Bones: Buried Deep

9

For the second day in a row, Temperance Brennan woke up in a hospital bed.

Which was, let’s face it, getting a little discouraging, and not just from a health standpoint.

Brennan might not be the most girly girl around, but having no purse distressed her, and she had been wearing the same clothes for… how long was it now?

She tried to think back to the last time she had been in her hotel room, but the results were fuzzy.

No shower in at least two days and, since her purse was stolen, she hadn’t even been able to comb her hair. She checked beside her to see the saline bottle, the line, the needle; hooked up again, and not in the date sense — at least no painkillers seemed part of the mix, this time.

On top of all that, her cell phone was nowhere in sight, and she had no idea where it was, which meant she was really cut off from her life.

Another week in Chicago and she’d be lucky to have the clothes on her back (which, at the moment, were not on her back or any part of her, for that matter).

And this time, Booth wasn’t in a chair watching over her, as he had been before, which gave her a pang.

She was alone.

TV was off. Clock said eight a.m.

Breakfast would be around soon and, hospital food or not, that was a good thing, starved as she was.

Her cell phone rang, as if to announce its presence after all, and with childish excitement she recovered it in the folds of her sheets. She snatched it up and hit the button, fast: she knew cell phones weren’t permitted in here, and figured Booth must have stowed hers away for her, in the bedclothes, so she would at least have that.

She felt suddenly grateful to the absent Booth, and the feeling wasn’t bad at all…. Or was she still on painkillers?

Her phone said, “Sweetie, you there?”

“Sorry, Angie — I’m here.”

“And where is ‘here’ today?”

“The hospital again.”

“Are you all right?”

The eternal question.

“Just overdid it, Angie. Checked myself out yesterday, little overeager. Must’ve passed out at the museum. A blink ago I was there, and now I’m here, back in a hospital bed. Seems to be the next morning…. What day is it, anyway?”

Angela told her, and relief swept over her.

“Oh,” Angela was saying, “and I got your credit cards canceled. No prob. When you get back? We can take care of the rest of your ID and stuff.”

More relief.

“Thanks. You’re a saint.”

“That’s not a commonly held opinion, sweetie. Hey, we’re finally making progress on the two skeletons you were so kind as to send.”

“That’s better medicine than this hospital can give me. Spill!”

“I’ve e-mailed you JPEGs of the 3-D images I’ve made from the skulls. You do still have your laptop, don’t you?”

“In my hotel room, I do — assuming I still have a hotel room…. What about dental ID?”

“Both of the skeletons—”

“Oh! Before I forget, there are three now. The latest skeleton should be on its way to you today.”

Angela sang, “ ‘It’s raining men….’ ”

“I don’t know what that means.”

“Get well, finish your case, come home, and maybe I’ll explain it to you.”

“Angie — back to the dental IDs.”

“I already e-mailed that stuff, too. But here’s what we have so far: one skull belonged to a guy named David Parks. Went missing in 1959.”

“Who was he?”

“Police didn’t want to give me anything. They told me to have Booth ask for the file.”

“Interesting.”

“I thought so. So pass it along to that good-looking guy you work with.”

“I will. Now, who is he?”

“Seeley Booth! He’s that hunky agent you—”

“Angie — who is David Parks? The owner of the skull in question?”

Brennan knew her friend well enough to know that Angela wouldn’t be satisfied with being stonewalled by the cops, and she had the computer chops to get around it.

“Knowing that he disappeared in 1959,” Angela said, “I did some digging online. ‘David Parks’ isn’t ‘John Smith,’ but it’s still a pretty common name.”

“But you found…?”

“Some old newspaper articles that said Parks was an accountant who had his own business. Then, one fateful night? Dave just fell off the planet.”

“That’s it?”

“According to what the Net gave up, police back in ’59 had no leads — everybody in Parks’s circle of friends, all male, by the way, were suitably distraught.”

“You find it significant that all of his friends were male?”

“Just that he had no wife, no girlfriend, no women in his life at all.”

Brennan was frowning. “And from this you extrapolate he was gay? How many men in 1959 had tons of gal pals?”

