gently pulling her back to her feet. He’s suppressing the urge to hug her, it seems, and Spencer wonders why he doesn’t. Perhaps the team at the Jeffersonian is not that close.
Prentiss, as calm as Hotch but more practical, is the first one to say, “Somebody try the door. I’ll call the police.” She removes her cellphone from a clutch that looks like it wouldn’t fit a tube of lipstick. Before she dials, she pulls her hair back, and with a few flicks of her wrist, it stays neatly up and out of her face; even in her short black dress, she suddenly looks like Agent Prentiss again, rather than Emily.
Hotch moves for the service elevator at the far side of the lab, so Spencer turns and heads for the main entrance. He tugs on the handle, but it won’t budge. There’s a small metal box next to the door, housing the security system, and Spencer unlatches it and stares inside, finding a tangle of wires and a small led panel, unlit. He pokes at it for a moment, but the truth is he has no intention of hacking the security system of one of the nation’s most important museums--even if he could. He closes the door with a tiny sigh.
“This door’s locked tight.”
“The security system locks down when the power goes out.” Dr. Brennan dabs surreptitiously at the corners of her eyes, and the panic is gone from her face, although sorrow remains.
Hotch has pushed the call button at least three times, but he tries once more before giving up. “The elevator must not be hooked up to the generator,” he says. His tone is as modulated as ever, but weariness still creeps through. “It looks like we’re not going anywhere for a while.”
There’s disappointment on the faces around him, but Spencer nods. “This is the Jeffersonian Museum,” he says, as though they need to be reminded. “The security system has to be state of the art. This building alone contains thousands of artifacts that are literally irreplaceable.”
“Dr. Reid is correct,” Brennan says. “As unfortunate as these circumstances are, even if there was a way out of this room, I’d have to insist that we all remain on the premises until both the police and museum security arrive.”
There’s a pause, and then Prentiss speaks, sliding her phone back into her bag. “The police will have someone here as soon as they can,” she says, “but they won’t be able to do much until power is restored and the security system resets.”
They’re in the forensic anthropology wing on the second floor of the Jeffersonian. The FBI holiday party is in full swing in the main atrium below them--or least it was, before the power went out. Spencer wonders if the guests downstairs have been able to leave, or if they’re locked in, as well. If they are, at least down there they have access to alcohol and food. And no dead bodies. Presumably.
Regardless, the party is over, and with that thought, Spencer loosens his bow tie. He’ll never get it knotted properly again, but it’s of no consequence, now.
It’s been windy all day--the kind of gusty winter wind that eats through your clothes and makes the trees wail. Spencer supposes it’s the wind that caused the power outage--there are probably downed lines all over the city. Of course, it had to happen just when he and his colleagues were being given a behind the scenes tour of the forensic anthropology facilities, in a small lab behind layer after layer of electronic security devices, isolated from the rest of the museum. What luck.
Spencer looks out the window, and sure enough, there are pitch black angular puzzle pieces cut out of the skyline in front of him. People all over the city are lighting candles, he thinks. Cursing because they can’t find the flashlight. Some of them are probably stuck in elevators; maybe a few are stuck behind security systems, as well.
He looks back at Wendell’s body, the one place in the room that his eyes shy away from. There’s a short gash on Wendell’s forehead, bloody but not bleeding now that his heart is still. Someone has closed his eyes--Dr. Brennan, maybe--and Spencer’s glad of it. It’s another reaction he doesn’t usually have to dead bodies, but he’d felt like Wendell was staring at him.
Prentiss catches him looking and takes a step closer, resting one hand on Spencer’s shoulder.
“I’m sorry,” she says.
Spencer swallows hard. “For what?”
“You knew him, didn’t you?”
“N-no.” Spencer steps back, turning his shoulders away from the body, and folds his arms. “I recognized him from my, my doctor’s office. When we were introduced at the party tonight, he said I looked familiar…and it was because we sat across from each other in the waiting room last week. But we’d never spoken before. It was just…random coincidence.”
