Bones

It must be them there near a big piece of nothing

According to my GPS,

it's about where Texas turns into Oklahoma.

Oh, great, right in the middle of a jurisdictional pissing contest.

Look, I'm out of water.

Give me yours.

Hey! Are y'all FBI?

FBI Special Agent Seely Booth.

This here is Dr. Temperance Brennan from the Jeffersonian.

Welcome to Oklahoma, ma'am.

Welcome to Texas, ma'am.

Guy, welcome to the United States of America.

Where are the remains, please?

Oh, right here.

Hardly any flesh left.

It's very dry here,

so I'm guessing the time of death

was some months ago.

How do you think they died?

They left Oklahoma, hit Texas,

then died of despair.

Nope, they're definitely Oklahomans.

If they were from Texas,

they'd had sense enough to carry water.

That wouldn't show up in the bones.

No clothing.

Might have blown away.

Maybe a young couple,

some kind of suicide pact?

Sub-pubic angle suggests two females.

Ooh, lesbian suicide pact.

Definitely Texans, then.

The victims were

Pygopagus, or some would say Illeopagus.

What's that? - Greek?

Conjoined twins. - What's that?

Siamese twins.

The point of attachment is posterior.

Joined at the ass.

Definitely Texans.

So what do we got here, Doc?

Well, it's a federal case, boys.

The FBI will take jurisdiction.

Conjoined twin births occur once every 85,000 births.

The same frequency as hermaphroditic births.

Oh, Mr. Nigel Murray,

we've so missed your insights.

Thank you.

Why weren't the remains dispersed by scavengers?

Well, the depression in the earth suggested

that they were buried in an extremely shallow grave.

The remains were spotted by an oil survey team

from a helicopter.

Begging the question, what exposed the bones?

Well, there was a sandstorm in that area eight days ago.

Sustained winds of 60 miles an hour,

gusts of about 80.

Their molars have not completely emerged

and root development is incomplete.

Indicating that

the victims were between 19 and 21 years of age.

Guys, hello?

ID'ing them is not going to be a problem.

How many sets of conjoined twins can there be?

Um, over the last 500 years, approximately 600 sets.

Over 70% women.

I did not expect him to know that.

Well, all facts are useful.

It's just the context that shifts.

I bet I could just go

search for missing Siamese twins

and find them in, like, ten minutes.

By all means, give it a shot.

The victims had

two separate spinal columns fused distally

at the lower sacral level extending to the pelvis.

No other vertebral anomalies.

Neither one of them could have survived

the death of the other.

So murder-suicide. Suicide-murder.

Or vice-versa.

That was vice-versa.

Soil beneath the skeletons was full of weirdness.

Quite a bit of decomposed cotton.

We didn't see any fabric.

Wow, it's decomposed. It's fairly cheap stuff, too.

I think they were wrapped in a sheet.

Naked, wrapped in a sheet.

Sweets will have something to say about that.

Also I found soil-dwelling mites:

genus Ameronothrus.

Nearest place they could have picked up soil mites

was hundreds of miles away.

And decomposed popcorn.

They were killed at the movies?

I have a theory...

The circus.

Kind of stole my thunder there.

but, yeah, yeah, the traveling circus.

I found them.

Already?

The circus.

The circus. - The circus.

"Abracadabra" was first uttered to cure hay fever.

Conjoined twins wrapped in a sheet?

According to Hodgins.

It would help to know how they were wrapped.

Well, all the evidence is gone with the wind.

No other clothing?

According to Hodgins. - The murderer didn't want

anyone to identify them from their clothes.

They're conjoined twins. You might as well buried them

with their driver's licenses in their hands.

Wrapped naked bodies

often indicate a careful burial,

or of course, sexual assault.

Okay, you know what? That's, uh,

that's creepy. We got to get going there, Sweets.

Where? - Texas. That's where the circus is.

circus folk

are extremely tight-lipped and close-knit.

They won't tell you anything.

How do you know?

I, you know, I've read articles.

You're the worst liar I have ever met.

You read articles?

Even I know he's lying.

Okay, I'm adopted.

You know what? My story isn't important here.

No, it's very important. Go ahead.

I...

when I reached the age

of majority, I tried to find my birth mother,

a psychic who worked the circus and carnival circuit in Florida.

Bio mom was a carney.

You know what? Let's stay on track.

The point is no one would talk to me.

Were you wearing a suit?

You'll be wearing a suit,

and they won't open up to you, either.

I'm just trying to be helpful here.

I suspect Sweets is right.

I studied a carnival for six weeks

as research for my cultural anthropology dissertation,

no one would tell me anything.

Even though I became quite adept on the high wire.

Fine. If they're going to talk to their own,

we will go undercover. - What?

If we're joining a circus, we'll need an act.

I am quite adept on the high wire.

No, no, no, you know what? We'll have a knife-throwing act.

I can't throw knives.

I can. I had the best

knife skills in the Rangers.

We're going to join the circus.

We are going to join the circus.

so we're going to talk to the twins' mother here in Ft. Worth,

then we'll pick up our mobile home.

And we'll join the circus right outside Waco.

"Our mobile home"?

Yeah, we're circus folks, Bones.

We crisscross the country in a mobile home.

I'll have the field office here

paint up something special for us.

Well, is that all you need

to get a job at the circus, a mobile home?

You know what? It's going to help.

It's showy, and we're show people.

Well, it's always possible that we'll talk to the girls' mother

and solve this whole case tonight.

Right? Hmm, - I hope not.

What? Hmm?

I should've never let those girls leave this home.

Worst thing that can happen to a mother, isn't it?

Finding out that you outlived your child.

Unnatural.

Except for societies with high infant mortality rates.

My understanding is you tried to sue the circus

several times, Mrs. Van Owen.

It's Mrs. Hicks.

Dell Hicks here

is my husband and my lawyer.

Dell helped me sue the circus for...

Loss of income, alienation of affection,

civil rights abuses,

animal abuses, improper hiring,

emotional distress, mental anguish...

Any of these go to court?

It's just a matter of time, Agent Booth.

Hmm. You really hated that circus.

They stole my daughters.

I'll do anything to get back at them for that.

When did you last see your last daughters?

Four months ago. They told us

to butt out of their lives. - Jenny did.

If one of the girls wanted something, it was the same

as both of them wanting it.

If Jenny wanted something, then they both want wanted it.

Didn't matter what Julie wanted.

I took a look