Red Fish, Blue Fish (3/?)
Standard disclaimers, as in chapter one, still apply.
Special thanks as always to ani8 for the beta and to everyone who reviewed.
And now... on to the story.
Booth followed Cam into her office and closed the door behind him. “What's up?”
Her expression was unreadable. “How's Parker?”
Where is this going? “He's good,” Booth hedged, trying not to frown. “Wore him out with swimming lessons and arcade games.” He paused. “Or he wore me out. Either way.”
“Good. I'm glad you got to spend some time with him. I know how much he means to you.”
Wait, she wasn't mad he'd brushed her off? She didn't want to know why he hadn't returned her phone calls? She wasn't going to chew him out?
Score. “You're not mad?”
Whoops. The words had slipped out before he could get a proper grip on them.
“For what?” She rolled her eyes. “Being a good father? Although I did miss you last night.”
The part of Booth that was allergic to sentimentality retched. Aloud he only said, “Oh?”
“I had to eat all those oysters by myself,” Cam said. She was making an obvious effort to exude sexuality. “You know what oysters do to me.”
Booth did know, intimately. He could vividly remember that night in New York a few years ago. In spite of his reluctance, he could feel his body responding. At the same time, he wanted to recoil. Didn't Cam think this was all sort of weird? She might've been the boss, but the lab was Bones' domain. It was awkward, carrying on an affair right beneath his partner's nose.
It had taken him long enough to get her to trust him in the first place.
“Sorry,” he managed at length, sounding sincere enough, and not preoccupied, to his own ears. “We still on for Friday?”
“I cleared my schedule.” She touched his tie, straightening it.
Uh oh. That was a bad sign. Cam only played with his clothing when she was going to suggest something she wasn't sure he'd agree to.
“You know, I've been thinking....”
Yep. Here it comes, he thought, mentally bracing himself. “Should I be worried?”
She ignored him. “If we're going to see each other, I think we should be upfront about it. I don't want to be that part of your life that you're ashamed of. I want to go out, have dinner. And I want to meet Parker, the next time you have him.”
Most of that didn't sound too bad until you translated it from “clever woman” into “something a man would understand.” I think we should be upfront about it translated to the same essential refrain he'd heard from every woman he'd dated for the last two years: “I am intimidated by Temperance Brennan and I want you to tell her to back off.” (This was, in Booth’s opinion, clearly unnecessary since Bones would never have given him the time of day if they hadn’t had to work together.) I want to go out meant dressing him up and showing him off to her friends, as if he didn't already wear a suit to work every day, which was mildly offensive.
But somehow he found her desire to meet Parker most unsavoury of all. Bones would have said that a woman could have no anthropological reason for meeting her partner's offspring from another woman except to gauge the level of competition for his affections. Booth was more worried about the implication that Cam was planning on sticking around for a while, not to mention the fact that he liked to have Parker to himself on the odd occasions when he did get to see him.
“Are you my dad's girlfriend?” Parker's words echoed in his head. He got the feeling that Cam and Parker just wouldn't get along.
“Tell you what,” he said at last. “Let me talk to Bones. She'll want to know” deserves to know “first.” After all, she was the closest thing he had to a best friend. “She's always lecturing me on anthropological inevitabilities. Then we can tell everyone else.”
Cam's eyes narrowed slightly, but her tone was neutral. “That's fair. You've got until Friday.”
Being in a relationship - if you could call it that - for less than a month and being handed ultimatums didn't really sit well with Booth, but there wasn't anything he could do about it. He smiled briefly, knowing as hard as he tried that it looked insincere. “Friday. Thanks.”
Cam didn't seem to mind. Rather, she seemed to have other things on her mind, he noted as she grasped him by his tie and pulled his face down to hers. “Well, now that we have that sorted out -”
Booth wasn't sure whether to be annoyed or relieved when a knock at the door interrupted. He stood up straighter, smoothing his suit, and waited for Cam to do the same. “Come in, Zach.”
The door opened. “Dr. Saroyan, Angela is ready to go with the reconstruction. Have you seen Agent B- oh, hello Agent Booth. Never mind.”
“Is it her?” Booth wanted to know, following Zach down the hallway.
He shook his head, “I haven't seen it yet. It was rendering as I was on my way over.”
They squeezed through the door to Angela's office and stopped simultaneously, squinting up at the simulation of the victim's face. The girl had high, flat cheekbones and a pointed nose and chin. Angela tapped in a command on her keyboard and the photograph of Karen Adams superimposed itself on the image.
“No match,” Hodgins pointed out the obvious. Karen's cheekbones were lower and more slanted, and she had a blunt chin.
Booth sighed. No match meant that he had to arrange for the body to be transported back to Canada, to undergo crime-scene processing there. It also meant that they still didn't know where to find Karen Adams, or whether she was still alive, which meant that they were short one star witness in a huge federal tax evasion case. “Does the body match any missing persons reports?”
