landrews

Title: The Dare In The Snipe Hunt
Author: Landrews
Fandom: Bones, Casefic
Spoilers:Set S1 between 'The Soldier On The Grave' and 'Woman In Limbo', though not based on airdates- the time's a little too stretchy for that :-) and Cullen's still working while his fill-ins transition.
Rating: Adult – some sex/violence, Booth and Brennan canon friendship, Brennan/David, Booth/OFC
Summary: Bones and Booth are kidnapped from the site of a mass burial which contains the victims of a serial killer... or does it? They are thrown into a modern day web of cowboys against indians. Can they figure out who is who in time to stop the killing spree as snipers blanket Washington?
Disclaimers: No profit, 'Bones' and it's characters owned by Hart Hanson/Fox/et al – no offense or statements intended regarding the Lumbee nation or Mara Salvatrucha -

CHAPTERS: One Two and Three Four Five Six and Seven Eight and Nine Ten Eleven Twelve and Thirteen Fourteen Fifteen Sixteen Seventeen Eighteen and Nineteen


*** 20 ***


Although the day seemed fresh and even somewhat breezy in town, the sun’s shining in a nearly cloudless sky and out on the grass shoulder of Interstate 95 northbound, it’s broiling. Crouched beside Booth behind the middle seat of a green minivan with its front and side doors open, Tempe’s sweating and she’s only just started her visual exam. A blue tarp, the ends folded over by a suspicious state trooper, holds three corpses wrapped in thin, dingy fabric- maybe beige cotton blankets. Waffleweave.

“There’s dirt on the outside of all three shrouds and,” she says, pulling the shroud back on the nearest corpse. “On the inside.”

“Nice of the unsub to wrap them in plastic; we get good money for a clean car at auction,” Booth jokes. At least she thinks he’s joking.

But then he waves one hand through the stifling air, the other over his nose. “If they can get the odor out. Cat piss and corpses, they’re the worst.”

“The odor's not as strong as it could be; they were probably kept somewhere dry.” She can see now what the state trooper saw, a desiccated hand, the tendons of the wrist clinging still to the bare bone. The forearm still carries mushy flesh, bearing the small holes that mean blowfly larvae have started their work, and plenty of ink, though Temperance can’t make out the shape of the tattoo.

She peels back the shredding upper corner of the blanket, hoping there’s still some skin on the skull. The nose is gone, but a sunken cheek remains, sporting stubble, and part of the forehead remains, also inked. And his teeth are in place. This one shouldn’t be too hard to identify; she can only hope as much remains of the others. “Tats and dentals,” she says.

“What do you need?”

“The mobile. And Zach.”

“My cell’s out of service, yours?”

She slides it out of her hip pocket. “Yes.”

“Yes, you have or ... never mind. I’ll radio. It’s hot, Bones, you want shade?”

A young guy sticks his head in, maybe twenty-five, sandy-haired, with three days growth, and piercing blue eyes. Even in tee shirt and board shorts he looks fly boy instead of surfer dude. Tempe thinks maybe it’s the way military boys hold their shoulders, but even she can see he’s federal.

“Agent Booth, sir,” he says. “Agent Robert Dryden, SBI, North Carolina.”

He still looks federal to her.

Booth looks wary. “You’re a long way from your jurisdiction, Agent Dryden.”

“Yes, sir. But, sir, see, sir…”

“Spit it out, son.”

“This is my car, sir. Well, my wife’s anyway. It was stolen last night from her mother’s place, near Woodbridge.”

Woodbridge is south of them. Someone took an easy drive up 95 and dumped the van before getting into the congested orbit of the Beltway. Tempe doesn't bother to ruminate on why.

Booth purses his lips. “I’ll get you shade, Bones, and get a fan set up so you can come out and cool off. As soon as the screen’s up and you give the okay, we’ll crack the hatchback for you.” He creeps back, half-stands and eases out to talk to Agent Daniels.

