Finding Her Hero
Chapter 2
"Castle, are you sure you want to come with me to the precinct today?" Kate inquired. "I can always come back at lunch to check on you and fill you in if we get another case."
"I'm sure. The voice to text program I was trying to use, seems to be mixing me up with Glortch from Planet Mumble. With one hand, I'd spend more time fixing the gibberish on the page than crafting anything substantial. And I may be able to employ any fantasies Ryan and Esposito spin about their encounter with Lockwood, as dialogue for their counterparts at the 23rd Precinct. We should stop on the way and pick up some doughnuts. Espo is always more voluble under the influence of powdered sugar."
"I'm not sure I want him to mouth off any more than he already does, but the bullpen would enjoy a snack that is less than a day old. We can get an assortment at Hole Hospitality," Kate suggested.
The name of the pastry vendor sent images rushing through Castle's head and blood rushing elsewhere. He swallowed. "Sounds good."
Ryan was just putting down his phone as Kate and Castle got off the elevator. "Hey, Castle! How's the hand?" Without waiting for an answer, he held up a sticky note with an address on it. "Beckett, body just dropped, and I do mean dropped."
Kate stared down at the dead woman on the sidewalk. Drying blood surrounded her on the pavement, and her limbs were at impossible angles. Lanie knelt by the corpse inserting a temperature probe. "I guess I don't have to ask the cause of death. She must have taken a hell of a plunge," Kate remarked, looking up at the edifice that towered above them.
"She took a plunge, all right," Lanie agreed, "but it wasn't the cause of death. She was stabbed, severing her aorta. From the angle at which she fell, she was pushed or thrown. It would have taken a lot of muscle to penetrate her chest that way and to lift the body, so our killer was probably a man."
"Wow! Some angry guy!" Castle exclaimed.
"Or a crazy one," Kate responded, turning to Ryan and Esposito. "You two set up a canvass. Castle and I will try to locate the stabbing zone." Entering the lobby of the building, she waved Castle toward the elevator. "Might as well start at the top and work down."
Castle's eyes swept from the curve of her lips to the firmness of her thighs. "A strategy I've always favored."
As Rick and Kate emerged from the door that led to the roof from a final flight of stairs, she spotted splatters of reddish brown on gravel topping the surface. She thrust out her arm to keep Castle from walking any farther. "This is it. Palming her radio, she called in uniformed cops to secure the scene and requested the services of CSU.
"That is a lot of blood," Castle observed. "With a spray like that, the killer had to get some of it on him."
"You're right," Kate agreed. "The rough surface up here won't hold shoe prints well, but there might be signs of it that will show up on the stairs. We'll have to check for security cameras too. With luck, there'll be some video. And the boys' canvass should turn up something. Even in New York, a man with blood all over him would have been noticed."
"Unless our killer cleaned up. When we got off the elevator to climb the remainder of the way up here, I noticed restroom signs. They probably have them on every floor And, if our perp works in the building, he might have had spare clothes stowed somewhere."
"You're right, Castle," Kate agreed. "But once we get CSU up here with some luminol to light up whatever blood trail there is, we'll have a better idea of where our killer went and maybe even what he did."
Mellie replaced her barbell in its rack. Sweat covered her body, but she felt better. Her anger had not cooled in the fountain of blood or seeing the toy-like image of Sheila's body on the pavement below the roof of the building where she'd drawn her last faithless breath. But a good workout helped Mellie smooth out.
She'd come back from the gym that morning craving a protein boost and hoping to find her partner in the kitchen. But Sheila wasn't there. It seemed like she had hardly been there for a long time. Even when her beautiful body was present in the apartment they shared, her mind wasn't. She was always mentally reviewing sales figures or planning some new deal.
Sheila had missed Mellie's match the night before, too. It had been the big one, for all the marbles. And Mellie had been victorious, but she'd had to celebrate her win alone. She hated being alone. It didn't use to be that way. When she and Sheila had met at the club, there had been an instant connection. Within a week they'd become almost inseparable. Mellie had trained, and Sheila toiled at her desk, but they'd spent as much time together as they could. Sheila kept a quilt in her office, which she'd spread on the gritty texture of the roof. They'd shared meals and other pleasures there, under the sun and even sometimes under the stars. But things had changed, Sheila started skipping breakfast and working through lunch. If she spent any time on the roof with Mellie, it was usually to vape, a habit Mellie despised.
That morning Mellie decided she'd bring Sheila breakfast. Instead of downing her energy shake, she'd made fresh carob bread and grabbed a knife to cut it and a couple of bottles of juice. She'd put them in a tote and headed to Sheila's office. There had to be a way her partner could cram that small a meal into her schedule.
Sheila had urged Mellie up to the roof but didn't bring the quilt. "Look, Mellie," she said, "I didn't want to embarrass either one of us in front of my colleagues, but I just can't have you doing this. I'm competing with all those men down there for a vice presidency. You know as well as I do, maybe better, than a woman needs to work twice as hard as a man to be seen as half as good. And to have you come here with food, it makes it look like I'm slacking off. You need to keep your distance."
Mellie had understood. She could have waited. She'd asked Sheila when things would get back to normal. But Sheila just shook her head and said that if she got the promotion, she'd be even busier, and if she didn't, she'd have to keep working hard to prepare herself to snag the next one. She wasn't going to have as much room in her life for Mellie anymore.
Mellie barely remembered what came next. She'd grabbed the knife from her tote and plunged it into Sheila's chest. Sheila's blood mingled with the red haze obscuring Mellie's sight as she tossed the useless body away. She took the stairs, not only from the roof but all the way down, leaving the building by a side door to an alley. Somehow, Mellie made her way to the gym, stumbling into the shower before retrieving work out clothes from her locker. Drawing strength from the depths of her wounded soul, she easily pressed the most massive weight she'd ever lifted, over her head.
