Bones: The Salt in the Wound recap
May 2nd 2009 20:51
At a City Maintenance Storage Unit, two woman, Tess and Darlene, prepare to salt the icy bridges in the area, but when they start up the machine, it clogs on something.
“What’s that?”
“Something in the salt.” Darlene answers, climbing up to check. She takes one look inside the truck and stops short. Tess notices something is wrong. “What is it?” she calls up.
“You know that Bible story about the woman who turns into salt?”
“Lots wife?” Darlene asks, confused.
“I think maybe we found her!”
Inside the truck bed, half buried in the truck is a human corpse covered in salt. It looks more like a mummy than recent human remains.
~*~*~
Booth climbs up the side of the truck. “So the uh, weather’s been warm for the past six weeks so, wow!” He gets sidetracked seeing the body that his partner is carefully brushing salt away from. “They haven’t had to use rock salt. Whoa.”
“The dermis is extremely desiccated,” Bones answers, squinting against the sunlight. “The salt quick-dried the tissue.”
Booth frowns at the body. “Looks like a really big apple doll.”
“Teenage girl. Very tall, six feet.”
“Looks like she’s been dead for a hundred yers.”
“In fact, less than a month,” Bones clarifies. “Salt is a hydroscopic. It draws moisture from its surroundings and replaces it with crystal.” She goes back to the body.
“You know what? I suddenly got a potato chip craving.”
Bones looks up at her partner. What? Booth just smiles, unconsciously licking his lips around all that salt.
~*~*~
Back at the lab, Angela tells a now very blond Roxie, “Cats are so disdainful.”
“They’re independent and self-assured,” Roxie answers. “Like you.”
Angela holds up two pictures. “Dog? Or cat. Which one are you going to pick?”
Roxie points at the “cat” picture, arguing, “Uh, that’s a picture of a lion eating a gazelle.” Angela flips it around and laughs. That’s kind of the point.
“What’s with the sudden pet desire?” Roxie asks. “We’re not even living together.”
“Yet.” Angela holds up the picture of the sweet little black and white dog behind bars. “Look at him Rox. Look at his warm brown eyes.” She holds it up, grinning. Clearly, Angela’s already made her choice.
Meanwhile, Bones and Cam watch the new intern, Arastoo Vaziri praying on the floor of the Jeffersonian.
“He’s going to do this five times a day,” Bones says, and Cam explains that he’s an observant Muslim.
“On the bright side,” Hodgins answers. “We’ll always know which way’s east.” He shrugs and walks off.
“I don’t know if this is going to work Dr. Saroyan, Bones tells Cam, and Cam reminds her that, “This country was founded on the notion of religious tolerance.” She walks back to the body.
“I’m not discriminating because he is Muslim,” Bones answers. “I find all religions equally irrational.”
Arastoo swipes his card, joining them on the forensic platform. “Thank you for patience.”
“I had no choice,” Bones answers. “Apparently it’s a constitutional issue.” Cam shoots her a warning look and confused, Arastoo turns to the monitor to look at the victim’s x-rays. Looking at the victim’s thumb, he’s seen this same type of damage in a case where a girl was chained to a radiator to protect her virginity. They find some red fibers that Hodgins takes, and Angela joins them with the victim’s ID.
“Turns out there aren’t that many 16-year old girls who are six feet tall on the missing person’s list.”
Bones looks down at the paper and reads, “Ashley Clark, missing three weeks.” Angela nods.
“So Roxie and I are getting a dog,” She announces, and Hodgins is surprised.
“Wow, I had Roxie pegged as a cat person.”
“Hey,” Angela welcomes, noticing Arastoo for the first time. She smiles. “I’m Angela.”
Arastoo introduces himself, then asks, “You’re boyfriend’s name is Rocky? Like pow, like the famous boxer?”
“No, uh, Roxie.”
“Angela’s boyfriend is a girl,” Bones interrupts. “Perhaps your religion won’t allow you to accept that.”
Cam quickly jumps up. “Blood chemistry shows unusually high levels of relaxants.”
“Hmm, relaxants? Sounds like something you could get arrested taking,” Angela says with a grin.
“It’s a naturally occurring hormone,” Bones answers. “Secreted during pregnancy.”
“So if she was handcuffed to protect her virginity,” Cam answers. “Didn’t work out so well.”
They all glance down at the very mummy-like remains.
~*~*~
Booth and Bones visit Ashley Clark’s parents, where they tell them the last time they saw her was before the high school dance. Her mother, Ellen, thinks they’re there to ask if Ashley was on drugs, but they tell her that’s not it. Did they know that Ashley was pregnant? Ellen refuses to believe it’s true, but her husband, Bob, looks at them confused. “Is that who you think killed her? The father of her child?”
“Well we’d like to talk to him,” Booth answers softly.
“My daughter and I were very close,” Ellen insists. “And it simply isn’t possible that she wouldn’t tell me she was pregnant.”
“I would appreciate some insight into the high number of injuries your daughter sustained since puberty,” Bones answers, glancing at Bob.
It’s Ellen that answers. “So now you’re saying that we abused our daughter?” Her denial is quickly turning into anger.
“It’s alright,” her husband assures. “They have to ask.”
He tells them that Ashley was an athlete, she grew almost two feet over the last year. “You can confirm her injuries with her chiropractor.”
“We’re very sorry for your loss, sir,” Booth answers, handing over his card.
Ellen is not so forgiving. “Then you shouldn’t say such terrible things.”
Booth and Bones exchange a look as Ellen continues to glare at them.
~*~*~
At the chiropractor’s, Dr. Sean Fitts shows Booth and Bones Ashley’s x-rays. “Ashley wasn’t a victim of abuse, she was the victim of athleticism and a competitive disposition.” Bones recognizes a volleyball injuring, and Booth recognizes “jumper’s knee”, and Bones is surprised.
“How did you know that?”
“Athlete, Bones,” he reminds, then thanks the doctor for his help.
“Yeah.” He hands Bones the x-rays, and she thanks him.
As the doctor is leaving, Booth has one more question. “Where you aware that Ashley Clark was pregnant?”
“No,” Dr. Fitts answers, turning around. “No, her last appointment was about six weeks ago. She didn’t mention it.”
“Well despite the fact that you’re not a real medical doctor, you have been quite helpful,” Bones answers, and Dr. Fitts can’t help but laugh.
“Oh you’re welcome.” He sits down at his desk. “Oh, and by the way, you aren’t a real medical doctor either.” He grins.
“Ouch,” Booth answers, and shoots the doctor a grin as he follows Bones out. Dr. Fitts grins to himself.
~*~*~
Back at the lab, Cam and Arastoo remove the top of the victim’s skull. Arastoo takes a look and discovers no hematoma. “Meaning the skull was fractured postmortem. Probably when the body tumbled out of the overhead bin. Ka-lunk,” he gestures, making the sound effect with a smile.
“Very…descriptively put,” Cam answers with a nod.
“It has been pointed out to me that I tend towards onamonapia.”
Suddenly Bones walks in, asking Cam why the body hasn’t been defleshed yet.
“I’m still conducting the autopsy.”
“Well if I can’t remove the flesh, then I can’t find cause of death,” she argues, and Cam answers, “Well if you remove the death *I* can’t find cause of death.”
“What flesh? The body is completely desiccated,” Bones answers, gesturing toward the remains. “Any remaining indicators are going to come from the bones.”
“Not if I can rehydrate the tissue.”
Arastoo adds that it’s been successfully done on mummies, but his smile quickly disappears when he sees Bones face. “But shush,” he tells himself, going back to the remains and letting Cam argue with Bones.
“The salt arrested bacterial development,” Cam tells Bones. “There’s no decomp. If I can rehydrate I can do a proper autopsy.”
“No, it will take too long, and a positive result is debatable.”
“Lucky for me, I’m the boss,” Cam answers easily.
Arastoo glances from Bones to Cam, waiting to see what’ll happen.
“I claim one of my freebies,” Bones answers, and Cam immediately answers, “I claim one of my freebie declines.”
Well that’s that then. Frustrated that she has no other argument, Bones stomps out. Cam sighs, shaking her head. She turns back to the remains.
~*~*~
Bob Clark visits Booth as his office at the FBI to tell Booth that he suspected his daughter was pregnant. Booth understands that he didn’t want to say anything in front of his wife, and Bob tells him that he found a pregnancy test in the trash. He confronted his daughter about it, and she denied that it was hers. She asked him to keep it a “father-daughter secret”. Bob asks him to please not tell his wife about keeping this a secret, then leaves.
~*~*~
Angela tells Roxie about the dog, Donatello. He’s super cute, only thing is he’s scared of the wind. When Roxie doesn’t say anything, Angela realizes she’s breaking up with her. Roxie leaves Angela alone with the picture of Donatello.
~*~*~
Meanwhile, Ashley Clark’s friend Becka, finds Booth fighting with the vending machine at the FBI. She too is pregnant.
