The smell, faint though it was, hit her instantly.
Looking up at Garland, she said, “You’re right — something’s decomposing under this house.”
Neither man said anything as she eased forward, sat on the edge, and let her legs dangle into the dark crawlspace.
Garland handed her down a Mini MagLite and she screwed its head half a turn, providing a fairly wide beam.
She smiled up at the troubled men and said, “Fellas — it’s going to be all right.”
Then she dropped through the door into a crouch.
She found herself in a large area with a dirt floor and less than three feet of clearance to the joists of the house’s main floor.
On her hands and knees, she moved forward, the beam of light sweeping back and forth. She tried to follow the smell of decay, which so permeated the space she did not wonder what awaited her; she knew: death.
The only question that remained at this point was… how many?
Finally making it to what (if she had her bearings right) must be the front wall, she sent the beam into a corner, revealing a stack of bags of agricultural lime.
Some bags were full, most empty.
The house was not huge, but the crawlspace seemed to be open under all of it. Thinking of her two skeletons formed from different remains, she saw plenty of room down here for enough bodies to make several more.
She took a more circuitous route back to the door, skirting the far end of the house, and she was just about to turn back when the light caught something shiny.
Even when she got right above it, she could not see it clearly.
Then, brushing away some dirt, she saw what looked like a diamond ring.
She cleared away more earth, using her fingers, digging tiny bits at a time until she saw that the ring encircled a finger, the finger was attached to a hand, and the hand to an arm.
She went back to the hatch and looked up to see both Garland and Booth peering in.
To Garland she said, “I need work lights — enough to illuminate the whole area down here. And can you rig up some way to blow clean air in?”
The Crime Scene lieutenant nodded and grinned. “Lights and air conditioning, Dr. Brennan — no problem.”
To Booth she said, “Call Dr. Wu…. No, wait, help me up out of here and I’ll do it.”
Garland and Booth both extended a hand. She took them both and let them pull her up out of the hole.
“Thanks, guys,” she said.
The two men exchanged wan glances, apparently spooked a little by how nonchalant Brennan was in the presence of death.
Booth handed her his cell phone. “Jane’s number’s up — just hit the green button.”
She nodded, surprised he didn’t have Dr. Wu on speed dial yet.
The Field Museum anthropologist picked up on the first ring and Brennan explained the situation and what she needed.
“I could bring a couple of interns,” Dr. Wu said.
“No room. They’ll just end up cramped and bored. Better if it’s just the two of us.”
“Might take me a while to get there.”
“No real rush,” Brennan said. “The victims aren’t going anywhere. Just make sure you’ve got everything. My gut tells me, when we do get started? We’re going to be at this for some time.”
Brennan ended the call. “Know where we can get a cadaver dog?” she asked Booth.
“Cadaver dog?”
“An animal that works like a bomb-sniffing dog, only it finds corpses.”
Booth shook his head.
“In Chicago, neither do I,” she said. “Let’s get a tech with ground-penetrating radar instead.”
Booth called in that request; while they waited for the tech and for Dr. Wu, Brennan and Booth tracked down Greene, in the front yard, smoking a cigarette.
“How you feelin’, buddy?” Booth asked.
Greene managed a shrug. “By the time my boss got done reaming me out, my ass hurt more than my chest.”
The FBI agent laughed. “Yeah, I got a rubber-glove exam, myself.”
Brennan spoke up: “We captured a killer — a suspect who responded to our presence by shooting Lieutenant Greene, point blank. Since when does that rate a reprimand?”
Greene smirked but it was not at all nasty, merely weary. “The doc here really isn’t law enforcement, is she?”
Booth didn’t respond to Greene, but did answer Brennan: “Channels, Bones. Neither one of us went through channels.”
“So what?”
“So, technically, the lieutenant and I aren’t even working together. And taking along our resident anthropologist-slash-bone-expert, to confront such a dangerous suspect? Not exactly what either the FBI or the Chicago PD hand out merit citations for.”
Brennan said, “Look, I put up with bureaucracy where I work — who doesn’t? But this is absurd….”
“Plus which,” Greene put in, “I went and got myself shot. Bosses hate that — more paperwork. Shooting board. Union reps to deal with.”
Brennan shook her head. “But the killer was captured!”
Booth said, “And that’s the only reason why Greene and yours truly are not both hanging from a yardarm somewhere.”
Turning to the FBI agent, Greene said, “Yeah, and I hate the yardarm.”
Booth nodded. “So hard to get your shirts to fit right for a month after that.”
“You’re making jokes?” Brennan asked. “You get dressed down for catching a killer, and you make jokes about it?”
Booth shrugged. “I’m open to other options, should you have any.”
She considered that, finally realizing nothing could be done about the vagaries of bureaucrats.
And yet she saw the system’s side of it, too. Law enforcement couldn’t just go around ringing every doorbell in America looking for bad guys.
Truth was they were lucky.
She only hoped their luck would hold out: chances were Jorgensen’s attorney would try to turn this into some sort of harassment case and get all the evidence thrown out.
Brennan hadn’t spent a lot of time in court, but she did understand that if you caught the wrong judge on the wrong day, your whole case could go out the window.
“I almost forgot,” she said to the men. “I got a call from Jack right before I went into the crawlspace.”
“Jack?” Greene asked.
“Dr. Jack Hodgins,” Booth explained. “Member of Dr. Brennan’s team at the Jeffersonian…. A squint.”
Booth’s favorite condescending jargon for scientific consultants like Brennan.
“Ah,” Greene said with a nod, obviously familiar with the term.
Booth had the ability, perhaps unintentional, to bring out the little girl in Brennan, almost never in a good way: right now she wanted to kick him in the shins. Or higher.
Booth caught her glowering at him and said, all innocence, “What?”
Ignoring this typical insensitivity, Brennan said, “According to Jack, our first skeleton was buried in sandy soil.”
Booth’s eyes narrowed. “That’s good to know, but this place surely doesn’t have sandy soil….”
“No it doesn’t,” she said.
Greene asked, “Are you sure about that, Doc?”
“Judging by what I was crawling around on, in that crawlspace? That dirt is clay.”
Booth looked uneasy again. “What are you saying?”
“That our friend Mr. Jorgensen may indeed have constructed the skeletons… but if he did, they were not put together from bodies buried under this house.”
Greene said, “Come on, Doc — I just know we’re gonna find a shitload of skels under this place!”
Even Booth seemed jarred by the inelegance of the lieutenant’s phrasing, but it was Brennan who said, coolly, “Be that as it may — it’s highly doubtful our made-to-order ‘skels,’ as you put it, were composed of bones found under that crawlspace.”