Bones: Buried Deep

by Max Allan Collins

  This was obviously mob-related: dead Outfit members made up at least part of the two wired-together skeletons, and now a double-tapped skull in sandy soil tied to those skels. Coincidences didn’t come that big, and Booth — like most law enforcement officers — didn’t believe in small coincidences….

  The mob had been burying bodies out here for years, the Dunes Express; that much seemed indisputable.

  So, why move them?

  The road construction was the obvious answer, plus the drought bringing deep buried bodies near the surface, both fueling the worry that if one body might be discovered, so would more.

  And if the authorities ever got an idea of how many one-way rides had been taken out here, well, there’d be hell to pay. Better to move ’em out.

  But then what to do with them?

  Maybe somebody had got a bright idea.

  Somebody who (for whatever reason) knew the pattern of certain local killings, and knew as well who the prime suspect was for those killings — a literally old suspect just waiting to take the fall.

  If skeletons seemed to start coming from a serial killer, as a last thumbing-of-the-nose at the cops he’d eluded all these years, whoever would think the Outfit was implicated?

  Besides, what could the FBI make out of a pile of mismatched bones?

  Plenty, Booth thought, watching the activity around him, plenty.

  His eyes found Brennan hard at work with the radar boys, and he smiled. The “mastermind” behind all this had not counted on Booth’s secret weapon: Temperance Brennan.

  On having determined the makeshift graveyard to be mob-related. Two alternatives presented themselves. One, the Gianellis, the main crime family in Chicago, were behind the skeleton scam; or two, someone in the rival families was trying to frame them for it, in a power play designed in part to rid the town of these Gotti-like self-styled superstar mobsters who had attracted so much unwanted federal heat.

  Booth approached Brennan as she sat on a folding chair watching a laptop computer monitor on a small portable table near where the techs worked the ground-penetrating radar.

  “Doesn’t look like anything’s there,” she said to the tech. “Try another two feet north.”

  “Got a minute?” Booth asked.

  She lifted her face from the monitor. “In a job that takes hours, there’s always a minute.”

  “You okay?”

  Her eyes were bright, but the circles under them were dark.

  “Never better.”

  “Bones, if you pass out on me again—”

  “Why don’t we agree never to mention that?… You’re on your own for a while, Ernie.”

  The tech nodded and resumed his search.

  Brennan followed Booth and the two of them found a private place on the periphery.

  He told her his theory.

  “This isn’t my field,” she said.

  “No, but it’s your case, and you spent time with Gianelli. I trust your instincts. I trust your mind.”

  “You think it really could be a rival mob family?”

  He shrugged. “Lot of people in Chicago don’t like the Gianellis. Find them an embarrassment. Plus, there’s money to be made by taking over their—”

  Her cell phone rang. “Brennan.”

  Booth watched as she listened.

  Brennan’s face grew surprised, then amazed.

  “You have got to be kidding me,” she said.

  Her eyes locked with Booth’s as she listened some more, then ended the call with, “Thanks, Jack. You’re tops.”

  Putting the phone back on her belt, she said, “That was Jack.”

  Booth nodded. “I’m a detective. I deduced that.”

  “We’ve got a DNA match on the clavicle from the latest skeleton — one of the bones that had never been buried.”

  “I remember. That’s why you looked surprised?”

  An eyebrow arched. “Not surprised they got a match… just who the bone turned out to belong to.”

  “So who, already?”

  “I’m not sure if you’ll view this as good news or bad news, Booth. But it’s your witness — the DNA match is Stewart Musetti.”

  Booth took the news like a physical blow. “You’re sure,” he said.

  It wasn’t exactly a question.

  She was nodding. “You took his DNA when he entered the Federal Witness Protection Program, just in case anything like this ever happened, right?”

  He nodded back numbly.

  “I know you didn’t want to lose this witness,” she said. “But you knew he was probably dead. His girlfriend said he’d taken the Dunes Express, and we’re at the last stop right now.”

