No Laughing Matter
Season 9, Episode 6
Written by alwayswritewithcoffee
This is a work of fiction by writers with no professional connection to ABC network's Castle. Recognizable characters are the property of Andrew Marlowe and ABC. Names, places, and incidents are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
She walked without fear - even in the dark of night - with only a crescent moon for company, confident and comfortable on the familiar path that she had traveled plenty of times before. It didn't matter that she was headed into the dark, that even now with New York City the safest it had been in decades, she was putting herself at risk by stepping into a remote area of the park at night and alone.
Knowing who was waiting just around the bend kept her brave, the excitement of possibilities leading her forward, eyes peeled for the man who had invited her for a late-night meeting.
She had dreams of candlelight, perhaps an engagement ring; the latter thought tugged a smile at her lips.
It didn't last; the moment was broken by the snap of a twig, the howl of the wind through trees that released a fresh round of foliage from their branches to flutter to the ground. A jolt of fear spiked through her blood, the steady pattern of her steps faltering on the sidewalk for just a moment.
"Hello?" she called, her eyes searching for any sign of her expected companion on the deserted path that led deep into the very heart of the park.
She wouldn't go any further. Of that much she was certain, glancing at her phone to check the time while also mentally calculating how quickly she could run back to the safety of the Upper West Side and its crowded, lively streets.
Another rustle, the crunch of leaves under a pair of feet, the click of shoes onto the sidewalk. She turned, expecting the familiar smile, the twinkle of a pair of green eyes.
The sight of a clown, clad in a jumpsuit patterned with alternating red and yellow diamonds and a frilly lace collar, was a shock, but she resisted the urge to yell, though survival instinct demanded that she take a step backwards; one step closer to the complete darkness, where the lights lining the path no longer were shining.
"What is this? Who are you?" She made sure to sound tougher than she felt, the fingers on one hand balling into a fist even as the other went to work unlocking her phone.
If she couldn't run for safety, she would call for help.
The clown didn't respond to her question, but took another step forward, fully into the light of one of the street lamps. Under the amber wash of light, she got her first look at the frizzy red wig, the blue makeup above the eyes, the extra-large and nearly sinister mouth painted bloody red with grease paint.
Even the red nose, usually so bright and cheerful, looked menacing.
"I don't know what you think you are playing at-" she began, the words dying in her throat at the glitter of something pulled from a pocket hidden at the hip of the clown's jumpsuit. In the second she'd risked to type in '911' on her phone, her surprise visitor had taken yet another step, lifting the large knife as if ready to strike.
And just like that, she knew.
Payback had finally come.
"I miss coffee."
It wasn't often that Rick Castle heard Kate Beckett openly whine, but she definitely was doing so now. Sleep-rumpled and more than a little grumpy, his wife's attention had bypassed him and gone straight towards the white cup of joe in his hand.
"You can have all the decaf you want," he countered, forgoing his first sip of the day in favor of turning towards the coffee pot. Compared to her usual intake, the 12 ounces per day of caffeinated coffee that the doctor had okayed was a pitiful allotment.
"It's not the same, and you know it," Kate sighed, taking a seat at the kitchen island as Rick poured a cup and sat it in front of her.
"I know," he said, picking up his own cup for a long, satisfying drink. "But just think about how happy you'll be that you abstained when the baby gets here and doesn't have two heads."
Whether it was his terrible joke or the fact the first sip of coffee had served to improve her mood, Castle just grinned in response to the slight upturn of his wife's lips in his general direction, marking it down as a win. Although the morning sickness had slowly begun to ease up as Kate moved into her second trimester, a whole host of other problems were still giving her trouble.
It was still rare, for one, that she slept for more than a few hours at a time, a side-effect of various pregnancy discomforts that included getting up multiple times to pee. And though she wouldn't admit it yet, Rick knew that her energy still lagged. More than once he was sure that he, Ryan, or Esposito had tapped on the door to her office and interrupted a brief snooze at her desk that Kate certainly hadn't planned on taking.
