Somewhere a Clock is Ticking
In slow motion, the blast is beautiful...
Characters: Kate Beckett, Richard Castle & Ensemble; Jordan Shaw, Scott Dunn (Tick, Tick, Tick...Boom)
Pairings: Beckett/Castle, Ryan/Jenny
Rating: R (language, gore, intense violence)
Genre: case; angst; light romance; general (and soul-crushing) misery
Setting: mid-January 2013 (s5)
Summary: (TTT...B sequel) By the time Sing Sing notices the glitch, serial killer Scott Dunn has long since fled the prison and the county, prompting a call to his arresting officer and the former object of his psychosis, Kate Beckett – who soon finds that the trail he's left her is one that is not only littered with corpses, but is going almost entirely downhill. Set earlyish s5. B/C.
A/N: Dark, angsty; set winter, earlyish s5 (preceding significant episodes such as "Recoil" and "Hunt"). Deals heavily with Beckett's shooting, and with a lot of the less pleasant aspects of Beckett and Castle's relationship (the idealization, the guilt, the anger, the not-talking-about-any-of-the-problems-ever, the worries, the fears). It's not a 100% angst-fest (more like...93%), and it is ultimately Caskett, but there are some arguments I want them to have, and there are some things with Beckett I wanted to explore. Scott Dunn was a nice a catalyst, with the history and the intense violence he brings to the table. Bottom line: angst, fluff stripped bare.
In the interest of continuity, my final note is that I'm making one small tweak to canon: that Beckett bears not only the scar from the bullet, but from the sternum spreader the surgeons used to crack open her chest (and the tube they shoved through her ribs). Both should've been there anyway, and visually it's a lot more horrific and a lot more obvious.
Chapter One: Infra Red
He walked down the hallway. It was lit poorly by cheap, low-wattage bulbs. That and the lack of windows gave the space a dead, airless sort of feeling. It felt like it could be any time of day. It was the middle of the night, but it felt like it could be any time.
He walked down the hallway. He saw the door in his head, but not the number on the door. He noticed his hands were sweating as he reached in his pocket for the address he'd scribbled on the back of a cab receipt. 20. It was 20. He remembered just as he removed the paper. He put it back in his pocket.
He walked down the hallway. Found the door. Stopped in front of it. Tonight was the night. He could see it all playing out in his head. Two years of planning. Three of thinking about it. This was the moment.
He cocked the gun in his hand. He hadn't bothered to hide it. The hall was deserted. There were TV sounds through a couple of doors, but for the most part the building seemed asleep.
He knocked. His hands were still sweaty. He switched the gun to the other hand and wiped his palms on the sides of his jacket. It seemed really hot in the hallway. Three minutes ago it had been freezing. He shifted the gun to his other hand again.
The door took forever to open. He knew he was home. He'd seen his shadow passing over the blinds from the street. If he'd left he would've passed him in the hall.
The door opened. "Hello?" Light streamed into the hallway, and he saw just one of his target's eyes. The door had opened only slightly. A chain stopped it.
He helped the door the rest of the way open with his shoulder. It held up better than expected, and he heard the man shout something, throw himself against the door to try to keep it shut. He gave it another ram, and the door popped open. It split like plywood around the chain.
And then he was inside, and for a moment they both just stood there, staring stupidly at each other. He thought of one of those little hot dog dogs coming face-to-face with a Doberman, too terrified to make eye contact. And then he smiled. And then he raised the gun. It had a silencer. He'd looked up how to make one on YouTube.
"Please, what do you want?"
He didn't reply. He could just make out his eyes between the little white dots on the sights, on the kill end of the barrel.
"Do—Do you want money?"
He pulled the trigger, and then he just dropped like a sack of flour. It was surreal. Just a bang, a little kick, and there he was, on the floor. He could feel the sting of sweat under his arms.
Everything just went still.
"Please..."
He blinked, walked forward. The guy was still alive.
"God..."
He stood right over him, looking down at his face. There was blood... just sort of everywhere, and the man was staring up at him. And at that moment, he was surprised to find how unmoved he was. He thought he might feel something. Just...something, anything. But he didn't.
He centered the sights on his forehead. Pulled the trigger again.