Angela, not at all defensive, said, “Didn’t you say your serial killer was targeting gay men, even back then? Seemed worth noting.”

“It is. Still, there’s no empirical proof that Parks was homosexual.”

“Sweetie, there’s seldom empirical proof that anybody is anything.”

Brennan couldn’t argue with that. “What else?”

“Nothing for Parks. Information was pretty sketchy. Long time ago… but that wasn’t quite as true for the other skull.”

“Who was he?”

“A small-time mobster named Johnny Battaglia.”

The back of Brennan’s neck prickled.

Angela was saying, “He disappeared in the fall of 1963, leaving behind a wife and two daughters and an arrest record the length of the lakefront.”

“Probably not gay,” Brennan said.

“You never know,” Angela said, a shrug in her voice.

“But didn’t you say Booth was investigating the Gianelli crime family, before you got there?”

The prickly neck was gone but an uneasy queasiness had seeped into her stomach. “Yes. Till our cobbled-together skeletons rudely interrupted him.”

“Well,” Angela said, “Battaglia allegedly worked with Raymond Gianelli’s father back in the forties and fifties.”

“I don’t see what this has to do with our skeletons,” Brennan said.

“Nobody on this end has any ideas, either; but we’re still working on that and DNA identification of the other bones.”

“Did you copy the Parks and Battaglia info to Booth?” Brennan asked.

“Yes — he’s had them awhile.”

“Good.”

A female orderly arrived bearing a tray with a cup of coffee, a glass of juice, a covered bowl, and a covered plate. Right behind her came a blond nurse in a flowered smock and white slacks.

“You’re not supposed to be using a cell phone inside the hospital, Dr. Brennan.”

The wide blue eyes and straight-lipped frown made the nurse look serious but not quite cross.

What is this, Brennan thought, an airplane?

“Gotta go,” Brennan told Angela, and rang off.

She sat quietly while the nurse checked her vitals.

“Feeling better?” the nurse asked, giving Brennan a little smile.

She had to admit, she did feel better; maybe the hospital had been the best place to spend the night, even though she longed to get reacquainted with that hotel room.

“Dr. Keller will be by to see you soon,” the nurse said. “In the meantime, enjoy breakfast… and no more cellular calls, all right?”

The nurse left Brennan to her meal and her thoughts.

The tray of food was nothing special — including oatmeal that looked about as appetizing as something off her worktable — but she ate it all, and was soon even wishing for a second cup of carburetor-fluid coffee.

Making sure there was no sign of the blond nurse in the corridor beyond her open door, Brennan got out her cell again, speed-dialed Booth, gave him a quick update, and suggested that he check his e-mail and print out the files Angela had sent him… and bring them along when he came to get her.

“Why,” he asked, “are they releasing you again?”

“They never released me in the first place,” she said.

“Good point. On my way.”

An hour later, Booth walked through the door in his usual dark suit, conservative tie, and crisp white shirt.

Dr. Keller, on the other hand, had yet to make an appearance — “soon” being a relative term in any hospital — and Brennan wondered if the physician was punishing her for yesterday.

Booth, carrying two fat manila folders under an arm, plopped into the chair next to her bed.

“Well?” she asked.

He shook his head. “I haven’t looked at ’em yet — didn’t waste the time. Knew you’d want to see them, too.”

“I like this new thoughtful side you’re showing,” she said, granting him a small smile. “I’ll have to check into the hospital more often.”

“Anyway, it’s hard to read and drive at the same time.”

Brennan took the file, surprised by its heft. “I didn’t think Angela had this much….”

“She didn’t. When I saw that name Battaglia, I called over to the Chicago PD. They e-mailed me the files on both Battaglia and Parks, and I printed those out, too. Seems the Chicago PD has been transferring over their old files onto disk.”

“Isn’t science wonderful?” she said, and settled back on the bed, using the motor to raise her about forty-five degrees.

The name scribbled on the tab in Booth’s handwriting was PARKS.

Not surprisingly, Booth had kept the mobster’s file for himself, and was starting in on it as she read hers.

The information was discouragingly thin, albeit with wrinkles that Angela hadn’t provided over the phone.

