The Righteous Man in the Shallow Grave 1/3
Chapter 1: The Grave
Ben's Chili Bowl in Washington DC was, as the sign proudly boasted, a city landmark. After fifty years of being in business it remained perpetually unchanged. In far more than fifty years of reaping souls, Tessa had never actually personally set foot inside its walls, even when the riots of the 1960s had torn up the whole neighborhood.
So when she appeared by the long counter amidst the late night clubbing crowd just before closing, she took a few moments to observe the atmosphere before turning to her boss. She understood mankind's sentimentality -- mostly, anyway, as much as someone who'd never been human could -- and fifty years was a long time, in human terms. But to her, the place looked like any other odd little restaurant, butcher shop, or deli her boss tended to favor. He liked them greasy. He liked them cheap. And he really liked them famous. Something about the inherent ego and self-importance seemed to amuse him.
"Tessa," he said, appearing on the stool at the counter next to her, a pile of food already arranged in front of him. "Have a half-smoke. They're named after that comedian who likes pudding."
"No," said Tessa. "Thank you." She looked around the restaurant again, eyes landing briefly on a shivery young woman in tight, shiny clothes buying herself a cup of vegetarian chili. The woman wasn't long for this world, but she wasn't exactly counting down the hours. "No one here is going to die, tonight. Why are we here?"
"Sit down," said Death, gesturing to the empty stool next to him. "I'd like to chat."
Death hadn't called her over to "chat" since she'd been possessed by Azazel and forced to let Dean Winchester live a little bit longer. It hadn't been pleasant, and Tessa wasn't looking forward to a repeat performance. Dean was properly dead now, though. She hadn't reaped him herself -- she preferred to stay well away from hunters these days, thanks so very much -- but there was no stopping word of his demise from circulating through the reaper community, especially in light of his brother's utter failure to bring him back. After four months, the reapers were just starting to feel settled again.
And now Death wanted to "chat".
"No offense sir," she said, careful to keep her tone respectful. "But I'd prefer to cut to the chase."
"Yes," said Death. "You've always been just a little bit impatient." Death set the remains of his chili dog aside and folded his hands. "We are here because something is shortly to happen. Something large." He looked Tessa in the eye, and she shivered like the girl in the shiny clothes. "Something disruptive."
That was never good. "How many?" Some of her fellows would be here if it was more than just a few. But disruptive events could quickly turn catastrophic.
"I don't know, yet," Death said. "In the short term, I suspect it will be few. Maybe a couple thousand. I've called you, specifically, because I suspect you'll have some interest in the matter." Death stood, leaving a few crumpled bills on the counter and straightening his jacket. "The righteous man has broken," he said. "And the angels have breached Hell's gates."
Tessa frowned. The righteous man only interested her in an academic sense. Unless. . . . "It isn't --"
Death nodded. Tessa resisted the urge to stomp her feet.
"Son of a bitch."
"Language, Tessa." Death cocked his head slightly. "Though I find I agree with sentiment."
Dean goddamn Winchester. He just wouldn't leave Death -- or his reapers -- alone.
There was no way that this would end well.
*
Kyle strode out toward the clearing in long, even steps, despite the thick undergrowth and the unwieldy surveying equipment bumping against his legs. He couldn't count the number of times he'd taken walks like this over the years -- or the number of assistants like Tim he'd had along for the ride.
"It's a damn shame," Tim called, tripping along behind him. "Gotta level all these woods."
"They'll put some of it back," Kyle said easily. "Places like this like to have some trees around."
"And how long'll it take 'em to grow back up?" Tim was beginning to pant. He was a young punk, fresh out of school with a degree in 'environmental engineering' or some such nonsense, who took the only job his experience-less ass could get. It was just Kyle's luck it happened to be with him and not data entry in an office somewhere.
"People gotta shop," he said. "Not like there's a whole lotta options for 'em on this end of town."
"People gotta breathe, first," Tim said. His footsteps paused, and Kyle looked back to find him leaning against one of the trees. Kid really should've looked for a desk job. "And we left 'this end of town' a couple miles back."
"If you build it," Kyle said. "Come on, kid. A few more yards."
Tim groaned, pushing himself upright, the tripod he was carrying looking like an off-center, stiff tail. He nodded and Kyle continued forward.
"Relax, kid. We're just checking things out, today. For all you know, there'll be an ancient tribal burial ground and the owners'll decide to sell it, anyway."
"Dude. If I get cursed, I'm so holding you responsible."
"Dug up a few of 'em in my time." Kyle looked back again with a grin, continuing toward the center of the field. "Nothing's gotten me yet." His left foot caught something rough in the grass, and as though Murphy himself was yakking it up, Kyle went over like a great, flailing tree.
Tim dropped the tripod and hurried forward. Kyle grunted and propped himself up on his elbows to see what he'd hit.
"Goddammit."
The cross lay on its side in the tall grass, half uprooted by some animal or storm so its planks formed a ragged X, not quite tall enough to be visible from the edge of the clearing. Looking closer, Kyle could just make out the outline of a rectangle stretching out from it, a patch about seven feet long more recently disturbed than the rest of the ground. Kyle lay right in the middle of it.
"Man, you gotta be more. . . ." Tim trailed off as he came closer, and Kyle watched as the blood drained from the kid's face as he sketched a cross of his own over his chest. "Is that. . . ?"
"Well." Kyle pushed himself up, dusting off his pants. "It's no ancient tribal burial ground."
"Oh my god." Tim fell back a step as though he worried whomever was resting beneath their feet would come bursting vengefully through the ground. "What -- what do we do?"
Kyle shrugged, frowning. "Contact the company. Go home and hope the boss'll pay us for the day."
"Shouldn't we -- do we call the police?"
"Someone probably will." Kyle ran a hand over his thinning hair. "Hope the boss'll pay us for tomorrow, too."
"Dude," Tim said, staring at him. "Someone's dead."
"It happens. It's a grave, kid. Not like we're looking at rotting bones on the ground."
Tim went paler. "You've seen that?"
"You stick in this job long enough, kid, you'll see most everything." Kyle shook his head down at the cross. "Like a state cremation was too good for you, you asshole."
"Dude," Tim said again. "He's dead."
"Doesn't mean he's not an asshole." Kyle looked over the clearing again and sighed. This would've been a decent gig, too. No local highways to choke the air, no protesters, just a big chunk of land needing a good chunk of time to get properly surveyed. And they hadn't even gotten half a day.
"Who the hell is that?" Tim asked. Kyle turned.
"What?"
"That." Tim pointed toward the woods on the far side of the clearing. "Nah, she's gone, now."
"She?"
"Some dark haired chick. Just, like, standing there, watching."
"Huh." Kyle shrugged. He'd never seen any surveyor fan girls, but he supposed they could exist. People were into anything these days. "Was she hot?"
Tim scowled. "You're a pig, you know that?"
Kyle sighed. "Shut up and get the gear back to the van, kid." If some dead guy was gonna keep him from an honest day's pay, he sure as hell wasn't going to put up with some punk ass's smart, judgmental mouth. "Then you can buy me a beer."
Tim glowered and started scooping up equipment. "Never shoulda left Portland."
And wasn't that the fucking truth.
*
"What are we looking at?" Booth swiped his passcard at the edge of the platform, clearing the steps in two short bounds, his suit jacket flaring out behind him. Bones looked up from where she was hunched with Hodgins over the main work table.
"Human remains," she said, her expression that mix of consternation and confusion that read "I'm a genius, so I can't tell if you're being deliberately obtuse." Booth got that expression all the time.
"Yeah, I can see that." Booth stepped up to the table and grimaced. "Gooey remains."
"Yes," said Bones. She took the skull between her gloved hands and gently pulled the mouth open. "Male," she said. "Late twenties to early thirties, approximately 1.85 meters in height. Likely a transient, judging by the inconsistent dental work, possibly from a young age."
Cam stepped onto the platform, giving Booth a smile. "He arrived this morning. Found in a shallow grave outside Pontiac, Illinois. No wallet, so the local PD requested our help in IDing him."
"Why didn't they tell me?" Booth spread his hands, tilting his head forward. He hated being left out of things. "They always tell me about the recent ones!"
"No foul play, no FBI." Cam pulled on her own pair of gloves. "Looks like this is a good old-fashioned animal attack."
"Ah, the good old days." Hodgins smirked, picking at the corpse like some kind of blond, bearded vulture. "When men were men and wolves were hungry."
"That's a myth," Bones said, moving down towards the corpse's chest. She picked up something long, metal, and pointy and prodded an exposed rib. "And we haven't determined the cause of death, yet."
"Guy's torso was shredded," Cam said. "That's usually going to be fatal."
Booth grimaced. "I swear, it's like you people enjoy this."
"Why are you here, Booth?" Bones glanced up again. "Do you have a case that takes precedence?"
"What, I can't just want to say 'hi'?"
"You can do that over the phone."
Booth shrugged. "Yeah, but I also wanted to tell you that the Bureau finalized things with Scotland Yard. I'm going to England with you." He grinned and spread his arms again, triumphantly this time, waiting for Bones to smile back. She didn't take her eyes off the corpse.
"That information can also be conveyed via phone. And they're more accurately referred to as the Metropolitan Police."
Booth leaned towards Hodgins, who'd stepped back with a tray of petri dishes. "Is she mad at me?"
