Bones: Buried Deep

1

Like a thick oil slick spreading over lake Michigan, an oppressive wave of heat coated Chicago, as it had since early spring.

The summer-long drought, coupled since late July with a garbage strike, made for long nights and longer days in a city where aromas were high and tempers were short. Piles of garbage accrued over the last seven weeks had become giant disease-bearing compost heaps.

Op-ed writers for the newspapers were referring to Chicago as “Fecund City” and “The City of Big Smoulders,” but neither side budged in the strike negotiations, and Mother Nature seemed to have decided to simply parboil the city.

In this town where smiles were rare about now, Special Agent Seeley Booth sat in a meeting room of the Everett M. Dirksen Federal Building barely able to contain his grin.

He’d been working on the case against Chicago Mafia bosses Raymond and Vincent Gianelli for most of the last six months, and now — with the help of a Gianelli crony turned informant — Booth had father and son in his sights.

Sitting on the prosecution side of the table, Booth exuded quiet confidence. Which was, after all, part of the profile for an FBI agent; but with his square jaw, close-cropped brown hair, and steel-blue eyes, his confidence today approached cockiness.

Even though this wasn’t a court day, Booth had worn his “testifying” suit, the number every law enforcement professional kept bagged in the closet for those special days in court.

Booth’s was a charcoal gray with a lighter pinstripe and had cost him just a little less than his first car; but today he wanted to look as good as he felt.

Next to Booth, federal prosecutor Daniel McMichael scribbled on a yellow legal pad that lay next to a stack of papers. His black hair receding and parted on the left, McMichael wore a gray suit easily twice as expensive as Booth’s.

The prosecutor had dark eyes that could be warm and friendly to those on his side, and icy and aloof to his enemies. A bulbous nose squatted between high, chubby cheeks and over a mouth that turned up a couple of degrees at the corners in what passed for a smile.

Dan McMichael had the wide shoulders and strong arms of an athlete, compromised by the slightly soft look of one whose playing days were long behind him. If his career had been baseball instead of prosecution, McMichael would be the MVP who went on to become the crusty but benign manager who quietly passed advice to his high-strung young players.

Booth had worked a couple of cases with McMichael and respected the attorney’s no-nonsense approach. They had carved out convictions both times and the perps were now spending long sentences in federal prisons.

To their left, sitting inconspicuously in a corner, was Anna Jones, a petite blonde court recorder with brown eyes and what Booth interpreted as a slightly openmouthed smile intended just for him.

Or perhaps that was just his confidence getting out of hand….

Checking his watch, the FBI agent noted that — although he had expected the Gianellis to be here by now — they weren’t officially late. The meeting had been scheduled for eleven and their prospective defendants still had a couple of minutes to make it on time.

And they did — at 10:59 and thirty seconds, the door swung open and three men entered, single file.

First was Raymond Gianelli, brawny but elegant in a brown suit, chocolate-colored shirt, and brown-and-tan-striped tie. His eyes, a very light brown, followed this color coordination, but his hair was black and slicked back with a hint of gray at the temples; his tan tried too hard, Booth thought, the type that came from a tanning bed and not the beach.

Next came Raymond’s son, Vincent.

Taller but thinner than his muscular father, his brown hair close-cropped, his eyes darker than Dad’s, Vincent wore a brown herringbone suit a shade lighter than his father’s. Handsome in a well-scrubbed fashion with a smile that was almost a sneer, he wore a light green shirt and solid tan tie. His brown Italian loafers no doubt cost more than Booth’s expensive suit, and maybe McMichael’s.

To the agent, Vincent Gianelli looked what he was: a textbook sociopath. The boy cared about no one but himself, with the possible exception of his father, a relationship that seemed built more on business than love for a family member, more Machiavellian than emotional.

The only other thing Vincent cared about was a huge Neapolitan mastiff named Luca, presumably named after Luca Brasi from The Godfather.

Booth knew this and more about his prey.

