Bones: Buried Deep

by Max Allan Collins

  If so, the tipster had to be FBI and, sooner or later, Booth would trap that rat.

  Brennan found the next door, behind a large lathe in the corner. She stepped aside to let Booth take the lead.

  The door opened onto a dark room, a spiral staircase going down into darkness. Using a mini-flash, Booth found a light switch and flipped it, bathing the room below in fluorescent light.

  Instantly Booth recognized the workroom of a madman.

  In the chamber below were worktables, not unlike the ones at the Field Museum. A headless skeleton lay on the one nearest the stairs, blood on the table and floor around it.

  Brennan moved around him to survey the remains from up close. Booth descended the stairs, his eyes on the scientist, her eyes on the blood.

  She followed it, looking at the floor beyond the table, and said, “Oh, no…. Sad. How sad….”

  Booth sped up now, coming around the table and pointing his gun down…

  … but what he saw made him holster his weapon.

  On the floor in a pool of blackened blood lay Gianelli’s dog, its throat cut.

  In a huge tub along one wall resided evidence of a hydrogen peroxide bath, a tag stuck between the toes of the headless skeleton.

  Brennan picked it up and unfolded the printed-out note, which read:

  POP THE TRUNK.

  They trooped back upstairs, Booth making a beeline for Vincent’s Vette. The keys were in the lid and he indeed popped the trunk, and found exactly what he expected to find.

  The head of Vincent Gianelli.

  This had little impact on Brennan, who had seen more than her share of severed skulls, even if she had not long ago spoken to this one firsthand. This skull still had much of its flesh, muscle, and hair.

  Vincent’s face possessed a strangely peaceful cast, belied by the hematomas on his cheeks and ragged neck, which told the anthropologist that the defleshing of the younger Gianelli’s bones had at least started while he was still alive.

  Not a pleasant way to leave the planet.

  The others all backed up when Brennan used her cell phone to snap a photo of the head, then with a latex-gloved hand promptly pulled it out of the trunk by its hair and tipped it so she was looking up Vincent’s neck from the bottom.

  She wanted to see where it had been severed.

  Replacing the head in the trunk, Brennan trudged back downstairs to count cervical vertebrae. She was sure that the number left with the skull and those on the skeleton would add up to seven.

  She was right.

  Though they would do more testing, this skeleton obviously belonged to one person: their deceased host.

  She wheeled to find Booth standing behind her. “Who do you suppose did this?”

  He shook his head.

  “Will you investigate this one?”

  “Yeah. But mob killings are rarely solved and prosecuted. These are pros.”

  Her eyes went from the skeleton to the dog, and she asked, “Who could do a thing like this?”

  “Whoever was ordered to,” Booth said coolly. “All about business with these people.”

  “Horrible business,” she said with a small shudder.

  Carefully, Booth put an arm around her. “That’s why we go after them so hard.” He gave her a little squeeze, then released her.

  She could hardly believe he had done that. She had no idea what to say.

  Booth’s expression was grave. “I need to tell his father. Raymond Gianelli. You can come with if you want.”

  “…Should I?”

  Shrugging, he said, “Your call. But you were the one to identify the body.”

  He had a point.

  11

  To Temperance Brennan, Raymond Gianelli’s monstrous home made his son’s mansion look like a guesthouse.

  Tucked away in a quiet Forest Park neighborhood, only the high wall around the property gave a hint at the nature of the man’s business. Within the grounds, however, armed guards patrolled with attack dogs and — unlike at Vincent’s place — everybody here was still on duty.

  At the gate, two burly guys in black jumpsuits glared at Booth and Brennan, but inspected their IDs and let them pass.

  Booth drove up a short drive to the front, where two more gunmen in black jumpsuits waited, looking like bad-guy SWAT team members.

  The FBI agent and the anthropologist were escorted into a mahogany-paneled office off the entranceway. A desk bigger than three of hers dominated the room, a huge leather chair behind. Two chairs waited on this side of the desk, and Brennan had the same feeling she got in middle school when called to the principal’s office.

