Bones: Buried Deep

3

Right now Seeley Booth wanted to throw a punch — not necessarily at a person; a wall would do.

Controlling his temper was something Booth had mastered as a sniper — dispassion was a requisite of the job, and the art — but on days like this, even the limits of a Zen master would be severely tested.

Special Agent in Charge Robert Dillon — Booth’s boss on the Musetti/Gianelli case, and head of the Chicago office — had, as Booth had anticipated, ordered him to drop the mob inquiry and concentrate his energy on finding this apparent serial killer with the skeleton calling card.

That more than one body had been used in the construction of the skeleton was enough to convince SAC Dillon that the “apparent” part of that designation was a mere formality: to Dillon (and, truth be known, to Booth) a serial killer was at large in Chicago.

Such a matter had a higher priority than a missing mob rat, who was probably at the bottom of the Chicago River, anyway (or Lake Michigan, or God knew where). Booth understood his superior’s thinking. Hell, he would have made the same decision himself, had he been in charge.

But that did not make Booth any more happy as he strode down the hall from Dillon’s office, heading for his own and an appointment with a VCR.

He had barely slept four hours.

After leaving Brennan and Dr. Wu at the museum, Booth had returned to the office and sifted through the Musetti evidence until well after midnight.

When he could barely keep his eyes open any longer, he’d driven to his hotel, slept from three until seven, showered, changed clothes, and gotten back in the office by eight.

Dillon had come in not much later and Booth had briefed him on the events of the last twenty-four hours.

Now, having found a cubbyhole of his mind in which to temporarily store Musetti, Booth entered his office, ready to track down this killer. After all, the sooner this madman was behind bars, the sooner Seeley Booth would be back searching for his missing witness.

By the time he had closed his door, loaded the first of the security tapes from the building office, turned on the TV, and dropped into his chair, Booth was as calm as if he had just had an hour-long massage.

The onetime sniper had acquired many skills beyond the one that had been the easiest to learn — marksmanship. Compartmentalizing emotions wasn’t just a desire, but a commandment among snipers. An emotional shooter was usually a bad shooter.

He had survived that nastiest of nasty military assignments by finding and developing an ability to be serene, no matter what the surroundings or the circumstance.

Picking up the remote, Booth aimed and squeezed the button.

The tape machine popped to life. The picture on the black-and-white video was grainy and showed the lobby of the Dirksen Building from above and behind the security desk, where Barney, the night guard, sat. The shot was over Barney’s head so it was impossible for Booth to tell if the guard was at the desk or not.

The lobby was empty, but what Booth was interested in was beyond the windows. The machine whirred quietly as he watched, his eyes straining to detect any hint of motion outside the building.

In the corner, below the date, the time clicked off one wrenching second at a time, Booth unwilling to fast-forward for fear he would miss something crucial.

He was seven minutes in when a knock at his door almost made him jump — serene or not.

Punching the PAUSE button, Booth said, “What?”

The door opened and Woolfolk framed himself there tentatively.

As usual, the Special Agent’s hair was as immaculate as his expression was haggard. His suit was navy blue, shirt light blue, tie a conservative blue stripe, an American flag pin on the left lapel of his jacket.

Booth, who worked hard at looking professional, always felt like the kid with his shirt untucked and his jeans ripped next to Woolfolk.

Yet Woolfolk, easily five years older than Booth, always behaved like he was the kid and the visiting agent from Washington, DC, the old pro.

“What is it?” Booth asked.

The other agent’s head dipped a little in deference. “Dillon assigned me to be your wingman on the Skel Case.”

Already a nickname for it.

“Pull up a chair,” Booth said.

Woolfolk did, and asked, “What are we doing?”

“Right now, we’re watching TV.”

Booth explained why, then hit PLAY again.

They had been at it about ten minutes when both agents sat forward as a dark figure dragged something into the frame.

The image was so grainy, and they were so far away, making out what was happening was difficult; but Booth noted the time on the screen’s lower corner.

This was their guy, all right.

The figure was dressed head to toe in black, with either a stocking cap or a hooded sweatshirt. The agents weren’t seeing any detail from this angle. The skeleton was placed in plain view, the guy moved around it for a few seconds, placing it just right…

… then was gone.

