The Signs In The Silence - Season 6, Ep 21
In an alleyway, a cop finds the bloody body of a young girl next to a large kitchen knife. However, she's not dead and she wails in panic when the officer nudges her, picking up the knife and trying to fend him off.
Caroline Julian interrupts Booth and Brennan at the diner, insisting Brennan go to the lab. She needs Brennan to examine a living girl to discover if she is a murderer and who her victim might be, and they can't question her because she's a deaf-mute. At the lab, the Jane Doe is still covered in blood. Grace Meacham has been assigned by Child Protective Services to represent Jane. Brennan says that they don't yet know if Jane is a child. Cam confirms that Jane is covered in another person's blood. She was wielding a large knife and had bloody money on her person. This could be a robbery that went bad. If they determine who Jane Doe is, they may be able to save the person she stabbed. However, when Grace signs to Jane that Cam and Brennan will begin their testing. Jane makes a break for it, trying to run away. Brennan and a security guard restrain the girl as the alarms blare. Hodgins tries to collect particulates from Jane as she struggles. She has no intention of cooperating. Grace explains to Jane that they need to do dental X-rays to establish her age and locate her parents. It is likely that she has family somewhere as no foster children were reported missing. Jane becomes even more distressed at the mention of her family.
Caroline reports there are no stabbing victims in the hospitals and morgues, but Booth may have a lead. They found $78 on Jane Doe, along with a crumpled ball of paper that Angela will reconstruct. The money has sequential serial numbers, indicating it came from an ATM. They can trace the numbers to a specific ATM and potentially find the victim. Meanwhile, Arastoo struggles to get dental X-rays from Jane, who won’t open her mouth. Brennan threatens to have Jane Doe sedated so they can obtain the information they need. Sweets pulls Brennan aside. He tells Brennan that Jane is terrified, disabled and restrained by strangers. He suggests that Brennan make sure Jane feels comfortable and secure. He reminds Brennan of her time in foster care and how frightening her experiences were. Sweets never wanted to cooperate when he was in foster care, and he's sure Brennan didn't either. Jane Doe bites Arastoo, so Brennan agrees to change her tactics. They use a Digital Motion X-ray machine, which is completely non-invasive. All Jane needs to do is slip her arm inside so Brennan can see the epiphyses of the distal radius and ulna. Nevertheless, Sweets and Arastoo must force Jane to put her arm into the machine. Brennan gets what she needs: Jane is over thirteen years old but less than seventeen years old - so definitely a minor. However, there have been no reports of a missing minor matching Jane's description. Booth has been looking into the hundreds of people who used the ATM at a bodega in Columbia Heights. Cam discovers that the victim was a white male in his forties. Booth instructs an agent to call up all the photographs of white men at the ATM. There is only one white male in his forties: Duval Price. Booth finds the door to Duval Price's apartment broken open. He and Brennan follow a trail of blood to the kitchen where they find Duval Price, dead, lying in a giant pool of his own blood.
Sweets doesn't understand why Jane Doe would murder someone and take the weapon with her. He thinks Brennan doesn't care about the motive, just the evidence but Brennan says she intends to discover the motive whether Jane reveals it or not. How could Jane have broken that thick oak door? Why would she target a man twice her size? Brennan has an epiphany. She needs to see the tape of Sweets questioning Jane. From the tape, Brennan and Angela are able to identify the dialect of Jane's sign language, pinpointing her home as a rural town in Southern Pennsylvania.
The piece of crumpled paper has been reconstructed. There is handwriting on the paper: "Bus 122." It is the only bus that arrives in D.C. from Crossroads, Pennsylvania. The paper is also a receipt from a hardware store. Luckily, there is only one hardware store in Crossroads, PA. Later, Booth enters Shenfield Hardware. He shows Jane Doe's picture to Mike and Denise Shenfield and they recognize her. It's Amy, their daughter. Why didn't Mike and Denise report their daughter missing? They explain that Amy has run away before, but she always comes back. She's an unruly child and they couldn't handle her. She would kick and fight, but she always came back when she ran away and said she was sorry. They can't believe she's killed a man. Booth agrees to let the Shenfields see Amy.
At the lab, Hodgins examines the oak door from the victim's apartment. It was too thick for Jane to break down. She would have suffered severe injuries, none of which were evident on her body. Hodgins also found fibers on the splinters in the door which don't match Jane's clothing. They need to determine when this door was broken. Cam accidentally spills the beans to Hodgins that Angela had some contractions earlier that day. Panicked, Hodgins runs to Angela. She tells him it was false labor and she's fine. She told everyone not to mention it to Hodgins because she didn't want to worry him. Hodgins promises he'll be there for her. He went through the birthing classes. He can handle this. Speaking of water breaking, Hodgins realizes he can analyze the moisture content in the door to determine when it was broken.
