Wow. Wow I mean... wow! The response was amazing! You have no idea how happy I was to see all the notifications for the alerts and the favs really, I'm honored. Love you all! As usual, thanks to Alex for the beta reading. This story wouldn't exist without you. *sends love and hugs from Italy*
Oh, for anyone who might be worried this will turn into something similar to Twilight, don't worry. I didn't like the books and despised the movies. I'm an Underworld kind of girl. Just wait until I get to re-write Vampire Weekend...
Chapter 1
Detective Kate Beckett had just got out of bed when her phone buzzed on the kitchen counter. Still a little groggy from the long sleep, she picked it up and answered. "Beckett." her voice drowsy and slightly raspy, so she cleared her throat in the attempt to sound more awake, but no matter how she tried, the day had been rough, she hadn't slept well and coming out of the haze was hard that morning.
"Yo, boss. We've got a fresh one. Sun's going down and safety zone starts in twenty minutes, need a ride?"
She yawned a no, dragged and slurred, as Detective Esposito, one of the two other detectives in her team, told her the address of the murder scene. She wrote it down on a piece of scrap paper she found near the fridge and sighed, waiting for the coffee to be ready. "K, I'll get there as soon as the sun goes down. Ryan?"
"On his way here. Looks like one you'll like."
She groaned. "Espo, the day I'll like a homicide, sunlight won't burn vampires. Give me thirty minutes."
She closed the call and let the phone fall unceremoniously on the counter. "Still twenty minutes to safety zone," she mumbled running her fingers through her hair, pushing it away from her eyes. She hated spring and summer; long days, short nights and hours blocked inside buildings with vampire-friendly windows. Long live autumn and winter, with their long nights, days with clouds thick enough she could go out without fearing getting a third degree sunburn in ten minutes or less. Sometimes she envied werewolves. Then she remembered their biology and all the issues that came with their extremely painful transformation and she was happy with being a bloodsucker, as people usually called vampires. After all, her main issue was the sun, taking the iron pills to control the anemia had never been a problem.
Then there was the mistrust that humans usually reserved for her, but she had got over that when she was a kid. Immortals were a minority, and they were treated as such. She had been lucky to be accepted the way she was when she applied for police academy and had actually built herself a career in the force. She knew other vampires had been subject of mobbing and had been pushed into resigning from their position or endure the oppression, but it wasn't her case. Her boss at least was very open to immortal beings and while she was the only immortal at the precinct, no one had ever tried to hurt her. They had never made her feel unwelcome and she was grateful for that. Maybe they were just plain scared of her heightened senses and strength, but no one had ever been offensive in her regards.
Anyway, she didn't bother. There were more important things in her life. One of them was solving this case, or at least getting to work on it before the sun rose. She didn't want to get caught out of safety zone like two weeks before so she quickly showered and got dressed, finishing with the makeup just in time for the beginning of vampiric safety zone. Time to get the show on the road.
She parked the car half a block away from the scene and walked to the building. The uniform stationed at the main entrance told her to go to the penthouse. Right outside the elevator there was a small crowd of agents, both uniforms and plain clothes, and CSU investigators with white tyvek overalls on. Esposito, the second in command in her team, waved as soon as he spotted her in the corridor. "Yo Beckett, come here. The scene is down this hallway."
Beckett followed him, with Ryan in two, and he showed them in, the body of a woman laid on a table in the dining room, covered in a mound of rose petals that preserved some of her modesty. A rare, thoughtful act from the murdered. Two brightly colored sunflowers covered her eyes. She knelt beside the table.
"Who are you?" she asked aloud, more to herself than to any other person in the room.
The Hispanic detective filled her in as they walked towards the apartment of the victim. "Allison Tisdale, twenty four, grad student at NYU, part of the social work program."
Kate looked around. "Nice place for a social worker."
"Daddy's money..." mused Ryan, who stood beside Esposito checking the facts he himself had gathered during canvassing as he continued exposing what they knew about their victim.
"Neighbors called to complain for the loud music and when she didn't answer they had the super check up."
Unconsciously, she bit her lower lip, deeply lost in her thoughts. She looked around and noticed how only the four coordinate chairs looked out of place, scattered around the room instead of being lined up at each side of the table, while the rest of the house looked in pristine condition. Not a dust bunny, not a pillow off the couch. Nothing.
"No signs of struggle. He knew her."
Suddenly, a memory sparked; she had seen that scene before, she just needed to remember where.
In that moment, doctor Lanie Parish, the medical examiner that usually followed their cases, arrived with her bag of tools in tow. The took a quick look around and, sassy as always, made one of her trademark sarcastic statements that made people cringe, considering they were in front of a dead body. "Even bought her flowers. Who says romance is dead?"
She stood up. "I do," replied Kate, still looking at the victim. "Every Saturday night."
"Well, lipstick wouldn't hurt."
Beckett shook her head and went back to the victim laying in front of her. "Just sayin'!"
Shaking her head, she took the conversation back to the original topic. "So what did he give her beside the flowers?"