“I'm running her through the database now,” Angela told him, but Booth didn't have much hope for that, either. If there had been an unsolved missing persons case in the area that had matched the body's description, it was very likely that they wouldn't have contacted him, believing it to be Karen Adams'.
The computer beeped a negative - no match here, either. “So we don't know anything about this Jane Doe?”
Bones crossed her arms defensively. “We know she was a young woman, late teens to early twenties, and stood about five foot two - three inches shorter than Karen Adams. She went to the University of Waterloo and she either knew the victim or someone wants us to think she did.”
Come to think of it, that was a good deal of information to pull from a corpse and gave them several good leads. “Wait, how do you know?”
“Believe me,” Zach said, looking a little paler and more squinty than usual, “You do not want to know what we did to reconstruct the tattoo.” He held up a sheet of white paper with a school crest on it. “She had it on her ankle, which was covered by her boot, so the flesh there took longer to decay. Luckily for us.”
“Yeah, lucky,” Booth agreed. He was glad he hadn't been around for that particular discovery. How long had he and Cam been in her office, anyway? He supposed most of this work had been done already that morning, before he got in. “But how do you know she knew the victim?”
“Angela actually figured it out,” Hodgins said, holding up a small silver circlet in an evidence bag.
At Booth's nonplussed expression, Angela explained, “It's the bracelet the victim was wearing when she came in. It's also the bracelet that Karen Adams is wearing in this photograph.”
“What, the exact same one?” He was sceptical.
Angela sighed. “It's a personalized charm bracelet. You start out with a basic, blank set of links, and then add in customized links as you go. You can't see all of the charms in the photograph, but the ones that you can see - the polar bear, the music note, the guitar and the Martini glass - show up in the same order in the photograph as they do on the bracelet.”
“Mathematically speaking, it either has to be the same one, or it was put together to look like the same one.” Bones still had her arms crossed, and she wasn't looking directly at him. He started to wonder if he'd missed something.
“And there's something else.” Zach took over the computer and called up two nearly-identical images. “The hair on the left is a sample we recovered from the victim. It had already begun to decompose, but we were able to do some analysis. The victim had brown hair, with no chemical dyes added. The hair on the right was caught in the links of the bracelet. It's almost the same colour, but it has been dyed - we're guessing the source was blonde.”
Like Karen Adams, Booth guessed. But why wasn't Bones telling him any of this? It was usually her job to brief him on the goings-on in the lab. And even if Zach was less annoying than he used to be, he wasn't sure he was comfortable with this kind of role-reversal.
On the positive side, at least he hadn't requisitioned the body for nothing, although he supposed it would have to go back. “I guess we have a new suspect.”
Special thanks as always to ani8 for the beta and to everyone who reviewed.
And now... on to the story.
Booth followed Cam into her office and closed the door behind him. “What's up?”
Her expression was unreadable. “How's Parker?”
Where is this going? “He's good,” Booth hedged, trying not to frown. “Wore him out with swimming lessons and arcade games.” He paused. “Or he wore me out. Either way.”
“Good. I'm glad you got to spend some time with him. I know how much he means to you.”
Wait, she wasn't mad he'd brushed her off? She didn't want to know why he hadn't returned her phone calls? She wasn't going to chew him out?
Score. “You're not mad?”
Whoops. The words had slipped out before he could get a proper grip on them.
“For what?” She rolled her eyes. “Being a good father? Although I did miss you last night.”
The part of Booth that was allergic to sentimentality retched. Aloud he only said, “Oh?”
“I had to eat all those oysters by myself,” Cam said. She was making an obvious effort to exude sexuality. “You know what oysters do to me.”
Booth did know, intimately. He could vividly remember that night in New York a few years ago. In spite of his reluctance, he could feel his body responding. At the same time, he wanted to recoil. Didn't Cam think this was all sort of weird? She might've been the boss, but the lab was Bones' domain. It was awkward, carrying on an affair right beneath his partner's nose.
It had taken him long enough to get her to trust him in the first place.
“Sorry,” he managed at length, sounding sincere enough, and not preoccupied, to his own ears. “We still on for Friday?”
“I cleared my schedule.” She touched his tie, straightening it.
Uh oh. That was a bad sign. Cam only played with his clothing when she was going to suggest something she wasn't sure he'd agree to.
“You know, I've been thinking....”
Yep. Here it comes, he thought, mentally bracing himself. “Should I be worried?”
She ignored him. “If we're going to see each other, I think we should be upfront about it. I don't want to be that part of your life that you're ashamed of. I want to go out, have dinner. And I want to meet Parker, the next time you have him.”
Most of that didn't sound too bad until you translated it from “clever woman” into “something a man would understand.” I think we should be upfront about it translated to the same essential refrain he'd heard from every woman he'd dated for the last two years: “I am intimidated by Temperance Brennan and I want you to tell her to back off.” (This was, in Booth’s opinion, clearly unnecessary since Bones would never have given him the time of day if they hadn’t had to work together.) I want to go out meant dressing him up and showing him off to her friends, as if he didn't already wear a suit to work every day, which was mildly offensive.