Spencer trails off, and nobody speaks. His looks quickly back at Wendell, wishes they could cover him with a sheet.
When the lights first came back on, when they first saw the body, Prentiss had yelped, “Oh my God--what happened?” It’s her gut reaction to crisis, Spencer knows--assess the problem in order to fix it as efficiently as possible.
The question had gone unremarked upon in the rush to Wendell’s side and the minutes of chaos that followed, but now, Spencer’s sure they’re all thinking it. He wonders who will voice it first.
It’s Hodgins who speaks, after a few more awkward moments of shocky silence.
“What--did anyone see what happened?”
Brennan and Hotch both answer, “No,” almost in unison.
Prentiss shakes her head. “I was admiring the view,” she says, gesturing out the window.
“Whatever--,” Spencer beings, then flounders. He was about to say killed him, but his tongue is suddenly paralyzed. “Whatever happened,” he settles on, eyes jumping from face to face, “it was after the lights went out. He was explaining the techniques this department uses to map the contours of weapon marks in bone, right as the power died. I was looking directly at him.” The words are soft, but they carry conviction; Wendell was laughing in the seconds before darkness, unharmed and unguarded. Spencer knows this.
“He could have tripped in the dark,” Prentiss says, and Spencer glances back at the dark red split on Wendell’s forehead. “If he hit his head on the way down…” she trails off. There’s a restraint in her voice that says she doesn’t believe it, and Spencer’s sure he’s not the only one who agrees. And accident doesn't make sense--Wendell was killed.
He doesn’t share this line of thought with the rest of the group. “The likelihood of a healthy adult dying as the result of an accidental fall is infinitesimally small,” he says, instead. Hotch shoots him a level look, and Spencer bites off his sentence without producing the actual odds. It doesn’t matter, though, because he was right before--he’s not the only one who knows Wendell’s death is suspicious.
It’s Dr. Brennan who speaks up. “Dr. Reid is correct,” she says, a reluctant note in her voice. “It does appear that he hit his head as he fell, but judging from the small amount of damage, it’s unlikely that this injury caused his death.”
There are relatively few practical ways to kill someone quickly without visible external trauma. Spencer supposes he should be disturbed by how quickly he can think of them, and rule them out. Electrocution--but with what? And during a blackout? Suffocation, but the lights were only out for 10 seconds--15 at the most. Not enough time. Poisoning, Spencer thinks.
He’s detaching himself from the horror of what happened here, and he knows it. He’d rather not think about how personal it feels, or how close he was to Wendell at the moment that he died. He wonders if his eyes will tear up, if his hands will shake, later, when the evening’s events have time to sink in. Right now, he just--can’t react.
Dr. Hodgins crouches down, examining the corner of the table next to Wendell’s body. It will be bloody, Spencer’s sure, because Wendell did hit his head as he fell, the gash on his face speaks to that. But the blood won’t answer the underlying questions.
Idly, Spencer wonders what the police will do, when they finally arrive and find a dead body in a locked room full of FBI agents and consultants, none of whom seems to know what happened.
Eventually, Hotch speaks up. “Did he have any health issues?”
Dr. Brennan has perched on a stool, arms crossed tightly over the low-cut bodice of her dress. She looks cold. “None that I was aware of,” she answers. “Hodgins?”
But Dr. Hodgins is already shaking his head. “He never said anything to me about any sort of health trouble. Of course,” he shrugs, “that doesn’t mean there wasn’t anything. He’s always been kind of a quiet guy.”
This speculation is useless. “There’s no way to know until after the autopsy,” Spencer says. “It very well could have been natural causes.”
“Or it could have been murder,” Dr. Brennan says.
Spencer glances around the room, watching everyone else do the same. Suddenly, the tension that has been building all night feels concrete and heavy.
“Who was standing closest to him?” Hotch says. “Dr. Hodgins?”
The words hang in the air--Spencer doubts Hotch meant them as an accusation, but they seem to twist in the atmosphere.
“I didn’t kill him!”