"Mad at the world, man. Just like the rest of us."
Booth winced. It hadn't been too long since they'd closed the Gormogon case, and as much as Bones tried to pretend she was fine, he knew she was still reeling from Zack's confession. As Hodgins said, just like the rest of them.
"These wounds were definitely made by sharp, curved, bony weapons," Bones said.
"So, claws," said Cam. Bones nodded distractedly.
"That would be a logical conclusion. The pattern appears to be canine in nature."
"Aha!" Booth said. "So much for the kindness of wolves!"
Bones looked up and shook her head at him. Cam leaned in.
"Those marks are pretty wide spread for a wolf. I would have said bear."
"This is not a bear attack." Bones straightened and pointed to what looked to Booth to be just a mass of dead guy chest. "The scrapes are clearly arranged in sets of four, with the fifth set some distance back. The fifth claw on a bear is much closer to the other four." She leaned over again, rubbing a gloved thumb over a groove on the rib. "I agree with you on the depth and spread, though -- I won't know more until we're done cleaning the bones, but I'd say this is the work of a very big dog."
"Like, Cujo big?" Hodgins asked, stepping back in with a fresh tray. "Or Clifford big?"
Bones looked at him. "I don't know what that means."
"They're big dogs," Booth said helpfully. Bones nodded, turning back to the corpse.
"Based on the distance between the claw marks, I'd estimate the animal's paw to be approximately 30 centimeters or more in diameter." She looked up from the body again. "That's the same as a large polar bear."
Cam whistled. "That is one hell of a dog." She prodded at the corpse. "There's not much left by way of tissue for me to look at. This guy must've been down there for awhile. I'd place time of death at more than a year ago."
Angela appeared behind her, notebook in hand, and made a face at the remains. "Ugh. Sorry, hon, I found a crumpled receipt in his pocket that says otherwise." She held up a baggie with a rather gooey looking piece of paper. "Dated April 30th, this year."
"Seriously?" Cam frowned. "This guy's almost completely skeletonized."
Hodgins shook his head. "Maggot activity agrees with Ang. Dude's no more than four months dead."
Bones looked up again. "I'm not seeing any evidence of scavenging, either peri- or post-mortem. Even without embalming, a body in a coffin shouldn't have deteriorated this much that quickly."
Hodgins shrugged. "The coffin wasn't much. It let in more creepy crawlies than a modern casket would have, but not enough to explain . . ." He gestured to the body as a whole. "This."
Cam straightened with a decisive nod. "I'll run a tox screen to see if there are any chemicals that could account for the rapid decomposition. Dr. Hodgins, you've got the clothes to check for particulates?"
Hodgins saluted. "I'm on it, Captain."
They split off, leaving Booth, Bones, and Angela behind with the remains. Angela looked them over again, the "ech" expression transforming into one of sympathy. "Poor guy."
"Very poor," Bones agreed. "Judging by the teeth and the bowing of the legs, I'd say he grew up well below the poverty line."
"That's not what I meant, sweetie." Angela sighed and pulled her notebook tighter to her chest. "The pine box, the rough cross. . . . They were both homemade. Whoever this guy is, someone out there's missing him, at least."
Bones looked over the corpse. "Then they should have chosen his burial site more carefully. I'm sure the plans for the new strip mall were lodged with the county records." She looked up at Angela. "Once we've identified him, we'll make sure his family finds him a better site for a memorial. I'll let you know when the skull's ready for a facial reconstruction."
Angela nodded, still looking at the corpse, probably already writing the tragic story of the John Doe in her head. Booth followed her gaze, then looked away quickly.
"Right. I'll just . . . go get some coffee."
Well, at least on this one they weren't going to have to chase down a serial killer. Just, as Cam had said, one hell of a dog.
*
Hodgins stared through the eyepiece of his microscope for what had to be the fifteenth time in half as many minutes, then looked up at his computer screens. The results hadn't changed. The insect he'd found nestled into the interior folds of the victim's clothing eluded identification in a way that was at once fascinating and infuriating. The fact that he didn't recognize it on sight was surprising, but not unprecedented -- he knew his bugs better than anyone else around, but the thousands of species he was familiar with wasn't even a drop in the bucket compared to the total number known by science in general. The fact that none of his usual resources had any record of anything remotely like it was a surprise. It wasn't native to North America, as far as he could tell, but from Dr. Brennan's notes on the victim's skeletal structure and his own observations into the other particulate matter found on the corpse and the environment, John Doe hadn't spent any significant time overseas, either.
Normally, such a mystery would be exciting, but without Zack around to toss ideas and lord "King of the Lab" over, it almost didn't seem worth it.
Damn Zack. More than that, damn Gormogon, secret societies, and people canny enough to use a kid's pragmatism and logic against him. And damn Jack Hodgins for not seeing that something was up with his best goddamn friend.
Hodgins pushed back from his table and rubbed at his eyes, then picked up his notes on the other particulate matter. The mystery bug would have to wait. It was possible -- okay, only remotely possible, bugs were important -- that they'd figure this whole thing out without it, and in doing so, get the answers Hodgins wanted on who his new buggy friend was and what it meant. Lord knew the particulates themselves had turned out interesting. Cam would want an update on what he'd found so far.
He found her in Angela's office, both of them standing in front of one of the large monitors, their heads cocked to precisely the same angle. Hodgins took a moment to admire the view of Ang from behind before approaching, marveling once again at his luck in landing such a woman. Smart, wild, funny, empathetic, gorgeous -- pretty much the perfect woman, and just as soon as they got the man she'd married on a drunken adventure in Fiji to sign the divorce papers, totally his.
Angela tilted her head the other way. "He's pretty cute," she said. She looked over at Cam. "Don't you think?"
"Not my type." Cam leaned forward, revealing the edge of the computer-generated sketch Angela had done based on the victim's skull. "Does he look familiar, to you?"
"Kind of. Hopefully we'll get a match from one of the usual databases." She turned to her desktop keyboard to start the search, and flashed Hodgins a smile. He grinned back, but it turned to shock the moment she bent down, revealing the facial reconstruction in full.
"Holy. . . ." Hodgins came forward, his notes from the particulates almost completely forgotten. "Oh man, Booth is going to hate this one."
Cam looked from the computerized portrait to Hodgins and back. "You recognize him, Dr. Hodgins?"
Hodgins glanced quickly at her, only to end up snapping his gaze right back to the image on the screen. "Are you kidding? That's Dean Winchester."
Cam's mouth dropped open, and she swung her head to stare at the picture again. "You're right. Booth is going to hate this."
"Dean Winchester?" Angela straightened at her desk. "Why does that name sound familiar?"
Cam shook her head, her eyes wide. "He and his brother Sam topped the FBI's most wanted list for a year. First degree murder, fraud, grave desecration, those boys did it all."
"Yeah, if you want to believe the government-controlled media." Hodgins stepped forward, giving the portrait a closer look, unable to keep a grin from spreading across his face. "Eye witness accounts vary. Half of them insist that Dean and Sam Winchester were heroes, driving around the country saving people from killers and corrupt cops alike."
Cam narrowed her eyes at him. "More of your conspiracy theories, Dr. Hodgins?"
"Wait." Angela folded her arms over her chest. "Isn't this the guy who was, like, skinning women in St. Louis a couple years back? Not what I'd call a hero."
"Ah," Hodgins raised one finger. "But that guy was shot and killed on the scene. Booked, autopsied, and buried, all by the tender hands of St. Louis's finest. And get this, the bullet that killed him? Was made of silver."
"So that wasn't Dean Winchester."
"Just someone -- or something -- that looked exactly like him. A year later in Baltimore, he was taped stating it was a shapeshifter."
"Shot with a silver bullet." Angela shook her head. "Why couldn't this be a nice story of a poor, loved man who couldn't afford a proper burial?"
"Yeah, because our cases are ever that simple."
"It gets weirder," Cam said, tilting her head thoughtfully. "I'm pretty sure I remember hearing that Dean and his brother were killed when that jail exploded in Colorado last winter."
"So how'd he get from there to Pontiac, Illinois?"
Hodgins remembered his notes and held them up. "Particulates from inside his clothing show high concentrations of carbon, nitrates, aluminium phyllosilicates, calcium, sodium chloride, and ash."
Cam frowned. "So . . . he was dirty from the burial."
"Not the outside of his clothing. The inside. We already know whoever buried our vic changed his clothes first, which means this probably comes from the location of the animal attack. And it's not just any dirt. The calcium comes primarily from bone dust. Graveyard dirt."
"Graveyard dirt."
"Likely from a cemetery in the Mississippi Delta."
"Dean Winchester was known for grave desecration all over the country. He could have easily been killed in a cemetery in that area."
"True, but there's also iron dust, powdered herbs, manure, insect chitin --"
"Jack, sweetie," Angela interrupted. "Get to the point."
"I think it's a powder colloquially known as 'goofer dust'. Traditionally used in --"
"Voodoo rituals?" guessed Cam.
Hodgins nodded. "Such as those to bring back the dead."
"Oh you've got to be kidding me."
"It gets better." Well, they might not see it as better, but Hodgins was on a roll, here. "Swabs of the grooves in the victim's ribs show a high concentration of pure sulfur. In some spots so deep it's embedded in the bone."
Cam frowned. "What could cause that?"