  “Oh yeah.”

  “So you’ve answered your own question, Booth. It’s not a rival gang.”

  He was recovering fast. “That means the Gianellis are behind all of this.”

  She was thinking. “Booth, I don’t mean to overstep…”

  “Overstep, overstep!”

  “Could I… float a theory?”

  “Float away.”

  She touched a finger to the side of her chin. “Suppose the younger Gianelli — Vincent — got the assignment from his father to get rid of these bones. We’ve already found evidence of areas surrounding us that show signs of digging. So the corpse removal is a gradual project.”

  “As the construction nears,” Booth said, getting it, “they clear more gravesites.”

  “Right. Perhaps they bring in a truck, a dump truck possibly, and just rudely toss their excavated findings into the back of it, the skeletons coming apart until a literal pile of bones remains.”

  Booth nodded again. “They wouldn’t exactly stand on ceremony.”

  “So,” she continued, “we can presume Vincent did any number of things with the unearthed skeletons… dumped them in the lake, buried them elsewhere, perhaps ground them up at a butcher shop associated with his restaurant…”

  “You’re scaring me,” he told her, but was smiling. “That’s good. That’s all well reasoned.”

  “You don’t have to sound surprised. But somewhere along the line ‘mastermind’ Vincent has an idea. A surprisingly complex one. He will use some of these bones to simultaneously taunt the FBI and distract them from the Musetti disappearance — with luck, even getting Seeley Booth pulled off the Musetti case.”

  His eyes narrowed. “Well, it’s true that the skel showing up on our doorstep made it a federal matter — if it hadn’t turned up on Uncle Sam’s property, it would’ve been strictly Chicago PD’s affair. But how could Vincent assume I’d be pulled off the case?”

  “Booth, I talked to the man. He claims to be a fan, and without a doubt he knows about me, knows that you and I’ve worked a number of cases together involving my specific anthropological skills.”

  “I don’t know. Now this is seeming thin…. Is that slick idiot capable of—”

  “He’s not an idiot, Booth. He is slick, all right. And cunning. And you know what else? He may or may not be a Temperance Brennan fan, but he is sure as hell a serial killer buff.”

  Booth frowned. “Really? How do you know this?”

  “Ever eat at Siracusa? I have.”

  “I know you have. Actually, I don’t exactly hang out there.”

  “He has a ‘Wall of Fame’ — framed photos?”

  Booth was nodding. “Typical celebrity display, sure. Lots of restaurants do that, particularly the Italian ones.”

  “Do they ‘typically’ include shots of the owner smiling and shaking hands with John Wayne Gacy?”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “I wish. He bragged to me about his interest in crime and mystery and in particular serial killers. He would be in a perfect position to know all about the prime suspect in those gay young men disappearances… a big-fish suspect who got away.”

  “So,” Booth said, “he puts us on Jorgensen’s trail. Distracts us and laughs at us…”

  She held up a palm. “It’s just a theory,
remember. The evidence gathering has just begun….”

  “Right, and I think I know how to get some evidence on Vincent, and digging in the ground won’t be how I do it.”

  “How, then?”

  “Bones, does Vincent Gianelli strike you as the kind of guy who could build a skeleton from scratch, with the schooling he’s had?”

  She thought about it. “Probably not. I said he wasn’t dumb, and that he was slick and cunning. But smart? Well educated? No.”

  “Exactly,” Booth said. “Maybe while his pals were grinding up bones or chugging out into the middle of Lake Michigan for dropping off chums for chum, Vince kicked back and did some reading.”

  Her forehead tightened. “How does that get you more evidence?”

  Booth grinned. “It doesn’t. But the Patriot Act, Section 215, does.”

  “Which is what?”

  “The section that allows a Special Agent like me to find out what our suspect has been reading.”

  Her mouth dropped. Horror-struck, she said, “You’re not.”

  “Sure I am. Why wouldn’t I?”