Tempe snaps open the kit she borrowed from the CSIs working the scene and goes to work.

***

“We’ve got three males, two between say twenty-two and twenty-nine, and the other between thirty-six and say, forty, maybe a little older. He has osteo-arthiritis and walked with a limp. He used a cane.”

“How can you tell that?” Agent Dryden blurts out.

“What’s left of the skin on his palm is calloused and his shoulder shows repetitive use injuries common to the use of a cane on a daily basis.”

Booth taps his finger on the table in the Jeffersonian’s mobile lab. “That’s nothing. She’s really good at what she does.”

“I guess so. I’m really good at what I do, too, Agent Booth, and I seriously doubt this is in any way related to me. It’s ran…” His eyes go soft and dart up and to the right as his brows pinch down.”...dom.

Booth sits up. “What?”

“I got a complaint, a few months ago, nothing we thought justified following up, about Native American artifacts being dealt on the antiquities black market. My wife, she has a little store in Pembroke, she sells things sometimes, not antiquities really, but artifacts.”

Booth's stomach clenchs, and he glances over to see Bones staring back at him. “Um,” he says, trying to put words together in his head. “Antiquities?”

“Yeah. We have the Eastern Band of Cherokees at Qualla Boundary, of course, and
smaller recognized tribes, but we also have a large, non-recognized Indian Community residing mostly in Robeson and Dare Counties...”

“The Lumbees,” Bones says.

“You know of them?”

Surprise, surprise. Agents spread too thin, so Cullen pulls him off AL, lobs him a soft one and boom, over the fence. Back in the game. Booth grins. When Agent Dryden looks alarmed, Booth figures out he's wearing a snarl, rearranges his lips, which doesn’t seem to help, and then just closes his mouth all together. “You’re up here visiting your mother-in-law?”

“Yeah. She’s a Lumbee. So’s my wife.”

Fucking A. “Even a blind chicken gets a little of the corn sometimes,” Booth says

Bones is so cute when she squints at him like that.


*** 21 ***


The bodies and Zach are off to the Jeffersonian, the green mini-van is off to the FBI lab, and Booth is sitting next to Bones in Emma Boyette Bell’s tiny, DC kitchen. Mrs. Bell is Agent Dryden's mother-in-law and the Agent in question has rounded up his wife and his kids from the matching, tiny back yard where they were playing in the hose and taken them up to dry off and change.

“Forgive me, Mrs. Bell,” Bones says and glances at him. Booth gets a bad feeling as her mouth opens, her words directed at Mrs. Bell. “You don’t look like a Native American…”

None of the Lumbees have, so far. “Bones…”

But Mrs. Bell laughs and reaches out to pat his hand. “That’s all right, Agent Booth, she’s an anthropologist, and a young one at that.”

Bones pulls herself up, but stays silent, looking uncertain, which is rare enough that Booth nods and settles back to watch.

“You’re naïve, Dr. Brennan, to think that race is as simple as a set of physical characteristics.”

Bones blinks. “The vast majority of our ability to identify people who have been…lost… to the world for some amount of time is based on physical characteristics, including ethnicity.”

“I understand. I taught introductory Physical and Cultural Anthropology classes at the University of North Carolina, Pembroke for many years. I moved here in order to work with a Native American non-profit and to further the Lumbee fight towards recognition.” She picks lint off the spotless yellow tablecloth on the small round table in her cozy, wood-floored kitchen, choosing her words. “Dr. Brennan, being Indian, and particularly, being Lumbee, is more a state of mind than a physical imperative. My ancestors were more concerned with survival and useful skill-building than inbreeding. Native Americans, and Natives in general the world over, have either been conquered or been flexible.”

Bones cocks her head and Booth’s lips quirk. He loves it when he can see her brain click over and hum. That look is pure Corvette, electric ignition start.

