MOST DANGEROUS
by ardavenport
Something was wrong.
Castle was being too quiet.
Detective Kate Beckett's eyes suspiciously shifted from her computer screen to the chair at the side of her desk. He looked his usual self, blue shirt, brown jacket, dark pants. But her mystery-novellist/sidekick had his blue eyes fixed on his own screen on his laptop, balanced on his legs, his expression unusually serious and . . . . focused. She glanced at her watch. He had been at it for almost half an hour. Weird.
Resisting the temptation to demand what he was up to, she returned her attention to her own computer screen and cleared the last of the e-mail that she could not ignore. The reminders for court appearances were already on her calendar and she shuffled off the other junk into the trash. . . . Someone had lost their keys downstairs, . . . A memo from the police commissioner related to a harassment case that put the 74nd Precinct in the news last week, . . . A reminder from Captain Mallory about all his detectives signing off on this year's mandatory Homeland Security training. She doubted that those PowerPoint slides were any different from last year, or the year before. But IT support had fiendishly posted the file on the precinct's internal web page so that she had to click through them all before she could sign off on the training. She would do it later.
She finished off the real work – the questions from the district attorney's office and the request for background information from a detective in Brooklyn about a case he was working on – and went back to the open case file for the morning murder that she had started when they got back to the precinct. Ryan and Esposito were still out with the uniforms canvassing the building. The APB on the missing wife was still out.
Beckett looked down at her own notes and started typing.
Castle made a noise.
Fingers frozen over her keyboard, Beckett looked at him suspiciously. But he only had eyes for his own screen. He did have a smug smile on his face, as if he was especially proud of something he wrote. That was more like the Castle she knew. But a moment later he was back to serious and intense. Like the writer she imagined he was . . . before she actually got to know him. And discover that behind his boyishly good looks was just a man-sized boy writer. Curbing her curiosity, she went back to the case.
She had gotten the call while still in bed that morning, hurried through her morning routine, thrown on just simple slacks, gray shirt, gun and coat and was out the door without breakfast in fifteen minutes. But Castle arrived, his laptop in a shoulder bag, at the murder scene before she did. He said that he had already been up, woken up early with a brilliant idea about his next book and was striking while his iron was hot and chronic procrastination cold. Beckett had only taken the coffee and donut he had waiting for her without the bait about his hot iron. . . .
"What've we got?"
Ryan shrugged back at her. "Looks kind of self explanatory to me."
It was.
A man, The Victim, Eric Torquin, late twenties, about five feet, nine inches tall, a hundred and seventy pounds, dark blonde hair, brown eye. One brown eye, wide open in shock and quite dead. The other was pierced by a crossbow bolt that had gone clean though his head and pinned his body to the wall.
Breckett glanced down at the array of weapons on a sideboard on the opposite side of the studio apartment from the body. There were various sizes of bows and arrows, plus an air gun, a BB gun, along with a few of real guns and rifles, and a brightly colored super soaker, its water reservoir fully loaded. But the lab people had marked off and were flashing photos of what looked like the murder weapon, an enormous crossbow lying on the wood floor in front of the sideboard. It looked like a murder weapon to her. She went to Ryan and Esposito by the body.
"We get any witnesses?"
Esposito looked down at his notepad. "Neighbors heard a loud noise at around 5:30, but what reallly got their attention was all the screaming right after. Peggy Torquin ran out of the apartment, still screaming, soon after that. Nobody saw her leave, but they certainly heard her. We got a description of what she was wearing from the doorman and we've got an APB out on her now."
"Kind of open and shut about who did this one," Detective Ryan commented.
"Or open and shoot," Castle amended. Then he looked around the studio apartment. It was an old, converted building with high ceilings. The walls were covered with large photos, paintings, framed advertising posters. One wall had shelves of various equipment, rolls of paper, other art supplies and tool boxes. There was a stack of canvasses leaning in a corner. "If I'm not mistaken, I'd say that either one of the happy couple was an artist."
"Bingo," Esposito confirmed. "They both were. They did all media; painting, photo, video, performance art. Some of their stuff has gotten a following on youtube, but they made most of their money subcontracting for ad agencies."
"Doesn't look like they did anything kinky," Beckett noted the landscapes, people in fancy clothes, still lifes and a few abstracts. "They seemed to like historical themes." She frowned at what looked like a posed photo of American Indians and Roman solders sharing a peace pipe. Castle went to the shelves and started touching things. At least she had gotten him to wear gloves.
"Yeah, it was all regular art, but the weird part about this case is that all the neighbors say they can't believe the wife did it," Ryan said over his notepad.
"All the neighbors say they were the perfect couple, spent all their time together, madly in love with each other, only married a few years, still acted like they were on their honeymoon. Never any fights outside of the ordinary, no calls for domestic disputes," Esposito added.
Beckett took a closer look at the body while his detectives went on about the happy couple. He hung from the crossbow bolt through his head. Bloody gore ran down his face and dribbled on the front of a long shirt of dark green, coarsely woven fabric, belted at the waist with a long strip of leather. He wore lighter green leggings and brown boots. It looked like the sort of outfit that a peasant at a ren faire might wear.