They sit in the hallway to talk, and Becka admits that she heard that Ashley was murdered. Booth tells her “it’s my job to find out who did it,” and Becka confesses that Ashley went behind her back with her boyfriend, make that ex-boyfriend, Rory. As mad as she was at Ashley, she insists wouldn’t have killed her best friend.
~*~*~
Back at the lab, Hodgins, Cam and Arastoo are trying to rehydrate the body. They get the body ready and Arastoo’s watch goes off. He has to go pray. As He walks out, Angela walks in to ask Cam if she needs her the rest of the day. Hodgins can tell something’s wrong, and when she tells them about Roxie, Hodgins tells Cam he’s going to take Angela for a cup of coffee.
“Sure, yeah, go,” Cam answers, talking to her herself as they leave. “This is a simple murder, solves itself.”
~*~*~
Booth and Bones visit the high school to find Rory working out in the weight room. He gets up from lifting weights, meeting them with an, “it wasn’t me.”
“It wasn’t you who what?” Bones asks as Booth can’t help but laugh.
“Becka texted me saying you think I killed Ashley, but I didn’t,” Rory answers. The eyebrows of the boy standing behind him shoot up. He grins, impressed.
“Dude, you’re a murder suspect, that’s awesome!”
Booth asks for some privacy with Rory, and they question him about he and Ashley.
“Becka said that you and Ashley connected sexually,” Bones starts, and Booth clarifies, “Yeah, her exact words were, uh, ‘got all over’.”
“This is completely not fair,” Rory answers wearily, walking over to pick up a towel.
“That you had sex with two girls and they got pregnant?” Bones asks.
“We didn’t have sex,” Rory insists, and Bones leans over to whisper to Booth, “Pregnancy is unlikely without intercourse.”
“Right, thanks for the tip, Bones, yeah,” Booth answers back.
“No, we didn’t have intercourse,” Rory says. “I’m a Christian, I’m not gonna have intercourse before I’m married.”
“Okay, so you got two girls pregnant but you didn’t have sex with either one of them?” Booth asks.
“Well, I think some of my…you know, stuff, may have…found its way in there in the way Ashley came after me,” Rory struggles to answer. “It’s like she was really really trying…”
“To get your sperm?” Bones offers helpfully.
“Well if it wasn’t for my faith in Jesus, there would have been sexual intercourse,” Rory answers, and Booth asks how their relationship ended.
“Bad. Ashley was mad at me, Becka was mad at me. I did everything right and it turned out all wrong.”
“Did Ashley have any arguments with anyone else?” Booth asks, and Bones adds, “Or try to get their sperm?”
Booth just shakes his head to himself as Rory tells them Ashley had a fight with Mr. Hawthorn, the volleyball coach.
~*~*~
Back at the Jeffersonian, Hodgins and Angela are back in the Egyptian storage room. Hodgins assure her that he’ll always be there for her, and Angela is appreciative. She tells him that Roxie “wanted somebody who doesn’t just live in the moment but who considers the future. “ She thinks a second, then asks, “What’s wrong with the moment?”
“Nothing.”
“But…?”
“But it’s nice every once in the while to think about the future,” Hodgins answers, staring at her from his side of the bed.
Angela sits up and gets dressed, asking, “So let me get this straight, to be together thten it has to be all about the future?”
“Yeah.”
“So this,” she turns to smile at him. “Right now, this isn’t together?”
“It was a moment,” Hodgins answers, sitting up with a smile. “A great moment,” he assures, leaning back against the headboard. “But all great moments…they pass.”
Angela leaves and Hodgins notices she left an earring. He starts to call her back, but stops, looking at the earring instead.
~*~*~
Booth and Bones follow Mr. Hawthorn outside, asking him about Ashley. He admits that they had to arguments. “The first one when was she failed to seduce me,” he says as they head down the steps. “And the second, a few months later when she threatened to name me as the father of her child if I didn’t give her five grand.”
“She tried to seduce you?” Bones asks, confused.
“Seduce isn’t the right word,” Hawthorn answers. “Look, that girl came at me like—“
“So Ashley Clark tried to blackmail you,” Booth offers.
He tells them that “with the way things are” he thought the smartest move was to report it to the principal. When Bones asks about “the way things are”, Hawthorn tells them that half his volleyball team got pregnant. Booth asks for a team roster, and Hawthorn points them to the multipurpose room. “They’re having another baby shower.”
~*~*~
Booth and Bones walk in on the baby shower and Booth lets out a dry laugh. “You gotta be kidding me. This school ever hear of sex education?”
“Well if so there’s gaps in the curriculum,” Bones answers.
“That’s for sure.”
When Becka approaches with a girl named Alyssa, who right away tells them that she assumes they’re here to talk to her about Ashley, Booth tells his partner, “Wow, this texting thing is way out of control.”
Bones assumes Alyssa is the team captain, and she’s right. Alyssa tells her she’s also valedictorian and student body president. “Or I was until people decided I was a bad example.”
“Well as alpha female, you are a bad example,” Bones tells her, and Alyssa is insulted. Booth brings the conversation back to the murder, and both girls assure them that they’re “quite intelligent”. They tell them that the same guy is the father of Alyssa, Becka, another girl named Jenny, and Ashley’s baby, and it’s not Rory.
“So one boy is the father of four babies?” Bones asks, and Alyssa just nods. “Mmmhmm.”
“Okay, and who would this stud be?” Booth asks.
“It’s Clinton.”
“Oh, President Bill Clinton?” Bones asks seriously, and both girls laugh.
“No, Clinton Gilmour.” They point to the kid standing in the doorway. Booth spots the kid and can’t help but be skeptical. “The one in the yellow?”
Yep.
~*~*~
Booth finds Clinton in the weight room and confronts him.
“Alyssa Howland says that you had sex with the entire volleyball team.”
“The girls volleyball team,” Clinton answers. “Not all of them, I don’t like to boast. A gentleman does not kiss and tell.” He leans back and begins lifting the weights.
“How old are you?”
“Sixteen. My personality is completely formed.”
“How did you get those four girls pregnant?”
“You want pictures? Check the internet. That’s what I did,” Clinton answers, getting back up.
“Alright, you know I show no disrespect,” Booth answers, taking off another weight to add to the bar. “I went to high school and high school has not changed. The fact is,” he continues, tightening weights. “Guys like you didn’t get that many girls, you know what I’m saying?”
Booth leans back and Clinton warns, “Wait, you can’t lift that.”
Booth merely lifts the weights off and begins lifting them. Clinton is impressed. “Whoa.”
When Booth is done, he sits up and says, “See, I can do that, but I didn’t get girls like that in high school. So what you’re saying happened, really didn’t happen.”
“Like a conspiracy?” Clinton jokes. “The conspiracy is that they like me. I’ll tell you something else, more than one of them told me that I’m very considerate and sweet in the bed department.”
“Ashley is dead,” Booth answers, standing up. “She was murdered.” He begins walking toward Clinton, who backs up. “The prime suspect would be the person who knocked her up. I need to know the person who did the deed.”
“It was me,” Clinton answers, then quickly clarifies, “The sex part! The killing part was definitely somebody else.”
“You know what I think? I think those girls are up to something and they’re using you as a cover.” He stares at Clinton a second, then shrugs. “Okay, we’ll just do a DNA test and the truth will come out right?”
Booth heads to the door, and Clinton calls after him, “Take my DNA and, uh, you’ll find out the truth. I am the mac-daddy, supremo baby-daddy of GOW high school.”
Booth ignores him and leaves.
~*~*~
Backa t the lab, Arastoo and Cam are watching the body rehydrate. Arastoo is worried about what to tell Bones, and Cam just answers, “Tell Dr. Brennan that unless she can think of a way to examine the bones while leaving the flesh intact, you’re both out of luck.”
~*~*~
Bones and Angela are eating lunch and watching the news on TV. The reporter announces that there was a pact between the girls at the high school to get pregnant and raise their kids together.
“No, there was no proof that there was a pact,” Bones tells Angela.
“See, this is what happens when all you worry about is the future,” Angela answers. “Pregnant teenagers.” They go back to their meal.
“I would argue that most pregnant teenagers get that way by becoming involved in the moment.”
Angela nods. “True.”
“You alright?” Bones finally asks, and Angela assures her that she was. That it was “so worth it”.
“Will you be able to remain BBFs?” Bones asks, and Angela gently corrects, “BFFs. Best friends forever.”
“Oh. Will you resume a sexual relationship with Hodgins?” Bones asks, and Angela answers, “I already did.”
Bones laughs. “Well, good.”
“Yeah, but he can’t keep it casual. He’s the marrying kind.”
“I am comfortable giving you advice in this area,” Bones answers, and Angela is a little surprised.
“Shoot.”
“I think you live your life very well.”
“Thank you.”
“You are not afraid to change your mind when conditions change.”
“Conditions always change,” Angela agrees.
“The successful organism is the organisms that adapts.” Angela doesn’t quite know what to say to that, so Bones continues, “This is one area where we are very similar.”
