Broken Bones

Episode 20 "The Girl with the Curl" Part 1

-Venus POV-

We were called up on a body found in the water filtration system as Booth was explaining it to us, "They found the victim in the filtration system. Just, you know, some bones, and nobody knows what to make of them."  Temp then says, "I mean, look at this. Millions of tax dollars are spent to clean and treat tap water, and yet people spend billions on bottled water." Booth then shows us his water bottle, "Well, it's cleaner. Look, it comes from a clean mountain stream." I chuckle and add, "Yes, which contains fecal matter from animals Ranger."  Booth looks at the bottle, "There's no bones in it, though, is there? Don't want that in your water." 

The planter supervisor comes over to us, "Excuse me. Um, do you know how long this is gonna take? Department wants to know when I can get back on line." I shrug, "Do you have any way to determine where the body originated?" "Water comes here through pipelines that travel through five different states. That's why I called the feds in." I nod as Booth says, "Great. How many miles of pipe?" "About 1,800." "I'm gonna need a schematic of the entire system as soon as you can." "Sure. Yeah."

Booth then looks at us, "Bones? Blueberry?" I started, "Swirl treatment sped the rate of decomp. Death was most likely less than three months ago..." Temp continued, "The sacrum is small still developing." Booth says, "A kid." I nod, "A little girl, about eight to ten years old... We should bag everything we could find up and send it back to the lab. Make sure they're careful with the body. We could determine more at there."

We are in the lab as everything was set up and the team was examining the remains. Booth then asks, "Hey, any luck with the cause of death?" Zack speaks first, "Eh, postmortem trauma makes assignation of cause difficult." "Great. "No, would've been just fine." I then say, "There are bands of discoloration on the ribs. Cam might find out why with a tox screen." Hodgins then says, "I'd like those clothes as soon as I can get 'em. Lots of crusty bugs and slime." Temp then says, "All yours. Zack, spend some time with the teeth. They should be more discolored." Cam came over to us, "Everything okay here?"

Booth answered first making themselves look awkward, "Yeah, sure. Hey. You know? How's things? "You know, murder and stuff. How's things?" "You know, murder and stuff. Just another day at the office. How about you? Same old same old. Listen, the Bureau's running location checks for registered pedophiles in the area, but we can't do much until we, you know, I.D. the girl." "I'm running D.N.A. on the hairs I pulled from the skull. There's something funky about it. The roots confirm brown hair. The blonde is from oxidized thiols evident in the hair shaft." I looked at Cam questioningly, "Her hair was bleached?" Booth then says, "Wait, come on. I mean, what nine-year-old dyes her hair?" Angie then comes up to us, "Well, that might explain why my sketch... isn't getting any hits from the missing children's database." 

Temp then says, "Zack, look at the remains again with a focus... on any physical anomalies that could hamper identification." Cam then says, "I've got results cooking, so-" Booth nods, "Sure. Yeah. See you later." I could see Hodgin's smirking about Cam and Booth. Booth saw as well, "Don't you have work to do?" "Don't you?" Booth chuckles, "Right. Right." We watch Booth. Hodgins and I leave going into Cams workspace as Cam says, "I should be able to run a tox screen with the tissue left on her clavicle." I then say, "The scrapings that I took from the cheek and eye socket contain propylene glycol, fragrance, dyes and lanolin.  Here you go Hodgins." "Thanks." Cam then asks, "She was wearing makeup?" Temp then comes in, "I was going to use dentition to narrow down the age ranger but look." We look as Temp pops out some false teeth from the child's mouth. Cam asks, "She has false teeth?" Hodgins adds, "What the hell happened to this kid?" Temp starts explaining, "The false teeth replace the missing deciduous teeth. And the other teeth were veneered." Hodgins asks, "What is she? A midget stripper?" We all looked at each other a bit in disbelief.