A Christmasy Fic (Bones/SPN)
Title: The Fingernail in the Ziploc Bag
Rating: PG13 (language, gruesome crime scene)
Words: 4,000ish
Summary: Seeley Booth and Victor Henriksen butt heads over a crime scene in Ypsilanti, MI. Spoilers (mild) for "A Very Supernatural Christmas." No Bones spoilers.
Notes: way2busymom asked for it, so here it is. :-)
In his time with the FBI, particularly the last few years working in conjunction with the Jeffersonian, Special Agent Seeley Booth had seen some horrific crime scenes, but this was easily in the top ten of worst ever. Maybe even the top five. Definitely up there with the guy dissolved in the bathtub and the corpse that had been eaten alive by dogs. And the woman who had liquefied in the refrigerator. Come to think of it, maybe he'd seen too many disgusting crime scenes.
"I gotta get a new job," he muttered, peering down at the bits and pieces of flesh scattered around the basement. The local cop, who'd escorted him to the scene, then bolted to throw up--Booth had to admire him for coming back--nodded.
"I hear you," he said. He looked painfully pale.
"You know, you don't have to stay," Booth offered. He didn't relish the thought of giving the guy mouth-to-mouth if he passed out.
"I'm fine," the cop replied tightly. He stared resolutely at a wall.
Booth didn't blame him. He still hadn't identified many of the bits and pieces. It looked like someone had chopped up at least one body--probably more than one, by the time they got through sorting--and prepared them to eat. Bits of ribs here, something that looked like part of a hand... He had to focus on dissociating from what he saw or he'd be heading for a moment with the porcelain throne, himself.
"Several of these pieces still have flesh attached." Brennan was down and dirty with the latex, as usual, sorting through bloody nuggets. "We'll have to take it all back to the lab. Cam can analyze the fleshy parts."
"Any idea how many victims?" Booth asked. "Well, aside from the obvious two." There'd been two non-dismembered bodies on the premises, upstairs, an older couple, both skewered through the heart. They’d looked completely harmless. Soft, quiet-mannered older folks, Booth suspected.
"The couple upstairs were impaled with evergreen branches," Brennan stated.
"Yeah," said Booth. He knew that already; he'd read the report. "Madge and Edward Carrigan. They were stabbed in the heart with branches from their own Christmas tree."
Brennan looked up at him. "Isn't that offensive to your religious sensibilities?"
He had a suspicion she was baiting him. Something about the quirk at the corner of her mouth. "Evergreen is a pagan symbol. I'm Catholic."
She smiled. "I'm surprised you knew that."
"Of course I know that. Can we get these bodies bagged and get out of here?" The place was starting to creep him out. It had all been so festive upstairs, with the bright decorations, the demolished but festively decorated Christmas tree, but down here--a folksy Santa costume drenched with blood, bloodsoaked bags filled with chopped up body parts, blood on the walls and stairs... It was almost Christmas, and he wanted to be with Parker opening gifts, not sorting through bits of anonymous human flesh.
Brennan had picked up what looked like a rib from a large wooden bowl, flesh still dangling from it. Turning it delicately in her long, latex-clad fingers, she peered at it, as if she could determine the age, sex, and occupation of its former owner by observation alone. Truth to tell, it wouldn't have surprised him if she had.
"I don't think there's much more we can do here," she said, laying the bone back down. She glanced over the bloody crime scene again, taking in the details as if memorizing them. "I say let's get everything bagged up and back to the Jeffersonian."
Booth nodded and headed for the stairs. The cop was two steps ahead of him, obviously relieved to get the hell out of there. Although he was just as eager for some fresh air, Booth took a step back and let him go first.
Upstairs the air was a little better, since it smelled more of Christmas cookies and less of butchered, half-rotted flesh, but there was a commotion. The ME's office had been preparing to bag the Carrigans' bodies when Booth and Brennan had headed downstairs. Now another man had joined the party.
"We were told to bag the bodies, sir." The young woman, who'd flirted briefly with Booth on his way down, stood between the newcomer and the bodies.
"Well, I'm telling you to unbag them."
Booth went immediately taut. The newcomer was a tall, African American man in a crisp suit, and Booth recognized him. Booth gave Brennan what he hoped was an encouraging glance and stepped forward to intervene.
"Agent Henriksen," he said. The other FBI agent turned to face him. Henriksen squelched the distaste in his expression a moment too late.
"Agent Booth," he said.
"I've been assigned to this case," Booth said. "I think you can leave this to me and my partner."
Henriksen gave Brennan a dismissive glance. "This was my case a long time before it was ever your case. Just back off, Booth. I've already talked to my boss."
Booth crossed his arms over his chest and peered at Henriksen. They'd butted heads before; Henriksen had stuck his nose in briefly during a case he and Brennan had worked in Ohio. Booth had gotten him out of the way fast enough, but the encounter had left a bad taste in his mouth. Henriksen had developed a case-specific obsession that was setting him up to rival the legendary Fox Mulder in terms of sheer insanity.
"You get all the i's dotted and t's crossed and I'm happy to turn everything over to you, Victor." His tone was calm and reasonable. Anybody who even half-knew him knew to be afraid of that tone. "In the meantime, this is my case, and we're taking these bodies and everything from downstairs to Washington for analysis." He turned to the MEs, effectively dismissing the other agent. "Bag the bodies. The sooner we get to work on this, the better."
