"7:30 right now." "Coming up, a recap of a disturbing story- ...the skeletal remains discovered by a group of sixth-grade students in Anacostia." "The remains have not yet been identified, according to police and there's no word as to whether foul play is suspected." "Dale, the word most repeated by the young witnesses we spoke to: "horror"." "As in it looked like a horror movie." "Nah we're going to be going for another take." "I hate press cases." "Yes sir." "More than three cameras show up, some homicide detective kicks it up to his captain who kicks it up to the chief, who kicks it to the F.B.I." "And you - bang - kick it down to me." "Which I thank you for, sir - the opportunity." "Booth, I want this closed." "I don't want to pick up next Sunday's Post and read" ""Church kids find mystery corpse dressed for Halloween, F.B.I. remains clueless"." "I guarantee you won't read that, sir." "Okay?" "I-I'm on it." "Bones." "Got here as soon as I could." "Yeah." "Thanks for coming." "I pull you from anything important?" "A 9,600 year old Caucasoid female skeleton was found in the Kunlun Moutains in China last month." "An international investigation is under way." "I'm contributing stress marker analysis." "I think you're gonna find this, uh, very interesting too." "Oh..." "What the hell is he wearing?" "It's lightweight." "Composite." "I think it was some kind of sexual bondage suit." "And there's that bag." "It's full of maggots." "Looks like cellulose in there, degraded from bodily tissues and decomposing fat." "And maggots." "Tibial plateau fractures and ground disturbance suggest total body impact." "Okay." "So did he jump, or was he pushed, Bones?" "That's what we have to figure out." "We can take the skeleton in." "Give you a report, maybe after next week." "No you don't have to solve the whole case." "Just tell me if I'm looking at a murder." "Maybe, you know, pull a quick I.D.?" "Don't use your charm smile on me." "What?" "It's a mark of respect." "That's all." "Epiphyseal union with the diaphysis on the wrist, knees and ankles suggests the victim was between 14 and 18 years old." "1.6 meters tall, a very slight build suggesting he was at the younger end of the scale." "That tracks with the bag." "The degraded cellulose we found is a graphic novel." "A what?" "It's a comic book." "I never read comic books." "Really?" "I had you pegged for a graphic novel nut." "The face and cranial vault are badly fractured." "Blows to the parietal have sent radiating fracture lines between the mid, frontal and anterior temporal buttresses." "Why?" "Star Wars, Star Trek, Stargate, Battlestar Galactica." "Focusing, gentlemen." "Conclusion: brutal assault killed him." "He was dropped...after he was was already dead." "His killer wanted it to look like a suicide." "Let's get his dentals into the N.C.I.C., see if we can find a match." "Zack, call Stockholm and Beijing." "Our research data on the other thing is going to be delayed." "It's Warren Granger, age 17." "17, small for his age." "Yeah." "Well, he was homeschooled." "G.E.D. obtained last summer." "Mother and stepfather reported him missing from this very block two months ago." "Hey, listen." "Bones, you know, if you want, uh, sit this part out, hey I know you got some ancient Chinese bones waiting." "No." "I'm on this now." "Looks like every other house  in the neighborhood." "BOOTH:" "Every family has its secrets, Bones." "This was Warren's room." "No one's been up here since the detective first looked it over." "The news said there was hardly anything left of him." "Can you think of anyone who might have wanted to... harm Warren in any way?" "He was always by himself." "No friends, no enemies." "Spent all his time up here with his comic books and toys." "He was a lonely kid." "Boy died before he even had a life." "I really thought he had just run away." "We tried." "Tried to get him out of this place, into some kind of real life." "I even got him a job at the bowling alley, but... he just spent all his money on this stuff." "Unbelievable." "Mm." "That's quite the collection of comic books." "Hodgins said that the cellulose mass was a graphic novel." "He sent it to Angela for analysis and recovery." "Sweet." "Sweet?" "This is Batman #127, featuring the Hammer of the Thor." "This is worth about 300 bucks." "Booth, are you a nerd?" "First of all, you mean geek, and no, I'm not, okay?" "It's quite normal for an American male to read comic books." "I find it hard to believe you have anything in common with Warren Granger." "Oh, you mean isolated, with an inner secret life?" "No, I'd say you were more like Warren." "Zack discovered some significant hairline parry