"Only way I can think of is if the sulfur was covering the attacking animal's claws."
"So the dog was hanging around, what, a match factory?" Angela asked.
Hodgins shrugged. "Could be. Of course, sulfur is also known as brimstone."
Cam blinked. "Brimstone."
"Like you said, Dr. Saroyan." Hodgins rocked back on his heels. "It was one hell of a dog."
*
Ruby paced across the motel room, a typically skeevy joint Sam had picked out, all exposed brick and tacky mirrors. She dreamed of the days she'd be able to talk him into getting something higher class. She wasn't a demanding demon, but something that didn't scream 'rents by the hour' would be nice.
Sam was out picking up food, as usual. It'd been awhile -- a small eternity, really -- but she was certain people didn't eat as much in her days as a human. Sam seemed to need to cram something into his mouth hourly, and they were nowhere near her talking him into cramming what she wanted him to in there. Not that Ruby didn't understand to a certain extent. She enjoyed the pleasures of the flesh in all their forms and always had. It'd marked her as an outcast even before she'd sold her soul so many centuries ago, and at the time they didn't even have french fries. But just now, she needed Sam back here. The game had changed, and she needed to know what he wanted to do about it so she could make sure that he stayed on the crooked and narrow path to raising Lucifer.
There'd been a moment there, in the clearing, where she'd considered taking action. The surveyors had been nothing, just idiot men doing their idiot man-work, and it would have been simplicity itself to take them out. A disappearing survey team would have only delayed the development project for so long. It wouldn't matter once she had Sam completely under her thumb, but he was being stubborn. She'd delayed telling Sam about it while she thought it over, then decided the digging up of Dean's grave could work in her favor. Being the one to break the news would add to her "but I'm a good demon" cred and with any luck by the time they got to Dean he'd be nothing but a stack of cleaned, cataloged bones and she could finally get Sam off the whole "must save my brother" thing. Besides, a change of scenery would do Sam a world of good. There were only so many demons she could talk into hanging out in the immediate Pontiac area, after all. Wherever Dean's mortal remains ended up was bound to be more interesting. It didn't much matter where he rotted. His soul was in Hell where it belonged, well on its way to becoming a halfway decent force for evil. "Righteous man" her ass.
The sound of footsteps approaching the room had her pacing faster, working to get her vessel's heart rate up to add to the frantic air she was cultivating. Keys jangled in the hallway and Ruby turned toward the door, wringing her hands like Lady MacBeth herself.
"Sam," she said as soon as the door opened. "Where have you been?"
Sam held up a greasy take-out bag. "Getting food. I told you." He frowned at her, looking her up and down. "What's with you?"
She rushed over to him, grabbing on to his upper arms. "Sam." She gasped artistically. The whole vengeful goody-two-shoes thing had worked well before Indiana and the hellhounds, but without Dean's over-developed sense of martyrdom around feeding Sam's desperation, she'd found that quietly worried and earnest held more sway. "I went to go check, just to make sure for you and there were these workers all around --" she cut herself off as though just realizing she was babbling when she decided Sam's brows had tilted up to just the right pitch of concern. She swallowed and got to the point. "They found Dean's grave."
Sam went white. "Ruby, are you --"
"They dug him up, Sam! They called the cops and brought out a back-hoe." She stopped again, looking up at him, her eyes wide and round. Sam pulled away from her and took up the track she'd been pacing for the last half an hour.
"Okay. Okay, calm down." He seemed to be speaking to himself as much as he was to her. "I've got his wallet and by now he --" He swallowed thickly, closing his eyes. "The body won't be -- recognizable. They'll just have to . . . rebury him. Right? They'll put him somewhere else and he'll be safe."
Ruby folded her hands against her chest and wondered if she was over-doing it. "Sam, they called in some kind of experts. They're shipping him off so they can identify him. To something called the Jeffersonian?"
Sam stopped pacing and turned to face her. "Who -- why would -- who the hell authorized that?!"
Ruby snorted, falling back just a bit into her old persona. "He's an illegally buried John Doe, Sam, they're gonna wanna know who the hell he is."
Sam shook his head and started pacing again. "We can't let that happen. They'll try to dissect him. I can't bring Dean back into a dissected body."
Okay, it was time to move this along a little faster. As much as she would have enjoyed pointing out that bringing Dean back into a decayed body wasn't much different, Ruby wanted out of this motel more. "The Jeffersonian. Isn't that where that writer works? The one who writes the steamy mysteries about identifying bones?"
"Temperance Brennan." Sam caught on to what she was saying immediately. Her little demonic power-house was so smart, if so very, very gullible. "Brady -- one of my college friends -- he was really into her work. I always thought it was kind of . . . grisly."
"Because she carves up dead things to identify them." Ruby stepped in to give that big doe-eyed look again. "Sam, she's going to boil Dean into a skeleton and catalog his parts."
Sam shook his head harder, crumpling the to-go bag he still held tight in his fist. Ketchup started oozing out a tear in the side. "I can't let that happen." He looked down as the ketchup dripped onto his shoe, staring at it like he wasn't sure what was going on for a second before flinging the to-go bag across the room and reaching for his duffel. "We've got to get to DC."
Ruby indulged herself in a small smile while Sam's back was turned. Damn, she was good.
*
Booth stared at the face on Angela's screen, larger than life and staring back at him with what looked like a mocking smirk. Angela usually went for a smile on these, or at least a neutral expression; the mocking was pure Winchester.
"I hate this."
Angela and Hodgins shared a knowing glance. Booth crossed his arms.
"I don't understand," Bones said, looking from him to the image and back. "Dean Winchester was a killer. I thought you'd be pleased that he's no longer out in the world."
Booth rubbed his chin. "I'm glad he's not hurting people, Bones. But finding him like this?"
"Finding who?" Sweets walked in, baby face all squooshed up in confusion. Booth could see the exact moment he recognized their vic. The kid's eyebrows shot up, and he rushed over to look closer.
"Oh. Oh wow. This is the guy you're working on?"
"Yes," said Bones. "Booth hates him."
"It," Booth corrected. "I hate it. Not him."
"He's a serial killer," said Bones.
"Alleged." Hodgins rocked back on his heels. "Never convicted."
"That's true." Sweets looked like Booth's son Parker did when they went to the zoo. "The Winchester case is very complex. Obsessive, codependent personalities with delusions towards vigilantism. . . ."
"Yeah," Booth cut him off before he could go totally psychological fanboy on them all. "So I hate it."
Bones had that look on her face like Booth had just transformed into an odd little jigsaw puzzle. Hating this case had apparently stumped her -- but then, for her this probably seemed nice and clean-cut. Identity verified, cause of death found, body laid to rest. The end. "You mean because this will make it more difficult for you to prove his guilt."
"Or innocence," said Hodgins. He was like the polar opposite of Bones, a mess of buzzing energy. He thought something he believed was being affirmed here.
Booth didn't know what to think at all -- other than that this case was going to mess with his already reeling team and likely put them in danger. Cam would understand it. She looked at cases the way he did: like a cop. Booth wondered where she was hiding out just now.
"But you should know by now, Booth," Bones was saying. "It's entirely possible that I'll be able to determine at least some of the truth from the remains."
"I know, Bones. That's not what --"
"Hey," said Sweets, eyes still glued to the image, having apparently spaced out on the entire conversation so far. "If this is Dean, then where's Sam?"
Finally. "Exactly."
"The brother?" Bones looked to Hodgins and Angela, who shrugged and nodded, respectively.
"This guy was buried," said Angela. "His clothes were changed, he was put into a pine box and given a handmade marker."
Sweets turned away from the screen, drawn from the image of one dead alleged killer to the conversation about the other. "That was definitely Sam. No way did anyone else take care of Dean's remains. Sam wouldn't allow it."
"Which means he's still alive," said Booth. "And one of possibly the most successful serial killers of our time is still at large."
Sweets nodded, head bobbing like he was on a sugar rush. "At least he was four months ago. If he's out there now? He's gonna come looking for his brother. Sam and Dean were wicked close. Like, scary close."
Angela's brows shot up. "Like Flowers in the Attic close?"
Bones frowned. "I don't know what --"
"You don't want to, sweetie."
"According to some of the sites I found," Hodgins said, "they totally were."
"And how many of those were serial killer fanfiction sites?" Angela asked. Hodgins shrugged.
"I don't remember seeing any evidence of it in the file," said Sweets. "But there's a lot we still don't know about them."
"And we don't need to," Booth said, a little desperate to turn the direction back away from that particular topic. "All we need to know is that odds are Sam's coming here."
Sweets looked from Bones to Hodgins, then shook his head. "No. Sam Winchester is smart. Maybe Medico-Legal smart."
"I find that unlikely," said Bones.
"He never had a single solid year at one school in his life," said Sweets. "And he got a full ride to Stanford. Anyway, he'll know we've figured out who we found. No way will he show up until he knows he can get Dean out without getting caught."
"But the guy that dug that grave isn't going to let Dean go into storage, somewhere," Angela pointed out. "He might be willing to take the chance."
Booth raised his hand, the other arm still crossed over his chest. "I don't think we can count on it, either way. And allegations or not, we know Sam and Dean had weapons training. I going to get increased security for the building. And no one goes anywhere without an armed escort."