Predictably, Henriksen bristled. "Well, Seeley, do you really want to waste the taxpayers' money having the bodies shipped back?"
Brennan tugged at Booth's sleeve. "What's this about?"
Booth gave her a careful smile. "Just a little jurisdictional squabbling. Agent Henriksen, what do you say we have a seat at the table and talk about this."
#
Booth was trying to pay attention. He really was. But he'd heard most of this already in Ohio a few months ago. Frankly he found it insulting Henriksen felt the need to repeat it all.
"I know about St. Louis," he finally cut in. "And I know about the bank thing in Milwaukee, and the prison escape. I don't really need the Cliffs Notes."
"Then why are you fighting me on this?" Henriksen was fairly quivering. "The Winchester brothers were spotted here the day before the Carrigans were found murdered."
Booth shrugged. "A tall guy, a not as tall guy--the guy at the florist shop said they were a couple, not brothers." Booth had done his homework. In fact, he'd expected Henriksen to barge in. Nice to know Victor didn't disappoint.
"A tall guy and a not so tall guy driving a black 1967 Chevy Impala. That narrows it down a bit."
"Why would they drive the same car? Especially one as identifiable as that?" It was a good question, but Booth knew the answer. If he had a car that sweet, he wouldn’t ditch it, either, no matter how many states he was wanted in.
"The car was a gift to the older brother from his father. Let's just say he has daddy issues."
Booth thrummed his fingers on the table. Henriksen was too deeply involved in this thing with the Winchesters, taking it all too personally. His antics were well-known enough around the Bureau that his name came up occasionally in water cooler conversation. Booth felt a little sorry for the guy; these Winchesters had given him the slip more than once, with an apparent ease Booth would have found humiliating, himself. He wasn't sure what he would have done, had he been in Victor's shoes. Keep trying, he supposed. Made a complete pain in the ass of himself until he caught the little shits and got them behind bars where they belonged.
"I'll tell you what," Booth finally said. "The bodies upstairs are connected to the Winchesters. The stuff downstairs has been here a good deal longer. We take the downstairs mess back to DC, and we'll leave the other two bodies here until jurisdiction's settled. Fair?"
Henriksen's expression shifted, the tension draining out, replaced by surprised appreciation. "Thank you, Agent Booth. That makes sense to me."
"Good. Then we're all set." He pushed to his feet and Henriksen put out a hand. Booth shook it. "I'll talk to the MEs."
Brennan wasn't happy about the news. "These are obviously related cases. How can you let them split it up like that?"
Booth shrugged. "We'll get the bodies. Don't worry about it." He glanced over his shoulder at Henriksen. "Best not to tangle with him. He's a fucking nutcase."
Brennan followed his gaze curiously. "Really? Interesting." To his relief, she didn't pursue it. Not so much to his relief, they headed back downstairs.
#
They did get the bodies, as he'd expected, wrapped up and shipped out on the flight right after the one they took back to DC. Which, since it came out of Ypsilanti, meant a delay of a full day.
Henriksen wasn't happy. He called Booth and made sure Booth knew he wasn't happy. Booth waited him out.
"Thanks for letting me know how you feel about it all," he said finally, when Henriksen took a breath. "But you know the only reason you called me is because you can't swear like this at the people who actually made the decision."
Henriksen's resumed flow of invective stopped mid-word. "You son of a bitch. You took my case."
"I didn't take it. It was given to me. Oh, and Victor?"
"What, Seeley?" Booth could tell, even over the phone, that Henriksen was talking through clenched teeth. He fought back a chuckle.
"Merry Christmas."
#
While Cam did autopsies on the Carrigans--"There are anomalies here I just can't explain, Seeley."--and Brennan and her squint squad examined the bones--"The striations on this rib bone indicate the meat was scraped from them by human teeth."--Booth decided to poke his nose into things that didn't concern him.
He'd often wondered what made a perfectly competent FBI agent, like a Fox Mulder or a Victor Henriksen, go batshit insane and start obsessing about certain cases. He'd looked into Mulder once, early in his career, and had discovered most of those files were closed and no longer accessible even to current agents. Which meant Mulder had meddled in places he didn't belong. No wonder he and his partner had disappeared. There were reasons you kept out of that special ops shit.
Henriksen's files were all still readily available. Booth pulled them up and glanced over them. These boys had been busy, that was for sure. Credit card fraud, petty theft, breaking and entering, grave desecration--okay, that was just wrong. But nothing overly serious until St. Louis.
The St. Louis case was much stranger than it had seemed on the surface, and made for interesting reading. This Dean Winchester, of the daddy issues and the sweet car--there was a picture and damn, but it was every bit as gorgeous as Booth had imagined--had tortured several women and killed one of them. But his body had been found at the last crime scene, shot twice through the heart.
Yet somehow he’d been involved in a bank robbery the next year in Milwaukee. Except no money had actually been taken out of the bank, and there'd been the dead body that looked exactly like the live girl who'd come out of the bank, who'd insisted she didn't have an identical twin sister... Add to that the incapacitated SWAT team, and yet another escape right under the noses of numerous law enforcement personnel, and Booth started to understand Henriksen's frustration.