“The Lumbee have always welcomed outsiders who were willing to adapt to our philosophies,” Mrs. Bell continues. “Especially if they brought adaptive mechanisms with them, such as new tools or better ways of living. Better to our minds, that is. We don’t care if your skin is dark or light, if you have a flat or straight nose, what color or texture of hair you were given by whomever your God may be. If one was willing to join themselves to our brotherhood in loyalty and friendship, was a hard and cooperative worker, could offer new ideas or physical prowess, we took them in and they became ours.

We adapted to the European threat better than any other tribe and blossomed. Blood ties all five hundred thousand of us indeliably, each to the other. We have always known we are Indians. Our children today know they are Indians. The other Tribes of the Americas know we are Indians. It is only the American Government who balks and demands proof, wants to see proud red brows and ink-black hair and aquiline noses and maybe a hand made war bonnet, too. That’s dried bull patties, Dr. Brennan.”

Bones nods, but Booth knows she’s sorting the “dried bull patties” comment through her social filter, separating the kernels of useful anthropological data from the chaff. Mrs. Bell is worried that Bones isn’t following. Booth wonders if he could encourage Bones to greater facial expression when they talk to people who might be of actual help to their investigations. She hides behind her thinking face.

Giving up on an immediate response from Bones, Mrs. Bell pets the table with her fingertips. “Lumbees are smart. We’ve pushed the legal system to our advantage ever since there was a legal system in this country, and too often, we found ourselves on the wrong side simply because we stood up and said we were Indian, when no one would’ve been the wiser had we just sat down and shut up. Passing for white, being mistaken for Negro, it goes to extremes in the Lumbee Community.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Bell,” Bones says. “I can appreciate your point. The physical characteristics traditionally associated with the various races often proves quite valuable in my work, but it’s very useful to understand the circumstances in which it may prove to be misleading as a tool to identity within a community.”

Whatever that means, Booth thinks. It occurs to him that more often than not, when Booth knew him, Danny Ghilley sat down and shut up.

“Actually, it goes further than the physical. Native Americans are somehow supposed to be 'Indians'.” Mrs. Bell continues. Her cheeks are staining a girlish pink as she becomes engrossed in her discourse. Booth revises her age estimate from sixty-two to fifty-eight. She tilts her head and offers a lop-sided grin. She’s attractive. She reminds him of his mother when she starts in on fly-fishing and water quality. “When the government became set on administering minority programs, some of our most forward citizens rallied to have us recognized, and we’ve been fighting ever since.

Minority programs often encourage the creation and maintenance of a racial identity frozen in time. We’re supposed to look a certain way and dress in animal skins and attend pow-wows and know something mysterious that the European has never quite figured out about the universe. And if we do that, and keep a membership roll and recover our 'language', maybe we’ll be given government money to bolster our poverty, a large portion of which came about simply because we've long lived on land that’s hard to farm and made our living on crops that aren’t politically correct, and because we stood up and proclaimed we were different from the immigrants relocating to our home.”

Booth wants the conversation to move on and he’s still listening for Dryden. The kids’ voices have quieted. If he isn’t down the staircase in the next three minutes, Booth is going up. He’s skimmed the file on Pembroke, the demographics and historical highlights. “White settlers, runaway or freed slaves, and other Indians… and now you have a pretty big Mexican population, right?”

“Yes, Agent Booth. Pembroke’s not a Lumbee stronghold anymore.”

“Interesting choice of words.”

“The Lumbee are a proud people, Agent Booth. We have always rolled with the tides and lived as a part of the planet, not just on it. We are also, these days, a fractured people. One group pushes for recognition, and another turns their back on it, choosing to live as we always have, within the majority, but always separate.

Many of our younger people have adopted the customs of other southern Tribes as our own. Some have chosen to date and marry only other Indians who display the expected Native American phenotype. I find it disheartening that our inclusive culture, our oral traditions, our adaptive Lumbee nature, is being compromised by the limited world view the concept of non-adaptive evolution offers.” Leaning forward, she slaps her hand down on the table, her silver hair swinging. “It’s like living in a Renaissance Fair all the time! We’re expected to act like our ancestors, and what for? What are you? Italian-American? Irish-American?”

