The Pinocchio In The Planter - Season 6, Ep 20
A teenage boy peeps through the windows of the women's locker room at the local community center, but he's spotted. The woman screams and he falls into the planter below, where he ends up screaming himself because he's unearthed a skeleton.
Sweets and Angela have breakfast, and she confides that Hodgins is overcompensating lately for her pregnancy, becoming overprotective. She ignores a call from Hodgins. Sweets wonders if something is off between the two, but Angela won't comment further. Meanwhile, at the crime scene, Hodgins is distressed that Angela sent his call to voicemail. Time to focus on the case: The planter is new, while the nearby playground is a week old. The victim is a male in his forties. Booth finds an electronic key on the ground. Hodgins discovers multiple hookworms in the soil. . Hookworms crawl at a rate of one foot per day. One of the hookworms traveled almost four inches, meaning the victim died 3 days, 8 hours and 45 minutes ago. Later, Wendell and Brennan examine the bones at the lab. The victim sustained a severe beating. There is blunt force trauma at the coronal suture and across the sagittal ridge, which is the likely cause of death. Brennan finds an open fracture near the clavicle. The murder weapon may have come into contact with the bone. Wendell is looking for more work, so Brennan mentions that Cam needs extra help around the lab.
The electronic key has a microchip that stores the owner's settings, so his home is found and inspected by Sweets and Booth. Ross Dixon had been missing for four days. His wife left him last year and his kids are all grown. No one missed him. There's a box on the coffee table containing the victim's advertising portfolio. He worked on many high profile ad campaigns. Dixon struck out on his own six months ago. Something must have prompted the split from Francuzzi & Schess, a top ad agency.
Cam squeezes stomach contents from the victim's small intestines. Wendell cheerfully asks for more hours, but Cam has decided to divide the hours among all the interns. Wendell says he needs the hours because his financial situation is precarious, but Cam says she can only consider who would do the job best, and all the interns are equally qualified. They turn to the case: Ross Dixon suffered nose breaks, a fractured left orbital socket and a hairline fracture near the right mental foramen. All were separate incidents that occurred in the past year. The victim had his face broken four times. Dixon filed assault charges for one of the incidents against Nicole Francuzzi, his former employer. Booth shows Sweets video from an advertising award show. Francuzzi attacks Dixon with the trophy they just won. Afterward, Dixon quit and filed charges against Francuzzi. She countered with her own suit, alleging that Dixon tried to sabotage her business. A judge ruled in Dixon's favor the day before the murder. Nicole Francuzzi is interrogated. She says that Dixon ruined the firm and their creative director slugged Dixon, too. Why did everyone hate this guy? About a year ago, Dixon started speaking his mind, and Francuzzi lost six clients. She thinks Dixon developed a conscience. They advertised a toy that a child ended up choking on. The kid was fine but Dixon felt guilty, so he joined a Radical Honesty group. Radical Honesty, explains Sweets, is a controversial notion popularized by an organization called the Honesty Policy. It can be aggressive because members say whatever they feel. Brennan sees no reason why telling the truth would be considered aggressive. Sweets says white lies play a crucial role in human interaction but Brennan thinks a world without lies would be efficient. She wonders if Booth has ever lied to her, but he avoids the question.
Hodgins finds titanium on the clavicle. How can a murder weapon be made of something as light as titanium? Perhaps it isn't the murder weapon. Wendell found a gap near the clavicle with osteitis on either side of the bone. It is likely there was a titanium implant that was dislodged during the attack. In order to find the implant, Hodgins uses his magnetic gloves to search the planter. He believes that Radical Honesty is a cult, but Wendell thinks it's a good idea. In fact, he has some honesty for Hodgins. He is a strange guy - really strange. Hodgins wants to be honest, too. When Wendell was dating Angela, Hodgins planned Wendell's murder, in detail. Rather than being creeped out, Wendell is enthused, and decides to try his Radical Honesty on Cam.
At the Honesty Policy meeting, attorney Burt Iverson greets Booth, Brennan and Sweets. Booth says he wants to join the group but is startled when a clown walks in. Burt admits that nobody likes Toby Holcomb, the man in the clown suit. Burt thinks this is a great opportunity for Booth to express his true feelings. The abrasive clown wants to know why Booth doesn't like clowns, but Booth only admits that when he doesn't have clean underwear, he goes commando. Everyone applauds. Booth changes the subject. Who had a problem with Dixon? Toby raises his hand. Dixon said his act sucked and Toby was with him on the night of the murder. He admits he is too cheap to hire a lawyer. Booth makes Brennan cuff the clown. At the FBI, Toby admits the only reason he still gets hired is because he is cheaper than other clowns. Toby denies murdering Dixon. Dixon came over to watch the game with some other guys, but everyone left around 5PM. Afterward, Toby had sex with a hooker. He remembers that Dixon was going out to dinner that night but he didn't ask with whom because he just didn't care. Toby only cares about himself.
