It's a slow day at the Jeffersonian. Zack's conducting an awkward conversation with a pretty blonde woman, Naomi-from-paleontology, while the work-avoidant Jack and Angela spy on him.

Angela tells Jack that Zack and Naomi slept together, but Naomi hasn't called since. Even gossip like this can only entertain them for so long, though, and at last Angela admits that she's desperate for a murder case. Happily, Brennan and Booth are waiting out front. Jack summons Zack, and Naomi takes the opportunity to run for the hills. Zack explains dolefully that she told him to take a hint. "I understand the individual words," he worries, "but I do not comprehend their meaning." Angela takes pity and they guide him gently out of the lab.

Cut to Booth's car, where a business-like Booth exposits that a dead body has been found on the grounds of Hanover Preparatory school. Brennan wishes him a good morning. Zack leans forward from the back seat and asks Booth "You're successful with women, right? You call after every sexual encounter. Cos that's the good thing to do." Booth is not going to go there, and tries to drag the conversation back on track as Brennan wonders what happened to courtesy, and Zack pumps him for sex tips. Eventually, Booth takes off his sunglasses to indicate the severity of his snit. He suggests they spend the forty-five minute drive in quiet meditation.

They arrive at the school, which has security gates. "Can we talk now?" drones Zack. They can't; it's Booth's crime scene, he's the only one permitted to talk. Let's see how that works out. Booth waves his badge at the security guard, and introduces Brennan as "an anthropologist." "Dr Temperance Brennan," supplies Brennan. The security guard escorts the car, as Booth observes you can't get much further from the real world than this place. He snickers at the Latin motto inscribed on the wall. "Omnia mea mecum porto. What's that mean, regular people keep out?" Brennan and Zack squint at him and recite "I carry with me all my things."

They get out of the car in a lightly wooded part of the grounds. The local sheriff, Karen Roach, greets Booth warmly, and the sarcasm in his voice as he congratulates her on being elected full sheriff appears to be lost on her. The head of security introduces himself as Leo Sanders, and the head master as Peter Ronson. Brennan's introduction is more perfunctory: "Where are the human remains?" she demands. They walk among the trees, as Karen reminds Brennan they've worked together before, on remains found in a culvert. "I remember the remains," recalls Brennan, "and the culvert…" Booth suggests, sotto voce, that she be a little nicer to the locals.

There's still no corpse in sight, until Booth points upwards: a body is hanging from a high tree branch, with crows pecking at its head. Zack begins taking photographs, as Booth asks the various bystanders to move back: "Give my forensic anthropologist some room." "Your forensic anthropologist?" huffs Brennan.
Karen thinks that if Booth deems the death a suicide, it becomes her problem. Brennan interrupts that it's actually herself who decides whether it's a suicide. Off Booth's quiet reproach, she explains that she doesn't like sheriffs - they're elected to office, and thus more interested in re-election than in the truth. Abruptly, the crows take off from the head, which falls. Brennan catches it. The body follows. Everyone but Brennan winces.

Back at the lab, the squints assemble over the remains. Brennan surmises that the body belongs to a boy aged fourteen to seventeen, with high cheek bones, possibly Asian or Hispanic. Jack explains that the body was eaten by several species of insect; he'll have a time-of-death estimate when he can work out "who ate what, when." They remove a St. Christopher charm from around his neck. Brennan finds something metallic in the remains of his skull: a cochlear implant. "That'd set a boy apart, being deaf," says Angela. Zack objects that he didn't talk to anyone in school, but didn't wind up killing himself. "That wasn't a school. It was an experimental genetics unit," sneers Jack.

Booth is still at Hanover, disbelieving that the staff don't yet know which of their pupils are missing. Sanders tells him that the 'higher-risk' pupils - those with their own bodyguards - are all accounted for. They walk into the headmaster's office, where Ronson wants to know what the "options are, vis-à-vis publicity." The school is a hothouse for the progeny of the rich and famous, its reputation rests on its security. "It's obviously a suicide," adds Ronson. "It's not like we're asking you to forego the glory of catching a murderer." Booth's cellphone rings; it's Brennan. She explains that they can determine the boy's identity from the serial number on the cochlear implant. Unwilling to discuss it further in front of Sanders and Ronson, Booth starts talking rubbish. Brennan doesn't get it, and demands "Are you drunk?" He winds up by telling her they can meet over Chinese food to "discuss all the boring details," and hangs up as Brennan protests "I'm not completely sure it was a suicide-"

Sanders has another crack at trying to impress Booth with the school's reputation. "You're famous for keeping your pupils safe, but you can't be held responsible if a troubled student kills himself," Booth paraphrases.. "We all agree suicide is the only feasible conclusion," suggests Sanders. "We understand each other," adds Ronson. Booth considers for a moment, then asks for a full enrolment list. Sanders and Ronson's faces fall. Booth turns away, wearing a small working-class hero smile.

