The plot features FBI Special Agent Seeley Booth and Dr. Temperance Brennan's investigation of a teenage boy's remains found inside an exclusive private school.
Booth brings Brennan and her assistant Zack Addy to the exclusive Hanover Preparatory School, where a decomposing body has been found hanging from a tree.
Based on the Tabinid maggots' pupal casing, Hodgins determines that Nestor ingested a heavy dose of ketamine, a dissociative anesthetic, before he died.
Combined with the ketamine, the choking would have caused Nestor to regurgitate stomach acids, which would have been trapped in the throat and weakened the hyoid bone.
In addition to the forensic evidence, Dr. Brennan and Agent Booth find DVD recordings of sexual activities, which they discover had led to blackmail.