Mitch, Gerard, and Scott stood around the remains in the lab.
"Looks like some kind of deranged surgeon sewed this back together." Mitch furrowed his browline. "Is that...? It looks like some kind of nasty string."
Gerard nodded. "I have a bad feeling about this, but I'll wait for the electrophoresis results to share it."
Scott, however, frowned. "Judging by the small skull and the nuchal crest, the victim was a female Caucasian. Her wisdom teeth haven't fully erupted, suggesting she was in her early 20s."
Gerard sighed. "Okay, bad feeling officially confirmed. The string the killer used is made out of human gut."
"Eww." Mitch groaned as Pete, the current intern, walked up.
"Well I sure hope that wasn't for me," Pete snorted. "Anyways, Serology results just came in. The message the killer left, 'Where's the rest of me?' They ran the usual ABO groups, plus enzyme and protein markers. The blood at the scene isn't from the victim. It's from five other people."
Gerard raised an eyebrow. "Five?"
Pete nodded. "Yep."
"Call the lab, tell them we need DNA. Tag it a priority, and if anyone gives you grief, tell them to refer to me."
*****
"Wait, so, Exterminators treated the museum last night?" Malo asked as he sat down in Joe's office with the case file.
Joe nodded. "Yeah, looks like our killer used a laser pointer to burn out the image from one of the security cameras. You see that? The camera goes out there at 5:51." He pointed to his computer screen.
"Okay, so the killer leaves the remains, writes the message, gets out before anyone can spot him." Malo nodded.
"Right, so we have one confirmed dead and, what, five maybes? What kind of nut bag does that?"
"Well, defacing an iconic American figure suggests that he craves attention, right? And he demands we engage by posing two mysteries-- one for the public: 'Where's the rest of me?'-- and a more private mystery for us: the reordered spine."
"Well, if he has something to say, why doesn't he just say it?"
"'Cause this way, he's forcing us down the path he wants us to go. It's very manipulative, meaning high IQ, which is consistent with the fact that he was able to dissect a spine. Which tells us he's comfortable killing people. It's likely that he has prior offenses."
Joe nodded just as his phone rang and he picked it up. "Hobbs. Yeah. Got a name? Right. Great. Thanks." He hung up. "So one of the guys on the exterminator crew has a felony record-- by the name of Sam Sachs."
*****
"Okay, we've got the C1 vertebra. T9, C2, C5, and then the T1, but with both transverse processes removed." Scott said as he and Pete hovered over the skull and spinal cord that had now been moved to the bone room.
"Why are we writing this all down again?"
Max leaned in the doorway. "Because the killer did not reorder 24 articulating vertebrae jutht for kickth and giggleth, and that maketh this some kind of cipher, which meanth I need the order written down before you go running the bony bits through the wash thycle."
Pete raised his eyebrows and went back to work. "Right, so, continuing... T7..."
"I'm telling you, my grandfather would expecth me to know what to do. I ever tell you that he was a code breaker back in World War II, huh? Worked for Admiral Nimitzth."
Pete looked up at him. "Mine worked for Colonel Chicken."
"What?"
"It's kind of military. He had a uniform. The C4... also has the right transverse process removed."
"It all meanth something... We just have to figure out what."
*****
"Uh, you sure I can't grab a smoke?" The nervous custodian asked in the interrogation room asked Joe and Malo.
"I'll tell you what, we'll let you trash your lungs on your own time." Joe said as he swiped the package from him. "You have quite a record here. Burglary, car theft..."
"Maybe one of these guys out there got some nicotine gum?"
"No. Also says here that you graduated to a couple pops for violent assault. That's what we call a pattern of escalation."
"Pattern of what now?"
"Escalation, Sam. Things just started to get worse and worse."
"Okay, maybe I made a couple bad moves, but it's a whole new me. I mean, I have an important job preserving our national heritage."
"Ya kill cockroaches, Sam."
"Obviously you don't understand museum hygiene. Mama roaches-- they have, like, 40 babies a pop. They eat the paint, the wallpaper, and drop their roach feces all over the historical artifacts. No kidding. I'm our nation's front line of defense."
"Against roach poop?"
"Very stressful job. That's why I need my smokes."
"The guy we're looking for glitched out security cameras without getting caught on film, so he definitely knew of a blind spot. So I'm assuming you do, too."
"And why would you think that?"
"Because you cant go fifteen minutes without a smoke. You get caught on camera, you lose your job."
"...You promise I won't get in trouble?"
"We swear."
"Okay... Yeah... There's a blind spot."
((ahahahaha this is long over due I'm so sorry))
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BONES AU - PART FIVE "The Serial Killer and the Hounds"
Mystery / Thriller~Time Skip! Four Years!~ He was a computer hacker who had a strong belief that the U.S. government was corrupt. He demonstrated his hacking skills twice by shutting down the Senate website in 2009 and hacking into the Pentagon security system to shu...