Hodgins confronts Sweets. What did Angela say to him? Sweets admits that something was on her mind but she wouldn't talk about it. Sweets thinks Hodgins need to directly ask Angela what's on her mind. Later, Booth and Brennan discuss honesty. Brennan wants Booth to reveal an instance in which he has lied. Booth agrees to give her an example when the case is over. Meanwhile, Hodgins assaults Angela with honesty. He doesn't like her painting. He wants her to be honest, too. She is reluctant to open up but finally confesses that she wants them to be more honest about what they could face with the baby. Angela can't pretend everything is fine. Hodgins says he is worried, too but he thought he was helping. They embrace and make up. Elsewhere in the building, Wendell tells Cam that Hodgins couldn't find the titanium implant, but he did find some shards of what could be bone. He also blurts out that he should have the job. He needs it the most and he has proven himself in the workplace. Cam finally gives in.
Hodgins finds that Ross Dixon was eating truffle pizza. Dixon dined at Ferrini's on the night of his death – the only place in town that serves truffle pizza. Dixon got into a fight with one of the waiters, Jonah Hinkle who poured a beer over Dixon's head. Hinkle is also the victim's son. Hinkle is interrogated, and says that he and his father were not on speaking terms. Nothing Hinkle did was ever good enough. Dixon stopped paying for his schooling because he didn't think his son would ever graduate. Dixon drove his family away. Hinkle explains that Dixon came to see him to apologize. He never wanted to hurt his son, but he meant what he said. Still, Hinkle regrets what he did. He didn't know it was the last time he would see his father. He tried to go to his house later that night, but there was a smashed up car in the driveway and Dixon was arguing with a woman in a neck brace.
Wendell shows Brennan his microscopic examination of the bones. There are faint microfractures on the ribs in a diagonal pattern. Brennan confirms that this is an injury consistent with being the passenger in a car accident. It was caused by the seatbelt. Hodgins finds that the shards from the planter are not bone. They're carbonized red oak. Angela points out something on the wood that looks like a nerve fiber. Wendell realizes that this is the bone implant. They are experimental but work better than titanium. If the bone implant was wood, the traces of titanium must be from the murder weapon. Back to square one. Meanwhile, the smashed car is found to belong to Dorothy Emridge. Dixon was a passenger in the accident one month ago. Both Dixon and Dorothy refused medical treatment, but later Dorothy claimed to have severe neck injuries. The accident happened at 2AM and she's a married woman. Booth suspects an affair. Dorothy admits she was in an accident – and an affair – with Dixon, but the honesty stops there. She wants her lawyer, Burt Iverson. The two met at an Honesty Policy meeting, and he offered to represent her in her car accident suit. He tells her that Dorothy was filing for divorce, so her affair was not a motive for murder. She didn't hurt Ross. In fact, she couldn't have. She was too injured from her car accident. Brennan agrees that her injuries would have prevented her from beating someone to death, but she'll need to see the X-rays to confirm.
Wendell extolls the benefits of honesty, insulting Cam's perfume but Cam doesn't want to hear any more. She wants manners. Hodgins and Angela video chat with the Squints from the Community Center playground. The monkey bars are coated with titanium dioxide paint. It was assembled right after the murder. The murderer hid the weapon in plain sight and it was built into the jungle gym. Meanwhile, Brennan finds that the X-rays from Dorothy Emridge aren't hers. Brennan can tell these are the bones of a Caucasian woman. Dorothy is African American. The honest lawyer lied. Booth and Brennan tell Burt Iverson they know the X-rays don't belong to Dorothy. Burt says he promised Dorothy a big settlement if she played along. Dixon found out and wanted to tell the truth. He would've exposed Burt and Burt would have been disbarred. Burt denies being the murderer, but Brennan has the titanium-coated pipe from the playground with his fingerprints.
Later at the Founding Fathers, Brennan wants the promised example of Booth lying to her. Booth says that when he broke up with Hannah, Booth never told Brennan how much it meant to him that she stuck by him. It wasn't a lie, but it meant more to him than he let on. He lied by omission but to be fair, Brennan never asked. Why was it so hard to tell Brennan something she already knew? It's hard to explain, says Booth but some things are better left unsaid.
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