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BONES: David Boreanaz and Emily Deschanel in the "The Donor in the Drink" episode of BONES airing... [+]
Two women trying to get a free fish-nibbling pedicure at a clandestine pond instead come up with a dead body to start off this week's episode of Bones. The body is brought back to the Jeffersonian, where the team learns that it was probably dragged into the pond. Intern Wendell Bray estimates from the prominent supraorbital ridge that the person was male and, based on mandibular dental wear, in his 40s. There is perimortem damage to the mandible, however, and fragments are missing, presumably in the carnivorous rainbow trout. Matching fractures to the tibia and fibula begin to suggest a murder weapon.
Saroyan takes a look at the body and notices that there are several organs missing and several intact. Cut marks on the flesh match small nicks to the cortical bone of the left 10th and 11th ribs. She and Wendell find the tip of a knife lodged in the 10th rib. Angela isn't able to get a missing persons match on the face without the full mandible, even though she's done it before with way less of the face, but when Saroyan finds parts of the victim's handlebar moustache, they find out that it is inventor Lloyd Nesbit.
Booth and Aubrey head over to Nesbit's workshop to talk to his assistant, Tim, who reported him missing. They note that Tim filed a patent on the day Lloyd was reported missing, but Tim explains that Nesbit was supportive and a good mentor.
Meanwhile, Saroyan and Wendell find out that there is no remodelling to the bone and no extravasation or infiltration in the incised tissue. Nesbit suffered sharp trauma post-mortem. Hodgins learns that the metal knife tip found in Nesbit's rib was from a scalpel, which makes Saroyan realize Nesbit did not lose his organs to the fish -- a surgeon took them out around the time of his death. Further cuts to the heels and the eye sockets mean his Achilles tendons and corneas were also removed. Based on larvae of hydropsychidae caddisflies, Hodgins puts time-of-death at eight days prior.
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Angela and Aubrey work on finding the person who sold Nesbit's organs. They track down a person called The Matchmaker, and Aubrey goes undercover to learn it is Nina Slocum. Nina insists she didn't kill anyone. Booth then cross-references the list of people in need of organs with people who have Nesbit's blood type and human leukocyte antigen (HLA) compatibility and who could have had access to Nesbit; he calls in for questioning Rodney Dale. Dale admits that he bought a kidney for his daughter but had no idea anyone was killed for it. He refuses to give up any names, as he worries his daughter may need help in the future.
Hodgins manages finally to get the remaining pieces of Nesbit's mandible out of the trout by feeding them an emetic. While he finds no trace particulates, he does note some skin cells that don't match Nesbit. There is a magical DNA match on the waterlogged cells to a woman killed in a drive-by shooting ten days prior. More importantly, the mark that Wendell noted on the interior aspect of the 11th rib is, Saroyan confirms, from a trocar button used to close up holes during embalming. When the scalpel broke in trying to separate the kidneys from the fascia and ribs, someone grabbed a trocar button to finish. The person who dismembered him has to be a mortician.
Brennan and Booth head to the mortuary that performed the embalming of the drive-by victim and talk to Vargas, the mortician. During an open-casket wake, Brennan notices that the upper abdominal area is unusually deflated for someone of the deceased's build. She rips open his shirt and shows a gaping wound... that is inexplicably not seeping through his white shirt. Vargas admits during questioning to working with Nina and taking the organs, but also denies killing anyone for them.
The Jeffersonian squints piece together the mandible and finally realize what happened. A sliver of bone from Nesbit's chin broke off during a blunt trauma and severed his submental artery, causing his death. Even more intriguing is the fact that the fracture patterns in the lower leg match those in his chin. Traces of car polish were found in the wounds, leading Angela to estimate from the wounds what type of car might have caused the injuries to Nesbit. While Nina's car is a match and even has traces of blood in the trunk, and she admits to dumping the body, the injuries to Nesbit could not have been caused by her vehicle. Instead, Brennan suspects based on a pattern of bone bruising and the angle of the force that fractured his jaw that Nesbit was struck by a part of a car, rather than by the car itself. Wendell suggests the weapon was a bumper guard.
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The car polish and bumper guard lead Booth and Aubrey to Tim, Nesbit's assistant. They uncovered a check for $30,000 that Tim gave Nesbit so that he could keep working under his mentorship. Tim had paid for that by selling his right kidney, and reveals his scar. After he killed Nesbit in a fit of rage, he talked Nina into helping him get the organs harvested.
And finally, in other news, Booth finally gets Jared's ashes back, Saroyan is sorry-not-sorry about Arastoo's departure, and Hodgins is kind of a jerk but it's all toooootally OK because Angela gets to meet a famous person.
Anthropological Comments
- Dental wear is a poor indicator of age-at-death. Supraorbital ridge is fine at suggesting sex, but not in isolation. The victim's ID was never confirmed through appropriate means like dental records. But all the injury stuff seemed reasonable.
- I feel like a broken record, but as usual, the radii are placed on the inside of the lower arm rather than the outside as is appropriate in standard anatomical position. (Seriously, I just cut-and-pasted this sentence from the last two weeks.)
- Some fun quotes, all -- of course -- from Brennan. "From an anthropological standpoint, the more openly a culture embraces death, the less anxiety they associate with it." "Conducting a forensic examination bears no resemblance to riding a bicycle." "It's not the size of the wound; it's the angle."
Stray Comments
- Wow, those "southern" accents in the opening scene. Just... no.
- No one touched on how harvesting works. How long after death can organs be safely harvested? Sure, the corneas can wait, and the liver and kidneys aren't the same as a heart. But I suspect there's some time limit to this. (That is, Tim had to kill Nesbit, then call Nina, who transported the dead body to Vargas, who extracted the organs?)
- Forcing your wife to show her photos to the public when she doesn't want to? Not cool, Hodgins.
- Wait, who got the money from Nesbit's organs? Did Tim? And I don't understand why he had to pay Nesbit money or why he suddenly snapped (over the polish)? Where did the bumper guard thing come from - his own car?
- Makeup effects weren't great this week. The dead body looked like it was covered in spam. The fractured mandible looked ridiculous, and I didn't see any missing piece that sliced the artery.
- Sorry I don't have good pictures from the show this week; the only ones available had people standing around. No bone shots this week, sadly.
Rating
Even the presence of Wendell could not save this episode. The forensic work was reasonable, but the dramatic elements of the plot this week ranged from boring to creepy. I'd give 'The Donor in the Drink' a mediocre C+.
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