"Two shots to the chest. Small caliber."
The detective started pacing around the table, arms crossed, concentrated on her task. Everyone stood silent, Lanie kept doing her job, taking pictures of the body and slowly working around the rose petals to see if there were more interesting things on the body.
"Does this look familiar to anyone?"
Lanie, Esposito and Ryan shrugged their shoulders. "No but I'm not one for the freaky ones. Just give me an open and closed case so I can make my job and go home and I'm a happy man."
"Yeah well… freaky ones are more interesting. They require more, they reveal more. Look at how the scene was prepared: she's covered, modestly."
"So?" asked Ryan.
"So despite all the effort to make it look like it, you won't find any evidence of sexual abuse." It was a statement. She was sure of it.
"And you get that only by looking at the body?"
She nodded. "Yes and the fact that I've seen this before."
"You… have seen this before? Where?" still Ryan. Now the whole gang was looking at her, as if they had just seen a ghost.
"Roses on the body, sunflowers on the eyes…" she waited for them to reply. "Don't you guys read?"
Still no answer, just shrugged shoulders and raised eyebrows. She huffed in annoyance. Shaking her head, she stood up. "Ryan, locate Richard Castle. We need to talk to him."
Not that far, on the rooftop of the skyscraper where Black Pawn held its offices, the most talked party of the month in New York was taking place; alcohol flowing in rivers, paparazzi flashing their cameras everywhere, women showing their boobs in every corner hoping for him to sign them. Richard Castle had released another book and, as usual, it was more a posh party for brainless gold diggers than a chance to celebrate the fact that he had just written a new book. And of course there was his ex-wife tailing him as he tried to have some fun for the first time in weeks. Spoilsports.
"You just had to kill him, didn't you?" she asked, putting up a fake smile for a photograph with him.
"Are you asking me as my publisher or as my bloodsucking ex-wife?" he grumbled as the photographer walked away from them.
"You're lucky I'm not a real vampire or your blood would be in my Bloody Mary for real." she quipped. "Couldn't you just give him a nice retirement plan? Cripple him? Have him join the damn circus? You killed the golden goose. Rick, are you even listening to me?"
Another grunt. He grabbed a chalice of champagne and turned towards the bar, looking for his mother and daughter. "Yes, I'm listening. Now, can I have some fun and enjoy my party? Derrick wasn't the golden goose, I am!" He was finding it hard to keep up the appearances with Gina, she was being a bitch about it and only because they had just signed the divorce papers. "I've written other best sellers before. I can write a new one."
His ex wife held his glass while he signed an autograph to a fan. "Oh my dear Richard Castle… does all this grumpy attitude come from the fact that you haven't written a single line in months and your book was due nine weeks ago?"
"That's absolutely not true," he growled. "And who told you that?" The contents of his chalice were downed in one single, thirsty gulp and it landed on the tray of a waiter passing by.
"I have my sources. Now, do I have to threaten to get your advance back to get you out of your bad case of writer's block?"
"I'm not blocked!" He exclaimed, suddenly defensive.
"You better. If I don't see a manuscript on my desk in the next three weeks, Black Pawn is prepared to take actions against you. Your last advance was pretty consistent, you know."
The sly smile on her face made him find the perfect comeback in less than a moment. "I've spent it divorcing you. You already have it."
With that he left and strode towards the bar. The barman looked up and him waiting for his orders. "Scotch, on the rocks." he asked. There was a small group of champagne flute beside him, he took one and handed it to his daughter, who was sitting at his right. The teenager was scribbling annotations on a notebook, studying.
"No Dad, thank you. I'm still fifteen, remember?"
"You're an old soul." He downed his drink and the one he had grabbed for her.
"Still, but my soul can wait. And you shouldn't drink that much Dad. I know you can't get drunk but they haven't done enough studies on the result of alcohol abuse on werewolves."
Castle snapped, shoving the tumbler and the flute on the counter with more force than required. The crystal of the flute cracked in three points, breaking it. "Alexis!"
The redhead shrugged her shoulders. "What Dad? It's not like someone wants to hear our discussions!"
He looked around and she was right; there was nobody around, close enough to hear them and those who were had something better to think about than eavesdropping his conversation with his daughter. Looking around, he spotted his mother being her usual self while chatting with a distinguished man about her age, who appeared to be quite engrossed in the conversation. He chuckled. Martha Rogers was hard to ignore and could charm her way into every conversation if she spotted a good prey.
"Shouldn't you be having fun like anyone else in the room?" he asked Alexis.
The teenager looked up from her schoolbooks. "Shouldn't you be having fun? It's your party after all."
"Just another boring release party to add to the list. That's why I killed Derrick: I didn't have fun anymore! I knew everything that was going to happen in each scene, writing his character and his adventures had become like writing the grocery list. There were no more surprises, so predictable! Just like the questions at these parties! How do you do that? Where do you get your ideas? Can you sign my chest?" he mocked the tragically familiar annoying voice of some of his fans. "It became stale like twenty parties ago. I only someone would come up at me and ask me something new."