The whole thing had taken less than twenty seconds.

“So we have him on tape?” Woolfolk asked.

“Not as good as in custody,” Booth said with a nod, “but a start.”

The tape kept rolling and the night guard, Barney, strolled into frame, then seemed to jump back a little before running out the bottom of the frame, on his way to his desk to call Booth. Five minutes of less than riveting security-cam “action” later, both Booth and Barney crossed into the frame and went outside.

“That’s enough,” Booth said. “Put in the next tape.”

Woolfolk did as he was told.

This tape was an exterior angle, the security camera mounted on the side of the building, shooting down toward Plymouth Square. Booth fast-forwarded to a few seconds before the suspect appeared.

There their litterer was, dropping the skeleton in front of the building and spreading out the extremities, then trotting away.

This time, though, the agents saw him disappear around a corner.

Booth hit rewind and they watched it again — specifically, the skeleton being set down and spread out.

Booth pointed at the screen. “Did you see that?”

“See what?” Woolfolk asked, leaning forward, squinting at the image.

“There,” Booth said, rewinding again. He played a few seconds and paused the tape, the suspect reaching out to straighten the skeleton’s arm.

“I don’t know what I’m supposed to see,” Woolfolk said.

“Right there,” Booth said, rising, pointing at the screen.

“Right where?”

Moving around the desk, Booth pointed to the suspect’s arm. “His sleeve pulled up away from the glove. That white spot is his arm. He’s Caucasian.”

Woolfolk nodded. “Yeah, yeah — I see it.”

Booth made a face. “Really narrowing the suspect list, huh?”

“Gotta start somewhere,” Woolfolk said with a shrug.

They played the tape a couple more times, but gained no new insights. Through the series of tapes from other buildings and traffic lights, they managed to track the suspect’s movements from three blocks away to the Dirksen Building, then back.

In the end, though, the perp always rounded a corner and disappeared.

And none of the views showed them much more than a figure in black — the only significant upgrade was ruling out the stocking cap and identifying the perp’s headgear as the hood of a sweatshirt.

“Where the hell did he go?” Woolfolk asked.

Booth rewound the tape, played it again, rewound it, played it, and then again.

Finally, he said, “Tapes don’t tell us, and I don’t have a guess.”

“Well, he had to go somewhere.”

They watched various tapes several more times.

“Somewhere around that building,” Woolfolk said, pointing to an ornately styled structure at the corner of Adams and LaSalle.

In the paused black-and-white video, Booth knew the other agent couldn’t see the burnt orange masonry that made the building easy to identify, even if you weren’t an architectural buff, or a local.

“The Rookery,” he said.

“Why have I heard of that?” Woolfolk asked.

“You work in downtown Chicago, you oughta have.”

“I didn’t grow up here, Seeley. I’ve only been in this post since February.”

Booth leaned back in his chair and cast a condescending smile at his new partner. In his best tour guide voice, he spoke.

“The Rookery sits on the site of the temporary city hall after the Chicago Fire. Place used to draw a lot of pigeons. When the building went up, it got dubbed ‘the Rookery’ and the name took. Home office of architects Daniel Burnham and John W. Root, who designed any number of famous buildings in the city.”

Woolfolk’s tired eyes had woken up. “How in the hell do you know that?”

Booth shrugged. “Kind of an architecture buff. Wanted to be one when I was a kid.”

“Somehow I didn’t see you as an architect.”

“Yeah, and that’s how it worked out; but it’s a great field — all about turning something in your head into something real, something that can shelter people… a building, a home.”

Woolfolk pondered that, then said, “Maybe it’s not that different from what we do.”

Booth had never made a connection and said so.

Woolfolk explained. “We look at evidence and keep arranging the pieces until they suggest a picture; and we work our asses off taking this abstract idea we have, and turning it into something concrete enough to catch a bad guy… and put him away.”

Booth chuckled. “Josh, you have depths I never dreamed of.”

Woolfolk summoned a rumpled grin. “Same back at you. So what picture are you assembling in your mind, Seeley, from this grainy video?”

Booth gestured toward the frozen image on the screen. “Suspect disappears… either inside the Rookery, which should have been locked up at that time of night… or down an alley or manhole or… something.”