In 1948, David Parks had graduated from Northwestern as a certified public accountant, worked for a medium-sized company for two and a half years, then left under circumstances not outlined in the police report.

Four months later, Parks opened his own business in an office in the Silversmith Building at 10 South Wabash, which — for the eleven years prior to going missing — was his sole source of income.

The file indicated Parks had made a substantial living, at least by the standards of the nineteen fifties; but — after the investigation into his disappearance — the authorities began to suspect his practice may not have been entirely legitimate.

The missing person’s report had been filed by one Terence Rhyne, who claimed that on the night of July 14, 1959, he had been scheduled to meet Parks at the Berghoff restaurant after work for drinks and dinner; but the accountant had not shown.

Known to be meticulously punctual, Parks had not phoned or messengered Rhyne, canceling their appointment (date?). Rhyne had grown worried and contacted the police. For the next six months, detectives searched for Parks with no success. Eventually, Parks went into the cold case file.

Brennan read and reread certain passages.

Around noon of the day of his disappearance, Parks had been seen at lunch in the Loop in the company of a man named Mark Koch, who also had an office in the Silversmith Building. A jeweler, Koch had lunch with Parks most days, and said that July fourteenth had been just like most every other shared luncheon with the accountant.

More witnesses, more statements… more of the same, and as Angela had suggested, everyone involved with the case indeed was male.

Unmarried, Parks had no noteworthy female acquaintances, not even sisters (he had none), and his mother was deceased.

The last page was Parks’s client list, which was — as the police report noted — quite short.

Seven names…

…but one leapt at her.

Her eyes flashed to her partner, engrossed in the Battaglia file.

“Booth,” she said.

Without looking up, he held up an index finger: he would be with her in what… a second, a minute, an hour?

This was one of the things about him that drove her mad. Whatever he was doing was always more important….

Not this time.

“Booth!”

“What?” he said with a start.

A nurse leaned in. “Is everything all right?”

“Sorry,” Brennan said sheepishly. “Didn’t mean to yell.”

The nurse cast her slitted-eyed disapproval, but said nothing and departed.

Brennan asked Booth, “You didn’t look at these at all?”

“No,” he said, one eye on the Battaglia file. “When I talked to Greene on the phone, he just said Parks was some accountant, and this goombah Battaglia mob muscle, not a real player.”

“Well, the accountant?”

“Yeah?”

“He only had about a half dozen clients.”

Booth shrugged. “And?”

“And one of them was named Anthony Gianelli.”

Booth slammed closed the Battaglia file, rose and crossed to the bed in two steps. He snatched the thick file folder out of her hands.

“Help yourself,” she said, folding her arms, an eyebrow arched.

“Thanks,” he said, reading the file but not her sarcasm.

Dr. Keller came in, took in the FBI agent, whose nose was buried in the manila folder. “I suppose I shouldn’t ask.”

Ignoring Keller, Booth said, “This has to be the connection… but does it mean Jorgensen was somehow mobbed up? Tied to Gianelli?”

“Excuse me?” Dr. Keller asked. “I’m sure your case is important, Agent Booth. But so is mine, and her name is Brennan.”

“Sorry,” Booth said, shutting the folder.

Skirting the FBI agent, Dr. Keller asked, “Feeling better, Dr. Brennan?”

“Yes, thank you. A good night’s sleep can do wonders.”

“Often the best medicine,” he said, and gave her a quick exam, cursory enough not to require Booth’s absence, and pronounced her fit enough to check out.

“Good to hear, Doctor,” she said.

The youthful physician half-smiled. “Really? Weren’t you going to leave anyway?”

“Probably.”

He sighed. “Well, I would hate to call security to restrain you, so let’s just check you out. Your injuries are going to need time to heal, and I want you to take it easy.”

“You can count on me, Doctor.”

“Yes,” Dr. Keller said, lifting both eyebrows, “but for what?”

Half an hour later — five minutes of which were devoted to Brennan refusing to ride in a wheelchair — she and Booth were in the hospital parking lot.

“We should go see Gianelli,” Booth said, somehow managing to be glum and excited at once.

“Which one? Father or son?”

“Either. Both.”

“With what for evidence?”