“I was with you until right there.”
“Like me, you are not swept away by your emotions. You remain rational, you use your brain to pick someone for sex and companionship.”
This is all making Angela a little worried. “Uh, minor correction there, I use my heart.”
“That is not—”
“Metaphoric heart, sweetie. Stay with me here, alright? Love, like art, comes from the moment where two people become one.”
“Minor correction, love comes from a confluence of chemicals and hormones in the peneal gland.”
“Right, but all beauty is transient and of the moment,” Angela finishes.
Bones thinks about this. “Like a sunset is beautiful.”
“You know it sounds like we’re in agreement, which is worrying me just a little bit.”
Bones’s phone vibrates, and it’s a text from Hodgins. He found pectin in the scratches he swabbed on the victim’s arm.”
“How did he find scratches? The victim looked like beef jerky,” Angela answers, taking a bite of her food.
“Well, apparently Cam had some limited success in rehydrating the body.”
“That’s impressive.”
“Yes,” Bones answers, already thinking about the fact that, “Pectin is used in some preserves, right?”
“Sure,” Angela answers. “I remember that from growing up a farm girl in Amish country.” At Bones’s look, Angela says, “Sarcasm, Brennan. I’m sorry.”
Bones remembers that the victim and her mother were making jam the night she disappeared. Bones gets up to leave, and Angela asks, “Have you ever noticed that a sunset looks more beautiful when you share it with somebody you care about?”
“No, I haven’t,” Bones answers. “But I’ll pay better attention next time.” She kisses Angela on the cheek and heads out. Angela just shakes her head in amusement.
~*~*~
Booth interrogates Ashley’s mother, who admits to grabbing her daughter’s arm, but not because she found out about the pregnancy. She still denies that it was real.
In the observation room, Bones asks Sweets, “Why can’t this woman face the facts?”
“Perhaps because the facts are so painful.”
“You suspect the father of incest?”
“That would explain the mother’s behavior.”
Back in the room, Angela’s mom tells Booth that she didn’t know about the pregnancy, she was angry about a forged check she’d found. Ashley had made out a check for $5,000 and forged her mother’s signature on it. When Booth asks why the girl needed that much money, her mom says she wouldn’t say. “She was hanging around Becka and the rest of that team, and suddenly I didn’t exist.”
Sweets nods as Mrs. Clark continues, “And now the News is saying that she had some kind of pact.”
“Booth,” Sweets interrupts through the microphone. “I have a theory.”
Booth excuses himself and joins them in the observation room. “What’ve you got?”
“Okay, it’s possible that Ashley Clark was killed by the pack for not coming up with $5,000.”
“So you think this whole pact thing is true?”
Bones agrees that, “There have been many instances in history where women grouped together to raise their children. And the men become nothing more to them than sperm donors.” She provides an example out of the Himalayas, and both Sweets and Booth just stare at her.
“Right,” Booth finally answers. “So you think the Himalayan mo-mos just killed each other when things got dicey?”
“Killing is a more male response,” Bones answers. “Women tend more towards shunning.”
Sweets thinks that he might be able to figure out the nature of the girls’ relationships, and when Booth asks how, Sweets answers, “Let me at the alpha girl.” At Booth’s look, he quickly adds, “Psychologically, I mean.”
~*~*~
Back at the lab, Cam walks in to find a giant skeleton on the wall. Not a real one, but one Arastoo has created out of x-rays. Cam is impressed. She assures Arastoo that he’ll get the credit for it, but he quickly tells her that he doesn’t want it. He doesn’t want to be the one to point out to Bones that there was a way to examine the bones virtually. But doing so, he found something that he never would have noticed had he looked at the actual bones.
Arastoo shows Cam a hairline fracture in the middle ear.
“What does that suggest to you?” Cam asks.
“Violence, Dr. Saroyan.”
~*~*~
Arastoo finds Angela sitting alone with her Jeffersonian mug.
“Miss Montenegro?”
She sets her cup down, welcoming him in with a smile.
“I would like to pass on to you my condolences that your heart has been broken.”
“Oh, here we go.” She gets up. “Are you gonna quote the Koran?”
“No, no, I put together a CD with some songs that I have found to be cathartic,” he answers with a smile.
“Oh.” Angela is touched.
Arastoo recites the entire playlist, ending with, “Of course, the finest of melancholy songs, ‘Dust in the Wind’. Very melancholy, that.” Still smiling he finishes, “I wish you peace Miss Montenegro. And I wish that you find love again.”
“Thank you Arastoo,” Angela answers, smiling big. “Thank you very much.” She hugs him.
~*~*~
Arastoo joins Cam back on the platform.
“Tell Dr. Brennan she can’t have the remains yet,” Cam begins, without even looking up from her camera as she continues to take pictures of the remains. “Hovering will not make this go any faster.”
“Dr. Brennan required me to hover.”
“Hows about you go back to prayer and give me a little breathing space.” Arastoo’s smile fades, and Cam winces. “I apologize, I quip sometimes.” He tells her that it’s nothing compared to what he got from his regiment. He salutes her with a smile, and Cam asks him to get the glycerin.
He watches her inject glycerin behind the ear. Perhaps this way they can see if there’s any other damage to explain the fracture.
~*~*~
Sweets is in the interrogation room with Alyssa, who insists that there was no pact. The team was all close, yeah, but there was no pact.
“Boys?”
“Boys, come and go, but your friends? That’s who you can really count on, right?”
“Count on?” Sweets asks.
“Yeah, they don’t pressure you like boys. Like parents,” she spats out.
“Uh, pressure?”
“Pressure to succeed, yeah.”
Sweets reminds her that she is a very high achiever, and reads off the list of her accomplishments. “All of which went away when you got pregnant.”
“Yeah, it’s okay,” she answers simply. “I mean, I’m totally okay with being a mother.”
“Is it a coincidence that once you got pregnant seven of the others on the volleyball team did the same?”
“It’s not my fault if people want to be like me. I’m a natural leader.”
“They look to you as an example.”
“It was my idea that we all get a house together, help each other raise our kids.”
“Where would the money come from?” Sweets asks.
“Oh, I mean we’d all put in. I’d figured out how much it’d be.”
“$5,000 each.”
“That’s right. Wait, how did you know?” she asks with a grin.
“You said it wasn’t a pact.”
“Huh-uh.”
“Then how do you explain four of you getting pregnant from the same boy? He seems an unlikely choice.”
“It wasn’t a choice. I didn’t plan a baby. I’d just found out that I’d won a scholarship, and my parents started to plan my whole life,” she answers, all peppy amusement gone. “I just went to the park, I couldn’t—breathe, I couldn’t think.”
“Too much pressure.”
“Yeah. And Clinton was there, and I was crying, and I felt like I was being banished. I mean, nobody asked me what I wanted, and Clinton understood. He held my hand and he let me cry, and one thing led to another, and he was great.”
“Great how?”
“Well, he’s a kid, you know, he doesn’t really want to raise kids.”
“Right. Maybe that’s why the other girls chose him to get them pregnant.”
“Yeah,” she answers, smiles back. “And it’s going to be great. We’re all gonna have these cute kids, and we’ll all be there for each other.”
“Except Ashley,” Sweets reminds.
~*~*~
Back at the lab, Arastoo watches Cam turn on the UV light to try and find out if there’s any more damage that they can’t see under normal light. Arastoo is impressed. Bones joins them, asking if he’s switching teams.
“No, no,” he answers. “Preference is for forensic anthropology, but Dr. Saroyan’s use of colorimetrics is thrilling.”
At Bones’s stern look, both Arastoo and Cam quickly move on, explaining the bruise. Bones looks at the monitor, agreeing that “the bruise is directly on top of the vagus nerve.”
“Meaning…” Cam coaxes.
“Cowabunga!” Arastoo exclaims, realizing what it means.
“What?” Cam asks, but Bones just answers, "When the vagus nerve is triggered with enough force, the victim will go into cardiac arrest and die. You have discovered the cause of death."
Cam is quite pleased with herself. Arastoo grins happily, but tries to hide it from Bones.
~*~*~
“Tissue damage is distributed evenly,” Cam announces as she and Bones look at the body.
“What does that indicate?”
“That it was a single blow.”
“Whatever did this is completely flat and round.”
“Some kind of hammer?”
Hodgins joins them to ask if anyone’s interested in “our mysterious red fiber”. He identified it as coming from a late model German sedan, Mercedes or BMW. Cam tells him they’ll let Booth know.
“And just so you know, Arastoo is prayin’ again,” Hodgins tells them. “Either that or he’s doing a very repetitive yoga move.”
“Is that appropriate in the lab?” Bones asks.
“Some of us take coffee breaks,” Cam answers. “Some of us take smoke breaks, Mr. Vaziri takes a spiritual break.”
“Who smokes?”
“Nobody,” Cam answers, grabbing a clipboard. “Very often anyway, just—very rarely in times of great stress…”
“If you had released the body to me when I’d asked, and Mr. Vaziri had removed the flesh? Then we never would have found the cause of death.”
