Brennan pointed to the worn areas.
“See these edges?” she asked. “They should have worn more evenly. Although the intervertebral disks are gone, you can see where they were worn down, and the surfaces of the vertebrae started rubbing against each other. Whatever was wrong with his leg caused him to hurt his back and any movement — especially walking — would have been extremely painful.”
“What was wrong with his leg?” Booth asked.
Dr. Wu said, “Could have been any number of things.”
“For instance?”
“Slipped femoral epiphysis would have done the trick.”
“Slipped what?” Booth said.
Brennan pointed to the ends of the femora. “Remember when we told you about the epiphysis sutures closing to show age?”
“Sure.”
“Well, this is the same area — the epiphysial cap on the femoral head.” Brennan pointed. “If the epiphysis slips out, the leg will rotate laterally.”
She turned the femur away from the body.
“The foot would have been turned out,” she continued. “Walking would have put torque and stress on the spine.”
Dr. Wu said, “The leg could have been broken and not set — could’ve been torture, or a birth defect that was never dealt with… lots of possible explanations.”
“Bottom line?” Booth asked.
“Bottom line,” Dr. Wu said, “is both of these femora are healthy… and if that’s what caused the wear on the spine, then the thoracic vertebrae could not possibly have come from this skeleton.”
“Okay,” Booth said, and heaved his biggest sigh of the day — so far. “Then we’ve got at least three victims.”
Brennan said, “The cervical vertebrae come from a body that was dead for a lot longer than either femur… and probably longer than the thoracic vertebrae as well. Though, of course, we—”
“Need more tests,” Booth interrupted.
“That’s right.”
Booth gestured toward the skeleton again. “What about the cervical vertebrae?”
“First,” Brennan said, in a little too teacherly a way for Booth’s taste, “you need to understand that skeletal decomposition can be broken down into rough stages.”
“All right,” Booth said.
“In the first stage, the bones are greasy and decomposed tissue remains.” She pointed, demonstrating. “That’s what most of these bones are.”
“Got it.”
“In the next stage, the bones still retain some mummified or putrefied tissue, but covering less than half of the skeleton.”
He nodded.
“In stage three the bones have lost all tissue and some organic components, but may retain a slight greasiness. The thoracic vertebrae and some of the foot bones indicate this. The bones are completely dry by stage four; the cervical vertebrae have signs of this stage and the next, which is when the bones are dry with bleaching and exfoliation. In the sixth stage, the dry bones show increased deterioration with metaphyseal loss and cancellous exposure; but we don’t have any bones that are that far gone.”
“So,” Booth asked, “the cervical vertebrae are the oldest?”
“Yes,” Brennan said. “I’d say this victim has been dead for as long as…” She glanced at Dr. Wu, who nodded. “… forty years.”
Booth whistled. “Back in the sixties?”
“Possible. Very possible.”
“Is it also possible that someone used real bones but faked all this — you know, doctored these things — just to screw with us?”
Shaking her head, Dr. Wu said, “I think we’ve eliminated that — you’ve got bones here that would not just be lying around. Forty-year-old cervical vertebrae are not like finding an Indian arrowhead in a state park.”
Her cell phone rang and Dr. Wu said, “Excuse me.”
She took the phone off her belt, touched a button, and said, “Jane Wu.” She listened for a few seconds, said, “I’ll be right there,” and clicked off.
“I’m sorry,” she said to Brennan. “Crisis upstairs. Be back as soon as I can.”
Brennan and Booth both nodded and Dr. Wu left, Booth watching the attractive way she walked as she went.
Turning his attention back to Brennan — who was smirking at him again — he said, “So, you two are saying I’ve got a serial killer who has been at it for forty years?”
“I know it sounds far-fetched,” Brennan said, all business. “But that’s where the evidence is leading us.”
A geriatric killer?
The killer taunting Booth would have to be, what? Sixty years old, at least?
Booth’s stomach knotted. This was not going to go over well with his boss.
Brennan said, “The note indicated this…” She gestured toward the table of remains. “… was a goodbye gesture of sorts. So we shouldn’t be surprised. Right?”
“You mentioned more tests,” Booth said, ignoring the question. “What’s that involve?”
“Taking the remains to the Jeffersonian so my staff can do DNA, track the dental records… assuming the skull is from the same person, which it might be. And we’ll have Angela do a holographic reconstruction.” She smiled at him. “You know, ‘squint’ stuff.”
“How long will that take?” he asked, blowing past her friendly dig.
“Going to take a while,” she admitted. “But the sooner we get going, the better.”
“We?” he asked, afraid he knew where this was heading. “You don’t mean you and me, do you?”
“No,” she retorted. “The skeleton and me… That ‘we.’ The sooner we get going to Washington, the sooner I can call you with the results.”
“You’re… going back?”
She nodded. “Sure, why not? You don’t need me here. The work is the skeleton, and the skeleton needs to be in DC.”
Though he could not say why, Booth suddenly felt uneasy, and queasy. They were in this together. They were… God, he wasn’t going to admit it to himself was he?… a team.
“You just got here,” he said, knowing it sounded lame even before the words tumbled out.
She eyed him with sublime condescension. “And it’s been wonderful… but I need to go where the work takes me.”
“Yeah,” he said, lowering his head. “You’re right, of course.”
Brennan jerked a thumb toward the table of bones. “When Dr. Wu gets back, we’ll package up the remains and I’ll be ready to go.”
He nodded.
“Think you can book me a flight on such short notice?”
Hauling out his cell phone, he said, “I’ll get someone at my office right on it.”
“Good. Thanks.”
“You know me, Bones. Whatever you need.”
Five minutes later, he had explained the problem to one of the agents in his office, who was working on it. He dropped the phone back in his pocket and waited for the call.
He looked over at Brennan, who was already packaging up the bones of the feet, packing them carefully in cotton and placing them in a cardboard box that would be her carry-on when she got to the airport.
Booth wondered why he felt the need for her to stay. They had no personal life together at all; they were, for the most part, oil and water — calling them “friendly” would be a stretch, though “friends” somehow wasn’t.
So, what the hell was the problem?
He shook his head, forcing the thoughts away.
The problem was a serial killer — a geezer of a one, perhaps — but a serial killer nonetheless, and by definition dangerous as hell.
If Bones was right, this was a fiend who had not been caught in the course of a forty-year career in which he (or possibly she) had killed at least four people and probably a lot more.