A.N & Disclaimer: A personal challenge to pull-off a case fic. This is set a few months after Deep Cover (though that episode has no bearing on this story) and diverges from canon at that point, but that's only because they keep messing up my wedding plans. isn't mine and we should all be grateful for that. I'd get too distracted by the pretties and it would pretty much just deteriorate into porn.
One Fell Swoop
Any truth is better than indefinite doubt.
- Arthur Conan Doyle
The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes
Teaser
This heat has to break soon, she thought as she entered the lobby of her apartment building. The temperature wasn't that high, but it was thick and muggy, not at all the kind of dry hot air she was used to.
She hated New York in summer. She hated New York, period.
She hated the dull greys of the surrounding city and the constant, endless noise. She hated the people, so many fucking people, who didn't give a damn about anyone but themselves.
She hated her apartment and her job and her relationship and her misbehaving son.
No. No, that wasn't fair. She hated her life, but it wouldn't do any good to take it out on the people around her, the people that loved her. The people she loved.
Mostly, she hated him.
She fantasized about killing him. Something personal, she'd decided in her darker moments. Close up, so she could watch the life drain out of his eyes. Something painful. He deserved to suffer.
She hated herself, too. After all, she wasn't completely without blame, was she?
God, she was disgusted with herself. So weak, so spineless. She was fucking pathetic.
All she'd made it through in her life (the abuse at her father's hands; the addiction she'd beaten; the upturning of her entire existence) and she'd still ended up this poor excuse for a woman.
The elevator was out and she wasn't as surprised as she should be, considering that it had never failed once since she'd moved in. Of course though, today, when all she wanted was to get home as quickly as possible and scrub away a layer of skin in an ice cold shower, it was down.
She sighed and opened the door to the stairway and looked up. Five floors was a long way when you barely had the energy to stay on your feet.
With the sigh of a woman resigned to a very shitty day - a shitty life, really - she trudged upwards, taking it one step at a time.
Maybe she had depression? Maybe her incapability to tear her mind from the awful things, her inability to focus on what was good, was a disorder or something.
Maybe the lack of energy, how hard it was just to get out of bed every morning to face another pointless day, was a symptom.
She thought about seeing a doctor, but dismissed it quickly. She couldn't do that. They'd want her to see a therapist or someone and not only could she not afford it, but they'd ask questions. Probing, leading questions to try and get at the cause of her melancholy. And she couldn't answer any of those questions.
She wanted to. God, how she wanted to talk to someone, to let it all burst out and spill forth. But she couldn't and every day it ate at her a little more. And at the people around her.
Her boyfriend was waning and she didn't blame him. She kept him at a distance, too far for them to truly call their relationship intimate. He tried so hard, and she was such a fucking bitch all the time. She wanted to tell him. She wanted to spill her secrets in the safety of his strong arms and have him whisper that everything would be okay.
Her son was affected, too. He was drifting, aimless in life. She knew he was into drugs and the school had called her at least half a dozen times during the last semester alone to let her know he was skipping. The attitude, the grungy clothes, the loud music, and the awful language were all pointing towards a spiral she didn't know how to stop.
She wondered where her little boy went. That tiny little creature that always, always had a smile for her. That kid that would sink into her arms and hug her as if she was the most important person in his world.
She missed him.
She missed herself.
What she wouldn't do to reclaim her life. If only she had the energy.
One flight to go.
Close to home. Close to a shower and crawling up in her bed to sob the day away and then clean herself up before the men in her life got home and asked what was wrong.
Three steps until she reached her landing and the door to her floor slammed shut behind someone. She moved to one side to let them pass, but they simply stood above her.
She blinked and looked up, surprise coloring her features.
She was even more surprised not three minutes later when she was shoved in the chest hard enough to knock the wind from her lungs. The surprise turned to panicked terror when she lost her balance and started to tumble backwards.
A sharp jolt of pain to her skull and then she stopped being surprised, or panicked, or terrified.
She stopped hating her life.
