McManus chewed on the end of his pen as he studied Kurt, who was sitting half-curled on the couch in McManus' office. Kurt's knees were pulled up to his chest and his shoulders were trembling almost imperceptibly. He was humming shakily under his breath, staring into space as if he were completely unaware of his surroundings or the fact that McManus was there.

Making sure his handheld recorder was in fact recording, McManus finally breached the quiet. "Zack, can you tell me what's making you so scared?"

Kurt turned his head away. "No."

"Why not?"

"H-he'll hurt me." Kurt's entire body shuddered for a moment.

"Who will?"

"The bad man," Kurt whispered. Another shudder. "He's here."

"Are you talking about Truman?" McManus asked.

Kurt flinched and clapped his hands over his ears. "Shh! Sh!"

McManus leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. "Zack, you aren't in any danger here. It's okay."

Kurt shook his head vehemently, his eyes squeezing shut. "No, no," he muttered. "He killed them. He's going to kill me too." A sob jumped from his throat. "Row, row, row your boat…"

"Zack…" McManus pressed. "Do you want to get rid of the bad man?"

Kurt flinched again. "Merrily, merrily, merrily—"

"Zack," McManus prodded gently. "Can you open your eyes for me? It's okay."

Kurt stopped singing, but kept his eyes shut and his hands over his ears as he strained to pull air into his chest. "I don't want to die…" he sobbed through clenched teeth.

"I won't let you. I'll protect you."

Finally, Kurt's eyes opened, watering as he slowly looked over to the doctor.

"You can't," he choked out.

Then his hands dropped and his lips pulled back into a cold grin. "Sorry, Doc, I need Zack for something else," he smirked.

"Mind telling me what?" McManus requested, refusing to react outwardly to Truman's sudden appearance.

"Nope. That would ruin the surprise." Kurt gave a smug wink.

"Where's Kurt?"

"Dead," said Robbie's voice, Truman's smirk melting away.

"How do you know?"

"I saw Truman do it."

"And you didn't try to stop him?"

Kurt sent a scathing glare in McManus' direction. "Hey, I just made sure he didn't kill Zack. I could only protect one of them and Zack's the youngest." He leaned back and crossed his arms in annoyance. "I thought the others could take care of themselves."

"Eleanor and Tyler are dead too?"

Kurt shrugged, studying the wallpaper behind the couch a little too intently.

McManus tried a different approach. "Maybe you can tell me why Zack's so upset."

Another shrug. "He says it's a secret for him and Truman."

"You don't have any theories?"

"Would you fuck off?"

McManus cocked his head to the side in mild surprise. "Why?" he asked. "What's making you upset?"

Kurt rolled his eyes. "I'm not upset, asshole, I just want you to back off. You're giving me a fucking headache."

McManus sighed. As stable as Robbie was (compared to the other alters, at least), McManus knew he wouldn't get anything useful from him. Not if he was right and Robbie was in fact Kurt's peacekeeper.

"Do you think it would be possible for me to speak with Craig now?"

Kurt grimaced. "What the fuck do you want with him?"

"I'd just like to speak with him."

"Well, if he wants to come out, he'll come out. It's not up to me."

McManus ran a hand through his thinning hair. He wasn't going to accomplish anything while Robbie was in control; that much was clear. "Okay," he said. "I guess our time's up for today, then." He reached over and switched off the recorder. "I'll take you back to the ward."

"What, no padded cell?"

"Not unless you try to punch Dustin again."

"Oh, come on. He wouldn't shut the hell up. Someone had to make him."

"Well, the next time you feel like shutting him up, call one of the orderlies. They might do it for you if you ask nicely."

Kurt snorted on his way out the door.

Tuesday morning found Burt in his office, working hard to catch up on all of his political responsibilities. Linus was working just as hard bringing coffee, faxing, photocopying, proofreading, and just generally keeping Burt on track. As the clock was nearing eleven-thirty, however, Linus came in with a fresh mug of coffee and informed Burt that there was a Hiram Berry there to see him.

Burt quickly put the last few touches on the bill he was drafting for that week's House sitting, then handed the folio to Linus. "Okay, send him in, and can you proofread that before you fax it to Senator Jamison? I might've rushed it a little."

"No problem," Linus said, then whisked out of the room. A moment later, the door opened again and Hiram entered.

"What's going on?" Burt asked, skipping the hi-how-are-you's as Hiram took a seat across from the desk. "Did you find anything?"

Hiram paused before speaking.

"We found him," he said.

Burt froze, feeling his heart skip ahead several beats. "You— Where is he?"

"At the moment he's in a holding cell in Toledo," Hiram replied. "Turns out the address you gave me was for his mother's house in Pittsburgh; she died years ago but his sister still lives there and she told us where he was. According to the officer who spoke with her, she didn't sound all that surprised we were looking for him."