Then there was Detective Diana Ballard, in Baltimore, who'd run across the Winchesters before Henriksen had come on the case. Somehow they'd gotten away from her, and she insisted they'd saved her life. The rest of the details of that story were unclear, mostly because Ballard seemed to be skirting around something in her interviews and accounts. Strange.
It all became curiouser the deeper he dug. Before he'd even gotten to the report on the Arkansas prison escape, he'd confirmed the pattern. Everywhere the Winchesters went, there were murders. But the murders happened while they were there, and before they arrived. After the brothers skipped town, the killings stopped. Always.
Henriksen had painted the brothers as cold-blooded killers. How had he missed that aspect of the pattern? Because the killings stopped when the brothers left, he assumed the brothers were doing the killing. But if the patterns began before the Winchesters hit town--sometimes years before--there had to be something else going on.
Strange. Booth understood Henriksen’s grudge--he’d be pretty pissed, too, if a suspect kept sliding right out from under his nose. Especially when so much about the cases didn’t make sense. In fact, without the handy presence of the Winchesters to lay the blame on, these cases would have remained unsolved.
He sorted through the files again, pulling up more information on the brothers. They looked like ordinary guys, if the younger one was taller than most and the older one prettier than most. Then again, most psychos looked normal. But nothing about them set off Booth's gut instincts.
He pondered. He was still pondering when his phone rang. It was Brennan.
#
"You're sure about this?" Booth was having a harder time understanding what Brennan and Zack were telling him than usual. Mostly because it was so insane.
"I'm absolutely sure," Zack said. "The scrape marks on the bones exactly match the Carrigans' teeth."
"So the Carrigans..." He paused, trying to deal with the mental image of those sweet-looking folks chowing down on human short ribs. "The Carrigans ate the people in their basement?"
"Yes," said Zack.
Booth shook his head. "Any evidence as to who killed them?"
"Fingerprints upstairs matched these Winchester brothers," Brennan said. "But Hodgins has been looking over photographs from the scene--"
Hodgins broke in. "There was a ritual sacrifice going on up there. Blood and a fingernail in a bowl... Instruments on the kitchen table--these brothers were about to become another meal. And the place was covered with pagan herbs--evergreen, verbena, meadowsweet..."
"It's Christmas,” Booth protested. “Everybody has evergreen in their house. Doesn't mean they're hosting pagan human sacrifices in the kitchen."
"Yeah, but not everybody has meadowsweet." Hodgins was almost as excited as he got when he stumbled over the possibility of a government conspiracy. "That's a lot harder to come by than an evergreen tree, or your basic mistletoe and holly--also very powerful pagan herbs, by the way--"
"Yeah, yeah, whatever, Hodgins. Thanks for ruining Christmas."
Hodgins just grinned. "That place was a hotbed of pagan activity. Ritual sacrifice, baby. Everything Christmas is about in the first place."
Booth gave him a hard look. "Do you mind?"
"Oh, sorry. I guess that's Easter." With a chuckle, Hodgins retreated to his own corner of the lab, leaving Booth to resist the urge to throw something at him.
"He's right, you know," Brennan chimed in, predictably. Booth clenched and unclenched his fists.
"Can I use your computer?"
"Sure," said Brennan.
Booth retreated to her office, where he could go into the FBI files in peace and finger his Saint Christopher medal and remind himself that not everybody in the world was a scientifically constipated heathen. She had a few of the evidence bags from the case on her desk where she’d been making notes; among the items were a couple of ancient-looking books from the Carrigans’ living room shelves, and a Ziploc bag with a detached fingernail. Booth shuddered at the sight of the latter and pushed back yet another unwanted memory.
He did a search on the Carrigans. Two disappearances in Seattle. The year before that, right around Christmas, three in Cedar Rapids. Five before that in Duluth. Not that any of the disappearances had been connected to the Carrigans at the time--there'd been no evidence. But now that the Carrigans were implicated in the Ypsilanti deaths, the pattern became clear. A string of disappearances solved, then, with the deaths of these two people, apparently mass murderers, cannibals, and Christmas fetishists. Booth wasn't sure which was worse--the cannibalism or disrespecting Christmas.
He had sent the first few records to Brennan’s printer when a knock fell on the doorframe. He looked up to see Cam standing just outside the office. “Getting late, Seeley,” she said.
“Yeah. Just going to finish up here, then I’ll head out.”
She looked curiously at the computer. “What have you got?”
“Just information on the Carrigans. There was another agent involved in the case. I want to pass this on to him, let him know what’s going on.”
“You might want to pass on their autopsy reports, too.”
Booth eyed her with interest. “Really? You find something else?”
“Found a lot of something elses. There was something seriously weird about those two. I don’t know how to explain it.”
“Weird how?”
Cam glanced back over her shoulder, as if afraid someone might overhear. “Those bodies had internal organs I’ve never seen before. Just a couple--weird little things in behind the kidneys. But they both had them. And their blood didn’t respond normally when I ran tox screens. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
Booth frowned and thought about the mysterious twin sister in Milwaukee, the unexplainable non-death of Dean Winchester in St. Louis. “Weird.”