Angela shivered and drew closer to Hodgins. Sweets nodded. Booth caught both movements from the corner of his eye. His full gaze was firmly on Bones. She wasn't exactly good at following those sorts of instructions.
Sure enough, Bones frowned. "Are you sure that's necessary, Booth? I have my gun in my office, if I need it."
Sweets beat Booth to the answer. "Dr. Brennan, think of how your father reacted to a threat to you and your brother. Everything I've read on Sam indicates that he'd respond the same way."
Bones frowned harder, apparently doing mental calculations, then nodded begrudgingly. "Fine. But I'm still carrying my gun."
"Wouldn't expect anything different." Booth clapped his hands. "Right, let's get back to work, then. Maybe we can keep a step ahead of this guy."
He watched the squints scatter, apprehension filling his gut. Another serial killer, so soon after Gormogon. Something told him that whatever they did, whatever precautions they took, they wouldn't be nearly enough. This case was going to throw them all over the wall, all over again.
He looked the facial reconstruction of Dean Winchester in the eye. "I hate this," he told him. "But if your brother crosses my people? He'll wish Henricksen was still around to hound his ass."
*
Angela stayed in her office until late. The FBI database had confirmed the ID of the body, as well as the details of Dean and Sam's alleged deaths in Monument, Colorado. That information had all been easy enough to track down. The information Hodgins had about Dean and Sam's supposed activities before that had been harder. It would take time before the FBI allowed the Jeffersonian access to the Winchesters' official file, even with Booth expediting it all, and all the other reports had been buried in the archives of conspiracy and occult websites. Opinions on the Winchesters definitely varied. Angela wondered what the FBI made of the reports of Sam and Dean saving people from killer monsters.
She was just about ready to pack it in for the night when Cam brought her one more puzzle to solve. It seemed she'd found evidence of a tattoo on what remained of the flesh on the victim's chest, one not mentioned in the identifying details of Dean's file in the database. They didn't need it to help with the identification, but any extra bit of information on a case could prove helpful, so Angela stuck around, trying to reconstruct the pattern as the rest of the building emptied out.
It seemed to be some sort of tribal sun symbol. Angela ran a search on the basic pattern, and on a hunch the placement on the body, high on the chest above the victim's heart. She found a handful of possible matches, including one that was said to protect the bearer from demonic possession. Hodgins was going to have a field day with that.
Speaking of, Hodgins hadn't stopped by to ask when she wanted to head home, which meant odds were he'd be crouched at his work table over some case detail or other. Brennan was likely doing the same. Time for cooler heads -- or at least one without an assortment of PhD's -- to prevail. They wouldn't get far on identifying the animal that ripped Dean apart or the location of his no-longer-presumed-dead brother if they didn't get any sleep.
Sure enough, Hodgins was at his desk, rubbing his beard as he studied one of his monitors.
"I don't know about you," Angela said, coming up behind him. "But I would really love to spend some time in a bed, tonight."
Hodgins grunted in vague agreement, the way he did when he was too wrapped up in a mystery to pay attention to what was happening around him. Angela sighed.
"Jack, sweetie. I was kind of hoping you might be in that bed with me."
"What?" Hodgins glanced up. "Oh, hey. Yeah. Just a minute." And his gaze went back to the monitor. Angela leaned in to see what had him so enraptured.
"Woah. I wouldn't want to meet that on a shadowy street corner." The image on the screen was a magnification of a monstrous -- and fortunately rather dead looking -- flea. "Or a brightly lit one."
"Yeah," Hodgins agreed. He tapped his keyboard and the image changed to another just as creepifying angle.
"Wait." Angela put her hands on her hips. "You're telling me that you, the bug, dirt, and slime guy, find this thing creepy?"
Hodgins shrugged. "Mostly baffling. I have no idea what it is."
"It looks like a flea."
"Except that it's three times the size of any recorded flea, with twice as many mandibles, and what looks like half-formed extra legs."
"A mutant flea?"
"A mutant flea covered in sulfur. It almost seems to be made of sulfur."
"What are you saying here?"
Hodgins sighed. "If I didn't know better, I'd call it a 'hell-flea'."
"To go with your hellhound theory."
He raised a hand. "I know, I know. Dr. Brennan already yelled at me. But can you find a better explanation?"
Angela slumped down into the extra chair. "No. Brennan's doing her staring at the bones all night thing?"
"Yeah. She wants this thing solved as soon as possible."
"So do I. This?" Angela gestured towards the flea, then out over the lab, encompassing the entire case. "Another serial killer with strange, occult associations? It's the last thing any of us need right now."
Hodgins sat silently for a moment, then reached over to pull her into a hug. "I miss him, too."
Angela tilted her head onto his shoulder. "I know, sweetie." She leaned into him, content to stay right there for the time being.
A brownout sent the lights flickering. A buzzing sound tingled against Angela's ear drums, and Hodgins' computer monitor pixelated, then brightened until it whited out.
Hodgins smacked it. "What the hell?"
Angela sat up. The buzzing got louder. One of the lights above the forensic platform blew out in a shower of sparks. "Power surge?"
Hodgins shook his head, then pressed his hand to his ear. "The computers are on a protected circuit. What is that noise?!"
It was getting impossible to hear him over the rapidly growing, feedback-like buzz. She shook her head at him, then looked past him to the bone room, which seemed to have started to glow.
"Brennan!" She started up, but Hodgins grabbed her around the waist, pulling her down. She buried her head in his chest, feeling him do the same with her hair as the glow and the hum reached impossible levels and the entire world exploded.
It lasted only a moment, then everything went dark and quiet. Angela wondered if they were dead.
The emergency lights over the forensic platform flickered on, far fewer in number then they should have been. Hodgins' workspace had been knocked over. Million dollar pieces of equipment lay scattered in pieces. Hodgins peeked his head up over the table, one hand out to keep her back.
"Dr. Brennan," he said, and then he was on his feet, running for the bone room. Angela was quick to follow.
If Hodgins' work space was a mess, the bone room was a war zone. It looked as though not a single thing had survived whatever had happened, save the central light table where the bones were displayed when Brennan was working on a case.
"Holy --" Angela slapped a hand over her mouth. Hodgins echoed her sentiment.
Not a single thing but the light table and the figure on top of it, nude, well muscled, and unquestionably alive.
Dean Winchester offered her a weak grin.
*
Dean woke to darkness and dust, his whole body buzzing. He lay flat on his back on a hard, cold surface littered with tiny stinging shards. A blaring shriek split the air, vibrating against his skin and making the fine hairs along his arms and legs stand on end.
He gasped, then immediately choked as the dust swarmed up his nasal passages and down his already dry throat. He tried to roll over, but the shards beneath him scraped his hands, digging into his skin.
He breathed again, cautiously this time, and when he coughed, he fumbled one hand to his chest, thinking to pull his t-shirt over his nose. His hand encountered only skin speckled with sharp pebbles -- glass -- and a few larger fragments of what felt like shattered bone.
He was naked.
The air was cold, the darkness complete. A tomb, he thought, and then he remembered: Indiana. Ruby, then Lilith. The hellhound and the most unimaginable pain, tearing across his chest and thighs. His hand flew to his chest again, but aside from a few small cuts, his skin was unbroken. He breathed. He bled. And tombs didn't tend to have alarms.
Something flickered and then the room was filled with light, red and warm yellow and seemingly impossibly bright before his eyes adjusted and he realized they were emergency lights, bleeding through the doorway.
He was in a large room, minimally styled, on a high table at the center. It looked as if every pane of glass in the place had shattered, and the room had a lot of glass. The table top beneath him was some sort of hard plastic, large enough and sturdy enough to hold a full grown man.
In essence, Dean had no idea where he was.
A gasp from the doorway drew his attention. He sat up with a grimace and the gasp repeated, this time followed by an abbreviated curse.
"Holy --"
A man and a woman stood in the doorway. The man, short and bearded, stood in front, his arms out as though to protect the woman at his back, though she was a few inches taller. The woman had her hand pressed to her mouth, her eyes wide. Her long brown hair was mussed, looking something like a halo in the glow of the lights behind her. Both of them wore blue lab coats, though the woman had taken the time to decorate hers, lining the lapels with brightly colored patterns.
She was seriously hot, and Dean's hands shifted into his lap. He felt battered and exhausted, but lord knew that didn't always keep certain parts of his anatomy from rising to the occasion, and he got the feeling that this wasn't the time for that.
"Um," he said. "Hi."
The man's eyes widened further. "Oh my god." The woman clutched at his shoulder and shook her head, her other hand still pressed over her lips. The man said "oh my god" again. Neither seemed inclined to make any further move.
Dean licked his lips, racking his brain for some witty rejoinder, but kept silent when a second woman arrived, pushing her way past the couple filling the doorway. She was just as gorgeous as the first woman but in a more severe way. Her hair was pulled tight into a ponytail, and while the first woman stared in wide-eyed shock, her brows raised, this one's gaze was more annoyed, eyebrows lowered, though her eyes were no less round.
"What is going on here?" she demanded, surveying the damage. "What happened to my lab?"
"Dr. Brennan," the man started, then stopped and shook his head, mouth open. Dr. Brennan locked eyes with Dean, and her already scowling mouth pulled down even further.
