They were moving in slow traffic now, headed back to Booth’s office.
Booth continued: “What I didn’t say, directly, was that he needs protection. If his rivals hit Vincent, they can get to him. He and I both knew that, but there was no reason to say it.”
“Shield his manhood from embarrassment in front of a female, huh?”
Booth nodded. “Gianelli’s Old World, in his way.”
“And Dillon? Did you suspect him before?”
“Actually… yeah.”
“And you never mentioned it?”
He grinned at her, a very boyish grin, she thought.
“Bones, I had nothing but a hunch. No evidence, no data at all. I’m gonna share that with a scientist? No way.”
She sat back, somewhat overwhelmed by the events of the day.
In the meantime, Booth called Special Agent Woolfolk and told him what was going on. Apparently Booth had shared his suspicions with his other partner, because the explanation did not take long.
By the time they got to the office, Woolfolk had started tracking the money, and in under two hours — after a phone call from the bank, confirming the existence and the content of the audiotapes in Gianelli’s safe-deposit box — they had enough on Dillon to go forward.
Brennan followed the two agents into Dillon’s office.
The square-jawed, eagle-beaked SAC sat behind a desk nominally smaller than Gianelli’s. He wore a well-tailored dark suit, a white-and-blue striped shirt with a white collar, and a yellow tie.
“News on the marsh dig?” he asked.
Booth said, “You have the right to remain silent…”
“What?”
“Do you understand your rights, Robert?”
“Of course I do! Explain yourself, Booth!”
“Raymond Gianelli gave you up, Robert. Seems he’s resentful of his business rivals after they cut off his kid’s head and stripped him into a skeleton, and he wanted to make a friend in the FBI. So he gave me… you.”
“And you believe that lying mobster son of a bitch?” Dillon roared, rising, his hands open-palmed and shaking in indignation.
Woolfolk waved a manila folder. “We tracked the money, Robert.”
Booth said, “And then there are the audiotapes.”
“What audiotapes?”
Booth’s smile was nasty. “Ah, I don’t wanna ruin it for you. You’ll find out soon enough.”
“Goddamn it! This is a frame! I’ve been after those goombahs for years, and this is their payback.”
“Payback,” Booth said. “Good word. Sit down, Robert. Maybe I will tell you about it….”
Booth laid it all out and, gradually, Dillon’s anger subsided and he sagged back into the chair, as if trying to disappear into it.
Booth’s voice held no humor as he said, “Let’s put it this way, Bob — a hard rain’s gonna fall.”
Dillon just sneered at Booth.
Brennan felt like she had missed something. Hard rain? What was that about?
“That’s why the abductors didn’t whack our four agents, isn’t it?” Booth asked. “That was part of the deal. You’re that loyal to the Bureau.”
“Go to hell, Booth.”
“Care to tell us why you did it? Was it just the money?”
From that point on, Dillon decided to assert his right to remain silent, even as Woolfolk cuffed him and led him out through the office.
As for Temperance Brennan, she had a lab to run, an eight-hundred-year-old Native American to get back to….
But her plane wasn’t scheduled to depart until the next morning, so, as the sun set, she accompanied Booth back to Gianelli’s home in Forest Park.
“You really think he’ll be here?” she asked as they parked.
“He’s got nowhere else to go. Plus we’re watching the place.”
“Ah.”
“Still, the contract on Raymond Gianelli will be worldwide. If he ran to Tibet and climbed to the top of Everest, they would still find him and kill him.”
She said, “Easiest route up Everest is from the south, through Nepal.”
“Really,” Booth said. “Good to know.”
As Booth had surmised, Gianelli was waiting for them in his office. He wore a button-down black shirt, open at the collar, and black slacks. He might have been ten years older than this morning.
The old mobster turned away and stared out the only window in the room, gazing somewhere off into the darkening woods.
“You ready to go?” Booth asked.
“You took care of your problem?”
“Dillon’s in custody.”
“Then I’m ready to go.”
He stood silently for a long moment, then turned to face them, his cheeks wet with tears. “I didn’t like his idea about the skeletons. I thought it was excessive. Too far out there, y’know? But I tried to respect his ideas, so he could stand on his own feet, outa my shadow. Said he thought that if you was looking for a serial killer? You’d leave us alone.”
“And it helped,” Booth said, “that my boss Dillon took me off Musetti and assigned me to that case.”
“I guess it did. Maybe the kid knew what he was doing, after all.”
“How did Vincent even know about Jorgensen?”
Gianelli gave a sad smile. “Booth, nobody farts in this town unless we know about it. Guy was killing fags, why should we give a shit? Public service far as we was concerned. And Vincent, he was interested in true crime. Serial killers, them sicko creeps. Why, I’ll never know.”
Brennan cringed at the word “fag.” Like many in his world, Gianelli was a practicing Roman Catholic who considered homosexuality a sin, and many of Gianelli’s generation and social strata considered it repugnant.
The hypocrisy underlying that gave Brennan a flash of understanding.
Even though Raymond Gianelli loved his son, as any father might love his son, the man cared nothing about human life in general.
She had thought Vincent a sociopath, which no doubt he was; but he’d come by it honestly, heredity and environment teaming to provide his lack of conscience.
The streets, the world, would be safer with these two gone.
She knew Booth would make Gianelli live up to his end of the bargain, which meant dozens more killers off the streets. Still, she had a sick feeling about this whole case, and not just because of the grotesque demise of Vincent Gianelli.
The dead had crossed decades, and her team would spend months trying to identify all them; but, in the end, their killers would not go unpunished.
“Vincent would have taken my place,” Gianelli said wistfully. “Run the family… but like everybody who’s going anywhere in the organization, he had to become a made man. That’s what he did with Stewart.”
Booth frowned. “Vince killed Musetti himself?”
“Yeah,” the old man said, and his chuckle was like parchment rubbing against itself. “Even Raymond Gianelli’s son has to make his bones, you know.”
A Note From the Author
I would like to thank Lieutenant Chris Kauffman, CLPE, Bettendorf Police Department, Bettendorf, IA, for his expert input; and Lieutenant Paul Van Steenhuyse, Scott County Sheriff’s Department, Scott County, IA, for Patriot Act information.
Researcher/co-plotter Matthew V. Clemens wishes to acknowledge Stefan Schmitt, Florida Department of Law Enforcement, for his forensic archeology workshop at the IAI conference.
Also helpful were Michele Kuder and Mary Kay Majot from the Dorothy Buell Memorial Visitor Center, Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore, Indiana, generously sharing information about the Indiana Dunes Inland Marsh and related subjects.
I also wish to thank Kathy Reichs for sharing her anthropological expertise. And thank you to Scott Shannon for bringing us together, and to editor Jennifer Heddle; and also to the producers and writers of the Fox television series Bones, for sharing materials and providing inspiration.