Chapter One: The Body
The study material wasn't holding her attention anymore, but, valiantly, she kept reading, doing her best to retain every iota of information that had been crammed into the War and Peace sized textbook. It was made all the more difficult by being just as dry as the Tolstoy work.
For an accomplished thirteen-year veteran of the police force, Kate Beckett was amazed that there was still so much to learn. All of it necessary, she supposed. Well, she was sure a lot of it was necessary … some of it, at the very least, but not much of it was really very interesting.
Which was probably why she allowed herself to be so easily distracted away from it by her partner.
"Stupid. Shouldn't' have done that," Castle mumbled. "Gonna' kick your ass now."
He sat behind his desk, slumped over his laptop, completely and utterly phased out of her world, deep as he was inside Nikki's. She was pretty sure that in his current condition she could tell him the loft was on fire and he wouldn't hear her.
"Hit him, Nik."
He was so focused and intense when he wrote. She'd gotten so used to the man-child who giggled like a little girl every time he farted in bed that it hit her hard sometimes, who he was. Richard Castle, best selling author. Her favorite writer.
The man who's words she had loved above all others before she'd even met him was delving into the world he had created about her, for her, right in front of her.
She could watch him write forever. Would, she remembered with a burst of happiness, thumbing the engagement ring on her finger with a giddy little smile that made her roll her eyes at herself.
God, she wasn't a pathetic sap before he came along, was she?
Shaking her head, Kate checked her watch, eyes widening when she saw that it was well past lunchtime. They'd been in the office for hours. They both needed a break.
"Castle."
"Oh, did a girl just punch you in your stupid mouth and knock you flat? Asshole."
"Castle."
"Yeah, feel that, you bastard. Feel the Heat."
"Castle!"
He startled, blinking owlishly at her for a long moment as his mind took the long way around to reality. "Huh?"
"We missed lunch. You hungry?"
She lifted her body from a reclining position on the couch and stood, stretching out her back by raising her arms high above her head. His eyes slipped from her face to the sliver of skin revealed at her waistline when her shirt rose with the movement.
A smile started to curl his lips and her own responded to it. Yeah, he was definitely coming back to her world.
"Huh?" he grunted again.
"Are you hungry?" she repeated slowly.
She could feel his gaze lowering to her denim covered backside when she bent over to straighten up the books she'd been flicking through and without even looking back at him, she snapped, "Castle! For food."
"Definitely hungry for something," she heard him mutter and was contemplating the merits of encouraging his train of thought - great sex; maybe even great desk sex - when, far louder than his voice, his stomach replied.
She turned back to him smirking. He glared down at his traitorous abdomen and then looked back up at her and, releasing a dramatic sigh that would have made his mother proud, saved his work and stood.
"It's Saturday. Brunch Menu at Balthazar's until four."
"Sounds good."
Kate had always thought that one of the best things about Manhattan was never having to go far to find food. As it was, their destination was only a block away, so they joined hands and set a slow place towards the restaurant.
It was stiflingly hot outside of the comfort of the air-conditioned loft, the shade from the surrounding buildings not doing much to cool the thick air down and there being no discernable breeze. She wouldn't hurry their walk, but she definitely wanted to be inside the restaurant soon.
"How's the studying going?" he asked on their way and she groaned in response. He laughed. "That good?"
"I know I need to know this stuff, but … it's mind-numbing, Castle."
"So you've said," he chuckled, squeezing her hand. "You've read all the texts, gone to all the classes; you've memorized all the important stuff. You've studied your ass off the past few months, Kate. I don't know why you keep going over it."
"I want to pass."
They had to hug some guttering to get around where some repair work was going on on the sidewalk, but only one car was creeping along the street, seeking a decent parking spot.
"Beckett, you're the best cop in the city," Castle told her. "There's nothing more for you to learn about policing. And if there is, you're certainly not going to pick it up from that tree murdering, word-waster disguised as a book. If you fail the exam then I truly fear for this great city of ours."
"Yeah?"
"Well, obviously it will mean that everyone who's actually passed it doesn't know anything about being a real cop. And is probably really boring."