Burt sat back in his chair, feeling winded. "God…" he breathed.

"Burt…" Hiram started, his voice tight. "Kurt wasn't the only one."

Burt's heart skipped a second time.

"The Toledo police department is still searching John Truman's apartment, but so far they've found evidence of at least twenty other kids from just the past ten years."

Burt suddenly had a very strong urge to vomit. He swallowed. "He… he kept records—?"

Hiram nodded.

"Jesus Christ."

"The police are going to track the kids down and contact their families. It's looking like an open-and-shut case, so it probably won't go to court, but if it does I need to know if you're willing to testify."

Burt blinked, confused. "Why would it go to court? What's there to argue?"

Hiram shifted in his seat, his face solemn. "If he lawyers up, they'll probably try to prove that he's mentally ill."

"Wouldn't surprise me," Burt muttered.

Hiram shook his head. "No, we want him to be proved sane. If he's sane, he's looking at thirty years to life, depending on what else we can pin him with."

"And if he's sick?"

"He'll go through several years of intensive therapy in a home for the criminally insane, jump through a few hoops, swear to God he's cured, and then he's back in the general population within a decade."

Burt's eyes widened, his frown deepening as a horde of beetles squirmed against the walls of his stomach. "They'd let that happen?"

"If he finds a smart lawyer who's willing to represent him, there's an upsetting number of loopholes in the judicial system he could worm through." Hiram removed his glasses and rubbed a hand over his forehead. "In any case, I'll be fighting tooth and nail to be first chair for prosecution if it goes to trial."

Burt's eyebrows shot up. "Can I ask why?" he said, trying to ignore the bugs crawling through his abdomen. "Not that I don't want you prosecuting the son of a bitch – 'cause I do – but you seem pretty invested."

Hiram pushed his glasses back onto his nose. "I told you before; this kind of abuse is not new to me," he replied levelly. "I've tried many cases involving a lot of horrific things, especially where kids are concerned." He shrugged. "Besides, it just as easily could have been Rachel, and Kurt's a good friend of hers. Not to mention the fact that I'm the only lawyer in Ohio that I trust one hundred percent."

Burt let out a heavy breath. "Well, I don't know how to thank you," he said.

Another shrug, and Hiram stood up. "Sending over a box of chocolates would be sufficient."

Burt forced a chuckle, too preoccupied to really laugh.

Hiram stopped on his way out the door. "I hope you realize how many kids you've saved, Burt."

Burt didn't really know how to respond to that, but Hiram spoke again before he had the chance, this time with a force that Burt had never heard before.

"We're going to make sure he burns in Hell."

Rachel fidgeted in her seat as Mr. Schue reviewed regular verb conjugations for what had to be the six hundredth time. She did love having him as a Glee coach, but Rachel was developing a sneaking suspicion that he didn't actually speak Spanish. So she really didn't feel that guilty for not paying attention to the subject matter she'd already learned back to front in September.

Instead, she was leaned back in her chair with her notebook propped against the edge of her desk as she doodled an intricate collage of stars across the entire page. She was putting the finishing touches on a star in the upper right corner when a folded slip of paper brushed over her shoulder and landed in her lap.

She picked it up with a frown, unfolding it to see Blaine's messy scrawl.

Hey have you seen Finn today?

Casting a glance at Mr. Schue to make sure his back was turned, Rachel quickly scribbled a response (Not yet, why? Is something wrong?) and slipped the note behind her, a tiny seed of worry taking root in her gut. She didn't share any part of her schedule with Finn on Tuesdays, so it wasn't that surprising that she hadn't talked with him since the day before, but she hadn't seen him in the halls between classes either.

The paper fell back into her lap.

I don't know. I haven't seen him but I don't have any classes with him until after lunch.

Rachel frowned more deeply. If Blaine hadn't seen Finn at all, then why was he worried?

What's going on?

Blaine's reply came more quickly than she expected. I don't know. I saw him in the weight room yesterday and he was really upset but we didn't talk about it.

Rachel pressed her lips together. She knew Finn, and this meant one of two things – either he'd had some kind of emotional outburst and was trying to take some time to calm down, or he was about to have some kind of emotional outburst, in which case he was a time bomb waiting to go off.

Okay, thanks, she wrote back. I'll find him at lunch.

No sooner had she passed the paper back to Blaine that she realized the third possibility, and felt her heart lurch as she knew it would be even worse than the two previous options: he could have already had an outburst and was about to have another one. In which case… Rachel wasn't exactly sure, but she didn't want to find out.

Finn didn't show up to lunch, or to Glee rehearsal later that day.