fractures on the right and left ulnae." "It's his arms." "I know ulna means forearm-- I pay attention." "I also know that parry fracture means that the kid fought back, Bones." "Small of stature, a geek, and he fought back." "Yeah, he also got thrown from a roof." "There's nothing but games on here." "There's no journal." "There's no documents, nothing personal." "What did he do at his desk?" "I mean, there's a light;" "The rug is worn." "He used this area for something." "What was it?" "It's probably where he read his comic books." "I think Warren sat here and wrote, longhand, with a ballpoint pen." "That's pretty retro for a geek." "Well, at least we know where he got the idea for a costume." "Citizen 14." "Superhero." "MONTENEGRO:" "Hodgins dried out and separated the pages." "I digitized them and adjusted for ink seepage." "Was this printed commercially?" "No, it's a prototype, it's handmade." "That's what he was writing at his desk." "A comic book starring himself." "A shy, adolescent young man renders himself as a superhero." "Alone in that room all the time, maybe Warren got consumed by his own fantasy." "You think he was actually out fighting crime?" "Well, the boy got beaten to a pulp while wearing his superhero outfit in the heaviest crime area of D.C., Bones." "As you know, being a writer yourself, Dr. Brennan," "Warren Granger's comic book could be infused with his real life fears and conflicts." "Especially in the case of an adolescent writer." "Can you retrieve any more of this?" "Yeah, sure." "Fine." "What's our next step?" "Oh, we'll go see if Warren had any friends his mother didn't know about." "MAN:" "Wait a minute-- Warren Granger was the skeleton corpse those kids found?" "Yeah." "Sounds like you were close." "How long was he lying there all dead like that?" "BRENNAN:" "Well, for a while." "How well did you know Warren, Mr. Ellis?" "He came in here all the time." "You know, he, uh, knew his stuff." "He was a nice kid." "Really nice guy." "Something you're not telling us?" "What do you mean?" "Well, you seem a little nervous." "Well, you just told me that someone I-I know is this rotting skeletal corpse that's been all over the news." "What do you expect?" "Is there a party upstairs?" "Oh, it's the, uh..." "Doomsday Group." "I rent it out Thursday nights." "Hey, wait, um, Warren was actually one of them." "Oh, well, you know, that's a handy thing to remember." "Anything else you forget to mention to me?" "No, that's it, I think." "( speaking indistinctly )" "Hey, excuse me, this is a private function," "So, good-bye." "Go ahead-- don't let me stop you." "What are you doing, exactly?" "BOOTH:" "Guys, this is actually a real live woman-- something you don't see often." "And like I said, this is a private function, so..." "Hey, it's the FBI, all right?" "!" "Just turn it off for a minute," "Please?" "FBI?" "( sirens wailing ) I'm Yasutani the Terrible." "I speak for this clan." "Okay, well, we'd like to ask you a few of questions, if you're not too, uh, busy." "BRENNAN:" "The costumes, the social awkwardness, the active fantasy life, the victim would fit right into this sub-grouping." "BOOTH:" "Okay." "Hey, Mr., uh..." "Yakitori the Horrible?" "What's your real name?" "Jeremy Kuznetsky." "Do any of you people know Warren Granger?" "Something happened to Warren, didn't it?" "Warren's dead." "He was murdered." "No, I never said anything about him being murdered." "Neither did the press." "Yeah, well, obviously, if you're the FBI, he was murdered." "You guys don't investigate people getting hit by a bus." "Okay, great-- when's the last time any of you have seen Warren?" "KUZNETSKY:" "Couple months ago, when he left." "Left?" "Citizen 14 was one of us... until he went psycho, and bugged out, called us all posers." ""Pathetic fantasists."" "BRENNAN:" "Was he wearing his, um... outfit?" "His identity, yeah." "Why do you wear these identities?" "For the game." "How serious do you take the game?" "It's only fun if you take it seriously." "You always play here?" "You know, "play" is not exactly the right verb, okay?" "YASUTANI:" "Don't even try to explain it to them." "Shut up!" "Who cares?" "!" "Didn't you hear?" "!" "Warren is dead!" "It's okay, Minnow!" "BOOTH:" "What's your name?" "Blue Minnow." "Okay, guys, when I ask your names," "I want the ones that your parents gave." "Abigail Zealey." "Citizen 14 was my partner." "Is that what you call Warren?" "Citizen 14?" "Citizen 14 was my partner." "Warren was my friend." "It was a little more than that." "( whispering ):" "Hey, hey, hey." "BRENNAN:" "I don't like to judge an entire subculture, but those people gave me the creeps." "Because