Booth marches in to the lab, demanding to know why Brennan thinks it wasn't a suicide, and sets off a security sensor. "We can't just have anyone coming in, contaminating the boring details," snits Brennan. Booth explains that 'boring details' was a signal to stop talking. Brennan isn't letting it go. Booth says he wants a security pass. Brennan says she wants a gun. They move on to the victim: he's identified from the implant as Nestor Olivos, the son of a Venezuelan ambassador. Booth presses Brennan for more. "Oh, you want all the boring details?" she asks. "Let it go, Bones," he replies. She explains that Nestor's hyoid bone, in the neck, was broken - common in adult hangings, but impossible in adolescents whose hyoids are flexible. Booth wonders if Nestor had "some kind of Venezuelan brittle bone disease," and receives a nasty look from Brennan. He asks if it indicates murder. Before Brennan can answer, both her and Booth's pagers go off.

They're summoned, along with Brennan's boss, Dr Goodman, to the field office of the FBI Major Crimes Unit, where Booth's boss chews them both out for upsetting the big hitters at Hanover Prep. Booth wants to declare it a murder to "shake things up a bit," a plan on which Brennan heaps scorn. Booth's boss asks her what she thinks: "You're an expert in your field of bones and stuff, right? What does your gut tell you?" Goodman explains that, like most at the Jeffersonian, Brennan solves mysteries using science, not her digestive tract. Booth's gut's more vocal: he says it stinks. The case, not his gut.

Booth's boss lays it on the line: there'll be no investigation if Nestor's death was a suicide. "Without an investigation we can't find out if it's a murder, but there'll be no investigation unless Dr Brennan declares it to be a murder," reiterates Goodman. "Shall I send for a philosopher?" Brennan, after a dramatic pause, declares that she finds Nestor Olivos the victim of a homicide.

Booth drives Brennan to the Olivos's home. In the car, he thanks her for backing up his instinct. Brennan says she did not such thing - she was just buying time for her investigation. She wants to know what's up with Booth and the private school. "They thought we understood each other," grits Booth, explaining that he can't stand people who think they're better than other people. Brennan insists that some people are better than other people. Booth tells her she's un-American. As part of her continuing training in tact, he tells her that when they inform the Olivos family of Nestor's death, they'll tell the parents that they're sorry for their loss. "And we are," he emphasises. "What?" asks Brennan. "Sorry for their loss. It's sad." Brennan objects that she is not a sociopath.

At the Ambassador's Residence in the Venezuelan Embassy, Nestor's mother, Ambassador Olivos, cries as Booth explains that Nestor was found hanging. His father says that they last heard from him a few days ago, in an email he sent from Nova Scotia where he was on holiday with a friend. Booth asks for a copy of the email. "It'll help us to determine when exactly the victim died," supplies Brennan, flinching when Booth nudges her. "Your son," she amends. "We're very sorry for your loss." His mother asks when they can have Nestor's body, and notes that they must petition the church to bury him in consecrated ground. His father reassures her that Nestor was an altar boy - a devout Catholic, and thus perhaps an unlikely suicide - and will be properly buried.

At the lab, Zack is still fretting about Naomi. "What does she mean, take a hint?" Jack theorises that it was probably "what [Zack] didn't do" that caused the problem. "I need specific instructions," pleads Zack. "A list of techniques to implement, or a sequence of moves." Jack declines to discuss the matter further. Zack protests: "You've slept with, like, ten thousand women." Jack tells him that they have a cerebral relationship; he needs to discuss this with someone "more… earthy."

