"I've got to hand it to you,
You played by all the same rules
It takes the truth to fool me
And now you've made me angry."
"Do you know why we called you in today, Mr. Hummel?"
The tone the cop uses to ask the question suggests that he already knows the answer; friendly, with just enough subtle suspicion hiding underneath it to make the question sound awkward. The question is a test. The cop is looking for the right answer, yes, but more than that, he is seeking the truth. He is looking at body language, listening for uneven tones or awkward pauses. He is searching for any little twitches or gestures that might give away even the best hidden lie.
Kurt Hummel was raised to respect authority. To always tell the truth. Lying only hurts people. It destroys lives. Ruins relationships. And lying to authority? Don't even consider it! Only criminals with something to hide lie to cops. What has he to hide? Nothing. Kurt Hummel is a good kid from a good home, the son of a Congressman of all things, and on the verge of graduating and going to the college of his dreams on a full scholarship. His criminal record has nothing but a thick layer of dust and cobwebs.
So Kurt draws himself up in the uncomfortable chair, and he starts telling the truth.
"The, um, the secretary called me. She said you wanted to see me, ask me a few questions, but she didn't say why. Only that it was urgent."
The cop nods slowly. When he walked in, he introduced himself as Detective Lance Bishop, which Kurt already knew from the newspaper and television coverage. In photographs and videos, Detective Bishop looks a lot more put together, younger—handsome, even. In person, he looks to be about forty and in need of a visit to the gym to prevent the bulge of his stomach from becoming the kind of gut that hangs oppressively over his belt. Silver is working its way into the man's brown hair. Wrinkles already gather around his watery brown eyes and thin lips. The gray suit he wears is completely the wrong fit. The shoes, which Kurt glanced at when they first shook hands, are in desperate need of a polish or replacement.
This is where our tax dollars are going?
The thought is a strange one, true, but so is sitting in a police interrogation room when he should be packing for New York instead. His flight out of Ohio is only a handful of weeks away and there is still so much left to plan—!
"Well, Mr. Hummel—" Detective Bishop takes a seat across from Kurt. "—I just needed to ask you a few important questions."
"All right." Kurt crosses his leg at the knee, holding it there with his linked hands. "I'll do my best to answer them."
"That's all I ask." The smile is only present for a few seconds. "I'm just gonna get right to it, if you don't mind—"
"Of course not—"
"Are you familiar with a, ah…a one Blaine Anderson, Mr. Hummel?"
"Kurt, please." Kurt smiles a little. "'Mr. Hummel' sounds so…old."
The detective nods. "All right. Kurt. Are you familiar with Blaine Anderson?"
The question is another test. The cop knows from the first question that the teenager can tell the truth, but this question gives him an idea of just how truthful he can be. Obviously, Detective Bishop already has some sort of inkling that Kurt is very familiar with Blaine Anderson. Why would he ask otherwise? Why would he even call Kurt into the station for questioning in the first place?
"He's my boyfriend. We've been together for a little over a year."
Detective Bishop pulls out a pen and jots down notes on a yellow legal pad sitting on the gray table between them. "How did you meet him?"
"We were students together at Dalton, but I—I met him a little bit before that. He helped me through a tough situation and, when I transferred, to get my bearings around campus. It just sort of progressed from there."
"How long were you at Dalton?" asks Detective Bishop.
"A few months? I transferred in…November, I think—" Kurt scrunches the left side off his face in thought, unlinking his hands to scratch his right temple. He uncrosses his legs. "Yeah. November. I ended up coming back to McKinley in May."
"McKinley High School?" asks Detective Bishop. When Kurt nods, the cop asks the follow up question, "Why did you transfer out of there in the first place?"
"Well…" Kurt shifts a little, still uncomfortable talking about it. "I was… I had some problems with another student. I didn't feel physically safe there, so my father and stepmother helped me transfer schools."
"And you transferred back because…?"
"A number of reasons. Mostly, I was tired of letting someone intimidate me into running scared."
Detective Bishop nods. "That's very brave."
"It's common sense," Kurt says without thinking. The cop looks up from his notes. "I—w-well, running away doesn't really solve anything, does it?"
"No." The detective smiles a little.
"Look, Detective Bishop, I-I—I'm sorry, but…why am I here? What does knowing Blaine or my attending Dalton have to do with anything?"
Nothing. Well, not quite nothing. It's a setup. An attempt to get more pieces of the puzzle in order to complete the bigger picture. The cop puts down his pen. He straightens in his seat and links his hands together on top of the legal pad. When he looks at Kurt with those watery brown eyes, Detective Bishop looks vaguely paternal.
"I'm sure you've heard about the rash of disappearances in and around Lima over the last year or so, haven't you?"
"Not to sound brusque, but who hasn't?"