they are creepy." "What?" "Those kids at the school weren't your good old harmless, tutor-you-in-math geeks." "They were the set-the-school-on-fire geeks." "Dark nerds." "Columbine nerds." "Columbine?" "You think Yasutani the Terrible is actually capable of murder?" "I think they get high, they play these games, they lose their grip on reality." "They start to believe that they are these characters." "You mean like Warren, out fighting crime?" "You know, maybe Warren and that guy, the leader, Yasuhama..." "Yasutani the Terrible." "Yeah, Yasutani the Terrible." "Maybe him and that guy, they got into this magic fight, and it became real." "So you're saying it wasn't Warren who was murdered." "It was his character, Citizen 14." "They're so delusional, they don't even know that they've committed a crime." "I'll get Hodgins to see if there's any signs of drug use in Warren's hair." "I've managed to get some of the text back from this panel." "Cheerful little tyke." "The writer was in pain." "I don't think it was purely the adolescent angst of the outsider." "In fact, I'd go so far as to say it wasn't mere psychological pain." "He's afraid of actual, physical death." "Can you really pull all that information from a comic book?" "Absolutely." "All writers reveal more of themselves than they intend on every page." "You know, I never bought all that English 101 stuff." "Sometimes a river is just a river." "All due respect, but my writing, for example, is pure fiction." "GOODMAN:" "Dr. Brennan," "I fear you reveal much more of your world-view in your writing than you realize." "Such as?" "Such as archaeologists make good administrators because they enjoy tedium." "MONTENEGRO:" "Such as artists are doomed to a life of loneliness because they aren't able to think beyond instant gratification." "BOOTH:" "Such as FBI guys are hot and Angela here wants to have sex with me." "All I'm suggesting is that, while Dr. Goodman goes through Warren's writing, we should concentrate on the hypotheses that are congruent with forensic evidence." "I'm going to take another look at Warren Granger's remains." "ADDY:" "In the last 24 hours, I've read several dozen comic books and graphic novels." "Hodgins find any sign of drug use?" "No." "They're quite interesting, the graphic novels, especially." "After you clean the bones, look for scoring on the occipital condyle and the inferior nuchal line." "They're basically a retelling of the Greek myths with all superheroes standing in for Hercules:" "half god, half human." "Be very careful here." "X ray shows fragmentation of the cervical vertebrae consistent with sharp force trauma." "Invulnerability, super strength, heightened senses, telekinesis." "I would love to have some of those powers." "Why?" "I don't really know." "Is it an odd desire?" "Why fantasize?" "You're smart." "In some ways, my intelligence is a handicap." "For one thing, I'm weird." "For another, I tend to make people feel stupid, and they resent me for it." "I suspect it's the same for superpowers." "The victim was stabbed here at the base of the spine." "The spinal cord was severed." "That's what killed him." "I'll clean the bones and try to match a weapon to the damage done." "Which will make you a real hero." "In the real world." "In this restored panel from the second and final volume of Citizen 14, we begin to see a female presence, beautiful, ethereal, which he calls the Opalescence." "A girl he literally can't approach." "What if Warren was only... you know, supplying his own masturbatory materials?" "Yes." "Lonely adolescent boy." "But the story moves beyond that dimension." "Here we see the idealized female Opalescence cowering before a dark male figure referred to only as the Twisted." "So Citizen 14 wants to rescue the Opalescence from the Twisted." "Could this be Warren's mother and stepfather?" "Elements of romantic love." "This girl surrounded by blue." "And one of those comic book geeks was a blue girl." "I'd say she's definitely worth questioning." "BOOTH:" "Blue Minnow." "That's your alter ego." "Abigail Zealey is my alter-ego." "Did you, Abigail, have a relationship with Warren Granger, or did the Blue Minnow have a relationship with Citizen 14?" "Or any combination thereof." "Neither." "Warren had a girlfriend at Capital Bowl." "What's the girlfriend's name, Abby?" "He never told us her name." "It was just a physical thing." "And it was almost over." "Warren and I had a connection." "He couldn't deny that." "Before he disappeared, he gave me his entire Neil Gaiman collection-- his favorite work beside his own." "In his own work, he describes a woman known as the Opalescence." "Do you believe that's