Bones: Buried Deep

by Max Allan Collins

  “Then I better take a look at the… well, it’s kind of a crime scene, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah,” Booth said dryly. “For littering…”

  “Then the first thing we’ll do is our bit to keep Chicago’s sidewalks beautiful — and move that skeleton.”

  She grabbed her bag.

  Booth was giving her that thoughtful wince of his, the one he got when he was a step behind her mentally; he got it a lot, she’d noticed.

  “Move it?” he asked.

  She led him out of the room and down the hall toward the elevator, saying, “Unless you FBI boys and girls have got a worktable handy in that federal building, with all the right tools, computer enhancements, and—”

  “I get it,” Booth interrupted. “You want your lab.”

  “Well,” she said, turning to him with her best withering smile, “seems to me it would’ve been cheaper, and more efficient, to fly the skeleton to me, than to fly me to it… which, if you’d bothered to talk to me personally last night, I could have told you.”

  Booth punched the DOWN button with a little more force than he probably needed to. “Look, sue me — I wanted you here.”

  “And here I am.”

  “Bones, the case is here — the answers are here.”

  “But the lab is in Washington.”

  He turned to her and his expression was conciliatory. “We’ll find you something suitable in Chicago.”

  The elevator doors opened. They had the car to themselves, but that didn’t encourage conversation, and they stared at the floor indicator like strangers awkwardly avoiding each other.

  She considered her dilemma.

  If Booth had done the sensible thing and arranged the transfer of the skeleton, she could be doing the work in her own lab back home, with all the support and bells and whistles and her own bed at night, too. With her own bedspread.

  But that was spilt milk under the bridge, right?

  “Field Museum,” she said.

  “What? How — would they have a lab? Aren’t they the dinosaur place?”

  She smiled. “Spoken like a true eight-year-old.”

  He shrugged. “Look — I’m not exactly the museum type.”

  “I noticed.”

  Ignoring her dig, he said, “Over by the lake, right?”

  “Yeah. Not the aquarium and not the Museum of Science and Industry. The Jeffersonian has a good relationship with the Field. If you like, I can call Dr. Goodman and—”

  “No. Leave it to me. You need to see the bones where they were dumped, or should I have ’em moved to the museum?”

  “You have photographs of the crime scene?”

  “Does a dog have fleas?”

  “Then go ahead and move the skeleton. Save us time.”

  They got out at the first floor and Booth had his cell phone in hand.

  By the time the valet brought his Crown Vic, he had pulled strings to get her a workroom at the Field Museum. Bureau agents would transport the skeleton to the museum and it would be there not long after they arrived, if not sooner.

  As they sped down Lake Shore Drive, Booth behind the wheel, Brennan hanging on for dear life as he dodged traffic, she couldn’t help but wonder if this was how she was spending her last moments on the planet.

  “Are you trying to get us killed?” she asked when he missed a delivery truck by less than a foot.

  “I’m in a hurry,” he said. He shook his head. “Would you please make up your mind?”

  “About what?”

  Booth flashed a glare, but it wasn’t wholly unfriendly. “Are you timid, or foolhardy? I can never quite peg that.”

  “That’s because I’m a riddle wrapped in an enigma.”

  “Oh. Good to know…. But I’m in a hurry ’cause I also want to know something else — specifically, what’s in that goddamned note.”

  “Uh… what ‘goddamned’ note would that be?” she asked.

  “The note on his — or her — foot.”

  She frowned. “A toe tag, you mean?”

  Booth shook his head. “Something else.”

  “You didn’t read it?”

  “I wanted to keep it all together until you got here. I know what a stickler you are about stuff like that.”

  “ ‘Stuff’ like evidence?”

  “Look, Bones, I am not a moron. I just know you want the whole picture. And I know enough to preserve the evidence at any crime scene… littering or not. Cut me a break.”

  She blew out a sigh. “I didn’t mean to snap at you… Just tired…. But why didn’t you just carefully remove the note and read it?”