“What?”
He shook his head. “Nothing.” He rubbed at his chest, feeling the textures of the Saint Christopher medal under his fingers. Maybe there was a reason why some of those files had been closed. To be honest, he didn’t want to think about it. His life would be a lot easier if he just filed it all away with some of the things he’d made himself forget about the Gulf. “Done with your Christmas shopping?”
Cam hesitated, and for a moment he thought she wasn’t going to let him get away with changing the subject. Then she said amiably, “Not quite. You?”
“Not quite. I’ll finish up tonight.”
She moved toward the door. “I’m heading out. Last one gone gets the lights.” She glanced out into the lab. “Looks like that’s going to be you.”
He nodded. “I’m almost done here.”
“Good.”
He watched her leave; he still hadn’t gotten over the primal enjoyment of watching her hips sway when she walked. He’d run by his office with the printouts and drop them off, head home. It was late--too late to do that last bit of Christmas shopping he'd had planned. He'd have to do it tomorrow, or Parker wouldn't have his Legos under the tree like he'd requested.
He’d just locked Brennan’s office behind him when the lights went out.
He froze. Every nerve began to tingle, every hair on the back of his neck went to full alert. Somebody was in the lab.
The Jeffersonian was nearly as secure as FBI headquarters--how the hell could somebody have gotten inside? But there was somebody there; he could feel it. Slowly, he moved toward his gun.
"Don't."
The single word came from the darkness, then a light flipped on--one of the automatic security lights that normally would have illuminated the lab in cases of a power outage. Momentarily blinded, Booth froze, then moved his hand slowly away from the butt of the gun at his waist. "Who's there?"
"I just need to talk to you," the voice continued. It was a man's voice, calm and reasonable. "No need for anything to get dodgy."
Booth blinked. Gradually, his eyes adjusted to the light. A figure stood leaning nonchalantly against one of the examination tables, arms crossed over his chest, a gun held loosely in one hand, but not pointed at Booth. It was just there, relaxed and easy.
Booth recognized the man immediately as Dean Winchester. He was taller and wider than Booth had guessed; his brother must be huge to make Dean look small in comparison. He was, in fact, about the same size as Booth, if about ten years younger. There was a hard look to him, of someone who'd seen too much too young. Booth had seen that look in the Gulf. It was the kind of posttraumatic effect rarely seen in anyone not a soldier.
"Talk," said Booth. "Make it fast."
Winchester grinned a little. "I need something from you."
"Really?"
"Yeah. Piece of evidence you took from that crime scene in Ypsilanti."
"I see." Booth mentally scanned the list of items they'd brought back with them--bones, bloody chunks of human bodies, knives, bloody bags and clothes... "What would that be?"
"My brother's fingernail." The answer surprised Booth at first, then it didn't.
"His fingernail."
"Yeah. That gets into the wrong hands, it could be bad. Hoodoo, Satanic spellcasting--anybody with that kind of knowledge could cause serious problems if they got ahold of that."
"If it's that important maybe you should have grabbed it from the crime scene before you left." Booth was willing to humor the guy… for a while. His gut still wasn't screaming vicious heartless murderer at him, even in Winchester's immediate vicinity. He seemed…competent. Assured. But not deranged or evil.
"Yeah, we really should have. But the neighbors called the cops, there was a commotion, we were both bleeding and we high-tailed it off the scene a little quicker than we should have. But you know what? I'm kind of having a bad year all the way around. So maybe you could just help a guy out, huh?"
Booth considered. "Did you kill that woman in St. Louis?"
"No." Winchester's tone was firm in a way that made Booth believe him. "You been talking to Henriksen?"
"I know Henriksen."
"I didn't kill any of the people he thinks I killed." There was a pause. "Not the people."
"You killed the couple in the house, though. The cannibals."
"Yeah. We did that. But they weren't people."
Booth nodded. “The autopsies were a little weird, I hear. So what were they?”
"Look," Winchester said. "I know you don't believe me. You've got no reason to believe me. But if you'll just get me that fingernail I'll get out of here and you'll never have to see me again if we're both lucky. That okay with you?"
Booth was silent a moment. He had no reason to believe Winchester. No reason at all. Except his gut remained calm. Winchester wasn't going to kill him. Yet somehow, this mission was important enough for him to risk walking into a secure government facility carrying a gun. And somehow he'd done exactly that.
Finally, Booth nodded. “It’s in the office. I’ll go get it.”
Winchester pushed away from the table. “No, thanks, Agent Booth. I think I’ll go fetch it myself.” He moved toward the office, the gun more prominent now. Booth calculated--he could probably take the kid out-- “I wouldn’t,” Winchester said, and the ideal moment passed.
“Dammit,” Booth muttered. Winchester crossed the threshold into the office, and Booth reached for the silent alarm next to the door. He hit the button with one hand, drew his gun with the other. But somehow, by the time he pushed the door back open, Winchester was gone. So was the Ziploc bag with the fingernail.
He searched the office--nothing, although he thought he heard a movement behind him when he checked under the desk. When they police arrived, summoned by the silent alarm, they couldn’t find any trace of Winchester’s passing, either.
As well as Booth knew the building, he had no idea where Winchester had disappeared to. But he was almost certain he would never see him again.
