Bones Episode 7.04 The Male in the Mail

ACT ONE

Tom, a postal clerk, shows new employee Ronald the ropes around the "Mail Recovery Center." Ronald takes in the dead letter office, and Tom shows him how to sort through the boxes. Tom hands Ronald a package to open. Ronald opens the box to see a heap of red gelatinous goo mixed in with packing peanuts and a skull. Ronald is completely disgusted, and Tom admits he is ready to retire.

A the diner, Brennan and Booth continue their house hunt by pouring over the real estate ads. The search is put on pause when Booth's grandpa Hank joins the couple. Hank informs Booth that his father passed away due to liver failure a few days ago. Booth isn't fazed by the news of his father's passing. When he receives a call about the case, Booth leaves the diner ready to work. Brennan promises Pops that she will look after Booth.

Cam and Brennan go through the six boxes that hold the pieces of the body at the crime scene. Brennan determines that the victim is male in his twenties. Brennan notes that the victim was dismembered at the cervical vertebra. Booth comes over to check in, and Brennan asks how he is feeling. Brennan informs Cam about Booth's father, and Booth isn't too pleased with Brennan's lack of discretion.

ACT TWO

Cam and Clark contemplate how they will separate the body from the cardboard without damaging the bones. Hodgins joins them on the platform with a laser, which will cut through the goop and separate it from the cardboard. Hodgins lasers through the first box, and Cam removes the square body mass onto a tray. Cam and Clark take turns cutting through the rest of the boxes.

Agent Shaw updates Booth in his office - the shipping addresses attached to the boxes didn't exist. She also found that the boxes were packed to the specifications of the American Society for Testing and Materials. Shaw offers her condolences for Booth's loss, but he only wants to deal with business.

Brennan joins Clark in the Bone Room for an update. Clark has found a sesamoid on the second metacarpal on the victim's left hand. Brennan asks Clark what the small growth means, but Clark is too distracted by Brennan who is massaging her swollen breasts. Clark tries to focus and notes that the marks on the body suggest that the weapon used was a toothless blade. Brennan tells Clark that she needs a weapon and Booth needs an ID, so that he should stay focused on his work and not her breasts.

Agent Shaw watches Angela scan the shipping labels into the Angelatron. Using QR codes Angela is able to tell where the label was created. The body was shipped from the Ship 'n' Print in Hyattsville, Maryland.

Booth and Brennan drive to Ship 'n' Print. Brennan is concerned about Booth, but Booth has accepted his father's death. Clark calls with an ID of the victim: Oliver Lawrence, a former employee of Ship 'n' Print who was reported missing in May.

Hodgins and Clark experiment with different modern weapons to try to find the murder weapon. The duo tries a Viking weapon and a scimitar but cannot find a match.

Brennan and Booth arrive at Ship 'n' Print and talk with the front desk clerk, Tony Dunston. Booth wants to speak to his manager, but Brennan is fascinated with Tony's Bhavacakra, which is a Buddhist wheel of life usually carved from the thigh bone of a thousand year old holy man. Brennan tells Tony that the bone on his necklace isn't more twenty years old. Their conversation is interrupted by a call from Clark and Hodgins at the lab, who have a murder weapon: a guillotine. Booth is incredulous until they hear a loud noise coming from the back, and proceed into the Ship 'n' Print's back room. The couple sees an industrial size guillotine paper cutter slicing into hundreds of sheets of paper.

ACT THREE

Booth talks to the manager of Ship 'n' Print, Connor Trammel. Brennan doesn't have any luck finding traces of blood on the guillotine. Connor tells Booth that Oliver was a loved employee when the old crew was working there. Connor explains that four employees, including himself won 60 million dollars in the lottery. The others didn't see any reason to continue working and quit. Oliver didn't believe in gambling so he didn't participate in their lottery pool.

Agent Shaw joins Booth and Sweets in the conference room to tell them that Oliver was a part of the lottery pool. Agent Shaw analyzed the numbers used on the ticket. Some of them were Oliver's birthday and street address. She suggests that one person within the pool killed Oliver and the rest traded silence for his shares of the win. Sweets agrees, and suggests they pretend to seek out the help of the other lottery winners to try to solve the case.

In Angela's Office, Brennan watches Angela scan through the memory card of the Ship 'n' Print copy machine, which has been brought to the Lab. There were 387 packages shipped the day that Oliver went missing. Angela asks Brennan how Booth is handling everything, but Brennan doesn't know how to help Booth through this hard time. Angela tells her that only she can be the one to be the one to help him and that it's different for every person.

Booth and Sweets watch Sheila Burnside, Hugh Burnside, Ralph Berti, and Connor Trammel file into the FBI Conference Room. Sheila and Hugh met while they were working at Ship 'n' Print, and Shelia has made some adjustments to her appearance with her winnings. Ralph Berti was broke and divorced when he started working at the store, but now rides a motorcycle and sports a new wardrobe.