At almost three o'clock on the dot, McManus' pager buzzed on his hip, and he walked quickly to Ward 3F. This was the fourth time he'd received a page like this since Saturday, and the previous three times had resulted with Kurt being taken back to solitary confinement. Needless to say, McManus didn't have a lot of confidence that this would be any different.

He pushed through the door to the ward. "What's going on?" he said to Charlie, the head nurse on staff (most of the patients in 3F couldn't be trusted to keep their hands to themselves where female nurses were concerned – the only female staff members who worked there were the two women who ran art therapy for the entire hospital).

Charlie glanced over his shoulder towards where Kurt was sitting on the floor at the far corner of the room, surrounded by loose sheets of paper. "Well… we're not sure," Charlie said. "Zack's out now and during art therapy Ashley gave him some crayons and paper but ever since she did, he's been drawing the exact same thing over and over again."

McManus' eyebrows shot up. Either Zack was becoming more prone to fits of hysteria like Eleanor, or he was actually trying to communicate something he couldn't find the words for.

"And he won't stop," Charlie continued. "Ashley tried to take the crayons away when art therapy was over, but he screamed at her and wouldn't let her get close."

"Was he violent?"

Charlie shook his head. "No, but he might've been if Ashley had pushed any more than she did. I'm not sure."

McManus let out a sigh, partly from relief that – for now, at least – Kurt didn't have to be carted back to the solitary room. "Okay," he said. "I'll go see what I can do."

Approaching Kurt's claimed spot in the corner, McManus was careful to stay about three feet away so as not to stress Kurt out even more. Hitching up his pants, McManus crouched in order to have a better look at the drawings scattered across the floor in a messy halo around Kurt's feet. Kurt glanced at him warily out of the corner of his eye for a moment before hunching back over the paper he was currently scribbling across in green crayon.

It took McManus several seconds to figure out what he was looking at. Each paper sported a series of thick lines, crossing and swooping over each other in a sequence that seemingly meant nothing, apart from the fact that it was the exact same sequence on every page. Different colors, sizes, and angles, but the pattern was the same. McManus abruptly realized that they were not a randomly selected pattern but instead a group of four Chinese symbols, repeated again and again from page to page.

"Zack, what are these?" McManus asked softly. "What are you drawing?"

"It's a secret," Kurt snapped, not taking his eyes off the paper in his lap.

"Okay," McManus acquiesced, sitting back on his heels. "I'm just going to stay here, then."

McManus sat in silence for several minutes, during which Kurt finished six more pages and didn't look up from his work even once. Eventually, still not meeting McManus' eye, Kurt finished a seventh page and rather than drop it on the floor with the others, pushed it into McManus' hands. He then stood up and walked off without another word, disappearing into his room.

Frowning, McManus studied the page Kurt had given him. It was different from the rest – rather than a single instance of the pattern, the paper was clogged with them. There had to be at least thirty identical repetitions of the symbols crammed into the single page.

And, McManus realized with a start, two English words directly in the center, scrawled in Zack's jagged preschool pen.

HELP ME

It was rare that Jacob Novacek took a special interest in the cases being taken care of in his precinct beyond keeping tabs on what his officers were handling. After all, as the chief of police he generally had bigger responsibilities to manage. However, today was different.

Standing at Officer Lee's desk, surveying the cluttered assortment of boxes that Lee was currently labeling for the Evidence room, Novacek was suddenly hit with a wave of nausea. In his years as an officer, Novacek had seen his fair share of disgusting crimes (grisly murders, gang fights, rapes, and a host of others) but he'd never seen anything quite on this scale before. At least, not in Toledo.

"This is everything?" he asked, leafing through the contents of one open box.

"Most of it," Lee replied. "Some of it's already been processed and taken down to Evidence."

"You get a victim tally yet?"

Lee nodded, looking a little green himself. "We found records of twenty-seven boys and girls, including a teenage girl in 1994 and that Hummel kid from Lima."

Novacek shook his head, clicking his tongue against his teeth. "And none of them ever said a thing. Jesus."

Lee finished labeling one box and moved on to another. "When are you interviewing him?"

Novacek sighed, steeling his nerves. "I guess now's as good a time as any," he said, clutching the case file under his arm. He gestured to the boxes with his free hand. "Let me know when this is all catalogued – I'll help you notify the families."

Lee nodded. "Will do. Good luck with the psycho."

The only people in the precinct's holding cell were a few druggies, a couple of girls who had gotten into a violent catfight at the mall, and, sitting casually in the corner like he was waiting for a coffee order, was a man that immediately gave Novacek the impression of a relaxed Doberman.

Novacek approached the bars. "You've got quite the track record, if the contents of your apartment are anything to go by, Mr. Truman."

The man met Novacek's eye with a startlingly amiable smile. "Please," he said. "Call me John."