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….’ ”