“Next step?”

“Find me more videotape from that area, the Rookery’s security video, and interview their night guard.”

Woolfolk was already on his feet. “And what will you be up to?”

“I’ve got to check in with our science squints at the museum, and see if they’ve come up with anything on the skeleton…. When I get back, we’ll start finding anything we can about missing men and serial killers in the area, particularly the variety that challenges the authorities to catch them.”

“Roger that,” Woolfolk said.

“Remember, sooner we catch this guy, sooner we’re back on Musetti.”

With a quick nod, Woolfolk slipped out.

When Booth arrived at the Field Museum, he had to wait for an employee to escort him through all the locked doors until he once more found himself in the basement with Dr. Wu and Brennan.

If the anthropologists hadn’t changed their clothes, Booth might have thought they’d been down here all night.

Brennan looked crisp and fresh in black slacks and a gray blouse. Dr. Wu wore gray slacks and a blue sleeveless turtleneck and appeared equally alert.

Booth gave the doctor a big smile, which she returned.

“Good morning, Dr. Wu — Bones. What do we know?”

Brennan raised both eyebrows and her smile wasn’t exactly a smile. “We know for starters that calling me ‘Bones’ gets the day off to a bad start.”

“Sorry,” Booth said halfheartedly.

Dr. Wu folded her arms. “Sherlock Bones would be more like it — with all the detective work she’s been doing since you saw her last.”

Booth grinned and Brennan’s smile morphed into a real one.

Back to business, Booth asked, “So, what can you tell me about our skeletal door prize?”

Dr. Wu glanced at Brennan, who led them closer to the worktable.

The skeleton had been cut apart, its puppet strings snipped and all the connecting wires in a pile on the next table over; on this surface, the bones were laid out in the form of the body.

“Why cut the wires?” Booth asked, his instinct being that evidence should be preserved.

“All strung up like a Christmas turkey,” Brennan said, “it was hard to examine.”

She gestured to the pile nearby.

“We saved the wires and were careful to wear gloves while we handled them,” she said. “My guess is they’re clean of prints, but you should send them to your lab, of course. Maybe they’ll get lucky.”

“Done,” Booth said.

Brennan’s eyebrows raised again. “As for the remains themselves? You knew already that the femora told us there were at least two different bodies.”

“Yeah. Playing at being one.”

“Right,” Dr. Wu said. “And now we’re pretty sure you can double your total.”

“Four sources?” Booth asked, goggling at the display of bones. “We have potentially four victims here?”

Brennan raised a cautionary palm. “We won’t know for sure until we get the results of more tests….”

Dr. Wu completed the thought: “But the preliminary evidence has us leaning that way.”

The two women exchanged glances and nods.

Surprised, Booth said, “Bones, you don’t ‘lean.’ You’re all about empirical evidence. If you can’t prove it, you don’t believe it.”

Brennan said, “I knew you would want as much as we could give you… so I’m pushing the envelope a little.”

He just stared at her.

She gestured toward the skeletal remains. “Here — look at the vertebrae.”

Booth leaned in. “The spine?”

“Most of it,” Brennan said. “The top seven are the cervical vertebrae, next twelve are the thoracic vertebrae, and then there are five lumbar vertebrae above the sacrum and coccyx.”

“Okay,” Booth said, not knowing where she was going with this anatomy lesson.

“For the time being, ignore the lumbar vertebrae on down.”

No problem, he thought. He had been ignoring most of this stuff since college. Including college….

“The seven cervical vertebrae,” Brennan was saying, “are all from the same body.”

“At least we think they are,” Dr. Wu put in.

“Yes,” Brennan said, and her head tilted to one side and the palm came up again. “Pending further tests.… But they fit together as if they belong together — you understand?”

He shrugged.

“The wear patterns are consistent within those seven bones. They fit together as if they’ve been working together for a long time.”

Booth considered that. “Like a nut and bolt that have been together for years?”

Dr. Wu said, “Exactly. You put on a new nut and it doesn’t tighten down exactly the same… but if you put the old one back on, voilà, fits perfectly.”

He nodded and the Field expert smiled at him again.

