“Bones, it’s time to get up.” “Bones, Bones, have you heard me calling you?” “Come on, we have a new case.” The door in front of Jared was opened, and Katherine went to the bar and poured herself down a latte. “You should try this cup of coffee. They were great. I went to Italy last week to give a lecture to the college students. They gave me some small gifts.” “I know that today is Saturday and you want to have a perfect weekend. But let’s go. Time won’t wait for no one, Ticktock！Ticktock！” The woman wearing a lake-blue blouse and a beige trench coat and came out of the room, she had already combed her long brown hair. This is her usual style, always wearing the simplest. “Jared, the next time you come to call me, you can tell me directly about the case rather than a live description. I still want to enjoy this weekend as early as possible.”
The victim was found this morning in the bathtub in the back garden of a renovated villa. The owner of the house quietly bought this building because he wanted to give his wife an anniversary surprise.The renovated workers had delayed their working hours because the scheduled bathroom floor had not arrived, plus there was heavy rain yesterday. Damn, heavy rain will always wash away a lot of evidence on the scene. A sneaky worker had thought of smoking in the back garden and could scare the guy. The lab’s partner is already waiting at the scene, telling you that this is the most disgusting case that they have ever seen.
The body of the victim was sink into the bottom of the bathtub and the murder poured a kind of strong acid and it smell like household etchant. They are mixing with pickling solution and decolorizes. The body was soaked for two or three days, which means it was soaked and dissolved throughout the whole weekend. That is what the killer wanted, to let the acid destroy all the evidence, but it’s not clear if it was the scene of the death or another location for dumping. “We have to wait until you get back the lab and give me an identity of the victim and the cause of dead.” Jared said and called a FBI technical group.
“Excuse me can I get in there?” a middle aged man stood behind the lines. “ My name is Peter Valero, the contractor of this building.” He came and knew there was a dead body been found….. oh…The poor man looked at the tub. It was a pool of scarlet, stinking human hair and grease, and foam. He threw up in a nearby flower bed. “Tell him not to do that or he may destroy the crime scene.” Katherine always cannot bare someone do that in front of her. She feel sorry about the dead but she is a scientist who can’t be swayed by her emotion but needs to be persuaded by evidence. “I will let Zack help me separate the body and you should deliver this bathtub back to the Jeffersonian lab.” Katherine took off her gloves and overalls and started walking out.
“Wait, you guys cannot take this bathtub away. That is a Godiva 3000 and it isn’t cheap.”
Peter yelled to Jared. “What?! Do you think it’s happening like this to those couples who will still want this tub? Sorry but it is with us now. It is an evidence that is filled with human body.”
Zack was in a hurry to get out of the lab. He found that the corrosives were stronger than anyone had expected. After a weekend of soaking, the human body tissue has been basically dissolved. Now they’re still eating the bones. If they don’t salvage it soon they will have no proof of the identity or the cause of death. The total mass is 542.13 pounds and minus the mass of the 200 pounds bathtub which has a volume of 34 gallon. Quick maths here a gallon is about 8.3 pounds so the body fluid is 270～275 pounds. It took up only two-thirds of the bathtub, so it gave the body weight of about 160 pounds. He found a steel fork next door at an agricultural display, just in time to salvage the large pieces. Small pieces are screened slowly with a strainer. “Dr. Katherine I think we may start the identity now.” He inserted a femur, specifically the right femur. There is a scratch on it and the bone is brittle. The bone marrow is partially gelatinous. “This shows that our deceased was an old man”, said Zack. Katherine didn’t say anything. She tells Zack not to move and then takes a rag and rubs the end of the bone. “This is an artificial bone head with a serial number on it. Jot it down and search in the recently patient database. Not many people get this kind of surgery.It should be possible to establish the identity of the deceased very soon.”
“All right I got the ID of our victim. His name is Lawrence Seaver. It’s quite easy to search from the database since not many people have such severe brittle bone disease. Jared you may find out about his workplace or any address that can help with the case. I’ll meet with you later.” Katherine put down her phone and turned to Zack. “I need to discover the cause of death, you should clean all this bones when I come back.”
The victim appears to have more than one identity. Jared also found an information matching the identity of the victim of the missing person report. His name is Lawrence Turner. He’s 35. He got the same job, commercial electrician. After the family visit, Jared and Katherine were surprised to find that the victim appeared to have started two families on both sides of the city. He has two different lives rather than two wives. One wife is an accountant and has a son with him. The other wife is a middle school Science teacher and they have a young daughter. Neither mother knew each other’s existence while the only similarity is in their child. They both inherited their father’s brittle bone disease. If both mothers found out what their husband did to them, that would be a good motive.
