They were now in a long, stark, white-walled corridor with maybe three or four doors on the right-hand side.
Dr. Wu unlocked the first door and held it open while they entered — this time, into a gray concrete stairwell.
They stopped on the landing and waited for their host to lock the door, then Dr. Wu led them down. Their footfalls echoed like gunshots against the concrete.
Brennan asked, “How long have you been here, Dr. Wu?”
“Started as an intern while I went to school — first at Northwestern, for my B.S.; then Loyola for my master’s and Ph.D.”
“Ah,” Brennan said.
“So, to answer your question, about fifteen years. Started out sweeping floors and worked my way up. I was even a docent for a while… but mostly I’ve been behind the scenes down here.”
At the bottom of the stairs, Dr. Wu unlocked another door, then led them down a dim hallway to a door on the left, this one unlocked.
They entered a large, antiseptic-smelling chamber lined floor to ceiling with wood drawers on three walls. Three large, rectangular worktables took up most of the center space and the door wall held shelving units filled with tools and chemicals.
Though not as modern or well lighted as her own work space, to Brennan this felt like home.
It was home, too, to a black body bag that lay on the center table.
“Your John Doe skeleton,” Dr. Wu said.
Before they did anything else, both anthropologists donned lab coats and latex gloves. Then Brennan stepped forward, Dr. Wu moving around to the far side of the table to be of assistance if needed.
Carefully, Brennan unzipped the bag.
She noticed two things immediately.
One, the skeleton was wired together; and two, several of the bones were discolored.
Also, the bones bore a faint odor of earth. Brennan was not one to jump to conclusions, but she thought this skeleton might have spent some time buried.
“Could just be a hoax,” she said to Booth.
“A hoax?” he asked, his voice a little nervous as he looked from Dr. Wu to Brennan.
“When was the last time you found a wired skeleton in the field?”
He thought about that, and his expression told Brennan he didn’t like what he was thinking. “Never.”
“So the odds of this being your witness…”
“Okay, I’ve got to admit that I might have been a little overeager in my assessment.”
She frowned at him. “No one else at the scene thought it might have come from a school science room or something?”
Offering a sheepish smile, he said, “I’m with the FBI, Bones — people don’t question what we say all that much.”
“Maybe they should.”
“Look, I did notice that wire myself, and it reminded me of a classroom display… but that wasn’t my call.”
No, Brennan thought, your call was to my boss.…
“Booth, do you know how easy it would be for someone to get their hands on one of these things and dump it in your lap?”
“I suppose it’s possible,” Booth said.
Both women were smiling now, and the agent frowned defensively.
“What?” Booth asked.
Dr. Wu said, “She’s just messing with you. Although it is legal to buy human bones in the United States, a real skeleton would cost well over a thousand dollars… while a plastic one would do the same job for around three hundred.”
“Still,” Brennan said, “there are some real skeletons still in use at academic facilities — less common than it used to be; and usually they are small skeletons, coming from India…. But that doesn’t mean we don’t have a prank here.”
Booth’s eyes tightened. “No?”
“No. A nasty, ugly one — bones from a graveyard?”
“Oh.”
“But I doubt that…”
“Why?”
“I smell earth on these bones.”
He cocked his head. “Well, wouldn’t that tend to indicate a graveyard…?”
She shook her head. “Not really. Most bodies are interred in caskets; burying a body directly into the ground is hardly usual.”
“Yeah. Of course. You’re right.”
Brennan and Dr. Wu removed the skeleton from the body bag.
With the container out of the way and the remains laid out on the table, Brennan did a cursory exam. She looked at Dr. Wu. The other woman had seen the same things Brennan had — it was in her eyes.
“Booth,” Brennan said. “This is not a hoax. Or anyway, if it’s a prank, it’s a very expensive one.”
“You’re sure?”
“For one thing, these bones are not plastic — I can tell you that. They are very much the real thing.”
“You can tell already? Is it Musetti?… Sorry. I know that’s impossible….”
She raised an eyebrow. “Actually not impossible.”
“Yeah?”
“Usually, I would need some sort of reference material from the victim to positively ID him… but in this case I can tell you this skeleton is definitely not Stewart Musetti. Or, more accurately, I can tell you it’s not all Stewart Musetti.”
“Obviously,” Booth said. “Last time I saw the guy, he had a lot more skin and hair and, uh, meat on his bones.”
Brennan shook her head. “You don’t understand.”
“I don’t?”
“This skeleton is not made up of the body of just one person.”
Booth’s eyes widened. “Say what…?”
“This is a contrived skeleton,” Brennan said.
“What the hell—”
Dr. Wu tried to help. “One obvious place is the femora. You know what those are, right?”
“The big bones in the thigh.”
“That’s right, Agent Booth,” Dr. Wu said. “And look at these two. Do you notice any differences?”
Stepping forward, Booth studied the right femur, which, judging from his expression, appeared pretty normal to him, though he obviously wasn’t sure what he was supposed to be searching for.
Brennan watched her colleague with great interest.
He leaned over farther and examined the left femur. He pointed to dark lines that ran around the knobs on either end.
“This one’s been broken?” he asked, his answer more of a question.
Dr. Wu gave him a tiny smile. “You found the right clue — but you drew the wrong conclusion.”
Booth’s eyes rolled. “It wasn’t broken?”
Moving to one of the drawers in the wall, Dr. Wu pulled it open and extracted two long bones. She held up one that looked nearly identical to the left femur of the skeleton. This one had the same thin, dark lines.
“When we’re born,” Dr. Wu said, “our bones are not fully formed. The shaft is bone, but the epiphysial cap…”
Booth gave her a look.
“…the knobby part has cartilage on the end that slowly turns to bone. The line shows us that the cartilage has not completely fused.”
Booth nodded, getting it. “The left femur belonged to someone younger than the body the right femur came from.”
“Good,” Brennan said, meaning it.
“So,” Booth said, frowning in thought, “how old are they?”
“The right femur,” Brennan said, picking up the other bone Dr. Wu had gotten out of the drawer, “is fully fused. This bone came from an adult.”
“The left one?”
Dr. Wu said, “A teenager. Someone younger than twenty.”
Nodding, Booth asked, “Anything else readily apparent to the expert eye?”
“The pelvis belongs to a man,” Brennan said. “The subpubic angle is more v-shaped than u-shaped, which is a male trait.”