Brennan instructs Arastoo to look at Jane Doe's X-ray. Arastoo notes that Brennan is becoming personally invested in the case. She is offended that he thinks her objectivity means she doesn't care. If she knew how to convey her emotions she would, if only to make his life easier. She points to the X-ray. It shows signs of child abuse. Brennan asks Grace and Amy for a full set of X-rays. She needs cooperation. Brennan mentions that Amy suffered child abuse. Amy is surprised. No one has ever believed her before. Brennan tells Amy that her bones cannot lie. They will tell the truth about what happened to her. No one will be able to dispute the facts. Amy agrees to give the X-rays, and they prove that Amy has been severely abused for years. No wonder Amy didn't want them to contact her parents. The Shenfields arrive to see Amy, but Caroline has a court order preventing them from doing so; they've been beating her since she was three years old. Brennan wonders why. Was it because she couldn't hear? Amy has Wardenburg's Syndrome. She got it from one of her parents. Why didn't they understand? Brennan has a sudden realization. She approaches Mike and Denise, feeling the bones at the tops of their noses. Brennan tells Booth that they don't have high nasal roots. These are not Amy's biological parents. Booth and Sweets present the Shenfields with a copy of the fake birth certificate they were using to prove Amy was their daughter. Sweets wonders where they got Amy. She was never beaten until age three, meaning she was safe until then. Mike tells his wife not to talk, but she starts to break when Sweets pretends to understand their situation. Mike takes matters into his own hands, slapping his wife savagely. Booth, enraged, grabs Mike and punches him.
Brennan and Arastoo examine the bones of Duval Price. There is a nick on the inside of the manubrium, which doesn't make sense to Brennan. Amy and Price must have been face to face. Price knocked Amy down and fell on top of her. She stabbed him in the back over his shoulder. Amy was defending herself. Hodgins finds that according to the moisture in the door, it was broken open at 2AM. Cam put Price's time of death at midnight. The door was broken open two hours after the murder. Someone else knocked it down, saw Price dead and left him there. Suddenly, Angela starts having contractions. Hodgins panics. He doesn't know what to do, other than scream, “BABY!” Angela tells him to get the car, but he can't find the keys. Angela sighs.
A notepad is found in Price's apartment that said 122 and 11:55 - the bus Amy took and the time she arrived in D.C. According to phone records, Mike Shenfield called Price an hour after the bus left Crossroads, PA. Brennan tells Amy that they know what happened. She ran away because she couldn't bear the abuse. Price kidnapped her when she got off the bus, took her to his apartment and told her he'd called her father. Amy says Price was going to tie her up and hit her. She tried to get away. She grabbed the knife to scare him but he grabbed her and they fell. She can't believe she killed a man. Meanwhile, Booth confronts the Shenfields. They couldn't risk Amy saying anything about the abuse, so they called their friend Price and told him to apprehend Amy. When Mike arrived in D.C., he found Price dead in the kitchen and left him there. The Shenfields still won't tell Booth how they got Amy or where she came from.
Brennan tells Amy that the Shenfields aren't her parents. "Then who am I?" asks Amy. Sweets and Brennan encourage Amy to remember something from her past. Amy can only remember one thing: a stuffed bunny that she slept with all the time. Brennan has another idea: she can use one of Amy's wisdom teeth to determine where she grew up. Amy readily agrees. Particles in the tooth show that Amy came from Los Angeles, and the Missing Children's Database contains a photo of a child matching Amy's description, holding a stuffed bunny.
Hodgins and Angela sit in the car after a disastrous trip to the hospital. They both panicked and Angela wasn't even in labor. Now they have had a dry run and they will definitely be ready next time.
Amy, whose real name is Samantha Winslow, waits with Grace, Booth and Brennan for her biological parents. Samantha is worried. Will they like her? Brennan assures her everything will be fine. Hugh and Celia Winslow arrive. They are overcome at the sight of their daughter. They say they never gave up hope. Celia produces Samantha's stuffed bunny. Samantha runs to her parents. As the family tearfully embrace, Booth and Brennan leave them to their reunion.
Brennan and Booth walk together in the Jeffersonian Gardens. Brennan has decided a stuffed animal would be a nice gift for Angela and Hodgins. Booth is concerned that he slugged Mike Shenfield. He doesn't want to lose his temper. He's seen what happens when parents let anger get the best of them. He doesn't want Parker to see that side of him. Brennan insists that Parker is lucky but Booth wants this to be about more than just luck.
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