“Thank you.”
“Why are you thanking me? I’m simply stating the fact.”
“I’m simply thanking you for stating the fact that you were wrong.”
“Oh. You’re welcome.” She moves back to the case. “The odds of hitting the vegus nerve by accident are very slim.”
“So you think this was done by someone who knew what they were doing?”
“Yes. Someone who’s very familiar with human anatomy. Like a physiologist, or a doctor…or a chiropractor.”
“Let’s check out the victim’s chiropractor’s ride.”
~*~*~
Booth enters his office to tell Cam and Bones that the doctor does drive the right kind of car, but seeing as how there are 1208 BMW sedans in DC, he didn’t get a warrant.
“But how many of those drivers know how to kill using the vegus nerve?” Bones asks. “And how many of those drivers had access to the victim?”
“And owned chiropractic tools we might be able to match with the murder weapon?” Cam adds.
“Guys,” Booth interrupts. “No warrant.”
“If Booth and I hadn’t questioned Dr. Fitts we could mount one of our undercover operations,” Bones answers with a grin. They think about this a moment, then both turn to Cam.
“Hey, not me,” Cam quickly answers. “But I do have a great idea.”
~*~*~
Angela and Sweets go undercover, and are now sitting in Dr. Fitt’s office.
“How long have we been married?” Sweets asks in a low voice, pretending to have back problems.
“Just concentrate on your symptoms, that’s all he’s gonna ask about,” Angela answers, picking up a magazine to flip through. She unfolds a piece of paper with a drawing of the possible murder weapon. “I’ll look for this thing.” She folds the paper back up and sticks it in her purse. “So you heard about me and Roxie?”
“Yeah, I’m sorry.”
“Oh no, really, absolutely fine.”
“Okay.”
“I also had a little afternoon delight with Hodgins, but let’s just say it’s not really his thing.”
“Again, I’m sorry.”
“No, it’s totally fine.”
“Then why are you telling me?” he asks, studying her carefully.
“Brennan approves of the way that I conduct my love life.”
“Oh.” He gets it.
“Yeah.” Worried, she asks him, “What’s wrong with living in the moment?”
Sweets glances around the office, and when he’s sure no one is watching, forgets his fake symptoms and leans back in the chair to answer, “Nothing. Nothing, as long as it’s working for you.”
“Oh it is, definitely.”
“If it weren’t—“
“No, it, it is—“
“Well if it weren’t—“
“It is.”
“If it weren’t, I’d suggest to you…” He stops, and when he hesitates, Angela asks him what. “You won’t like it,” he answers.
“Oh I’m happy living in the moment,” she assures. “What you say is merely interesting.”
“Well what I would advise you to do is remove sex from the situation.”
She turns to look at him. “I don’t like that.”
“You’re a beautiful woman, confident in your sexuality,” he answers. “But you need to connect with other people on another level.”
“Why?”
“Why? Because sexual attraction is only one facet of the human experience.”
“So, don’t have sex.”
“I suggest you be celibate for, say, six months.”
Angela isn’t buying it. “Six months? Why not ten years?”
“You asked my opinion and that’s it. Forego sex in favor of other connections—“ he leans forward again, hand on his back. “Shouldn’t we have like a cover story in order to reassure the chiropractor that we’re married?”
Before Angela can answer, the doctor comes out. “Mr. Sweets?”
“Yeah.”
Angela leans over, putting her arm around him and kissing his cheek. “Okay honey,” she reassures, patting his arm. “This is us, a happily married couple,” she tells the doctor with a smile.
“Uh, help me please,” Sweets says, trying to get up and feigning a serious back injury.
“Okay—“ Angela helps him up.
“Thank you.”
~*~*~
Once inside the office, Angela stands by as the doctor examines Sweets.
“You’ve had some discomfort in your lower back?”
“Uh yeah, yeah” Sweets answers as the doctor crosses his arms across his chest and gets ready to pop his back. “As a fireman I often have to carry heavy—OH!” He gasps in surprised pain as the doctor cracks his back.
“That’s very tight, that’s very tight,” the doctor tells him as Sweets continues to gasp in pain.
“Oh, what are you-Oh ga—what are you doing?” Sweets asks the doctor as Angela tries not to laugh.
“Frankly, these knots I feel in your lumbar region are more congruent with sitting hunched over a desk then they are from pulling people from a burning building.”
“Oh, he’s not a fireman yet, Dr. Fitts,” Angela answers with a laugh. “He’s just training.”
“Oh yeah, almost,” Sweets agrees. “Another week.”
“Spends a little too much time on the internet,” Angela tells the doctor.
“Oh, well I feel knots in your lumbar region,” the doctor tells Sweets, heading over to his drawer of supplies. “I’m gonna give you a minor adjustment.” He pulls out exactly what they’re looking for. “This won’t hurt, but you will feel some pressure.”
Sweets turns to Angela as the doctor heads for his back, and Angela pulls out her phone. “Not as much as you.” She takes a picture as the doctor gets ready to punch Sweets’s back.
~*~*~
Booth shows the medical instrument to the doctor in the interrogation room…
~*~*~
Angela goes through her pictures of her and all her past relationships…
~*~*~
Cam touches the victim’s forehead then pulls a sheet over Ashley Clarks’s remains…
~*~*~
Hodgins pulls out Angela’s earring and sets it in his hand, closing his fingers around it…
~*~*~
Bones watches as Arastoo prays then heads out.
~*~*~
At the Founding Fathers Bar, Booth explains to Bones why Ashley was killed. She needed the money, seduced and blackmailed the chiropractor, threatening him with statutory rape, and he killed her.
“So, uh, are the rest of the girls still renting a house together?”
“Right, you know what I don’t get?” Booth asks. “How is it that eight beautiful girls could just give up their whole lives during high school?”
“It’s a rational decision.”
“On what planet?”
“Earth.”
“Earth?” Booth laughs.
“Giving the current environment, the paradigm within which a group of girls band together to raise their offspring has merit.”
“Without their fathers?” Booth asks, unconvinced.
“Anthropologically speaking, those girls have grown up in a culture that reinforces the sad truism that women cannot count on men.”
“Don’t say “men” like that, men do not a world without responsibility.”
“That boy? Whom those young girls chose as their sperm donor? He seemed more than happy with the arrangement.”
Booth thinks about this a moment, then pulls out his phone.
“Booth?”
“You’re right.”
“I know. Who are you calling?”
“Clinton? Yeah, this is Agent Booth, I need to talk to you,” Booth says into the phone.
“The kid?”
“Listen, meet me at the Royal Diner, uh, in twenty minutes. Just get there okay? Thanks. I’m buying.” Booth turns to Bones. “Look, I know you want to come along and all—“
“No I get it. Go, Booth, guy to guy thing.”
“Thanks.” He grabs one last peanut off the bar then leaves.
~*~*~
At the Royal Diner, Clinton eats as Booth explains to him why the chiropractor killed Ashley.
“Dude…”
“Yeah,” Booth agrees. “You know, Ashley needed money to raise her baby. Your baby.”
“You didn’t think those girls would have sex with me because I can’t bench press enough,” Clinton says and Booth lets out a soft laugh.
“DNA tests, they proved that I was wrong, so, yeah, I owe you an apology.”
“I did, I told you.”
“You know what? You’re a smart kid,” Booth answers, stealing a fry off of Clinton’s plate.
“I know.”
“You’re also a real smartass kid,” Booth adds. “Okay? There’s something I want you to think about, alright? Sex is never free and easy.”
“I beg to differ.”
Booth pulls out pictures from his pocket. “Because the fact is, that any one of these girls could change their mind, and you would be paying child support for the rest of your life.”
“Wait, what?” Clinton asks, his cocky demeanor faltering.
“You see these girls?” Booth sets the volleyball pictures on the table. “You, are responsible for bringing their children into the world. Whether they think so or not, they’re YOUR responsibility. Your children, your responsibility, you understand?”
Clinton looks at the pictures.
“And what you do with that, will define what kind of man you are,” Booth tells him.
“No, hold on a second—“
“Yeah, and if you ignore that, ignore your children? That’s exactly what you’re gonna become. A loser. A deadbeat, for the rest of your life. You know what? There’s else that you should think about.” He picks up Ashley’s picture so Clinton has to look at it. “Ashley Clark? She was gonna have your baby. According to our pathologist, it was gonna be a boy.”
Clinton finally starts to feel bad. “A boy?”
Booth nods. “A son.” He slowly starts to rip up Ashley’s pictures, piece by piece. “Who died.” He sets the ripped up photo on the table, the only part visible Ashley’s head. “With his mother.”
Close to tears, Clinton asks, “Why’d you have to tell me all that for?”
“Because you needed to hear it,” Booth answers softly. “You understand?”
“Yes,” Clinton whispers, staring down at the picture.
Outside the diner, Bones walks by and stops, watching Booth and Clinton sitting at the table.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
Okay, I have to say I loved Booth in this episode, and the part with Angela and Sweets going undercover. So funny! And all this talk about babies and the role of the father? I sense a buildup to the finale...
