'Bones' Season 11, Episode 7 Review: The Promise in the Palace

A trio of extreme mountain bikers accidentally stumbles on a body at the bottom of a ravine, getting a fragment of lower arm bone in his own arm. The Jeffersonian team arrives on the scene, and Dr. Edison estimates from the subpubic angle of the pelvis and bone density that the victim was a female in her mid-30s. There is a considerable amount of predation to the body, and Hodgins puts time of death based on the maggot lifecycle at 48 hours. Because the victim was wearing heels, and therefore not a jogger or hiker who got lost, and because of the dried blood and drag marks on the foliage, the team suspects she was killed and thrown down into the ravine.

Back at the Jeffersonian, Hodgins notices that the victim's clothing is made of super long chain polymers, so some sort of stretchy material. Her bone density, splayed metatarsals, and light frame along with muscle tone suggest she was a dancer or similar. Trauma to the ribs and upper body reveal extensive antemortem injuries that have since remodelled. Injuries to the ischia and clavicles happened within the last decade.  The acromioclavicular ligament shows signs of repeated dislocation, and the expanded glenoid fossae mean her shoulders were repeatedly displaced. Within her upper esophageal sphincter is a key, which she seems to have voluntarily swallowed based on the lack of avulsion fractures to her mastoid process.

Angela uses her facial reconstruction software to narrow down the pool of possible victims to 379 women in the greater DC area. Saroyan brings a right second phalanx and Angela manages to get a partial fingerprint, which she amplifies. Running it through AFIS gets 84 matches, but cross-referenced with the facial matches, she gets one hit: Klarissa Mott. There was no missing person's report filed for Klarissa, though.  She had no steady boyfriend, no family, and her roommate didn't seem to care either. Booth and Aubrey visit the apartment and meet her roommate, Anna Lloyd, and her boyfriend, Victor Cornaccio.  They just started a catering company, and Anna tells the FBI that Klarissa was into magic - she was an escape artist who worked at the Magic Palace.

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On the way to the Magic Palace in their 2016 Toyota Product Placement, Brennan and Booth find out that Klarissa had burns on her wrists. The owner of the place, Mr. Jay, gave Klarissa her start and had recently moved her to the Friday night main stage, bumping Big Phil.  Aubrey questions Big Phil, whose act involves the use of fire. He admits to pulling pranks but insists he and Klarissa were working together on one of his tricks when she got distracted and accidentally got burned.

The Jeffersonian team notices perimortem fractures to Klarissa's left orbital socket, maxilla, and zygomatic but a lack of hemorrhagic staining. Saroyan finds out that her liver had high levels of the opioid dilaudid. Angela finds out that Klarissa withdrew $340 from the same ATM in a sketchy area of town every Wednesday, and that she would go across the street after that. Booth finds out that the man who owns the place, Timothy Hodsteder, had been in trouble for abuse of pain meds. He and Aubrey hear screaming coming from inside and bust open the door.  But Hodsteder, it turns out, does active release for muscle tension. He'd lost his PT license and worked off the books.  Klarissa just wanted more pliability in her shoulders and hips. Angela also finds out that Klarissa was getting threatening emails from someone using a computer at a public library in Maryland. Somehow, she magically cross-references this with members of the Palace and hits on Junior, Mr. Jay's son. Junior admits he had been following Klarissa because his dad gave her his magic trick, the Drunken Monkey. He never confronted her, but saw her kissing someone outside the palace.

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Back at the Jeffersonian, they find more trauma to Klarissa's left ulna suggesting a defensive wound. Just superior to it is a smaller wound made simultaneously.  The difference in angles of the wounds means the object had corners.  Hodgins finds out that it was made out of steel, manganese, and nickel. Edison also finds damage to the hyoid - bone bruising and microfracturing of the greater cornua that could mean ligature strangulation. Additional bone bruising in a similar pattern to the ulna is found on the mandible. Saroyan thought that marks on the neck tissue were from predation or decomposition, but finds out that they are hives. Klarissa was allergic to fungus. Between that and the flowers sent to her apartment, the team suspects she may have been together with Victor.

