Bones: Buried Deep

by Max Allan Collins

  Booth said, “Like I said — it’s how the killer signed the first note. Now we’ve got ‘Tim’ claiming the work.”

  Greene’s brow furrowed. “The other note looked similar?”

  “At first blush,” Booth said, “the work of the same correspondent.”

  Greene’s wheels were turning. “Son of Sam reference, you think?”

  Shrugging, Booth said, “That occurred to me, too. But honestly, I don’t know. Maybe he’s signing the name of another noted serial killer to each note…. Anybody know a serial killer named Tim?”

  Woolfolk said, “There was that guy — Judy.”

  “Judy? We’re looking for a Tim.”

  “Steven Timothy Judy. Guy raped and killed women in Indiana, Texas, Louisiana, and California. Eleven in all, including drowning three children of one of his victims.”

  Greene offered, “There’s Timothy McVeigh.” The man convicted for the bombing of the Murrah Building in Oklahoma City in 1995.

  “Not really a serial,” Booth pointed out.

  Brennan said, “If he’s taunting you, invoking someone who struck at the federal government before could be part of that.”

  Dillon’s eyes were on her. “Taunting us?”

  Booth said, “Dr. Brennan has the idea, and I think it’s a good one, that the choice of this site has to do with the Dillinger shooting.”

  Greene laughed. “That’s ridiculous…. Sorry, Doc, but that’s—”

  “No,” Dillon said. “She’s right again — this was the site of one of the Bureau’s first great triumphs… nailing Public Enemy Number One.”

  Booth nodded. “The guy is definitely yankin’ our chain.”

  Dillon, his scowl deeper than usual, said, “Let’s yank his, shall we?”

  “Yes, sir.” Booth turned to Greene. “I’d like a chat with our homeless citizen.”

  “No problem,” Greene said.

  Dillon put a hand on Booth’s shoulder. “I’ll be calling it a day — Seeley, it’s all yours from here.”

  “Thanks, Robert. I’ve got it.”

  Dillon got in his unmarked car and started the engine. They watched him navigate through the thinning crowd into traffic.

  The bystanders were losing interest — no one could see what was in the alley, and the coroner’s van had pulled away empty. No blood, no further excitement, no reason for them to hang around. Time to head for dinner or home.

  Woolfolk brandished the note in the evidence bag, said, “I’ll get on this,” and was gone as well.

  Greene led Booth and Brennan to an unmarked car up the block. The detective opened the back door and made a motioning gesture. A tall, older man unfolded himself from the backseat.

  Brennan was surprised to see the man’s hands cuffed behind his back.

  Rail-thin, the man wore a threadbare black suit several sizes too big for him, a shirt that had once been white with a Superman tee shirt pulled over, and grimy tennis shoes.

  Brennan was estimating the man had not bathed in weeks when a shift in breeze confirmed her theory.

  Their homeless gent had a receding hairline, a gray beard, and a wad of nose that seemed to take up most of his face. The scruffy visage was softened, however, by mild blue eyes.

  “Why is he cuffed?” Booth asked. “I thought he was just a witness.”

  Greene gave the homeless man a hard look. “He tried to run, after he told the patrolmen about what he found.”

  “Any possibility he dropped that package off himself?”

  “Hell I did!” the guy said. “Told the cops what I found, then I tried to leave! This is still America, isn’t it?”

  Booth sized up the guy. “It’s America, but you’ll excuse me if I don’t just take your word as gospel.”

  “Free country,” the guy said with a shrug.

  Greene said, “Two other people verified that someone else took the bag down the alley. They’re with a forensic artist back at the precinct. Unfortunately, both got a better look at this guy than they did the delivery boy with the bag.”

  “That’s just peachy,” Booth said. To the homeless guy, he said, “What’s your name?”

  “Pete.”

  “Pete what?”

  “I’m hungry.”

  “You won’t get a meal till we’re through here,” Booth said.

  The blue eyes sparked. “I’m gettin’ a meal outa this?”

  “Maybe. What’s your last name?”