Rating: PG13 (language, gruesome crime scene)
Words: 4,000ish
Summary: Seeley Booth and Victor Henriksen butt heads over a crime scene in Ypsilanti, MI. Spoilers (mild) for "A Very Supernatural Christmas." No Bones spoilers.
Notes: way2busymom asked for it, so here it is. :-)
In his time with the FBI, particularly the last few years working in conjunction with the Jeffersonian, Special Agent Seeley Booth had seen some horrific crime scenes, but this was easily in the top ten of worst ever. Maybe even the top five. Definitely up there with the guy dissolved in the bathtub and the corpse that had been eaten alive by dogs. And the woman who had liquefied in the refrigerator. Come to think of it, maybe he'd seen too many disgusting crime scenes.
"I gotta get a new job," he muttered, peering down at the bits and pieces of flesh scattered around the basement. The local cop, who'd escorted him to the scene, then bolted to throw up--Booth had to admire him for coming back--nodded.
"I hear you," he said. He looked painfully pale.
"You know, you don't have to stay," Booth offered. He didn't relish the thought of giving the guy mouth-to-mouth if he passed out.
"I'm fine," the cop replied tightly. He stared resolutely at a wall.
Booth didn't blame him. He still hadn't identified many of the bits and pieces. It looked like someone had chopped up at least one body--probably more than one, by the time they got through sorting--and prepared them to eat. Bits of ribs here, something that looked like part of a hand... He had to focus on dissociating from what he saw or he'd be heading for a moment with the porcelain throne, himself.
"Several of these pieces still have flesh attached." Brennan was down and dirty with the latex, as usual, sorting through bloody nuggets. "We'll have to take it all back to the lab. Cam can analyze the fleshy parts."
"Any idea how many victims?" Booth asked. "Well, aside from the obvious two." There'd been two non-dismembered bodies on the premises, upstairs, an older couple, both skewered through the heart. They’d looked completely harmless. Soft, quiet-mannered older folks, Booth suspected.
"The couple upstairs were impaled with evergreen branches," Brennan stated.
"Yeah," said Booth. He knew that already; he'd read the report. "Madge and Edward Carrigan. They were stabbed in the heart with branches from their own Christmas tree."
Brennan looked up at him. "Isn't that offensive to your religious sensibilities?"
He had a suspicion she was baiting him. Something about the quirk at the corner of her mouth. "Evergreen is a pagan symbol. I'm Catholic."
She smiled. "I'm surprised you knew that."
"Of course I know that. Can we get these bodies bagged and get out of here?" The place was starting to creep him out. It had all been so festive upstairs, with the bright decorations, the demolished but festively decorated Christmas tree, but down here--a folksy Santa costume drenched with blood, bloodsoaked bags filled with chopped up body parts, blood on the walls and stairs... It was almost Christmas, and he wanted to be with Parker opening gifts, not sorting through bits of anonymous human flesh.
Brennan had picked up what looked like a rib from a large wooden bowl, flesh still dangling from it. Turning it delicately in her long, latex-clad fingers, she peered at it, as if she could determine the age, sex, and occupation of its former owner by observation alone. Truth to tell, it wouldn't have surprised him if she had.
"I don't think there's much more we can do here," she said, laying the bone back down. She glanced over the bloody crime scene again, taking in the details as if memorizing them. "I say let's get everything bagged up and back to the Jeffersonian."
Booth nodded and headed for the stairs. The cop was two steps ahead of him, obviously relieved to get the hell out of there. Although he was just as eager for some fresh air, Booth took a step back and let him go first.
Upstairs the air was a little better, since it smelled more of Christmas cookies and less of butchered, half-rotted flesh, but there was a commotion. The ME's office had been preparing to bag the Carrigans' bodies when Booth and Brennan had headed downstairs. Now another man had joined the party.
"We were told to bag the bodies, sir." The young woman, who'd flirted briefly with Booth on his way down, stood between the newcomer and the bodies.
"Well, I'm telling you to unbag them."
Booth went immediately taut. The newcomer was a tall, African American man in a crisp suit, and Booth recognized him. Booth gave Brennan what he hoped was an encouraging glance and stepped forward to intervene.
"Agent Henriksen," he said. The other FBI agent turned to face him. Henriksen squelched the distaste in his expression a moment too late.
"Agent Booth," he said.
"I've been assigned to this case," Booth said. "I think you can leave this to me and my partner."
Henriksen gave Brennan a dismissive glance. "This was my case a long time before it was ever your case. Just back off, Booth. I've already talked to my boss."
Booth crossed his arms over his chest and peered at Henriksen. They'd butted heads before; Henriksen had stuck his nose in briefly during a case he and Brennan had worked in Ohio. Booth had gotten him out of the way fast enough, but the encounter had left a bad taste in his mouth. Henriksen had developed a case-specific obsession that was setting him up to rival the legendary Fox Mulder in terms of sheer insanity.
"You get all the i's dotted and t's crossed and I'm happy to turn everything over to you, Victor." His tone was calm and reasonable. Anybody who even half-knew him knew to be afraid of that tone. "In the meantime, this is my case, and we're taking these bodies and everything from downstairs to Washington for analysis." He turned to the MEs, effectively dismissing the other agent. "Bag the bodies. The sooner we get to work on this, the better."