"Uh," said Dean again. He fidgeted on the table, sending bits of glass cascading off to the tile floor. "Can, uh, someone get me some pants?"
| Next |
| Master post | 1 | 2 | 3 | Notes and Credits |
Ben's Chili Bowl in Washington DC was, as the sign proudly boasted, a city landmark. After fifty years of being in business it remained perpetually unchanged. In far more than fifty years of reaping souls, Tessa had never actually personally set foot inside its walls, even when the riots of the 1960s had torn up the whole neighborhood.
So when she appeared by the long counter amidst the late night clubbing crowd just before closing, she took a few moments to observe the atmosphere before turning to her boss. She understood mankind's sentimentality -- mostly, anyway, as much as someone who'd never been human could -- and fifty years was a long time, in human terms. But to her, the place looked like any other odd little restaurant, butcher shop, or deli her boss tended to favor. He liked them greasy. He liked them cheap. And he really liked them famous. Something about the inherent ego and self-importance seemed to amuse him.
"Tessa," he said, appearing on the stool at the counter next to her, a pile of food already arranged in front of him. "Have a half-smoke. They're named after that comedian who likes pudding."
"No," said Tessa. "Thank you." She looked around the restaurant again, eyes landing briefly on a shivery young woman in tight, shiny clothes buying herself a cup of vegetarian chili. The woman wasn't long for this world, but she wasn't exactly counting down the hours. "No one here is going to die, tonight. Why are we here?"
"Sit down," said Death, gesturing to the empty stool next to him. "I'd like to chat."
Death hadn't called her over to "chat" since she'd been possessed by Azazel and forced to let Dean Winchester live a little bit longer. It hadn't been pleasant, and Tessa wasn't looking forward to a repeat performance. Dean was properly dead now, though. She hadn't reaped him herself -- she preferred to stay well away from hunters these days, thanks so very much -- but there was no stopping word of his demise from circulating through the reaper community, especially in light of his brother's utter failure to bring him back. After four months, the reapers were just starting to feel settled again.
And now Death wanted to "chat".
"No offense sir," she said, careful to keep her tone respectful. "But I'd prefer to cut to the chase."
"Yes," said Death. "You've always been just a little bit impatient." Death set the remains of his chili dog aside and folded his hands. "We are here because something is shortly to happen. Something large." He looked Tessa in the eye, and she shivered like the girl in the shiny clothes. "Something disruptive."
That was never good. "How many?" Some of her fellows would be here if it was more than just a few. But disruptive events could quickly turn catastrophic.
"I don't know, yet," Death said. "In the short term, I suspect it will be few. Maybe a couple thousand. I've called you, specifically, because I suspect you'll have some interest in the matter." Death stood, leaving a few crumpled bills on the counter and straightening his jacket. "The righteous man has broken," he said. "And the angels have breached Hell's gates."
Tessa frowned. The righteous man only interested her in an academic sense. Unless. . . . "It isn't --"
Death nodded. Tessa resisted the urge to stomp her feet.
"Son of a bitch."
"Language, Tessa." Death cocked his head slightly. "Though I find I agree with sentiment."
Dean goddamn Winchester. He just wouldn't leave Death -- or his reapers -- alone.
There was no way that this would end well.
*
Kyle strode out toward the clearing in long, even steps, despite the thick undergrowth and the unwieldy surveying equipment bumping against his legs. He couldn't count the number of times he'd taken walks like this over the years -- or the number of assistants like Tim he'd had along for the ride.
"It's a damn shame," Tim called, tripping along behind him. "Gotta level all these woods."
"They'll put some of it back," Kyle said easily. "Places like this like to have some trees around."
"And how long'll it take 'em to grow back up?" Tim was beginning to pant. He was a young punk, fresh out of school with a degree in 'environmental engineering' or some such nonsense, who took the only job his experience-less ass could get. It was just Kyle's luck it happened to be with him and not data entry in an office somewhere.
"People gotta shop," he said. "Not like there's a whole lotta options for 'em on this end of town."
"People gotta breathe, first," Tim said. His footsteps paused, and Kyle looked back to find him leaning against one of the trees. Kid really should've looked for a desk job. "And we left 'this end of town' a couple miles back."
"If you build it," Kyle said. "Come on, kid. A few more yards."
Tim groaned, pushing himself upright, the tripod he was carrying looking like an off-center, stiff tail. He nodded and Kyle continued forward.
"Relax, kid. We're just checking things out, today. For all you know, there'll be an ancient tribal burial ground and the owners'll decide to sell it, anyway."
"Dude. If I get cursed, I'm so holding you responsible."
"Dug up a few of 'em in my time." Kyle looked back again with a grin, continuing toward the center of the field. "Nothing's gotten me yet." His left foot caught something rough in the grass, and as though Murphy himself was yakking it up, Kyle went over like a great, flailing tree.
Tim dropped the tripod and hurried forward. Kyle grunted and propped himself up on his elbows to see what he'd hit.
"Goddammit."
The cross lay on its side in the tall grass, half uprooted by some animal or storm so its planks formed a ragged X, not quite tall enough to be visible from the edge of the clearing. Looking closer, Kyle could just make out the outline of a rectangle stretching out from it, a patch about seven feet long more recently disturbed than the rest of the ground. Kyle lay right in the middle of it.
"Man, you gotta be more. . . ." Tim trailed off as he came closer, and Kyle watched as the blood drained from the kid's face as he sketched a cross of his own over his chest. "Is that. . . ?"
"Well." Kyle pushed himself up, dusting off his pants. "It's no ancient tribal burial ground."
"Oh my god." Tim fell back a step as though he worried whomever was resting beneath their feet would come bursting vengefully through the ground. "What -- what do we do?"
Kyle shrugged, frowning. "Contact the company. Go home and hope the boss'll pay us for the day."
"Shouldn't we -- do we call the police?"
"Someone probably will." Kyle ran a hand over his thinning hair. "Hope the boss'll pay us for tomorrow, too."
"Dude," Tim said, staring at him. "Someone's dead."
"It happens. It's a grave, kid. Not like we're looking at rotting bones on the ground."
Tim went paler. "You've seen that?"
"You stick in this job long enough, kid, you'll see most everything." Kyle shook his head down at the cross. "Like a state cremation was too good for you, you asshole."
"Dude," Tim said again. "He's dead."
"Doesn't mean he's not an asshole." Kyle looked over the clearing again and sighed. This would've been a decent gig, too. No local highways to choke the air, no protesters, just a big chunk of land needing a good chunk of time to get properly surveyed. And they hadn't even gotten half a day.
"Who the hell is that?" Tim asked. Kyle turned.
"What?"
"That." Tim pointed toward the woods on the far side of the clearing. "Nah, she's gone, now."
"She?"
"Some dark haired chick. Just, like, standing there, watching."
"Huh." Kyle shrugged. He'd never seen any surveyor fan girls, but he supposed they could exist. People were into anything these days. "Was she hot?"
Tim scowled. "You're a pig, you know that?"
Kyle sighed. "Shut up and get the gear back to the van, kid." If some dead guy was gonna keep him from an honest day's pay, he sure as hell wasn't going to put up with some punk ass's smart, judgmental mouth. "Then you can buy me a beer."
Tim glowered and started scooping up equipment. "Never shoulda left Portland."
And wasn't that the fucking truth.
*
"What are we looking at?" Booth swiped his passcard at the edge of the platform, clearing the steps in two short bounds, his suit jacket flaring out behind him. Bones looked up from where she was hunched with Hodgins over the main work table.
"Human remains," she said, her expression that mix of consternation and confusion that read "I'm a genius, so I can't tell if you're being deliberately obtuse." Booth got that expression all the time.
"Yeah, I can see that." Booth stepped up to the table and grimaced. "Gooey remains."
"Yes," said Bones. She took the skull between her gloved hands and gently pulled the mouth open. "Male," she said. "Late twenties to early thirties, approximately 1.85 meters in height. Likely a transient, judging by the inconsistent dental work, possibly from a young age."
Cam stepped onto the platform, giving Booth a smile. "He arrived this morning. Found in a shallow grave outside Pontiac, Illinois. No wallet, so the local PD requested our help in IDing him."
"Why didn't they tell me?" Booth spread his hands, tilting his head forward. He hated being left out of things. "They always tell me about the recent ones!"
"No foul play, no FBI." Cam pulled on her own pair of gloves. "Looks like this is a good old-fashioned animal attack."
"Ah, the good old days." Hodgins smirked, picking at the corpse like some kind of blond, bearded vulture. "When men were men and wolves were hungry."
"That's a myth," Bones said, moving down towards the corpse's chest. She picked up something long, metal, and pointy and prodded an exposed rib. "And we haven't determined the cause of death, yet."
"Guy's torso was shredded," Cam said. "That's usually going to be fatal."
Booth grimaced. "I swear, it's like you people enjoy this."
"Why are you here, Booth?" Bones glanced up again. "Do you have a case that takes precedence?"
"What, I can't just want to say 'hi'?"
"You can do that over the phone."
Booth shrugged. "Yeah, but I also wanted to tell you that the Bureau finalized things with Scotland Yard. I'm going to England with you." He grinned and spread his arms again, triumphantly this time, waiting for Bones to smile back. She didn't take her eyes off the corpse.
"That information can also be conveyed via phone. And they're more accurately referred to as the Metropolitan Police."
Booth leaned towards Hodgins, who'd stepped back with a tray of petri dishes. "Is she mad at me?"