Hodgins looks incensed, and his hands compact into fists. “He was my friend! Yes, I was standing next to him but--the lights barely blinked. Even if I had a motive, how could I have killed him in a split second with no weapon? And I didn’t have a motive.” He shoves one fist angrily into his jacket pocket, and the motion startles Spencer.
Hotch makes an abortive move forward, and Prentiss raises both her hands, quelling, palms out.
Hodgins looks confused for a second, and then he rolls his eyes, pulling his hand back out of his pocket and extending his fingers.
“Oh, for--I don’t have a weapon,” he says, exasperated, but his face is pale under the spots of angry color on his cheekbones.
Prentiss lowers her hands, and so does Hodgins, slowly. The air is charged, and Spencer feels just as shaken as the others look.
He eyes the four people standing in front of him. Hotch and Prentiss--Spencer's worked with both of them for years. He's known Hotch longer, granted, but it doesn't matter. He’s as sure as he can be that neither of them is a murderer. Besides, he supposes it's possible that one of them could have known Wendell before tonight, but that seems like a stretch. It's difficult to imagine that either of them had a motive, to imagine them seizing on the moments of darkness to rush across the crowded lab and kill Wendell. Spencer predicts that they'll both be quickly discarded as suspects, once an official investigation is underway. He hopes the same is true of himself.
As for Dr. Brennan and Dr. Hodgins-well, who knows what motives either of them could have had: a lover’s quarrel, perhaps, or professional jealousy. He could speculate all night; it won’t accomplish anything.
“We’re all a bit jumpy,” Spencer says. “Maybe we should each turn our pockets out. Just for peace of mind.”
At first, no one moves.
“I just have my clutch,” Prentiss says, finally. She walks over to the lab table and twists the latch, then upends her bag. A compact, her cell phone, her badge, and a credit card clatter onto the table.
One by one, they follow her lead. It’s surreal, yanking his pockets inside out to prove they’re empty, watching the assemblage of stuff on the table grow. They lay it out neatly, in rows. Everyone has a phone with them, and all of the men are carrying wallets. There’s a handful of loose change on the table, as well, and a condom from Dr. Hodgins’ pocket. Dr. Brennan had a few hairpins and a lip gloss tube in her purse; Spencer was carrying a torn scrap of notebook paper and a rubber band.
No one is is in possession of anything even remotely dangerous, although Spencer supposes it was unlikely they would find a gun or a bloody hunting knife, since Wendell wasn’t shot or stabbed. He takes a moment to stare down at the personal possessions on the table, idly counting the change. $1.32.
“That was uninformative,” Hodgins says.
Dr. Brennan sighs. “If he was murdered, poison seems like the most likely method-and it could have been administered long before the start of the party tonight.”
“True,” Hodgins seems to perk up--presumably at the relief of no longer being their best suspect, and not at the thought that his coworker was poisoned. Then he glances back at Wendell’s body and frowns. “I guess there’s really nothing we can do, except wait for the power to come back on.”
That seems to signal the end of the speculation. Dr. Brennan and Hodgins subside into stunned, sad quiet.
Spencer goes back to looking out the window.
When the lights finally flare and the heating system rumbles back to life, Hotch speaks up.
“Someone should go find the police,” he says. “I’m sure they’re downstairs. The rest of us should remain here.”
“I’ll go.” Spencer jumps at the chance to get away from the body, even if he does have to come right back.
He picks up his suit jacket from the chair near the door. Sliding his arms into the sleeves, he gets tangled and his left elbow bangs into the box housing the security console next to the exit. The tiny metal door pops open again, exposing the wires he’d examined earlier, and Spencer winces, rubbing his funny bone as he turns to close it.
Once his back is to the room, no one can see his hand steal into the console and close over a small, empty syringe.
He closes and latches the little door and steps back, slipping his hands comfortably into the pockets of his slacks, rocking back on his heels.
“I’ll hurry,” he offers, taking in the exhaustion on the faces of his teammates and the grief tugging at the corners of Dr. Brennan’s mouth. He glances one last time at Wendell, inanimate on the tile floor.
