SO I didn't have much to do in study hall today and earlier was completely inspired with this idea. It's probably way overused, but mine has a twist! It's only gonna be like 5 or 6 chapters long, unless anyone WANTS it to be longer, but I'm cool with either way! The first part starts off in third person, but after the three pound signs, switches to Beckett's POV. You'll know when.
Anyway, ENJOY!
THIS CHAPTER HAS BEEN REVISED. THERE'S NO NEED TO READ IT AGAIN IF YOU'VE ALREADY READ IT ONCE. I JUST NEEDED TO CLEAR SOMETHING UP. Just saying...
Kate Beckett, punctual as ever, bent underneath the yellow, police tape, letting it snap back into place as leaves blew across the previously deserted lawn. The wind gusted across her pale face, but Kate hastily pushed the brunette strands dancing around her eyes behind her ears. Quickly, she strode across the crunchy, sooty grass of the front lawn of a standard, suburban house, her heels click-clacking up the sidewalk.
She took note of the house before her; the blackened windows, the burnt out hole in the roof, and the singed wood strewn about the yard. Glass sprinkled the concrete walkway up to the house and crunched beneath her feet as sirens continued to wail in the background. Parents quietly shushed their on looking children as they screamed and pointed, wanting to get a closer look at the big, red trucks and the long, snaking fire hoses still dripping with water, but unfortunately being packed away.
Kate climbed the few steps up to the decaying, wood porch and entered the crippled home, immediately coughing in the lingering smoke.
The yellow, caution tape wafted in the breeze and singed leaves flew over the crowd, occasionally landing on the random spectator.
No one noticed the lone figure in the crowd, donning a simple brown hat and an overly cliché, tan trench coat simply staring at the house and not hushing a shrieking child.
# # #
I suppressed the urge to cough upon entering the back room on the second floor. Shoving my face into my elbow, I quickly ducked in to the blackened room where Laney and Alexis sat in the back corner, hunched over a lump of something black.
"Is this supposed to be our victim?" I asked, skeptical she was testing something that wasn't in fact dead.
"Unfortunately," Lanie replied, looking up. "It's male and I'm guessing over the age of thirty, but as you can see," she gestured to the mutilated corpse, "I can't be sure until we get him back to the lab."
I gazed at the dark form on the floor. It was so darkened, shriveled, and ashen it was nearly impossible to tell the shape had once ever been even remotely human. "What happened? He's completely unrecognizable!" I said, in shock.
"Burned to death," said Alexis, glancing up from a mountain of papers.
"He wasn't killed before the fire?"
"Nope," she said. "Firefighters found him back here in this study underneath the window, probably trying to escape, but the windows are sealed shut. The poor guy didn't even have a chance."
I glanced over at the now blown out window, jagged glass protruding from the frame. "Why not just use the door?" I asked, muddled.
"It was locked. Firefighters had to kick it down just to get in here and when they did they found," Alexis gestured to the corpse, "our victim, clutching this." She handed me a piece of blackened paper.
I quickly perused the withering paper, but it was unreadable. "Wonder what was written on here that was worth dying for," I thought aloud. "And this is the only victim?"
"Yeah, that we've found," Lanie answered, picking at the tattered remains of the victim's clothes.
I bent down next to the pair, peering at what was left of the man. "He's completely disfigured; hardly even a mark on the ground."
"There's not much left to him that's for sure," Lanie said. "When we got here the fire chief said it was one of the hottest fires he'd ever seen; white flames and nearly 3000 degrees. It took fire crews almost 6 hours of spraying water before the fire finally died out and even then the house was too hot to enter for another half hour or so."
Lanie stood and crossed the room, leaving Alexis behind to finish filling out papers. I followed her out of the room and into the hallway.
"Do we know anything about the victim?" I asked her.
"We know no one lived here," Esposito said, reaching the top of the stairs, Ryan in tow. "No one has for years. Neighbors said the last person to live in this house moved out over 27 years ago."
"Why? Was there something wrong with the house?" I asked.
He continued. "An old woman a few houses down said there was a murder here back in '83. A whole family, cut to bits and scattered about the house. A girl out walking her dog discovered the bodies. Or, what was left of them, I should say."
"Pull the files on the case and read them over, maybe try and find that girl and see what she remembers," I said.
"You think there's a connection?" Ryan asked, walking down the hall and into the back room.
"No. But if there is, I want to know," I said.
"And Lanie, can you order dental records so we can try and ID our victim?"
"Already done," she replied.
"Good, thanks."
I trailed after Esposito and Ryan as they entered the room and made a beeline for the corpse. "Man, there is nothing left of this guy!" Esposito exclained.
I smacked him on the arm. "Don't be so rude!"
"The guy's dead what's he gonna do, insult me back?"
"Anyway!" Ryan cut in, "Back to the case, it looks like the guy had some money."
"What makes you say that," I said, crouching to join him next to the body.
"Look at the clothes," he said.
"Where? There burned to pieces."
"But not completely. Look at what is left. Only high quality material would have lasted through a fire like this. Expensive material. And the watch on his wrist. That's not your ordinary plastic, pull out of a cereal box watch. It's a nice one."
As Esposito turned to give him a look, I bent down an examined the watch. He was right. It was tarnished and rusting, but still there. That was enough to prove it was worth money. And a lot.
"Hey, look!" Esposito suddenly shouted, snapping me out of my reverie. "The guys not wearing any shoes."