Sweets and Booth join them in the conference room and ask if they remember Oliver having any problems with former customers. Booth lays out the mug shots of various criminals, and Sheila immediately recognizes one man. Hugh and Ralph agree that this man was bad news, but Connor doesn't remember him. Booth and Sweets leave the room to talk about the information they've just gotten. Sweets thinks Hugh is submissive and will crack. Booth is interrupted by a call from Angela. Angela tells Booth that each time the printer was used at the store an ID number needed to be punched in. Ralph Berti's ID number was used to print the shipping labels for the body.

ACT FOUR

Booth and Sweets question Ralph Berti, who says Oliver wasn't the type of guy to enjoy millions of dollars. Sweets tells Ralph that he knows Oliver participated in the lottery pool. Booth also tells Ralph that his ID number was the one used to ship the body. Ralph tells them that his code was 1-2-3-4, and that if they checked, his ID number was used ninety percent of the time.

In the Bone Room, Clark goes over some of the X-rays with Brennan. The victim has microfractures on the third and fourth left rib and left radius. There are also kerf marks on the right acromion, right tubercle, and right olecranon. Brennan hypothesizes there was a struggle before the victim was struck multiple times in the right side. Brennan has faith that the kerf marks will help Clark find the cause of death.

Booth cooks dinner for Pops. Hank needs Booth to sign probate forms, insurance claims, pension documents and social security forms for his father since Booth was named the beneficiary. Hank tries to let Booth see that he is hurt by how dismissive Booth has been about his father's passing. Hank feels responsible for his son's actions. Booth finally sees how important this is to Pops and signs the papers.

In the Ookey Room, Hodgins is boiling some of the remains to remove the packing peanuts. Cam notices a sternocleidomastoid muscle that Hodgins passes off to her. Cam finds a piece of tape embedded in the muscle, which means it was there when the victim died.

Angela tells Brennan that Ralph was right about his ID number covering ninety-six percent of the jobs on the copier. On the printer's memory card, Angela found a photocopy of a woman's thin buttocks in lace panties that was taken two days before the murder. Angela points to a man's left hand in the frame. Brennan knows that this is the victim's hand due to the sesamoid growth. Angela measures the woman's pelvic girdle and ischial tuberosities: they match Sheila's hips.

ACT FIVE

At the FBI, Brennan has Sheila sit on a compression form seat cushion to measure her ischial tuberosities. Her measurements match the photocopy. Sheila's lawyer urges her not to speak, but Sheila admits that she and Oliver had been having an affair. However, she came clean to her husband about it. Booth and Brennan wonder if jealousy motivated Hugh to kill Oliver.

Clark still hasn't had any luck finding a murder weapon. Cam joins him in the Bone Room to show him the muscle Hodgins gave her. The tape on it also contained a piece of artery. The victim's right sternocleidomastoid muscle severed the right subclavian artery, which left behind the tape. Clark asks to examine the tape, and believes that he might now know what the murder weapon was.

Hank stops by Booth's office to say good-bye. Before he goes, Hank reads a letter written to him by his deceased son: he admits he was a lousy father to Booth, and thanks Hank for raising Booth to be a good man. Hank is touched by the letter, but Booth isn't interested in what his father had to say. Hank gives Booth a wooden box that his father left him, and tells Booth to take care of Brennan and the baby.

Clark finally discovers that the victim was murdered by an industrial sized tape gun. Cam and Clark watch Angela try to match the tape guns found in Ship 'n' Print to the kerf marks on the victim's body. They find a match. They are able to determine the assailant was left-handed due to the injuries on the victim's right side. The tape on the sternocleidomastoid muscle was left after the murder slit Oliver's throat.

Booth questions Hugh about his wife's affair with Oliver. Hugh's lawyer won't let Hugh answer any questions and tries to hustle him out of the interrogation room. Booth tosses Hugh his cell phone, which Hugh catches with his left hand. Things don't look so good for Hugh.

ACT SIX

Booth and Agent Shaw talk over coffee - there isn't enough evidence to convict Hugh. Booth is impressed by Shaw's work, but urges her to learn to work as a team more than a solo player.

Cam checks in on Hodgins, who is going through the packing peanuts found with the body. He's found a slight sliver of bone that he needs Clark to look at.

Clark isn't sure where the new bone chip belongs on Oliver's skeleton. Brennan takes a closer look at the chip and realizes it is a human bone from a Buddhist necklace.

Booth and Shaw bring in Tony for questioning. Tony was working the night shift the night the shipping labels were created for the body. Booth and Shaw also contacted the other people who received packages that were shipped that night. All those packages contained magic mushrooms. Tony admits that Oliver tried to stop him from dealing drugs. The two fought. Tony believes that his life as a non-violent Buddhist makes up for what he did to Oliver.

Back at Booth's apartment, Brennan and Booth finish dinner. Brennan hands Booth his father's box. Brennan tells him that quantum physicists believe that people experience time as an illusion. By that theory, all of Booth's happy memories with his father are happening right now, he should honor them by opening the box. Booth takes her advice: he goes through the letters and mementos from his father and is overcome with emotion.