Chapter 38. Real or Memorex?

"The phone rings in the middle of the night, my father yells,

"What you gonna do with your life …"

"Bones, where have you been? I've been sitting here in this monkey suit sweating up a stink for almost an hour. And why are you at the doctor's office – everything okay?"

"Booth, everything's fine. At least it will be. I just had the strangest experience, but I'll tell you about it later. Suffice it to say that I am more human than I thought I was," she says, actually sounding excited. "Resistance is futile," she says in a robotic voice. "Get it, Booth? It's Star Trek. You know, the Borg …"

"Who are you and what have you done with my partner?" laughs Booth, surprised by her knowledge of the cult series featuring Jean-Luc Picard. Flippin' foreign guys again, he smirks to himself. "Just wait until Sweets and Fisher find out about this. They had you pegged as a Dalek."

"What's a Dalek?"

"From Doctor Who."

"Dr. Who? The periodontist-proctologist with the wandering eye at Bethesda General?"

"What?" says Booth, disturbed that there is such a person. "You know, long knitted scarf … curly hair, English accent. Travels around in a flying blue phone booth thingy – or, no, wait – I think it's a police box – or bobby box or whatever. He calls it THE TARDIS?"

Brennan remains silent. He can hear the blank look on her face over the phone line.

"Time travel?" He tries one last time, gives up. "Okay –lets move on."

"Thank you. Were there gum shoes in the ambulance?" She can't believe she let the time travel comment go without comment."

"Yes, thank God. It's a crap hole down there. Can't I just take a picture and send it to you?" he asks, shifting from one foot to the other, testing the ground for squishiness and knowing full well that it's going to get worse the closer her gets to the mud.

"Booth. Have you ever heard me complain about getting dirty?"

"Oh, there are so many comments I could make, but no one is hear to enjoy them with me …"

"Booth. Focus. Please. Didn't you ever have a sand box as a kid? Or were you one of those fussy boys …" Brennan chides her partner.

"Well, grown men have a whole different idea about what getting dirty means than little boys in a sandbox …"

"Okay Casanova, lets get to work."

Booth asks for and receives a pair of large gum shoes from the EMT. He puts them on and heads over to the area cordoned-off by bright yellow crime scene tape.

"Tell me when you get to the hole," says Bones. She's sitting in her car, parked outside the medical complex.

"At the hole," he reports.

"How deep is the hole?"

"Bout five feet."

"Dimensions?"

"About three and a half wide and spans the length of the property."

"Hmm. Interesting. Look at the walls inside the hole. There should be visible layering, like the rings in a tree trunk, but in the dirt."

"Layers of sediment," he says.

"Precisely," she replies.

"Okay – do the lines of sediment appear consistent around the perimeter where the remains were located?"

"Yes. What does that mean?"

"I don't know for sure, but Hodgens will. I'm going to have him come out there with us."

"No way, Bones," objects Booth.

"Excuse me?"

"Angela is due to squeeze out a puppy any moment now. He'll quit before he leaves her side until that baby is born."

"Oh. Good point. I'll have Hodgens locate a coring device so we can gather samples to send back to the lab."

"What about the remains? The locals want a name, time of death, anything," Booth kicks a little dirt into the hole and peers over the ledge at the skeleton.

"Okay – whatever you do, the goal is to disturb the surrounding soil as little as possible," Brennan closes her eyes and envisions herself there. "Sit on the edge of the hole, as if like you are about to ease into an in-ground swimming pool for the first time."

"Okay .."

"Not yet!" she says quickly.

"What? Don't sit down yet, or don't slide into the hole yet?"

"Before sliding into the hole, determine where you want your feet to land. You need to have enough space between yourself and the skeleton so that you can bend over it and look at it closely without touching it."

"Got it. Can I get in now?"

"One other thing …"

"Now what?"

"If indeed these bones have been somehow cleaned, the particulates are even more difficult to find than if we had soft tissue, clothing, etc. to examine. So – disturb as LITTLE of the surrounding soil as possible. If you can manage to make only two foot prints, that would be optimal."

Booth makes a dubious face. "You're asking a lot, lady."

"To whom much is given, much shall be required," quotes Brennan.

"Oh," starts Booth, disbelieving what he just heard. "Did you just quote the bible to me? The Catholic Bible?"

"Are you in the hole yet?"

"I think you just quoted from the gospel according to Luke. I'm in the hole. FIRE IN THE HOLE! Sorry, I just had to say that."

"All Christian religions abide by the allegedly historical writings in the gospels. Not just the Catholics."

"Yeah, but we were first," counters Booth. "The dirt down here is not as wet as it looked. The bones … aren't exactly clean."

"What do you mean?"

"Well," he says, down on his haunches, using one arm to brace himself against the opposite wall of the hole. "They've been in a hole full of dirt for some time. They look dirty – but cleared of anything that might have been human before."

"You are referring to viscera, tissue, etc.?"

"Correct," says Booth standing for a moment and stretching his back.

"Okay – that, combined with any disturbances in the sediment layers will give us an approximate time – for now. It would take too long for me to bring you through the process of identifying age of remains – or how long this person has been dead."

"We've gotta give law enforcement here something, Bones. Anything."

"Okay – ask for a measuring tape and someone to write some notes down."

"Benton! Where's Benton?" shouts Booth over the edge of the hole he's standing in.

"While he's locating writing materials, find out who has a SLR camera. Probably a newspaper photographer. Tell him he can be the first one to use whatever you shoot. They usually go for that."

"Got it." Booth sends another minion to summon a photographer from the on-lookers.

"Take down the length measurements of the humerus, radius, femur, and tibia. Without disturbing the bones, see if you can estimate the circumference of those four bones. This will help us determine if the victim is male or female. Take five or six close-up photos of the cranium. Send those all to me and copy Angela at the Jeffersonian right away."

"Got it," answers Booth, confidently.

"Oh, and take photos from as many angles as possible of the sacrum. This will help us determine the sex, the age, and whether or not this person has given birth."

"One more thing. In each photo, place something next to the bone as a reference of scale."

"Like what? I have nothing here."

"Ask the EMT for scissors, unroll the tape measure, cut of the final three to five inches, and use that to place next to the bones you photograph."

Booth starts to do this and the EMT begins to object. "We'll buy you a new one, buddy," he says to the most agitated of the two EMTs.

"Done?" Asks Brennan.

"What? I haven't even started."

"It never takes me this long …" says Brennan.

"Would you just … back off, lady. I'm out of my element here!"

"Booth."

"What?" he snaps at her.

"Take the scissors and tap on the skull, then one of the larger bones."

"What's that gonna do?"

"The sound will tell us if the skeleton is a polymer replica, or real bones," she explains.

Booth takes the scissors and taps several different bones. Brennan quizzes him about the quality and tone of the resulting sounds and determines that this is indeed a real skeleton.