She hit the alarm when she woke up. It hadn't gone off yet. She had another half an hour to sleep, but she sat up instead, rubbing her eyes to clear the muzziness from her head. It was still dark outside, charcoal clouds having smothered the sun and dulled the edges of neighboring buildings to mere dark suggestions. Just below, cars stopped and started, honked, belched. Someone was running their bass, and it thudded distantly against the window.
Thump-thump-thump-thump-thump-thump
And then it faded, a second after she noticed it.
Blinking heavily, she looked left. Castle was still asleep. He looked so peaceful there, sleeping, that it was almost disgusting. For one fleeting moment, she considered throwing a pillow in his face, but then the moment passed, and Kate Beckett rolled from her bed. She found her old NYU shirt hanging over a chair, slipped it on, then left the bedroom, leaving Castle to his sleep. The wood floor was cold on her feet as she padded to the kitchen, intent on the coffee maker. She stopped there after she tapped the switch, staring out the frosted window at the grey, smudgy, formless blobs that formed her world. Maybe it was because she'd woken up before the alarm, maybe it was the writer asleep in the other room, hell, maybe it was last night, but this morning had an odd sort of peace to it, and she felt... good. Content.
Smiling a small, private smile, she went to the bathroom to start her morning routine. She'd been feeling that a lot lately. Content. It wasn't exactly a foreign feeling, but it felt uncomplicated, and it felt nice. No case hanging overhead, no 3 AM call about some guy dead in his apartment. Just a good night and a quiet morning.
If she didn't know herself better, she'd say she could almost want to get used to it.
She spat toothpaste, rinsed her mouth, then returned to the kitchen. The coffee had started dripping into the kettle, so she reached for a couple mugs and set them on the counter. Then her eyes wandered until she found Castle's laptop on the table. It was open, asleep but still running. He'd insisted she finish her paperwork at home rather than the precinct, said he'd write while she was writing or something like that. Wanted to clock some observation hours. He was so full of crap sometimes.
Yet she'd gone along with it.
Glancing into the bedroom to check for his shadow, she walked over to the laptop, then sat on the couch and pulled it to her. The thing wasn't password protected, so when she tapped space it lip up at the document, still hovering mid-word where she'd eventually pulled him away.
She scrolled up. Picked a random paragraph to start from. Felt her brow lift an inch.
God and the angels were crying that night. Either that, or they had had way, way too much to drink and were pissing it down. Heat shielded her eyes as she stared up at the storm. Sandy may have passed, but tonight that didn't really matter. She was soaked to the bone. Her clothes clung to her like she'd just climbed out of a pool. She stood there, soaking up the angels' tears like a shower, laughing to herself. It sounded victorious, and maybe just a little psychotic. As if she'd made them cry. For her.
Blood ran off the steps beside her. She could smell the shot in the rain. The rain had washed away the blood, washed away the rose, but not the smell, and when she looked over the guy's warm, dead body, she met Rook's eyes. The buds of romance had long since blossomed into bloom, and the petals were starting to fall, but at that moment it was as if they were staring at each other with new eyes. And at that moment, she kne
"If you're coasting for porn, I keep that on my other computer. The password's 'kinky.' "
She looked up. Castle was leaning against the bedroom doorway, hair disheveled, a blanket wrapped around him like a toga. He was staring at her with a crooked brow. She wondered how long he'd been standing there.
" 'The buds of romance had blossomed into bloom' ?" she repeated, eyebrow still hiked.
He crossed his arms, "What, you don't like it?"
"Blossomed," she repeated again, shaking her head.
He walked forward, "How long have you been up?"
"Uh," she glanced down at the laptop. "Fifteen minutes? There's coffee." She spoke it as she remembered it, and she stood to make her way to the machine.
He caught her hand, held it lightly. "Why don't we leave it?" He was grinning at her, brow still crooked. "It's not too late to go back to bed."
She almost hated herself for smiling back. "Come on, Castle. I still have to shower."
"We can do both." He was rubbing little circles into her palm. His hands were warm.
"I do have a job to get to."
"A very important one," he agreed. He was pulling her toward him, and she found herself letting him.
"Unlike some of us..." She murmured that.
Somehow, they were only an inch apart now.
He leaned in to kiss her.
"Castle," she breathed.
He stopped, hovering a micrometer from her lips. "Hm?" He smelled like mint, and she thought of toothpaste and Tic Tacs and Altoids and bright, blue mouthwash, and she thought of tasting it.
"Is this how the petals fa—"
He swallowed the rest of her sentence.
