Bones

Brennan, Zack, and Hodgins are working with a set of remains when Angela calls and asks for a private word with Brennan. She's at the New Mexico home of her part-time boyfriend Kirk, a photographer whom she visits every year for her three weeks' vacation, but does not see the rest of the year. Kirk and his guide/model Dani went out into the desert five days ago for a photo shoot and haven't been seen since. Adding to Angela's fears, a skull has been found in a box on the sheriff's porch, and Angela is worried it may belong to Kirk or Dani. Brennan agrees to fly out to New Mexico and take a look at the skull to see if she can assuage Angela's fears.

At the sheriff's office, Brennan examines the skull. She determines the victim was male, age 30 to 35, and died within the last few days. She also finds evidence of a perimortem gunshot wound to the base of the skull. She wants to send the skull back to the Jeffersonian for further investigation, but the sheriff refuses on the grounds she is not a cop and doesn't have any real jurisdiction.

That night, Brennan calls Booth and asks him to fly out to New Mexico and claim jurisdiction so they can investigate. He arrives the next morning. He and Brennan go to Dani's trailer to look around. As they approach the trailer, a man comes around the side aiming a gun at them. Booth identifies himself as FBI and shows his badge and the man reluctantly lowers his weapon. The man identifies himself as Alex Joseph, Dani's boyfriend, but refuses to answer any questions or allow Brennan and Booth to look inside the trailer without a warrant. When Booth asks Alex if he has a problem with law enforcement, Alex wordlessly hands him a photo of the sheriff with his arm around Dani.

Brennan and Booth return to the sheriff's office to question Sheriff Dawes about his relationship with Dani. Sheriff Dawes informs the partners that Dani is his half-sister. Booth asks him for his thoughts on Dani's boyfriend Alex, and the sheriff informs them that Alex has a criminal record for assault, narcotics, and bootlegging, and he thinks Dani could do better.

While they are discussing this, Brennan receives a call from Hodgins and Zack. DNA results confirm the skull belongs to Kirk. In addition, Hodgins and Zack found high levels of the drug peyote in Kirk's hair, and they discovered Kirk's remains were chewed by a male coyote with a malformed jaw.

After breaking the news to Angela that the skull is indeed Kirk's, Booth asks her for information on where Kirk got peyote. Angela tells him Kirk took peyote as part of a Navajo rite, though Kirk was white, and it was supplied by another white man, local artist Wayne Kellogg. Brennan and Booth pay Wayne a visit and question him about the peyote. He admits to taking it but refuses to release the name of his supplier. Out in Wayne's driveway, they see the same Humvee they saw at Alex Joseph's trailer earlier. They return to Alex's trailer to question him again, but find him outside, badly beaten.

Later, Brennan receives a call from a naturalist at the Jeffersonian, Professor Inez, who shows them a database used to track wild coyote packs. She finds a photo of an alpha male pack leader with a malformed jaw in the desert where Kirk and Dani went missing. Professor Inez is able to tell Brennan and Booth exactly where this particular coyote pack's territory lies, so they now have an idea of where Kirk's body can be found.

The next morning, Brennan, Booth, Angela, and Sheriff Dawes accompany a search party to the area of the desert Professor Inez indicated. Once there, Sheriff Dawes tells Booth that Alex Joseph regained consciousness, and he was beaten by fellow Navajo tribe members for selling peyote to a white man, something they saw as a violation of their religion. Booth questions whether the same people who beat up Alex for selling peyote to Kirk might kill Kirk for buying it, but Sheriff Dawes explains that, as a white man, Kirk was the sheriff's responsibility in the eyes of the Navajo.

While the search party finds the rest of Kirk's remains, Angela finds his camera hidden in some shrubs. The camera is cracked, but Angela hopes the film may be undamaged enough to reveal some clue as to Kirk's killer's identity or Dani's whereabouts. The sheriff wants to send the film to the state crime lab to be developed, but Angela convinces him to let her develop the film using Kirk's equipment.