supposed to be you?" "What do you think?" "We think it's another girl entirely." "Does that bother you?" "Okay." "Maybe the others told you I'm obsessed, I know." "Because they never got Warren like I did." "He was right." "They are posers." "And Warren wasn't?" "Warren believed." "He believed in truth." "He believed in doing what was right." "He was Citizen 14." "Citizen 14 is real." "Warren didn't fit in with the others?" "I just said" "Warren was better!" "He was a really nice guy." "Were you aware that Jeremy Kuznetsky and Kenneth Vert have police records?" "Yeah." "It's nothing interesting, though." "It's, like, vandalism and trespassing." "You can't take them seriously." "What, as criminals?" "As anything." "Okay, well, what would be interesting?" "As a crime." "Something that took courage." "Something that meant something." "Like murder?" "Yeah, like murder." "Warren Granger on the night he died, wearing his costume." "Start the sequence." "Cause of death was a severed spinal cord." "We can rule out Abigail Zealey as the killer." "How do you figure?" "Abigail doesn't have enough strength to sever Warren's spinal cord with one blow." "What about his step-dad?" "Or the other kids at the comic shop?" "BRENNAN:" "Well, if the physicality of the murderer is between five-ten and six-two," "I'd say yes to them all, depending on the weapon." "What could he have done to make somebody so angry at him?" "Zack's cleaning the bones now." "Maybe we'll find something that we've missed." "HODGINS:" "What are you reading?" "I'm doing research." "By reading a comic book?" "Intensely allegorical modern myths." "You're reading Bugs Bunny, man." "On the surface, yes, but if you dig deeper, the subtext becomes apparent." "The conflict is representative of the Darwinian struggle between avians and mammals for dominance." "Based on Bugs giving Daffy Duck a cigar made out of dynamite?" "Yeah." "And then here, he explodes, but not really." "You have a problem, my man." "What?" "Looks like you degraded the bones." "Impossible." "It's only a four-percent peroxide solution." "Then what's that bubbling and pitting on the periosteum?" "Four-percent solution wouldn't cause that." "So, what, it's some kind of systemic deterioration?" "The intertrochanteric crest is almost totally eaten away." "What do you think it is?" "This kid was sick." "BOOTH:" "Right." "Smell that?" "Yes, I do." "You know what that is, Bones?" "Wax, popcorn... feet, deodorant..." "That is America, Bones." "Keep your bowling ball in the car?" "Oh, you know, I figure we ask a few questions about Warren Granger, maybe bowl a few frames." "Nothing like a little sport to take the edge off." "This is not a sport." "How do you figure?" "There's no physical benefit." "So it's really like golf." "It's not a sport, it's an activity." "Could you please, Bones, maybe just for once try not to piss everyone off around you?" "Yeah, sorry." "Are you good at this sport?" "My average was over 200, less than two opens per game." "One match, I had 211 strikes out of 431 shots, 29 opens in 39 games." "What does that mean?" "Means I won some bowling awards." "I won the Marshall H. Dixon award for my paper on George John Romanes and physiological selection." "My God, it's like we lead parallel lives." "Need shoes?" "Yeah." "Looking for the manager." "Ted McGruder." "FBI, huh?" "Yeah." "We're investigating the death of one of your employees." "Warren Granger." "Warren?" "When he didn't show up for his last paycheck," "I thought he'd just found another job and didn't want to give notice." "He was weird like that." "Good kid, though." "Oh, oh, welcome back..." "Have a bag...?" "Ted, I talked to 'em, but they just keep giving me lip." "Luce, these people are with the FBI." "They're here about Warren Granger." "Warren?" "What about him?" "He's deceased." "Oh, my God." "I told you he didn't quit." "I was wrong." "This is my wife, Lucy." "Sorry." "That's OK." "How often do those kids come in here?" "TED:" "Who, those jokers?" "Weekends, mostly, but they used to come in a lot more, but in these crazy costumes." "I told 'em I'd allow it on Halloween, but that's it." "BOOTH:" "Is Warren's girlfriend here?" "TED:" "His girl...?" "What?" "We were informed that Warren's girlfriend worked here." "Well, I mean, if you ever met Warren, you'd know he's not the girlfriend type of kid." "There was a girl who came by to see him sometimes." "Yeah." "Yeah, that's-that's her." "I-I don't know her name, but..." "I don't think Warren was all that glad to see her, and if she called, he'd ask me to tell her that he wasn't here." "Brennan." "TED:" "Maybe he was trying dodge her." "Excuse me just one