Chapter 4:

Booth leaned back in his chair and took a long drink of his coffee. Hawk was sitting across from him sipping easily on a beer. Booth was a little apprehensive of this man. His easy smile, and boyish good looks just didn't compare with what Booth knew about the R.C.M.P.

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police were, as far as Booth knew, vastly under funded, and as such, like every other Canadian thing, made up for it with training. The R.C.M.P. officers that Booth had met had all been highly trained and quite frankly a little scary. Hawk exuded none of that and it bothered Booth. Why it bothered him, he didn't know, but it did. Booth felt it in his gut.

"So tell me about Joseph Cowl." Booth asked.

Hawk shrugged. "Not really much to say other than what I have told you. He started his killing about a year and a half ago in Ottawa. He made no obvious mistakes in all that time. The only reason we had him as a suspect is because a Bank of Montreal video surveillance camera caught him leading his last Canadian victim away the night she disappeared."

Booth shook his head. "It doesn't jive." He rubbed his tired eyes and glanced back up at Hawk. Why didn't he look tired? All cops looked tired. "I mean he must have made some mistakes. It's a fundamental rule of serial killers. The first few kills are always messy and sloppy. He had to have learned on something. What was his military record like?"

Hawk shrugged. "I don't know, it was classified."

Booth slapped his hand down onto the table, the dishes and cutlery rattled on the table as Hawk eyed him coolly, waiting for something.

"That's it!" Booth exclaimed. "He must have learned it in the military."

Hawk raised one eyebrow. "You're telling me you think the Canadian Military taught him how to be a serial killer?"

Both shook his head. "Not to be a serial killer, just taught him to kill. It's not that big a stretch. Something in this guy's head just kind of snapped and he started to prey on girls."

Hawk nodded. "Plausible." He downed his beer in one gulp. "What's our next move? Your city, your show."

Booth stood and flopped some bills onto the table. "We back to Bones and see what she and the Squint Squad have dug up."

"Bones?" Hawk asked. "Squint Squad."

"Sorry, Dr. Brennan and her staff." Booth said with a smile.

"So!" Booth said as he rubbed his hands together and approached the examining table with Hawk behind him. "What have you got for us, Bones."

Angela had already sidled up beside Hawk and had whispered 'Hello' to him with a smile. Hawk smiled back and gave the small woman a long gaze up and down her body. Angela smiled wider.

Brennan frowned disapprovingly at Angela and cleared her throat loudly. "Well, we've discovered that he probably used pliers to remove the victim's fingernails. All wounds, by the way, are peri-mortem. He used a variety of knives, long, short, serrated and tapered. At one point, he used a lighter to burn parts of the victim's body. Traces of butane were found on the burns." Brennan paused and looked around. No one was looking at her or the body on the examination table. Everyone was staring at the floor. Zach was visibly trying to keep tears from his eyes.

"Judging by the various stages of insects found on the remains, I'd say she was in the ground for no more than 19 weeks." Hodgins said, shifting from foot to foot. "I also found some kind of dust on her clothes, I haven't identified it yet, I've got the mass spectrometer working on it."

"Cause of death?" Booth asked.

"None of the wounds were enough to kill individually." Zach said softly.

"So she was tortured to death?" Hawk asked.

Zach nodded.

Angela handed a sheet of drawing paper to Booth. "My sketch of her." She said. "I made her look happy; I thought it would be better if she looked happy."

Hawk placed a firm hand on Angela's shoulder. "A good idea." He said in a soft voice.

Booth took the sheet and nodded his thanks to Angela. "I'll see if I can track down her face in missing persons." He glanced down at the sketch. "She was beautiful. Some of your best work, Angela."

"Thanks, Sweety."

Booth turned to Hawk, who now had his arm around Angela and was rubbing her shoulders trying to comfort her. Booth paused for a second, "I was just going to go back to the office and run this. If you want to stick around and do the sightseeing thing, I'll pick you up when we have something more complete."

Hawk nodded. "I was going to see if Angela here might need some air."

Angela looked up at Hawk. "I'd love some." She said, putting on the best smile she could.

Zach and Hodgins went towards their respective desks in silence, each trying to keep out of their minds the visions of what had actually happened to the young girl.

Booth watched as the four people left Brennan alone with him. "Look, Bones, I didn't want to ask this question with everyone else around." Booth started.

"I didn't think you would." Brennan said as she covered the bones with a white sheet. "There was no sexual trauma; as a matter of fact there was no damage in the pubic region at all." Brennan turned to head back to her office. Booth wondered if he should follow her or just turn and leave. Brennan left the door open, and Booth took that as a sign to enter.

"How are you and Hawk getting along?" Brennan asked as she sat behind her desk.

Booth shrugged. "Fine, I guess. He's a little strange, but that could just be because he's Canadian."

Brennan rolled her eyes. "You're starting to sound like Hodgins."

"His shoes squeak." Booth said.

"That's bad?"

"Any good cop knows that you should have good sturdy shoes that are relatively comfortable and quiet." Booth said. "His shoes squeak. He said they were new, why would he buy new shoes to go to another country to conduct an investigation?"

"You sound jealous." Brennan said. "Like you're not the Alpha Male any more."

"I'm not jealous." Booth snapped. "I just don't trust him." Booth paused and looked directly into Brennan's eyes. "Call it my gut."

Brennan sighed. "We've had discussions about your gut before." She leaned back and looked out a window, where she saw Hawk and Angela walking down a path and chatting with each other. "There's no real empirical evidence to back your claims, however," she added quickly when Booth took a deep breath. "Your so called 'gut' has proven accurate in the past."