  “Because this was… you know… bones. And you always get after me when I touch something. Now you’re going after me because I didn’t touch something? How do I win with you, anyway?”

  Brennan wondered why she and Booth could not get through five minutes without sparring. Angela claimed, in her Cosmo psychology 101 shorthand, that it was “sexual tension.”

  Brennan had another theory.

  She knew damn well she spent too much time with dead people — who after all didn’t talk back — and her social skills were rusty. Still, that didn’t mean she needed to work at having an extended relationship with every man who crossed her path, which sometimes seemed Angela’s aim for her.

  “Sorry,” she muttered to Booth.

  The dead were less complicated, easier to communicate with, and at the end of the day, she might actually help one of them find their way home, back to their family.

  How many live people could she say that about?

  Certainly not Pete, her ex. If anything, she had only managed to help him become more lost in life’s tangle. But blaming herself about that was dumb — truth was, Pete had a pretty good head start at losing his way before he met Brennan.

  All she knew was, at this moment on her personal path, Temperance Brennan was a lot more comfortable with the skeletal remains she’d be meeting at the Field than with ninety-nine percent of the living men around her. She glanced at Booth — present company excepted.

  Sometimes.

  Booth spent the rest of the drive explaining to Brennan about his missing witness, Stewart Musetti, and his concerns about the ID of the skeleton that would greet them at the Field.

  They were met at the entrance of the museum by an attractive Asian-American woman about as tall and slender as Brennan. The woman wore a white lab coat over a red V-neck blouse and black slacks, her raven hair hanging to her shoulders. She had wide-set dark eyes, a straight nose, and small, perfect white teeth that gleamed when she smiled, which she did as she extended her hand.

  “Special Agent Booth, I’m Dr. Jane Wu.”

  He shook her hand and gave her that big puppy dog grin of his. Predictable.

  “Very nice to meet you,” Booth said. Then, nodding toward Brennan, he said, “This is—”

  “Dr. Temperance Brennan,” Dr. Wu said, shaking Brennan’s hand, too. “Your reputation precedes you. I can’t tell you what a pleasure it is to finally meet you.”

  “Nice to meet you, too,” Brennan said.

  “You’ve heard of her?” Booth asked the Field scientist.

  Dr. Wu nodded. “Dr. Brennan and her staff at the Jeffersonian are respected worldwide for the work they do.”

  Booth summoned half a grin. “Well, I know Bones here is one of the best, but I didn’t know her rep was so—”

  Dr. Wu interrupted Booth again, staring wide-eyed at Brennan. “He calls you ‘Bones’?”

  Brennan smirked at the FBI agent. “Yes, and I’ve repeatedly asked him not to.”

  Dr. Wu gave the FBI man a disappointed look, and said, “How can you be so disrespectful, Special Agent Booth?”

  He found the rest of that grin and shrugged. “Well, we’re friends… sort of… certainly colleagues, and—”

  Holding up a hand to silence him, Dr. Wu said, “Special Agent Booth — if they made baseball cards for anthropology, Dr. Brennan’s would be a Ken Griffey Jr. roo
kie card.”

  Shaking her head and wincing at their host, Brennan said, “I have no idea what you just said.”

  Dr. Wu grinned. “That’s all right. I understand that you have no need to speak ‘guy’… but I am conversant in their native tongue. Have to be, around this town — let’s just say I’ve explained your value in terms a man can understand.”

  “Yeah, and I get it,” Booth said cheerfully.

  Brennan, who found Dr. Wu’s attitude a little patronizing toward her partner, said, “That wasn’t exactly a compliment, Booth.”

  “Sure it was. She compared you to—”

  “No, I meant compliment to you.”

  He shrugged. “Doesn’t bother me. I get what she was saying.”

  Dr. Wu’s cell phone rang and she fished it out of the pocket of her lab coat. “Yes?”

  She listened for a moment, said, “Thanks,” and ended the call.