moment, please." "Okay, slow down, Zack, and repeat that." "Hypercellularity with total effacement of the marrow space." "Osteoblasts at 26%." "Okay, good work, Zack." "Keep working on the weapon I.D." "I take it we're not going to be getting any bowling in tonight, huh?" "Zack said that if Warren hadn't been murdered two months ago, he'd be dead by now." "When you said Warren was sick as a child, you meant leukemia?" "Yes, but by the time he was 11, he was in remission." "The hypercellular activity I saw is only present in advanced cancer cases." "He must have been very ill." "You didn't notice?" "MAN:" "We tried to be there for Warren, but... he wouldn't let us in." "Right when you thought you'd built a bridge of trust, he'd quit on you." "He quit trying to face reality." "Maybe your son didn't want you to have to face it." "He knew his situation was dire, and he decided to tough it out on his own." "Yes." "He saw what it did to me the first time." "It's not that he quit." "It's that he didn't want me to suffer." "You told her that her son didn't tell her about being sick to make her feel better." "Uh-huh." "But you don't really believe that." "Well, people don't actually do that." "So, you just told her that to make her feel better?" "Right." "So, you just did what you said people don't do." "I wonder why he didn't tell his mother." "Well, maybe he was all caught up in the romance of being a dying superhero, you know?" "Adolescent angst, all that." "What do you really think?" "The truth is, I think the boy was looking how to be a man." "All on his own, without any help." "He was doing the best that he could." "Heroes don't whine about being sick." "Something like that." "Poor kid." "Did they know about the leukemia?" "No, he kept it a secret." "Tough guy, huh?" "You were right on before about the kid knowing he was facing imminent death." "This changes motivation." "The killer's motivation?" "BOOTH:" "No." "Warren Granger's." "GOODMAN:" "You think he was emboldened by the knowledge that he was going to die." "He went looking for a fight." "He went looking for the Twisted." "Wait." "No, wait." "We are allowing the comic book story to generate too many hypotheses." "I only heard the "Go get the bad guy" hypothesis." "It's too general." "BRENNAN:" "Yes, perhaps, the Opalescence represented Warren's better nature, and the Twisted was a reflection of his darker sexual impulses." "A theme I assume is common in teenage fiction." "And the drawings..." "Hello..." "Bones." "The drawings." "Warren wrote the comics, but there was no evidence in his room that he knew how to draw." "Dr. Brennan," "I found an extra piece of bone I can't account for." "Someone else drew the comic." "Stew Ellis." "What about him?" "Look." "Warren Granger wrote this comic book, but it was drawn by Stew Ellis." "STEW ELLIS:" "Look, I told you, I knew Warren from the store, okay?" "He was a serious investor." "Did he owe you money, Stew?" "( sighs ):" "What?" "Was it, uh, creative differences, or was it you just didn't get enough credit?" "No, it was none of that." "Look, why didn't you tell me you were partners when I asked you earlier?" "'Cause we had a big argument, and I didn't want you to think I had a motive." "Okay." "What did you argue about?" "Abigail Zealey?" "No, man." "Just merchandising." "You argued about merchandising?" "Yeah, Warren thought he deserved 70% for the concept, but I think, since I did the actual drawings, I..." "Do you have a publisher?" "No." "And now we never will." "Look, if-if you think that I killed Warren," "I'm not that stupid, man." "So, who do you think killed Warren?" "( sighs ):" "I don't know, man." "Definitely not me, okay?" "Well, you know, Stew, as of this moment, you're the prime suspect in Warren's murder." "Why?" "Why?" "Because you lied about your relationship with Warren, so, if I were you," "I would think really, really hard if there's anything else you haven't told me." "All right, Abby." "Abby?" "Triangle." "Look, I hooked up with her a few times, but she was obsessed with Warren." "So, you did argue about her." "No, man." "Warren never wanted Abby." "Okay, maybe it made you jealous that she wanted him?" "Dude," "Abby's cute in a chick-geek kind of way, but she's definitely not that kind of betty you go to the death chamber for." "Okay, Stew, you know what?" "You're just one of those guys who's just way, way too good at lying." "Dude, I'm an artist." "What do you want?" "I found the extra piece of bone lodged here in the odontoid process of C2." "I-I went through all the chipping and damage again, but I can't find where it came from." "Well, it's not from a cervical vertebrae." "Oh, it's