"Mad at the world, man. Just like the rest of us."
Booth winced. It hadn't been too long since they'd closed the Gormogon case, and as much as Bones tried to pretend she was fine, he knew she was still reeling from Zack's confession. As Hodgins said, just like the rest of them.
"These wounds were definitely made by sharp, curved, bony weapons," Bones said.
"So, claws," said Cam. Bones nodded distractedly.
"That would be a logical conclusion. The pattern appears to be canine in nature."
"Aha!" Booth said. "So much for the kindness of wolves!"
Bones looked up and shook her head at him. Cam leaned in.
"Those marks are pretty wide spread for a wolf. I would have said bear."
"This is not a bear attack." Bones straightened and pointed to what looked to Booth to be just a mass of dead guy chest. "The scrapes are clearly arranged in sets of four, with the fifth set some distance back. The fifth claw on a bear is much closer to the other four." She leaned over again, rubbing a gloved thumb over a groove on the rib. "I agree with you on the depth and spread, though -- I won't know more until we're done cleaning the bones, but I'd say this is the work of a very big dog."
"Like, Cujo big?" Hodgins asked, stepping back in with a fresh tray. "Or Clifford big?"
Bones looked at him. "I don't know what that means."
"They're big dogs," Booth said helpfully. Bones nodded, turning back to the corpse.
"Based on the distance between the claw marks, I'd estimate the animal's paw to be approximately 30 centimeters or more in diameter." She looked up from the body again. "That's the same as a large polar bear."
Cam whistled. "That is one hell of a dog." She prodded at the corpse. "There's not much left by way of tissue for me to look at. This guy must've been down there for awhile. I'd place time of death at more than a year ago."
Angela appeared behind her, notebook in hand, and made a face at the remains. "Ugh. Sorry, hon, I found a crumpled receipt in his pocket that says otherwise." She held up a baggie with a rather gooey looking piece of paper. "Dated April 30th, this year."
"Seriously?" Cam frowned. "This guy's almost completely skeletonized."
Hodgins shook his head. "Maggot activity agrees with Ang. Dude's no more than four months dead."
Bones looked up again. "I'm not seeing any evidence of scavenging, either peri- or post-mortem. Even without embalming, a body in a coffin shouldn't have deteriorated this much that quickly."
Hodgins shrugged. "The coffin wasn't much. It let in more creepy crawlies than a modern casket would have, but not enough to explain . . ." He gestured to the body as a whole. "This."
Cam straightened with a decisive nod. "I'll run a tox screen to see if there are any chemicals that could account for the rapid decomposition. Dr. Hodgins, you've got the clothes to check for particulates?"
Hodgins saluted. "I'm on it, Captain."
They split off, leaving Booth, Bones, and Angela behind with the remains. Angela looked them over again, the "ech" expression transforming into one of sympathy. "Poor guy."
"Very poor," Bones agreed. "Judging by the teeth and the bowing of the legs, I'd say he grew up well below the poverty line."
"That's not what I meant, sweetie." Angela sighed and pulled her notebook tighter to her chest. "The pine box, the rough cross. . . . They were both homemade. Whoever this guy is, someone out there's missing him, at least."
Bones looked over the corpse. "Then they should have chosen his burial site more carefully. I'm sure the plans for the new strip mall were lodged with the county records." She looked up at Angela. "Once we've identified him, we'll make sure his family finds him a better site for a memorial. I'll let you know when the skull's ready for a facial reconstruction."
Angela nodded, still looking at the corpse, probably already writing the tragic story of the John Doe in her head. Booth followed her gaze, then looked away quickly.
"Right. I'll just . . . go get some coffee."
Well, at least on this one they weren't going to have to chase down a serial killer. Just, as Cam had said, one hell of a dog.
*
Hodgins stared through the eyepiece of his microscope for what had to be the fifteenth time in half as many minutes, then looked up at his computer screens. The results hadn't changed. The insect he'd found nestled into the interior folds of the victim's clothing eluded identification in a way that was at once fascinating and infuriating. The fact that he didn't recognize it on sight was surprising, but not unprecedented -- he knew his bugs better than anyone else around, but the thousands of species he was familiar with wasn't even a drop in the bucket compared to the total number known by science in general. The fact that none of his usual resources had any record of anything remotely like it was a surprise. It wasn't native to North America, as far as he could tell, but from Dr. Brennan's notes on the victim's skeletal structure and his own observations into the other particulate matter found on the corpse and the environment, John Doe hadn't spent any significant time overseas, either.
Normally, such a mystery would be exciting, but without Zack around to toss ideas and lord "King of the Lab" over, it almost didn't seem worth it.
Damn Zack. More than that, damn Gormogon, secret societies, and people canny enough to use a kid's pragmatism and logic against him. And damn Jack Hodgins for not seeing that something was up with his best goddamn friend.
Hodgins pushed back from his table and rubbed at his eyes, then picked up his notes on the other particulate matter. The mystery bug would have to wait. It was possible -- okay, only remotely possible, bugs were important -- that they'd figure this whole thing out without it, and in doing so, get the answers Hodgins wanted on who his new buggy friend was and what it meant. Lord knew the particulates themselves had turned out interesting. Cam would want an update on what he'd found so far.
He found her in Angela's office, both of them standing in front of one of the large monitors, their heads cocked to precisely the same angle. Hodgins took a moment to admire the view of Ang from behind before approaching, marveling once again at his luck in landing such a woman. Smart, wild, funny, empathetic, gorgeous -- pretty much the perfect woman, and just as soon as they got the man she'd married on a drunken adventure in Fiji to sign the divorce papers, totally his.
Angela tilted her head the other way. "He's pretty cute," she said. She looked over at Cam. "Don't you think?"
"Not my type." Cam leaned forward, revealing the edge of the computer-generated sketch Angela had done based on the victim's skull. "Does he look familiar, to you?"
"Kind of. Hopefully we'll get a match from one of the usual databases." She turned to her desktop keyboard to start the search, and flashed Hodgins a smile. He grinned back, but it turned to shock the moment she bent down, revealing the facial reconstruction in full.
"Holy. . . ." Hodgins came forward, his notes from the particulates almost completely forgotten. "Oh man, Booth is going to hate this one."
Cam looked from the computerized portrait to Hodgins and back. "You recognize him, Dr. Hodgins?"
Hodgins glanced quickly at her, only to end up snapping his gaze right back to the image on the screen. "Are you kidding? That's Dean Winchester."
Cam's mouth dropped open, and she swung her head to stare at the picture again. "You're right. Booth is going to hate this."
"Dean Winchester?" Angela straightened at her desk. "Why does that name sound familiar?"
Cam shook her head, her eyes wide. "He and his brother Sam topped the FBI's most wanted list for a year. First degree murder, fraud, grave desecration, those boys did it all."
"Yeah, if you want to believe the government-controlled media." Hodgins stepped forward, giving the portrait a closer look, unable to keep a grin from spreading across his face. "Eye witness accounts vary. Half of them insist that Dean and Sam Winchester were heroes, driving around the country saving people from killers and corrupt cops alike."
Cam narrowed her eyes at him. "More of your conspiracy theories, Dr. Hodgins?"
"Wait." Angela folded her arms over her chest. "Isn't this the guy who was, like, skinning women in St. Louis a couple years back? Not what I'd call a hero."
"Ah," Hodgins raised one finger. "But that guy was shot and killed on the scene. Booked, autopsied, and buried, all by the tender hands of St. Louis's finest. And get this, the bullet that killed him? Was made of silver."
"So that wasn't Dean Winchester."
"Just someone -- or something -- that looked exactly like him. A year later in Baltimore, he was taped stating it was a shapeshifter."
"Shot with a silver bullet." Angela shook her head. "Why couldn't this be a nice story of a poor, loved man who couldn't afford a proper burial?"
"Yeah, because our cases are ever that simple."
"It gets weirder," Cam said, tilting her head thoughtfully. "I'm pretty sure I remember hearing that Dean and his brother were killed when that jail exploded in Colorado last winter."
"So how'd he get from there to Pontiac, Illinois?"
Hodgins remembered his notes and held them up. "Particulates from inside his clothing show high concentrations of carbon, nitrates, aluminium phyllosilicates, calcium, sodium chloride, and ash."
Cam frowned. "So . . . he was dirty from the burial."
"Not the outside of his clothing. The inside. We already know whoever buried our vic changed his clothes first, which means this probably comes from the location of the animal attack. And it's not just any dirt. The calcium comes primarily from bone dust. Graveyard dirt."
"Graveyard dirt."
"Likely from a cemetery in the Mississippi Delta."
"Dean Winchester was known for grave desecration all over the country. He could have easily been killed in a cemetery in that area."
"True, but there's also iron dust, powdered herbs, manure, insect chitin --"
"Jack, sweetie," Angela interrupted. "Get to the point."
"I think it's a powder colloquially known as 'goofer dust'. Traditionally used in --"
"Voodoo rituals?" guessed Cam.
Hodgins nodded. "Such as those to bring back the dead."
"Oh you've got to be kidding me."
"It gets better." Well, they might not see it as better, but Hodgins was on a roll, here. "Swabs of the grooves in the victim's ribs show a high concentration of pure sulfur. In some spots so deep it's embedded in the bone."
Cam frowned. "What could cause that?"
