But then what to do with them?
Maybe somebody had got a bright idea.
Somebody who (for whatever reason) knew the pattern of certain local killings, and knew as well who the prime suspect was for those killings — a literally old suspect just waiting to take the fall.
If skeletons seemed to start coming from a serial killer, as a last thumbing-of-the-nose at the cops he’d eluded all these years, whoever would think the Outfit was implicated?
Besides, what could the FBI make out of a pile of mismatched bones?
Plenty, Booth thought, watching the activity around him, plenty.
His eyes found Brennan hard at work with the radar boys, and he smiled. The “mastermind” behind all this had not counted on Booth’s secret weapon: Temperance Brennan.
On having determined the makeshift graveyard to be mob-related. Two alternatives presented themselves. One, the Gianellis, the main crime family in Chicago, were behind the skeleton scam; or two, someone in the rival families was trying to frame them for it, in a power play designed in part to rid the town of these Gotti-like self-styled superstar mobsters who had attracted so much unwanted federal heat.
Booth approached Brennan as she sat on a folding chair watching a laptop computer monitor on a small portable table near where the techs worked the ground-penetrating radar.
“Doesn’t look like anything’s there,” she said to the tech. “Try another two feet north.”
“Got a minute?” Booth asked.
She lifted her face from the monitor. “In a job that takes hours, there’s always a minute.”
“You okay?”
Her eyes were bright, but the circles under them were dark.
“Never better.”
“Bones, if you pass out on me again—”
“Why don’t we agree never to mention that?… You’re on your own for a while, Ernie.”
The tech nodded and resumed his search.
Brennan followed Booth and the two of them found a private place on the periphery.
He told her his theory.
“This isn’t my field,” she said.
“No, but it’s your case, and you spent time with Gianelli. I trust your instincts. I trust your mind.”
“You think it really could be a rival mob family?”
He shrugged. “Lot of people in Chicago don’t like the Gianellis. Find them an embarrassment. Plus, there’s money to be made by taking over their—”
Her cell phone rang. “Brennan.”
Booth watched as she listened.
Brennan’s face grew surprised, then amazed.
“You have got to be kidding me,” she said.
Her eyes locked with Booth’s as she listened some more, then ended the call with, “Thanks, Jack. You’re tops.”
Putting the phone back on her belt, she said, “That was Jack.”
Booth nodded. “I’m a detective. I deduced that.”
“We’ve got a DNA match on the clavicle from the latest skeleton — one of the bones that had never been buried.”
“I remember. That’s why you looked surprised?”
An eyebrow arched. “Not surprised they got a match… just who the bone turned out to belong to.”
“So who, already?”
“I’m not sure if you’ll view this as good news or bad news, Booth. But it’s your witness — the DNA match is Stewart Musetti.”
Booth took the news like a physical blow. “You’re sure,” he said.
It wasn’t exactly a question.
She was nodding. “You took his DNA when he entered the Federal Witness Protection Program, just in case anything like this ever happened, right?”
He nodded back numbly.
“I know you didn’t want to lose this witness,” she said. “But you knew he was probably dead. His girlfriend said he’d taken the Dunes Express, and we’re at the last stop right now.”
“Oh yeah.”
“So you’ve answered your own question, Booth. It’s not a rival gang.”
He was recovering fast. “That means the Gianellis are behind all of this.”
She was thinking. “Booth, I don’t mean to overstep…”
“Overstep, overstep!”
“Could I… float a theory?”
“Float away.”
She touched a finger to the side of her chin. “Suppose the younger Gianelli — Vincent — got the assignment from his father to get rid of these bones. We’ve already found evidence of areas surrounding us that show signs of digging. So the corpse removal is a gradual project.”
“As the construction nears,” Booth said, getting it, “they clear more gravesites.”
“Right. Perhaps they bring in a truck, a dump truck possibly, and just rudely toss their excavated findings into the back of it, the skeletons coming apart until a literal pile of bones remains.”
Booth nodded again. “They wouldn’t exactly stand on ceremony.”
“So,” she continued, “we can presume Vincent did any number of things with the unearthed skeletons… dumped them in the lake, buried them elsewhere, perhaps ground them up at a butcher shop associated with his restaurant…”
“You’re scaring me,” he told her, but was smiling. “That’s good. That’s all well reasoned.”
“You don’t have to sound surprised. But somewhere along the line ‘mastermind’ Vincent has an idea. A surprisingly complex one. He will use some of these bones to simultaneously taunt the FBI and distract them from the Musetti disappearance — with luck, even getting Seeley Booth pulled off the Musetti case.”
His eyes narrowed. “Well, it’s true that the skel showing up on our doorstep made it a federal matter — if it hadn’t turned up on Uncle Sam’s property, it would’ve been strictly Chicago PD’s affair. But how could Vincent assume I’d be pulled off the case?”
“Booth, I talked to the man. He claims to be a fan, and without a doubt he knows about me, knows that you and I’ve worked a number of cases together involving my specific anthropological skills.”
“I don’t know. Now this is seeming thin…. Is that slick idiot capable of—”
“He’s not an idiot, Booth. He is slick, all right. And cunning. And you know what else? He may or may not be a Temperance Brennan fan, but he is sure as hell a serial killer buff.”
Booth frowned. “Really? How do you know this?”
“Ever eat at Siracusa? I have.”
“I know you have. Actually, I don’t exactly hang out there.”
“He has a ‘Wall of Fame’ — framed photos?”
Booth was nodding. “Typical celebrity display, sure. Lots of restaurants do that, particularly the Italian ones.”
“Do they ‘typically’ include shots of the owner smiling and shaking hands with John Wayne Gacy?”
“You’re kidding.”
“I wish. He bragged to me about his interest in crime and mystery and in particular serial killers. He would be in a perfect position to know all about the prime suspect in those gay young men disappearances… a big-fish suspect who got away.”
“So,” Booth said, “he puts us on Jorgensen’s trail. Distracts us and laughs at us…”
She held up a palm. “It’s just a theory, remember. The evidence gathering has just begun….”
“Right, and I think I know how to get some evidence on Vincent, and digging in the ground won’t be how I do it.”
“How, then?”
“Bones, does Vincent Gianelli strike you as the kind of guy who could build a skeleton from scratch, with the schooling he’s had?”
She thought about it. “Probably not. I said he wasn’t dumb, and that he was slick and cunning. But smart? Well educated? No.”
“Exactly,” Booth said. “Maybe while his pals were grinding up bones or chugging out into the middle of Lake Michigan for dropping off chums for chum, Vince kicked back and did some reading.”