By 8:36, Richard Castle was stepping out of the elevator to his loft. For once, he hadn't had to endure coitus interruptus in the form of aphone call from the scene of some dead guy on the side of some street (which, yeah, that did happen, and the guy was spread over two blocks; take away: if you're going to dart across a four-lane street, make sure to bring some other pedestrians as a buffer— though, of course, the car had been aiming for him...), and Beckett had sent him home after they'd finally gotten around to their coffee. Not that he hadn't brought a change of clothes — they were beyond the walk-of-shame portion of their relationship, thank you – but as long as he had the morning, he had a laundry Situation to take care of. (Seriously, it was dire. He was down to his last pair of undies, and he may have left that one under Beckett's bed.) So they split at her apartment's lobby. She went down the street to the parking garage; he crossed it to head for the subway. While he considered himself a man of great daring and courage and adventure, he had yet to be convinced to get on the back of her bike. He saw how she drove cars (as if she took personal offense to the road and everyone on it), and those things had four wheels.
So they split with a kiss and a wave. It was nice, and it wasn't like he wouldn't be seeing her again by lunch. Or possibly for lunch. At that little bistro by the park.
You know, at this point, he could so pass the Police Academy. He practically lived at the station as it was.
He slipped his key into the lock, opened the door, typed in the security code.
I mean, okay, maybe not the physical so much, but everything else...He'd pass, and sometimes (but only sometimes) he imagined the look on Beckett's face when he would walk in with his very own, shiny, new Desert Eagle (once he got the carry permit Situation taken care of). No Glocks or Sigs for this writer, oh no. Although that gun Dirty Harry had was pretty cool...
Maybe he could just have both. It wasn't as if Beckett didn't o...
"Dad?"
He jumped out of the way of her voice (panther reflexes). "Hey, my daughter mine," he said cheerfully, noting that he hadn't, in fact, been in any danger of actually running into her. She was standing in the kitchen. "How's it hanging?"
"Good," her eyes flicked all over him as she walked over, searching for evidence of...what? He suddenly felt like he had something on his face. "How's Beckett?" she asked.
"She's good," he said, rubbing his cheek self-consciously. "We had a nice time last night."
She held up a hand, "I'm glad we have such an open, honest relationship, but there are things we don't need to share."
He nodded solemnly, "I respect your wishes. So," he walked over to the nearest chair and plopped into it, dropping his bag beside it. "We gonna do movie night tonight?"
When she looked away, he knew instantly that they wouldn't be. He tried his best to keep the disappointment off his face as she spoke, "I'm sorry, I, uh...my friends just sent me a text a few minutes ago asking if I wanted to go out with them tonight, and I already said yes..." her voice trailed off. She stood there awkwardly for a moment, then walked over and gave him a hug. "I'm really sorry," she said.
"It's okay," he said as she pulled away.
"I mean, if it's really important to you, I can cancel."
"No, no," he held both her hands. "No, you go out and have a good time." He squeezed them, then released her and got to his feet. "In the meantime, you want to have breakfast? I'm starved." There was no way she wasn't accepting. She was still in her p-jays. No phone in hand. He'd found her in the kitchen. This was a slam-dunk.
"Yeah, sure," she said and smiled.
The fear that she was leaving melted from his heart. "Awesome!" he said, walking into the kitchen. "So what do we want?"
She followed him. "Waffles?"
"Waffles it is!" he could practically hear the exclamation point in his voice. His daughter was home over winter interim (on his insistence), and although they'd spent a good portion of that time together, they'd spent a better portion of it apart. As far as he was concerned, her classes would be starting up again all too soon, and he wasn't looking forward to the empty house. Some guys liked the bachelor life. Hell, some guys needed it. But he had a housekeeper and had lived with women most of his life. The whole stag thing wasn't really his scene.
Alexis pulled out the waffle press and greased it while Castle located and beat together the ingredients. When her scant duties were complete, Alexis took a seat on the stool to watch him mix away. She smiled, "I'm glad we still do this."
"Please, it's family tradition," he said. "You watching while I do all the work."
She scoffed, but didn't take the bait or the hint. "So are you home for the day?"
It was his turn to look away, "No, I'm going to meet up with Beckett in a few hours."
"Big case?" her face was neutral. Lately, he just never knew what she wanted to hear. Though, he supposed if he was honest with himself, this had been going on longer than just lately...
