In the cafeteria the next day, Artie rolled alongside the procession of students filling their trays at the buffet and snatched Santana, Puck, and Blaine out of the line, insisting that they sit at a separate table away from the rest of the club.

"What's going on?" Blaine asked as he set his tray down.

"Better make this quick, Wheels," Santana snapped. "It's spaghetti and meatballs today, which means Britt and I are supposed to be sucking noodles together right now."

Artie leaned in. "I'm making a movie," he said.

"That's it?" Santana said. "As fascinating as that is, my noodle date—"

Artie shook his head, cutting her off. "No, I want help from the three of you."

"Cool, what's the movie?" Puck grinned.

"I'm making a short documentary about Kurt for my college applications."

Silence.

"…Artie, are you sure that's a good idea?" Blaine asked softly.

"Kurt already agreed to it; I wouldn't be asking anyone to help out if I didn't have his permission," Artie replied, slightly affronted.

"Well, why us?" Santana questioned, all traces of her dry humor gone. She looked worried, which was an odd expression to see on her face.

"I need you three as cameramen," Artie answered. "It's unrealistic to only hire one cameraman and hope that the schedules line up, so I need more than one so that there'll be a better chance of someone being available when I need to film."

"No, I asked why us," Santana emphasized. "Why not Finn?"

Artie shrugged. "Finn's got enough on his plate, and I also want him in the documentary, but I still need to talk to him about that. Either way, I want to leave it open for him." He rested his elbows on the table. "As for you and Puck, you guys are both tough and when we did Run, Joey, Run two years ago you actually had good suggestions. Blaine, I chose you for obvious reasons."

Blaine squirmed in his seat. "Which were?"

"What are you talking about? You're dating Kurt – he needs someone there to help him feel better if he gets stressed."

"Actually…" Blaine fidgeted, looking away. "We're not together any more."

"Told you," Santana immediately said to Puck, holding out her hand. He grumbled, pulled a five-dollar bill out of his jeans pocket and slapped it into her hand.

"You broke up with him?" Artie said, hating that he couldn't really say he was surprised.

Blaine shook his head. "No, he broke up with me."

Puck's head perked up and he slapped Santana lightly on the shoulder. "Give me my money back."

Her lip curled. "Why? A bet's a bet."

"Yeah, and our bet was on whether Blaine would dump Kurt, not the other way round." He held out his hand until Santana huffed, rolled her eyes, and returned the money.

Artie ignored them. "Look, Blaine, even if you're not dating Kurt any more, don't you still want to support him?"

"Of course I do, but he'll get upset if I go anywhere near him, and Kurt getting upset usually leads to one of the alters popping out, and I really don't want to watch that again."

Artie sighed. "Blaine, I don't think he'll get upset if you make it clear you just want to support him and aren't trying to pressure him into anything."

Blaine shrugged, still looking away. "I'll think about it," he mumbled.

Artie nodded and backed off, knowing that was the best he could hope for from Blaine at the moment. He turned his attention to the other two. "What about you?"

Puck nodded immediately. "I'm in."

Santana pursed her mouth for a minute in thought. "What happens if he has a fit? How are we supposed to handle that?"

Artie had thought about that, but hadn't come up with any very good solutions other than asking Finn to be there for filming. He still had to talk about it to Finn, and as far as Artie knew Finn still had no idea that this plan was underway.

"Well, Finn would know what to do more than us," Santana said once Artie explained this to her. "I guess I'm in too."

There were a total of only ten Franklins on Hiram's list. Burt stood on the other side of Hiram's desk in his home study, holding the list of names. Resting on the top of Hiram's desk like a ticking bomb was a stack of files that Burt knew criminal records corresponding to every man on the list. Most of them were thin, but there were a few fat folders containing all sorts of lewd acts.

Burt stared at the bulleted names on the paper in his hand. Ellis, Jefferson, Kowalski, Petersen, Shaber, Wright…

One of these men destroyed my son.