Booth and Brennan interview Dr Petty, the school counsellor, who tells them that, without a warrant or permission from Nestor's parents, there's only so much she can tell them. The fact that Ronson and Sanders are sitting by her shoulder doesn't look to be giving her full freedom of speech either. She says that Nestor was at extreme risk of suicide, though, as Brennan comments, he wasn't taking antidepressants. The counsellor argues that Nestor was alienated by culture, language, his handicap and his own social awkwardness. "As we suspected, suicide," nudges the headmaster.
Booth is still not willing to be led, and wants to know how the son of an ambassador could disappear for two weeks without anyone noticing. Sanders says the school thought Nestor was vacationing with his roommate. Brennan notes that the Venezuelan political situation is extremely fragile. Ronson admits that they were cognizant of threats, but Sanders laughs at Brennan's implication that a Venezuelan hit squad assassinated a student at Hanover Prep. Ronson tells her that this is a simple case of a depressed boy killing himself, "not a Tom Clancy novel."
"Yeah," says Booth, "We'll start with Nestor's roommate first thing tomorrow."
Ronson and Sanders look defeated. "Well, it's your investigation," begrudges Sanders. Booth beams. He kind of gets a kick out of this bad-ass cop thing.

Booth takes Brennan to his pet Chinese restaurant, where the owner, Sid, greets them at the door. He looks Brennan up and down. "I'll say this," he tells Booth, "she's tall." Brennan wants to know why Sid's restaurant is called Wong Foo's. "We changed the family name at Ellis Island," Sid says, enigmatically. They sit, and Brennan's confused when Sid doesn't take their orders. Booth explains that Sid has a knack of knowing what a person needs to eat better than the person does.

The rest of the squints show up and bundle into Booth's, uh, booth, much to his consternation. Worse, they pull out Zack's crime-scene photos. Ignoring Booth's protests about privacy and taste, Jack explains that insect activity shows Nestor died in the tree, ten to fourteen days before he was found. Brennan asks whether bird and insect activity could have cracked the hyoid, but Jack says no. Angela argues that Nestor was isolated at school and could well have committed suicide. Booth's still not buying it, suspicious of the school's agenda. "Booth thinks the prep school produces entitled criminals," Brennan explains. Jack objects that they all went to private school and didn't turn out criminal. "In fact we fight criminals," says Zack, gleefully. "We're crime-fighters." Angela shrugs, and says she puts a lot of weight on instinct. "Finally," Booth sighs, "a squint with an open mind." "You have no idea how open-minded I can be," teases Angela.

Sid interrupts this promising line of conversation by returning with food, and recoiling in horror at the pictures on the table. He scolds Booth for bringing such barbarians to his restaurant, and tells him to sort it out. He serves Jack the seven-organ soup he ordered, but grouses "It's always better when you leave it to me."

Booth demands to know how to explain the email sent seven days ago - at least three days after Jack claims Nestor died. "It stinks," he repeats. It doesn't stink as badly as Jack's soup.

The following morning, Booth interrogates Nestor's roommate, Tucker, at FBI headquarters. Tucker says Nestor left the Cape Breton summerhouse where they'd been staying early, to go home to Venezuela. Booth asks whether Nestor had a girlfriend; Tucker thinks Nestor was interested in a girl but wouldn't tell him who. Booth sits on the desk and tells Tucker that he's lying to a federal agent: that Nestor couldn't have sent the email his parents received, because he was already dead. Tucker swallows, and says "You know the dodge." "You backed him up, so he could be with a girl," Booth confirms. Tucker protests that he sent the email, but doesn't know who the girl in question was.

Ambassador Olivos visits Brennan at her office and hands her a video of the day Nestor received his cochlear implant: the first time he could hear. The first words the five-year-old Nestor hears are his mother saying "Te amo, mi amor. Entiendes?" The ambassador tells Brennan that the child who lived through this miracle would never take his own life. She acknowledges that, as a scientist, Brennan will need more than a mother's word, but warns her that the school will be desperate for her to reach a verdict that serves its own reputation. She tells Brennan that the family had many enemies. Brennan promises Ambassador Olivos that she will find the truth.

Angela runs numerous simulations of Nestor's drop from the tree branch - none accounts for the hyoid break. The extra weight necessary to break the bone is 90 kilos - that of a muscular adult man, Brennan notes. Even the Venezuelan hit-man theory can't accommodate it.

Booth and Brennan return to the school for another look at Nestor's room. On the stairs of the extremely plush halls of residence they encounter a man, who turns and runs when they approach. "Stay here," Booth advises Brennan. "Yeah, right, like that's gonna happen," mutters Brennan, running ahead of him. She follows the stranger into a room, shoves him against the door, which opens as Booth enters. The man falls forward and trips over Brennan's foot. When he gets up, Booth punches him to the ground. "Are you alright?" Booth asks, straightening his tie. "Are you?" replies Brennan. The stranger's wallet reveals him to be Tovar Comara, security staff at the Venezuelan embassy. "If he's security, why did he run?" wonders Booth.