"It doesn't make any sense," Esposito said behind her. "There doesn't seem to be a motive."
"Uh, I think I found your motive."
They all turned to Castle. He had gotten to the end of the shelves and pulled the canvasses away from the wall. He pointed. They looked.
It was bright and round and red. And had apparently rolled into the corner behind the canvasses.
It was an apple. . . .
Castle made another noise. Very quiet, but loud enough for Beckett's Castle-tuned ears to pick out from the the usual background noise of movement, voices and phones in the open area around the homicide detectives' desks. Beckett's eyes shifted to him and caught a glimpse of that smug Rick-Castle smirk again before the intensity returned, his fingers rapidly tapping on his keyboard. She looked at her watch again. This had to be the longest period of time she had ever seen him really working, seriously working, on anything. Usually he found some other way to waste his or somebody else's time while she did the 'boring police work' part of her job.
She clinched her teeth. Castle had actually managed to be annoying by being quiet and focused. She was not going to ask. She was not going to ask. She was not going to ask.
A motion behind her screen caught her attention, two suits and ties. Ryan and Esposito were back from the scene. Just then a box popped up on her computer screen. Lanie Parsons had the body at her lab and they could come down any time to have a look, as long as she wasn't at lunch.
"The neighbors gave us the names of some studios that the Torquins' worked with," Esposito held up his note pad, "and they confirmed that they were working on 'something dynamic and medival' but they wouldn't say what it was."
"Just that they needed to work out some of the kinks to make sure it was safe," Ryan added.
"Looks like those kinks didn't work out so well for them." Beckett clicked the save button for the case file.
"Hey, what're you working on, bro?" Esposito tilted his head to look at Castle's laptop.
Suddenly straightening in his chair, Castle hastily pulled down the screen, keeping the detectives from seeing what was on it.
"Oh, just a few more brilliant chapters for my next book." He protectively covered his computer with his hands.
"Yeah?" Esposito bent down to see, but Castle pressed the screen down so the laptop was practically closed. "Is Detective Ochoa going to get a little more action in this one? I think he needs a real hot girlfriend." He reached for the laptop. Castle jerked away defensively as if Esposito were trying to steal his lunch.
"Hey, hey, hey! You gotta wait for the book."
Suddenly, the wrongness of what Castle was doing that morning clicked into place for Beckett.
"Wait a minute. You're writing?"
"Well, that is what I do," he answered, his expression confused, but he still clutched the laptop to his chest as if to preempt another assault on it.
"You're writing here?"
"Yeeeeaaaaah. I'm beginning to think that wasn't such a great idea."
"You're writing Nikki Heat? Here?" He could be doing anything to Nikki Heat. And he was doing it while he was sitting right there next to her desk. She could be tied up in a dark basement, pinned down in a gunfight with maniacal terrorists and running out of ammo, getting her clothes ripped off. . . . He could be writing a love scene. Hot steamy, erotic sex - - -
Castle made a face back at her, as if she had just caught him in her underwear drawer. He pushed the chair back with a loud scraping sound.
"I think I'd better just take this home." He grabbed his bag from the floor and backed away while keeping his laptop as far away from Ryan and Esposito as posible. Beckett stared as he hastily retreated down the aside between desks and offices toward the exit. With a last nervous wave, he disappeared around a corner. Esposito and Ryan shrugged at each other.
"Whoa, I guess they're right about writers being sensitive about their work," Esposito commented. Ryan nodded. Beckett continued staring down the hall where Castle had gone. What just happened?
o – oo – oo – oo – oo – o
Castle didn't show up again until well after lunch. The squad room smelled of coffee, take-out food, too much floor wax and the occasional ripe suspect. Castle was in the break room when they got back from the park, but he slid into the seat next to Beckett's desk fifteen seconds after she sat down. He did not have his laptop with him.
Beckett typed in her password. There were fourteen new e-mails; some of them looked important but she ignored them and opened the morning's case file and started typing. He fidgeted for a few minutes before giving her the satisfaction of speaking first and asking how the case was going.
"Great. It's done." She hardly even glanced back at him from her rapid typing on her keyboard.
"Done?" He straightened from his usual slouch.
"Yep. All wrapped up."
"You found the wife?"
"Yep. Found the wife. And a suicide note. She wrote it all over her body with a sharpie. That pretty much explained everything. Apparently, they were practicing their version of William Tell's apple trick as a piece of performance art and she got the aim wrong."
Castle's eyebrows rose. "Really. I'll bet that was a good read for Lanie."
Beckett shook her head. "Lanie didn't get her. They're stitching up her head at the emergency room now. We can't get a statement until the doctors are done with her."