Mob guys could be oddly normal — basically decent people who through family ties and character defects went down a criminal path.

The Gianellis — Vincent in particular — were not in that group.

Trailing his clients, about the size of a Mini-Cooper, waddled Russell Selachi, the Gianelli family attorney.

The counselor wore a black suit, though its effect was not particularly slimming, with a white shirt with silver stripes, and a blue, pink, yellow, and green tie loud enough to have been snatched from a clown’s clothesline.

Booth wondered if a dozen clowns would pile out, like they did out of those tiny cars in the circus, should Selachi open his coat….

Even though the trio exuded arrogance, the Barnum and Bailey imagery brought a smile to Seeley Booth’s face.

“Special Agent Booth,” the elder Gianelli said in a resonant baritone, “you’re in a surprisingly good mood for a man about to be sued for wrongful prosecution.”

Booth allowed his smile to shift to a smirk. “I am in a good mood, thanks… and that would only be wrongful prosecution if you were innocent.”

“Gentlemen,” McMichael said, his voice stern as he shot a look at Booth.

The FBI agent returned the glance, his expression reassuring the prosecutor: I’ll behave, Dan.

Turning his attention back to the others, McMichael said, “Have a seat, would you?”

The three men took chairs across the table, Raymond Gianelli in the center, Vincent on his left. Selachi withdrew a yellow pad from a briefcase, and set the pad before him and the briefcase beside him.

McMichael turned to the blonde recorder. “Ms. Jones?”

She gave him a curt nod.

“All right, then,” McMichael said, looking across the table. “You ready, Mr. Selachi?”

“We are, Mr. McMichael.”

“Well, then, let the record show who is in attendance today. Myself, Daniel McMichael, United States attorney; Special Agent Seeley Booth of the Federal Bureau of Investigation…”

Booth thought he caught Anna smiling at him again as she recorded his name. Wishful thinking?

“…Raymond Gianelli,” McMichael continued. “Vincent Gianelli…”

The younger Gianelli grinned at Anna, apparently thinking the smile had been for him — or was he mocking Booth?

The FBI agent tensed. Ms. Jones’s smile vanished and she looked down at her flying fingers.

McMichael was saying, “…and Russell Selachi, attorney for the Gianellis. Both Raymond and Vincent Gianelli have been informed of their rights.”

“So noted,” Selachi said.

Shuffling some papers from the stack in front of him, McMichael said, “Let’s get right to the heart of the matter… and begin with your command to have Marty Gramatica assassinated.”

“Allegedly,” Selachi said.

Vincent Gianelli’s eyes burned. “That fucking liar Musetti. He’s—”

“Vincent,” Selachi said.

Raymond Gianelli shot his son a look and Vincent eased back in his chair and folded his arms and found something interesting to look at on the paneled wall to his left.

Stewart Musetti was the reason they were all in this room today.

A childhood friend of Raymond’s, son of Raymond’s father’s trusted lieutenant David Musetti, and a former Gianelli lieutenant himself, Stewart Musetti — thinking the family was about to hit him — had turned himself in and ratted out his former bosses in exchange for a future in the Federal Witness Protection Program.

Booth had, in recent months, come to know Musetti well.

Soft-spoken and almost devoid of personality, Musetti — a bald man with a gray wreath of hair and silver steel glasses — looked more like a math professor than a man allegedly responsible for at least twenty murders in thirty years of toiling for the Gianelli family.

When the longtime hitman had flipped, Booth had been there to catch him, and had spent the better part of a month interrogating Musetti, then another five weeks investigating his charges and collecting evidence that would corroborate his chief witness’s story.

Now, thanks to Musetti’s loose lips and Booth’s hard work, the FBI agent had them.

The Gianellis were going down.

“The Gramatica murder,” McMichael said, regaining control of the situation.

Raymond Gianelli shrugged. “A tragedy — an old friend, dearly missed. Did you have a question?”

“Yes. A simple one — did you order the murder?”

Selachi sat forward and half-smiled. “That isn’t a serious question, surely….”