Predictably, Henriksen bristled. "Well, Seeley, do you really want to waste the taxpayers' money having the bodies shipped back?"
Brennan tugged at Booth's sleeve. "What's this about?"
Booth gave her a careful smile. "Just a little jurisdictional squabbling. Agent Henriksen, what do you say we have a seat at the table and talk about this."
#
Booth was trying to pay attention. He really was. But he'd heard most of this already in Ohio a few months ago. Frankly he found it insulting Henriksen felt the need to repeat it all.
"I know about St. Louis," he finally cut in. "And I know about the bank thing in Milwaukee, and the prison escape. I don't really need the Cliffs Notes."
"Then why are you fighting me on this?" Henriksen was fairly quivering. "The Winchester brothers were spotted here the day before the Carrigans were found murdered."
Booth shrugged. "A tall guy, a not as tall guy--the guy at the florist shop said they were a couple, not brothers." Booth had done his homework. In fact, he'd expected Henriksen to barge in. Nice to know Victor didn't disappoint.
"A tall guy and a not so tall guy driving a black 1967 Chevy Impala. That narrows it down a bit."
"Why would they drive the same car? Especially one as identifiable as that?" It was a good question, but Booth knew the answer. If he had a car that sweet, he wouldn’t ditch it, either, no matter how many states he was wanted in.
"The car was a gift to the older brother from his father. Let's just say he has daddy issues."
Booth thrummed his fingers on the table. Henriksen was too deeply involved in this thing with the Winchesters, taking it all too personally. His antics were well-known enough around the Bureau that his name came up occasionally in water cooler conversation. Booth felt a little sorry for the guy; these Winchesters had given him the slip more than once, with an apparent ease Booth would have found humiliating, himself. He wasn't sure what he would have done, had he been in Victor's shoes. Keep trying, he supposed. Made a complete pain in the ass of himself until he caught the little shits and got them behind bars where they belonged.
"I'll tell you what," Booth finally said. "The bodies upstairs are connected to the Winchesters. The stuff downstairs has been here a good deal longer. We take the downstairs mess back to DC, and we'll leave the other two bodies here until jurisdiction's settled. Fair?"
Henriksen's expression shifted, the tension draining out, replaced by surprised appreciation. "Thank you, Agent Booth. That makes sense to me."
"Good. Then we're all set." He pushed to his feet and Henriksen put out a hand. Booth shook it. "I'll talk to the MEs."
Brennan wasn't happy about the news. "These are obviously related cases. How can you let them split it up like that?"
Booth shrugged. "We'll get the bodies. Don't worry about it." He glanced over his shoulder at Henriksen. "Best not to tangle with him. He's a fucking nutcase."
Brennan followed his gaze curiously. "Really? Interesting." To his relief, she didn't pursue it. Not so much to his relief, they headed back downstairs.
#
They did get the bodies, as he'd expected, wrapped up and shipped out on the flight right after the one they took back to DC. Which, since it came out of Ypsilanti, meant a delay of a full day.
Henriksen wasn't happy. He called Booth and made sure Booth knew he wasn't happy. Booth waited him out.
"Thanks for letting me know how you feel about it all," he said finally, when Henriksen took a breath. "But you know the only reason you called me is because you can't swear like this at the people who actually made the decision."
Henriksen's resumed flow of invective stopped mid-word. "You son of a bitch. You took my case."
"I didn't take it. It was given to me. Oh, and Victor?"
"What, Seeley?" Booth could tell, even over the phone, that Henriksen was talking through clenched teeth. He fought back a chuckle.
"Merry Christmas."
#
While Cam did autopsies on the Carrigans--"There are anomalies here I just can't explain, Seeley."--and Brennan and her squint squad examined the bones--"The striations on this rib bone indicate the meat was scraped from them by human teeth."--Booth decided to poke his nose into things that didn't concern him.
He'd often wondered what made a perfectly competent FBI agent, like a Fox Mulder or a Victor Henriksen, go batshit insane and start obsessing about certain cases. He'd looked into Mulder once, early in his career, and had discovered most of those files were closed and no longer accessible even to current agents. Which meant Mulder had meddled in places he didn't belong. No wonder he and his partner had disappeared. There were reasons you kept out of that special ops shit.
Henriksen's files were all still readily available. Booth pulled them up and glanced over them. These boys had been busy, that was for sure. Credit card fraud, petty theft, breaking and entering, grave desecration--okay, that was just wrong. But nothing overly serious until St. Louis.
The St. Louis case was much stranger than it had seemed on the surface, and made for interesting reading. This Dean Winchester, of the daddy issues and the sweet car--there was a picture and damn, but it was every bit as gorgeous as Booth had imagined--had tortured several women and killed one of them. But his body had been found at the last crime scene, shot twice through the heart.
Yet somehow he’d been involved in a bank robbery the next year in Milwaukee. Except no money had actually been taken out of the bank, and there'd been the dead body that looked exactly like the live girl who'd come out of the bank, who'd insisted she didn't have an identical twin sister... Add to that the incapacitated SWAT team, and yet another escape right under the noses of numerous law enforcement personnel, and Booth started to understand Henriksen's frustration.
