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.”