Pairing: Kurt/Sebastian (in later chapters)
Warning: Murder, Serial killers, nothing too gory
Beta: Many thanks to the lovely jwmelmoth, and as always, all mistakes are my own.
Disclaimer: Neither Glee nor Bones is mine, nor do I wish them to be
AN: Kurt and Puck are best friends. There might be a flashback on why later, but it doesn't really matter. You just have to know they're best friends.
AN 2: This is a story that wouldn't leave my head, and it's also a late birthday present for soshistorm
There was a small path leading towards the hole in the ground. The hole was surrounded by trees and they had to cut some just to get proper access. Also, the hole wasn't so much a hole as it was a grave. A mass grave actually. So far they had uncovered five bodies; all in a different state of decomposition.
Bones kneeled down next to the first body, looking it over. "Male, mid-teens. It's a bit hard to say, seeing as they have all been here quite some time, but based on how little is left, and the fact that he is lying on the end, I would say he has been here the longest."
She got up and walked along the line of bodies, looking them over and studying their bones. "They're all male, actually. Some are slightly more developed than others, but they were all in the same age range, mid to late teens, when they died. I would say they have been here at least five years, but probably longer."
Turning around, she looked at Booth. "I can't figure more out here. The ground is too moist and slippery. Can we ship them back to the Jeffersonian? Or is there a lab I can work in close by? "
Both nodded and made a few notes. "Yeah, there's a lab for you in Columbus, it's the closest major crime lab."
As the people around them started working on transporting the remains, Booth looked around him and sighed. A mass grave in Lima, Ohio. What the hell?
A couple of days later, Booth were going slightly stir crazy. They had been sending samples back and forth to the team in DC, but so far they were making no headway in figuring out who these people were. After looking at the remains closer, Bones had said they were probably about ten years old, something Hodgins confirmed later with the soil from the dig site.
Bones had decided to focus on one set of remains at the time, looking over the body she said was the first of the five to die. "He was a teenager, 17 or 18 would be my estimate. He suffered from blunt force trauma to the back of his head. I can't say for certain, but as I can't find any other injuries, I would say he bled out. He played sports, but was slightly overweight, judging from the tear and wear of his knees and joints. They would have started to bother him if he had lived to see twenty. Other than that, he has no markers. His arm has been broken when he was younger, but I don't know if that will help any. I've tried to use the dental records to identify him, but several of them seemed to have been knocked out in the fight. We'll have to see what Angela can come up with. "
They had sent the remains of the teenager to Angela, as Bones started working on the next one and a day or so later, she called them up.
"Well, sweetie, contestant number one has a name. He was in the missing person's database. His name is David Karofsky. He was 17 when he disappeared in November of 2010. He lived in Lima, Ohio; I'll send you the info on him, before I go back to the depressing task of recreating contestant number two."
Booth sighed as he climbed into the car outside the Karofsky house. He had gone to tell his parents what had happened to their son, and try to find something that could take the case forward. They had both been sad, but also seemed relieved that they now knew what had happened to their boy. He had seen a picture of the boy in his hockey gear, a somewhat chubby boy with a smile on his face. The mother had insisted that David was a good boy, but when she went to lay down, the father had confessed that his son had been a bully. His father had known, but not how bad it had been until the school had suspended him for threatening another student's life. Mr. Karofsky had managed to talk the school board into overturning it by stating the lack of proof, but he confessed that, in the back of his mind, he knew that his son probably did threaten the kid. Three weeks later, David had gone missing.
The name of the other student stood out on Booth's pad. Kurt Hummel.
"You wanted to talk to me?"
Kurt Hummel, son of Elisabeth (teacher, deceased) and Burt Hummel (mechanic and congressman), 28 years old and working for a fashion magazine in New York, looked at them with a raised eyebrow, and Booth gave Bones a look. She shook her head. There was no way the man in front of them had killed and moved the body of David Karofsky, as Bones had determined that the teenager had not been killed where he was found.
"Yes, hi, I'm agent Seeley Booth and this here is my partner, Temperance Brennan, we are with the FBI, and we need to have a chat with you." Booth held out his shield, and the young man looked at it with troubled eyes.
"Is something wrong? Is it my dad?"
"No no, it has nothing to do with your dad; we just want to talk with you."
"Oh, okay. We can use a conference room over here." He led them towards a door on the right, and soon he was sitting across from Bones and Booth.
"We have some questions about David Karofsky."
Hummel frowned in confusion, and Booth waited for the expression to change. It slowly did, into shock.
"Karofsky? Dave Karofsky? Last I knew of him, he ran off or something, but I was already at another school by then. "
"Yes, we know. We heard you had some problems with him?"
He looked at them with an incredulous face before shaking his head. "Look, Karofsky made my sophomore year crap and my junior year hell. I had to move schools because of him, costing my family a heap load of money and forcing me to leave my friends. I can't say I was upset when he vanished. Now, I would like to know what this is about."
Booth sighed. He got why the man held a grudge, but they needed to find out if it was enough of a grudge to kill for.
