Bones: Buried Deep

by Max Allan Collins

  “As long as the bones getting defleshed isn’t you, Bones? I’d say deflesh away… but it’s still gross.”

  Booth turned to find that their exchange had garnered an audience.

  Upon being noticed, the others backed off a little. Booth looked past the crowd to see members of the crime scene unit trudging toward them, kits in hand.

  He found himself instinctively shielding Brennan, who was in the process of using tweezers to put something in a tiny plastic bag, which she slipped into her pocket.

  When the leader of the CSU team, a tall, rangy brown-haired guy named Lieutenant Platt, had met everyone, Brennan explained that she and Booth wanted the skeleton as soon as possible.

  Pratt said, “Dr. Brennan, we’ve got the word on you from Lieutenant Greene.”

  She blinked. “You do?”

  “We do. He said you’re tops and anything you ask for, we should give to you. Expect nothing but cooperation here.”

  She smiled. “Cool.”

  The crime scene unit went to work and, an hour later — even though there was much to be done at the scene — Platt released the skeleton to Booth and Brennan.

  “Where’s the note?” Booth asked.

  “Well,” Pratt said, “we kept that, of course.”

  “We’ll need it.”

  “You said the skeleton, that’s what you got.”

  “And everything that went with it — including the note.”

  Pratt grimaced, then forced a smile. “Agent Booth, I indicated to Dr. Brennan we’d cooperate. This is a joint investigation. But this is still my crime scene. I’ve turned over the skeleton, and that will have to do for now.”

  SAC Dillon came over and, pleasantly professional, said, “This is a federal investigation, Lieutenant. We’ll handle the note, and send you a copy with a full report on our findings.”

  Pratt frowned.

  He was just about to reply, apparently not in a nice way, when Brennan approached the crime scene investigator and said, “We’re wasting time, struggling over turf. You were great about the skeleton, and I appreciate that. But we need some more of that cooperation you promised.”

  Pratt shook his head, only it wasn’t a refusal, because he immediately had one of his techs fetch the note and bring it to Booth.

  This latest missive from their skeleton assembler was now safely sealed inside a plastic evidence bag.

  “Thank you for your cooperation,” Dillon said to Pratt, and walked away.

  Brennan smiled sweetly at the already put-upon crime scene investigator and asked, “Just one more thing?”

  Pratt laughed. “Not my firstborn? My wife will have a fit.”

  “No. Not that. We could use some large evidence bags to convey the skeleton safely. Could we borrow some?”

  “And by ‘borrow,’ you mean ‘have’?”

  “Yes.”

  Soon Booth and Brennan were utilizing large plastic bags from the crime scene unit, slipping them over the skeleton. The entire thing was covered with plastic by the time they loaded it into the backseat of the Crown Vic.

  As they pulled back onto the road, Booth phoned Dr. Wu, who, despite the late hour, agreed to meet them at the Field Museum ASAP.

  Booth ended the call, passed through a T-intersection and headed east back toward the expressway. He shot Brennan a glance and noted her puzzled expression.

  “What?” he asked.

  “I know I’ve been taking painkillers, but I thought you said this was Highway 62.”

  “It is,” Booth said, pointing to a sign they were passing.

  “Then why did the sign back there say this is Algonquin Road?”

  “Because it is. Highway 62 is Algonquin Road.”

  Booth tried to keep his eyes on the road, but he kept glancing over at Brennan, who was obviously pondering something.

  When he couldn’t take it anymore, he finally said, again, “What?”

  “Something doesn’t fit.”

  “How so?”

  “We’ve been working with the assumption that Jorgensen was the one placing the skeletons, right?”

  “Right. And we caught him.”

  “But the last one didn’t turn up until after he was in custody.”

  “Also correct, but that doesn’t mean that he didn’t stage it, before we caught him. Plenty of opportunity for him to do that, and it was only found just now.”

  “Possible,” she said. “But think about it. Where was the first skeleton discovered?”

  “At the Dirksen Building.”

  “Why there?”

  “To get our attention.”