Booth kept walking, thinking, obviously trying to come up with an answer; but by the time they were seat-belted into the Crown Vic, he had still said nothing.

“Okay,” he said finally, starting the car. “Maybe you’re right. We don’t really have anything. We have to go somewhere.”

“Yes, we do,” Brennan said. “My hotel.”

He pulled onto the ramp. “I’ll bite — why?”

“I need my laptop.”

“What’s on your laptop?”

“Take me to my hotel and I’ll show you.”

He snorted a laugh. “A beautiful woman, a hotel room, and a suggestive remark — best offer I’ve had all day.”

He headed toward the hotel.

“There was nothing suggestive about—”

“Joke,” he said.

Including the “beautiful” part? she wondered.

Booth managed to keep his curiosity under wraps until they got to her hotel, but he was clearly anxious. They did not converse, however, and she could see he was chasing theories in his mind.

She did not give in to that pursuit — she preferred to have more data first.

He allowed her a quick shower and a change of clothes before sitting her down at the little desk with the hotel’s high-speed Internet connection.

She pulled up the files that Angela had sent of the images she’d created with the Angelator, a program Angie developed that allowed rendering of 3-D holographic images based on measurements from the original skulls. With the Angelator, a face and hair could be given to what had been a bare skull.

Brennan turned the laptop to share the images with Booth, who had drawn a chair up beside her.

“This is making my brain hurt,” Booth said.

“No comment,” Brennan said.

“Parks was probably gay—”

“Possibly gay.”

He gave her that. “Possibly gay, which made him a potential target for Jorgensen… but Battaglia was the furthest thing from Jorgensen’s victim profile.”

“Can’t a mob guy be gay?”

“Not one whose first arrest was a rape charge involving a sixteen-year-old waitress.”

“Oh.” She shifted her position. “And Parks had a connection to the Gianellis.”

He nodded decisively. “Both these victims had a connection to the Gianellis.”

They studied side-by-side pictures of the two men.

Battaglia had a wide, flat mug with the nose and big bulging eyes of a bulldog.

Parks was blond with blue eyes and angular, sharp features, including high cheekbones, adding up to a vague resemblance to an owl.

Her cell phone rang and she hit the button. “Brennan.”

“Zach.”

Her assistant Zach Addy — thin and bespectacled, with a mop of dark hair — was halfway through two doctorates, but looked more like he was halfway through his senior year in high school.

“What’s up?” Brennan asked.

“Third skeleton just arrived, and we’ve started testing already. I thought you’d want to know.”

“Thanks, Zach. Stay on it.”

“…Wait a minute, Jack wants to talk to you.”

Hodgins got on the line. “Been looking more into the soil question.”

“Hi, Jack. Soil question? Does it have an answer?”

“The sandy soil the first two skeletons were buried in is different than the soil under that Jorgensen guy’s house.”

“We knew that.”

“Yes,” Jack said, “but we know more now. I’ve been doing some further testing and comparisons, and the soil mixture from the skeletons matches a place called the Indiana Dunes Inland Marsh.”

“Great work,” Brennan said.

Jack said, “Thanks… just don’t get too effusive. It’s a smaller area to search than all of Chicago, but it’s still several hundred acres.”

“Where do we start?”

“I’d suggest the main gate.”

“…Thanks, Jack. It’s a start. A good one.”

“Yeah, and I got something off the third skeleton, too. Not sure what it is, but I’ve got it in the gas chromatograph/mass spectrometer now. I’ll call ya back when I know what the substance is.”

Brennan said, “Thanks,” and ended the call.

She brought Booth up to speed on what she had learned, and within minutes they were in the car headed for Indiana.

Booth had an Indiana map in the glove compartment and Brennan unfolded it as he drove.

“The Indiana Dunes?” Booth asked.

“Yes… What are you thinking?”

His eyes narrowed. “I’m thinking maybe it’s the Dunes Express….”

She had all but forgotten the odd expression Lisa Vitto had used, in relation to her missing boyfriend, that night at Siracusa.

In her defense, since then Brennan had suffered a mugging, numerous painkillers, and passing out at the Field Museum; but as soon as Booth spoke the words “Dunes Express,” the case made sudden sense.