Gianelli put a hand on his attorney’s arm. “It’s okay, Russell. It’s okay…. Mr. McMichael, the answer is no, I did not order the murder of Marty Gramatica.”

“You did not tell the man you ordered to do this to…” McMichael made a show of referring to his notes. “… ‘Make sure the bastard doesn’t wake up tomorrow’?”

Gianelli remained passive, though his eyes met McMichael’s. He shrugged and opened his palms and smiled like an uncle addressing a beloved but slightly dim nephew.

“You have to understand,” Gianelli said, “that I’ve known Stewart Musetti for a long time… practically all my life… but we had a falling-out over business matters, and Stewart feels, rightly or wrongly, that he was not treated fairly. That has made him bitter. We are adults here. We know that bitter men sometimes do things that are…” — Gianelli smiled at Booth—

“…vengeful in nature. My son, in his understandable passion, spoke the truth: Musetti lies.”

Leaning forward, McMichael asked, “Then Stewart Musetti is nothing more than a disgruntled employee with an ax to grind?”

“Bingo!” Vincent blurted, drawing another reproving glance from his father.

Booth was starting to understand something — he’d expected McMichael to depose the father and son separately, and had expressed his misgivings about dealing with them together half an hour before this meeting.

“It’ll be fine,” McMichael had said, bemused. “After all this time, Seeley, don’t you trust me?”

“I trust you, Dan… but I think I’ve earned an explanation.”

McMichael nodded. “Yes you have…. I’ll ask both Papa and Junior questions now, some things we know they’ve done and we can get them for in any event…. Then, in a couple of days, I’ll come up with some new questions, just for Vincent. Once we get him alone, and on the record, I’ll go after the father — with hothead sonny boy’s answers in my pocket.”

“I guess that makes sense….”

The prosecutor shrugged. “If nothing else, and these charges somehow get flushed like all the others, at least I might have a shot to get them for perjury.”

McMichael had used the word “flushed” on purpose. Like the other federal prosecutors in the building, he was running scared.

As a young enforcer, Raymond Gianelli had been called “the Plumber” because he had a way of stopping leaks inside the mob. As Gianelli had climbed the ladder of command, the nickname stuck but changed in definition.

Each time new charges were brought, somehow “the Plumber” managed to get them “flushed.” In a lifetime of working for, and later leading the largest mob family in Chicago, Gianelli had never spent a night in jail.

And right now Raymond Gianelli was staring at Prosecutor McMichael with dispassionate eyes.

“Despite what the people in this office think… and you FBI people, too, Agent Booth… we are simply in a family business here. Does it offend you, our Sicilian heritage? Is that why you seem determined to drag us down?”

This nonsense shattered Booth’s ability to monitor himself, and he heard himself say, “You’re playing the race card? The ‘man’ is persecuting you? You gotta be kidding me….”

“Mr. Booth,” McMichael said.

Selachi raised his pen and pointed it at Booth. “You’re overstepping, Agent Booth. You are badly over—”

Raymond Gianelli’s voice, soft but powerful, cut his lawyer off. “Agent Booth,” he said, “I resent your attitude and your implication. Marty Gramatica was my friend, for many, many years… and he was Vincent’s friend. Why would I have him killed?”

Booth’s control was back. “Because he crossed you.”

Gianelli shrugged and waved that off. “So you say.”

“I’m not the one who says,” Booth said. “I’m just passing along what our witness tells us.”

The mobster shrugged again, but was that a smile tickling the bastard’s lips?

Booth felt a chill — he knew Uncle Sam had the Gianelli duo cold; so why was “the Plumber” smiling?

All of a sudden, Booth had the feeling that something was not right….

As if picking up on Booth’s mental cue, Special Agent Josh Woolfolk opened the door and made an awkward picture of himself, framed there.

“Mr. Woolfolk, we are very busy,” McMichael said, annoyed.