They really seemed to be hitting it off. Was she flirting with him? Guys were supposed to know when women were flirting, but Booth could never really sort through the signals.

Tessa, a lawyer he had been seeing, practically threw herself at him before he figured it out. Coming out of his little reverie, he noticed Brennan smirking at him.

“What?” he asked defensively.

“Nothing,” she said, in that tone that always meant “nothing” was something. “Are you listening?”

“Of course I’m listening!”

Brennan returned her attention to the skeleton, pointing as she spoke. “What is true of the cervical vertebrae is true of the twelve thoracic vertebrae as well. They fit together like they belong… and again, the wear patterns seem consistent with them coming from the same body.”

“Hold on,” Booth said. “The cervicals and thoracics came from the same body?”

Brennan said, “Yes and no. The cervical vertebrae are all from one body; and the thoracic vertebrae are from one body — they just happen to be two different bodies.”

“Does your head hurt? My head hurts.”

“I feel fine,” Brennan said.

A concerned Dr. Wu asked Booth, “Would you like some aspirin?”

Booth waved that off, bobbing his head toward the skeletal “corpse” and saying, “Cervical from one, thoracic from the other. And neither of them are from the other two?”

Brennan nodded. “Wear on the thoracic vertebrae shows that the person they belong to had something wrong with one of his legs — causing the vertebrae to wear unevenly and in a way that is not normal.”

Brennan pointed to the worn areas.

“See these edges?” she asked. “They should have worn more evenly. Although the intervertebral disks are gone, you can see where they were worn down, and the surfaces of the vertebrae started rubbing against each other. Whatever was wrong with his leg caused him to hurt his back and any movement — especially walking — would have been extremely painful.”

“What was wrong with his leg?” Booth asked.

Dr. Wu said, “Could have been any number of things.”

“For instance?”

“Slipped femoral epiphysis would have done the trick.”

“Slipped what?” Booth said.

Brennan pointed to the ends of the femora. “Remember when we told you about the epiphysis sutures closing to show age?”

“Sure.”

“Well, this is the same area — the epiphysial cap on the femoral head.” Brennan pointed. “If the epiphysis slips out, the leg will rotate laterally.”

She turned the femur away from the body.

“The foot would have been turned out,” she continued. “Walking would have put torque and stress on the spine.”

Dr. Wu said, “The leg could have been broken and not set — could’ve been torture, or a birth defect that was never dealt with… lots of possible explanations.”

“Bottom line?” Booth asked.

“Bottom line,” Dr. Wu said, “is both of these femora are healthy… and if that’s what caused the wear on the spine, then the thoracic vertebrae could not possibly have come from this skeleton.”

“Okay,” Booth said, and heaved his biggest sigh of the day — so far. “Then we’ve got at least three victims.”

Brennan said, “The cervical vertebrae come from a body that was dead for a lot longer than either femur… and probably longer than the thoracic vertebrae as well. Though, of course, we—”

“Need more tests,” Booth interrupted.

“That’s right.”

Booth gestured toward the skeleton again. “What about the cervical vertebrae?”

“First,” Brennan said, in a little too teacherly a way for Booth’s taste, “you need to understand that skeletal decomposition can be broken down into rough stages.”

“All right,” Booth said.

“In the first stage, the bones are greasy and decomposed tissue remains.” She pointed, demonstrating. “That’s what most of these bones are.”

“Got it.”

“In the next stage, the bones still retain some mummified or putrefied tissue, but covering less than half of the skeleton.”

He nodded.

“In stage three the bones have lost all tissue and some organic components, but may retain a slight greasiness. The thoracic vertebrae and some of the foot bones indicate this. The bones are completely dry by stage four; the cervical vertebrae have signs of this stage and the next, which is when the bones are dry with bleaching and exfoliation. In the sixth stage, the dry bones show increased deterioration with metaphyseal loss and cancellous exposure; but we don’t have any bones that are that far gone.”

“So,” Booth asked, “the cervical vertebrae are the oldest?”

“Yes,” Brennan said. “I’d say this victim has been dead for as long as…” She glanced at Dr. Wu, who nodded. “… forty years.”

Booth whistled. “Back in the sixties?”

“Possible. Very possible.”

“Is it also possible that someone used real bones but faked all this — you know, doctored these things — just to screw with us?”

