Bones: Buried Deep

8

Glancing over at Brennan — who was gazing out her passenger window, lost in private thoughts — Seeley Booth couldn’t help but think that maybe he should have fought on the doctor’s side and insisted she stay in that hospital bed.

Right now her skin — usually aglow with life — appeared sallow, and tiny beads of sweat glistened on her forehead.

“You okay?” he asked.

She looked his way, gave him a tiny smile and one tired nod. “Yeah. Where was this latest skeleton found?”

“Spring Lake Forest Preserve. On Highway 62.”

“And where is that, exactly?”

“Northwest suburbs, Barrington Hills.”

Brennan had been in Northwestern Memorial Hospital downtown; this, Booth knew, meant a long trip along I-90 West.

The FBI agent drove fast, but did not have the lights flashing or siren blaring as he wove in and out of Chicago traffic, using all three westbound lanes as he hustled toward the scene. Wrestling with both rush-hour traffic and driving into the setting sun, Booth got off I-90 onto I-290 and, at the very next exit, caught Highway 62.

Booth knew, under normal circumstances, Brennan would be brimming with questions. But he also knew she was recovering her balance — mentally, physically, emotionally — and he would follow her lead.

Step at a time.

The road was only two lanes as they neared their destination, and the surrounding countryside was mostly trees, the occasional house. The sun filtered through the canopy of leaves and Booth felt like he was driving in a tunnel. He took off his sunglasses… not that it helped.

He knew they were headed for a forest preserve, but it never failed to amaze him how there could be large rural stretches within the confines of a metropolitan area that was home to millions.

“Who found it?” Brennan asked.

She seemed to be getting up to speed.

“Hikers. They used a cell phone to call the police.”

“How did you learn about it?”

“After Jorgensen’s house, the cops will call us if they dig up so much as a Milk Bone.”

“Milk Bone?”

“Dog biscuit.” He glanced at her. “Do you even own a TV?”

“Yes,” she said blankly, apparently too numb to rise to the bait.

He decided to kid her out of her state — gently. “Ever turn the thing on?”

She hesitated.

“I thought so,” he said.

“No… I was just thinking. Weather Channel, Discovery, History, A & E, lots of stuff. I just don’t have a high tolerance for nonsense.”

He’d noticed.

But he was relieved she was alive again.

They lapsed back into silence, Brennan obviously still fighting the effects of the painkillers; and — as they rode along on the tree-sheltered two-lane, going slower now — she nodded off, head against the window.

He let her rest.

Before long, Booth turned into the Spring Lake Forest Preserve parking lot.

A county deputy stood next to a Sheriff’s Department car at the entrance, stopping anyone who tried to enter. As Booth swung in, the deputy held up a hand; even though the sun had not set completely, the country law enforcement officer brandished a flashlight in his other hand, careful to aim the beam away from Booth’s eyes… but waving it so Booth could not miss seeing him.

Booth knew cops felt safer going through an unknown doorway than doing traffic duty.

He stopped and powered down the window as the sentry approached. By the time the deputy got to the door, Booth had pulled out his ID.

“Special Agent Booth and forensic anthropologist Dr. Brennan.”

The deputy — medium height, emotionless steel-gray eyes — pointed to several cars parked to the left side of the gravel parking lot.

“Put it over there. No road beyond the lot. Have to walk in.”

Booth nodded. “Where’s our skeleton?”

“I’ll get you a guide,” the deputy said. He pushed a button on his shoulder-mounted radio mic. “Bobby?”

He waited.

Finally, a voice said, “Yeah?”

“Carl. Come on out — FBI Special Agent and an anthropologist. Need you to show ’em to the cemetery.”

“On my way.”

Deputy Carl and Booth exchanged nods, then Booth pulled the Crown Vic around and parked.

Booth hurried around the vehicle to help his partner, but Brennan was already wobbling out.

When he caught up to her, she leaned against him and he helped her straighten up, then she took a long breath, held it, and expelled it.

Guilt flushed Booth’s face. “I should never have let you talk me into this.”

“I’m all right,” she said, pulling away from him. “Really.”

He kept a hand near her, but didn’t touch her. He knew to give her her space. This was a woman who took pride in her independence, and he respected that. Admired it, even.

Still, he asked, “You sure, Bones?”

“Dead sure — we’ve got work to do.”

Booth was looking for something else to say, when a flashlight beam cut through the darkness. A deputy sheriff trailed the shaft of light into the parking lot.

“Welcome to Spring Lake Forest Preserve,” the deputy said, pleasant but not cheerful. He was a blocky blond with dark blue eyes in an oval, pug-nosed face; Booth made him in his early twenties.