Because he was there on Ambassador Olivos's instructions. At the embassy, she tells them she sent Comara to see whether an assailant could reach Nestor's room undetected, to counter the school's declaration that suicide was the only possible explanation for Nestor's death. Booth tells her that he and Brennan have declared Nestor's death a homicide, meaning that the school lied to her. Brennan asks Comara if he thinks Nestor was killed by outsiders. He believes it can't have been Venezuelan insurgents, who would have claimed his death, rather than making it look like a suicide. "This hanging?" He sniffs. "Huele mala." Brennan hmm's.

Booth steers her away. "Oh yeah. Someone says 'It smells' in a Spanish accent, and all of a sudden you're all 'Hmm, interesting!'" he bitches.

They return to Nestor's room. "I figured we'd come here, and you'd do your, y'know, anthropologist thing," Booth suggests. Brennan examines Nestor's record collection, saying he was getting into new types of music that the implant allowed him to enjoy. "Enjoyment is the opposite of suicide," theorises Booth. He finds a broken Mozart CD in the trash, and wants to know why Nestor threw it out. They find the case on the shelf - it contains another disk, with a hand-written label saying 'Mozart concerto for flute and violin.' Brennan recognises that it's not a CD but a DVD.

They play it back at the Jeffersonian: it shows a half-dressed man and woman kneeling on a bed, kissing. Angela recognises the man as Nestor. "This is pretty kinky stuff," says Zack, seriously. Booth asks for a close-up and stills of the woman's face. Jack belches in a deeply unpleasant way and blames Booth for the fact that his seven-organ soup is repeating on him. Booth says he should've let Sid choose for him. After the others leave, Jack informs Zack that the sex on the DVD was not kinky, but very basic stuff. Zack looks overawed.

Booth and Brennan question Ronson and Sanders about the tapes. Ronson observes that young people today are "more jaded," and students are often caught swapping tapes like this. Booth wants to see them; when Ronson tells him "absolutely not" he threatens to get a warrant, detailing the fact that the school lets students exchange sex tapes. Sanders tries to smooth things over, telling Booth that they turn the confiscated tapes over to Sheriff Roach. Ronson is still reluctant to name the female student in the video, and starts asking for a lawyer, until Booth threatens to take him to FBI HQ in handcuffs. "He'll do it," chips in Brennan. "He doesn't like you."

The student is Camden Destri. At the FBI, she tells them she knew Nestor but wasn't involved with him romantically. "Camden is too young to date seriously," explains her mother. Booth hmphs and puts on the sex tape. Camden reacts with shock. Booth turns his chair around and starts questioning Camden. She can't understand why Nestor would tape them, and says that she loved him.

Booth and Brennan drive out to meet Sheriff Roach, and for a change Brennan gets to criticise Booth's tact and diplomacy. Booth is sick of being lied to, and thinks the school teaches its students that they're special and above the law. Brennan tells him he's the least objective person she's ever met, and that the involvement of the students, staff and even the sheriff may stink, but don't add up to murder. The Sheriff shows up with a box of tapes, and a chip on her shoulder to match Brennan's and Booth's. "What do you think, I'm withholding evidence?" she demands. Booth tells her he thinks the school gets her elected, so she looks the other way when it's involved in irregularities.

The tapes include one of Melody Destri, Camden's mother, sleeping with Tucker Pattison, Nestor's roommate. They haul Tucker back in for questioning, and he admits that he slept with Melody in Nestor's bed because he knew it would be caught on camera. Melody paid him for sex, and, Tucker says, Nestor reckoned she'd pay even more to keep her husband from seeing the tape. Tucker says that after she paid $5,000, Nestor wanted to blackmail her with the tape of her daughter too, but Tucker threatened to tell his parents. The next Tucker knew, Nestor had killed himself.

Back at the lab Jack explains that Tucker ingested a large dose of ketamine before he died, which explains his failure to struggle during the hanging. Booth thinks he was dosed, Brennan suggests he took the drug for fun. Zack joins them, quizzing Angela all the while about whether his lack of success with Naomi from paleontology means he "lack[s] imagination in the sack." Angela thinks this is a guy-guy conversation.