Then there was Detective Diana Ballard, in Baltimore, who'd run across the Winchesters before Henriksen had come on the case. Somehow they'd gotten away from her, and she insisted they'd saved her life. The rest of the details of that story were unclear, mostly because Ballard seemed to be skirting around something in her interviews and accounts. Strange.
It all became curiouser the deeper he dug. Before he'd even gotten to the report on the Arkansas prison escape, he'd confirmed the pattern. Everywhere the Winchesters went, there were murders. But the murders happened while they were there, and before they arrived. After the brothers skipped town, the killings stopped. Always.
Henriksen had painted the brothers as cold-blooded killers. How had he missed that aspect of the pattern? Because the killings stopped when the brothers left, he assumed the brothers were doing the killing. But if the patterns began before the Winchesters hit town--sometimes years before--there had to be something else going on.
Strange. Booth understood Henriksen’s grudge--he’d be pretty pissed, too, if a suspect kept sliding right out from under his nose. Especially when so much about the cases didn’t make sense. In fact, without the handy presence of the Winchesters to lay the blame on, these cases would have remained unsolved.
He sorted through the files again, pulling up more information on the brothers. They looked like ordinary guys, if the younger one was taller than most and the older one prettier than most. Then again, most psychos looked normal. But nothing about them set off Booth's gut instincts.
He pondered. He was still pondering when his phone rang. It was Brennan.
#
"You're sure about this?" Booth was having a harder time understanding what Brennan and Zack were telling him than usual. Mostly because it was so insane.
"I'm absolutely sure," Zack said. "The scrape marks on the bones exactly match the Carrigans' teeth."
"So the Carrigans..." He paused, trying to deal with the mental image of those sweet-looking folks chowing down on human short ribs. "The Carrigans ate the people in their basement?"
"Yes," said Zack.
Booth shook his head. "Any evidence as to who killed them?"
"Fingerprints upstairs matched these Winchester brothers," Brennan said. "But Hodgins has been looking over photographs from the scene--"
Hodgins broke in. "There was a ritual sacrifice going on up there. Blood and a fingernail in a bowl... Instruments on the kitchen table--these brothers were about to become another meal. And the place was covered with pagan herbs--evergreen, verbena, meadowsweet..."
"It's Christmas,” Booth protested. “Everybody has evergreen in their house. Doesn't mean they're hosting pagan human sacrifices in the kitchen."
"Yeah, but not everybody has meadowsweet." Hodgins was almost as excited as he got when he stumbled over the possibility of a government conspiracy. "That's a lot harder to come by than an evergreen tree, or your basic mistletoe and holly--also very powerful pagan herbs, by the way--"
"Yeah, yeah, whatever, Hodgins. Thanks for ruining Christmas."
Hodgins just grinned. "That place was a hotbed of pagan activity. Ritual sacrifice, baby. Everything Christmas is about in the first place."
Booth gave him a hard look. "Do you mind?"
"Oh, sorry. I guess that's Easter." With a chuckle, Hodgins retreated to his own corner of the lab, leaving Booth to resist the urge to throw something at him.
"He's right, you know," Brennan chimed in, predictably. Booth clenched and unclenched his fists.
"Can I use your computer?"
"Sure," said Brennan.
Booth retreated to her office, where he could go into the FBI files in peace and finger his Saint Christopher medal and remind himself that not everybody in the world was a scientifically constipated heathen. She had a few of the evidence bags from the case on her desk where she’d been making notes; among the items were a couple of ancient-looking books from the Carrigans’ living room shelves, and a Ziploc bag with a detached fingernail. Booth shuddered at the sight of the latter and pushed back yet another unwanted memory.
He did a search on the Carrigans. Two disappearances in Seattle. The year before that, right around Christmas, three in Cedar Rapids. Five before that in Duluth. Not that any of the disappearances had been connected to the Carrigans at the time--there'd been no evidence. But now that the Carrigans were implicated in the Ypsilanti deaths, the pattern became clear. A string of disappearances solved, then, with the deaths of these two people, apparently mass murderers, cannibals, and Christmas fetishists. Booth wasn't sure which was worse--the cannibalism or disrespecting Christmas.
He had sent the first few records to Brennan’s printer when a knock fell on the doorframe. He looked up to see Cam standing just outside the office. “Getting late, Seeley,” she said.
“Yeah. Just going to finish up here, then I’ll head out.”
She looked curiously at the computer. “What have you got?”
“Just information on the Carrigans. There was another agent involved in the case. I want to pass this on to him, let him know what’s going on.”
“You might want to pass on their autopsy reports, too.”
Booth eyed her with interest. “Really? You find something else?”
“Found a lot of something elses. There was something seriously weird about those two. I don’t know how to explain it.”
“Weird how?”
Cam glanced back over her shoulder, as if afraid someone might overhear. “Those bodies had internal organs I’ve never seen before. Just a couple--weird little things in behind the kidneys. But they both had them. And their blood didn’t respond normally when I ran tox screens. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
Booth frowned and thought about the mysterious twin sister in Milwaukee, the unexplainable non-death of Dean Winchester in St. Louis. “Weird.”
“What?”