  Brennan nodded. “Which it did.”

  “Yeah.”

  “What about the second skeleton?”

  He hit the exit and they were on the expressway now. Traffic was thin, the hour late, the lights of the city making Booth feel a part of civilization again. “By the Biograph theater.”

  “But the homeless witness, ultimately, led you to where?”

  “Jorgensen’s old haunts, his old house.”

  “And now?”

  Booth shrugged.

  “Algonquin Road?”

  “So?”

  “Where did Jorgensen live?”

  Seeing where she was going now, Booth said, “Algonquin.”

  Forehead creased, she asked, “Would he be that obvious?”

  “Sure, if he wanted to get caught badly enough.”

  Brennan shook her head. “I don’t think so. You were in that kitchen. Did he behave like he wanted to be caught?”

  “Maybe it was a… go-out-in-a-blaze-of-glory deal.”

  “Booth, he didn’t act like he wanted to die. To take us with him. He wanted to survive. Which he did.”

  “Creeps do weird things, Bones. This is my area, trust me — serial killers do things and sometimes don’t even know they’re doing it.”

  She said nothing, staring straight ahead.

  Booth kept trying: “He picks the cemetery, for some completely other reason, not even thinking about what road it’s on… but subconsciously, he’s trying to get caught, right? So out of all the cemeteries in Chicago, he picks the one on Algonquin Road.”

  She wasn’t buying. “It’s not logical.”

  “Neither is killing young men and burying them in your crawlspace or making ‘new’ skeletons out of the pieces of those people. Serial killing isn’t about logic…. It’s just a part of their sicko M.O.”

  “I still think we’re missing something,” Brennan said.

  “If it’ll make you feel better, have an advance peek at the note. Maybe there’s something there.”

  She got the evidence bag out, turned on the dome light, smoothed the plastic so she could read the latest missive. “… All in caps again….”

  “What does it say?”

  “ ‘To the FBI,’ ” she read. “ ‘I’ve given you two chances already and you are proving to be as incompetent as the police. How much easier do I need to make it for you? I’ve given you every clue, every possibility to make it as easy for you as I can. Still, you are incompetent, inept, and unable to catch me. My patience is wearing as thin as your pathetic skills. Perhaps I need to just send you my name and address, like the police, that is probably the only way you will ever darken my door.’ Signed, ‘Nerd.’ ”

  “‘Nerd?’ As in ‘Revenge of the… ’?”

  “I don’t know what that means,” she said. “ ‘Nerd’ as in N-E-R-D.”

  “Three notes, three different signatures,” Booth said. “Now that really doesn’t make sense….”

  Brennan turned off the dome light. “Imagine we’d found this skeleton prior to pinpointing Jorgensen.”

  “Why would that make a difference?”

  “I’d have made the same Algonquin Road connection, and so would you…. Would Jorgensen make it so easy to track him? While using three different names that have nothing to do with him?”

  “Bones, again — you keep using logic to try to explain an ill
ogical act. You’ll never get anywhere that way.”

  “Notebook and pen?”

  He squinted at her.

  “Eyes on the road,” she said. “Do you have a notebook and pen?”

  Driving with one hand, and digging in his pocket with the other, he searched for the small notebook and ballpoint; he found them and handed them over.

  Brennan, very quiet now, began writing something. Focused. Gone somewhere in her mind and not inviting him along.

  Booth used the drive time to think about what he would do about the Musetti case once this Skel craziness was over. Which, he told himself, should be in the very near future.

  The suspect was in custody, the evidence piling up. Nothing was directly tied to Jorgensen, but that would come soon enough.

  And that job would be for squints like Brennan.

  She was still scribbling when he got off the interstate and wound his way over to Lake Shore Drive, which he followed south to the Field Museum. He parked near a back door with a single security light.

  Dr. Wu wasn’t there yet and they would be waiting awhile, so he asked, “What’s in the little bag you spirited away at the scene?”

  “The little bag in my pocket?”

  “That little bag.”