She leaned into him, huffing a laugh into his shoulder. "Best not let Captain Gates hear that theory."
Captain Gates. The reason Kate was slumping over textbooks and attending classes again after well over a decade had passed since she'd last thought of herself as a student.
When the captain had called her into her office a few months ago, the detective had mentally prepared a progress report on the case they'd been working on and then delivered it concisely, ready to get back to it.
But that hadn't been all that Gates had wanted.
"I got an email a few days ago," she told Beckett. "A sergeant's exam has been scheduled for the end of June and I took the liberty of obtaining an application. I think you should fill it out."
She slid a thin stack of paper across the desk and Beckett merely stood there for a long moment, staring at it. Promotion?
Hesitantly, she fingered the forms. "Sir, I …" She trailed off, no idea how to respond.
"Beckett, you've got such incredible potential. You may just be the best investigator I've ever met. You didn't go as far with the Fed's as I thought you would, but I'd be happy, proud, to help you fulfill that potential with the NYPD."
Kate looked up from absently staring at the application, to meet her boss' eyes, warmed by her words. "Thank you, Captain."
"You'll do it?"
"I haven't thought about promotion in a long time."
Never, really; not seriously. Kate had spent her first years on the force pushing herself hard, so determined to make detective so that she could reopen her mothers case, but she'd never really put her mind to going further than that.
"Really, sir, I'm honored that you think I'm ready for this." She finally allowed herself to pick up the application.
"Long past ready, Beckett," Gates confirmed. "But don't give me too much credit. I'm only doing this so that I can pass a few of these off to someone else," she said, indicating the piles of paperwork on her desk. "We've got supervisory officers to head robbery and patrol, but there's never been any money in the budget to bring another one in, there still isn't really, and Montgomery always chose to watch over the homicide division himself. For the past few years I've done the same and I've come to the conclusion that Roy must have been waiting for the same thing I have been."
"Captain?"
"We were waiting for you to sit that exam, Beckett. You'll be overseeing all three of our teams, instead of just your own, and all the uniforms assigned to you, so it'll mean a lot more responsibility, and, no matter what they say on the streets, more work, but I'd like for you to be promoted so I can put you in charge of homicide." Her face softened. "You deserve the recognition, Kate."
Then she straightened up in her seat and turned her attention to the work in front of her, dismissing the detective with, "You've got between January sixth and seventeenth to submit that. A little time to make your decision."
"Well," Castle was responding to her comment, "the captain may prove my point."
Kate poked him in the ribs. "She's not that bad … anymore."
He agreed, "She's come a long way since she first came to the Twelfth."
At the door to the restaurant Kate stopped him and leaned up for a gentle kiss, forcing another patron to have to awkwardly dance around them, and not caring in the slightest.
"We all have," she smiled against his lips.
They both liked Balthazar's. It was always crowded, so Castle could partake in his favorite pastime of people watching, but the atmosphere wasn't stuffy, so Kate was comfortable. Not to mention the food was French and always wonderful.
Kate was four bites into her delicious Eggs Norwegian when her pocket vibrated and a familiar ringtone broke the comfortable quiet between Castle and herself. She pulled out her cell, not at all surprised to find Dispatch on the call ID.
With one last bite and a mournful glance at what was left, Kate answered, her partner already pulling out a notepad and pen from his pocket and passing them across to her. She shot him a thankful look and wrote down the address being relayed to her
"Body?" he asked when she hung up, signaling for a waiter.
"Body," she sighed in confirmation.
She headed outside to text her partners while he paid and had just hit send when he appeared beside her. She didn't bat an eye to find he was carrying the basket of breads and pastries they'd ordered with their meals, but merely reached out and snagged a warm roll before grabbing his hand and setting a quick pace back to the loft.
The apartment building they'd pulled up at was nondescript, one of a thousand just like it in the city. A brief flash of her shield and the uniform at the door waved them through and into the lobby.
Inside certainly wasn't opulent, but it wasn't a slum either. It was decent, the kind of average place Kate could have lived in on her salary before she moved into a SoHo loft with her millionaire fiancé.