There was a large fracture pattern in the victim’s head, which was caused by blunt force. They were crushed like wet cardboard. Rough V shape, hoarding about 2 times 4. There was a blood loss near the impact, and it was a fatal blow. It’s comforting to know that he was dead before he got into the tub. But this is only his personal judgment. The final decision will be made when Dr. Katherine comes back.
Jared and Katherine found out that the victim worked for Mr. Valero on the new house electrical work. Before waiting for Mr. Valero, the company front desk lady was talking with Jared and knew that the victim was Lawrence. She looked shocked and kept telling Jared that he was popular and didn’t believe it was him. Katherine took a look at this woman when she was talking to Jared. She was young and energetic. It’s very interesting that she used chopsticks from a Chinese restaurant as a bun for her hair. Maybe she earned some extra money from different places at the same time. From the boss’s mouth, Jared knew that the victim actually loved to engage in interpersonal relations. He was kind to everyone around him, kind of warm-hearted, and it was hard to know who was going to kill him.
Katherine came back to the lab and the technology group took some crime scene photos and pieces of evidence back to the Jeffersonian. They found blood on a switch box in the back garden and it matched with the victim’s DNA. The corner of the box fitted the V shape of the back of the victim’s head. It looked like someone tried to hit him and he fell backwards and slipped on the switch box. The man’s bones were softer than normal, and some of the bone fragments crashed directly into his brain, causing brain hemorrhage.
The next step is to find out the wound matched with the killer who attacked Lawrence. Katherine found some fractures, but none of them occurred before death. The most recent trauma occurred three months ago. She liked to work with bones because they have no mind of their own and they never lie. Evidence is always the most direct one because their existence tells the story of the life of the deceased. You can tell from the reconstruction of their leg bones that he may have loved playing football as a child. The size of the entire skeleton suggests that he was malnourished as a child, perhaps because he had chondropathy at the time and gave up on his football dreams. “Even though I don’t agree with your personal lifestyle but finding who kills you is the last good thing returning to you. So what can I know from your skeleton?” She picked up his skull and began stroking the lines. When she reached the socket, she stopped. Touching the bone repeatedly, Katherine realized something was different. She placed the bones under the microscope, and some of the very tiny, spiderweb-like fractures were spreading under the right eye socket of the victim. The weapon is a very long and thin object not more than 30cm. The shape is gradually thickened from bottom to top, like a cone but more of a square. What kind of weapon did the killer use? Assuming that the murderer used this weapon to attack the eyes of the victim, it can be regarded as a very sensitive organ. You don’t have to do that if it’s a man because Mr. Lawrence was a thin person. Then it’s more likely that the killer is a woman.
“Bones I have to tell you. Neither the two wives is the killer, they got valid alibis. I am sorry that you still need to find the killer in this case. How about we go to the victim’s workplace again and see if we can find some missing evidence?” Jared didn’t like this result but the killer is still at large. He took Katherine back to the company but the boss was having a root canal therapy and many employers went home. They found the Chinese restaurant near the workplace and decided to have dinner there. “ Jared, over there. Have you seen that woman inside? She is the front desk lady of Mr. Valero and also is a waitress here.”Katherine looked at her as she was serving the guests. “ See！Her pelvis looks oval and lean back as she walks. The woman is pregnant, I say at least 14 weeks. Jared looks at the chopsticks in her hair. I believed that can match with the weapon I found.”
The woman is named Chloe Pete. The baby she is carrying is Lawrence’s. She has no idea that Lawrence was married, twice. The poor girl started to dream about the wonderful life she can have but once she caught that Lawrence’s message and knew this man is much worse than she can imagine. The three women gathered together and Chloe lied to Lawrence that his boss finds the false bill he had provided. She said that it is not too late to throw some materials away and took him to the back garden. The accountant appeared and so did the science teacher. They started to argue and one woman picked up the chopstick and stabbed into Lawrence’s eyes and his head bounced unto the electrical switch box. Then they poured the acid into the poor guy and acted like they don’t know each other.
Case closed ! We don’t know if how many crimes out there waiting for Jared and Katherine to solve. But one thing we can be sure of is that they will never be late for justice to served.
WORKS CITED
Bones.Emily Deschanel. May 28, 2019. [Bones]TV series，Season 6, episode 9 29:03seconds
ULink College Wordsmith Society 2019 