  “These cuffs hurt, too, y’know. Can’t eat with cuffs on.”

  Booth let out an irritated sigh.

  Brennan intervened. “Lieutenant, will you remove the cuffs, please?”

  “If I do, he’s just going to try to run again.”

  “Probably,” Pete admitted, bobbing his shaggy head.

  Pointing to a restaurant two doors up the street, Brennan said, “You really want dinner?”

  “Is the Pope Catholic?”

  “If I get your cuffs taken off, can you eat and talk at the same time? And by talk, I mean answer our questions?”

  The homeless man considered that. “Could I have a beer?”

  Brennan held up an index finger in the man’s face. “One beer, one dinner — you answer our questions.”

  “No cuffs?”

  “No cuffs.”

  “How about another beer after dinner?”

  “If you’ve been straight with us, sure.”

  A smile blossomed in the bush of Pete’s beard. “Done deal!”

  Pete turned his back to Greene so the lieutenant could undo the bracelets.

  “This may be a bad idea,” Greene said, but he did it anyway.

  “If he runs, you could shoot him,” Brennan suggested.

  Pete’s head jerked.

  Brennan could tell Pete wanted to think she was kidding, but she made sure her face gave away nothing.

  The restaurant was a Mexican joint and they took a booth near the back — or anyway, that was where the hostess sat this oddly mixed group.

  With Booth and Brennan on one side, Greene was forced to sit next to aromatic Pete. The crowd was thin, the salsa spicy, the beer cold.

  When they were each nursing a Tecate, Booth asked, “So, Pete — what did you see?”

  Pete didn’t have his large combination plate yet, but he munched chips and salsa, sipped his beer, and nodded at Booth’s question. “I was across the street, headed for my alley.”

  “Your alley,” Booth said. “That’s the one next to the Biograph?”

  “Naw. I got a place a couple of blocks down… but I was headed that way when I saw the guy get out of the car.”

  Booth leaned forward. “Did you see the car?”

  “Sure did.”

  “Did you see what kind?”

  “Oh yeah. You bet.”

  “What kind, Pete?

  “Blue.”

  Brennan felt Booth tense next to her and she spent the next several seconds concentrating very hard on the label of her beer.

  With the expression of a nearsighted person trying unsuccessfully to thread a needle, Booth asked, “You, uh, wouldn’t know the make of car?”

  Pete shook his head. “Last car I owned was a 1968 Dodge. Somehow, I haven’t kept up.”

  Booth nodded his surrender. “And you didn’t get the plate number.”

  It was a statement, not a question.

  “Nope.” Pete took a deeper drink from his beer. “He was weird, this guy. Which is why I noticed him.”

  When somebody like Pete found somebody else “weird,” that was worth a listen.

  “Weird how?” Booth asked, perking up. “Dressed like crap, this guy.”

  “Define ‘dressed like crap.’ ”

  Pete thought for a second, munched a chip.

  “Dressed like me — dirty face like me, too… only he got out of a big new-lookin’ car. That’s weird to me. Isn’t that weird to you?”

  “Oh yeah,” Booth said. “Was that on this block?”

  “No… more lik
e — east of Halsted over on Orchard… in front of some of them row houses? Guy parked in that residential neighborhood, probably ’cause nobody was around. He was lucky.”

  “Lucky?”

  “Findin’ a parkin’ spot. Anyway, I was just cuttin’ through, on my way back to my alley, like I said… and this guy gets out of the car lookin’ homeless as hell, then he opens the trunk and yanks out this garbage bag. He tosses it over his shoulder like fuckin’ Santa, and off he goes.”

  “Which way?”

  “To the corner, then west on Fullerton to Lincoln, and up to the alley. And me? I followed him the whole way.”

  “Why did you follow him?”

  “Are you kiddin’?” Pete snorted, and chewed a chip. “He had a trash bag!.. And a nice car. If he was dumping something that he had to take blocks from the car, that meant he didn’t want nobody to find it. And if he didn’t want nobody to find it, maybe he was Santa, and Christmas come early for Pete this year.”