“Thanks for having us,” Booth said. “You Bobby?”

“Yeah.”

“I’m Booth. This is Dr. Brennan.”

No handshakes, just nods.

The deputy said, “I’ll lead you down the path to the cemetery where the thing was found.”

“Appreciate it,” Booth said.

Deputy Bobby was shaking his head. “Weirdest thing I ever saw around these parts…. You folks watch your step, now. It’s gettin’ pretty dark and these roots and stuff along the way? You can trip and take a header, easy.”

Swell, Booth thought.

Here he was dealing with a half-conscious Brennan — okay, maybe a ninety-percent conscious Brennan — and now they were traipsing through the woods in the dark.

Though the glow of the city and the suburbs surrounded the area, the woods were darker than anyplace Booth had been since his military days. The only light beyond the deputy’s flashlight came from the moon and a few scattered stars.

Whatever sense of wonder, of the majesty of the universe, that others might feel in the Great Out of Doors had been ruined forever for Seeley Booth. The woods to him were jungle, and jungle meant memories of the time he spent as a sniper.

Deputy Bobby led the way, single file, Booth behind Brennan to catch her if need be. The path was well worn and mostly flat, leaves falling in heavy clumps in some places, making exposed roots even harder to see despite Bobby trying to point them out with the beam of the flashlight.

Trailing behind, feeling sweat starting to soak the underarms and back of his shirt, Booth was beginning to wonder how Bobby had made it to the parking lot in such a short time after the radio call.

Then the woods parted and Bobby stepped left, and Brennan right, and Booth found himself damn near face-to-face with the eyeless sockets of a skull, the rest of the skeleton hanging down as if the fleshless man stood before him.

The arms of the skeleton had been draped over and secured to the wrought-iron gate of the Guild Cemetery. Like the first skeleton, this one had been wired together in the manner of those seen in medical school classrooms.

Booth stepped to one side and got his bearings.

Small, at least by modern standards, the cemetery was home to one hundred or so souls buried between 1854 and 1899. The wrought-iron fence that surrounded the space seemed in good repair, but the gate was padlocked and Booth knew that this final resting place received few visitors these days.

At least until tonight.

Now, besides Bobby, two more uniformed sheriff’s department officers, as well as Special Agent in Charge Dillon and SA Woolfolk had come to pay their respects, before Booth and Brennan even arrived.

Inside the fence, Booth saw a flashlight beam, moving slowly between the graves.

“Crime scene unit on the way?” Booth asked Bobby.

The deputy turned to the older of the two uniformed officers. “Sheriff, this FBI agent here wants to know if the—”

“My hearing’s fine, Bobby,” the sheriff said, stepping forward and meeting Booth’s eyes. “And yes, crime scene analysts are coming — I requested Chicago PD and got it. I’m Sheriff Greg Trucks, by the way.”

The sheriff — a beefy, craggy, dark-haired guy in his fifties — extended a hand.

Booth shook it, introducing himself and Brennan.

“Glad to have you, Doctor,” Trucks said to Brennan, shaking her hand as well. “We haven’t had a murder in seven or eight months… and we never had anything like this.”

“Where are you,” Brennan asked, “with checking the graves themselves?”

Trucks pointed toward the nearby cemetery. “That’s Mary Newman in there — she’s from the local library association. They’ve taken on the history of the cemetery as a pet project, so I called her in. She’ll know if anything’s been disturbed.”

While they waited for Ms. Newman to finish her survey, Booth watched Brennan studying the skeleton in the moonlight.

After a short time, she turned to the deputy.

“Bobby? May I borrow your flashlight?”

Bobby glanced at his boss; the sheriff nodded.

The young deputy handed over the light and Brennan ran the beam slowly up and down the limbs of the skeleton.

The other onlookers seemed as fascinated as Booth as they watched her work the beam over the skull, the ribs, then the spine, and, finally, the legs clear down to the feet…

… where there appeared to be another note bound to the toes.

Turning to the sheriff, she asked, “Have you photographed this site?”

Trucks nodded. “But I don’t think we should be touching any of it until the crime scene people get here.”

That, Booth knew, was the wrong thing to say to Brennan, drugged or not.

“Thank you for the advice, Sheriff,” she said, artificially polite. “My advice to you, had I had the opportunity to offer it earlier, would’ve been not to have all these people tromping around a crime scene. I didn’t plan on touching anything — I was merely requesting information.”

She’s baaaack, Booth thought, and almost smiled.

