"Ninety-eight...ninety-nine..."
The pen arced smoothly through the air and touched down with a satisfying "tok" on the trunk of the police car, then bounced its lazy return towards Booth's waiting hand. He caught the pen, weaved it expertly through his fingers, then sent it flying again.
"One hundrreeddd," he crowed with mock fanfare. The car's owner looked up from her clipboard to cast a scrunch-eyed glare towards the agent, who continued to ignore her as he started another pass.
"Booth," came the exclamation behind him.
Startled, he bobbled the pen and flung it with untimely force. It deflected off to the side and grazed the cheek of a nearby uniform, who flinched away with a garbled profanity. Booth clenched his mouth into an embarrassed grin, winced a quick apology, and turned around to face his partner.
"Booth. I thought I told you to meet me at the Jeffersonian." The mildly annoyed face of Dr. Temperance Brennan frowned at him from under a god-knows-what-smeared face mask. A spattering of goo adorned her dark blue jumpsuit and the gloved hands on her hips were covered with an unidentifiable, and likely horrible smelling, brown glop. Behind her, a similarly-attired Doctor Hodgins stumbled through the matted grass, though he wore an expression of unbridled glee as he cooed towards some crucial and crawling fauna in a specimen jar.
Booth tried to reply, but he was cut off by the young man thrusting the black-capped container at him. Inside, a squadron of agitated red and black dots squirmed up the sides. "Hister quadrimaculatus," said the doctor with a glimmer of awe. "Hister carrion beetles. These babies usually shows up when the corpse is ju..."
"Great, great. I'm sure that'll be a big help." Booth clapped Hodgins on the back and, in doing so, pushed him towards the Jeffersonian van, where some nameless intern was waiting to lavish the appropriate amount of attention on the find. "Bones, listen-"
"No, Booth," Dr. Brennan gestured with one hand, flipping a particle of blop off to the side. "I...need you at the Jeffersonian." Her voice took on the edge that indicated a minor-scale meltdown was less than two clicks away. Her nostrils flared and she breathed a layer of mist on the inside of her face shield.
He changed his tactic. "I figured I'd ride back with you." He pantomimed a relaxed driving pose, bobbing his head back and forth like he was listening to a pop anthem. "You know: you, me, talking about the case, just like we do all the time."
She put the free hand on the edge of her mask. "Yes, well, that won't be for several hours and I need you to get me a warrant in case we find something after we bring in the jackhammers."
Booth looked puzzled. "The...jackhammers? Bones, this is a graveyard. You brought the backhoe in a half hour ago. That's enough, right?"
"Yes, well, that's what I thought, but..." She turned around and walked back down the hill. He half-sprinted after her, eyeing the tamped-down and browning grass with some relief. His shoes stood a chance of being wearable after this case, unlike his usual business wear forays into swampland and sewers. They walked in silent tandem through the run-down cemetery, side-stepping time-worn headstones, the thin stone monuments now chipped and spattered with lichen.
Three days ago, the Jeffersonian had been contacted by a federal prosecutor who demanded the lab's expertise. He said he'd received an anonymous tip about the final resting place of the Honorable Arnold Henderson, a DC judge who vanished twenty years ago. Various theories about the judge's disappearance, ranging from his fleeing the mob to being murdered by a spurned lover, had kept the public entertained for months but ultimately the case went nowhere. Booth privately suspected this whole shebang was just a spectacular attempt at career revival by someone who would otherwise be stuck in the annals of prosecutorial history, but no one was asking him.
They reached the exhumation site in time to see the backhoe take out a few headstones as the driver made unusual haste getting away. A nearby grave settled slightly underneath the tread marks, prompting a small avalanche of dirt to collapse around it.
"Oh come on," cried Booth after the retreating machinery. "Show some respect for the dead."
"The dead don't care, Booth," said Bones patiently. "Really, the strange preoccupation with respect for the remains is quite inappropriate. After all, there's nothing respectful about pulling out a corpse's organs, filling it with formaldehyde, and putting makeup on it. It would be," she took in a breath, "more respectful to let it decompose naturally."
"Bones, can we not talk about this right now?" He shifted uncomfortably in his suit at the mention of the naturalness of death. There really was nothing natural about death no matter how many times he'd stared at it. "You said something about jackhammers."
The dig was surrounded by a flapping white canvas tent, blocking the view of a cluster of bored-looking journalists behind an obligatory and completely redundant strip of police tape. A few cameras snapped pictures of the duo as they approached the site, though a flash of Booth's badge kept any from asking questions.
They ducked in and Bones gestured into the hole. Instead of the expected coffin, there was a partially rotted corpse draped across what looked like a massive slab of concrete. Bones grabbed one of the floodlights and aimed it towards the gravesite, illuminating the grisly site.
"Wait, is that the judge?" Booth tried to look closely without actually moving any part of himself towards the scene.
"I can't determine that," she chided Booth, then held up a hand. "But, based on style of dress, amount of decomposition, the width of the pelvis and the prominent brow ridges," she pulled a pen out of her pocket and gestured into the pit. "It suggests that this is a male who died between 10 and 40 years ago." She smiled proudly. "I knew the question and I even extrapolated for you."
Booth pulled out a handkerchief and mopped his forehead. A few of the histerine or whatever beetles seemed to be flying around his head. "That's great, Bones. I appreciate it." Small steps, he thought. "But how did he end up down here and what the hell is this brick?"
"I have not yet determined this," her smile was replaced by familiar annoyance at his asking guesswork questions. "That's why I need a jackhammer. We're going to bring this all back to the Jeffersonian."
"Right, right. Hey," his face brightened. "Wasn't the judge working on some sort of mob stuff? Maybe the person who killed him actually buried someone else down here, then used the judge's death to cover it." He clapped his hands. "Best place to bury a body is with a body. Works great."
"Mmm, no. The best place to bury a body would involve it being completely unfindable. This body," she gestured again, "is obviously found. And besides..."
Bones tilted the lamp down and then hopped into the hole, crouching next to the remains. "The concrete looks far older than six months. And there seems to be," her voice became muffled as she brushed some dirt away from her feet, "some sort of marking on it. I don't recognize the particulars, but it has some features that I've seen in 15th century monastic tomes on funeral rites. I need to study it more closely."
Booth swiveled the light and allowed himself a generous fifteen degree waist bend, bringing him as close as he was comfortable to the decay. When she moved aside her arm, he caught a full glimpse of the uncovered carving. He stumbled back out of the tent, tripping over the mound of displaced dirt and landing hard on a tombstone. A light storm of photography flashes surrounded him, but he screened them out as he squinted his eyes shut and tried to slow his pulse.
"Booth? Booth?" Bones emerged from the tent. "Are you hurt? What happened?"
Booth didn't answer. He recognized the carving. It wasn't 15th century; it was 11th, and certainly not relating to funerals...at least, not as she meant it. It was the daywalker's sigil, the mysterious sign borne only by those vampires who chose to live as part of humanity. Booth knew it well: it was emblazoned on the brilliant green ring he clenched tightly on his right hand, the very item that let him sit here, panting in panic under a brilliant autumn sun, instead of dissolving into damned ash.
Suddenly, that conversation he'd been meaning to have with Bones was all the more pressing. Even more so, the figured, than jackhammers.
Catchy remix of the Angel and Bones theme