Spencer retraces the path Wendell had blazed earlier in the evening, when they first left the party, after Spencer talked him into giving them a behind-the-scenes tour. Noise drifts up from downstairs, no longer celebratory sounds, businesslike instead. This floor remains dim and deserted.
He had recognized Wendell the moment they were introduced--remembered sitting across from him in his psychiatrist’s waiting room. And then, after his appointment, Spencer bumped into him in the hallway outside the doctor’s thin wooden office door. Wendell had been plenty close enough to overhear--Dr. Shah’s diagnosis is still echoing in Spencer’s head. The doctor is bound by patient confidentiality laws, he knows…and besides, Spencer hadn’t used his real name.
But when he saw Wendell tonight, here, with Spencer’s co-workers--.
Well, no one else could know, that’s all. He had to make sure Wendell didn’t tell anyone.
Spencer passes through the empty particulates lab, past the chemical storage closets that Wendell had pointed out earlier. It’s amazing what you can find just lying around in a laboratory.
He is sorry, he tells himself. He is. But they’d make him quit the team, if they knew. And he can’t allow that.
-END-
Author: verying
Fandoms: Bones/Criminal Minds
Reid, Hotch, Prentiss; Brennan, Hodgins, Wendell
Pairings: none
Rating: PG
Wordcount: 2,900
Spoilers: Very limited spoilers through season 2 of Criminal Minds, character(s) from season 4 of Bones.
Warnings: Death of a minor character.
Disclaimer: Criminal Minds and Bones belong to their respective creators
A/N: Thank you to languisity for reading multiple versions of this story and providing feedback, suggestions, and cheerleading. Also, thank you azurejay for being my test audience.
Summary: A dead body, a handful of party guests, and a locked room.
When the back-up generator kicks on and the emergency lights come up, Spencer’s as surprised to see the body as anyone. He’s taken aback by how much it startles him, and he can’t shake the feeling that he should have reacted more calmly. He doesn’t shout like Dr. Brennan, or rush to check for a pulse like Hotch, but he chokes on a strange, shapeless vowel sound and flinches back, putting a hand over his chest like a 19th century maiden.
Dead bodies don’t repulse him anymore, in and of themselves. Death is sad, lifelessness is creepy, and of course, he’s seen the results of torture and violence too many times and never stops being viscerally upset by them. But the presence of a dead body in the room with him, its existence alone, hasn’t been enough to upset Spencer in years, now.
It’s just that Wendell had been laughing when the lights went out, and now he’s dead on the floor. And it all happened so, so fast.
He doesn’t need to hear Hotch’s pronouncement that there’s no pulse; Wendell’s face is pasty gray and his eyes are unblinking, even as Dr. Brennan slaps his cheek. She looks like she’s trying to wake him from an especially deep nap, and her eyes are glassy. Dr. Hodgins steps over and stills her hand, gently pulling her back to her feet. He’s suppressing the urge to hug her, it seems, and Spencer wonders why he doesn’t. Perhaps the team at the Jeffersonian is not that close.
Prentiss, as calm as Hotch but more practical, is the first one to say, “Somebody try the door. I’ll call the police.” She removes her cellphone from a clutch that looks like it wouldn’t fit a tube of lipstick. Before she dials, she pulls her hair back, and with a few flicks of her wrist, it stays neatly up and out of her face; even in her short black dress, she suddenly looks like Agent Prentiss again, rather than Emily.
Hotch moves for the service elevator at the far side of the lab, so Spencer turns and heads for the main entrance. He tugs on the handle, but it won’t budge. There’s a small metal box next to the door, housing the security system, and Spencer unlatches it and stares inside, finding a tangle of wires and a small led panel, unlit. He pokes at it for a moment, but the truth is he has no intention of hacking the security system of one of the nation’s most important museums--even if he could. He closes the door with a tiny sigh.
“This door’s locked tight.”
“The security system locks down when the power goes out.” Dr. Brennan dabs surreptitiously at the corners of her eyes, and the panic is gone from her face, although sorrow remains.
