Bones: Buried Deep

1
The Present
LIKE A THICK OIL SLICK SPREADING OVER LAKE Michigan, an oppressive wave of heat coated Chicago, as it had since early spring.

The summer-long drought, coupled since late July with a garbage strike, made for long nights and longer days in a city where aromas were high and tempers were short. Piles of garbage accrued over the last seven weeks had become giant disease-bearing compost heaps.

Op-ed writers for the newspapers were referring to Chicago as "Fecund City" and "The City of Big Smoulders," but neither side budged in the strike negotiations, and Mother Nature seemed to have decided to simply parboil the city.

In this town where smiles were rare about now, Special Agent Seeley Booth sat in a meeting room of the Everett M. Dirksen Federal Building barely able to contain his grin.

He'd been working on the case against Chicago Mafia bosses Raymond and Vincent Gianelli for most of the last six months, and now with the help of a Gianelli crony turned informant Booth had father and son in his sights.

Sitting on the prosecution side of the table, Booth exuded quiet confidence. Which was, after all, part of the profile for an FBI agent; but with his square jaw, close-cropped brown hair, and steel-blue eyes, his confidence today approached cockiness.

Even though this wasn't a court day, Booth had worn his "testifying" suit, the number every law enforcement professional kept bagged in the closet for those special days in court.

Booth's was a charcoal gray with a lighter pinstripe and had cost him just a little less than his first car; but today he wanted to look as good as he felt.

Next to Booth, federal prosecutor Daniel McMichael scribbled on a yellow legal pad that lay next to a stack of papers. His black hair receding and parted on the left, McMichael wore a gray suit easily twice as expensive as Booth's.

The prosecutor had dark eyes that could be warm and friendly to those on his side, and icy and aloof to his enemies. A bulbous nose squatted between high, chubby cheeks and over a mouth that turned up a couple of degrees at the corners in what passed for a smile.

Dan McMichael had the wide shoulders and strong arms of an athlete, compromised by the slightly soft look of one whose playing days were long behind him. If his career had been baseball instead of prosecution, McMichael would be the MVP who went on to become the crusty but benign manager who quietly passed advice to his high-strung young players.

Booth had worked a couple of cases with McMichael and respected the attorney's no-nonsense approach. They had carved out convictions both times and the perps were now spending long sentences in federal prisons.

To their left, sitting inconspicuously in a corner, was Anna Jones, a petite blonde court recorder with brown eyes and what Booth interpreted as a slightly openmouthed smile intended just for him.