  “A hair I found stuck in one of the knots used to assemble the skeleton. I’ll send it to Jack to identify.”

  Then, as if they hadn’t even spoken, Brennan went back to working on whatever she was doing in the notebook, and Booth returned to devising new ways to attack the Musetti search.

  Brennan suddenly grunted something that was almost a laugh, and a self-satisfied one at that.

  “An anagram,” she said.

  “What is?”

  “The signatures. They comprise an anagram.”

  “The three signatures do?”

  “The three signatures. If you rearrange the letters of the names, here is what you get.”

  Booth met Brennan’s excited eyes, then looked down at the notebook in the meager glow from the security light coming through the windshield.

  In Brennan’s sharp printing was one word:

  MASTERMIND.

  Booth started mentally rearranging the letters himself now, not wanting to be one-upped by a squint.

  “Could be Mister Damn,” he announced.

  She stared at him, an eyebrow arched, and he immediately realized how dumb he sounded.

  “All right,” he said finally. “Yours probably makes more sense.”

  “You think?”

  Before he could get any more embarrassed, Booth noticed Dr. Wu’s Volvo pulling into the lot. He glanced over at Brennan, still giving him that arched eyebrow expression.

  He held up his hands in surrender.

  “Mastermind it is,” he said.

  As Dr. Wu unlocked the Field’s rear door, Booth and Brennan got their newest skeleton’s worth of evidence out of the back and carried it into the lab.

  They rested it on the central table, removed the plastic bags, and Brennan put on a lab coat and gloves. Dr. Wu did the same, and then the two women examined the skeleton while Booth hovered and tried to look like he wasn’t.

  Dr. Wu concurred with Brennan’s defleshing theory and again both women were convinced that the bones had come from more than one body.

  “The clavicle and ribs are from different bodies,” Brennan told Booth. “I explained that to you at the scene.”

  He nodded.

  “The pubic symphysis belonged to a young man while the closure of the sutures in the skull belong to a much older man.”

  “Either of those belong to the others?”

  “Maybe, but the clavicle, several of the hand bones, and the legs below the knees probably all came from the same person.”

  “And those, you think, are more recent?”

  “In terms of time since death,” she said, “yes.”

  “Where does that leave us?”

  Brennan smiled. “More information is more knowledge. More knowledge gets us closer to the identity of the bastard sending us these sick messages.”

  “Makes sense. Makes damn good sense.”

  “We’ll package this one up, and you can ship it off to the Jeffersonian.”

  Booth eyed her curiously. “What are you going to be doing?”

  She looked very tired, very pale, and sweat glistened on her forehead again. “I think there’s a very good possibility that I’ll be sleeping in.”

  He gave her half a grin, and she gave him the other half.

  Then she crumpled. The only thing that kept Brennan from hitting the ground was Booth catching her.

  “Better call 911,” he told Dr. Wu.

  Alarmed, Dr. Wu asked, “Is she going to be all right?”

  Booth laid Brennan gently on the floor. “I think she just overdid it. But we better make damn sure.”

  Dr. Wu was studying him even as she got the cell phone to her lips.

  “You really care about her, don’t you?” Dr. Wu asked with the faintest trace of a smile.

  “Why shouldn’t I?” Booth said. “She’s my partner.”

  9

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  She was alone.

  TV was off. Clock said eight a.m.

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

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

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

  Her phone said, “Sweetie, you there?”

  “Sorry, Angie — I’m here.”

  “And where is ‘here’ today?”

  “The hospital again.”

  “Are you all right?”

  The eternal question.

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

  Angela told her, and relief swept over her.

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

  More relief.

  “Thanks. You’re a saint.”

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

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

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

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

  “Both of the skeletons—”

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

  Angela sang, “ ‘It’s raining men….’ ”

  “I don’t know what that means.”

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

  “Angie — back to the dental IDs.”

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

  “Who was he?”

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

  “Interesting.”

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

  “I will. Now, who is he?”

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

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

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

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

  “But you found…?”

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

  “That’s it?”

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

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

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

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

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

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