Hotch has pushed the call button at least three times, but he tries once more before giving up. “The elevator must not be hooked up to the generator,” he says. His tone is as modulated as ever, but weariness still creeps through. “It looks like we’re not going anywhere for a while.”
There’s disappointment on the faces around him, but Spencer nods. “This is the Jeffersonian Museum,” he says, as though they need to be reminded. “The security system has to be state of the art. This building alone contains thousands of artifacts that are literally irreplaceable.”
“Dr. Reid is correct,” Brennan says. “As unfortunate as these circumstances are, even if there was a way out of this room, I’d have to insist that we all remain on the premises until both the police and museum security arrive.”
There’s a pause, and then Prentiss speaks, sliding her phone back into her bag. “The police will have someone here as soon as they can,” she says, “but they won’t be able to do much until power is restored and the security system resets.”
They’re in the forensic anthropology wing on the second floor of the Jeffersonian. The FBI holiday party is in full swing in the main atrium below them--or least it was, before the power went out. Spencer wonders if the guests downstairs have been able to leave, or if they’re locked in, as well. If they are, at least down there they have access to alcohol and food. And no dead bodies. Presumably.
Regardless, the party is over, and with that thought, Spencer loosens his bow tie. He’ll never get it knotted properly again, but it’s of no consequence, now.
It’s been windy all day--the kind of gusty winter wind that eats through your clothes and makes the trees wail. Spencer supposes it’s the wind that caused the power outage--there are probably downed lines all over the city. Of course, it had to happen just when he and his colleagues were being given a behind the scenes tour of the forensic anthropology facilities, in a small lab behind layer after layer of electronic security devices, isolated from the rest of the museum. What luck.
Spencer looks out the window, and sure enough, there are pitch black angular puzzle pieces cut out of the skyline in front of him. People all over the city are lighting candles, he thinks. Cursing because they can’t find the flashlight. Some of them are probably stuck in elevators; maybe a few are stuck behind security systems, as well.
He looks back at Wendell’s body, the one place in the room that his eyes shy away from. There’s a short gash on Wendell’s forehead, bloody but not bleeding now that his heart is still. Someone has closed his eyes--Dr. Brennan, maybe--and Spencer’s glad of it. It’s another reaction he doesn’t usually have to dead bodies, but he’d felt like Wendell was staring at him.
Prentiss catches him looking and takes a step closer, resting one hand on Spencer’s shoulder.
“I’m sorry,” she says.
Spencer swallows hard. “For what?”
“You knew him, didn’t you?”
“N-no.” Spencer steps back, turning his shoulders away from the body, and folds his arms. “I recognized him from my, my doctor’s office. When we were introduced at the party tonight, he said I looked familiar…and it was because we sat across from each other in the waiting room last week. But we’d never spoken before. It was just…random coincidence.”
Spencer trails off, and nobody speaks. His looks quickly back at Wendell, wishes they could cover him with a sheet.
When the lights first came back on, when they first saw the body, Prentiss had yelped, “Oh my God--what happened?” It’s her gut reaction to crisis, Spencer knows--assess the problem in order to fix it as efficiently as possible.
The question had gone unremarked upon in the rush to Wendell’s side and the minutes of chaos that followed, but now, Spencer’s sure they’re all thinking it. He wonders who will voice it first.
It’s Hodgins who speaks, after a few more awkward moments of shocky silence.
“What--did anyone see what happened?”
Brennan and Hotch both answer, “No,” almost in unison.
Prentiss shakes her head. “I was admiring the view,” she says, gesturing out the window.
“Whatever--,” Spencer beings, then flounders. He was about to say killed him, but his tongue is suddenly paralyzed. “Whatever happened,” he settles on, eyes jumping from face to face, “it was after the lights went out. He was explaining the techniques this department uses to map the contours of weapon marks in bone, right as the power died. I was looking directly at him.” The words are soft, but they carry conviction; Wendell was laughing in the seconds before darkness, unharmed and unguarded. Spencer knows this.
