The Twisted Bones in the Melted Truck - Recap

The show opened with a young man sitting with his eyes closed in a pickup truck as the truck burst into flames but the man did not move. He was quite obviously dead and not suffering as the truck burnt to the rims, leaving a smoking metal ruin.

Hannah, Booth's significant other, sat on the bed half clad as she complained bitterly about a story she was assigned to do. Booth listened with half an ear as he thought about the looming meeting between his young son, Parker, and Hannah. When Hannah decided that Booth was not listening fully to her complaints, she snapped at him, drawing his complete attention. He sympathized with her, telling her that it couldn't be that bad, but to just give it some time and it would resolve itself, or else she could talk to her boss and perhaps get assigned to another job. Hannah accidentally broke the glass in the picture frame holding Booth's son's picture and apologized profusely to which Booth told her it wasn't a problem, that it could be replaced quite easily. Hannah finished dressing for work and said that she was apprehensive about meeting Parker, that she felt that Parker quite hated her and she was a failure with children anyway. Booth tried to soothe her fears and said that she would do just fine, but that didn't seem to make Hannah feel any better. She kissed him and left for work.

At the FBI headquarters, the bones of the young man had been brought in, having a very melted appearance. Bones said that it was physically impossible for bones to melt, but here it was and wasn't it simply marvelous? Hodgins said that he had never seen such a thing and how could it have happened? He wanted to get to the bottom of this as soon as possible! He and Bones found white powder which they discovered to be magnesium oxide all over the melted bones. Did not magnesium have to be wet to ignite, Bones wanted to know? Yes, of course! It had rained the night before and that was how the magnesium oxide had caught fire. So the man had been out in the rain instead of inside the truck. The deceased had been George Liferd, an employee of a local garage. What might he have been doing out there on that lonely country road? This warranted deeper investigation.

The logo on the truck had directed Bones and Booth to the garage and its' owner, Jessie Wilson, whom they interrogated about George Liferd. Had they had a quarrel? No, but Wilson had allowed George to take a bag of magnesium oxide to sell because the man had been behind in his bills and needed a financial break. The agents wondered if Wilson had known what kind of risk Liferd had taken by taking the oxide. Yes, Wilson had known, he'd just wanted to help Liferd out.

At the lab, Hodgins and Angela discovered that a 9mm bullet had been lodged in the skull. The deceased's wife, Kathy Liferd, had just the week before taken out a very large life insurance policy on her husband. The agents wen to talk to Kathy, who told them that it had been George's idea about the insurance policy, not hers. He had wanted her and the children provided for in case something were to happen to him. That let her off the hook, so to speak. The bullet was determined to not have caused Liferd's death, however. Had he had any enemies angry enough to kill him? Kathy said that she didn't think so.

Kathy Liferd was a high school teacher. Her financial records were looked into by Booth who found that she had a monthly habit of buying Star wars cards online that were not worth what she was paying for them. They apparently were being sold to her by a high school student of hers named Paul. When questioned, Angela admitted that she was paying this Paul to keep quiet, hush money as it were. Why, though? Because he had come upon Angela and another male high school student named Randy Seminole, age seventeen, having sex at the high school. He had demanded five hundred dollars a month as black mail money to which she complied. So far, she had paid Paul at least three thousand dollars and the end was not in sight yet.

Further investigation on the deceased's bones revealed that George Liferd had died of bleeding from being stabbed in his carotid artery, thus ensuring his death within just a few minutes. Whose had been the hand that had wielded those fatal blows? Who would have the motive to kill him?

Bones and Booth found out from Paul that Randy had a knife in his locker which they opened. Sure enough, the rare World War II Nazi issue knife was there in his locker. Jessie Wilson had told the agents that it had gone missing from his garage at least six months before, that the knife had belonged to his grandfather. He had reported the theft to the police and then forgotten about it. This was the knife that lay in Randy's locker. Upon questioning, Randy said that his on again off again girlfriend had stolen it from the Wilson garage six months before and given him the Nazi knife. He had kept it but she had borrowed it just recently and then returned it. Randy said that his would be girlfriend had a terrible temper and he was afraid of her sometimes. The agents needed to talk to the girl, Amber.

Amber admitted that she was angry with teacher Kathy because she was having an affair with Randy and she wanted it to stop. The only way she could see to do this was to tell Kathy's husband, George, about it. Amber had approached George at the garage and enticed him to meet her at the park outside of town. Amber had tried to get George to have sex with her in order to set him up, but the man had refused her which had angered her very much. She had stabbed him in his carotid artery and then fled the truck, turning back once to fire the gun at him that she pulled from her pocket. That done, she turned on her heel and walked back to town. That night, it had rained and had ignited the large bag of magnesium oxide that George had put in the back of the pickup, thus engulfing the pickup truck in flames and melting his bones. Case solved. Bad girl Amber was taken in to custody pending trial.

Parker sat on a park bench with father Booth and Hannah, the boy not saying very much. Booth decided to leave the two alone and made an excuse to go to the car nearby. He stood listening as Hannah and Parker warmed up to one another, asking each other questions, getting to know about each other. Soon, the little boy was telling Hannah all about his likes and dislikes, what he hoped to be when he grew up, and what did she want to do when she grew up? Hannah smiled and scooted closer to Parker. She knew she was not a failure with this little boy and that everything would soon be alright. Booth smiled to himself and approached the pair, asking them if they wanted to go for ice cream. Of course they did!

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