While Angela works on developing the film, Brennan and Booth question Wayne Kellogg again. Booth has looked into Kellogg's financials and determined the amount of money he's received selling his art is not nearly enough to cover the lavish lifestyle he leads. Kellogg insists he had nothing to do with Kirk's death, and denies being involved in any underhanded business dealings. Brennan snaps some cell phone pictures of floral engraving plates, which she finds suspiciously different from the Native American style of the rest of Wayne's art, and sends them to Dr. Goodman to analyze.

Angela calls Brennan's cell phone to tell her she was able to retrieve a few photos off Kirk's damaged film. The photos were only shots of Dani in the desert, but as soon as Sheriff Dawes saw them, he seized the photos and the negatives and ran off without telling Angela where he was going. Brennan and Booth catch up with Dawes in his office, and he tells them he brought the photos to Alex Joseph to look at. There is an unusual-looking outcropping in the background of one of the photos, and Sheriff Dawes does not recognize it, nor was it anywhere near where Kirk's body was found. If Kirk was taking photos near this outcropping shortly before he died, it stands to reason he was murdered near there and his body was moved to the discovery site. Dawes brought the photos to Alex because Alex is the person most familiar with the desert landscape, and Dawes was hoping he might recognize the outcropping. Dawes tells Brennan and Booth that Alex gave him directions on how to find the spot shown in the photo, and he, Brennan, Booth, and Angela head out into the desert to find it.

Five hours of driving later, they finally find the spot. As Angela tries to pinpoint the exact location from which the photo was taken, Dawes tells the others he's going to get into his truck and drive around looking for Dani. They don't think much of it until the truck quickly pulls out of earshot, and they realize it is entirely possible the sheriff drove them out to the middle of nowhere and left them to die.

As they look around the scene, Brennan finds a blood trail that leads to a set of tire tracks. The tire tracks are too wide-set to have come from the sheriff's truck and are more consistent with a Humvee. The tire tracks continue for a short distance and then suddenly stop at a large, flat open area. Booth theorizes the spot is a landing strip for drug dealers. Just then, the sheriff reappears in his truck. He has not found Dani but is still hopeful she is alive.

Back in town, Brennan and Booth supervise a technician who is spraying Kellogg's Humvee with luminol to find traces of blood. The tire treads match those found at the crime scene, but the truck seems to be clean of blood traces. Booth tells the technician to spray the hood of the Humvee, and sure enough, the hood is covered with blood traces. Brennan calls Zack and confirms that Kirk's bones show signs of having been dropped from a great height. Given the evidence, Brennan and Booth conclude the body was strapped to the hood of the Humvee, driven to the landing strip, loaded into a helicopter and then dropped 200 miles away from the crime scene. This narrows their suspect pool to Wayne Kellogg, the owner of the Humvee, and Alex Joseph, who they know has borrowed it.

Dr. Goodman calls Brennan to tell her he has examined the photos of the engraving plates Brennan took at Kellogg's house, and he believes them to be used for counterfeiting Venezuelan currency. Brennan, Booth, and Dawes meet with Kellogg and his attorney at the sheriff's office. Sheriff Dawes reminds Kellogg and his attorney if someone dies during the commission of a felony, everyone involved in said felony can be charged with murder. Kellogg's attorney agrees to a guilty plea on the counterfeiting charges in exchange for immunity on the murder charges. Kellogg tells them that while he was meeting with his "clients" to pass on the engraving plates, the people he was meeting caught sight of Kirk and Dani watching them and jumped into Kellogg's vehicle and drove toward them. However, Kellogg claims he has no idea what happened after that as he was out of sight. He does, however, know when and where the counterfeiters are going to be meeting again, and could lead Brennan and Booth to them, if they are willing to give him immunity on the murder charges.

Brennan, Booth, and Dawes have trouble swallowing Kellogg's story and are reluctant to give him immunity. They decide to take one more drive out to the crime scene with Angela to see if they can find any evidence they may have missed before. Once they arrive, the four each set out in a different direction. Alone in the desert, Angela has a vision of Dani walking off through the undergrowth. Angela asks the others to follow her in the direction Dani went in her vision, and they eventually come upon Dani, weak and dehydrated but alive. Once she regains consciousness, Dani tells Booth it was Kellogg who pulled the trigger on Kirk, and Kellogg and his fellow counterfeiters are all apprehended.