"Only way I can think of is if the sulfur was covering the attacking animal's claws."
"So the dog was hanging around, what, a match factory?" Angela asked.
Hodgins shrugged. "Could be. Of course, sulfur is also known as brimstone."
Cam blinked. "Brimstone."
"Like you said, Dr. Saroyan." Hodgins rocked back on his heels. "It was one hell of a dog."
*
Ruby paced across the motel room, a typically skeevy joint Sam had picked out, all exposed brick and tacky mirrors. She dreamed of the days she'd be able to talk him into getting something higher class. She wasn't a demanding demon, but something that didn't scream 'rents by the hour' would be nice.
Sam was out picking up food, as usual. It'd been awhile -- a small eternity, really -- but she was certain people didn't eat as much in her days as a human. Sam seemed to need to cram something into his mouth hourly, and they were nowhere near her talking him into cramming what she wanted him to in there. Not that Ruby didn't understand to a certain extent. She enjoyed the pleasures of the flesh in all their forms and always had. It'd marked her as an outcast even before she'd sold her soul so many centuries ago, and at the time they didn't even have french fries. But just now, she needed Sam back here. The game had changed, and she needed to know what he wanted to do about it so she could make sure that he stayed on the crooked and narrow path to raising Lucifer.
There'd been a moment there, in the clearing, where she'd considered taking action. The surveyors had been nothing, just idiot men doing their idiot man-work, and it would have been simplicity itself to take them out. A disappearing survey team would have only delayed the development project for so long. It wouldn't matter once she had Sam completely under her thumb, but he was being stubborn. She'd delayed telling Sam about it while she thought it over, then decided the digging up of Dean's grave could work in her favor. Being the one to break the news would add to her "but I'm a good demon" cred and with any luck by the time they got to Dean he'd be nothing but a stack of cleaned, cataloged bones and she could finally get Sam off the whole "must save my brother" thing. Besides, a change of scenery would do Sam a world of good. There were only so many demons she could talk into hanging out in the immediate Pontiac area, after all. Wherever Dean's mortal remains ended up was bound to be more interesting. It didn't much matter where he rotted. His soul was in Hell where it belonged, well on its way to becoming a halfway decent force for evil. "Righteous man" her ass.
The sound of footsteps approaching the room had her pacing faster, working to get her vessel's heart rate up to add to the frantic air she was cultivating. Keys jangled in the hallway and Ruby turned toward the door, wringing her hands like Lady MacBeth herself.
"Sam," she said as soon as the door opened. "Where have you been?"
Sam held up a greasy take-out bag. "Getting food. I told you." He frowned at her, looking her up and down. "What's with you?"
She rushed over to him, grabbing on to his upper arms. "Sam." She gasped artistically. The whole vengeful goody-two-shoes thing had worked well before Indiana and the hellhounds, but without Dean's over-developed sense of martyrdom around feeding Sam's desperation, she'd found that quietly worried and earnest held more sway. "I went to go check, just to make sure for you and there were these workers all around --" she cut herself off as though just realizing she was babbling when she decided Sam's brows had tilted up to just the right pitch of concern. She swallowed and got to the point. "They found Dean's grave."
Sam went white. "Ruby, are you --"
"They dug him up, Sam! They called the cops and brought out a back-hoe." She stopped again, looking up at him, her eyes wide and round. Sam pulled away from her and took up the track she'd been pacing for the last half an hour.
"Okay. Okay, calm down." He seemed to be speaking to himself as much as he was to her. "I've got his wallet and by now he --" He swallowed thickly, closing his eyes. "The body won't be -- recognizable. They'll just have to . . . rebury him. Right? They'll put him somewhere else and he'll be safe."
Ruby folded her hands against her chest and wondered if she was over-doing it. "Sam, they called in some kind of experts. They're shipping him off so they can identify him. To something called the Jeffersonian?"
Sam stopped pacing and turned to face her. "Who -- why would -- who the hell authorized that?!"
Ruby snorted, falling back just a bit into her old persona. "He's an illegally buried John Doe, Sam, they're gonna wanna know who the hell he is."
Sam shook his head and started pacing again. "We can't let that happen. They'll try to dissect him. I can't bring Dean back into a dissected body."
Okay, it was time to move this along a little faster. As much as she would have enjoyed pointing out that bringing Dean back into a decayed body wasn't much different, Ruby wanted out of this motel more. "The Jeffersonian. Isn't that where that writer works? The one who writes the steamy mysteries about identifying bones?"
"Temperance Brennan." Sam caught on to what she was saying immediately. Her little demonic power-house was so smart, if so very, very gullible. "Brady -- one of my college friends -- he was really into her work. I always thought it was kind of . . . grisly."
"Because she carves up dead things to identify them." Ruby stepped in to give that big doe-eyed look again. "Sam, she's going to boil Dean into a skeleton and catalog his parts."
Sam shook his head harder, crumpling the to-go bag he still held tight in his fist. Ketchup started oozing out a tear in the side. "I can't let that happen." He looked down as the ketchup dripped onto his shoe, staring at it like he wasn't sure what was going on for a second before flinging the to-go bag across the room and reaching for his duffel. "We've got to get to DC."
Ruby indulged herself in a small smile while Sam's back was turned. Damn, she was good.
*
Booth stared at the face on Angela's screen, larger than life and staring back at him with what looked like a mocking smirk. Angela usually went for a smile on these, or at least a neutral expression; the mocking was pure Winchester.
"I hate this."
Angela and Hodgins shared a knowing glance. Booth crossed his arms.
"I don't understand," Bones said, looking from him to the image and back. "Dean Winchester was a killer. I thought you'd be pleased that he's no longer out in the world."
Booth rubbed his chin. "I'm glad he's not hurting people, Bones. But finding him like this?"
"Finding who?" Sweets walked in, baby face all squooshed up in confusion. Booth could see the exact moment he recognized their vic. The kid's eyebrows shot up, and he rushed over to look closer.
"Oh. Oh wow. This is the guy you're working on?"
"Yes," said Bones. "Booth hates him."
"It," Booth corrected. "I hate it. Not him."
"He's a serial killer," said Bones.
"Alleged." Hodgins rocked back on his heels. "Never convicted."
"That's true." Sweets looked like Booth's son Parker did when they went to the zoo. "The Winchester case is very complex. Obsessive, codependent personalities with delusions towards vigilantism. . . ."
"Yeah," Booth cut him off before he could go totally psychological fanboy on them all. "So I hate it."
Bones had that look on her face like Booth had just transformed into an odd little jigsaw puzzle. Hating this case had apparently stumped her -- but then, for her this probably seemed nice and clean-cut. Identity verified, cause of death found, body laid to rest. The end. "You mean because this will make it more difficult for you to prove his guilt."
"Or innocence," said Hodgins. He was like the polar opposite of Bones, a mess of buzzing energy. He thought something he believed was being affirmed here.
Booth didn't know what to think at all -- other than that this case was going to mess with his already reeling team and likely put them in danger. Cam would understand it. She looked at cases the way he did: like a cop. Booth wondered where she was hiding out just now.
"But you should know by now, Booth," Bones was saying. "It's entirely possible that I'll be able to determine at least some of the truth from the remains."
"I know, Bones. That's not what --"
"Hey," said Sweets, eyes still glued to the image, having apparently spaced out on the entire conversation so far. "If this is Dean, then where's Sam?"
Finally. "Exactly."
"The brother?" Bones looked to Hodgins and Angela, who shrugged and nodded, respectively.
"This guy was buried," said Angela. "His clothes were changed, he was put into a pine box and given a handmade marker."
Sweets turned away from the screen, drawn from the image of one dead alleged killer to the conversation about the other. "That was definitely Sam. No way did anyone else take care of Dean's remains. Sam wouldn't allow it."
"Which means he's still alive," said Booth. "And one of possibly the most successful serial killers of our time is still at large."
Sweets nodded, head bobbing like he was on a sugar rush. "At least he was four months ago. If he's out there now? He's gonna come looking for his brother. Sam and Dean were wicked close. Like, scary close."
Angela's brows shot up. "Like Flowers in the Attic close?"
Bones frowned. "I don't know what --"
"You don't want to, sweetie."
"According to some of the sites I found," Hodgins said, "they totally were."
"And how many of those were serial killer fanfiction sites?" Angela asked. Hodgins shrugged.
"I don't remember seeing any evidence of it in the file," said Sweets. "But there's a lot we still don't know about them."
"And we don't need to," Booth said, a little desperate to turn the direction back away from that particular topic. "All we need to know is that odds are Sam's coming here."
Sweets looked from Bones to Hodgins, then shook his head. "No. Sam Winchester is smart. Maybe Medico-Legal smart."
"I find that unlikely," said Bones.
"He never had a single solid year at one school in his life," said Sweets. "And he got a full ride to Stanford. Anyway, he'll know we've figured out who we found. No way will he show up until he knows he can get Dean out without getting caught."
"But the guy that dug that grave isn't going to let Dean go into storage, somewhere," Angela pointed out. "He might be willing to take the chance."
Booth raised his hand, the other arm still crossed over his chest. "I don't think we can count on it, either way. And allegations or not, we know Sam and Dean had weapons training. I going to get increased security for the building. And no one goes anywhere without an armed escort."