  Raymond Gianelli strode in, his dark, well-tailored suit immaculate, his face a blank mask as he took his place in the big chair, without shaking hands. “What now, Special Agent Booth?”

  Booth’s face was serious, no animosity in his eyes at all as he said, “I don’t relish this task, Mr. Gianelli, despite our adversarial relationship…. We’re here to inform you that your son Vincent has been murdered.”

  Gianelli didn’t move, his expression didn’t change. “…How?”

  Brennan opened her mouth, but before she could utter a sound, Booth put a hand on her arm.

  She clammed up.

  Booth said, “Does it matter?”

  The gangster’s chin dropped to his chest and he rubbed his forehead. “You know it does. It’s not like you to pull punches, Agent Booth.”

  Booth hesitated, and Gianelli, straightening up, demanded, “How did my son die?”

  Brennan spoke, her voice low, professional. “He was tortured — we don’t know how long as yet — and his head was severed. He was alive at the time. I’m sorry.”

  Booth was frowning, perhaps even irritated, but Gianelli only nodded and said, “Thank you.”

  To Booth, the gang boss asked, “Who is she?”

  “Dr. Brennan is an anthropologist who sometimes works with—”

  “You could stand to learn from her,” Gianelli interrupted. His voice was strong but, if you listened carefully, a tremor could be detected. “She has a nice way with the truth.”

  “She does,” Booth admitted.

  “Where is my boy now? I want to see him.”

  “No, sir,” Brennan said. “You don’t.”

  Gianelli stared at her, his eyes dark marbles, his face a mask of pain and anger. “I want to see him for myself.”

  “It’s your right,” Booth said.

  Raymond Gianelli rode with them, no bodyguards, no gunmen, no lawyer, just the three of them.

  They drove to the Cook County morgue, to which Vincent’s remains had been transferred.

  In the basement, in a cold, green hallway with one bench and two windows at the corridor’s end, they waited.

  Soon they were standing on either side of the father, facing a window behind which a blank-faced worker in hospital greens rolled in a sheet-covered cart.

  Brennan wondered if Gianelli noticed the abnormally large lump where the head was. While the rest of the body lay flat, the head stood upright and the sheet rose a good six inches more than normal.

  With the cart next to the window, the worker on the other side withdrew the sheet to reveal Vincent’s head.

  A hand shot to Raymond Gianelli’s mouth and a horrified murmur escaped his lips. Surely Gianelli had seen almost everything in his long and illegal life; but this was too much, even for him.

  The sheet was drawn a little farther back, and Brennan followed Gianelli’s eyes to the skeleton.

  Then his eyes closed, tears fell, and Raymond Gianelli — who had mercilessly murdered and ordered God only knew how many more — wobbled as though he might drop.

  Automatically, Brennan and Booth each grabbed an arm and steered him away from the window to the long, wooden bench. He sagged and sat, weeping shamelessly.

  Softly Booth said, “We are sorry for your loss.”

  Gianelli glared up at the FBI agent. “Really? Tell the truth like your lady friend he
re — don’t you love that my son is dead, and there’s one less Gianelli in the world?”

  Booth kept his voice even. “No parent should have to bury a child.”

  Brennan could tell that Gianelli was eager for a fight, perhaps intent on picking one so rage could blot out sorrow; but Booth’s words, his obvious sincerity, stopped the man cold.

  His face fell into his hands.

  They drove him home in silence, Gianelli in the back, lost in his thoughts, Brennan thinking about how everything up until now seemed like a warm-up for the Old School gangster bloodbath that would surely follow.

  As they turned into Gianelli’s driveway, he said, “I want to make a deal.”

  Booth shook his head. “All due respect to your situation, Mr. Gianelli, nothing has changed. I told you before, sir, no more deals. I offered you one in the deposition room, and you turned it down.”

  Brennan could hardly believe what she was hearing, and started to speak, but Booth’s eyes shut her down.

  He was up to something.

  She swiveled slightly to see Gianelli in the backseat. He rubbed his forehead wearily.

  “I’ll tell you all of it, anyway,” he said. “Not just our family, but the others. I know everything everyone’s ever done in this town.”