"No," he shook his head. "No case. But, you know, this is New York. Sure she's five minutes away from catching another fresh one." He paused. "Hopefully not literally."
She glanced down at her hands. Looked back up, "Not sure whether we should be hoping for that or not."
"Well, then Beckett would be out of a job, and I'd have to split the proceeds from my books with her, so..."
"Then I guess we'll hope for a nice double homicide," she stood. "Or a serial killing."
"Sounds good," he dumped in the chocolate chips.
"Mm," she came around to his side. "Need any help with that?"
He nodded. "Scoop the bowl?" he asked, holding it up.
"Consider it done." She reached for the rubber scrapey thing.
They stopped talking about cops and dead people after that.
The elevator doors of the 12th Precinct opened just a few minutes shy of shift start, and Beckett walked out, coat and bag slung over her arm, still enjoying the heat as it worked to burn the last of the ice from her face and fingertips. She knew that her enjoyment of the pizza oven temp could only last as long as it took for her mouth to dry and her skin to start itching, but for the moment she loved the warmth as it settled under her turtleneck and around her freezing toes, because even though she'd hardly missed a winter in the city since her birth—excepting those blissful semesters in California—she still hated the cold.
Especially since the incident a couple years back...
"Yo, Beckett," Javier Esposito hailed her from the break room. "Starting off the morning a little late?"
She arched a brow at him as she approached, shucking off her gloves. "Oh, please."
Kevin Ryan smiled at her from his perch on one of the counter tops. "Yeah, you're almost keeping human time now."
"Shut up," she looked at Esposito as he snorted, then shoved the rest of a doughnut in his mouth. "Anymore of those left?"
He winced, very fakely. There was powder dusting his nose and chin. "Jeez, you know, if you'd only come sooner..."
"Stop screwing with me, Espo, and just give me my doughnut."
He smirked at her as he held out a folded napkin. She was itching to wipe it off his face, but she accepted his offering.
Instead, she switched topics. "Night shift pull anything in?" she asked, leaning against the counter opposite Frick and Frack.
Ryan shook his head, "Nothing exciting."
"Heard Lanie had an interesting night," Esposito said.
"Oh?" she looked at him.
"Yeah. Got called out on a report of a baby in a dumpster. Turns out..." he let that hang for a moment as he ate another doughnut. "Turns out, it was just a duck."
"Like, a duck, quack, quack?" Ryan asked.
"Like Donald Friggin' Duck." He pointed at him with sugar-coated fingers, then looked down, as if only just noticing they were attached to his hand. "Can you hand me a napkin, bro?" he said.
"Yeah, sure."
Beckett watched their exchange, shaking her head. "Sure Lanie was pleased."
"Yeah," Esposito said, wiping off his fingers. "Cop called at her home. Was absolutely convinced he had a dead kid. Didn't even believe her when she came down and told him what it was at first."
She ripped off a piece of doughnut and ate it. "Well, that's an interesting story, Espo, but how did you manage to hear it?" She was smirking now.
He colored. "She told me this morning."
Ryan snorted. "Of course she did."
"At the morgue." He looked at his partner. "Went down there to get the lab report on the Kissinger case."
"And you mock me," Beckett ate the rest of the doughnut.
"We are not back together."
"Uh huh," she pushed off the counter.
They followed her out of the break room and into the bull pen, still going back and forth on the Lanie issue. Beckett decided to leave them to it, draping her coat around her chair, then dropping into it. She pulled her paperwork from her bag and started leafing through it. She hadn't managed to finish it, an outcome she had never quite deluded herself into believing had been avoidable last night, but due date was looming and choices were dwindling. With a sigh, she pulled her pen from the little chalk-line body post-it/pencil holder thing Castle had given her awhile ago and set to work finalizing the incident reports.
Her phone rang as she was literally dotting an 'i'. "Beckett," she said, picking it up .
"Is this Detective Kate Beckett, 12th Precinct?" was the response. Male. Middle-aged. Bronx accent.
"Yes," she said, crossing a 't.'
"This is Brian Dobbs. I'm the director of operations at Sing Sing."
She paused her scribbling, interest snagged. Sing Sing was way outside her turf.
"I just got off the phone with the FBI," Dobbs continued. "They told me to call you. Got your contact info from the file."
"The FBI?" she repeated, now definitely interested. She put down her pen. "What file?"