"Two heads?" Kate questioned, one of her eyebrows curving up in that sly teasing gesture that always made his blood pump just a bit faster. "Last week it was an extra finger."
"Last week it wasn't nearly Halloween."
"Is that going to be your explanation for the severed head on the bathroom counter, too?"
"Guilty as charged, Captain."
With a fond roll of her eyes, Kate lifted the cup back to her lips, taking another drink.
"Have you given any thought to your costume for the party?"
An innocent enough question, but she was thankful that Rick was busy fiddling with the toaster when he asked, facing away from her and unable to see the wrinkle of her nose and the purse of her lips.
The truth was that she hadn't given a costume much thought at all and had really been planning on winging it with various items from her closet. Surely she had enough black to pull off a decent witch?
"I… yeah, I have some ideas," she muttered, draining the rest of her coffee as her cell phone began to ring from the pocket of her robe.
"No, you don't," Rick said with a laugh. "But we'll go shopping this weekend, find you something fantastic."
Giving a glance at the caller ID on her phone, Kate wasn't so sure about that, the Dispatch number an indication that a good portion of her time leading up to Halloween would be spent overseeing a murder investigation. "Beckett," she answered, flashing a grateful smile to Castle as he passed her a pen and pad of paper.
Scribbling down the address, Kate muttered her thank you for the notification, fingers immediately flying over the screen once the call had ended, composing a group text to Ryan and Esposito. "Looks like you'll have to put those plans on hold," she informed Castle. "Early morning jogger found a body in the park. Ryan and Esposito will be headed that way within the half-hour if you want in."
"I think I could find the time," he grinned, tipping his mug back up to his lips to drink its contents.
It looked like he would need the jolt of caffeine for more than just decorating for his Halloween party.
The footpath had been bisected by police cars, the familiar van of the Medical Examiner's office wedged in between the yellow crime scene tape and a large oak tree.
As usual, two officers guarded the scene, doing their best to encourage the nosy spectators undoubtedly hoping for a glance at something gruesome to move along. Flashing them both a smile as he passed them, Rick ducked under the tape, stepping around technicians with evidence bags and cameras to approach where the two detectives stood, consulting in identical notebooks.
"What have we got?" he asked, drawing Ryan and Esposito's attention from their notes to glance at him. "Something befitting Halloween, I hope."
"Then you are going to be very disappointed," Esposito replied, tilting his head towards the body. From their vantage point on the path, only the flash of blonde hair and the curve of a shoulder were visible between the bushes. "Just a run of the mill stabbing. Young woman in this area of the park at night? Likely a mugging."
"Still, we've got officers canvassing around the park. It's unlikely we're going to get any witnesses, but we have to give it a try," Ryan added.
With a long sigh, Rick glanced back towards the body. "I admit it, I'm disappointed. I was hoping for…."
"Astral projection? Demon vampires? Freddy Krueger? Michael Meyers?" Espo jumped in, the smirk on his face growing with every suggestion.
"No!" Castle exclaimed, the word sounding far more like confirmation than he wanted. "I just wanted something a bit out of the ordinary."
"Too bad. You got a stabbing in the park last night," Espo replied, stepping away to give instructions to another uniform as Ryan gestured for Rick to join him closer to the body.
"We don't have any ID yet on the vic, there was no purse or wallet with the body, and we're guessing that her phone was either dropped or maybe taken with the rest of her things," he explained, eyes lingering on the long blonde hair now matted with dirt and blood.
"But a jogger on this path caught a glimpse of her hair on her run and called it in," Ryan added, pointing to where a tall brunette stood with a uniform, her shoulder-length bob fluttering in the breeze that had kicked up. "Name is Tessa Hannon. She said she usually never runs on this side of the park, but the weather was nice and she wanted a challenge. If not for her, it'd have been hours before the usual crowd started poking around up here."