"Yes, well…" Detective Bishop sighs a little. He seems to be searching for the right way to bring up what he wants to say, looking in the process like a man about to bring up his lunch. "We've…begun finding bodies."
Kurt tilts his head. His blue eyes widen. That has not been on the news. "Bodies?"
"We've been working to withhold that specific detail from the media as long as we can—a-at least, until we can get identification on a majority of them. Some have been out in the elements for quite some time or have been tampered with to prevent immediate detection of who it might be." The cop's face grows grave. "However—"
A knock at the door breaks the building tension. A young man enters—an intern, perhaps, barely older than Kurt—and gestures for Detective Bishop to draw near. Kurt watches them whisper. The detective excuses himself a moment and leaves Kurt in the gray room. Nothing decorates the walls save for a plan black-rimmed wall clock like the kind they have at school. The time is five-fifteen. A little window is cut into the door; through it, Kurt can see the intern and the detective discussing whatever it is so important that they cannot speak in front of him. There is another, wider rectangle cut into the wall, but this has a mirror in it. Kurt would bet his full ride to NYADA that someone is standing on the other side of this supposed "mirror," taking notes on his body language. He lets out a small huff of air, stretches his arms down to his toes. When he sits back up, he runs his fingers through his hair and wishes he hadn't left his cell phone in the car. Not that he'd probably get any reception in here anyway…
When Detective Bishop returns, it is five-twenty. He has a manila folder in his hands. The chair creaks when he sits down.
"Right. Terribly sorry about that interruption—"
"It's fine," Kurt answers. "You're a busy man."
"As are you, I'd imagine." When the young man looks confused, Detective Bishop nods in his direction. "You're in this year's graduating class, aren't you?"
"Yes, sir."
"Going to college?"
"Yes."
"Where at?"
"New York. The New York Academy of the Dramatic Arts?" Try as he might to resist it, Kurt cannot help enjoying the way it rolls off his tongue. "I start in the fall."
"Well, congratulations. Your parents must be proud." After a few moments of silence go by, Detective Bishop grows grave again. He clears his throat, taps at the folder. "Kurt, I'm afraid I have to share with you some things that are… To be honest, they're very hard to share, but it may make all the difference between finding closure and having this turn into a cold case.
"Are you familiar with a…" The older man trails off to look at something inside of the folder. "David Karofsky?"
Kurt blanches. "K—Karofsky?"
"Mm-hm."
"I— H-he was the one…" The young man looks down at his hands. "He, um…he was the reason I transferred to Dalton. He…he started to target me specifically in his bullying and then one day, he just sort of snapped, I guess."
"Snapped?"
"He threatened to kill me if I told anyone. I told my dad. The school got involved, but it wasn't handled very well, so I transferred. But—but he went missing last year, didn't he? I mean, it was on the news—"
"That's right." Detective Bishop hesitates. "Kurt, did Blaine know about your problems with this young man? Did he know that's why you transferred?"
"He did, but…I-I don't understand. What does that have to do with anything?"
"Did they ever meet?"
"Once." Kurt fidgets with his fingers, looking troubled. "It didn't go very well. Karofsky called him names, threw him against a wall… It almost broke into a fight, but— (He sighs, short and quick.) It was a little before I transferred to Dalton—"
"And he was the one who threatened to kill you, correct? David, I mean."
"Yes." Kurt swallows. He looks terribly nervous, as if he might be reliving all of the bullying received at David Karofsky's hands. "He was expelled, but then the school board overrode it, so I—that's why I transferred. I didn't want to be anywhere near where he was, in case he tried it."
"Did Blaine know about that? About the overturning?" asks Detective Bishop.
"What does Blaine have to do with this? Blaine would never—"
"But did he know?"
"Well, yes, b-but—" Suddenly, the young man stalls, realization washing over him. His face twists into an expression of shock and disgust. "Oh. Oh, God, is he—? A-and you think—o-oh my God, no. No, Blaine's not like that. H-he can barely get through a nature show without getting emotional if one of the animals dies o-or—or even if it gets wounded!"
"Now calm down, Kurt. We're not saying Blaine had any direct involvement in this young man's disappearance, but I think it's important for you to know that we are looking at him as a potential suspect. Now, officially, David's still officially missing. However, there are a few pieces of evidence suggesting that this might actually be a homicide instead."
"But—but Blaine—?"
"We've already interviewed Blaine with his parents present; some of the answers he gave in comparison with the evidence just don't quite add up. Now—" Detective Bishop's eyebrows knit together in concern. "Are you alright?"
"Of course not! You just told me someone I—I care about might be—? H-how am I supposed to be okay? He wouldn't—" Kurt's voice cracks. While brushing at the tears threatening to spill down his cheeks, he tries and fails to hide a sniffle. The cop gets up and calls to someone outside of the room. A few moments later, the intern from earlier brings tissues and a cup of ice water. "Blaine wouldn't. He wouldn't."
