“I don’t know what that means.”
“Get well, finish your case, come home, and maybe I’ll explain it to you.”
“Angie — back to the dental IDs.”
“I already e-mailed that stuff, too. But here’s what we have so far: one skull belonged to a guy named David Parks. Went missing in 1959.”
“Who was he?”
“Police didn’t want to give me anything. They told me to have Booth ask for the file.”
“Interesting.”
“I thought so. So pass it along to that good-looking guy you work with.”
“I will. Now, who is he?”
“Seeley Booth! He’s that hunky agent you—”
“Angie — who is David Parks? The owner of the skull in question?”
Brennan knew her friend well enough to know that Angela wouldn’t be satisfied with being stonewalled by the cops, and she had the computer chops to get around it.
“Knowing that he disappeared in 1959,” Angela said, “I did some digging online. ‘David Parks’ isn’t ‘John Smith,’ but it’s still a pretty common name.”
“But you found…?”
“Some old newspaper articles that said Parks was an accountant who had his own business. Then, one fateful night? Dave just fell off the planet.”
“That’s it?”
“According to what the Net gave up, police back in ’59 had no leads — everybody in Parks’s circle of friends, all male, by the way, were suitably distraught.”
“You find it significant that all of his friends were male?”
“Just that he had no wife, no girlfriend, no women in his life at all.”
Brennan was frowning. “And from this you extrapolate he was gay? How many men in 1959 had tons of gal pals?”
Angela, not at all defensive, said, “Didn’t you say your serial killer was targeting gay men, even back then? Seemed worth noting.”
“It is. Still, there’s no empirical proof that Parks was homosexual.”
“Sweetie, there’s seldom empirical proof that anybody is anything.”
Brennan couldn’t argue with that. “What else?”
“Nothing for Parks. Information was pretty sketchy. Long time ago… but that wasn’t quite as true for the other skull.”
“Who was he?”
“A small-time mobster named Johnny Battaglia.”
The back of Brennan’s neck prickled.
Angela was saying, “He disappeared in the fall of 1963, leaving behind a wife and two daughters and an arrest record the length of the lakefront.”
“Probably not gay,” Brennan said.
“You never know,” Angela said, a shrug in her voice.
“But didn’t you say Booth was investigating the Gianelli crime family, before you got there?”
The prickly neck was gone but an uneasy queasiness had seeped into her stomach. “Yes. Till our cobbled-together skeletons rudely interrupted him.”
“Well,” Angela said, “Battaglia allegedly worked with Raymond Gianelli’s father back in the forties and fifties.”
“I don’t see what this has to do with our skeletons,” Brennan said.
“Nobody on this end has any ideas, either; but we’re still working on that and DNA identification of the other bones.”
“Did you copy the Parks and Battaglia info to Booth?” Brennan asked.
“Yes — he’s had them awhile.”
“Good.”
A female orderly arrived bearing a tray with a cup of coffee, a glass of juice, a covered bowl, and a covered plate. Right behind her came a blond nurse in a flowered smock and white slacks.
“You’re not supposed to be using a cell phone inside the hospital, Dr. Brennan.”
The wide blue eyes and straight-lipped frown made the nurse look serious but not quite cross.
What is this, Brennan thought, an airplane?
“Gotta go,” Brennan told Angela, and rang off.
She sat quietly while the nurse checked her vitals.
“Feeling better?” the nurse asked, giving Brennan a little smile.
She had to admit, she did feel better; maybe the hospital had been the best place to spend the night, even though she longed to get reacquainted with that hotel room.
“Dr. Keller will be by to see you soon,” the nurse said. “In the meantime, enjoy breakfast… and no more cellular calls, all right?”
The nurse left Brennan to her meal and her thoughts.
The tray of food was nothing special — including oatmeal that looked about as appetizing as something off her worktable — but she ate it all, and was soon even wishing for a second cup of carburetor-fluid coffee.
Making sure there was no sign of the blond nurse in the corridor beyond her open door, Brennan got out her cell again, speed-dialed Booth, gave him a quick update, and suggested that he check his e-mail and print out the files Angela had sent him… and bring them along when he came to get her.
“Why,” he asked, “are they releasing you again?”
“They never released me in the first place,” she said.
“Good point. On my way.”
An hour later, Booth walked through the door in his usual dark suit, conservative tie, and crisp white shirt.
Dr. Keller, on the other hand, had yet to make an appearance — “soon” being a relative term in any hospital — and Brennan wondered if the physician was punishing her for yesterday.
Booth, carrying two fat manila folders under an arm, plopped into the chair next to her bed.
“Well?” she asked.
He shook his head. “I haven’t looked at ’em yet — didn’t waste the time. Knew you’d want to see them, too.”
“I like this new thoughtful side you’re showing,” she said, granting him a small smile. “I’ll have to check into the hospital more often.”
“Anyway, it’s hard to read and drive at the same time.”
Brennan took the file, surprised by its heft. “I didn’t think Angela had this much….”
“She didn’t. When I saw that name Battaglia, I called over to the Chicago PD. They e-mailed me the files on both Battaglia and Parks, and I printed those out, too. Seems the Chicago PD has been transferring over their old files onto disk.”
“Isn’t science wonderful?” she said, and settled back on the bed, using the motor to raise her about forty-five degrees.
The name scribbled on the tab in Booth’s handwriting was PARKS.
Not surprisingly, Booth had kept the mobster’s file for himself, and was starting in on it as she read hers.
The information was discouragingly thin, albeit with wrinkles that Angela hadn’t provided over the phone.
In 1948, David Parks had graduated from Northwestern as a certified public accountant, worked for a medium-sized company for two and a half years, then left under circumstances not outlined in the police report.
Four months later, Parks opened his own business in an office in the Silversmith Building at 10 South Wabash, which — for the eleven years prior to going missing — was his sole source of income.
The file indicated Parks had made a substantial living, at least by the standards of the nineteen fifties; but — after the investigation into his disappearance — the authorities began to suspect his practice may not have been entirely legitimate.
The missing person’s report had been filed by one Terence Rhyne, who claimed that on the night of July 14, 1959, he had been scheduled to meet Parks at the Berghoff restaurant after work for drinks and dinner; but the accountant had not shown.
Known to be meticulously punctual, Parks had not phoned or messengered Rhyne, canceling their appointment (date?). Rhyne had grown worried and contacted the police. For the next six months, detectives searched for Parks with no success. Eventually, Parks went into the cold case file.