I glanced over and sure enough, our guy had no shoes. "That's funny," I muttered to myself.
"I bet wherever the shoes are will gives us a clue about our killer," Alexis said, not looking up from her paperwork.
"She's right," said Ryan. "Are you sure you're the spawn of Castle?"
"I question it every day," she said laughing.
"Speaking of which," I said, "this case is getting a little bit too weird for my taste. I'm calling him down here."
I walked out of the back room and into the hall to get away from the noise as I pulled my phone out of my jacket, dialing Castle's number. Lanie stood at the top of the steps, leaning over the railing and listening in on the home investigators conversation.
"What are they saying?" I asked, waiting for the dull buzz that meant the phone was ringing.
"They think it was arson. Looks like ground zero was in what's left of the living room."
The phone began to ring.
"Hmmm," I muttered.
"If I go, it will not be by fire that's for sure," Lanie murmured mainly to herself. "I can't imagine anything worse than watching the flames just creeping closer and closer…"
Someone picked up on the seventh ring.
"Hello…?" A woman asked, sounding confused.
Not Castle. My heart immediately shot into my stomach and began hammering away."Hello," I began, trying to calm myself, "This is Detective Kate Beckett calling on behalf of the NYPD, may I speak with Richard Castle?"
Lanie shot me a confused look. I mouthed the words 'I don't know' and waited for the woman to answer. Probably just the wrong number.
Except it was on speed dial. I mentally groaned, growing impatient waiting for the women to respond.
Just as I was about to ask if the woman had hung up, there was dull thump and the sound of static buzzed in my ear. Then the phone clicked off, ending the call.
"Hang up on you?" Laney asked, not sounding overly surprised.
"I'm not entirely sure," I said, beyond confused.
There was a muffled 'Oh shit' and a scream suddenly blasted from the study. I immediately shoved the phone back into my pocket as Laney and I both sprinted down the hall and into the back room.
The first thing I saw was Esposito and Ryan kneeling on the floor next to the body and Alexis, her bright red hair just barely poking out from behind the pair. "What's wrong?" I snapped.
Slowly, Ryan and Esposito parted, emotionless looks gracing both of their faces and I gasped. Alexis sat kneeling over the body, her hands resting on his ashy chest (hitting it ever couple of seconds), and uncontrollably sobbing, undistinguishable words falling from her mouth.
Ryan snatched something off the rotting, wood floor and slowly walked up to me, leaving Esposito behind, rubbing Alexis' back while gently trying to yank her off the victims remains.
I looked him-for lack of better term-dead in the eye, trying to keep a straight face. "Ryan, what's going on?"
"After you went to call Castle," he started, taking a deep breath, "we heard a noise coming from inside that file cabinet over there." He gestured behind himself to the cabinet. "It must be fireproof or something, surviving the fire like that. Inside we found the victim's shoes and… and this I-phone." He raised his hand to show me the phone as everything began to fall into place. The women's voice, Alexis crying, Esposito and Ryan's uncharacteristically long faces. "We figured it would be a family member or something so Alexis answered it. We told her to put it on speaker phone in case she didn't know what to say and when she answered…" he paused.
My heart pounded in my chest and suddenly a sheer, layer of sweat coated my body, my hands shaking inside the pockets of my coat. "What?" I yelled, my voice quaking.
He looked down at floor, suddenly becoming extremely interested in his shoes. "You were on the other line," he mumbled.
Dark shadows swirled around the edges of my visions and my head churned. I slowly pulled my hands out of my coat pockets and brought them to my forehead.
I vaguely here Laney repeatedly calling my name, but the noise was soon overwhelmed by the white noise that roared in my ears.
"Kate? Kate!" she yelled, resting a hand on my shoulder. "Kate, we can't know for sure!" Pushing her hand away, I stumbled closer to Alexis as Esposito desperately tried to pry her off her father's crumbling chest, tears streaming down her face.
I gracelessly shoved Esposito to the side, seeing as his attempts to pull Alexis off the body were failing, he landing with a dull thump on the floor. I grabbed Alexis' shoulders, shaking her and pulling her back off the body.
"Alexis, honey, I need you to listen to me, back away from-"
I didn't even see her hand come up to smack my face away. It wasn't so much of a slap more than an attempt to shove my face back. Either way, I ended up landing on my butt with my back against the wall.
I slowly stood, using the wall as a support. My vision was still clouded, but I was going to get a grip on myself.
Lanie was suddenly in front of me. "Kate, Kate?"
I tried to focus on her face, but the room was spinning. "Kate," her voice was warped. "Go home. You need to leave."
"No… staying…"
I pushed off the wall and began to stride across the room, no particular goal in mind, but stopped about halfway through, spinning to glance at Alexis again. She clutched the victims chest, her face resting on his burned chest.
"Kate?" Lanie asked, sounding worried.
Was the ground getting closer?
"I think… I think I needa go… sit down…" I slurred.
"Kate!" Lanie yelled.
I felt the wind rush through my hair and the hard wood slam against my face, but all I heard was the finally intelligible word Alexis managed to belt out as Ryan and Esposito held onto each of her arms to keep her from diving onto the body again.
"DAD!"
Would I really be so mean to kill off our favorite author/volunteer detective? On a normal day, probably. But I got lots of sleep last night and am in a relatively good mood today. So maybe I did, maybe I didn't. Review and find out!