“A mob dumping ground,” she said, “a burial ground for traitors and enemies.”

“Where else do missing mob accountants and washed-up Outfit muscle wind up, after the lights go out?”

Her heart pounding, she said, “All right — what do we do?”

“How big is the area again?”

“According to Jack, several hundred acres.”

He shook his head, jaw set. “Do we even know what we’re searching for?”

“Graves, of course.”

“But probably not with little headstones and white crosses marking them.”

“Probably not.”

“And the best part?” Booth said miserably. “It’s in a swamp.”

“Marsh, actually.”

He barked a laugh. “Marsh, swamp, what difference does it make?”

“Swamp has a higher water table. If they were disposed of in a swamp, the bodies most likely would be hidden underwater instead of buried.”

His eyes bored into her.

Hers bored back at him. “Would you please not stare at me when you’re driving?”

He returned his gaze to the road. “What I was trying to say is… it’s going to be hard.”

“Unlike all the easy times we’ve had,” she said.

That got a dry chuckle out of him.

“It is a big area,” she allowed.

“It’ll take a ton of agents to search the area, and most of them won’t have any idea what they’re looking for.”

Brennan thought it over. “Narrow the field, and we could bring in ground-penetrating radar.”

Around them, traffic slowed as they ran into Chicago’s inevitable construction. Brennan watched out the window as they entered the Chicago Skyway, the scenery becoming more and more desolate.

The South Side had long been the neglected section of the city, made up predominantly of the working poor and those who were not even that lucky. As the road turned east toward Gary, the prospects did not improve.

The steel industry, which had once made Gary a thriving community, had for the most part turned to rust; and many of those left living here wore the faces of Titanic passengers as the water rose over the deck.

They might still be alive, but nothing was left to look forward to except death and release.

Brennan’s phone chirped, obliviously good-natured, and she answered it to find Jack Hodgins on the other end again.

“What have you got, Jack?”

“That dust I told you about before?”

“Yeah?”

“It was on all the bones of the other two skeletons, too… but in such small amounts I couldn’t get a breakdown. This time? There was enough.”

“You gonna keep me in suspense?”

“Sixty-four percent lime.”

She hunched over, straining her seat belt. “Jorgensen’s basement?”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa, Dr. Brennan…. Don’t get ahead of yourself. Sixty-four percent lime, twenty-three percent silica, seven percent alumina, three percent each of iron oxide and sulfur trioxide.”

Brennan took only a second to put the pieces together. “Cement.”

“Cement.”

“I thought you said the Indiana Dunes — where did the cement come from?”

Jack said, “My guess? A construction site or a demolition site. Whatever it is, it’ll be in or near the Indiana Dunes Inland Marsh. And your bodies came from that patch of the Dunes.”

They were off the expressway now, and Booth had turned east onto a two-lane highway, traffic finally moving again.

“Also,” Jack said, “I’ve found traces of Typha, Cyperaceae, and Potamogetonaceae.”

“Cattails, bulrushes, and pondweed,” Brennan said. “That helps.”

“The marsh is on Highway 12, south of the highway in Indiana.”

“We’re on our way there now,” Brennan said. “You want me to paste the gold star on your chart, or can you handle it yourself?”

A grin was in his voice. “I’ll wait for you, Doctor.”

They rang off and she updated Booth as he drove.

“Where are we?” she asked.

“Highway 12.”

She glanced around at a low-slung cityscape. On the North Side, railroad tracks ran parallel to them, woods beyond that, Lake Michigan beyond the woods. After a while a sign near the tracks said Chicago South Shore and South Bend Railroad.

She asked Booth, “How did you know to go this way?”

“I stashed Musetti down the road in a place called Ogden Dunes.”

“As in Dunes Express?”

Booth looked pained.

“Sorry,” she said.

“Truth hurts.”

“You’ve been out here recently then, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Was there any construction?”

He considered that. “They’re renovating some of the homes along the lake.”

“Are they using a lot of cement?”

“Not particularly, they’re wood homes… but the Homeland Security Department is building a two-lane highway from the interstate to the south to U.S. Steel to the north.”