"I'm sorry to have to tell you this," Dobbs said, "But earlier this morning Scott Dunn escaped."
Her breath caught in her throat. "What?" she asked, swallowing the lump, sure she'd heard it wrong. "There has to be some sort of mistake."
"Well, there was," he said. "That's how he escaped."
"Are you seriously making a joke with me?" she snapped. Ryan and Esposito looked at her, snapped out of conversation.
"No. I'm sorry, Detective."
She pressed three fingers against her temple. "How did this happen?"
"We're still sorting that out ourselves. I don't have any details for you, beyond the fact that he wasn't at roll call and no one's seen him since the morning."
Scott Dunn escaped.
Ryan and Esposito were on their feet now, heading toward her, and they stopped just beside her desk, waiting for her to share what was going on. She found herself wondering vaguely why they didn't just pick up the other phone.
"So, what, he just...disappeared?" she said. "Sing Sing is max security. How the hell could something like this happen?"
"Hey, Detective, don't shoot the messenger. We only just found out."
"I'm coming up there," she said, the decision made as she spoke it. She stood. "Tell the guards to expect us."
"Us?" he said.
"We'll call you back." She dropped the phone into its cradle, then ran her fingers through her hair, exhaling a long breath. She suddenly became conscious of her heart banging against her ribs. The ache was dull. She'd almost gone the morning without feeling it, or thinking about it.
"What was that about?" Esposito said.
She dropped her hands. Opened her mouth. Inhaled.
The phone rang again.
Blowing out the breath, she held up a finger, then grabbed the phone. "Beckett," she said.
"You heard?"
It'd been three years, but she knew Special Agent Jordan Shaw's voice when she heard it. "I heard," she replied.
"I assume you're already en route to Sing Sing?"
"Yes."
"I've got a few cases to wrap up here, but I'm taking the first flight down to the city tomorrow."
Under any other circumstance, she might have argued against it. But this was almost as personal to Shaw as it was to her. "I'll see you then," she said.
"Yep." And then she hung up. Beckett liked that about her. Short, to the point, all-business.
She put the phone down again.
"Okay, seriously," Esposito said. "What the hell is going on?"
She looked at him. "Scott Dunn escaped from prison this morning."
"Who is Scott Dunn?" Victoria Gates, Captain of the 12th Precinct, said.
Castle leaned against the wall, watching silently as Beckett handed Gates a file. Beckett was tense, angry, a whole world away from the woman he'd found on the couch and drawn back to bed this morning. He hadn't known what to make of her voice when she'd called him away from his daughter a half hour ago. His first, nightmarish thought was that something new had surfaced from her past in the scant hours they'd been apart, but when she'd told him what was going on, he wasn't quite sure this was any better (he was, in fact, pretty sure this wasn't any better).
"Dunn cut a swath through the city a few years ago," Beckett said, slipping a hand into her pocket. "Ben Conrad, Alex Peterman, Michelle Lewis, Sandra Keller, Gloria Rodriguez, he killed those five in as many days. He then kidnapped a federal agent and attempted to kill her entire squad, and me." It was amazing how casually she slipped that in there. He certainly didn't feel that casual about it. "Before New York, he was in Seattle. Killed five prostitutes and framed a local businessman named Keith Lewis for it before shooting him in the head. Lewis' death was ruled a suicide until our investigation."
Gates stood. "I remember this case now," she said. "You were the lead investigator. Wasn't he in contact with you several times over the course of his spree?"
"In a sense," her tone was hard, but Castle could hear the old bitterness in it. "He called to report his murders. He dared me to stop him, sent me little messages. Carved them into the bullets he shot his victims with. Dumped one of their bodies on my doorstep. That was just before he blew up my apartment." She paused, eyebrows pinching. "He left me homeless for months."
The Captain stared at her for a beat. Castle didn't remember how much of this had made it into the news and around the cop grapevine, but he got the feeling if any of it had, Gates didn't recall it.
"Sir," Beckett said, filling the silence, "Dunn didn't do it because he got spanked when he was six or because he hated his mother. He did it because he enjoyed it. He was diagnosed as a sociopath out West, did a stint at a psychiatric facility. This man is volatile and extremely dangerous, and he's been sitting in a box for three years."
"And now he's not," Gates sighed.
"I'm going up to Sing Sing," she continued. "The cavalry will be here tomorrow, but we've got to get the ball rolling as soon as possible."