Castle looked baffled for a moment before the figurative light bulb went off over his head. "Oh, you don't mean - - "
"Yep." Beckett tapped out the end of a sentence with a flourish and sat back. "But we already knew she had lousy aim." She looked at the text of her report, black on white on her screen. "After she shot her husband - and the love of her life - she was understandably distraught. She took one of the weapons they had, a gun, a .38, went to the park, cried for a few hours by herself, then stripped off all her clothes behind the bushes, wrote out her suicide note and stepped out in front of the tree where they planned for her to shoot the apple off her husbands head, held the gun out in front of her, aimed it at her head, closed her eyes and - - "
"Missed?" Castle guessed.
"Missed," Beckett agreed. "She did graze the top of her head. Just enough to bleed a lot while she ran screaming through the park. We were just there after some artist friends of the Torquins' told where they were planning their next performance piece. Caught the whole thing. The doctors think that she didn't really want to die, but we won't know anything for sure until they do the psyche profile." She sighed as she dragged a photo from the scene into the file with her mouse. As tragic as Peggy Torquin's situation was, Beckett was having a great deal of trouble feeling sympathy for her given the incredibly stupid way that her husband had died and her part in it.
"Naked?"
Leave it to Castle to zero in on the most relevant observation, for him. "Yep. All she was wearing was her suicide note. It's a shame you missed it. She was at least a double D." She just couldn't resist rubbing it in.
"Really?" He leaned forward, trying to see her screen. She blocked him with her hands and angled it away from him.
"Hey, you missed quite a show, Castle," Ryan greeted him as he strolled up to Beckett's desk with his partner.
"Yeah, it was amazing." Esposito shook his head. "You shoulda' seen it."
"I'm getting the picture." Castle kept craning his neck trying to see Beckett's screen and she turned it even further away from him. "Or not."
"Castle!"
He snapped back into his chair. The two junior detectives laughed, but then Ryan took mercy on him. "You can see it on my computer later."
"Oh, yeah. And maybe you can bring yours by and share the love, too," Esposito suggested.
Castle waved his hands, warding away the suggestion. "Not for a double G cup would I do that."
"Why not?" Esposito scowled. "You talk about your books all the time with that poker game crowd of yours."
"Ah, well leaving aside my publisher slash ex-wife – who would slice and dice my internal organs if I divulge any part of my book to the public – my poker games are a critical review of works in progress for all of us, emphasis on the 'critical', where we all systematically stomp through the holes in each others plots and where nobody is going to request hot girl friends for their favorite characters."
Esposito pouted back at Castle, who sat back in his chair and looked at all of them with that serious-face that Beckett had seen earlier.
"Do you know what happens to writers who talk about their books?"
"They get thrown out of the union?" Ryan guessed.
"The spoiler police confiscate all their laptops?" Esposito suggested.
They all looked at Beckett, who just shrugged. "I don't know what happens to them."
"Nothing," Castle told them.
"Nothing?"
"Nothing?"
"Nothing?"
"Nothing," Castle confirmed. "Not a thing. Nothing happens to them. No unions, no confiscations." He held up a warning finger. "And. No writing, no publishers, no books. Writers who can write, do. Those who can't, just talk about it."
"Ooooooh," Beckett sat back. "So, you're a real writer only when you're writing. And the rest of the time," she glanced at the computer screen turned away from him, "maybe most of the time, you're just a guy trying to sneak a peek at a naked suspect on my computer."
He opened his mouth. And paused. Tilted his head and paused again. "Weeeeelllll, writers . . . . sometimes have to do research."
"Ooooooooh, so that's what you call it. And when you don't stay in the car when I tell you, or go through the things on my desk, or invite yourself to a stake-out . . . . that's just research."
The two detectives standing behind him snickered.
Castle drew back. "I brought deli sandwiches for that stake-out. And desert."
Beckett rolled her eyes. Why couldn't he bring that laptop and serious writer-face with him if he was going to show up unannounced at ten at night with a bag of pastromi on rye and a box of cream puffs? But . . . . noooooo . . . . . he would just play video games on it. Or worse, write. She could see what he did to the insides of a cream puff. But when he was writing . . . . that was when he was at his most dangerous. It was bad enough that he had been doing it at her desk in the precinct, but being alone with him in the car when he was doing it . . . .
"So, how come you're here 'researching' instead of writing?" Esposito asked with a big grin.
"Well, that burst of writing energy has been spent." He hastily held up an instructive finger. "But well spent. You're all going to love it when the book comes out."
"So, it's back to procrastinating," Beckett concluded.
"Researching."
"Oh, of course." She conceded the point and the sarcasm in her tone sailed right over him.
"So, the wife has been found." He tried to go back to the case. "What's next?"
Beckett looked toward her idle computer screen, which had gone blank. She tapped it back to life. "I have to transcribe Peggy Torquin's suicide note for the report."
He eagerly leaned forward in his chair. "Can I help?"
"Castle!"
*+*+*+*+* END *+*+*+*+*
Note: This story was first posted on tf.n on 16-April-2011.
Disclaimer: All characters belong to Beacon Pictures, Experimental Pictures or ABC Studios; I am just playing in their sandbox.