“What’s that?”
“Something in the salt.” Darlene answers, climbing up to check. She takes one look inside the truck and stops short. Tess notices something is wrong. “What is it?” she calls up.
“You know that Bible story about the woman who turns into salt?”
“Lots wife?” Darlene asks, confused.
“I think maybe we found her!”
Inside the truck bed, half buried in the truck is a human corpse covered in salt. It looks more like a mummy than recent human remains.
~*~*~
Booth climbs up the side of the truck. “So the uh, weather’s been warm for the past six weeks so, wow!” He gets sidetracked seeing the body that his partner is carefully brushing salt away from. “They haven’t had to use rock salt. Whoa.”
“The dermis is extremely desiccated,” Bones answers, squinting against the sunlight. “The salt quick-dried the tissue.”
Booth frowns at the body. “Looks like a really big apple doll.”
“Teenage girl. Very tall, six feet.”
“Looks like she’s been dead for a hundred yers.”
“In fact, less than a month,” Bones clarifies. “Salt is a hydroscopic. It draws moisture from its surroundings and replaces it with crystal.” She goes back to the body.
“You know what? I suddenly got a potato chip craving.”
Bones looks up at her partner. What? Booth just smiles, unconsciously licking his lips around all that salt.
~*~*~
Back at the lab, Angela tells a now very blond Roxie, “Cats are so disdainful.”
“They’re independent and self-assured,” Roxie answers. “Like you.”
Angela holds up two pictures. “Dog? Or cat. Which one are you going to pick?”
Roxie points at the “cat” picture, arguing, “Uh, that’s a picture of a lion eating a gazelle.” Angela flips it around and laughs. That’s kind of the point.
“What’s with the sudden pet desire?” Roxie asks. “We’re not even living together.”
“Yet.” Angela holds up the picture of the sweet little black and white dog behind bars. “Look at him Rox. Look at his warm brown eyes.” She holds it up, grinning. Clearly, Angela’s already made her choice.
Meanwhile, Bones and Cam watch the new intern, Arastoo Vaziri praying on the floor of the Jeffersonian.
“He’s going to do this five times a day,” Bones says, and Cam explains that he’s an observant Muslim.
“On the bright side,” Hodgins answers. “We’ll always know which way’s east.” He shrugs and walks off.
“I don’t know if this is going to work Dr. Saroyan, Bones tells Cam, and Cam reminds her that, “This country was founded on the notion of religious tolerance.” She walks back to the body.
“I’m not discriminating because he is Muslim,” Bones answers. “I find all religions equally irrational.”
Arastoo swipes his card, joining them on the forensic platform. “Thank you for patience.”
“I had no choice,” Bones answers. “Apparently it’s a constitutional issue.” Cam shoots her a warning look and confused, Arastoo turns to the monitor to look at the victim’s x-rays. Looking at the victim’s thumb, he’s seen this same type of damage in a case where a girl was chained to a radiator to protect her virginity. They find some red fibers that Hodgins takes, and Angela joins them with the victim’s ID.
“Turns out there aren’t that many 16-year old girls who are six feet tall on the missing person’s list.”
Bones looks down at the paper and reads, “Ashley Clark, missing three weeks.” Angela nods.
“So Roxie and I are getting a dog,” She announces, and Hodgins is surprised.
“Wow, I had Roxie pegged as a cat person.”
“Hey,” Angela welcomes, noticing Arastoo for the first time. She smiles. “I’m Angela.”
Arastoo introduces himself, then asks, “You’re boyfriend’s name is Rocky? Like pow, like the famous boxer?”
“No, uh, Roxie.”
“Angela’s boyfriend is a girl,” Bones interrupts. “Perhaps your religion won’t allow you to accept that.”
Cam quickly jumps up. “Blood chemistry shows unusually high levels of relaxants.”
“Hmm, relaxants? Sounds like something you could get arrested taking,” Angela says with a grin.
“It’s a naturally occurring hormone,” Bones answers. “Secreted during pregnancy.”
“So if she was handcuffed to protect her virginity,” Cam answers. “Didn’t work out so well.”
They all glance down at the very mummy-like remains.
~*~*~
Booth and Bones visit Ashley Clark’s parents, where they tell them the last time they saw her was before the high school dance. Her mother, Ellen, thinks they’re there to ask if Ashley was on drugs, but they tell her that’s not it. Did they know that Ashley was pregnant? Ellen refuses to believe it’s true, but her husband, Bob, looks at them confused. “Is that who you think killed her? The father of her child?”
“Well we’d like to talk to him,” Booth answers softly.
“My daughter and I were very close,” Ellen insists. “And it simply isn’t possible that she wouldn’t tell me she was pregnant.”
“I would appreciate some insight into the high number of injuries your daughter sustained since puberty,” Bones answers, glancing at Bob.
It’s Ellen that answers. “So now you’re saying that we abused our daughter?” Her denial is quickly turning into anger.
“It’s alright,” her husband assures. “They have to ask.”
He tells them that Ashley was an athlete, she grew almost two feet over the last year. “You can confirm her injuries with her chiropractor.”
“We’re very sorry for your loss, sir,” Booth answers, handing over his card.
Ellen is not so forgiving. “Then you shouldn’t say such terrible things.”
Booth and Bones exchange a look as Ellen continues to glare at them.
~*~*~
At the chiropractor’s, Dr. Sean Fitts shows Booth and Bones Ashley’s x-rays. “Ashley wasn’t a victim of abuse, she was the victim of athleticism and a competitive disposition.” Bones recognizes a volleyball injuring, and Booth recognizes “jumper’s knee”, and Bones is surprised.
“How did you know that?”
“Athlete, Bones,” he reminds, then thanks the doctor for his help.
“Yeah.” He hands Bones the x-rays, and she thanks him.
As the doctor is leaving, Booth has one more question. “Where you aware that Ashley Clark was pregnant?”
“No,” Dr. Fitts answers, turning around. “No, her last appointment was about six weeks ago. She didn’t mention it.”
“Well despite the fact that you’re not a real medical doctor, you have been quite helpful,” Bones answers, and Dr. Fitts can’t help but laugh.
“Oh you’re welcome.” He sits down at his desk. “Oh, and by the way, you aren’t a real medical doctor either.” He grins.
“Ouch,” Booth answers, and shoots the doctor a grin as he follows Bones out. Dr. Fitts grins to himself.
~*~*~
Back at the lab, Cam and Arastoo remove the top of the victim’s skull. Arastoo takes a look and discovers no hematoma. “Meaning the skull was fractured postmortem. Probably when the body tumbled out of the overhead bin. Ka-lunk,” he gestures, making the sound effect with a smile.
“Very…descriptively put,” Cam answers with a nod.
“It has been pointed out to me that I tend towards onamonapia.”
Suddenly Bones walks in, asking Cam why the body hasn’t been defleshed yet.
“I’m still conducting the autopsy.”
“Well if I can’t remove the flesh, then I can’t find cause of death,” she argues, and Cam answers, “Well if you remove the death *I* can’t find cause of death.”
“What flesh? The body is completely desiccated,” Bones answers, gesturing toward the remains. “Any remaining indicators are going to come from the bones.”
“Not if I can rehydrate the tissue.”
Arastoo adds that it’s been successfully done on mummies, but his smile quickly disappears when he sees Bones face. “But shush,” he tells himself, going back to the remains and letting Cam argue with Bones.
“The salt arrested bacterial development,” Cam tells Bones. “There’s no decomp. If I can rehydrate I can do a proper autopsy.”
“No, it will take too long, and a positive result is debatable.”
“Lucky for me, I’m the boss,” Cam answers easily.
Arastoo glances from Bones to Cam, waiting to see what’ll happen.
“I claim one of my freebies,” Bones answers, and Cam immediately answers, “I claim one of my freebie declines.”
Well that’s that then. Frustrated that she has no other argument, Bones stomps out. Cam sighs, shaking her head. She turns back to the remains.
~*~*~
Bob Clark visits Booth as his office at the FBI to tell Booth that he suspected his daughter was pregnant. Booth understands that he didn’t want to say anything in front of his wife, and Bob tells him that he found a pregnancy test in the trash. He confronted his daughter about it, and she denied that it was hers. She asked him to keep it a “father-daughter secret”. Bob asks him to please not tell his wife about keeping this a secret, then leaves.
~*~*~
Angela tells Roxie about the dog, Donatello. He’s super cute, only thing is he’s scared of the wind. When Roxie doesn’t say anything, Angela realizes she’s breaking up with her. Roxie leaves Angela alone with the picture of Donatello.
~*~*~
Meanwhile, Ashley Clark’s friend Becka, finds Booth fighting with the vending machine at the FBI. She too is pregnant.
They sit in the hallway to talk, and Becka admits that she heard that Ashley was murdered. Booth tells her “it’s my job to find out who did it,” and Becka confesses that Ashley went behind her back with her boyfriend, make that ex-boyfriend, Rory. As mad as she was at Ashley, she insists wouldn’t have killed her best friend.
