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"Fire in the Ice" is episode thirteen of season four of Bones, the forensic drama television series loosely based on the novels and life of anthropologist Kathy Reichs. In this episode, a man that Booth had a fight with is found dead a month later.
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Booth Playing Hockey
This episode opens with Booth playing ice hockey and Brennan, Cam and Sweets are watching. Brennan clearly doesn't understand hockey. Booth gets annoyed with one of the opposing players and knocks him down. So he gets sent to the sin bin. When Booth gets out again, the same player knocks down one of Booth's players - actually, Wendell Bray - in what is apparently an illegal move, and Booth and he get into it. The opposing player definitely comes off worst.
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Bleeding Ice and Booth is a Suspect
A month later, on a frozen lake, a man and his son are ice fishing. The father also uses drilling a hole in the ice as a metaphor for other things. Rather unusually, the ice starts bleeding. That's because there's a corpse under the ice. Booth, who has a broken hand from punching the man during the hockey game (well, his helmet), recognises the chain on the corpse. It belongs to the man he broke his hand on. Given their history, that makes Booth a suspect. So he cannot work on the case. A new agent is therefore assigned, and Brennan is not happy about it. Booth is still allowed to tag along, but not actively investigate. It looks like the dead man died not long after the game, and Booth lacks an alibi for the time in question. However, the new - attractive, female - agent starts flirting with him.
Several People Having Issues with the Victim
The dead man seemed to be short of money, and had borrowed $2K just before he disappeared from his landlady. Who seemed to be rather struck on the dead man. His car also had its tyres slashed just before he died. The next bit of evidence shows that the man was apparently killed at an ice rink, and the closest one to the lake is the one that Booth played on. Which means that the evidence points to Booth - again. Although the tyres were slashed by another woman. Who didn't like that the dead man, Pete, was sleeping around. Pete also played, and lost, illegal high stakes poker games frequently. He owed a lot of money, and generally people who are owed money don't kill their debtors, as it tends to make it hard for them to pay up.
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Sweets and Personal Questions for Booth
In order to rule Booth out, Sweets has to ask him some personal questions. Booth is not keen on Sweets asking personal questions, and doesn't cooperate. There is another suspect, a state policeman that Pete had got into it with after Booth.
Need Some Viable Suspects
It doesn't seem likely that Booth would have killed someone following a hockey brawl, but other suspects are thin on the ground. Viable ones, anyway.
Bones Season 4 Trailer
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