Brennan read and reread certain passages.
Around noon of the day of his disappearance, Parks had been seen at lunch in the Loop in the company of a man named Mark Koch, who also had an office in the Silversmith Building. A jeweler, Koch had lunch with Parks most days, and said that July fourteenth had been just like most every other shared luncheon with the accountant.
More witnesses, more statements… more of the same, and as Angela had suggested, everyone involved with the case indeed was male.
Unmarried, Parks had no noteworthy female acquaintances, not even sisters (he had none), and his mother was deceased.
The last page was Parks’s client list, which was — as the police report noted — quite short.
Seven names…
…but one leapt at her.
Her eyes flashed to her partner, engrossed in the Battaglia file.
“Booth,” she said.
Without looking up, he held up an index finger: he would be with her in what… a second, a minute, an hour?
This was one of the things about him that drove her mad. Whatever he was doing was always more important….
Not this time.
“Booth!”
“What?” he said with a start.
A nurse leaned in. “Is everything all right?”
“Sorry,” Brennan said sheepishly. “Didn’t mean to yell.”
The nurse cast her slitted-eyed disapproval, but said nothing and departed.
Brennan asked Booth, “You didn’t look at these at all?”
“No,” he said, one eye on the Battaglia file. “When I talked to Greene on the phone, he just said Parks was some accountant, and this goombah Battaglia mob muscle, not a real player.”
“Well, the accountant?”
“Yeah?”
“He only had about a half dozen clients.”
Booth shrugged. “And?”
“And one of them was named Anthony Gianelli.”
Booth slammed closed the Battaglia file, rose and crossed to the bed in two steps. He snatched the thick file folder out of her hands.
“Help yourself,” she said, folding her arms, an eyebrow arched.
“Thanks,” he said, reading the file but not her sarcasm.
Dr. Keller came in, took in the FBI agent, whose nose was buried in the manila folder. “I suppose I shouldn’t ask.”
Ignoring Keller, Booth said, “This has to be the connection… but does it mean Jorgensen was somehow mobbed up? Tied to Gianelli?”
“Excuse me?” Dr. Keller asked. “I’m sure your case is important, Agent Booth. But so is mine, and her name is Brennan.”
“Sorry,” Booth said, shutting the folder.
Skirting the FBI agent, Dr. Keller asked, “Feeling better, Dr. Brennan?”
“Yes, thank you. A good night’s sleep can do wonders.”
“Often the best medicine,” he said, and gave her a quick exam, cursory enough not to require Booth’s absence, and pronounced her fit enough to check out.
“Good to hear, Doctor,” she said.
The youthful physician half-smiled. “Really? Weren’t you going to leave anyway?”
“Probably.”
He sighed. “Well, I would hate to call security to restrain you, so let’s just check you out. Your injuries are going to need time to heal, and I want you to take it easy.”
“You can count on me, Doctor.”
“Yes,” Dr. Keller said, lifting both eyebrows, “but for what?”
Half an hour later — five minutes of which were devoted to Brennan refusing to ride in a wheelchair — she and Booth were in the hospital parking lot.
“We should go see Gianelli,” Booth said, somehow managing to be glum and excited at once.
“Which one? Father or son?”
“Either. Both.”
“With what for evidence?”
Booth kept walking, thinking, obviously trying to come up with an answer; but by the time they were seat-belted into the Crown Vic, he had still said nothing.
“Okay,” he said finally, starting the car. “Maybe you’re right. We don’t really have anything. We have to go somewhere.”
“Yes, we do,” Brennan said. “My hotel.”
He pulled onto the ramp. “I’ll bite — why?”
“I need my laptop.”
“What’s on your laptop?”
“Take me to my hotel and I’ll show you.”
He snorted a laugh. “A beautiful woman, a hotel room, and a suggestive remark — best offer I’ve had all day.”
He headed toward the hotel.
“There was nothing suggestive about—”
“Joke,” he said.
Including the “beautiful” part? she wondered.
Booth managed to keep his curiosity under wraps until they got to her hotel, but he was clearly anxious. They did not converse, however, and she could see he was chasing theories in his mind.
She did not give in to that pursuit — she preferred to have more data first.
He allowed her a quick shower and a change of clothes before sitting her down at the little desk with the hotel’s high-speed Internet connection.
She pulled up the files that Angela had sent of the images she’d created with the Angelator, a program Angie developed that allowed rendering of 3-D holographic images based on measurements from the original skulls. With the Angelator, a face and hair could be given to what had been a bare skull.
Brennan turned the laptop to share the images with Booth, who had drawn a chair up beside her.
“This is making my brain hurt,” Booth said.
“No comment,” Brennan said.
“Parks was probably gay—”
“Possibly gay.”
He gave her that. “Possibly gay, which made him a potential target for Jorgensen… but Battaglia was the furthest thing from Jorgensen’s victim profile.”
“Can’t a mob guy be gay?”
“Not one whose first arrest was a rape charge involving a sixteen-year-old waitress.”
“Oh.” She shifted her position. “And Parks had a connection to the Gianellis.”
He nodded decisively. “Both these victims had a connection to the Gianellis.”
They studied side-by-side pictures of the two men.
Battaglia had a wide, flat mug with the nose and big bulging eyes of a bulldog.
Parks was blond with blue eyes and angular, sharp features, including high cheekbones, adding up to a vague resemblance to an owl.
Her cell phone rang and she hit the button. “Brennan.”
“Zach.”
Her assistant Zach Addy — thin and bespectacled, with a mop of dark hair — was halfway through two doctorates, but looked more like he was halfway through his senior year in high school.
“What’s up?” Brennan asked.
“Third skeleton just arrived, and we’ve started testing already. I thought you’d want to know.”
“Thanks, Zach. Stay on it.”
“…Wait a minute, Jack wants to talk to you.”
Hodgins got on the line. “Been looking more into the soil question.”
“Hi, Jack. Soil question? Does it have an answer?”
“The sandy soil the first two skeletons were buried in is different than the soil under that Jorgensen guy’s house.”
“We knew that.”
“Yes,” Jack said, “but we know more now. I’ve been doing some further testing and comparisons, and the soil mixture from the skeletons matches a place called the Indiana Dunes Inland Marsh.”
“Great work,” Brennan said.
Jack said, “Thanks… just don’t get too effusive. It’s a smaller area to search than all of Chicago, but it’s still several hundred acres.”
“Where do we start?”
“I’d suggest the main gate.”
“…Thanks, Jack. It’s a start. A good one.”
“Yeah, and I got something off the third skeleton, too. Not sure what it is, but I’ve got it in the gas chromatograph/mass spectrometer now. I’ll call ya back when I know what the substance is.”