~*~*~
Back at the lab, Hodgins, Cam and Arastoo are trying to rehydrate the body. They get the body ready and Arastoo’s watch goes off. He has to go pray. As He walks out, Angela walks in to ask Cam if she needs her the rest of the day. Hodgins can tell something’s wrong, and when she tells them about Roxie, Hodgins tells Cam he’s going to take Angela for a cup of coffee.
“Sure, yeah, go,” Cam answers, talking to her herself as they leave. “This is a simple murder, solves itself.”
~*~*~
Booth and Bones visit the high school to find Rory working out in the weight room. He gets up from lifting weights, meeting them with an, “it wasn’t me.”
“It wasn’t you who what?” Bones asks as Booth can’t help but laugh.
“Becka texted me saying you think I killed Ashley, but I didn’t,” Rory answers. The eyebrows of the boy standing behind him shoot up. He grins, impressed.
“Dude, you’re a murder suspect, that’s awesome!”
Booth asks for some privacy with Rory, and they question him about he and Ashley.
“Becka said that you and Ashley connected sexually,” Bones starts, and Booth clarifies, “Yeah, her exact words were, uh, ‘got all over’.”
“This is completely not fair,” Rory answers wearily, walking over to pick up a towel.
“That you had sex with two girls and they got pregnant?” Bones asks.
“We didn’t have sex,” Rory insists, and Bones leans over to whisper to Booth, “Pregnancy is unlikely without intercourse.”
“Right, thanks for the tip, Bones, yeah,” Booth answers back.
“No, we didn’t have intercourse,” Rory says. “I’m a Christian, I’m not gonna have intercourse before I’m married.”
“Okay, so you got two girls pregnant but you didn’t have sex with either one of them?” Booth asks.
“Well, I think some of my…you know, stuff, may have…found its way in there in the way Ashley came after me,” Rory struggles to answer. “It’s like she was really really trying…”
“To get your sperm?” Bones offers helpfully.
“Well if it wasn’t for my faith in Jesus, there would have been sexual intercourse,” Rory answers, and Booth asks how their relationship ended.
“Bad. Ashley was mad at me, Becka was mad at me. I did everything right and it turned out all wrong.”
“Did Ashley have any arguments with anyone else?” Booth asks, and Bones adds, “Or try to get their sperm?”
Booth just shakes his head to himself as Rory tells them Ashley had a fight with Mr. Hawthorn, the volleyball coach.
~*~*~
Back at the Jeffersonian, Hodgins and Angela are back in the Egyptian storage room. Hodgins assure her that he’ll always be there for her, and Angela is appreciative. She tells him that Roxie “wanted somebody who doesn’t just live in the moment but who considers the future. “ She thinks a second, then asks, “What’s wrong with the moment?”
“Nothing.”
“But…?”
“But it’s nice every once in the while to think about the future,” Hodgins answers, staring at her from his side of the bed.
Angela sits up and gets dressed, asking, “So let me get this straight, to be together thten it has to be all about the future?”
“Yeah.”
“So this,” she turns to smile at him. “Right now, this isn’t together?”
“It was a moment,” Hodgins answers, sitting up with a smile. “A great moment,” he assures, leaning back against the headboard. “But all great moments…they pass.”
Angela leaves and Hodgins notices she left an earring. He starts to call her back, but stops, looking at the earring instead.
~*~*~
Booth and Bones follow Mr. Hawthorn outside, asking him about Ashley. He admits that they had to arguments. “The first one when was she failed to seduce me,” he says as they head down the steps. “And the second, a few months later when she threatened to name me as the father of her child if I didn’t give her five grand.”
“She tried to seduce you?” Bones asks, confused.
“Seduce isn’t the right word,” Hawthorn answers. “Look, that girl came at me like—“
“So Ashley Clark tried to blackmail you,” Booth offers.
He tells them that “with the way things are” he thought the smartest move was to report it to the principal. When Bones asks about “the way things are”, Hawthorn tells them that half his volleyball team got pregnant. Booth asks for a team roster, and Hawthorn points them to the multipurpose room. “They’re having another baby shower.”
~*~*~
Booth and Bones walk in on the baby shower and Booth lets out a dry laugh. “You gotta be kidding me. This school ever hear of sex education?”
“Well if so there’s gaps in the curriculum,” Bones answers.
“That’s for sure.”
When Becka approaches with a girl named Alyssa, who right away tells them that she assumes they’re here to talk to her about Ashley, Booth tells his partner, “Wow, this texting thing is way out of control.”
Bones assumes Alyssa is the team captain, and she’s right. Alyssa tells her she’s also valedictorian and student body president. “Or I was until people decided I was a bad example.”
“Well as alpha female, you are a bad example,” Bones tells her, and Alyssa is insulted. Booth brings the conversation back to the murder, and both girls assure them that they’re “quite intelligent”. They tell them that the same guy is the father of Alyssa, Becka, another girl named Jenny, and Ashley’s baby, and it’s not Rory.
“So one boy is the father of four babies?” Bones asks, and Alyssa just nods. “Mmmhmm.”
“Okay, and who would this stud be?” Booth asks.
“It’s Clinton.”
“Oh, President Bill Clinton?” Bones asks seriously, and both girls laugh.
“No, Clinton Gilmour.” They point to the kid standing in the doorway. Booth spots the kid and can’t help but be skeptical. “The one in the yellow?”
Yep.
~*~*~
Booth finds Clinton in the weight room and confronts him.
“Alyssa Howland says that you had sex with the entire volleyball team.”
“The girls volleyball team,” Clinton answers. “Not all of them, I don’t like to boast. A gentleman does not kiss and tell.” He leans back and begins lifting the weights.
“How old are you?”
“Sixteen. My personality is completely formed.”
“How did you get those four girls pregnant?”
“You want pictures? Check the internet. That’s what I did,” Clinton answers, getting back up.
“Alright, you know I show no disrespect,” Booth answers, taking off another weight to add to the bar. “I went to high school and high school has not changed. The fact is,” he continues, tightening weights. “Guys like you didn’t get that many girls, you know what I’m saying?”
Booth leans back and Clinton warns, “Wait, you can’t lift that.”
Booth merely lifts the weights off and begins lifting them. Clinton is impressed. “Whoa.”
When Booth is done, he sits up and says, “See, I can do that, but I didn’t get girls like that in high school. So what you’re saying happened, really didn’t happen.”
“Like a conspiracy?” Clinton jokes. “The conspiracy is that they like me. I’ll tell you something else, more than one of them told me that I’m very considerate and sweet in the bed department.”
“Ashley is dead,” Booth answers, standing up. “She was murdered.” He begins walking toward Clinton, who backs up. “The prime suspect would be the person who knocked her up. I need to know the person who did the deed.”
“It was me,” Clinton answers, then quickly clarifies, “The sex part! The killing part was definitely somebody else.”
“You know what I think? I think those girls are up to something and they’re using you as a cover.” He stares at Clinton a second, then shrugs. “Okay, we’ll just do a DNA test and the truth will come out right?”
Booth heads to the door, and Clinton calls after him, “Take my DNA and, uh, you’ll find out the truth. I am the mac-daddy, supremo baby-daddy of GOW high school.”
Booth ignores him and leaves.
~*~*~
Backa t the lab, Arastoo and Cam are watching the body rehydrate. Arastoo is worried about what to tell Bones, and Cam just answers, “Tell Dr. Brennan that unless she can think of a way to examine the bones while leaving the flesh intact, you’re both out of luck.”
~*~*~
Bones and Angela are eating lunch and watching the news on TV. The reporter announces that there was a pact between the girls at the high school to get pregnant and raise their kids together.
“No, there was no proof that there was a pact,” Bones tells Angela.
“See, this is what happens when all you worry about is the future,” Angela answers. “Pregnant teenagers.” They go back to their meal.
“I would argue that most pregnant teenagers get that way by becoming involved in the moment.”
Angela nods. “True.”
“You alright?” Bones finally asks, and Angela assures her that she was. That it was “so worth it”.
“Will you be able to remain BBFs?” Bones asks, and Angela gently corrects, “BFFs. Best friends forever.”
“Oh. Will you resume a sexual relationship with Hodgins?” Bones asks, and Angela answers, “I already did.”
Bones laughs. “Well, good.”
“Yeah, but he can’t keep it casual. He’s the marrying kind.”
“I am comfortable giving you advice in this area,” Bones answers, and Angela is a little surprised.
“Shoot.”
“I think you live your life very well.”
“Thank you.”
“You are not afraid to change your mind when conditions change.”
“Conditions always change,” Angela agrees.
“The successful organism is the organisms that adapts.” Angela doesn’t quite know what to say to that, so Bones continues, “This is one area where we are very similar.”
“I was with you until right there.”
“Like me, you are not swept away by your emotions. You remain rational, you use your brain to pick someone for sex and companionship.”