The sheriff, who looked like he’d been slapped, struggled for a response.

Before this could escalate into an argument, Booth’s local boss, Dillon, stepped in, but his words were addressed to neither the sheriff nor Brennan.

“Ms. Newman,” he said, “what did you find?”

Booth looked up to see a woman leaning on the fence near the gate. Tall, thin, with a sharp chin and a straight nose that propped up wire-frame glasses, white hair flying out from under a Cubs baseball cap, the chipper Ms. Newman wore a Cubs windbreaker and jeans.

Booth couldn’t see the woman’s eyes in the darkness, but she seemed to be smiling.

“Everything’s all right,” she announced with obvious relief, as if a skeleton wasn’t tethered to the fence barely two feet from her. “Not a single grave has been tampered with.”

“Mary, you’re sure?” Trucks asked.

“Gregory, why would you even ask?” She tried to respond with grace, but the irritation was evident. “You know this place has been my life for the last ten years.”

“Sorry, Mary,” Trucks said, suitably cowed. The beefy guy was not doing well with the “weaker” sex tonight.

Five minutes later the Chicago PD crime scene unit finally showed up and started working the scene. The parking lot had been disturbed by ten or so city, county, state, and federal cars since the perp had made his delivery, but a couple CSUs stayed behind to work the lot anyway.

This assumed, of course, that the perp had arrived by car and hiked in as they had. Airlifting was probably the only other way, and no one in their right mind would skydive with an extra skeleton lashed to his or her back.

Not that leaving reassembled skeletons around Chicago indicated a right mind….

Booth noticed Brennan shining the flashlight on the skeleton again.

“What’s up?” he asked.

Aiming the beam at the midsection of the skeleton, Brennan said, “Look at this. What do you see?”

Booth stepped closer. “Bones, I see bones.”

“Cute,” she said. “But don’t just take in the surface — look closer.”

He tried, but gave up. “I honestly don’t know what I’m supposed to be looking for…”

“Try here,” she said, pointing to where the clavicle met the sternum just above the ribs.

“Yeaaaaah,” he said, still not getting it.

“Do you see the dirt spots on the ribs?”

“That I do see. Why?”

“Where are they on the clavicle?”

She shined the light on the collarbone and he searched for any kind of smudge but saw nothing.

“There isn’t any dirt on the clavicle,” he said. “Okay. What’s that mean?”

“This bone… this particular bone… has never been buried… and judging from the color? It was defleshed artificially.”

He repeated, not quite sure it was English: “Artificially defleshed…?”

“Yes. Sometimes, in the lab, if we have a partial body and we want to study just the bones, we will deflesh the bone by soaking the remains in enzyme-activated detergent and water.”

“And I thought my job had its gross moments,” Booth said.

“It’s just science, Booth. What if defleshing bones meant the difference between finding a murderer and not?”

“As long as the bones getting defleshed isn’t you, Bones? I’d say deflesh away… but it’s still gross.”

Booth turned to find that their exchange had garnered an audience.

Upon being noticed, the others backed off a little. Booth looked past the crowd to see members of the crime scene unit trudging toward them, kits in hand.

He found himself instinctively shielding Brennan, who was in the process of using tweezers to put something in a tiny plastic bag, which she slipped into her pocket.

When the leader of the CSU team, a tall, rangy brown-haired guy named Lieutenant Platt, had met everyone, Brennan explained that she and Booth wanted the skeleton as soon as possible.

Pratt said, “Dr. Brennan, we’ve got the word on you from Lieutenant Greene.”

She blinked. “You do?”

“We do. He said you’re tops and anything you ask for, we should give to you. Expect nothing but cooperation here.”

She smiled. “Cool.”

The crime scene unit went to work and, an hour later — even though there was much to be done at the scene — Platt released the skeleton to Booth and Brennan.

“Where’s the note?” Booth asked.

“Well,” Pratt said, “we kept that, of course.”

“We’ll need it.”

“You said the skeleton, that’s what you got.”

“And everything that went with it — including the note.”

Pratt grimaced, then forced a smile. “Agent Booth, I indicated to Dr. Brennan we’d cooperate. This is a joint investigation. But this is still my crime scene. I’ve turned over the skeleton, and that will have to do for now.”

SAC Dillon came over and, pleasantly professional, said, “This is a federal investigation, Lieutenant. We’ll handle the note, and send you a copy with a full report on our findings.”

Pratt frowned.

He was just about to reply, apparently not in a nice way, when Brennan approached the crime scene investigator and said, “We’re wasting time, struggling over turf. You were great about the skeleton, and I appreciate that. But we need some more of that cooperation you promised.”