“Homeland Security?” Brennan asked.

“Steel is considered intrinsic to national security. No steel, no tanks, no Humvees, no gun barrels. The HSD wants the road into the plant to be secure, so they’re building it themselves.”

“Where at?”

He pointed off to the left. “That over there?”

She could see the huge steel mill up the road a little north of the South Shore railroad tracks. “Yeah, U.S. Steel.”

“Right,” he said. “The road will come up to it from the right.”

“Where’s the marsh?”

“That’s the west edge of it.”

Brennan sat forward again. “They’re building the road through the marsh?”

“Not quite, but close.”

She stared at him.

“Don’t go tree hugger on me now, Bones. Wasn’t my idea to put the road there.”

She stared harder.

“Hey, they’re almost finished with it. Be done before winter. Seriously, I wouldn’t have put it there either, but I wasn’t consulted.”

She didn’t tell him that her reaction was not environmentalist in nature… at least, not entirely.

They passed the construction of the northbound highway, which was still a good half mile south of crossing Highway 12, and would have to bisect both 12 and the railroad tracks before it reached U.S. Steel.

She wondered why, if the HSD wanted the road secure, they would cross this highway and the tracks. This didn’t make a lot of sense, but in her dealings with the FBI, she’d found that making sense did not seem to be high on the federal government’s priority list.

She gave up trying to understand the government and watched the prevailing westerly wind carry dust past the car window.

Booth hit his right turn signal just as Brennan saw a sign for the Indiana Dunes Inland Marsh.

He pulled into the parking lot and turned again, stopping with the front bumper facing a log rail.

They alighted, and Brennan stretched.

It felt good to be out of the car. The dust wasn’t so bad that you noticed it breathing, but she could see buildup on the leaves of nearby plants and the log in front of the car.

A huge framed map on log legs stood off to the right of the parking lot, the marshland trails plainly visible behind Plexiglas.

“What’s next?” Brennan asked.

“We can’t search it by ourselves,” Booth said.

She shrugged and walked over to the map, Booth on her heels.

“When did this area become protected?” she asked.

“Why would you think I’d know that?”

Brennan got out her cell phone and speed-dialed.

“Zach Addy,” her cell said.

“It’s me.”

“Dr. Brennan. And how are you?”

“Fine, Zach. Are you near your computer?”

“What do you think?”

“Are you online?”

“Of course.”

She told him what she wanted to know, then listened to him tap some keys.

“The state park opened in 1926,” he said.

“Are we in the state park?” Brennan asked Booth.

“Barely. This is the southeast corner of the Indiana Dunes State Park; rest of it is across the road, runs back west from here.”

“All right, Zach, thanks.” She ended the call. “Okay, the park has been here since 1926. How long has the cement been here?”

“Maybe six months,” Booth said, eyes tight.

Brennan studied the map and the winding trails that it showed. One trail led away from the parking lot, then — maybe a mile out — branched into different trails that serpentined around the marsh, all coming back to the main trail at that point.

“Depending on the wind,” she said, “these trails are all too far from the construction to absorb a great deal of cement dust.”

He frowned. “Are we in the wrong place?”

Back to the west, maybe a quarter of a mile, a smaller area (according to the map) had a modest parking lot, a few tables, and a single looping trail called the Inland Marsh Overlook.

This spot squatted in the shadow of the new highway.

She pointed at the map and grinned. “Booth, I think we just narrowed our search area….”

They climbed back into the Crown Vic and he drove them to the picnic area. Westbound, a sign pointed to it; but looking up the highway, the sign they should have seen, coming from the west, had been sheared off and lay flat in the ditch next to the road.

No wonder they had missed it.

Booth pulled in and parked.

They got out again, this time Brennan more confident about their search. Booth popped the trunk and removed the trowel she’d used in Jorgensen’s basement.

“You might want to lose the suit coat before we go,” she said.

He took her advice, dropped it in the trunk, his gun looking even larger now without the jacket to hide it.

Picking up a folding shovel, he asked, “Do we need anything else?”

She shook her head. “Not yet. If we find something…. we’ll deal with it then.”