"She looks young," Castle said, glancing towards the victim. "Late 20s, early 30s."
"Yeah, and we're gonna run her prints, check her photo against missing person reports at the precinct and at area shelters. Her clothes are high end, and she's obviously taken care of herself, but you never know…."
"Until you know," Rick echoed, taking in the pale curve of a cheek and counting the pools of blood against the dark fabric of her jacket that marked a violent and painful end to a life.
"We got a hit on the ID of our victim," Ryan's head popped through the open doorway of Kate's office the moment Rick passed over a styrofoam container filled with her lunch. "Uniforms walked the path from the crime scene back towards the street, and another set took the path approaching from the opposite direction, and we found her purse. Cash and credit cards are missing, but her driver's license was still inside."
Kate hopped to her feet before Ryan had finished explaining, stepping around her desk to follow the detective into the bullpen, where Esposito stood scribbling on the murder board underneath the DMV photo of a woman with honey blonde hair and blue eyes.
"Victim is Olivia Fabre, 34. Owns her own women's fashion line and, according to the New York Ledger via a Google search, just debuted her first collection at Fashion Week last month. Address is the Upper West Side, about ten blocks from the closest park entrance to the crime scene," he said, capping the marker and stepping aside so Beckett and Castle could read the rest of the information.
Death from blood loss. Four stab wounds in the back, believed to have been attacked from behind after a chase down the footpath. Time of death between 11 P.M. and 1 A.M.
"It's a good start," Kate said, glancing at the boys in turn. "No witnesses came up in the canvass?"
"None that would cop to seeing or hearing anything," Ryan sighed. "Some of the homeless and the junkies who hang out around there might know something, but none of them would talk. We'll take another crack at it if you want."
"Not right now. We need to find out if she made it a habit of going into the park at night. If she did, where did she go and why? If she didn't, what put her there last night?"
"Talk to her friends, her family, her co-workers. Turn her life upside down," Espo said with a grin, cutting off Kate's orders before she could even give them. "We got it, boss."
Years of partnership meant that Esposito didn't even need to signal Ryan, the two of them reaching for jackets in tandem, ready to ride uptown for a bit of investigation.
With her attention turned back towards Castle, intent on asking if he wanted to ride with the boys or to stay and eat lunch with her, Kate never noticed Vikram step out from the tech room. But Rick did notice, the confusion on the analyst's face evident but mixed with something unsettled that had the hair on the back of Castle's neck prickling.
"I have something you should all see before you go," Vikram said, halting the two detectives in their tracks and leaving Kate spinning on her heels to face him. "I scrubbed the webcam footage of that footpath like you asked, and I found something... well, something weird."
"How weird?" Rick asked, already in motion to follow Vikram's footsteps back to the room where the video waited; the timestamp at the bottom marked it at 12:34 A.M.
Waiting until the other four had stepped into the room, Vikram pressed play and stepped aside, turning his attention to the others as the wind rustled trees and blew leaves along the path for a good fifteen seconds. The figure that appeared on the screen wasn't just any ordinary person, the jumpsuit, wig, and makeup all looking incredibly out of place in the middle of the night in Central Park.
"A clown?" Castle gasped. "You found a clown wandering Central Park around the vic's time of death?"
"Not just that. This clown is the only person that uses the footpath, at least in the range of the cameras, in the four-hour window that Ryan asked me to check. And, if you zoom in..."
Vikram continued, tapping at the keyboard so that the video froze on the screen and slowly zoomed in towards a hand carrying something long and sharp that glittered in the light of the street lamps.
"Son of a bitch," Esposito muttered, "Could be a knife."
"The two of you go back to the park with a photo of this guy, ask if anyone saw him. Castle and I will go interview our victim's co-workers," Kate said, frowning at her husband when he flashed them all a grin. "What, Castle?"
"A murderous clown loose in Manhattan? Best case ever!"