“He could have tripped in the dark,” Prentiss says, and Spencer glances back at the dark red split on Wendell’s forehead. “If he hit his head on the way down…” she trails off. There’s a restraint in her voice that says she doesn’t believe it, and Spencer’s sure he’s not the only one who agrees. And accident doesn't make sense--Wendell was killed.
He doesn’t share this line of thought with the rest of the group. “The likelihood of a healthy adult dying as the result of an accidental fall is infinitesimally small,” he says, instead. Hotch shoots him a level look, and Spencer bites off his sentence without producing the actual odds. It doesn’t matter, though, because he was right before--he’s not the only one who knows Wendell’s death is suspicious.
It’s Dr. Brennan who speaks up. “Dr. Reid is correct,” she says, a reluctant note in her voice. “It does appear that he hit his head as he fell, but judging from the small amount of damage, it’s unlikely that this injury caused his death.”
There are relatively few practical ways to kill someone quickly without visible external trauma. Spencer supposes he should be disturbed by how quickly he can think of them, and rule them out. Electrocution--but with what? And during a blackout? Suffocation, but the lights were only out for 10 seconds--15 at the most. Not enough time. Poisoning, Spencer thinks.
He’s detaching himself from the horror of what happened here, and he knows it. He’d rather not think about how personal it feels, or how close he was to Wendell at the moment that he died. He wonders if his eyes will tear up, if his hands will shake, later, when the evening’s events have time to sink in. Right now, he just--can’t react.
Dr. Hodgins crouches down, examining the corner of the table next to Wendell’s body. It will be bloody, Spencer’s sure, because Wendell did hit his head as he fell, the gash on his face speaks to that. But the blood won’t answer the underlying questions.
Idly, Spencer wonders what the police will do, when they finally arrive and find a dead body in a locked room full of FBI agents and consultants, none of whom seems to know what happened.
Eventually, Hotch speaks up. “Did he have any health issues?”
Dr. Brennan has perched on a stool, arms crossed tightly over the low-cut bodice of her dress. She looks cold. “None that I was aware of,” she answers. “Hodgins?”
But Dr. Hodgins is already shaking his head. “He never said anything to me about any sort of health trouble. Of course,” he shrugs, “that doesn’t mean there wasn’t anything. He’s always been kind of a quiet guy.”
This speculation is useless. “There’s no way to know until after the autopsy,” Spencer says. “It very well could have been natural causes.”
“Or it could have been murder,” Dr. Brennan says.
Spencer glances around the room, watching everyone else do the same. Suddenly, the tension that has been building all night feels concrete and heavy.
“Who was standing closest to him?” Hotch says. “Dr. Hodgins?”
The words hang in the air--Spencer doubts Hotch meant them as an accusation, but they seem to twist in the atmosphere.
“I didn’t kill him!”
Hodgins looks incensed, and his hands compact into fists. “He was my friend! Yes, I was standing next to him but--the lights barely blinked. Even if I had a motive, how could I have killed him in a split second with no weapon? And I didn’t have a motive.” He shoves one fist angrily into his jacket pocket, and the motion startles Spencer.
Hotch makes an abortive move forward, and Prentiss raises both her hands, quelling, palms out.
Hodgins looks confused for a second, and then he rolls his eyes, pulling his hand back out of his pocket and extending his fingers.
“Oh, for--I don’t have a weapon,” he says, exasperated, but his face is pale under the spots of angry color on his cheekbones.
Prentiss lowers her hands, and so does Hodgins, slowly. The air is charged, and Spencer feels just as shaken as the others look.
He eyes the four people standing in front of him. Hotch and Prentiss--Spencer's worked with both of them for years. He's known Hotch longer, granted, but it doesn't matter. He’s as sure as he can be that neither of them is a murderer. Besides, he supposes it's possible that one of them could have known Wendell before tonight, but that seems like a stretch. It's difficult to imagine that either of them had a motive, to imagine them seizing on the moments of darkness to rush across the crowded lab and kill Wendell. Spencer predicts that they'll both be quickly discarded as suspects, once an official investigation is underway. He hopes the same is true of himself.
