The Boneless Bride in the River

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“The Boneless Bride in the River”

Bones episode

Booth interrupts Brennan's vacation with Sully.

Episode no.

Season 2
Episode 16

Written by

Gary Glasberg

Directed by

Tony Wharmby

Guest stars

Agent Sullivan — Eddie McClintock

Professor Shi Jon Chen — Michael Paul Chan
Drew Harper — J.P. Pitoc
Mai Zhang — Lucille Soong
Jackie Burrows — Deborah Theaker
Nelson Han — Leonard Wu
Joseph Han — James Hong
Mary Chang — Alice Lo
Eric Chang — Bob Lem

Production no.

2AKY16

Original airdate

March 21, 2007

Episode chronology
← Previous	Next →
"The Bodies in the Book"	"The Priest in the Churchyard"

List of Bones episodes

"The Boneless Bride in the River" is the 16th episode of the second season of the FOX Network drama Bones. It originally aired on March 21, 2007.

[edit] Plot summary

During Brennan's vacation with Agent Sully, a woman's body is found with her bones removed. The woman is found to be Li Ling Fan, who came to America on a fiancée visa from China. Booth pays a visit to Li Ling Fan's fiancée, Drew Harper. Harper claims he hasn't seen Li Ling since they mutually decided to call off the wedding. When Booth informs Harper that he'll be seeing if he has a criminal record, Harper makes a run for it by doing some free running, getting away from Booth.

Booth and Brennan meet back in the lab to discuss with Professor Shi Jon Chen about items taken from Harper’s apartment. Booth also gets information about the bridal agency that set up Harper with Li Ling and he and Brennan head out to interview Jackie Burrows, the owner of the Perfect Wife. When Booth tells her that one of her clients may have killed his fiancee, she is visibly distraught. At the lab, the professor tells Brennan and Booth that he has been doing undercover research on some Chinese immigrants and that a family he has been in contact with is planning a Minghun, or to bury their dead son with the bones of a young woman.

Harper was suspected to have taken Li Ling's bones and sold them for a large amount of money. Brennan asks him to bring her to just look at one of the bones to see what she can discover. The professor agrees, but asks Brennan to pretend to be his girlfriend and Booth to act as her brother. At the house of a relative with the dead son’s bones, Brennan, Booth, and the Professor have tea with Mei Zhang. When Mei Zhang exits the room Brennan snoops around and finds a hidden bone. She swaps it with a fake that she pulls out of her bag.

At the lab, Brennan finds that the bone contained cancer and that that was most likely the cause of death. Further investigation reveals that the bone is male. Sully enters and pulls Brennan aside, asking her to take a sabbatical in order to sail away with him to the Caribbean on his new boat. Brennan doesn’t know what to say. Cam confirms that none of the weapons found in Harper's home were used to kill anyone, and that toxins were found in the kidneys of Li Ling. She also has an I.D. on the bone: William Chang. Booth takes Brennan to exhume his body, but instead of finding a body in the coffin, fake money is found which Brennan confirms to be a cultural tradition.

Hodgins confirms that there was a body inside but it was removed and in it’s place they put fake money, which is a cultural tradition. Hodgins finds a bug that tells him that the coffin was dug up last July or August. The body was also never embalmed. Brennan suspects the mortuary. They bring in Joseph and Nelson Han, the owners of the mortuary, for questioning. They tell Booth and Brennan that they were paid to remove the bones of Li Ling, and that the Minghun ceremony is happening tonight. At the ceremony, Brennan goes straight to look at the bones. Brennan ID’s them as both Li Ling’s and William Chang’s bones. The only thing that is left to figure out is who poisoned Li Ling. Sully, Booth and Brennan wait for Harper to appear, on the appearance of selling him a rare Chinese artifact. After cornering him, they ask if he killed Li Ling for money from Williams Chang’s family, and replies that he didn't.

At the FBI, Booth questions Jackie Burrows and she admits to working with the mortuary and killing Li Ling for them to de-bone her and sell her bones for a Minghun ceremony. At the end of the episode Sully sails off in his new boat, "Temperance", without Brennan, who decided to stay behind.