Shaking her head, Dr. Wu said, “I think we’ve eliminated that — you’ve got bones here that would not just be lying around. Forty-year-old cervical vertebrae are not like finding an Indian arrowhead in a state park.”

Her cell phone rang and Dr. Wu said, “Excuse me.”

She took the phone off her belt, touched a button, and said, “Jane Wu.” She listened for a few seconds, said, “I’ll be right there,” and clicked off.

“I’m sorry,” she said to Brennan. “Crisis upstairs. Be back as soon as I can.”

Brennan and Booth both nodded and Dr. Wu left, Booth watching the attractive way she walked as she went.

Turning his attention back to Brennan — who was smirking at him again — he said, “So, you two are saying I’ve got a serial killer who has been at it for forty years?”

“I know it sounds far-fetched,” Brennan said, all business. “But that’s where the evidence is leading us.”

A geriatric killer?

The killer taunting Booth would have to be, what? Sixty years old, at least?

Booth’s stomach knotted. This was not going to go over well with his boss.

Brennan said, “The note indicated this…” She gestured toward the table of remains. “… was a goodbye gesture of sorts. So we shouldn’t be surprised. Right?”

“You mentioned more tests,” Booth said, ignoring the question. “What’s that involve?”

“Taking the remains to the Jeffersonian so my staff can do DNA, track the dental records… assuming the skull is from the same person, which it might be. And we’ll have Angela do a holographic reconstruction.” She smiled at him. “You know, ‘squint’ stuff.”

“How long will that take?” he asked, blowing past her friendly dig.

“Going to take a while,” she admitted. “But the sooner we get going, the better.”

“We?” he asked, afraid he knew where this was heading. “You don’t mean you and me, do you?”

“No,” she retorted. “The skeleton and me… That ‘we.’ The sooner we get going to Washington, the sooner I can call you with the results.”

“You’re… going back?”

She nodded. “Sure, why not? You don’t need me here. The work is the skeleton, and the skeleton needs to be in DC.”

Though he could not say why, Booth suddenly felt uneasy, and queasy. They were in this together. They were… God, he wasn’t going to admit it to himself was he?… a team.

“You just got here,” he said, knowing it sounded lame even before the words tumbled out.

She eyed him with sublime condescension. “And it’s been wonderful… but I need to go where the work takes me.”

“Yeah,” he said, lowering his head. “You’re right, of course.”

Brennan jerked a thumb toward the table of bones. “When Dr. Wu gets back, we’ll package up the remains and I’ll be ready to go.”

He nodded.

“Think you can book me a flight on such short notice?”

Hauling out his cell phone, he said, “I’ll get someone at my office right on it.”

“Good. Thanks.”

“You know me, Bones. Whatever you need.”

Five minutes later, he had explained the problem to one of the agents in his office, who was working on it. He dropped the phone back in his pocket and waited for the call.

He looked over at Brennan, who was already packaging up the bones of the feet, packing them carefully in cotton and placing them in a cardboard box that would be her carry-on when she got to the airport.

Booth wondered why he felt the need for her to stay. They had no personal life together at all; they were, for the most part, oil and water — calling them “friendly” would be a stretch, though “friends” somehow wasn’t.

So, what the hell was the problem?

He shook his head, forcing the thoughts away.

The problem was a serial killer — a geezer of a one, perhaps — but a serial killer nonetheless, and by definition dangerous as hell.

If Bones was right, this was a fiend who had not been caught in the course of a forty-year career in which he (or possibly she) had killed at least four people and probably a lot more.

Dr. Wu returned and Booth watched as the two scientists finished prepping and packing the remains.

They had just finished when Booth’s cell phone chirped. The agent on the line gave him Brennan’s travel information.

“Got you on a United flight leaving at nine,” Booth told her.

Brennan glanced at her watch. “That should be fine — thanks. I need you to stop by the hotel to pick up my bag, of course.”

“Of course.”

Booth’s intention had been to call a car for her and get back to work; but she had obviously made the judgment that Booth was her ride to the airport, and he decided now was not the time to rock that particular boat.

He simply nodded and Brennan went back to talking to Dr. Wu.

Least you can do, he told himself.