Caught off guard, Booth says, “Um…” while Bones and Mrs. Bell stare at him, waiting for him to answer. Bones is hiding a smirk in the corners of her upturned lips. He frowns at her.

“Whole political nations are currently being subsumed by their cultural or religious sub-groups,” Mrs. Bell says into his silence. “In part because governments have encouraged minorities within their population to remain static in order to qualify for this or that program, but that stasis only enslaves them ever more to the system as they fail to either adapt or move on. A snake eating its own tail needs decisive action.”

Ah, finally. “Are the Lumbees taking decisive action in the form of the Guard?”

Her eyes narrow. To her credit, that’s all she gives him, though. “The Guard is a children's tale, Agent Booth, from the Civil War,” she scolds him. “It's an offshoot of the Lowrie Gang legends. They fought to keep Lumbees from being conscripted by the Confederate Home Guard and they were opposed to the strong-arm tactics of the Conservative Democracy Movement, which was pro-White Supremacy. When Henry Berry died, the Gang died with him.”

“Momma!” says a long-limbed, brunette beauty from the doorway. Dryden stands just behind her, looking just like Parker does when he’s spilled his milk or streaked crayon off his paper onto the coffee table. “Don’t get her started on Henry Berry, you’ll be here for days.”

Booth wants to pursue the idea of the Guard starting with an ancestral cemetary at Douglas Point, but the moment's past and he's made Mrs. Bell wary, so instead he stands and Kiera Dryden comes to shake his hand. She’s pale, her hand cold. “I’m Kiera.”

“Agent Seeley Booth; this is Dr. Temperance Brennan. The kids?”

“I put a movie on. They’re fine for a while. Bobby says it’s bad, that there were… bodies?... in the car?”

He gestures towards the table and the chairs Dryden has pulled out for them.

“There were three cor… males… men,” Bones says. “In your car. We have reason to believe they were in some way related to the Lumbee Community.”

“Who are they?”

Bones shakes her head. “We’re working on identifying them. Your husband believes one of them may have been the subject of a complaint regarding the dealing of antiquities.”

“Do you know anything about Indian artifacts?” Booth says, as he sits. “Maybe something that would be valuable to collectors?”

“Why were you asking Momma about the Home Guard?”

“We’ve been told there’s a faction of Lumbees who call themselves the Guard.”

“They’re just stories. Bobby would’ve heard about it otherwise, people talk to him.”

“He’s an SBI agent, he’d be the last to know,” Booth says.

Dryden tilts his head in rueful agreement.

Bones leans forward. “Do you consider yourself a Lumbee, Agent Dryden?”

He looks startled and Mrs. Bell laughs. “No,” he says. “Lumbees are Lumbee by blood. I’m loyal to my wife and her family, but I can’t ever be Lumbee.”

“Your children are, though.”

He and Kiera both nod in acknowledgement.

Booth’s still thinking of connections. Since she didn’t answer his first question, he asks another. “Did you know Jack Stratton?”

It’s Mrs. Bell who answers. “Of course, he lived three doors down from us most of his primary years. He was a sweet boy. My old neighbors have been interviewed by the police, the sheriff, the coroner, the FBI- I’m sure there are transcripts available.”

“Yes, ma’am. We’ve just come into this investigation at an oblique angle. We need to know if these murders are in any way related to Jack Stratton.”

“I don’t see how.”

Neither does Booth, but there’s now definitely too many Lumbees popping up this week to be a coincidence.

Back to the corpse with the cane and the only tie to the other cases- antiquities. “Do you know Samuel Lyons?”

Kiera and her Momma share a look, and then Kiera says, “He came into the shop a couple of times, looking for items I didn’t have.”

“What kind of shop do you have?”

“I sell Native American crafts- baskets, masks, arrows.”