But somehow he found her desire to meet Parker most unsavoury of all. Bones would have said that a woman could have no anthropological reason for meeting her partner's offspring from another woman except to gauge the level of competition for his affections. Booth was more worried about the implication that Cam was planning on sticking around for a while, not to mention the fact that he liked to have Parker to himself on the odd occasions when he did get to see him.
“Are you my dad's girlfriend?” Parker's words echoed in his head. He got the feeling that Cam and Parker just wouldn't get along.
“Tell you what,” he said at last. “Let me talk to Bones. She'll want to know” deserves to know “first.” After all, she was the closest thing he had to a best friend. “She's always lecturing me on anthropological inevitabilities. Then we can tell everyone else.”
Cam's eyes narrowed slightly, but her tone was neutral. “That's fair. You've got until Friday.”
Being in a relationship - if you could call it that - for less than a month and being handed ultimatums didn't really sit well with Booth, but there wasn't anything he could do about it. He smiled briefly, knowing as hard as he tried that it looked insincere. “Friday. Thanks.”
Cam didn't seem to mind. Rather, she seemed to have other things on her mind, he noted as she grasped him by his tie and pulled his face down to hers. “Well, now that we have that sorted out -”
Booth wasn't sure whether to be annoyed or relieved when a knock at the door interrupted. He stood up straighter, smoothing his suit, and waited for Cam to do the same. “Come in, Zach.”
The door opened. “Dr. Saroyan, Angela is ready to go with the reconstruction. Have you seen Agent B- oh, hello Agent Booth. Never mind.”
“Is it her?” Booth wanted to know, following Zach down the hallway.
He shook his head, “I haven't seen it yet. It was rendering as I was on my way over.”
They squeezed through the door to Angela's office and stopped simultaneously, squinting up at the simulation of the victim's face. The girl had high, flat cheekbones and a pointed nose and chin. Angela tapped in a command on her keyboard and the photograph of Karen Adams superimposed itself on the image.
“No match,” Hodgins pointed out the obvious. Karen's cheekbones were lower and more slanted, and she had a blunt chin.
Booth sighed. No match meant that he had to arrange for the body to be transported back to Canada, to undergo crime-scene processing there. It also meant that they still didn't know where to find Karen Adams, or whether she was still alive, which meant that they were short one star witness in a huge federal tax evasion case. “Does the body match any missing persons reports?”
“I'm running her through the database now,” Angela told him, but Booth didn't have much hope for that, either. If there had been an unsolved missing persons case in the area that had matched the body's description, it was very likely that they wouldn't have contacted him, believing it to be Karen Adams'.
The computer beeped a negative - no match here, either. “So we don't know anything about this Jane Doe?”
Bones crossed her arms defensively. “We know she was a young woman, late teens to early twenties, and stood about five foot two - three inches shorter than Karen Adams. She went to the University of Waterloo and she either knew the victim or someone wants us to think she did.”
Come to think of it, that was a good deal of information to pull from a corpse and gave them several good leads. “Wait, how do you know?”
“Believe me,” Zach said, looking a little paler and more squinty than usual, “You do not want to know what we did to reconstruct the tattoo.” He held up a sheet of white paper with a school crest on it. “She had it on her ankle, which was covered by her boot, so the flesh there took longer to decay. Luckily for us.”
“Yeah, lucky,” Booth agreed. He was glad he hadn't been around for that particular discovery. How long had he and Cam been in her office, anyway? He supposed most of this work had been done already that morning, before he got in. “But how do you know she knew the victim?”
“Angela actually figured it out,” Hodgins said, holding up a small silver circlet in an evidence bag.
At Booth's nonplussed expression, Angela explained, “It's the bracelet the victim was wearing when she came in. It's also the bracelet that Karen Adams is wearing in this photograph.”
“What, the exact same one?” He was sceptical.
Angela sighed. “It's a personalized charm bracelet. You start out with a basic, blank set of links, and then add in customized links as you go. You can't see all of the charms in the photograph, but the ones that you can see - the polar bear, the music note, the guitar and the Martini glass - show up in the same order in the photograph as they do on the bracelet.”
“Mathematically speaking, it either has to be the same one, or it was put together to look like the same one.” Bones still had her arms crossed, and she wasn't looking directly at him. He started to wonder if he'd missed something.
“And there's something else.” Zach took over the computer and called up two nearly-identical images. “The hair on the left is a sample we recovered from the victim. It had already begun to decompose, but we were able to do some analysis. The victim had brown hair, with no chemical dyes added. The hair on the right was caught in the links of the bracelet. It's almost the same colour, but it has been dyed - we're guessing the source was blonde.”
Like Karen Adams, Booth guessed. But why wasn't Bones telling him any of this? It was usually her job to brief him on the goings-on in the lab. And even if Zach was less annoying than he used to be, he wasn't sure he was comfortable with this kind of role-reversal.
On the positive side, at least he hadn't requisitioned the body for nothing, although he supposed it would have to go back. “I guess we have a new suspect.”