  “It’s an invasion of privacy! You’re taking a case that is one part evidence, one part circumstance, and another part theory, and using that as a pretext to invade Vincent Gianelli’s privacy.”

  “Yeah, and who cares? It’s legal.”

  Her eyes blazed. “That doesn’t make it right.”

  “Why do you even care? This is my part of the job, not yours.”

  “One, I’m a writer. Two, I’m a citizen of the United States, and all citizens should be outraged by this kind of—”

  Booth snorted. “What, Bones? Afraid I’ll find out he’s been reading your book? Or maybe the competition?”

  She glared at him for a long moment. Then, calm but having to work at it, she said, “Booth — I have been to Bosnia, Guatemala, Thailand, and half a dozen other places where one group of people tried to enslave or eradicate another.”

  “I know,” Booth said, his tone respectful. He had been to some of those places, too — with a gun.

  She was asking, “Do you know what the aggressor group had in common in each case?”

  Booth shook his head.

  “Control. They all tried to control the other group by controlling information.”

  He held up his hands in surrender. “Look, I’ll concede your point; I don’t disagree with your politics. But this is the law of the land right now, and I’m law enforcement. Anyway, I don’t want to ‘control’ Gianelli. If he’s got nothing to hide, then he’s got nothing to fear.”

  She stabbed the air with a finger. “You just don’t get it, do you? You sound like the Nazis in 1937, the McCarthyites in 1953, the—”

  “Nazi?” he exploded. “Now you’re calling me a Nazi? Well, that’s the limit!”

  He stormed away, leaving her and her self-righteous beliefs behind, and when she called out, “Booth!” he ignored it.

  He had work to do.

  Woolfolk had showed up a while ago, and Booth assigned him to supervise the site while he went back into the city to get the necessary paperwork.

  Then Booth approached two chain bookstores and the local library nearest Vincent Gianelli’s home.

  Whether due to what Brennan had said, or because as he performed this search he actually had time to think about it, he did feel a little dirty about these tactics, legal or not. He had performed police work for years now, and this felt a lot like something else.

  That didn’t stop him from utilizing the results.

  The library list showed that Vincent Gianelli had not visited any library in the greater Chicago area since he was a sophomore in high school. (Booth was not the least bit surprised.)

  But the Barnes & Noble list showed the purchase of half a dozen serial killer books, and two or three on anatomy; and Borders had their customer special-ordering a tome about the skeletal system.

  This moment of glory was not all he’d hoped it would be — instead, he felt a little empty.

  But he did have the information he needed to feel confident that Vincent Gianelli was the “mastermind” behind the assembled skeletons.

  A knock on the jamb of his open office door got Booth’s attention.

  Brennan stood there.

  “Mind if I…?”

  “Come in. Please. Make yourself comfortable.”

  She wore jeans, a white blouse, and a loose gray jacket, hair tied back in a ponytail; she appeared herself, rested and attractive, and certainly healthier than she had since being attacked in that hotel parking ramp.

  Twenty-four hours had passed since their spat at the Inland Marsh, and they hadn’t spoken since Booth had stomped off yesterday.

  Now, with her sitting across from him, the tense silence hung between them, an invisible curtain.

  She said, “Doing all right?”

  He shrugged. “Fine.”

  She looked at the floor. “I, uh… guess I probably owe you an apology.”

  “Really?”

  “Nazi was probably a little… strong.”

  “You think?”

  “I should have probably settled for fascist.”

  He blinked.

  But she was smiling.

  She said, “I really am sorry.”

  He tossed the pencil he’d been using onto the desk, sighed, and leaned back. “You know, I’m sorry, too. I’m not big on this ends-justifies-the-means crap, even when the law permits it.”

  “But, uh… you went through with it, right?”

  “Yeah. I’m afraid I didn’t feel regret till after I’d done the deed.”

  “Hard to feel regret before,” she said with a shrug.

  He held up the sheaf of papers. “Right here — purchases of serial killer books, anatomy, skeletal system….”