After all, he had dragged her to Chicago and had not been on hand to meet her when she arrived. He’d better see her off, or there would be hell to pay at some point.

Women never forgot things like that, in Booth’s experience, and men usually didn’t even know they were supposed to remember them.

But Booth knew this much: Brennan was helping him, and he needed to reciprocate, out of professional courtesy, if nothing else.

Brennan picked up the box and Booth took a step toward her, but she shook her head. She had it, and his trying to help would be misconstrued. She would believe that he was thinking he was stronger, and should therefore carry the box for her.

Okay, so she wouldn’t really be misconstruing his thought process — just the reasoning behind it. Wasn’t that he thought she was weak: he just liked to help people, even science squints who felt they had to prove their worth every second.

Dr. Wu handed him her card. “If you have any questions, Special Agent Booth, anything at all, feel free to give me a call.”

He accepted the card, the doctor’s hand brushing against his.

He smiled at her, grateful for any friendly gesture from an attractive female.

She returned the smile. “Call anytime. My home number is on the back.”

“I appreciate that.”

Brennan, fairly testy, said, “This box isn’t getting any lighter….”

Shaking hands with Dr. Wu, Booth said, “Thank you for everything. The Field’s been most hospitable.”

“Our pleasure,” she said, but to Booth it sounded like My pleasure….

Over by the door, Brennan let out a little harumph and Booth ran to get the door for her. His mind was whirling with what was correct to do for a modern female, and what wasn’t….

At the car, he opened the trunk and she set the box inside. She got in on the passenger side before he had time to work out whether he should risk getting it for her or not.

Soon Booth was battling his way through Lake Shore Drive traffic on his way back to her hotel. The ride passed in relative silence, driver and passenger lost in thought, Booth mulling how the hell he was going to track down a killer about whom he knew next to nothing….

Parking the Crown Vic under the hotel’s canopy, Booth got out, flashed his ID at the valet, and said, “Official business. Leave it here. We’ll be back soon.”

The valet, realizing there would be no tip, nodded at Booth and looked away.

As he followed Brennan up to her room, Booth sifted the pieces of what he knew.

The suspect who had delivered the skeleton was white. Was he the killer or just an accomplice?

Brennan and Dr. Wu thought they had parts of four people — all victims of the killer?

One of the source bodies for the skeleton had been dead for over forty years — an old victim, or a piece robbed from a grave to throw them off?

As the anthropologist packed her bag, one thing was clear to Booth: he had no shortage of questions… just a surfeit of answers.

Well, maybe Brennan and her squint squad could come up with something back at the Jeffersonian. He felt tired, bone-tired (appropriately enough), and it didn’t look like he’d be catching up on sleep anytime soon.

Brennan checked out and they put her duffel in the trunk alongside the box of bones, and Booth got them on the expressway toward O’Hare Airport.

After a few minutes of silence, Brennan asked, “Are you going to ask her out?”

The question took Booth by surprise. “Ask who what?”

Though she said nothing, he could feel her eyes on him. He took it as long as he could before he turned to look at her.

“Dr. Wu,” Brennan said. Her voice and her face were expressionless, her tone equally blank. “I know I’m not the best person at picking up signals, but even I could tell she was practically throwing herself at you.”

“Well, if so, I missed it,” Booth claimed, not even convincing himself…

…although it didn’t feel bad, having Brennan corroborate his theory.

Brennan stared straight ahead.

“I dunno.” He shrugged. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe I should give her a call.”

“I’m right?” Brennan rolled her eyes, and then seemed to burrow down farther in her seat.

“Want to get something to eat?” Booth asked her. “There’s time before your flight.”

“Not hungry.”

They lapsed back into silence.

Booth was entering the serpentine access to the airport, when his cell phone chirped in his pocket.

“Booth.”

“Woolfolk. God, I’m glad I caught you.”

The agent was breathless.

Booth frowned. “What?”

Booth listened as the other agent spoke.

When Woolfolk finally stopped, Booth could only manage two words, “Oh Christ.”

He clicked off and turned to Brennan, who frowned, clearly not liking the lines she’d been reading between.

“No bones are going on that flight today,” he told her glumly. “Not you… and not that box in the trunk, either….”