  Brennan looked at Pete in a new light. He definitely wasn’t homeless because he was a mental case.

  Gently she asked, “Pete, why is a smart fella like you on the street?”

  Pete shrugged. “Havin’ lots of stuff never brought me anything but pain — I decided to cut my losses and carry a lighter load.”

  She wasn’t sure she knew what he meant, and she was about to ask something else when Booth cut in.

  “What did ‘Santa’ look like?”

  “I told ya! A homeless-lookin’ dude!”

  “Be specific, Pete. Sing for your supper.”

  Pete thought and chewed another chip; salsa dotted his beard now. “Shorter than me, stooped over a little, like he was old… but not so much right away, he sort of got that way as he carried the bag. Like maybe it was gettin’ to him? Dude wore sunglasses, too — like a homeless guy could afford expensive sunglasses!”

  Booth tilted his head. “How do you know they were expensive sunglasses?”

  “I dunno. Just looked like it to me. I mean, the ones that get thrown out that I can salvage are usually cheapies that got left behind or expensive ones that got busted.”

  “You didn’t get a good look at his face?”

  “Just that he had it all smeared with dirt. He was white, if that’s where you’re goin’.”

  “Any distinguishing marks? Anything at all?”

  Pete shook his head and finished his beer, milking every drop.

  Then he posed a question to Brennan: “You sure I can’t have that other beer now? I mean, I been talkin’ like crazy for you people, and it’ll go swell with my meal.”

  “Sure,” Brennan said.

  Booth accepted this, and waved the waitress over and ordered Pete’s second Tecate.

  Then the FBI man asked Lieutenant Greene, “Can you get someone over to run the scene on Orchard?”

  “After we finish eating,” Greene said, “I’ll take Pete over there, and he can show me where the guy parked the car.”

  “I’ll do that,” Pete said, bargaining some more, “if you promise me a ride back to my alley.”

  Greene nodded, and even smiled a little.

  “You guys are the nicest cops I run into in a long time,” Pete said. To Brennan he said, “And you’re the foxiest.”

  Booth grinned and so did Brennan, flushing a little, saying, “Thanks, Pete.”

  Their food arrived and they mostly ate in silence — if Pete’s enthusiastic style of putting food away could accurately be described as silent….

  When the meal was winding down, Brennan turned to Booth. “What do you make of the note?”

  Booth glanced at Pete, whose full attention was devoted to his large combination plate. Like Brennan, the FBI agent clearly didn’t consider talking in front of Pete much of a risk.

  “Two different signatures?” he asked. “The ‘clock’ is running? Male victims in the neighborhood? I think the note writer is just screwing with us, typing anything that comes into his head.”

  “A few gay bars in the neighborhood,” Greene pointed out.

  “That’s just it,” Booth said, warming to the topic. “He’ll get us to go off on some wild-goose chase while he laughs his ass off at us.”

  Greene thought for a moment. “Like he’s been laughing at us cops, you mean?”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “You didn’t have to — the bastard’s note did. He’s supposedly been active for how long?”

  Brennan said, “One of the bones might be as much as forty years old… but we don’t know for sure yet.”

  Greene scowled, waved that off. “Forty years and we didn’t tip to him? And catch him? That’s bullshit.”

  “One thing isn’t bullshit,” Booth said. “This guy’s got access to skeletons, and some of them are old. We find out where he’s getting them, maybe we find him.”

  Greene sighed. “We’ll do what we can.”

  After Booth paid the check, they went outside into the cool, clear night.

  Greene and Pete headed for the cop’s car, and Booth — who had found a place to park his Crown Vic before they went to dinner — headed off in the opposite direction, Brennan hustling to keep up.

  “Hey!” she yelled. “Where’s the fire?”

  He stopped and smiled. “Just walking off dinner… and some frustration.”

  They continued up the well-lit street.