“New?”

“Some new, some reproduced artifacts, some antique. Not as old as Lyons was looking for. He also wanted relics.”

Dryden shuffles his feet and looks at the tabletop when Booth sends a glance his way. Dumbass.

“Relics. Like bones or organs?” Bones asks.

“Yes. Sometimes things like dance bonnets or staffs have old bones attached.”

“Human?”

Momma pats Kiera’s hand and answers for her. “Probably no, although that’s always what collectors want to believe.”

“I sometimes receive that type of thing for analysis, Booth, most often it’s old Bison or fox bones.”

“Lyons wanted human bone,” Kiera says.

“Skulls with Native American markers and with provenance,” Momma clarified.

“Provenance?”

“Proof of origin. Who dug it up and where. He said he had the ability to date them. What does Samuel Lyons have to do with any of this? ”

“He’s dead,” Bones says, god damn her.

Booth unclenches his jaw. “Do you know Danny Ghilley?”

Tears spring up in Kiera’s eyes and her fingers close on Mrs. Bell’s. “Why?”

“Kiera,” Dryden says.

Booth’s arm is resting on the back of Bones’ chair, and he touches her shoulder. She stiffens.

“Why?” Kiera says again, louder. “Is he dead, too?”

“No,” Booth lies, and waits for Bones to contradict him. She doesn’t.

Keira stifles a sob and gulps.

“But he’s in trouble.”

“That boy’s troubled, period.” Mrs. Bell says.

The serial killer was a sweet boy, and the man who took him out on behalf of a whole Indian tribe is trouble. Booth can’t figure that one out. “I knew Danny Ghilley, ma’am, a long time ago. He’s a good man.”

A calculating look crosses her face. “He’s troubled, Agent Booth, not a troublemaker. Has been ever since he got out of the military.”

Dryden says, “He was Kiera’s fiancé until he came back home, Agent Booth.”

Kiera wipes her sudden tears from her cheek and sighs. “He broke our engagement, said he couldn’t sleep. He’d walk out of town with a pack and be gone weeks, sometimes months. And then he’d show up and shave his beard and work a few weeks before he wandered off again. Three or four years ago, he bought a place out on the swamp, a cabin, basic, and started his own company making knives. I buy all the ones he makes from horn or antler. He’s been gone. He missed our last meeting.”

“Kiera,” Dryden says. “The last time you saw Danny…”

“Yes.” She sniffs. Her momma gets up and rips a paper towel from the roll by the sink and hands it to her. She dabs at her nose.

“The last time you saw Danny?” Booth pokes.

“Samuel Lyons came in, but before I could say anything, they were growling at each other. Danny punched him, bloodied his lip, but left when I yelled at him.”

“Did Lyons say how they knew each other?”

“No. I asked if he was okay, but he didn’t say anything, just watched out the front until Danny pulled out and then left. He broke the door, slamming it so hard.”

“Did Lyons purchase anything at all from you?” Bones asks. Her tone is threaded with the tension surging under Booth's palm.

“Sure, yes. He only came in the couple of times, but I’ve dealt with him as a wholesaler for a while. I took his orders by phone, items to re-sell, mostly, though he had me drop-ship a few things.”

“Could I get all his shipping addresses from you?” says Booth at the same time as Bones says, “What did he purchase?”

Rattled, Kiera stares at them with big, blank eyes wet with tears again.

“It’s okay, Kiera,” Dryden soothes. “I’ll call Sarah, she can fax the addresses up.”

“Sarah works for us part-time,” he explains, scooting his chair back. “I’ll just go call…”

“Sit down. I’ve got men there in Pembroke,” Booth says. “I’ll want them to interview her. What did Lyons purchase?”

“Blankets and baskets, mostly, the hand-made ones. He favored certain artists.”

“Anything else?”

“Drums, last fall. And masks, all different types, maybe three weeks ago? I drop shipped the masks to somewhere in New York.”