"Detective," Gates held up a hand. "Do you honestly think I can let you lead this investigation?"
"Yes," a single hydrogen atom could fit in the space she'd left for compromise in her voice. "No one understands this guy like I do, and we don't have time to get someone else up to speed."
Gates studied her for a long moment, weighing invisible, golden scales. It seemed to drag on forever. Finally, she said. "Alright, Detective."
About three of the seven hundred muscles in Beckett's body relaxed, and then she left the room without another word.
Castle looked between Gates and Beckett's retreating form a few times, then got off the wall, pointed in the general direction of the door, and mumbled some sort of apology-goodbye before going through it.
"You guys ready?" Beckett asked without slowing.
"Yeah," Ryan said. He and Esposito had been sitting on a desk. They joined Castle in following her to the elevator. No one said anything as they waited for the car to arrive, nor as they walked inside it. Castle was sure all of them were remembering what had happened the last time they'd dealt with Scott Dunn, and he wondered what scene was playing out in their heads.
The detectives split ways at the bottom of the precinct steps, and Castle followed Beckett to her car, which they entered silently. He watched her as she slipped on her seat belt and keyed the ignition. His own little memory byte was looping in his brain. It'd been looping since she'd called.
Several minutes passed. He just kept on watching her as she backed the car and put it in drive.
"What?" she said finally, as they bumped over the exit. "You got a problem with me working this case too?"
"I didn't say anything," he couldn't stop the words, though he knew as he said them that they were gonna piss her off.
"You didn't have to, Castle."
Yep.
She wrenched the wheel violently to get between a van and a taxi, floating on the lane divide for a beat before passing another car. Someone honked. She responded in kind.
He switched tacts when she stopped to obey a light. "I'm just worried, Kate."
She glanced at him. Her face softened, though her eyes didn't. "Sorry," she said, looking back out the windshield. "Didn't mean to snap."
"Think he's halfway to Canada by now?" he asked.
"I don't know." She didn't look at him.
"Yeah," he said, leaning back in his seat. "I don't either."
She didn't reply.
The silence came back as she made her way onto FDR, and there it settled, as heavy as the morning fog. Between it and the images running through his head, he could feel the air condensing to lead in his lungs. Finally, he cracked, "I just keep seeing it."
Her gaze flicked to his. Went back to the road. "What?" she said.
"That moment when I was standing outside your building. When I watched it blow."
She shifted.
"Did I ever tell you how scared I was?"
Her throat bobbed as she swallowed. "Castle, just...just don't, alright?"
"Okay," he said.
The silence returned, and, this time, it would be here to stay. He directed his gaze out the window, feeling cold and hollow. He wished she'd let him touch her.
And then he was surprised to hear her voice again, low and dangerously human. "I keep seeing it too," she said. "That moment when the world fell in around me, when I went deaf and blind from the blast. I think I blacked out for a minute, and when I woke up...that first second, I thought I was dead, and the next I realized I wasn't, but I'd lost my home, and half my world was burning."
He looked at her, but whatever part of her soul had spoken had already retreated behind the armor, and she wasn't looking at him.
So he let it go.
And then the silence really did settle between them. Like something heavy and dark.
A guy in a Department of Corrections jacket met them at the gates. He introduced himself as Brian Dobbs, then led them into the facility. Esposito and Ryan fell in step just behind the group, allowing Beckett to have her space in the lead. Even Castle kept slightly behind her. She was angry. She was hiding it, but she was angry.
"What happened to Pollman?" she asked. Pollman was the former director of Sing Sing. He remembered her weekly calls to him, back when she'd been trying to crack Hal Lockwood. That seemed like a long time ago.
"He retired," Dobbs said. "You knew each other?"
"Yeah," she said. Her face revealed nothing of the history there. "So tell me what you know."
He ushered them into a closet some janitor had obviously abandoned—his office, apparently—then reached for one of the folders on his desk. "At 6:23 this morning," he said, "we carried out a transfer order from..." he flipped the folder open, "the Metropolitan Correctional Center for one of our inmates, Marshall Franco. A couple uniforms arrived, and we sent them and Franco on his merry way with one of my guards."
"But it wasn't Franco," Beckett said.
"No," he shook his head. "Franco's currently chilling in Block D."
"Was the transfer order legitimate?"