Jack is still belching away with the best of them. Booth tells him to go back to Sid, ask him to bring him something, and trust the guy to bring him something restorative. Zack sidles up to Booth and asks him "Some time, when you're not busy, I wonder if I could ask you a few questions about sexual positions?"
"If you even try, I will take out my gun and shoot you between the eyes," Booth tells him.
Meanwhile, Brennan gets a brainwave from Jack's stomach acid: digestive juices are basically hydrochloric acid. When Nestor died, stomach acid would have risen into the oesophagus and been trapped there by the noose, gradually eroding the hyoid bone until it broke. Angela simulates this and finds the acids could degrade the bone to breaking point in just over eight days. The finding is congruent with suicide. Booth doesn't like it, but Brennan tells him he can't refuse to accept a fact. She announces that she'll amend her findings to suicide.

Angela finds Brennan studying Nestor's bones, and asks her if she ever knew that something was true, just believed it despite the evidence. Brennan says no. She tells Angela that everyone concerned with Nestor's death except for her has an agenda, and that all that matters is the truth. "You know that's true - or you hope it's true?" asks Angela, gently. She holds up her drawing of Nestor's face, and tells her "He did not kill himself."

And she has more proof: a snippet of recording found on Nestor's hard-drive. It shows him putting a seahorse pendant round Camden's neck. Angela reckons a blackmailer wouldn't do that - that it's the gesture of a kid in love. Booth is unconvinced, and thinks he gave her the necklace because he wanted sex, not because he was in love. Angela smiles. "That cynicism you affect, Booth? It's your way of hiding a deeply romantic nature." Brennan spots something on the tape and gets Angela to play it in slow-motion: Camden rolls her eyes for the camera. Camden was in on the scam, not a victim. "This is where a public school education comes in handy," says Booth. "Divide and conquer was the playground motto."

They call in Camden Destri and Tucker Pattison and interview them in adjoining rooms. Booth tells Camden that Tucker's given testimony that make her look bad, but that, if their stories match up, he can drop the murder investigation. Brennan tells Camden she can't believe it was her idea for Tucker to seduce her mother. Camden says it was Tucker's idea, she just gave him permission: "Tucker was all Stacey's Mom about it." She got the idea to blackmail her mother, then Tucker said it was her turn. She says that Nestor was cute, as well as rich and vulnerable. When they showed him the tape he got really upset. "Because you threatened to show his mother?" asks Brennan. "Or because I broke his heart," princesses Camden. Her father says that what Camden did was wrong, but that she can't be held responsible for the suicide of an unstable boy. "I said I'm sorry," repeats Camden. "Yeah," says Booth. Then he arrests her for Nestor's murder. Brennan exposits that Nestor was going to reveal their scam to the headmaster, so they dosed him with ketamine and dragged him up into the tree.
"If I cooperate and tell you everything that Tucker did, do I get some sort of deal?" blurts Camden, like some kind of entitled criminal.

Booth tells the Ambassador that Ronson, Sanders, and Sheriff Roach will lose their jobs over what happened to Nestor, and that the two students who killed him are in custody. Brennan remembers that the Ambassador's greatest regret was that she wouldn't get to see if Nestor grew up to be a good man, and tells her that he already was: that he died because he was trying to do the right thing. When the Ambassador leaves, Booth says "Very impressive, Temperance. You got that one right."

At Sid's restaurant, Zack is slumped in a corner with Angela, who tells him that it's personality, not gymnastics, that matters in bed. She advises him to go and tell Naomi that he knows plenty about sex but nothing about lovemaking, and to ask her to induct him into the secrets of love. I can't quite see it coming off in Zack's delivery, but it's a sweet idea. "That's totally counter-intuitive," ponders Zack.
"Just do it, Z-man. Reap the benefits of my sexual wisdom," counsels Angela. Meanwhile, Jack discovers that the soup Sid has just served him has cured his heartburn.

Booth shows up, and is horrified to find his favourite haunt full of forensic anthropologists. Sid says he doesn't mind, so long as they keep the rotting-corpses talk down. Booth does mind, and tells the scientists that they can have the one booth in the corner, but that everything else belongs to him. He goes around gesturing at various tables and declaring them "Mine," stopping just short of biting them. He sits down at the counter and gives Jack evils until he moves, then rearranges the sugar and peanuts into a more acceptable Booth-dictated configuration.

Brennan shows up. "I've been thinking about your whole 'something stinks' aptitude, and I think you have a subconscious knack for reading body language," she tells him. "Stress in the voice, other subtle yet discernible indicators. It's not mysterious but it is impressive, and in future I will try to accord it an appropriate degree of objective worth."
"Thank you Temperance. Appreciate that. So, uh, what part of 'this is mine' did you not understand?" He pours about half a kilo of sugar into his coffee. "Want me to say it in Latin?"
"Absit invidia," says Temperance, placing on the counter a security pass with Booth's name and picture.