“Booth…” Bones says, and there’s a little bit of wild in her eyes he doesn’t like. It tightens his chest and clenches his fists and his voice will come out sounding dangerous.

He stands. “C’mon, Daniels, let’s go make that call.”

*

Sitting at a cluttered desk in the den, Daniels talks to the girl on the other end of the phone line in a soft voice, explaining what he needs, that Federal agents will collect it, that no, he can’t explain right now. Booth reads the spines of the books in the shelves against the wall and wonders that anyone could have such varied interests as Mrs. Bell has on display.

When he hangs up, Dryden stares at the wall without blinking.

Booth clears his throat and Dryden sighs and closes his eyes.

“What are you thinking?” Booth says.

“That I should’ve… made some connections.”

Booth takes a deep breath, lets it go slow and drops into the leather wingback chair nestled into the corner next to the desk. They are not quite face-to-face, not quite side-by side. They’ll talk of everything, and nothing. This has always been the way. They each have information the other wants, and they each have mandates on that knowledge. To tell or not to tell?

It’s not the same as interviewing a suspect, and yet, it is, exactly. Booth wants to play big brother Fed to little brother State, but that doesn’t feel right and if nothing else, the years have taught Booth to trust his gut. He goes for father-to-father, head down, rolling a stray Matchbox Chevelle on the edge of the desk, with one finger. Back and forth. Back and forth.

“The guy with the limp, could she tell… could Dr. Brennan tell if he had tats? Lots of them?”

Booth shrugs, but his ears are pricked.

“It’s just, that antiquities complaint, by Turner Colvin…”

“Turner Colvin?”

“Yes, he’s a prominent Lumbee, but removed from home. He ‘lives away’ in Lumbee terms. He’s in New York. He’s not involved much in local politics or Lumbee Tribe business. No one knows where his information flows from or what part he might play, but his name frequently comes up when there's trouble in Robeson. He’s used complaints before for legal maneuvering. We didn’t credit it much.”

Booth will return to that in a moment, but he knows a train of thought is easily derailed and it’ll be his fault if Dryden has steamed ahead already. “The man with the limp,” he says.

Dryden is pensive. He scoots forward and plucks a pen from among the papers on the desk. He flips an invoice over and writes: MS-13.

“Are you sure?”

“No. We’ve been watching him. I didn’t… It didn’t occur to me that the complaint might relate to him. It was two separate matters, I didn’t think… I didn’t think.”

Booth is thinking. He’s thinking of Danny Ghilley on the rooftop in the morning fog. Guard takes care of their own. Sounds an awful lot like a gang motto, like MS-13’s own motto that revenge always gets taken care of, no matter if takes twenty minutes or twenty years. He’s thinking of Turner Colvin complaining about a man with a limp, a possible MS-13 gang member, who turns up dead in the back of a Lumbee Indian artifacts dealer's mini-van. And about Colvin’s brother, a serial killer who’s flexible MO has occasionally run to dismemberment and decapitation, a traditional MS-13 method. He’s thinking about an altercation in the artifact dealer's store, between Samuel Lyons and Danny Ghilley. About Stratton and Ghilley and Lyons all dead within a single day.

“What do you know about the Guard?”

“I know they exist. I’ve got a buddy who’s tracked them for years, can’t get anything solid. If you ask anyone at the SBI, they’ll shrug and say it’s not possible for the Guard to exist in any meaningful capacity without them knowing about it. But there’s whispers, there’s unsolved casework, there’s a missing bad guy or druggie or two.” He swallows, and Booth understands suddenly that Dryden is scared. “I love my wife, Agent Booth. As long as the Guard is whispers and innocents stay safe… I don’t ask my extended family too many questions when I come home.”

“Danny Ghilley’s dead.”

“He was far from innocent.”

Booth palms the tiny, orange Chevelle, closing it in his fist. “Aren’t we all,” he says.


Thanks, thiswaltz for the copyedit!

Part Twenty-Two