"Yes," he handed her one of the papers in the folder, which she glanced at. "I signed it myself. Someone went in and switched Franco's ID info with Dunn's."
Dunn's accomplice. He could almost hear the thought flashing through all their heads at once.
She took a moment to digest that. In her silence, Castle opened his mouth, "When did you notice the glitch?"
"8:05."
"I assume you tried raising the guard?" Beckett asked.
"Yeah. No reply."
"Do you have the information from the officers who picked him up?"
"Yeah," he said, then grabbed another paper from his folder, which he held out to her. He pointed at something on it. "Names and badge numbers, right here."
"And the guard?"
"Right below that."
"May I?" she took the page, then immediately turned. "Ryan?"
"On it," he took it. He made brief eye contact with Esposito before moving past him and into the hallway, cell already out.
"Look, Detective," Dobbs said. "I know this guard— David Sharp. He's good people."
"I'm sorry, but we can't just take your word for it.." Beckett looked at him again, "Do we have GPS on the truck used to transport?"
He just looked at her. "I have no idea."
"Well, find out," she exhaled. "I'd like to talk to whoever signed him over."
Dobbs nodded. He had that look on his face like he'd just spent several hours with her in the box. "That would be Officer Zehner," he swiped at his thinning hair. "I'll call him in."
"Okay," she turned. "Esposito, track down that car. Castle and I will talk to Zehner."
He nodded, "Done."
"Okay," she murmured that to herself, looked at Dobbs again. "Have Zehner meet us at your break room. Come on, Castle." She swept out of the little broom closet then, looking for all intents and purposes like she needed some air. Castle followed her, looking worried but saying nothing. Esposito wondered how long that would last.
And then it was suddenly just the two of them standing there. "I'm going to buzz Zehner," Dobbs said. "You just need the vehicle information?"
"Yeah," he said. "Whatever you've got."
Five minutes later, he was out in the hall, phone pressed to his ear, fresh print-out in hand, listening to a grainy-ass version of what sounded like "Good Morning Starshine" as he waited for the insurance people to pick up. He wondered if this song was appropriate for anyone who had to call insurance people, let alone him.
Gliddy glup gloopy nibby nabby noopy la la la...
Ryan was about a yard away, muttering "Uh huhs" into the phone as he scribbled down notes. Then he said his thanks, clicked off, and walked over. "Okay, so, Central can't raise Officer Falk or Reyes. They haven't been seen or heard from since they left to make the transfer. I had them run our guard—David Sharp—he's clean."
Esposito looked at Ryan.
Tooby ooby walla...
"You thinking what I'm thinking, bro?"
"Yeah," Ryan said. "I just hope we're wrong."
The little strip mall parking lot had already been emptied out by the time they got there. Uniforms were parked at the entrances, four cars. It seemed like a lot of them. Beckett found herself wondering why so many had come as she rolled past them and parked in the middle of the lot. Esposito's car stopped next to hers, and they both got out at the same time. She stared straight ahead, at the unmarked van. GPS had led them here.
As she stood there, she thought about Scott Dunn, that cocky sonofabitch. They were barely ten minutes away from the prison, yet here they'd parked, in a strip mall parking lot four yards away from a Starbucks.
Everything was still in the freezing air, surreally so, like she was standing in a photograph. Suddenly, it occurred to her that everyone was watching her, waiting for her to do something. So she took a breath and strode forward, trying to push away thoughts of what she was about to find.
A uniform met her halfway to the van.
"You found it?" she asked, not stopping.
"Yeah," he said. "Got your call, found the van, checked the plates."
"You look inside?" she tightened her leather gloves around her fingers.
"No, ma' — Detective." Any other day, his correction might have made her smile. "Heard your message loud and clear."
"Thank you." And then they were at the van. She knew no one was inside anymore, but her hand was hovering a few inches away from her gun, which was loose in its holster, just in case. She brushed eyes with Castle before looking through the passenger side door. She saw nothing. The windows were tinted black.
"Castle," she said, gesturing for him to get behind her. He obeyed without protest and then she nodded at Esposito and Ryan, who had positioned themselves at the back of the van. They all drew at once, and then she opened the door.
"Oh jeez," she muttered automatically, looking away. It didn't make any difference; the scene had seared across her vision at first glance. Behind her, either Castle or the uniform made some sort of noise, but she didn't glance over to see which.
Instead, she looked again.