  “Sorry,” she said to them. “But that was my boss telling me your package just came in through the back door. Would you like to see it?”

  “Yes,” Brennan said.

  Skirting the information desk, the box office, and the short lines of people waiting to get in, Brennan and Booth followed Dr. Wu to the right, where she unlocked a door and hustled them through.

  They were now in a long, stark, white-walled corridor with maybe three or four doors on the right-hand side.

  Dr. Wu unlocked the first door and held it open while they entered — this time, into a gray concrete stairwell.

  They stopped on the landing and waited for their host to lock the door, then Dr. Wu led them down. Their footfalls echoed like gunshots against the concrete.

  Brennan asked, “How long have you been here, Dr. Wu?”

  “Started as an intern while I went to school — first at Northwestern, for my B.S.; then Loyola for my master’s and Ph.D.”

  “Ah,” Brennan said.

  “So, to answer your question, about fifteen years. Started out sweeping floors and worked my way up. I was even a docent for a while… but mostly I’ve been behind the scenes down here.”

  At the bottom of the stairs, Dr. Wu unlocked another door, then led them down a dim hallway to a door on the left, this one unlocked.

  They entered a large, antiseptic-smelling chamber lined floor to ceiling with wood drawers on three walls. Three large, rectangular worktables took up most of the center space and the door wall held shelving units filled with tools and chemicals.

  Though not as modern or well lighted as her own work space, to Brennan this felt like home.

  It was home, too, to a black body bag that lay on the center table.

  “Your John Doe skeleton,” Dr. Wu said.

  Before they did anything else, both anthropologists donned lab coats and latex gloves. Then Brennan stepped forward, Dr. Wu moving around to the far side of the table to be of assistance if needed.

  Carefully, Brennan unzipped the bag.

  She noticed two things immediately.

  One, the skeleton was wired together; and two, several of the bones were discolored.

  Also, the bones bore a faint odor of earth. Brennan was not one to jump to conclusions, but she thought this skeleton might have spent some time buried.

  “Could just be a hoax,” she said to Booth.

  “A hoax?” he asked, his voice a little nervous as he looked from Dr. Wu to Brennan.

  “When was the last time you found a wired skeleton in the field?”

  He thought about that, and his expression told Brennan he didn’t like what he was thinking. “Never.”

  “So the odds of this being your witness…”

  “Okay, I’ve got to admit that I might have been a little overeager in my assessment.”

  She frowned at him. “No one else at the scene thought it might have come from a school science room or something?”

  Offering a sheepish smile, he said, “I’m with the FBI, Bones — people don’t question what we say all that much.”

  “Maybe they should.”

  “Look, I did notice that wire myself, and it reminded me of a classroom display… but that wasn’t my call.”

  No, Brennan thought, your call was to my boss.…

  “Booth, do you know how easy it would be for someone to get their hands on one of these things and dump it in your lap?”

  “I suppose it’s possible,” Booth said.

  Both women were smiling now, and the agent frowned defensively.

  “What?” Booth asked.

  Dr. Wu said, “She’s just messing with you. Although it is legal to buy human bones in the United States, a real skeleton would cost well over a thousand dollars… while a plastic one would do the same job for around three hundred.”

  “Still,” Brennan said, “there are some real skeletons still in use at academic facilities — less common than it used to be; and usually they are small skeletons, coming from India…. But that doesn’t mean we don’t have a prank here.”

  Booth’s eyes tightened. “No?”

  “No. A nasty, ugly one — bones from a graveyard?”

  “Oh.”

  “But I doubt that…”

  “Why?”

  “I smell earth on these bones.”

  He cocked his head. “Well, wouldn’t that tend to indicate a graveyard…?”

  She shook her head. “Not really. Most bodies are interred in caskets; burying a body directly into the ground is hardly usual.”

  “Yeah. Of course. You’re right.”

  Brennan and Dr. Wu removed the skeleton from the body bag.

  With the container out of the way and the remains laid out on the table, Brennan did a cursory exam. She looked at Dr. Wu. The other woman had seen the same things Brennan had — it was in her eyes.