This is all making Angela a little worried. “Uh, minor correction there, I use my heart.”
“That is not—”
“Metaphoric heart, sweetie. Stay with me here, alright? Love, like art, comes from the moment where two people become one.”
“Minor correction, love comes from a confluence of chemicals and hormones in the peneal gland.”
“Right, but all beauty is transient and of the moment,” Angela finishes.
Bones thinks about this. “Like a sunset is beautiful.”
“You know it sounds like we’re in agreement, which is worrying me just a little bit.”
Bones’s phone vibrates, and it’s a text from Hodgins. He found pectin in the scratches he swabbed on the victim’s arm.”
“How did he find scratches? The victim looked like beef jerky,” Angela answers, taking a bite of her food.
“Well, apparently Cam had some limited success in rehydrating the body.”
“That’s impressive.”
“Yes,” Bones answers, already thinking about the fact that, “Pectin is used in some preserves, right?”
“Sure,” Angela answers. “I remember that from growing up a farm girl in Amish country.” At Bones’s look, Angela says, “Sarcasm, Brennan. I’m sorry.”
Bones remembers that the victim and her mother were making jam the night she disappeared. Bones gets up to leave, and Angela asks, “Have you ever noticed that a sunset looks more beautiful when you share it with somebody you care about?”
“No, I haven’t,” Bones answers. “But I’ll pay better attention next time.” She kisses Angela on the cheek and heads out. Angela just shakes her head in amusement.
~*~*~
Booth interrogates Ashley’s mother, who admits to grabbing her daughter’s arm, but not because she found out about the pregnancy. She still denies that it was real.
In the observation room, Bones asks Sweets, “Why can’t this woman face the facts?”
“Perhaps because the facts are so painful.”
“You suspect the father of incest?”
“That would explain the mother’s behavior.”
Back in the room, Angela’s mom tells Booth that she didn’t know about the pregnancy, she was angry about a forged check she’d found. Ashley had made out a check for $5,000 and forged her mother’s signature on it. When Booth asks why the girl needed that much money, her mom says she wouldn’t say. “She was hanging around Becka and the rest of that team, and suddenly I didn’t exist.”
Sweets nods as Mrs. Clark continues, “And now the News is saying that she had some kind of pact.”
“Booth,” Sweets interrupts through the microphone. “I have a theory.”
Booth excuses himself and joins them in the observation room. “What’ve you got?”
“Okay, it’s possible that Ashley Clark was killed by the pack for not coming up with $5,000.”
“So you think this whole pact thing is true?”
Bones agrees that, “There have been many instances in history where women grouped together to raise their children. And the men become nothing more to them than sperm donors.” She provides an example out of the Himalayas, and both Sweets and Booth just stare at her.
“Right,” Booth finally answers. “So you think the Himalayan mo-mos just killed each other when things got dicey?”
“Killing is a more male response,” Bones answers. “Women tend more towards shunning.”
Sweets thinks that he might be able to figure out the nature of the girls’ relationships, and when Booth asks how, Sweets answers, “Let me at the alpha girl.” At Booth’s look, he quickly adds, “Psychologically, I mean.”
~*~*~
Back at the lab, Cam walks in to find a giant skeleton on the wall. Not a real one, but one Arastoo has created out of x-rays. Cam is impressed. She assures Arastoo that he’ll get the credit for it, but he quickly tells her that he doesn’t want it. He doesn’t want to be the one to point out to Bones that there was a way to examine the bones virtually. But doing so, he found something that he never would have noticed had he looked at the actual bones.
Arastoo shows Cam a hairline fracture in the middle ear.
“What does that suggest to you?” Cam asks.
“Violence, Dr. Saroyan.”
~*~*~
Arastoo finds Angela sitting alone with her Jeffersonian mug.
“Miss Montenegro?”
She sets her cup down, welcoming him in with a smile.
“I would like to pass on to you my condolences that your heart has been broken.”
“Oh, here we go.” She gets up. “Are you gonna quote the Koran?”
“No, no, I put together a CD with some songs that I have found to be cathartic,” he answers with a smile.
“Oh.” Angela is touched.
Arastoo recites the entire playlist, ending with, “Of course, the finest of melancholy songs, ‘Dust in the Wind’. Very melancholy, that.” Still smiling he finishes, “I wish you peace Miss Montenegro. And I wish that you find love again.”
“Thank you Arastoo,” Angela answers, smiling big. “Thank you very much.” She hugs him.
~*~*~
Arastoo joins Cam back on the platform.
“Tell Dr. Brennan she can’t have the remains yet,” Cam begins, without even looking up from her camera as she continues to take pictures of the remains. “Hovering will not make this go any faster.”
“Dr. Brennan required me to hover.”
“Hows about you go back to prayer and give me a little breathing space.” Arastoo’s smile fades, and Cam winces. “I apologize, I quip sometimes.” He tells her that it’s nothing compared to what he got from his regiment. He salutes her with a smile, and Cam asks him to get the glycerin.
He watches her inject glycerin behind the ear. Perhaps this way they can see if there’s any other damage to explain the fracture.
~*~*~
Sweets is in the interrogation room with Alyssa, who insists that there was no pact. The team was all close, yeah, but there was no pact.
“Boys?”
“Boys, come and go, but your friends? That’s who you can really count on, right?”
“Count on?” Sweets asks.
“Yeah, they don’t pressure you like boys. Like parents,” she spats out.
“Uh, pressure?”
“Pressure to succeed, yeah.”
Sweets reminds her that she is a very high achiever, and reads off the list of her accomplishments. “All of which went away when you got pregnant.”
“Yeah, it’s okay,” she answers simply. “I mean, I’m totally okay with being a mother.”
“Is it a coincidence that once you got pregnant seven of the others on the volleyball team did the same?”
“It’s not my fault if people want to be like me. I’m a natural leader.”
“They look to you as an example.”
“It was my idea that we all get a house together, help each other raise our kids.”
“Where would the money come from?” Sweets asks.
“Oh, I mean we’d all put in. I’d figured out how much it’d be.”
“$5,000 each.”
“That’s right. Wait, how did you know?” she asks with a grin.
“You said it wasn’t a pact.”
“Huh-uh.”
“Then how do you explain four of you getting pregnant from the same boy? He seems an unlikely choice.”
“It wasn’t a choice. I didn’t plan a baby. I’d just found out that I’d won a scholarship, and my parents started to plan my whole life,” she answers, all peppy amusement gone. “I just went to the park, I couldn’t—breathe, I couldn’t think.”
“Too much pressure.”
“Yeah. And Clinton was there, and I was crying, and I felt like I was being banished. I mean, nobody asked me what I wanted, and Clinton understood. He held my hand and he let me cry, and one thing led to another, and he was great.”
“Great how?”
“Well, he’s a kid, you know, he doesn’t really want to raise kids.”
“Right. Maybe that’s why the other girls chose him to get them pregnant.”
“Yeah,” she answers, smiles back. “And it’s going to be great. We’re all gonna have these cute kids, and we’ll all be there for each other.”
“Except Ashley,” Sweets reminds.
~*~*~
Back at the lab, Arastoo watches Cam turn on the UV light to try and find out if there’s any more damage that they can’t see under normal light. Arastoo is impressed. Bones joins them, asking if he’s switching teams.
“No, no,” he answers. “Preference is for forensic anthropology, but Dr. Saroyan’s use of colorimetrics is thrilling.”
At Bones’s stern look, both Arastoo and Cam quickly move on, explaining the bruise. Bones looks at the monitor, agreeing that “the bruise is directly on top of the vagus nerve.”
“Meaning…” Cam coaxes.
“Cowabunga!” Arastoo exclaims, realizing what it means.
“What?” Cam asks, but Bones just answers, "When the vagus nerve is triggered with enough force, the victim will go into cardiac arrest and die. You have discovered the cause of death."
Cam is quite pleased with herself. Arastoo grins happily, but tries to hide it from Bones.
~*~*~
“Tissue damage is distributed evenly,” Cam announces as she and Bones look at the body.
“What does that indicate?”
“That it was a single blow.”
“Whatever did this is completely flat and round.”
“Some kind of hammer?”
Hodgins joins them to ask if anyone’s interested in “our mysterious red fiber”. He identified it as coming from a late model German sedan, Mercedes or BMW. Cam tells him they’ll let Booth know.
“And just so you know, Arastoo is prayin’ again,” Hodgins tells them. “Either that or he’s doing a very repetitive yoga move.”
“Is that appropriate in the lab?” Bones asks.
“Some of us take coffee breaks,” Cam answers. “Some of us take smoke breaks, Mr. Vaziri takes a spiritual break.”
“Who smokes?”
“Nobody,” Cam answers, grabbing a clipboard. “Very often anyway, just—very rarely in times of great stress…”
“If you had released the body to me when I’d asked, and Mr. Vaziri had removed the flesh? Then we never would have found the cause of death.”
“Thank you.”
“Why are you thanking me? I’m simply stating the fact.”
