'Bones' Season 8, Episode 16: 'The Friend in Need' Recap

‘Bones’, season 8, episode 16, ‘The Friend in Need’

A homeless man drags a dirty suitcase into a pawnshop, hoping to get 10 bucks for it. The owner doesn’t want to buy it. The homeless man opens it up, convinced there might be treasure in it, only to reveal some bloody human remains. The owner screams in terror.

The remains are delivered to the lab and the team determines that the victim is teenage male, possibly killed due to his own stupidity.

Booth and Sweets break the news to the boy’s mother, who is joined with her neighbor Delores, and her daughter Kat. The boy had been missing for 2 weeks and was last seen at a party. Dr. Saroyan calls Booth and tells him the victim had high levels of the party drug Ketamine in his system.

Dr. Saroyan’s daughter visits home from college, much to Finn’s surprise. She doesn’t want to stay at her mom’s, so Finn agrees to keep her visit a secret.

Booth and Sweets check out the victim’s room and find various electronics strewn about, as well as a large bundle of cash.

Angela checks the cellphones they found and found the victim only texted Kat and some guy named Nick Pavonetti. Booth goes to question him and finds that the victim provided hacked cellphones to Nick, who, in turn, sold them to other teens. He denies any involvement with drugs.

Bones and Finn find that the victim died from asphyxiation caused by a severed nerve. Angela finds that the victim frequented a photo-sharing website, which contained photos from the party where he was last seen. The victim looked angry in all his photos, and was following  Kat around the party. He got into a scuffle with a boy she was dancing with, and the pictures stop there.

Booth interrogates the boy from the party. He denies knowing the victim, but says that Kat yelled at the kid when he tried to break up their dance.

Kat visits Sweets in his office. She confesses that she was raped at the party, and all she remembers was one green eye. She said her mother told her not to call the police because she didn’t remember it, which meant it was her fault. She thinks she might have been drugged.

Bones reveals to Booth that the Ketamine found with the victim wasn’t present in his liver, which means he never ingested it. It was just present on his body. Likely in his pocket or in the suitcase. Sweets tells Booth and Bones that she was raped, and they suspect that the victim might have been the one to drug her.

Finn and Dr. Saroyan try to figure out the cause of the bone fractures when Finn tells her that her daughter is in town, and has been for almost 2 days. She chastises him for telling her, saying that he’s breaking her daughter’s trust. To fix it, she tells them to meet somewhere specific, and tell her where, and she will happen upon them, and make it look like a coincidence.

Booth and Bones interview the neighbor, Delores, who admits to confronting the victim about Kat’s rape. But he ran off without saying anything.

Outside, Kat confronts Sweets for breaking her trust. But he tries to justify his actions by telling her how he was beating as a child in foster care. He blamed himself for years until someone helped him realize it wasn’t his fault. He promises her he will find the guy who raped her.

Outside of a club, Dr. Saroyan ‘happens upon’ her daughter and Finn. Their plan goes off without a hitch.

Angela steps through the party once again, but this time tracks Kat rather than the victim. They see a boy giving her a spiked drink. They have found the boy who drugged and raped her.

Dr. Saroyan’s daughter apologizes to her mother for keeping secrets. Feeling guilty, she admits that Finn told her already and that the club was a set-up. They agree to keep this a secret as well, but to not keep any more secrets anymore. So she admits she’s seeing someone.

Hodgins finds that the injuries to the victim were caused by ratcheting straps. Straps that would be used by a moving company. Bones and Booth pay Nick another visit and find the straps used to kill him, so they arrest him.

They interrogate him, and accuse him of drugging Kat and raping her. When the victim confronted Nick about drugging Kat, he punched him in the throat, which killed him. Then he strapped him into a suitcase along with the drugs and threw them into the river. He is charged for rape and murder.

Sweets tells Kat and Delores that they caught the killer, who happened to be the boy who raped her. He urges Delores to get her professional help, and to be supportive for her.

At their home, Bones thanks Booth on letting Sweets have his moment.