Esposito peeled away from where he and Ryan were talking to an ashen faced elderly gentleman and fell into step with the partners as they crossed the lobby, guiding them away from the elevators and towards the propped open door beside it.
"Victim is Erin Portman, thirty-seven, public school teacher. Lives here with her son and boyfriend. Building manager," he said, nodding back to Ryan and the man, "found her when he was leading a repairman up the stairs to fix whatever's wrong with the elevator."
They entered the darkened stairwell and when Kate glanced up she could see the bright glare from the portable lights the Crime Scene Unit had set up about four flights up.
"Where's the repairman?" Kate questioned.
"Put some gloves on him and sent him to the roof with a uni and a tech to have a look at the broken elevator."
To see if it had been intentionally sabotaged or not. Kate nodded, pleased but not surprised that Espo was covering all the bases. She had a damn good team.
"The son and boyfriend?"
"Not here. Manager says the boyfriend, Victor Martin, is a security guard at some fancy building downtown. Ryan's gonna' have him find the info so we can track him down. Son is sixteen, comes and goes as he pleases, so no idea where he is."
The fourth floor landing was crowded. A tech took photo's, while another bagged evidence for Lanie, who was crouched beside the body. The victim was sprawled out on the landing, neck twisted at a disturbing angle.
"Hey, Lanie," Beckett greeted, stepping around the tech with the camera for a closer look. Castle hovered on a step beside Espo, craning his neck to see.
"Watch your step," the ME warned, pointing toward a small pool of thick blood that had come from a nasty gash on the victims face.
Dropping to her haunches, Kate took in the dead woman. She was dressed casually, but in nice clothes, a flowing skirt and a white top. Dirty blonde hair and a face that was probably very pretty once, long ago, but had been lined and weathered for some time before she'd died. Blue eyes stared blankly, straight at Kate's boots.
"What have you got for me?"
"Not much, yet. Neck's broken, obviously."
"Can you tell if it was purposely snapped?"
Lanie shook her head. "Not yet."
Looking back past her friend, Beckett saw another scene tech several steps above them, placing a yellow placard beside something. "She fall?"
"Well, there's blood on the stairs and her glasses are smashed on the next landing up, beside her handbag, so she definitely came down that way," Lanie told her. "But whether she fell, or was pushed, I can't tell you yet."
Nodding, the detective mused, "So this might not even be a homicide."
"I'll get her on a slab as soon as I can and let you know for sure once I've finished up with her."
"She only came down the one flight?"
"Seems that way," Lanie told her.
Espo piped up as he and Castle sidled past, "She lived on the fifth floor."
"Like I said, I can't give you a definite cause of death yet, but she might have gotten up and walked away were it not for the broken neck."
"TOD?"
"Rigor's only just starting to set in, so, hedging my bets, between nine a.m. and one p.m. I'll narrow it down during autopsy."
"Thanks, Lanie."
Castle and Espo had made their way to the landing above, so Kate rose and, careful where she put her feet, joined them.
"Like I said, this is her floor," said the male detective, motioning towards the exit. "So she was either coming or going from home."
"Bag could have been dropped. Except for the glasses, which could have been smashed if she fell, there's no signs of a struggle," Castle commented.
"Doesn't mean there wasn't one," Esposito countered.
Kate looked around, took in the scene. The glasses were stylish, but bland, the lenses smashed and the frame snapped. She knelt down beside the handbag. A few things had fallen out of it; a pen, a can of spray on deodorant, and a purse. But what caught Kate's eye was the slim day planner.
Castle obliged with passing her a glove, undoubtedly pilfered from a crime scene tech and Kate slipped it on, using only that hand to flip the diary open and search for the day's date.
On the line for nine a.m. a single word was entered in neat, block handwriting: Asshole.
"It might have been an accident, but we're going to investigate it as if it wasn't. Espo, ask some uniforms to canvass the neighbors, you and Ryan search the apartment, look for something that might tell us where she went this morning. And see what you can do about finding the son's whereabouts. Castle and I will get the boyfriends work address and talk to him."