"A few days ago, we found the remains of David Karofsky. He has been dead since he disappeared."
The young man paled and his eyes grew. "Wow. Now I feel bad for saying that. I had no idea. What did he die of?"
Bones answered, looking at the man as if trying to read him. "He was murdered."
"Oh, crap. Are you sure?"
Booth nodded. "Yes."
"I don't… I don't really know how to react. It all seems so surreal."
"We need to know why he threatened to kill you. Also, we heard that, a week or so before he was suspended, he came home bruised and beaten. Would you happen to know why?"
Hummel closed his eyes, a bitter smile playing on his lips. "I guess it's okay to talk about now." He looked at them again. "Karofsky had, most of the fall, been horrible to me. I won't go into detail, but I was covering up masses of bruises under several layers of clothing. One day, I just had enough, and I ran after him into the lockers, confronting him about why he was being so horrible, egging him on to just hit me, saying that I would never change. Before I knew what was happening, he kissed me. Just then, one of my best friends walked in and saw me struggling. He jumped on Karofsky and beat him up. Three days later, Karofsky pushed me up against the wall and threatened to kill me if I told anyone. A few days later my dad found out he had threatened me, and got the suspension. A week later it was overturned by the school board, and I switched schools. That's the whole story."
Booth forced himself to talk through the empathy for what this kid had probably gone through at school. "We're going to need the name of your friend. Also, do you remember what you were doing the day David Karofsky disappeared?"
Noah Puckerman. He was sitting slouched down in the seat in the interrogation room at the police station in Columbus. He lived in New York too, but had been out here doing some work, apparently, and had offered to come to them when they called. He was simply dressed, jeans and a t-shirt, tattoos peeking out on both sides of the arms. For all that he looked like a delinquent, his record clearly showed some hard work and determination; he'd been in the navy for four years as a paratrooper before he started working as a stunt actor and trainer.
"Mr. Puckerman, thank you for coming in. We wanted to ask you a few questions about David Karofsky."
His eyebrows raised in surprise. "Karofsky? Seriously? You found him?"
"We found his remains." Bones helpfully chimed in.
"Can't say I'm surprised, vanishing like that. Did he kill himself?"
"No, he was murdered. "
"Sadly, that doesn't surprise me either. He was an ass to a lot of people. I wouldn't be shocked if someone decided to take revenge."
"How about you? Did you feel you had something to avenge?"
"Me? You think I killed him? He was an ass, yes, but he wasn't that much of an ass."
"Oh? You gave him quite the beating just a few weeks before he was murdered."
He scoffed at them. "Please, if you had found someone basically sexually harassing your best friend, you would have beaten them too."
Booth knew he would. Then again, if anyone touched Bones in any way she didn't want, she would probably beat them down herself.
"Is that all?" The young man was clearly getting impatient, and Booth nodded. "For now. I just need to know where you where the day Karofsky vanished."
"Anything?" Bones looked at him with a hopeful look.
"No. Both their alibies checks out. They were both at a football game a state over, filmed by Hummel himself as well as several parents. It's impossible to say when exactly Karofsky disappeared during the day, only that he left home that morning, but as Hummel is the only one who got written down for ditching school, and he says he did so to have time to get to the game, we have to presume Karofsky vanished somewhere between last class and when the bus left from the school."
Puck shoved Karofsky's head against the asphalt again. He was seriously pissed that the lump or lard had chased his best friend out of school, and he could finally take out his frustration. As he let go of the jacket he was holding him up with, the other boy fell limp to the ground, and Puck suddenly realized that his chest wasn't moving. He put his hand on the other boy's throat and cursed when he didn't find a pulse. The blood was already pooling from a head wound that was obviously worse than Puck had thought.
"Fuck. Though it's not like he didn't deserve it."
"Noah?" Puck had sworn they were alone behind here, and he turned around in a panic, seeing Kurt there with his hands over his mouth, his eyes jumping between the dead teenager on the ground and the live one in front of him.
"Uhm, it.. It was accident, seriously, I didn't mean to…"
Kurt broke him off with a sigh, and crossed his arms in front of his chest.
"Noah, what the fuck? Why did you have to kill him here? Now we have to move him, and come up with alibies, and ugh. Couldn't you at least have fought him in the woods somewhere?"
Puck gaped for a moment or so before his lips spread into a grin. A small smile lay round Kurt's lips, and Puck suddenly remembered why they were best friends.
"Wanna help me move a body?"
"Sure, why not." Kurt shook his head in amusement.
A couple of hours later, they looked down at the body lying in the hole they had dug in front of them. They had hijacked Azimio's car, and used that to roll the body into before driving out to an area in the woods that they used to hang out in when they were kids. School was out, but as the whole football team was going away to a game, he would never notice it, as the car would be in its place when he came back.
Kurt had ditched the last class at Dalton to come see the game, but as the bus would have left by now, they drove back to the school, took Kurt's car and drove after the rest of the team. They would both be present at the game, so if anyone ever found the body, their alibies would be good.