Angela shivered and drew closer to Hodgins. Sweets nodded. Booth caught both movements from the corner of his eye. His full gaze was firmly on Bones. She wasn't exactly good at following those sorts of instructions.
Sure enough, Bones frowned. "Are you sure that's necessary, Booth? I have my gun in my office, if I need it."
Sweets beat Booth to the answer. "Dr. Brennan, think of how your father reacted to a threat to you and your brother. Everything I've read on Sam indicates that he'd respond the same way."
Bones frowned harder, apparently doing mental calculations, then nodded begrudgingly. "Fine. But I'm still carrying my gun."
"Wouldn't expect anything different." Booth clapped his hands. "Right, let's get back to work, then. Maybe we can keep a step ahead of this guy."
He watched the squints scatter, apprehension filling his gut. Another serial killer, so soon after Gormogon. Something told him that whatever they did, whatever precautions they took, they wouldn't be nearly enough. This case was going to throw them all over the wall, all over again.
He looked the facial reconstruction of Dean Winchester in the eye. "I hate this," he told him. "But if your brother crosses my people? He'll wish Henricksen was still around to hound his ass."
*
Angela stayed in her office until late. The FBI database had confirmed the ID of the body, as well as the details of Dean and Sam's alleged deaths in Monument, Colorado. That information had all been easy enough to track down. The information Hodgins had about Dean and Sam's supposed activities before that had been harder. It would take time before the FBI allowed the Jeffersonian access to the Winchesters' official file, even with Booth expediting it all, and all the other reports had been buried in the archives of conspiracy and occult websites. Opinions on the Winchesters definitely varied. Angela wondered what the FBI made of the reports of Sam and Dean saving people from killer monsters.
She was just about ready to pack it in for the night when Cam brought her one more puzzle to solve. It seemed she'd found evidence of a tattoo on what remained of the flesh on the victim's chest, one not mentioned in the identifying details of Dean's file in the database. They didn't need it to help with the identification, but any extra bit of information on a case could prove helpful, so Angela stuck around, trying to reconstruct the pattern as the rest of the building emptied out.
It seemed to be some sort of tribal sun symbol. Angela ran a search on the basic pattern, and on a hunch the placement on the body, high on the chest above the victim's heart. She found a handful of possible matches, including one that was said to protect the bearer from demonic possession. Hodgins was going to have a field day with that.
Speaking of, Hodgins hadn't stopped by to ask when she wanted to head home, which meant odds were he'd be crouched at his work table over some case detail or other. Brennan was likely doing the same. Time for cooler heads -- or at least one without an assortment of PhD's -- to prevail. They wouldn't get far on identifying the animal that ripped Dean apart or the location of his no-longer-presumed-dead brother if they didn't get any sleep.
Sure enough, Hodgins was at his desk, rubbing his beard as he studied one of his monitors.
"I don't know about you," Angela said, coming up behind him. "But I would really love to spend some time in a bed, tonight."
Hodgins grunted in vague agreement, the way he did when he was too wrapped up in a mystery to pay attention to what was happening around him. Angela sighed.
"Jack, sweetie. I was kind of hoping you might be in that bed with me."
"What?" Hodgins glanced up. "Oh, hey. Yeah. Just a minute." And his gaze went back to the monitor. Angela leaned in to see what had him so enraptured.
"Woah. I wouldn't want to meet that on a shadowy street corner." The image on the screen was a magnification of a monstrous -- and fortunately rather dead looking -- flea. "Or a brightly lit one."
"Yeah," Hodgins agreed. He tapped his keyboard and the image changed to another just as creepifying angle.
"Wait." Angela put her hands on her hips. "You're telling me that you, the bug, dirt, and slime guy, find this thing creepy?"
Hodgins shrugged. "Mostly baffling. I have no idea what it is."
"It looks like a flea."
"Except that it's three times the size of any recorded flea, with twice as many mandibles, and what looks like half-formed extra legs."
"A mutant flea?"
"A mutant flea covered in sulfur. It almost seems to be made of sulfur."
"What are you saying here?"
Hodgins sighed. "If I didn't know better, I'd call it a 'hell-flea'."
"To go with your hellhound theory."
He raised a hand. "I know, I know. Dr. Brennan already yelled at me. But can you find a better explanation?"
Angela slumped down into the extra chair. "No. Brennan's doing her staring at the bones all night thing?"
"Yeah. She wants this thing solved as soon as possible."
"So do I. This?" Angela gestured towards the flea, then out over the lab, encompassing the entire case. "Another serial killer with strange, occult associations? It's the last thing any of us need right now."
Hodgins sat silently for a moment, then reached over to pull her into a hug. "I miss him, too."
Angela tilted her head onto his shoulder. "I know, sweetie." She leaned into him, content to stay right there for the time being.
A brownout sent the lights flickering. A buzzing sound tingled against Angela's ear drums, and Hodgins' computer monitor pixelated, then brightened until it whited out.
Hodgins smacked it. "What the hell?"
Angela sat up. The buzzing got louder. One of the lights above the forensic platform blew out in a shower of sparks. "Power surge?"
Hodgins shook his head, then pressed his hand to his ear. "The computers are on a protected circuit. What is that noise?!"
It was getting impossible to hear him over the rapidly growing, feedback-like buzz. She shook her head at him, then looked past him to the bone room, which seemed to have started to glow.
"Brennan!" She started up, but Hodgins grabbed her around the waist, pulling her down. She buried her head in his chest, feeling him do the same with her hair as the glow and the hum reached impossible levels and the entire world exploded.
It lasted only a moment, then everything went dark and quiet. Angela wondered if they were dead.
The emergency lights over the forensic platform flickered on, far fewer in number then they should have been. Hodgins' workspace had been knocked over. Million dollar pieces of equipment lay scattered in pieces. Hodgins peeked his head up over the table, one hand out to keep her back.
"Dr. Brennan," he said, and then he was on his feet, running for the bone room. Angela was quick to follow.
If Hodgins' work space was a mess, the bone room was a war zone. It looked as though not a single thing had survived whatever had happened, save the central light table where the bones were displayed when Brennan was working on a case.
"Holy --" Angela slapped a hand over her mouth. Hodgins echoed her sentiment.
Not a single thing but the light table and the figure on top of it, nude, well muscled, and unquestionably alive.
Dean Winchester offered her a weak grin.
*
Dean woke to darkness and dust, his whole body buzzing. He lay flat on his back on a hard, cold surface littered with tiny stinging shards. A blaring shriek split the air, vibrating against his skin and making the fine hairs along his arms and legs stand on end.
He gasped, then immediately choked as the dust swarmed up his nasal passages and down his already dry throat. He tried to roll over, but the shards beneath him scraped his hands, digging into his skin.
He breathed again, cautiously this time, and when he coughed, he fumbled one hand to his chest, thinking to pull his t-shirt over his nose. His hand encountered only skin speckled with sharp pebbles -- glass -- and a few larger fragments of what felt like shattered bone.
He was naked.
The air was cold, the darkness complete. A tomb, he thought, and then he remembered: Indiana. Ruby, then Lilith. The hellhound and the most unimaginable pain, tearing across his chest and thighs. His hand flew to his chest again, but aside from a few small cuts, his skin was unbroken. He breathed. He bled. And tombs didn't tend to have alarms.
Something flickered and then the room was filled with light, red and warm yellow and seemingly impossibly bright before his eyes adjusted and he realized they were emergency lights, bleeding through the doorway.
He was in a large room, minimally styled, on a high table at the center. It looked as if every pane of glass in the place had shattered, and the room had a lot of glass. The table top beneath him was some sort of hard plastic, large enough and sturdy enough to hold a full grown man.
In essence, Dean had no idea where he was.
A gasp from the doorway drew his attention. He sat up with a grimace and the gasp repeated, this time followed by an abbreviated curse.
"Holy --"
A man and a woman stood in the doorway. The man, short and bearded, stood in front, his arms out as though to protect the woman at his back, though she was a few inches taller. The woman had her hand pressed to her mouth, her eyes wide. Her long brown hair was mussed, looking something like a halo in the glow of the lights behind her. Both of them wore blue lab coats, though the woman had taken the time to decorate hers, lining the lapels with brightly colored patterns.
She was seriously hot, and Dean's hands shifted into his lap. He felt battered and exhausted, but lord knew that didn't always keep certain parts of his anatomy from rising to the occasion, and he got the feeling that this wasn't the time for that.
"Um," he said. "Hi."
The man's eyes widened further. "Oh my god." The woman clutched at his shoulder and shook her head, her other hand still pressed over her lips. The man said "oh my god" again. Neither seemed inclined to make any further move.
Dean licked his lips, racking his brain for some witty rejoinder, but kept silent when a second woman arrived, pushing her way past the couple filling the doorway. She was just as gorgeous as the first woman but in a more severe way. Her hair was pulled tight into a ponytail, and while the first woman stared in wide-eyed shock, her brows raised, this one's gaze was more annoyed, eyebrows lowered, though her eyes were no less round.
"What is going on here?" she demanded, surveying the damage. "What happened to my lab?"
"Dr. Brennan," the man started, then stopped and shook his head, mouth open. Dr. Brennan locked eyes with Dean, and her already scowling mouth pulled down even further.
"Uh," said Dean again. He fidgeted on the table, sending bits of glass cascading off to the tile floor. "Can, uh, someone get me some pants?"
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