As they strode to the trail, she took the lead. It was his investigation, but this was her turf.

The sun was high in the autumn sky, a light breeze blowing from the west; although she wore a long-sleeved tee shirt, Brennan felt a slight chill and wished she’d brought a windbreaker.

Then again, a mile of walking through the woods would heat her up and she would probably end up wishing she’d worn a lighter-weight, short-sleeved shirt.

The trail was nothing more than a worn path through the high grass and foliage sprouting from the sandy soil. From the texture of the earth, Brennan knew they were much closer to finding the source of the skeletons than they ever had been in Jorgensen’s basement.

A stray strand of hair tickled her face at the same time a stray thought tickled her mind. “Does Jorgensen have a valid driver’s license?”

“I don’t know. Why?”

“Well, if he’s responsible for the skeletons, this is a long way from his house.”

“Couple hours,” Booth agreed.

“And if he had this place, why use his crawlspace?”

Booth frowned. “Do you still think he’s the guy delivering skeletons, Bones?”

“That sounded a little redundant, don’t you think?… I doubt Jorgensen’s our skeleton assembler; but he’s guilty of multiple homicides, which means you may wind up having to prove he didn’t send them.”

“To nail the right guy for this, you mean,” he said, nodding. “Good point.”

This sunny landscape was thick with pine and beech trees, leaves still on them, trees fooled by the drought and excessive heat that lasted beyond summer — not enough leaves to block out the sun, but trees and bushes were everywhere, as well as goldenrod and several other weedy-looking plants that Brennan didn’t recognize.

She did recognize, however, that these were not the plants found in trace portions on the first two skeletons.

Brennan moved farther into the wilderness, her eyes scouring the ground for any clue, checking the plants for the level, if any, of cement dust accumulated on the leaves.

Finally, as they neared the marsh overlook — a green space with scattered picnic tables and trash cans — she started seeing cement dust on plant leaves.

Stopping, she pointed this out to Booth.

The FBI agent stepped forward, his face moist with sweat, rings starting under his arms. She could feel perspiration on her own face, her hair matted to her forehead, and figured she must be about as disheveled as he was.

“Cement dust,” she said.

“So much for the marsh as wetlands,” Booth said. “What did they do with the ‘wet’?”

The ground they’d trod over hadn’t seen rain in weeks or longer.

She sighed, hands on hips. “The drought’s hit this area really hard. My guess, they’re at least a foot short of normal rainfall.”

Looking up ahead, she saw scraggly cattails and wispy bulrushes.

“Look sharp now,” she told the FBI agent. “We’re getting to where we should find something… if there’s anything to be found.”

“What exactly are we looking for?”

“Clues,” she said.

He touched her shoulder and stopped her. “A little help, here, for the laymen in the crowd — what kind of clues?”

Facing him, she said, “You once told me that it was like pornography — I would know it when I saw it.”

Clenching his jaw, he nodded.

Brennan put her head down and veered off the trail to the right, toward the construction site.

“Where are you going, Bones?” he asked, still on the pathway.

“If you were a killer,” she said, without looking back at him, “would you bury the body on the trail?”

“I’d bury it in the marsh.”

“Right.”

Booth fell in behind her again.

Maybe a hundred yards off, on her left, something white winked at her from the ground near a clump of weeds.

She stopped… … but it was gone.

Booth stopped too. “What?”

She said nothing, her eyes roving the area as if that alone would unearth whatever she had seen.

Nothing.

She backed up two steps, then saw it again. Keeping her eyes on the object, she moved to it and knelt. Dusty but white as a pearl in the sun, was a one-inch square buried in the dirt.

“What?” Booth repeated, next to her now, looking down.

“You don’t see it?”

He squatted next to her, putting the thing in shadow. She used a hand to scoot him a foot to the left, letting the sun in again, and pointed to the white square.

“A rock?” he asked.

She looked at him. “A rock?”

“Not a rock?”

“How about a bone.”

“You’re sure?”

She tilted her head and arched both eyebrows at him.

He smiled weakly. “Of course you’re sure. But is it human?”

“One way to find out….”

She used her cell phone to snap three quick pictures from different distances, then eased the trowel in and met resistance.