“Yes, sir, I know, and I’m sorry, but…”

Woolfolk completed his sentence with a gesture, curling a finger toward Booth, summoning him to the hall.

McMichael’s eyes darted back and forth between the two FBI men.

And everyone on the Gianelli side of the table sat back and relaxed.

When they were alone in the hallway, Woolfolk glanced both ways. Shorter than Booth, thinner, but older, Woolfolk had dark hair swept to the right and dark, puffy eyes that gave him an exhausted look.

“What?” Booth asked, growing more peevish by the second.

“It’s… it’s… Moose…”

“Moose?” Booth asked, frowning in confusion.

“Musetti,” Woolfolk finally managed.

Everything inside Booth stilled, much as it had in his military days, when he was a sniper and had acquired the target.

Everything around him slowed, everything within seemed to stop. He breathed without breathing, felt no nerves, no tension, no anything.

There was only him, the trigger, and the target.

Right now the target was Woolfolk. “What about Musetti?”

“He is gone.”

The inner stillness exploded. “Where?”

Woolfolk, eyes hysterical, said, “No damn idea.”

Booth took a deep breath, refocused on the target. “What about the four agents guarding him?”

The other agent swallowed and shrugged. “Gone, too.”

“Gone, too?” Booth echoed. “Where… how…?”

“No clue.”

Booth’s mind raced. “When was the last time we had contact with them?”

“They checked in from the safe house this morning right before breakfast,” Woolfolk said. “A pair of agents showed up with lunch and found the place empty… like it had been abandoned.”

Hands on his hips, Booth loomed over his fellow agent. “And we haven’t heard from any of them since?”

“Not a word.”

Prosecutor McMichael came out into the hall, carefully shutting the door behind him. “What’s going on?” he hissed.

Booth and Woolfolk exchanged a look.

Booth said, “They’ve all disappeared.”

The prosecutor’s face turned to stone. “Who? What…?”

Booth explained what he had just learned.

“Musetti and four FBI agents?” McMichael asked, his voice cracking. “Vanished? How the hell is that possible?”

“I wouldn’t know,” Booth said, eyes on the closed door. “And the people who do know aren’t likely to tell us…. No wonder that bunch was so smug this morning — they knew damn well Musetti was about to disappear, and what better alibi for them than being deposed by a federal prosecutor and the FBI agent who had been hounding their asses?”

McMichael’s eyes were on that closed door, as well.

“We’re going to lose them,” the prosecutor whispered. Despair edged his words. “The Plumber’s going to get another set of charges flushed.”

“Right now,” Booth said, “I’m more interested in the lives of four FBI agents.”

“Of course you are,” McMichael said, chagrined. “Of course you are.”

Woolfolk said, “I’ve got the Chicago PD crime scene unit on the way to the safe house….”

“Good.”

“…and we’ve got agents working every angle we can think of.”

Nodding to Woolfolk, Booth opened the door and walked back in. He was only vaguely aware that the other two men followed.

He circled the table and looked down, his eyes boring into Raymond Gianelli’s.

The Mafioso didn’t flinch.

Booth’s immediate urge was to slam Gianelli into the wall, screw his pistol in the man’s ear, and question him about the whereabouts of the four missing agents…

…but that would cost more than it would gain.

He continued to stare at Gianelli, willing the emotion away, calming the anger, becoming the sniper again.

His voice steady, he asked, “You want to tell me where they are?”

Gianelli squinted. “Who are where…?”

“You want to make a deal,” Booth said, “now’s the time.” He thumped the wooden surface between them. “This is the only time there will ever be anything on the table for you or your son.”

Shrugging with a single shoulder, Gianelli said, “You don’t seem to understand, Agent Booth — innocent parties don’t need deals. And I’m an innocent party. It’s the guilty parties who need to make deals, and I’m not one of them.”

Booth said nothing, temper in check. He wouldn’t waste time here with this scum when fellow agents were in harm’s way.

He said, “All right, that’s enough for today.”

“You want us to leave?” Vincent Gianelli asked. “After we came all the way down here?”

