It felt good to be out of the car. The dust wasn’t so bad that you noticed it breathing, but she could see buildup on the leaves of nearby plants and the log in front of the car.
A huge framed map on log legs stood off to the right of the parking lot, the marshland trails plainly visible behind Plexiglas.
“What’s next?” Brennan asked.
“We can’t search it by ourselves,” Booth said.
She shrugged and walked over to the map, Booth on her heels.
“When did this area become protected?” she asked.
“Why would you think I’d know that?”
Brennan got out her cell phone and speed-dialed.
“Zach Addy,” her cell said.
“It’s me.”
“Dr. Brennan. And how are you?”
“Fine, Zach. Are you near your computer?”
“What do you think?”
“Are you online?”
“Of course.”
She told him what she wanted to know, then listened to him tap some keys.
“The state park opened in 1926,” he said.
“Are we in the state park?” Brennan asked Booth.
“Barely. This is the southeast corner of the Indiana Dunes State Park; rest of it is across the road, runs back west from here.”
“All right, Zach, thanks.” She ended the call. “Okay, the park has been here since 1926. How long has the cement been here?”
“Maybe six months,” Booth said, eyes tight.
Brennan studied the map and the winding trails that it showed. One trail led away from the parking lot, then — maybe a mile out — branched into different trails that serpentined around the marsh, all coming back to the main trail at that point.
“Depending on the wind,” she said, “these trails are all too far from the construction to absorb a great deal of cement dust.”
He frowned. “Are we in the wrong place?”
Back to the west, maybe a quarter of a mile, a smaller area (according to the map) had a modest parking lot, a few tables, and a single looping trail called the Inland Marsh Overlook.
This spot squatted in the shadow of the new highway.
She pointed at the map and grinned. “Booth, I think we just narrowed our search area….”
They climbed back into the Crown Vic and he drove them to the picnic area. Westbound, a sign pointed to it; but looking up the highway, the sign they should have seen, coming from the west, had been sheared off and lay flat in the ditch next to the road.
No wonder they had missed it.
Booth pulled in and parked.
They got out again, this time Brennan more confident about their search. Booth popped the trunk and removed the trowel she’d used in Jorgensen’s basement.
“You might want to lose the suit coat before we go,” she said.
He took her advice, dropped it in the trunk, his gun looking even larger now without the jacket to hide it.
Picking up a folding shovel, he asked, “Do we need anything else?”
She shook her head. “Not yet. If we find something…. we’ll deal with it then.”
As they strode to the trail, she took the lead. It was his investigation, but this was her turf.
The sun was high in the autumn sky, a light breeze blowing from the west; although she wore a long-sleeved tee shirt, Brennan felt a slight chill and wished she’d brought a windbreaker.
Then again, a mile of walking through the woods would heat her up and she would probably end up wishing she’d worn a lighter-weight, short-sleeved shirt.
The trail was nothing more than a worn path through the high grass and foliage sprouting from the sandy soil. From the texture of the earth, Brennan knew they were much closer to finding the source of the skeletons than they ever had been in Jorgensen’s basement.
A stray strand of hair tickled her face at the same time a stray thought tickled her mind. “Does Jorgensen have a valid driver’s license?”
“I don’t know. Why?”
“Well, if he’s responsible for the skeletons, this is a long way from his house.”
“Couple hours,” Booth agreed.
“And if he had this place, why use his crawlspace?”
Booth frowned. “Do you still think he’s the guy delivering skeletons, Bones?”
“That sounded a little redundant, don’t you think?… I doubt Jorgensen’s our skeleton assembler; but he’s guilty of multiple homicides, which means you may wind up having to prove he didn’t send them.”
“To nail the right guy for this, you mean,” he said, nodding. “Good point.”
This sunny landscape was thick with pine and beech trees, leaves still on them, trees fooled by the drought and excessive heat that lasted beyond summer — not enough leaves to block out the sun, but trees and bushes were everywhere, as well as goldenrod and several other weedy-looking plants that Brennan didn’t recognize.
She did recognize, however, that these were not the plants found in trace portions on the first two skeletons.
Brennan moved farther into the wilderness, her eyes scouring the ground for any clue, checking the plants for the level, if any, of cement dust accumulated on the leaves.
Finally, as they neared the marsh overlook — a green space with scattered picnic tables and trash cans — she started seeing cement dust on plant leaves.
Stopping, she pointed this out to Booth.
The FBI agent stepped forward, his face moist with sweat, rings starting under his arms. She could feel perspiration on her own face, her hair matted to her forehead, and figured she must be about as disheveled as he was.
“Cement dust,” she said.
“So much for the marsh as wetlands,” Booth said. “What did they do with the ‘wet’?”
The ground they’d trod over hadn’t seen rain in weeks or longer.
She sighed, hands on hips. “The drought’s hit this area really hard. My guess, they’re at least a foot short of normal rainfall.”
Looking up ahead, she saw scraggly cattails and wispy bulrushes.
“Look sharp now,” she told the FBI agent. “We’re getting to where we should find something… if there’s anything to be found.”
“What exactly are we looking for?”
“Clues,” she said.
He touched her shoulder and stopped her. “A little help, here, for the laymen in the crowd — what kind of clues?”
Facing him, she said, “You once told me that it was like pornography — I would know it when I saw it.”
Clenching his jaw, he nodded.
Brennan put her head down and veered off the trail to the right, toward the construction site.
“Where are you going, Bones?” he asked, still on the pathway.
“If you were a killer,” she said, without looking back at him, “would you bury the body on the trail?”
“I’d bury it in the marsh.”
“Right.”
Booth fell in behind her again.
Maybe a hundred yards off, on her left, something white winked at her from the ground near a clump of weeds.
She stopped… … but it was gone.
Booth stopped too. “What?”
She said nothing, her eyes roving the area as if that alone would unearth whatever she had seen.
Nothing.
She backed up two steps, then saw it again. Keeping her eyes on the object, she moved to it and knelt. Dusty but white as a pearl in the sun, was a one-inch square buried in the dirt.
“What?” Booth repeated, next to her now, looking down.
“You don’t see it?”
He squatted next to her, putting the thing in shadow. She used a hand to scoot him a foot to the left, letting the sun in again, and pointed to the white square.
“A rock?” he asked.
She looked at him. “A rock?”
“Not a rock?”
“How about a bone.”
“You’re sure?”
She tilted her head and arched both eyebrows at him.