  “Booth,” Brennan said. “This is not a hoax. Or anyway, if it’s a prank, it’s a very expensive one.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “For one thing, these bones are not plastic — I can tell you that. They are very much the real thing.”

  “You can tell already? Is it Musetti?… Sorry. I know that’s impossible….”

  She raised an eyebrow. “Actually not impossible.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Usually, I would need some sort of reference material from the victim to positively ID him… but in this case I can tell you this skeleton is definitely not Stewart Musetti. Or, more accurately, I can tell you it’s not all Stewart Musetti.”

  “Obviously,” Booth said. “Last time I saw the guy, he had a lot more skin and hair and, uh, meat on his bones.”

  Brennan shook her head. “You don’t understand.”

  “I don’t?”

  “This skeleton is not made up of the body of just one person.”

  Booth’s eyes widened. “Say what…?”

  “This is a contrived skeleton,” Brennan said.

  “What the hell—”

  Dr. Wu tried to help. “One obvious place is the femora. You know what those are, right?”

  “The big bones in the thigh.”

  “That’s right, Agent Booth,” Dr. Wu said. “And look at these two. Do you notice any differences?”

  Stepping forward, Booth studied the right femur, which, judging from his expression, appeared pretty normal to him, though he obviously wasn’t sure what he was supposed to be searching for.

  Brennan watched her colleague with great interest.

  He leaned over farther and examined the left femur. He pointed to dark lines that ran around the knobs on either end.

  “This one’s been broken?” he asked, his answer more of a question.

  Dr. Wu gave him a tiny smile. “You found the right clue — but you drew the wrong conclusion.”

  Booth’s eyes rolled. “It wasn’t broken?”

  Moving to one of the drawers in the wall, Dr. Wu pulled it open and extracted two long bones. She held up one that looked nearly identical to the left femur of the skeleton. This one had the same thin, dark lines.r />
  “When we’re born,” Dr. Wu said, “our bones are not fully formed. The shaft is bone, but the epiphysial cap…”

  Booth gave her a look.

  “…the knobby part has cartilage on the end that slowly turns to bone. The line shows us that the cartilage has not completely fused.”

  Booth nodded, getting it. “The left femur belonged to someone younger than the body the right femur came from.”

  “Good,” Brennan said, meaning it.

  “So,” Booth said, frowning in thought, “how old are they?”

  “The right femur,” Brennan said, picking up the other bone Dr. Wu had gotten out of the drawer, “is fully fused. This bone came from an adult.”

  “The left one?”

  Dr. Wu said, “A teenager. Someone younger than twenty.”

  Nodding, Booth asked, “Anything else readily apparent to the expert eye?”

  “The pelvis belongs to a man,” Brennan said. “The subpubic angle is more v-shaped than u-shaped, which is a male trait.”

  “Does it go with either femur?” Booth asked.

  “We won’t know for sure without further testing,” Brennan said, shaking her head. “But judging by the epiphysial fusion on the pelvic bones, I’d say the right femur is the more likely candidate as a match for the pelvis… and the skull as well.”

  Picking up the thread as if they had been working together for years, Dr. Wu said, “The cranial sutures are nearly fused — a sign that the skull came from an adult.”

  “What about race?”

  “Judging from the high-bridged nasal bones and narrow face, the skull belongs to a Caucasoid man.”

  Brennan nodded her agreement. “The bony ridges over the eyes also tell us the skull is that of a man. Plus, we’ve got both jaws, which gives us something to compare to dental records.”

  Booth said, “At least two people — one older, one under twenty?”

  “Yes,” Brennan said. “We’ll know more after our exam, but for now… let’s concentrate on the note.”

  Booth — eyes brightening like a kid just told to go sit next to the Christmas tree so presents can be handed out — moved closer.

  Using her forceps for the second time today, after freshly sterilizing them, Brennan lifted the folded piece of paper from between the skeleton’s toes.