And the eye looked back, milky white and staring, suspended in its blood-drenched socket like a ping-pong ball. The other eye was gone, along with half the face. That was mashed into pulp and splattered all over the car interior. She could see little bits of brain matter on the dash. What looked like bone bits. Tufts of hair. His body was leaning back in the seat, one hand still resting on the wheel, fingers caught in it.
She swallowed. Remembered she was still holding her pistol. Holstered it.
He was wearing a uniform. Service belt, gun still in it. He hadn't had time to...
"Beckett?" Ryan said. Her thought shattered like glass.
"Yeah?" she looked over, jaw set.
"Better come."
Steeling herself, she walked to him. Looked in the van.
Again she saw the uniform, the brass buttons, the badge. Her gaze crawled up the bloody mess of his chest, up to his face. No holes. He hadn't been shot there. He'd been shot in the chest. And his eyes were staring right through her, at that same cold and terrifying Nothing she'd just seen in the driver's eye, that she'd seen in a hundred corpses, that she'd almost come to drown in herself.
She swallowed again, feeling her heart pound, feeling it ache with each beat, suddenly hot despite the cold. Trying to force herself back into control, she refocused on his face, but despite herself her gaze slid down, to stop on the ragged little holes in his uniform. She studied them with morbid fascination, a thousand horrible little nightmares squirming around her guts. It was a full twenty seconds before she noticed his gun wasn't in his holster.
And then she snapped out of it.
"Call Lanie," she said, to whoever was behind her. "Get her down here. They shouldn't be out here like this."
She could feel her detectives' eyes on her back. If they thought about saying anything, they didn't, and she heard one of them break away to do her bidding.
"How many up front?" Esposito asked.
"Just one," she said. "The other cop." Her voice was tempered steel as she stared at the body in front of her. He was just a kid.
"Beckett," Castle's voice was in her ear. She could hear the concern in it, over the roar in her ears, but that was the last thing in the world she wanted from him.
"I'm fine," she murmured the usual line, then turned away to look at Esposito. "Espo, we've gotta set up a canvas. Talk to everyone who started their shift around the time this van was parked. I'll be there to help in a minute." She turned back to the body then, and a name popped into her head, like she was glancing into an old yearbook. The photo on Ryan's phone. "Brad Falk," she said.
Castle stared at her as if she'd said it in Russian. "What?"
"That's his name," she clarified. "This is Officer Brad Falk. And the man in the driver's seat is Officer Mathew Reyes." Beckett glanced down at Falk again, at his wide, staring, dead eyes, and was spooked suddenly, like someone had grabbed her back with a chilly hand. She quickly stepped away, kept walking until she could no longer see into the van, and Castle followed her. Then she stopped and watched Ryan talk on his phone, not really seeing him. Something was wrong with this picture. "Where's the guard?" she wondered aloud.
Castle blinked, catching her meaning without her having said it. "You thinking he's the accomplice?"
She met his gaze. "I think I want to know where he is."
The low-rise slouched sullenly against the charcoal clouds, swathed by cracked concrete and a few wispy trees. It glared down at them as Beckett rolled to a stop at the curb and killed the engine, and she glared back, the apartment number repeating like some long, generic kick loop in her head. The building David Sharp had listed as his address had probably been cheap when it'd been new in the 70s, as cheap as it was now, and she knew before she led Castle and the uniforms up to and through the doors that cam footage wouldn't be a possibility for this place. There was no door man.
The complex smelled vaguely like pine sol and musk as they made their way toward the stairs. Beckett kept seeing the cops in the van. Kept seeing the blood doused seats. Kept seeing Dunn, and wondering which one he'd killed, and if he'd smiled when he'd done it, the way he'd smiled at her when she'd testified against him, like this was all some private joke with a punchline he'd been savoring for years.
She fell back into reality as she opened the second floor door, scanning the hallway for number 20. Finding 29, she strode forward, knowing her mark was around the corner, at the end of the hall.
She'd made it most of the way there before she noticed the splintered frame, and all at once she realized what she was about to find. For no reason, Castle's words on the drive up to Ossining suddenly popped into her head, even as she gestured Officers Blake and Slocum into position around the door.
Dunn wasn't halfway to Canada.
She counted down with her fingers. Nodded at Blake.
He was still in New York, and he was only just getting started.
She gritted her teeth. Burst through the door.