While Victor admits to kissing Klarissa in front of the Palace and to sleeping with her, he denies he killed her.  But he suspects Anna knew about the affair. When Aubrey questions her, she first denies then admits she knew about the affair.  Since she had so much money invested in the catering business, though, she overlooked Victor's dalliance.

When the FBI finds out that the flowers were sent by the Gold Pro Casino in Las Vegas, congratulating Klarissa for making them her new home, they realize they need to go talk to Mr. Jay again. Brennan suspects that the padlock and chain on display for the Drunken Monkey trick were the murder weapon, used to hit Klarissa and strangle her, causing her to fall on her face and break her left cheek. Jay lets them look at the padlock, and Brennan notes it has been cleaned.  But since Jay didn't have the key -- it was in Klarissa's throat -- he couldn't clean within the lock mechanism.  When Brennan opens it, she finds that the clotting matches the exact frequency of luminescence of the blood sample extracted from Klarissa's remains... whatever that nonsense means.  But it's enough to get Jay to admit to killing her when he found out she was quitting after he gave her his most famous trick.

Anthropological Comments

• The biker got a fragment of an arm bone stabbed into his; and yet the arm bones are complete when laid out at the Jeffersonian later.
• Brennan mentions that Christine's deciduous lower central incisor fell out, but she doesn't say whether it's right or left.  Just seconds later, she mentions that upper incisors are usually the first baby teeth to fall out; she's incorrect, as it's usually lower incisors.  I'm not entirely sure how old Christine is supposed to be; I thought it was 4, which is a bit too young to be losing teeth (6 years old is average, and 4 is quite early).
• The victim was estimated to be in her mid-30s from bone density. It is possible to look at a thin-section of bone and tell histologically about how old someone is.  That is, of course, not something that can be done in the field on a fully-fleshed body like Edison does.
• More interesting, though, is the fact that the age-at-death at the scene was estimated as mid-30s, but her real age was found to be 27. I think this is the first time on the show that their age method hasn't more or less perfectly matched the victim's actual age (and therefore the first time the show's been close to the reality of fuzzy age-at-death categories).
• As usual, the radii are placed on the inside of the lower arm when laid out on the table, which is not standard anatomical position.
• The whole frequency of luminescence thing seems totally bogus to me.
• But the explanation of the wounds, the use of the fracturing to figure out cause of death, the pelvis to estimate sex... all fine. Some decent forensics going on this week.

Stray Comments

• I didn't teach my 6-year-old about the Tooth Fairy either, for honestly the same reasons as Brennan.  My kid did get a gold $1 coin for each lost tooth so far, though. (Fun fact: the tiny little cusps on incisors that you only see for a little while when they first erupt in kids are called mamelons... from the French for "nipple.")
• Did we ever find out what was up with Klarissa's abuse of dilaudid? Was there an explanation mentioned?
• Why was everyone hauled into the FBI for questioning except Anna, who was questioned at home?
• Oh right, there were a bunch of minor magic tricks. And Saroyan is going out with a photographer now.

Rating

Although there were too many random suspects for my taste and the luminescence thing at the end was weird, for the most part the forensics were good. They used multiple methods to get ID, cause of death was something that can show on bone (although strangulation doesn't always), and the victim's particular occupation would certainly lead to dislocations that would be obvious on bone as well.  I'd give the Promise in the Palace a respectable A-.

Read More Bones Reviews:

• Season 11, Episode 6: The Senator in the Street Sweeper
• Season 11, Episode 5: The Resurrection in the Remains
• Season 11, Episode 4: The Carpals in the Coy-Wolves
• Season 11, Episode 3: The Donor in the Drink
• Season 11, Episode 2: The Brother in the Basement
• Season 11, Episode 1: The Loyalty in the Lie
• Seasons 6-10 Episode Reviews