McMichael chimed in his approval of Booth’s call, saying, “Yes — other related matters have taken precedence.”

Booth said, “As you well know.”

The elder Gianelli rose, smiling. “I’ll tell you what I ‘know,’ Agent Booth — I know harassment when I see it. I know when a guy is spinning his wheels and wasting my time.”

Booth said nothing.

Attorney Selachi was shaking his head. “We made a great effort here at a considerable inconvenience to my clients and—”

McMichael cut him off. “We have an emergency. There will be no deposition today.”

When the others had cleared out, Booth followed Woolfolk down through the building to the parking lot.

The two agents immediately headed to the safe house where Musetti had been held in a small Indiana community just the other side of Gary.

The thinking had been that if they moved Musetti out of the Chicago metro area, their witness could be guarded more effectively. Booth’s superiors had picked a small gated community called Ogden Dunes inside the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore Park.

Booth had considered it an excellent location for a safe house; but, obviously, it had not been safe enough….

Even with the red lights flashing, Woolfolk spent an hour getting through midday Chicago traffic, driving around Gary, then finally turning left onto the long two-lane blacktop that led to the tiny burg of Ogden Dunes.

The first thing a visitor saw upon approaching this semi-private community on the south shore of Lake Michigan was a speed bump the size of a Native American burial mound; the second thing was a guard shack with a huge stop sign hanging from a metal pole just outside.

Normally, a uniformed guard would come out, ask the entering motorist his or her destination, then phone ahead.

For the last ten days, that guard had been one of four FBI agents assigned to Stewart Musetti. In his turn, each went undercover in the security company uniform.

Now, as Woolfolk eased the Crown Victoria up to the guard shack, the pretense was gone.

Two men approached the stopped car, each wearing the typical gray suit and dark glasses of special agents.

The one from the shack on the passenger side came up to Booth’s window, pistol drawn, his arm hanging down so the pistol was almost hidden behind his leg.

The agent on the driver’s side approached holding an MP5 at port arms and leaned down to address Woolfolk, who already had his ID out.

To Booth, all this was the Bureau equivalent of closing the barn door long after the horse was gone. Hell, the horse, four riders, the saddle, their case, his career….

Booth powered down his window to show his ID to the tall blond agent who took off his dark glasses to reveal light blue eyes as he studied the ID nearly identical to his own. Booth had seen the man in the Chicago office but had no idea what his name was.

The agent gave Booth a polite nod and put his glasses back on.

“What the hell happened?” Booth asked him.

The agent looked at him, said nothing, then offered up an almost imperceptible shrug.

On the other side of the car, the other guard waved Woolfolk through.

Woolfolk followed the blacktop another quarter mile, turned right onto a side street, and parked in front of the third house on the right.

Two police cars were parked on the street along with two more Crown Vics and a Chicago PD evidence tech van angled into the driveway of a sprawling white two-story clapboard house with black shutters on half a dozen windows.

Getting out, Booth noticed that other than the police cars, which had brought out a few gawkers, the neighborhood looked much as it had the day he had scouted the house — just like every other block in this tiny town hunkered next to the lake… quiet, unassuming, anonymous.

The Gianellis had a long reach, but the only way they could have found this place was from someone inside the Bureau — a prospect that added nausea to the rage boiling in Booth’s belly.

Seeley Booth had two priorities now — find Stewart Musetti; and find the sellout in the Bureau who had leaked the location of the safe house.

“Who’s in charge?” Booth asked as Woolfolk caught up with him on the sidewalk.

Both men were sticking their IDs in their breast pockets to identify themselves.

“Dillon,” Woolfolk said. “He’s probably inside.”

Robert Dillon — always Robert, never Bob, which led to bad jokes about the singer — was Special Agent in Charge of the Chicago office; a hard-ass, but always fair. Booth respected him.

Booth and Woolfolk walked up to the front door. As they approached, two Chicago evidence techs exited carrying their cases.