"And this is every Franklin on the registry?" Burt said.

Hiram nodded, standing with his arms crossed against the bookshelf on the wall next to his desk. "Every Franklin in Ohio that fits the bill. These are the guys who go for kids, not just minors."

Burt forced himself to suppress the nausea rising in his gut. "These are all convicted pedophiles?"

Hiram nodded. "Anyone having anything to do with kids under ten, with mug shots and case reports."

"The police chief must be a good friend," Burt said, dropping the list onto the desk.

Hiram flapped a hand and came over to sit in his chair. "He owed me a favor; it wasn't a big deal," he said. "Now, we need to weed out the men who beyond a reasonable doubt couldn't have done anything to Kurt. I was waiting for you before going through the reports, but each file has the offender's work history included, so that should tell us where they were each year. From what you've told me, we're looking for men who were anywhere near Lima before your wife's car accident in 2002."

Burt nodded, knowing that Hiram was much more familiar with this process than he was, and grabbed the first report on the stack – Franklin B. Alexander. Hiram took the file for Franklin Ellis.

It took only forty minutes for the two of them to go through each file and determine that six Franklins were in other cities or other states before 2002, and three of them were too young to have done anything at the time. The last one – Franklin Solokov – was living only twenty minutes away in Wapakoneta until 2006.

"This is him," Hiram said, handing the file across the desk to Burt.

Burt grabbed it and snapped it open, greeted with the man's mugshot. "This guy is practically eighty years old," he said, feeling like he needed to vomit. He scanned the man's list of convictions, his eyes widening. "Thirty-six accounts of child molestation?"

He looked incredulously to Hiram, who nodded solemnly and said, "Fourteen of those were rapes. All his victims were between the ages of two and eight."

Burt swallowed. "He's in the penitentiary in Columbus."

"Burt, before we go in to attack this guy – and we may not be able to, since he's already in jail – we need to be sure that he's the one who harmed Kurt," Hiram said quickly.

"How do you suggest we do that?"

"See if Kurt recognizes him."

Burt narrowed his eyes. "Three days after my son breaks down over this guy and you want me to go waving the mug shot in his face?"

Hiram sighed, fiddling with a pen. "If you want to catch the man who hurt your son, Burt… you need to pay attention to the laws of the procedure. There's a very specific path you have to follow in order to accuse someone of this kind of thing, and if you skip any steps, it'll turn around and bite you in the ass, hard. You could lose your position as Representative. If you want to do what's best for Kurt, we have to be absolutely sure that this is the guy before we go any further, and Kurt's the only one who knows what he looks like."

"This is the only guy on the registry who could've done it!" Burt cried, holding up the file.

"Yes, on the registry," Hiram said firmly. "The police don't catch everyone. They don't even catch a majority. There's probably a seventy percent chance that the man that targeted Kurt left the state, was convicted for something else, or was never convicted of anything at all. We have to be sure." Hiram shook his head. "Let me rephrase that – you have to be sure."

Burt tossed the file onto the desk, clenching his fists. His jaw muscles tightened. "You know Kurt doesn't remember anything about this guy," he growled. "How the hell's he going to identify him if he doesn't remember him?"

"Seeing the perpetrator's face will create a visible reaction, Burt," Hiram said. "I've seen it in almost every single case I've had that involved personal violence. Abuse, kidnapping, murder, you name it. The victims always remember, even if it's not consciously. Besides, it's obvious that at least one of Kurt's alters remembers this Franklin guy. Otherwise he wouldn't have broken down at dinner."

Burt ran a hand over his face, pacing the room. He'd been so focused for years on just dealing with whatever Kurt was going through in the present that he hadn't had the space in his head to think about anything else. Finally, after several minutes of running over the facts and trying – and failing – to keep his own emotions out of it, Burt gave a heavy sigh and turned around. "All right, give me the mug shot. I'll talk to Kurt tonight."