  “You can’t fight them all,” Booth said. “You want to use me as your weapon of revenge. I’m not playing.”

  Gianelli’s eyes and nostrils flared. “You think this is a fucking game, you FBI prick?”

  Booth said nothing.

  They were parked in front of Gianelli’s house; one of Gianelli’s men had a hand on the vehicle’s rear door, but something had kept the guard from opening it. A gesture or look from Gianelli had maintained their privacy.

  Whatever it had been, Brennan missed it.

  Finally Booth spoke: “I’m the only way you have to get at the others now. Agreed?”

  “…Agreed.”

  “Problem for you, Mr. Gianelli, is I can put them away now without your help. And put you away, too, no deals…. Unless, of course, you have something to trade that hasn’t occurred to me. Otherwise, we have nothing more to talk about.”

  Gianelli sat for a long time without saying anything. When he did, his voice was soft and Brennan had to strain to hear.

  “I know what you want, Booth.”

  “Do you?”

  “You want the guy who gave us Musetti. You want the rat.”

  “I’m listening.”

  Gianelli hunched over. “I give you that guy, we’ll cut a deal?”

  Still facing front, Booth said, “You’ll get hard time, Raymond, but we’ll protect you. White-collar country club with no other mob guys. Nobody to cut you in the shower, unless it’s a fallen congressman or Enron exec needing a buck.”

  “You’re funny.”

  “Give me the federal leak, and we will take the others out. Those responsible for the atrocity perpetrated upon your son will go down. Give us enough, we’ll bust them down to the root.”

  Gianelli’s sigh had gravel and regret in it. “Hardest thing I ever did, havin’ Stewie whacked. Musetti and me, we grew up together, our papas were pals, we were best buddies, compadres. Woulda been for our whole lives, too, only somebody started talkin’ to him, fillin’ his head with shit that we was gonna whack him. Which was bull — I loved that guy. But he threatened my family… threatened Vincent. And my boy wasn’t perfect, but I loved him. And I couldn’t allow that.”

  “I understand,” Booth said.

  “Finally, when we couldn’t convince Stewie we weren’t after his ass, I had to have Stewie taken out… to save my son. And the son of a bitch, the very bastard who filled Stewie with all that nonsense about us wanting him gone? Well, he’s the very same bastard who sold him out to us. I will give him to you gladly, Agent Booth.”

  Brennan’s eyes were on Booth now. His breathing seemed rapid and shallow, but he said nothing, sitting, staring through the windshield, not even looking in the rearview.

  At last Gianelli said, “Special Agent in Charge Robert Dillon.”

  Booth nodded, as if this were old news.

  Brennan, however, almost fell off the seat.

  Dillon?

  She eyed Booth — was he believing this? Where was the proof?

  As if in reply to her thoughts, Gianelli said, “I have evidence for you in a safe-deposit box — audiotapes of the bastard that he don’t know about. You want them?”

  “Yes.” Booth turned to look at the man he’d been talking to. “I’ll have a man accompany you to the bank, Mr. Gianelli, to collect that evidence. You go on in and I’ll arrange that.”

  Gianelli nodded.

  Booth said, “Let me clear the rat out of our nest, and then we’ll meet you back here.”

  Gianelli made a slight gesture with his hand, his man opened the door and he climbed out, no wobble in his step now.

  As the elder statesman of organized crime headed into his mansion, Booth and Brennan rolled slowly away from and back around the circular drive.

  “You believe him?” she asked.

  Booth glanced at her. “What’s his motivation to lie?”

  “He’s a liar. With a dead son to avenge.”

  “The latter is true, Bones, but the former? Gianelli is a lot of things, but a liar isn’t one of them. Within his world, he plays by the rules. His word is gold. Matter of honor.”

  “Then you do believe him?”

  “Hard not to. Despite everything he’s done over the years, Gianelli is on the federal side now.”

  She frowned. “That’s hard to picture.”

  “Do you think his enemies will be satisfied with just killing Vincent?”

  “Oh. Well, no. Of course not.”

  “Raymond’s motives are twofold. As you said, he wants revenge.”

  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.