As for Dr. Brennan and Dr. Hodgins-well, who knows what motives either of them could have had: a lover’s quarrel, perhaps, or professional jealousy. He could speculate all night; it won’t accomplish anything.
“We’re all a bit jumpy,” Spencer says. “Maybe we should each turn our pockets out. Just for peace of mind.”
At first, no one moves.
“I just have my clutch,” Prentiss says, finally. She walks over to the lab table and twists the latch, then upends her bag. A compact, her cell phone, her badge, and a credit card clatter onto the table.
One by one, they follow her lead. It’s surreal, yanking his pockets inside out to prove they’re empty, watching the assemblage of stuff on the table grow. They lay it out neatly, in rows. Everyone has a phone with them, and all of the men are carrying wallets. There’s a handful of loose change on the table, as well, and a condom from Dr. Hodgins’ pocket. Dr. Brennan had a few hairpins and a lip gloss tube in her purse; Spencer was carrying a torn scrap of notebook paper and a rubber band.
No one is is in possession of anything even remotely dangerous, although Spencer supposes it was unlikely they would find a gun or a bloody hunting knife, since Wendell wasn’t shot or stabbed. He takes a moment to stare down at the personal possessions on the table, idly counting the change. $1.32.
“That was uninformative,” Hodgins says.
Dr. Brennan sighs. “If he was murdered, poison seems like the most likely method-and it could have been administered long before the start of the party tonight.”
“True,” Hodgins seems to perk up--presumably at the relief of no longer being their best suspect, and not at the thought that his coworker was poisoned. Then he glances back at Wendell’s body and frowns. “I guess there’s really nothing we can do, except wait for the power to come back on.”
That seems to signal the end of the speculation. Dr. Brennan and Hodgins subside into stunned, sad quiet.
Spencer goes back to looking out the window.
When the lights finally flare and the heating system rumbles back to life, Hotch speaks up.
“Someone should go find the police,” he says. “I’m sure they’re downstairs. The rest of us should remain here.”
“I’ll go.” Spencer jumps at the chance to get away from the body, even if he does have to come right back.
He picks up his suit jacket from the chair near the door. Sliding his arms into the sleeves, he gets tangled and his left elbow bangs into the box housing the security console next to the exit. The tiny metal door pops open again, exposing the wires he’d examined earlier, and Spencer winces, rubbing his funny bone as he turns to close it.
Once his back is to the room, no one can see his hand steal into the console and close over a small, empty syringe.
He closes and latches the little door and steps back, slipping his hands comfortably into the pockets of his slacks, rocking back on his heels.
“I’ll hurry,” he offers, taking in the exhaustion on the faces of his teammates and the grief tugging at the corners of Dr. Brennan’s mouth. He glances one last time at Wendell, inanimate on the tile floor.
Spencer retraces the path Wendell had blazed earlier in the evening, when they first left the party, after Spencer talked him into giving them a behind-the-scenes tour. Noise drifts up from downstairs, no longer celebratory sounds, businesslike instead. This floor remains dim and deserted.
He had recognized Wendell the moment they were introduced--remembered sitting across from him in his psychiatrist’s waiting room. And then, after his appointment, Spencer bumped into him in the hallway outside the doctor’s thin wooden office door. Wendell had been plenty close enough to overhear--Dr. Shah’s diagnosis is still echoing in Spencer’s head. The doctor is bound by patient confidentiality laws, he knows…and besides, Spencer hadn’t used his real name.
But when he saw Wendell tonight, here, with Spencer’s co-workers--.
Well, no one else could know, that’s all. He had to make sure Wendell didn’t tell anyone.
Spencer passes through the empty particulates lab, past the chemical storage closets that Wendell had pointed out earlier. It’s amazing what you can find just lying around in a laboratory.
He is sorry, he tells himself. He is. But they’d make him quit the team, if they knew. And he can’t allow that.
-END-