Pulling the trowel out, she moved six inches farther from the square and tried again.

This time, no resistance.

She dug down, repeating the process all around the object until she had a perimeter.

Then she snapped more photos, before digging up as much ground as she could without disturbing the object.

With that done, she dug with the only tool she had more control of than the trowel — her hands.

The more she cleared, the more photos she took.

Unable to help, Booth walked a few steps away and made a cell-phone call.

When he finished, he said, “That was Woolfolk.”

“What did he have to say?”

“Jorgensen’s spilling his guts. He’s talking so much they can’t shut him up. It’s like a Dr. Phil show out of control.”

“I don’t know what—”

“Bones, he’s been killing gay men for fifty years.”

“…That does fit the time frame of our made-to-order skeletons.”

Booth was shaking his head. “Yeah, but he’s denying that.”

“He is?”

“And if he’s done it, why would he? He’s copped to over thirty murders, but Woolfolk says he vehemently denies delivering the skeletons.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah — the guy who did that? Must have been sick, he says.”

She went on digging. “Keep talking. Tell me more.”

“Woolfolk says word on the street is that the other crime families are turning against the Gianellis.”

She frowned and glanced at him, pausing in her work. “Turning on their own?”

“You’ve got to understand,” Booth said. “The Gianellis run most everything, and what they don’t run, they don’t want. They’re public figures… they’re like rock stars or something. You remember John Gotti?”

She nodded.

“The older Gianelli’s the same sort of gangster. He craves the attention, the crowds, and the younger Gianelli is even worse. And ever since Al Capone attracted too much attention with the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre… you have heard of that?”

“Yes.”

“Well, ever since, and particularly in modern times, the mob has sought to be a low-profile operation.”

She pulled the object free from the ground. “There.”

“Human?” Booth asked, moving closer.

Brennan held up a skull that was dirty but otherwise whole.

A human skull.

“Jackpot,” Booth said.

“Could be,” Brennan granted, “if we can match dental records.”

She swiveled the skull so Booth could see the back. “And I’m thinking maybe this is the cause of death….”

She pointed to where two small caliber bullets had bored through the back of the skull.

“Double tap,” Booth said. “Mob-style execution.”

“We’re going to need more people,” Brennan said, “and ground-penetrating radar.”

“You have but to ask,” Booth said, getting out his cell phone. “I think we just found ourselves a Mafia graveyard.”

“Whatever it is,” she said, “this is most likely the source of our skeletons… and there are probably more.”

Booth called for help and then, as he was putting the cell away, his eyes panned toward the construction site and froze.

Then he was smiling, his eyes wide.

“What?”

“That’s why,” he said. “The construction’s coming too close to the graveyard! They had to move it. They couldn’t risk us finding all these bodies!”

“Possible,” she allowed, not wanting to go much further without proof.

“It’s logical, Bones. Just the kind of thing you like. The mob’s been burying guys out here for God only knows how long, and now with the drought exposing their hiding place, and the encroaching construction? They had to move the bodies. More than that, get rid of them…. Then, to throw us off the track, they put us on the trail of a serial killer.”

“How would they even know about that?” she asked skeptically.

“Trust me, no one knows what goes on in their city better than the Outfit.” He waved his arms. “The cops, us feds, we’re just trying to keep our heads above water; but the mob guys? They know everything, anything that might help them turn a buck.”

“There’s a certain logic to what you say,” she admitted.

“Thank you.”

“But how does knowing about a madman like Jorgensen help them ‘turn a buck’?”

He frowned, just a little.

“Don’t mean to rain on your parade,” she said.

“No. Valid point. Gotta think about that, Bones…. Don’t let me stop you.”

If they were standing in the middle of a graveyard, she was going to be busy for a very long time.

She surveyed her surroundings.

This was a big area to search. Would be more like one of those mass graves in Bosnia or Guatemala.

Booth was on his phone again, this time relaying news of their find to the higher-ups while Brennan poked around the ground, wondering how many sorry souls had taken the one-way ride on the Dunes Express.

Knowing that, dead gangsters or not, they deserved the dignity of identification.