He shook his head. “Nothing.” He rubbed at his chest, feeling the textures of the Saint Christopher medal under his fingers. Maybe there was a reason why some of those files had been closed. To be honest, he didn’t want to think about it. His life would be a lot easier if he just filed it all away with some of the things he’d made himself forget about the Gulf. “Done with your Christmas shopping?”
Cam hesitated, and for a moment he thought she wasn’t going to let him get away with changing the subject. Then she said amiably, “Not quite. You?”
“Not quite. I’ll finish up tonight.”
She moved toward the door. “I’m heading out. Last one gone gets the lights.” She glanced out into the lab. “Looks like that’s going to be you.”
He nodded. “I’m almost done here.”
“Good.”
He watched her leave; he still hadn’t gotten over the primal enjoyment of watching her hips sway when she walked. He’d run by his office with the printouts and drop them off, head home. It was late--too late to do that last bit of Christmas shopping he'd had planned. He'd have to do it tomorrow, or Parker wouldn't have his Legos under the tree like he'd requested.
He’d just locked Brennan’s office behind him when the lights went out.
He froze. Every nerve began to tingle, every hair on the back of his neck went to full alert. Somebody was in the lab.
The Jeffersonian was nearly as secure as FBI headquarters--how the hell could somebody have gotten inside? But there was somebody there; he could feel it. Slowly, he moved toward his gun.
"Don't."
The single word came from the darkness, then a light flipped on--one of the automatic security lights that normally would have illuminated the lab in cases of a power outage. Momentarily blinded, Booth froze, then moved his hand slowly away from the butt of the gun at his waist. "Who's there?"
"I just need to talk to you," the voice continued. It was a man's voice, calm and reasonable. "No need for anything to get dodgy."
Booth blinked. Gradually, his eyes adjusted to the light. A figure stood leaning nonchalantly against one of the examination tables, arms crossed over his chest, a gun held loosely in one hand, but not pointed at Booth. It was just there, relaxed and easy.
Booth recognized the man immediately as Dean Winchester. He was taller and wider than Booth had guessed; his brother must be huge to make Dean look small in comparison. He was, in fact, about the same size as Booth, if about ten years younger. There was a hard look to him, of someone who'd seen too much too young. Booth had seen that look in the Gulf. It was the kind of posttraumatic effect rarely seen in anyone not a soldier.
"Talk," said Booth. "Make it fast."
Winchester grinned a little. "I need something from you."
"Really?"
"Yeah. Piece of evidence you took from that crime scene in Ypsilanti."
"I see." Booth mentally scanned the list of items they'd brought back with them--bones, bloody chunks of human bodies, knives, bloody bags and clothes... "What would that be?"
"My brother's fingernail." The answer surprised Booth at first, then it didn't.
"His fingernail."
"Yeah. That gets into the wrong hands, it could be bad. Hoodoo, Satanic spellcasting--anybody with that kind of knowledge could cause serious problems if they got ahold of that."
"If it's that important maybe you should have grabbed it from the crime scene before you left." Booth was willing to humor the guy… for a while. His gut still wasn't screaming vicious heartless murderer at him, even in Winchester's immediate vicinity. He seemed…competent. Assured. But not deranged or evil.
"Yeah, we really should have. But the neighbors called the cops, there was a commotion, we were both bleeding and we high-tailed it off the scene a little quicker than we should have. But you know what? I'm kind of having a bad year all the way around. So maybe you could just help a guy out, huh?"
Booth considered. "Did you kill that woman in St. Louis?"
"No." Winchester's tone was firm in a way that made Booth believe him. "You been talking to Henriksen?"
"I know Henriksen."
"I didn't kill any of the people he thinks I killed." There was a pause. "Not the people."
"You killed the couple in the house, though. The cannibals."
"Yeah. We did that. But they weren't people."
Booth nodded. “The autopsies were a little weird, I hear. So what were they?”
"Look," Winchester said. "I know you don't believe me. You've got no reason to believe me. But if you'll just get me that fingernail I'll get out of here and you'll never have to see me again if we're both lucky. That okay with you?"
Booth was silent a moment. He had no reason to believe Winchester. No reason at all. Except his gut remained calm. Winchester wasn't going to kill him. Yet somehow, this mission was important enough for him to risk walking into a secure government facility carrying a gun. And somehow he'd done exactly that.
Finally, Booth nodded. “It’s in the office. I’ll go get it.”
Winchester pushed away from the table. “No, thanks, Agent Booth. I think I’ll go fetch it myself.” He moved toward the office, the gun more prominent now. Booth calculated--he could probably take the kid out-- “I wouldn’t,” Winchester said, and the ideal moment passed.
“Dammit,” Booth muttered. Winchester crossed the threshold into the office, and Booth reached for the silent alarm next to the door. He hit the button with one hand, drew his gun with the other. But somehow, by the time he pushed the door back open, Winchester was gone. So was the Ziploc bag with the fingernail.
He searched the office--nothing, although he thought he heard a movement behind him when he checked under the desk. When they police arrived, summoned by the silent alarm, they couldn’t find any trace of Winchester’s passing, either.
As well as Booth knew the building, he had no idea where Winchester had disappeared to. But he was almost certain he would never see him again.