not?" "It's from a long bone." "Probably the deltoid process of a humerus." "Arm bone?" "I need you to set up the microtome and get me paraffin and an embedding mold." "Are you going to prep your own bone slide?" "Yes." "Usually I do that for you." "This is a tough one, Zack." "The piece is small, and I need to make sure there's enough left for a DNA sample." "Warren Granger's arm bones are complete." "This extra bone fragment didn't come from Warren Granger." "Warren Granger was the victim of a violent attack." "He fought back." "It's possible that during that struggle, he struck his attacker with the same weapon that was later used to kill him." "Which means that piece of bone could have come from his murderer." "( loud breath ) ( whistles ):" "What are you doing?" "Breathing on the sample dissipates static electricity and makes it easier to cut." "You seem nervous." "If I get this right, I'll be able to tell you the age, sex and race of Warren Granger's killer." "Stew was the artist." "Really?" "You think he killed Warren over artistic differences?" "He also had a thing for Abby." "Wow." "Yeah, for a recluse, Warren Granger-- he had his thumb in a lot of pies." "You said before that Warren reminded you of me." "You think I'm just like him." "That he hid from life by immersing himself in a fantasy world where he fought crime, and I do the same thing, only I don't have superpowers." "I..." "I have science." "No, Bones, you do fight crime." "It's not a fantasy." "And as far as any normal person is concerned, you do have superpowers." "You're just being nice to me." "No, I don't do that." "Yes, you do." "You lied to Warren Granger's mother to make her feel better." "That seems to be your superpower." "Look, this piece of bone you're analyzing-- how did it get lodged in Warren Granger's neck?" "It was deposited by the same weapon that severed his spinal cord." "Doesn't make it the killer's bone." "You thinking a-a separate murder victim?" "The Opalescence?" "The woman he loved?" "I don't think she's dead." "Why?" "This is an arm bone." "Has anyone we've seen on this case been favoring her arm?" "Not that I've noticed." "That's because you're not an anthropologist." "With superpowers." "Ha!" "That's good." "Oh... hello." "Any news about Warren?" "We're still in the initial phase of our investigation." "Listen, Mr. McGruder, you didn't happen to keep that, uh, last payroll check for Warren Granger that you told me about?" "By law I have to, yeah." "You mind digging that out for us?" "I mean, I apologize for the inconvenience." "I guess." "It's probably in the file somewhere." "What do you need the paycheck for?" "BOOTH:" "Ah, it's technical." "Mrs. McGruder, what's wrong with your left side?" "Why would you ask me that?" "I noticed how you held yourself the last time I was here." "I didn't think anything of it." "Though viewed through the current context, I..." "What is she talking about?" "BOOTH:" "She wants to know how you hurt yourself." "BRENNAN:" "You' walk as though your left ribs are cracked." "Also, you favor your left arm." "Oh, I, um..." "I-I... fell on the lanes." "They're very slippery." "Falling would bruise a number of ribs." "You're favoring only one or two." "Type of damage done by a fist." "Look, were you and Warren close?" "He was a nice kid." "A really nice kid." "Here it is." "You two want to bowl a few frames?" "Got some empty lanes." "I'll see you in the comic books, buster." "What?" "Thanks." "I'll get this back to you." "It's, "See you in the funny pages."" "Okay, I took a liberty." "Her husband beats her." "Bones, all right, talk about multiple hypotheses." "It's a leap, yes, but it was bound to happen." "Me spending so much time with you." "I mean that as a compliment." "Okay, so Warren's former boss is the Twisted, and the boss' wife is the Opalescence." "Go back and arrest him." "It's not enough." "Okay, for that we need something just a little bit more real." "Evidence." "Cold hard facts baby." "Dr. Brennan, based on your histology and the DNA, the bone chip found in Warren Granger's neck came from a Caucasian male, mid 30s." "McGruder." "Can you get any more specific?" "We need the weapon." "I can get a warrant, search the McGruder house for whatever you want." "That's the trouble-- we don't know exactly what we're looking for." "We hit a dead end trying to reverse engineer it from the mark on the neck." "Too much damage and fragmentation." "Wait, you said that in books you could find the real world version." "Yeah, well, I mean... if you know you, it's pretty obvious." "Well, give me an example." "Okay, well, in your book, your partner's a former Olympic boxer who