Pratt shook his head, only it wasn’t a refusal, because he immediately had one of his techs fetch the note and bring it to Booth.

This latest missive from their skeleton assembler was now safely sealed inside a plastic evidence bag.

“Thank you for your cooperation,” Dillon said to Pratt, and walked away.

Brennan smiled sweetly at the already put-upon crime scene investigator and asked, “Just one more thing?”

Pratt laughed. “Not my firstborn? My wife will have a fit.”

“No. Not that. We could use some large evidence bags to convey the skeleton safely. Could we borrow some?”

“And by ‘borrow,’ you mean ‘have’?”

“Yes.”

Soon Booth and Brennan were utilizing large plastic bags from the crime scene unit, slipping them over the skeleton. The entire thing was covered with plastic by the time they loaded it into the backseat of the Crown Vic.

As they pulled back onto the road, Booth phoned Dr. Wu, who, despite the late hour, agreed to meet them at the Field Museum ASAP.

Booth ended the call, passed through a T-intersection and headed east back toward the expressway. He shot Brennan a glance and noted her puzzled expression.

“What?” he asked.

“I know I’ve been taking painkillers, but I thought you said this was Highway 62.”

“It is,” Booth said, pointing to a sign they were passing.

“Then why did the sign back there say this is Algonquin Road?”

“Because it is. Highway 62 is Algonquin Road.”

Booth tried to keep his eyes on the road, but he kept glancing over at Brennan, who was obviously pondering something.

When he couldn’t take it anymore, he finally said, again, “What?”

“Something doesn’t fit.”

“How so?”

“We’ve been working with the assumption that Jorgensen was the one placing the skeletons, right?”

“Right. And we caught him.”

“But the last one didn’t turn up until after he was in custody.”

“Also correct, but that doesn’t mean that he didn’t stage it, before we caught him. Plenty of opportunity for him to do that, and it was only found just now.”

“Possible,” she said. “But think about it. Where was the first skeleton discovered?”

“At the Dirksen Building.”

“Why there?”

“To get our attention.”

Brennan nodded. “Which it did.”

“Yeah.”

“What about the second skeleton?”

He hit the exit and they were on the expressway now. Traffic was thin, the hour late, the lights of the city making Booth feel a part of civilization again. “By the Biograph theater.”

“But the homeless witness, ultimately, led you to where?”

“Jorgensen’s old haunts, his old house.”

“And now?”

Booth shrugged.

“Algonquin Road?”

“So?”

“Where did Jorgensen live?”

Seeing where she was going now, Booth said, “Algonquin.”

Forehead creased, she asked, “Would he be that obvious?”

“Sure, if he wanted to get caught badly enough.”

Brennan shook her head. “I don’t think so. You were in that kitchen. Did he behave like he wanted to be caught?”

“Maybe it was a… go-out-in-a-blaze-of-glory deal.”

“Booth, he didn’t act like he wanted to die. To take us with him. He wanted to survive. Which he did.”

“Creeps do weird things, Bones. This is my area, trust me — serial killers do things and sometimes don’t even know they’re doing it.”

She said nothing, staring straight ahead.

Booth kept trying: “He picks the cemetery, for some completely other reason, not even thinking about what road it’s on… but subconsciously, he’s trying to get caught, right? So out of all the cemeteries in Chicago, he picks the one on Algonquin Road.”

She wasn’t buying. “It’s not logical.”

“Neither is killing young men and burying them in your crawlspace or making ‘new’ skeletons out of the pieces of those people. Serial killing isn’t about logic…. It’s just a part of their sicko M.O.”

“I still think we’re missing something,” Brennan said.

“If it’ll make you feel better, have an advance peek at the note. Maybe there’s something there.”

She got the evidence bag out, turned on the dome light, smoothed the plastic so she could read the latest missive. “… All in caps again….”

“What does it say?”

“ ‘To the FBI,’ ” she read. “ ‘I’ve given you two chances already and you are proving to be as incompetent as the police. How much easier do I need to make it for you? I’ve given you every clue, every possibility to make it as easy for you as I can. Still, you are incompetent, inept, and unable to catch me. My patience is wearing as thin as your pathetic skills. Perhaps I need to just send you my name and address, like the police, that is probably the only way you will ever darken my door.’ Signed, ‘Nerd.’ ”

“‘Nerd?’ As in ‘Revenge of the… ’?”

“I don’t know what that means,” she said. “ ‘Nerd’ as in N-E-R-D.”