"Okay. Okay, listen—listen, Kurt…I just need you to answer a few more questions, okay? We just need to cover all our bases. Can you—are you able to answer a few more questions for me?"
To prove his boyfriend didn't cause anyone to permanently disappear? Of course, he is.
So he does. Three, five, ten questions. Yes, that's true. No, that's now how it happened. Yes, Kurt was there with Blaine on that date. Yes, they were together on that other date, too. No, he has never really known Blaine to be physically violent towards anyone. Angry, yes. Emotional, passionate? More than once! Blaine is a passionate person. Protective. Supportive. He's had difficult experiences in the past with bullying himself, after all, and he was the one who encouraged Kurt to finally stand up to Karofsky in the first place. But violent? Blaine Anderson? The boy who gets teary-eyed over wounded animals on nature shows? Not towards anyone, no. Never. If anything, the experiences that made him transfer to Dalton also made him averse to the idea of using his fists to settle conflicts.
Detective Bishop writes all of this down, nodding every now and then. He only pauses in his note-taking to ask another question or to glance at something in the folder. Whenever he does the later, the cop is always careful to angle it so that Kurt cannot see what he is looking at. Perhaps he does not want to further traumatize the young man, already so shaken up by the mere possibility that his boyfriend might even hurt someone, let alone kill them! Kurt answers his questions the best he can, admitting with some measure of embarrassment and worry when he admits being unable to remember something that he feels he should.
When Detective Bishop turns the questions towards Karofsky, the young man seems to grow doubly uncomfortable. He bows his head to hide the flush of his cheeks as he admits forlornly that, yes; life is much easier without the boy around to bully him—but the possibility that he might be dead? Never in a million years would he wish it on anyone.
"I mean, I know what is to lose a family member—my mother died when I was eight—and I just… My heart went out to his parents so much," Kurt tells the detective. "I can't begin to imagine what they're going through."
Detective Bishop nods slowly, jotting something down before looking up. "How did Blaine react when he first heard about David missing?"
"He was shocked. Very shocked. We, um…talked about whether or not it would be appropriate to send condolence flowers."
"And did you?"
"No."
"Why not?"
"I decided that it would be too uncomfortable on both sides, considering everything that happened." Kurt draws himself up and glances at the clock. Six-forty-five. He runs a hand over his face. "I don't want to sound rude, Detective, but is there a chance we can schedule a follow-up? I have to be at home in fifteen minutes for my family's weekly dinner. Not many of them left for me."
The cop thinks of refusing, or of at least attempting to wheedle another half-hour's worth of information, but he sees how tired the young man looks. This must be so strange and sudden for him! And having to process it all on top of preparing to leave for college… Poor kid.
"Sure. Ah, does next week at the same time work for you?"
Nodding, Kurt rises. "I'll leave it open."
The two men leave the room, Kurt leading. Detective Bishop pauses long enough to write down the appointment on a Post-It at his desk. He escorts the young man to the entrance. When they shake hands, he looks Kurt in the eye. Decent young man, this one. Genuine. One of Lima's hidden gems, soon off to bigger and better things.
"Listen, I'm sure I don't have to tell you, but about what we've discussed—"
"Not a word." Kurt smiles wanly. "B-but…how should I—what should I do about Blaine—?"
"Just treat him like you normally would. He doesn't know that he's a potential suspect yet, and I would appreciate it if things stayed that way for now. If things change and it requires you to do anything different, I'll be sure to notify you."
"Fair enough…"
"In the meantime, if you need or think of anything else that could be helpful—" Detective Bishop offers his card. "You call me, okay?"
Kurt takes it gingerly, studying the text printed thereon. "Thank you. I… Th-thank you."
"Thank you, Kurt." They shake hands again. "Same time, next week."
He watches the young man through the window, waiting until Kurt gets into his car before going back into the interrogation room to gather his things. The cop picks up the Styrofoam cup and is surprised to find it still has water inside.
Come to think of it, the cup is still completely full.
And on the table where it sat, there is a very noticeable—and also very solitary—ring of condensation.
"Huh."
Sitting alone in his car, Kurt is in the middle of checking his face in the mirror above the driver's seat when his phone announces the arrival of a new text message.
Still on for tonight after dinner?
He bites his lower lip as he types, then erases, then types a new response—only to erase it all over again. He lets out a short breath. Okay. He can do this. No problem.
Change of plans. We have to talk. It's important.
It feels like years before Kurt's phone rings again.
What's wrong?
Surprisingly, that question is the easiest in the world to answer. It takes only four words.
They're on to us.