graduated from Harvard and spoke six different languages." "In real life... you got me." "So what you're saying is... that reality falls far, far short of the fictional." "Yeah." "Thanks a lot, Bones." "Warren Granger's spinal cord was severed by something sharp, but not a knife." "If it wasn't a knife, what was it?" "The closest match I could find would be a corkscrew or a Tibetan skull knife." "But neither of them explain how foreign bone was left lodged in the vertebrae." "Pull up Citizen 14's weapons, Ange." "It was a boomerang thing, like a sonic gun." "A laser cutlass." "That thing that allowed him to hear through walls." "We're looking for something that has a drabber, more banal version in the real world." "Why would he be killed by his own weapon?" "Well, because he probably had it on him the night he decided to confront Ted McGruder." "Citizen 14's arsenal." "What's that?" "That's his main weapon." "It's a three-sided throwing knife that returns to him." "But none of them make the wounds that resemble the one that severed Warren's spinal cord." "It was just an idea." "Bones..." "I fell into the exact thing that I warned you about-- developing too many hypotheses not grounded in fact." "No, Bones, I know exactly which drab real world thing was used to murder Warren Granger." "All this kid wants is to feel like a hero." "Suddenly he's facing a damsel in distress." "Lucy McGruder is ten years older." "No, it's not the damsel part that matters." "It's the distress that appealed to the kid, you know." "Look, it wasn't about the sex or the romance, it never was." "He wanted to make a difference in the world before he died." "I told you he was more like you than me." "22-705, Dispatch." "22-705." "Unit sent to the suspect's residence reports that the domicile is empty." "No one's there?" "What about the wife?" "Negative." "Search team is inside the house." "It's empty." "Signs of flight." "Affirmative, Dispatch." "He beats her, but she takes off with him anyway?" "Spousal abuse syndrome." "Dispatch, 22-705." "Dispatch." "Can you send a backup unit to Capital Bowl 1123 Seboldt." "( quietly ):" "Domestic disturbances are always weird, okay?" "You know, the woman gets beat on by her husband, the cavalry turns up to save her." "You know, you'd think she'd be on the same side as the rescuers, but sometimes..." "You're saying watch out for the wife." "MAN:" "Shut up." "All I'm saying is just stay alert, okay, Bones?" "Okay." "MAN:" "Shut up." "Ed, why are we doing this?" "Shut up." "You didn't do anything." "Lucy, I swear to God, if you don't shut up..." "I know you wouldn't hurt Warren." "BOOTH:" "Of course he would." "You see, that's what he does." "He loves to beat up people weaker than him." "We are closed." "You left your door unlocked." "Probably an oversight due to your state of panic." "Yeah, light's were on." "We suspected a robbery." "Say, have a bevel knife?" "A what?" "It's a triangular three-sided knife." "You know, to clean out bowling ball holes." "Say, I used to have one back in the day." "You wouldn't happen to have one around here, would you now?" "You need a warrant... you need a warrant to take any of my stuff." "Lucy, we need a bevel knife." "We keep one in here." "Shut up, Lucy!" "BOOTH:" "Why don't you smack her around a little bit there, Ted, huh?" "Keep your woman in line." "Yeah." "This could have done it." "Say, Bones, that bone chip, uh... second victim or murderer?" "For Warren's sake, I hope it was the murderer." "Me, too." "What are you talking about?" "Just get out of here." "It'd be his left arm." "What?" "Warren was right-handed, so the wound would be on your husband's left arm." "Oh, my God." "Bones..." "Right there." "I told him, I got him, I got him, I got him." "All right, all right." "Aw, hell, Bones, it looks like you opened up an old wound there." "All right, let's go." "You know what, you're under arrest." "I really hate a wife beater, I really do." "Almost as much as I hate someone who kills a dying kid." "Warren knew what Ted did to you." "Did you tell him?" "I didn't have to." "He saw one night." "Ted hit me, and..." "Warren..." "Warren ran away." "Why didn't you go to the police?" "Because..." "it's not all the time." "It's just when things go bad and he's under a lot of strain." "Ted has a bad temper." "Warren wanted to rescue you." "Oh, my God." "BOOTH:" "He probably just wanted to intimidate your husband." "Stop him from attacking you." "Warren stabbed your husband in the arm with the bevel knife." "Ted took the knife away from Warren." "It wouldn't have been hard." "The boy was very ill." "After that, it's like you said-- your husband has a bad temper."