“I’m simply thanking you for stating the fact that you were wrong.”
“Oh. You’re welcome.” She moves back to the case. “The odds of hitting the vegus nerve by accident are very slim.”
“So you think this was done by someone who knew what they were doing?”
“Yes. Someone who’s very familiar with human anatomy. Like a physiologist, or a doctor…or a chiropractor.”
“Let’s check out the victim’s chiropractor’s ride.”
~*~*~
Booth enters his office to tell Cam and Bones that the doctor does drive the right kind of car, but seeing as how there are 1208 BMW sedans in DC, he didn’t get a warrant.
“But how many of those drivers know how to kill using the vegus nerve?” Bones asks. “And how many of those drivers had access to the victim?”
“And owned chiropractic tools we might be able to match with the murder weapon?” Cam adds.
“Guys,” Booth interrupts. “No warrant.”
“If Booth and I hadn’t questioned Dr. Fitts we could mount one of our undercover operations,” Bones answers with a grin. They think about this a moment, then both turn to Cam.
“Hey, not me,” Cam quickly answers. “But I do have a great idea.”
~*~*~
Angela and Sweets go undercover, and are now sitting in Dr. Fitt’s office.
“How long have we been married?” Sweets asks in a low voice, pretending to have back problems.
“Just concentrate on your symptoms, that’s all he’s gonna ask about,” Angela answers, picking up a magazine to flip through. She unfolds a piece of paper with a drawing of the possible murder weapon. “I’ll look for this thing.” She folds the paper back up and sticks it in her purse. “So you heard about me and Roxie?”
“Yeah, I’m sorry.”
“Oh no, really, absolutely fine.”
“Okay.”
“I also had a little afternoon delight with Hodgins, but let’s just say it’s not really his thing.”
“Again, I’m sorry.”
“No, it’s totally fine.”
“Then why are you telling me?” he asks, studying her carefully.
“Brennan approves of the way that I conduct my love life.”
“Oh.” He gets it.
“Yeah.” Worried, she asks him, “What’s wrong with living in the moment?”
Sweets glances around the office, and when he’s sure no one is watching, forgets his fake symptoms and leans back in the chair to answer, “Nothing. Nothing, as long as it’s working for you.”
“Oh it is, definitely.”
“If it weren’t—“
“No, it, it is—“
“Well if it weren’t—“
“It is.”
“If it weren’t, I’d suggest to you…” He stops, and when he hesitates, Angela asks him what. “You won’t like it,” he answers.
“Oh I’m happy living in the moment,” she assures. “What you say is merely interesting.”
“Well what I would advise you to do is remove sex from the situation.”
She turns to look at him. “I don’t like that.”
“You’re a beautiful woman, confident in your sexuality,” he answers. “But you need to connect with other people on another level.”
“Why?”
“Why? Because sexual attraction is only one facet of the human experience.”
“So, don’t have sex.”
“I suggest you be celibate for, say, six months.”
Angela isn’t buying it. “Six months? Why not ten years?”
“You asked my opinion and that’s it. Forego sex in favor of other connections—“ he leans forward again, hand on his back. “Shouldn’t we have like a cover story in order to reassure the chiropractor that we’re married?”
Before Angela can answer, the doctor comes out. “Mr. Sweets?”
“Yeah.”
Angela leans over, putting her arm around him and kissing his cheek. “Okay honey,” she reassures, patting his arm. “This is us, a happily married couple,” she tells the doctor with a smile.
“Uh, help me please,” Sweets says, trying to get up and feigning a serious back injury.
“Okay—“ Angela helps him up.
“Thank you.”
~*~*~
Once inside the office, Angela stands by as the doctor examines Sweets.
“You’ve had some discomfort in your lower back?”
“Uh yeah, yeah” Sweets answers as the doctor crosses his arms across his chest and gets ready to pop his back. “As a fireman I often have to carry heavy—OH!” He gasps in surprised pain as the doctor cracks his back.
“That’s very tight, that’s very tight,” the doctor tells him as Sweets continues to gasp in pain.
“Oh, what are you-Oh ga—what are you doing?” Sweets asks the doctor as Angela tries not to laugh.
“Frankly, these knots I feel in your lumbar region are more congruent with sitting hunched over a desk then they are from pulling people from a burning building.”
“Oh, he’s not a fireman yet, Dr. Fitts,” Angela answers with a laugh. “He’s just training.”
“Oh yeah, almost,” Sweets agrees. “Another week.”
“Spends a little too much time on the internet,” Angela tells the doctor.
“Oh, well I feel knots in your lumbar region,” the doctor tells Sweets, heading over to his drawer of supplies. “I’m gonna give you a minor adjustment.” He pulls out exactly what they’re looking for. “This won’t hurt, but you will feel some pressure.”
Sweets turns to Angela as the doctor heads for his back, and Angela pulls out her phone. “Not as much as you.” She takes a picture as the doctor gets ready to punch Sweets’s back.
~*~*~
Booth shows the medical instrument to the doctor in the interrogation room…
~*~*~
Angela goes through her pictures of her and all her past relationships…
~*~*~
Cam touches the victim’s forehead then pulls a sheet over Ashley Clarks’s remains…
~*~*~
Hodgins pulls out Angela’s earring and sets it in his hand, closing his fingers around it…
~*~*~
Bones watches as Arastoo prays then heads out.
~*~*~
At the Founding Fathers Bar, Booth explains to Bones why Ashley was killed. She needed the money, seduced and blackmailed the chiropractor, threatening him with statutory rape, and he killed her.
“So, uh, are the rest of the girls still renting a house together?”
“Right, you know what I don’t get?” Booth asks. “How is it that eight beautiful girls could just give up their whole lives during high school?”
“It’s a rational decision.”
“On what planet?”
“Earth.”
“Earth?” Booth laughs.
“Giving the current environment, the paradigm within which a group of girls band together to raise their offspring has merit.”
“Without their fathers?” Booth asks, unconvinced.
“Anthropologically speaking, those girls have grown up in a culture that reinforces the sad truism that women cannot count on men.”
“Don’t say “men” like that, men do not a world without responsibility.”
“That boy? Whom those young girls chose as their sperm donor? He seemed more than happy with the arrangement.”
Booth thinks about this a moment, then pulls out his phone.
“Booth?”
“You’re right.”
“I know. Who are you calling?”
“Clinton? Yeah, this is Agent Booth, I need to talk to you,” Booth says into the phone.
“The kid?”
“Listen, meet me at the Royal Diner, uh, in twenty minutes. Just get there okay? Thanks. I’m buying.” Booth turns to Bones. “Look, I know you want to come along and all—“
“No I get it. Go, Booth, guy to guy thing.”
“Thanks.” He grabs one last peanut off the bar then leaves.
~*~*~
At the Royal Diner, Clinton eats as Booth explains to him why the chiropractor killed Ashley.
“Dude…”
“Yeah,” Booth agrees. “You know, Ashley needed money to raise her baby. Your baby.”
“You didn’t think those girls would have sex with me because I can’t bench press enough,” Clinton says and Booth lets out a soft laugh.
“DNA tests, they proved that I was wrong, so, yeah, I owe you an apology.”
“I did, I told you.”
“You know what? You’re a smart kid,” Booth answers, stealing a fry off of Clinton’s plate.
“I know.”
“You’re also a real smartass kid,” Booth adds. “Okay? There’s something I want you to think about, alright? Sex is never free and easy.”
“I beg to differ.”
Booth pulls out pictures from his pocket. “Because the fact is, that any one of these girls could change their mind, and you would be paying child support for the rest of your life.”
“Wait, what?” Clinton asks, his cocky demeanor faltering.
“You see these girls?” Booth sets the volleyball pictures on the table. “You, are responsible for bringing their children into the world. Whether they think so or not, they’re YOUR responsibility. Your children, your responsibility, you understand?”
Clinton looks at the pictures.
“And what you do with that, will define what kind of man you are,” Booth tells him.
“No, hold on a second—“
“Yeah, and if you ignore that, ignore your children? That’s exactly what you’re gonna become. A loser. A deadbeat, for the rest of your life. You know what? There’s else that you should think about.” He picks up Ashley’s picture so Clinton has to look at it. “Ashley Clark? She was gonna have your baby. According to our pathologist, it was gonna be a boy.”
Clinton finally starts to feel bad. “A boy?”
Booth nods. “A son.” He slowly starts to rip up Ashley’s pictures, piece by piece. “Who died.” He sets the ripped up photo on the table, the only part visible Ashley’s head. “With his mother.”
Close to tears, Clinton asks, “Why’d you have to tell me all that for?”
“Because you needed to hear it,” Booth answers softly. “You understand?”
“Yes,” Clinton whispers, staring down at the picture.
Outside the diner, Bones walks by and stops, watching Booth and Clinton sitting at the table.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
Okay, I have to say I loved Booth in this episode, and the part with Angela and Sweets going undercover. So funny! And all this talk about babies and the role of the father? I sense a buildup to the finale...
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