One was a tall African-American guy — BELL, according to his name tag. The other was a red-haired woman nearly as tall and thin as her partner; her name tag read: SMITH.

“Anything?” Booth asked.

The woman gave them a glum smile. “Not much.”

Bell shook his head. “Place is cleaner than my apartment.”

The evidence techs continued on to their van while Booth and Dillon opened the front door.

The living room was empty but for the rent-to-own-style furnishings. A couch sat against one wall, two chairs at angles next to it, a television perched on a stand underneath a huge window.

Booth put his hand against the TV screen — cool.

The two agents passed through into a dining room. Four chairs surrounded a rectangular oak table, place mats on the table, sun streaming through thin curtains from three windows. The room seemed as if it was just waiting for someone to set out lunch.

In the kitchen, they found an agent Booth knew from the academy, a wide-shouldered, ruddy-faced guy named Mike Stanton.

Counters running down the two sides, refrigerator on the right, stove and microwave on the left, the spacious kitchen had an island in the middle and a breakfast nook in the back right corner.

The breakfast dishes were still on the table, the attack probably coming mid-meal. Nothing seemed amiss, meaning the agents hadn’t even had the chance to draw their weapons.

“Booth,” Stanton said by way of greeting.

“Hey. Where’s Dillon?”

“Out back with the locals. Trying to figure out if they could have gone out that way.”

Through the back door, Booth went down the few stairs into the yard, Woolfolk on his heels.

Dillon was out there, all right — a square-shouldered, square-jawed man of fifty, his dark hair swept straight back, his dark eyes cold as they scanned the area. His sharp nose gave him the appearance of an eagle.

Two uniformed officers and two local detectives fanned out around Dillon, wearing that horrible frustrating expression that meant they not only were unable to find what they were searching for, they didn’t know what they were searching for.

Booth approached the group and Dillon raised his chin in greeting.

“What went down here?” Booth asked.

Dillon shrugged. “They came in through the main gate, grabbed the guard, then your guess is as good as mine…. The bad guys probably used the agent playing guard as a hostage, to bargain for Musetti. But we don’t even know that for sure.”

“Jesus,” Booth muttered.

“All we know for sure is Musetti and our boys are simply not here… and no sign of a struggle. No neighbors saw or heard anything. Even the car is gone. The detectives are going to canvass the neighbors down toward the lake, to see if they could have gotten out that way. May be our intruders had a boat waiting.”

“In broad daylight, on a hot summer day with people on the beach?” Booth asked. “Doubtful.”

“Agreed,” Dillon said. “But no stone gets left unturned on this one. I want you in charge, Seeley.”

“We’re in agreement already. But what about the Gianelli case?”

Dillon’s features hardened. “Without Musetti, there is no Gianelli case.”

“No argument there, either.”

“Good. Make it happen, Booth — find Musetti. Find our four agents.”

“Yes, sir.”

Dillon gestured. “Woolfolk will work with you. Find Musetti and save our collective ass.”

Booth knew a dismissal when he heard it. He turned, but before he could take a step, Dillon’s voice halted him.

“We’ll get what little we have on your desk by the end of the day. In the meantime, start beating the bushes…. See if anybody on the street knows anything.”

“Yes, sir.”

At midnight, Booth was still at his desk, everyone else having cleared out, when a call from the night guard brought him to the lobby, where he found four FBI agents waiting…

…the four FBI agents who had been babysitting Musetti.

One still wore the security uniform from the guard shack.

He said when he went up to a car, men with automatic weapons came out of the woods and took him prisoner. Then, as Dillon had suspected, the attackers had gone to the house and used him to get inside and snatch Musetti.

“They had us blindfolded,” the agent told Booth. “Wrists and ankles duct-taped — took us in a truck of some kind, and drove us around in circles till we were so goddamn disoriented, I don’t think any of us has any idea where we were….”

Booth took them upstairs and questioned them at length, but little else was learned.