“Three notes, three different signatures,” Booth said. “Now that really doesn’t make sense….”

Brennan turned off the dome light. “Imagine we’d found this skeleton prior to pinpointing Jorgensen.”

“Why would that make a difference?”

“I’d have made the same Algonquin Road connection, and so would you…. Would Jorgensen make it so easy to track him? While using three different names that have nothing to do with him?”

“Bones, again — you keep using logic to try to explain an illogical act. You’ll never get anywhere that way.”

“Notebook and pen?”

He squinted at her.

“Eyes on the road,” she said. “Do you have a notebook and pen?”

Driving with one hand, and digging in his pocket with the other, he searched for the small notebook and ballpoint; he found them and handed them over.

Brennan, very quiet now, began writing something. Focused. Gone somewhere in her mind and not inviting him along.

Booth used the drive time to think about what he would do about the Musetti case once this Skel craziness was over. Which, he told himself, should be in the very near future.

The suspect was in custody, the evidence piling up. Nothing was directly tied to Jorgensen, but that would come soon enough.

And that job would be for squints like Brennan.

She was still scribbling when he got off the interstate and wound his way over to Lake Shore Drive, which he followed south to the Field Museum. He parked near a back door with a single security light.

Dr. Wu wasn’t there yet and they would be waiting awhile, so he asked, “What’s in the little bag you spirited away at the scene?”

“The little bag in my pocket?”

“That little bag.”

“A hair I found stuck in one of the knots used to assemble the skeleton. I’ll send it to Jack to identify.”

Then, as if they hadn’t even spoken, Brennan went back to working on whatever she was doing in the notebook, and Booth returned to devising new ways to attack the Musetti search.

Brennan suddenly grunted something that was almost a laugh, and a self-satisfied one at that.

“An anagram,” she said.

“What is?”

“The signatures. They comprise an anagram.”

“The three signatures do?”

“The three signatures. If you rearrange the letters of the names, here is what you get.”

Booth met Brennan’s excited eyes, then looked down at the notebook in the meager glow from the security light coming through the windshield.

In Brennan’s sharp printing was one word:

MASTERMIND.

Booth started mentally rearranging the letters himself now, not wanting to be one-upped by a squint.

“Could be Mister Damn,” he announced.

She stared at him, an eyebrow arched, and he immediately realized how dumb he sounded.

“All right,” he said finally. “Yours probably makes more sense.”

“You think?”

Before he could get any more embarrassed, Booth noticed Dr. Wu’s Volvo pulling into the lot. He glanced over at Brennan, still giving him that arched eyebrow expression.

He held up his hands in surrender.

“Mastermind it is,” he said.

As Dr. Wu unlocked the Field’s rear door, Booth and Brennan got their newest skeleton’s worth of evidence out of the back and carried it into the lab.

They rested it on the central table, removed the plastic bags, and Brennan put on a lab coat and gloves. Dr. Wu did the same, and then the two women examined the skeleton while Booth hovered and tried to look like he wasn’t.

Dr. Wu concurred with Brennan’s defleshing theory and again both women were convinced that the bones had come from more than one body.

“The clavicle and ribs are from different bodies,” Brennan told Booth. “I explained that to you at the scene.”

He nodded.

“The pubic symphysis belonged to a young man while the closure of the sutures in the skull belong to a much older man.”

“Either of those belong to the others?”

“Maybe, but the clavicle, several of the hand bones, and the legs below the knees probably all came from the same person.”

“And those, you think, are more recent?”

“In terms of time since death,” she said, “yes.”

“Where does that leave us?”

Brennan smiled. “More information is more knowledge. More knowledge gets us closer to the identity of the bastard sending us these sick messages.”

“Makes sense. Makes damn good sense.”

“We’ll package this one up, and you can ship it off to the Jeffersonian.”

Booth eyed her curiously. “What are you going to be doing?”

She looked very tired, very pale, and sweat glistened on her forehead again. “I think there’s a very good possibility that I’ll be sleeping in.”

He gave her half a grin, and she gave him the other half.

Then she crumpled. The only thing that kept Brennan from hitting the ground was Booth catching her.

“Better call 911,” he told Dr. Wu.

Alarmed, Dr. Wu asked, “Is she going to be all right?”

Booth laid Brennan gently on the floor. “I think she just overdid it. But we better make damn sure.”

Dr. Wu was studying him even as she got the cell phone to her lips.

“You really care about her, don’t you?” Dr. Wu asked with the faintest trace of a smile.

“Why shouldn’t I?” Booth said. “She’s my partner.”