  As they walked north on Lincoln Avenue, Chicago blues poured out of several bars, dance music out of others; and a few of the shops still had their lights on. They passed a club called Centre Stage, which, according to the marquee, tonight featured entertainment by a group of cross-dressing singers called Cher and the Cher-alikes.

  “He could be stalking gay men, at that,” Brennan said, but not pushing it.

  Booth gave a one-shouldered shrug. “He wouldn’t be the first… but forty years? Only way he could not’ve got on the local PD’s radar is if he struck only very, very occasionally over all those years.”

  “I suppose.”

  “Greene’s probably right — that’s a long time to go without getting noticed, much less caught.”

  “Depends on his victims, though, doesn’t it?”

  He stopped and turned to her. “Meaning?”

  She stopped, too. “Meaning that if his victims are very young men and older men, you don’t really have a neat cross section of missing persons. And if he’s hunting in a segment of the population that doesn’t always get full service from law enforcement—”

  “Hey, I treat everybody equally.”

  “That’s probably true of most law enforcement these days,” she agreed, “but think how homophobic the Chicago police would’ve been when this character started out.”

  He did think about that, then started walking again, quickly.

  Catching up, she said, “Even now, gay people at least feel like they never get a fair shake from law enforcement.”

  Though he was less than happy, Booth said, “Granted.”

  “How accurate do you suppose missing persons records are, really?”

  He didn’t respond.

  “Pete goes missing, for instance — who would ever know?”

  Booth continued to walk in silence.

  “What about young boys running away?”

  Nothing.

  “Face it, Booth, if this guy’s smart… and his reconstruction of those remains tells me he is… my question isn’t why hasn’t he been caught by now — it’s how do you ever expect to catch him?”

  He stopped and faced her again. “Simple.”

  “Yeah? How, then?”

  He twitched a smile. “Why — with your help.”

  They walked on.

  5

  Seeley Booth could hardly believe how pleasant walking with Brennan seemed.

  She’d annoyed him with her generalization about law enforcement treating gays unfairly; but she’d clarified that well enough.

  And now he felt he’d just been too touchy about the subjec
t. Hell, he’d been too touchy about everything lately….

  Now, with her here, at his side, the two of them strolling along anonymously on this big city street, the evening cool, the nightlife just starting to hop, he felt… fine.

  “What’s bothering you?” she asked.

  Wasn’t that wonderful — here he was, feeling great, and she thought he looked like something was bothering him.

  “Nothing.” He glanced sideways at her. “What makes you think something’s bothering me?”

  She chuckled, which was a warm, surprising sound: he didn’t think he’d ever heard her laugh before, at least not in that way.

  He found himself smiling a little, and asked, “Oh, so now you’re laughing at me?”

  Smiling a little herself, she said, “I seem to be.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s just that… that’s such a universal male response.” She lowered her voice and aped his reaction. “Nothin’.”

  He did not respond, instead working at ignoring the tickle at the corners of his mouth.

  She shook her head, but the smile remained. “Why is it so hard for men to admit something is wrong? Why so defensive?”

  “I was not defensive.”

  “Well — you were brooding, then.”

  “I was not brooding! Anyway, men are wired to fix what’s wrong, not bitch about it.”

  “Talking isn’t ‘bitching,’ ” Brennan said, the smile a bit condescending now.

  “…Hey, I didn’t mean ‘bitch’ in any kinda, you know, way that’d—”

  “Get you in trouble.”

  Booth nodded, then shrugged. “If I really talked about what’s on my mind, you’d call it bitching.”

  “Hey. Go ahead and bitch.”

  He waited till they got past a blues club, from which funky music emanated, then said, “I’m supposed to focus on this Skel deal, but my head is still on that damn Musetti.”

  Her forehead creased sympathetically. “He’s part of an important case — your case.”

  “Right, and I was responsible for his safety. Musetti may not be part of either of our skeletons, but he’s almost surely dead. Snatched out from under—”

  “You weren’t even there,” Brennan said.

  “Right! Right. And maybe I should have been.”

  “…How’s it working out for you?”

  “How’s what working out for me?”