Her forehead tightened. “How does that get you more evidence?”
Booth grinned. “It doesn’t. But the Patriot Act, Section 215, does.”
“Which is what?”
“The section that allows a Special Agent like me to find out what our suspect has been reading.”
Her mouth dropped. Horror-struck, she said, “You’re not.”
“Sure I am. Why wouldn’t I?”
“It’s an invasion of privacy! You’re taking a case that is one part evidence, one part circumstance, and another part theory, and using that as a pretext to invade Vincent Gianelli’s privacy.”
“Yeah, and who cares? It’s legal.”
Her eyes blazed. “That doesn’t make it right.”
“Why do you even care? This is my part of the job, not yours.”
“One, I’m a writer. Two, I’m a citizen of the United States, and all citizens should be outraged by this kind of—”
Booth snorted. “What, Bones? Afraid I’ll find out he’s been reading your book? Or maybe the competition?”
She glared at him for a long moment. Then, calm but having to work at it, she said, “Booth — I have been to Bosnia, Guatemala, Thailand, and half a dozen other places where one group of people tried to enslave or eradicate another.”
“I know,” Booth said, his tone respectful. He had been to some of those places, too — with a gun.
She was asking, “Do you know what the aggressor group had in common in each case?”
Booth shook his head.
“Control. They all tried to control the other group by controlling information.”
He held up his hands in surrender. “Look, I’ll concede your point; I don’t disagree with your politics. But this is the law of the land right now, and I’m law enforcement. Anyway, I don’t want to ‘control’ Gianelli. If he’s got nothing to hide, then he’s got nothing to fear.”
She stabbed the air with a finger. “You just don’t get it, do you? You sound like the Nazis in 1937, the McCarthyites in 1953, the—”
“Nazi?” he exploded. “Now you’re calling me a Nazi? Well, that’s the limit!”
He stormed away, leaving her and her self-righteous beliefs behind, and when she called out, “Booth!” he ignored it.
He had work to do.
Woolfolk had showed up a while ago, and Booth assigned him to supervise the site while he went back into the city to get the necessary paperwork.
Then Booth approached two chain bookstores and the local library nearest Vincent Gianelli’s home.
Whether due to what Brennan had said, or because as he performed this search he actually had time to think about it, he did feel a little dirty about these tactics, legal or not. He had performed police work for years now, and this felt a lot like something else.
That didn’t stop him from utilizing the results.
The library list showed that Vincent Gianelli had not visited any library in the greater Chicago area since he was a sophomore in high school. (Booth was not the least bit surprised.)
But the Barnes & Noble list showed the purchase of half a dozen serial killer books, and two or three on anatomy; and Borders had their customer special-ordering a tome about the skeletal system.
This moment of glory was not all he’d hoped it would be — instead, he felt a little empty.
But he did have the information he needed to feel confident that Vincent Gianelli was the “mastermind” behind the assembled skeletons.
A knock on the jamb of his open office door got Booth’s attention.
Brennan stood there.
“Mind if I…?”
“Come in. Please. Make yourself comfortable.”
She wore jeans, a white blouse, and a loose gray jacket, hair tied back in a ponytail; she appeared herself, rested and attractive, and certainly healthier than she had since being attacked in that hotel parking ramp.
Twenty-four hours had passed since their spat at the Inland Marsh, and they hadn’t spoken since Booth had stomped off yesterday.
Now, with her sitting across from him, the tense silence hung between them, an invisible curtain.
She said, “Doing all right?”
He shrugged. “Fine.”
She looked at the floor. “I, uh… guess I probably owe you an apology.”
“Really?”
“Nazi was probably a little… strong.”
“You think?”
“I should have probably settled for fascist.”
He blinked.
But she was smiling.
She said, “I really am sorry.”
He tossed the pencil he’d been using onto the desk, sighed, and leaned back. “You know, I’m sorry, too. I’m not big on this ends-justifies-the-means crap, even when the law permits it.”
“But, uh… you went through with it, right?”
“Yeah. I’m afraid I didn’t feel regret till after I’d done the deed.”
“Hard to feel regret before,” she said with a shrug.
He held up the sheaf of papers. “Right here — purchases of serial killer books, anatomy, skeletal system….”
“Do you still think that was the only way to get to Vincent?”
Booth considered that. “All I could think of.”
She nodded and pulled a small plastic bag from her pocket.
“What’s that?” he asked.
“You remember the hair I got from the wire knot on the third skeleton, the one at the cemetery?”
“Yeah — is it human?”
“Actually, no.”
He let out another sigh, heaving this one. “I should have known it’d come to nothing… just like so much else in this case.”
“It’s canine,” Brennan said.
He frowned at her curiously. “Dog hair?”
“Not just any dog — a Neapolitan mastiff.” She gave him an innocent smile that was guilty as hell. “Anybody you know own one of those?”
“…Vincent Gianelli.”
“Right. And I didn’t have to invade his privacy to get it.”
“Is it from his dog?”
She shrugged. “Well, we won’t know until we test it; but it’s a rare enough breed that it should constitute probable cause.”
Booth thought about saying something, talked himself out of it, and instead said, “I’m going to go see him.”
“Good idea.”
“Want to… come with?”
She grinned. “Thought you’d never ask….”
Though the father divided his time between a Gold Coast apartment and a Forest Park mansion, Vincent Gianelli lived in Des Plaines, in a rambling two-story palace on a secluded estate at the very end of Big Bend Lane.
Booth and Brennan did not arrive alone.
Woolfolk was on hand, along with Chicago Police Lieutenant Greene (technically an observer), and an FBI SWAT team.
A wrought-iron gate blocked the driveway, but when Booth announced them through the squawk box, no response followed.
“Guy could be in there destroying evidence,” Booth said to Brennan in the passenger seat.
Booth got on his walkie-talkie and gave the order.
Within a minute, the SWAT team had blown the gate.
SWAT went through first, some on foot, some riding in their truck. Booth and Brennan followed in the Crown Vic, Woolfolk and Greene in another car behind them.
They sped up the curving, wooded lane toward the front of the house while the SWAT team moved through the woods, searching for Vincent’s security staff. After parking behind the SWAT truck, Booth got out, walkie in hand, Brennan on his heels.
The house was brick and about a block long, main entrance tucked into a portico in the center on the west side. Four double windows on either side of the entrance mirrored those one floor above. A wide chimney took up part of the front, matching others on each of the three exterior walls.