None of the agents could tell Booth where they had been, and Musetti had been transported in a separate vehicle… and they all assumed their witness was already dead.

No argument there, either.

However hopeless it might look, for the next forty-two days, Seeley Booth sought Stewart Musetti like the hitman was the holy grail.

The FBI agent worked sixty- to eighty-hour weeks, stopping only to eat and sleep.

He interviewed Musetti’s girlfriend, his ex-wife, the Gianellis, every man, woman, or child with even the most tenuous connection to the Gianelli family… and learned nothing.

What meager evidence had been collected from the safe house was tested and chased down, and each piece led to its own dead end.

Six weeks and all he had to show for his search was a pile of files leading nowhere, bags under his eyes, and the feeling that Stewart Musetti was gone for good… and he strongly suspected the same was true of the government’s case against Raymond and Vincent Gianelli.

Hot summer gave way to a warm autumn.

The garbage strike finally got settled. The drought continued, but the humidity was down, which at least gave Chicago a more tolerable climate.

One thing had not changed since that first awful day: Booth working until midnight.

On night forty-three, he was about to pack it in when the phone rang and he picked it up. “Booth.”

“Special Agent Booth, this is Barney.”

“…Barney?”

“You know — guard in the lobby?”

“Oh yeah. Sorry, Barney, didn’t recognize your voice.”

“You’re about the only one left in the building, sir. So I thought I better start with you. I’ve got something down here somebody needs to see. Probably you.”

Booth was in no mood for practical jokes, whether Barney’s or some vandal’s. “What is it?”

The guard took a long moment before answering. “It’s… well, it’s bones, sir. I guess you’d say — it’s a, you know… skeleton?”

Hanging up the phone, Booth threw on his jacket and hustled to the elevator.

Two minutes later he was in the lobby, where he found gray-haired, pot-bellied Barney staring out through the glass panes that made up the lobby.

Just outside, on the sidewalk of Plymouth Square, Booth saw something too. He exited the building, Barney on his tail, and looked down at a fully articulated human skeleton.

He scanned the area, thinking this might indeed be some elaborate pre-Halloween practical joke… but he saw no one.

Booth had a sinking feeling that this was all that was left of his star witness.

Under the mercury vapor lights illuminating Plymouth Square, the bones appeared very white, almost bleached. Squatting next to the skeleton, Booth saw something that struck him as odd, even in this already strange situation.

Tiny wires holding the bones together.

Someone had taken time to assemble the skeleton like one of those seen hanging in the science room back in Booth’s junior high days.

Between the bones of the foot, not quite a toe tag, Booth saw a folded piece of paper.

A note?

His curiosity told him to pick it up; his training told him not to.

He glanced one more time toward the toe-held note, then pulled his cell phone from his jacket.

“What do you want me to do?” Barney asked from behind him.

“Call 911 and tell ’em what we’ve got. I’ll watch the body until you get back.”

“Yeah, I, uh… guess he ain’t goin’ anywhere.”

“I guess not, Barney. But you are.”

The guard nodded and hustled off.

Booth punched in Woolfolk’s number, and when the sleepy agent picked up the phone, Booth outlined the situation.

“Is it Musetti?” Woolfolk asked.

“It’s just a frickin’ skeleton,” Booth growled. “How the hell would I know?”

“Okay, okay…. What do you want me to do?”

“Get your ass down here. I want to see the security video from this building, the surrounding buildings, and any traffic light cameras in a six-block radius. Somebody left us a hell of a present, and I want to know where to send the thank-you card.”

They clicked off and Booth went back to staring at the pile of bones in front of him.

Musetti?

Maybe. But like he had told Woolfolk, how the hell would he know?

The good news was, he knew someone who would know, someone who could tell him exactly whose skeleton had been dumped in Plymouth Square tonight.

He checked his watch — east coast was an hour later, nearly two a.m. out there.

She was going to be pissed, but Booth couldn’t afford to care right now — he needed help. Her kind of help.

He punched in the number and hit the green button.