  “Do you still think that was the only way to get to Vincent?”

  Booth considered that. “All I could think of.”

  She nodded and pulled a small plastic bag from her pocket.

  “What’s that?” he asked.

  “You remember the hair I got from the wire knot on the third skeleton, the one at the cemetery?”

  “Yeah — is it human?”

  “Actually, no.”

  He let out another sigh, heaving this one. “I should have known it’d come to nothing… just like so much else in this case.”

  “It’s canine,” Brennan said.

  He frowned at her curiously. “Dog hair?”

  “Not just any dog — a Neapolitan mastiff.” She gave him an innocent smile that was guilty as hell. “Anybody you know own one of those?”

  “…Vincent Gianelli.”

  “Right. And I didn’t have to invade his privacy to get it.”

  “Is it from his dog?”

  She shrugged. “Well, we won’t know until we test it; but it’s a rare enough breed that it should constitute probable cause.”

  Booth thought about saying something, talked himself out of it, and instead said, “I’m going to go see him.”

  “Good idea.”

  “Want to… come with?”

  She grinned. “Thought you’d never ask….”

  Though the father divided his time between a Gold Coast apartment and a Forest Park mansion, Vincent Gianelli lived in Des Plaines, in a rambling two-story palace on a secluded estate at the very end of Big Bend Lane.

  Booth and Brennan did not arrive alone.

  Woolfolk was on hand, along with Chicago Police Lieutenant Greene (technically an observer), and an FBI SWAT team.

  A wrought-iron gate blocked the driveway, but when Booth announced them through the squawk box, no response followed.

  “Guy could be in there destroying evidence,” Booth said to Brennan in the passenger seat.

  Booth got on his walkie-talkie and gave the order.

  Within a minute, the SWAT team had blown the gate.

  SWAT went through first, some on foot, some riding in their truck. Booth and Brennan followed in the Cr
own Vic, Woolfolk and Greene in another car behind them.

  They sped up the curving, wooded lane toward the front of the house while the SWAT team moved through the woods, searching for Vincent’s security staff. After parking behind the SWAT truck, Booth got out, walkie in hand, Brennan on his heels.

  The house was brick and about a block long, main entrance tucked into a portico in the center on the west side. Four double windows on either side of the entrance mirrored those one floor above. A wide chimney took up part of the front, matching others on each of the three exterior walls.

  Booth had studied a layout of the estate and knew a huge garage and workshop were out back, as well as a guesthouse and a small bungalow for guards and other employees.

  A voice came over the radio. “Woods clear.”

  A SWAT guy rang the bell and, when nothing happened immediately, a crash bar smashed into the knob and the door swung open and careened off the wall, then limply swung back, hanging loose like a broken tree limb.

  The SWAT guys fanned out through the house.

  More “clear” calls started coming almost immediately.

  The house was empty.

  Not even Gianelli’s dog seemed at home.

  Booth led the way to the back. While SWAT checked the guesthouse and bungalow, Booth, Brennan, Woolfolk, and Greene took the garage.

  Booth shot off the lock and they entered, Booth in the lead.

  The room was dark and Booth hit the light switch by the door.

  The cars and SUVs behind the four overhead doors were two deep, making eight that they had to search on their way through the big room to the single door at the far end: Bentley, Hummer, Porsche, Escalade, Jaguar, Aston Martin, Ferrari, and Vincent’s favorite, a ’63 Corvette.

  Taking a deep breath and letting it out, Booth twisted the knob and swung through the door crouching, his gun leveled.

  He found a large machine shop, tools, workbenches, and heavy machinery scattered around…

  …but no Gianelli.

  The “all clear’s” came in from the bungalow and guesthouse.

  Booth frowned, the gun grip cold in his hand.

  What, had aliens snatched them all?

  From sarcasm he shifted to cold reality: had they been tipped off? Maybe by the same insider who had tipped the Gianellis about where to find Stewart Musetti?