Alexis was about to reply when she noticed the fake, strained smile on his face disappear. He twisted his head from side to side, sniffling the air. A waft of cherry-scented air filled his nostrils, capturing his attention. Someone that wasn't in the room before was approaching.
"Mr. Castle?"
He turned around, pen in hand. "Where would you like it?" he said, a knee jerk reaction her had developed after twenty years of release parties and signing sessions, before the woman with the scented conditioner raised her hand and flashed her police badge.
"Detective Kate Beckett, NYPD, we need to talk about a murder that took place tonight."
Richard Castle, self-proclaimed wordsmith, was at A loss for words. The woman in front of him was so beautiful he was blocked. He couldn't speak, he could barely breathe. He jumped when Alexis sneaked her arms around his shoulders and took the pen from his hand. "That's new."
It had been a long time since Richard Castle had sat in an interrogation room. And it had never been on the suspect's side.
He didn't exactly know what was going on, only that someone had died and the PD wanted to question him for some reason. Whatever it was, he had an alibi for that night anyway, so he was calm and composed, a tad bored and definitely intrigued by this Detective Beckett. Beautiful woman though a silent one. During the short trip from Black Pawn to the 12th Precinct, or at least he thought it was the 12th, they hadn't spoken much. He had tried to gather more information about this murder, but her lips were sealed shut about it.
So he waited for any of the detectives he had seen as she had walked him through the homicide division. And while he waited, he tried to conjure every possible motive the police might have to drag him away from his launch party and put him in that room alone. But above all, he was kind of annoyed by the fact that they had placed him there all alone for the past forty five minutes.
He wondered what they were doing on the other side of the see-through mirror so he remained silent and listened closely to his surroundings. A human couldn't probably hear much outside those walls, but an immortal like him could listen way beyond. He could hear them talking clearly, deciding what to do with him. He could hear three male voices in the adjacent room, one he had heard talking to Detective Beckett when they had arrived, but the other two were completely unknown to him. He understood though, by the tone of their discussion, that one of the voices belonged to a superior officer, probably the captain. Beyond that, muffled by the walls and the distance, he could hear the people in the bullpen bustling around, doing their jobs and the background traffic noise he always heard everywhere. He was so used to it he had to concentrate to actually listen to it.
Beyond the fine ears, his sense of smell was heightened too. On the way there he had picked up many different scents, from the cheap motor oil that reigned in the parking lot to the strong odor of antibacterial detergent used to clean the room he was sitting in. Not to mention the acrid smell of stale sweat, urine and God knows what else that came from the detention room on the first floor. They hadn't gone near there, but the horrid smell had washed over him like a wave. He had to suppress his gag reflex to not throw up in the middle of the hall.
So he waited, patiently, watching as the battery of his phone dropped while he played Tetris on his phone to kill time, until he heard the sound of high heels approaching the door. He quickly closed his phone and pushed it back in his pocket, then laid his hands on the table. The door opened and Detective Beckett appeared in the frame, a thick file in hand.
"Mister Castle… quite a rap sheet for a best-selling author: disorderly conduct resisting arrest… it says you stole a police horse and that you were naked at the time."
"Actually, I only borrowed it and for the nakedness part… it was spring." Lamest joke ever, but it helped dissolve a little bit of tension. There was something in his woman that kept him on his toes, and he wasn't sure if liked it or hated it.
"And every time the charges have been dropped," she stated, sitting down in front of him.
He shrugged his shoulders. "What can I say, the mayor's a fan but if it makes you feel better, I'd be happy to let you spank me."
The roll of her eyes spoke volumes about what she thought about him being a jerk. Her words just confirmed it.
"Mister Castle, this whole bad boy charm thing… it only works with bimbettes and celebutantes. Me, I work for a living so this gives you two options: you're either the person that makes my life easier or the person that makes my life harder and believe me, you don't want to be the latter."
"'K". was his only reply.
Detective Beckett took a photo out of the folder, the picture of a woman. "Allison Tisdale, daughter of Jonathan Tisdale."
"She's cute," he added.
Kate hardly suppressed a groan. "She's dead. Have you met her? Book launch party, signing session, charity event… anywhere."
That was a weird question. "I might have but… neither her name or her face ring a bell, I don't think so. I'm usually good with faces and unfortunately she doesn't remind me of anything."
One down, another one to go. "What about this guy? Marvin Fisk small claims lawyer."
He tried to bite his tongue but couldn't stop himself, really. "Usually my claims tend to be on the large side…"
Another eye-roll and this time it came with a soft yet steady groan of annoyance. The sudden instinct to bite his neck off surged in her veins and she had to fight it back as she ran the tip of her tongue on her pointy canine teeth that apparently ached to pierce his skin. She hated that feeling, that instinct to bite that came with her condition, that hunger for blood she had ever since she could remember, and how it popped up at random moments of her life, most of all when she was in a foul mood. Like in that very moment.
"What's this got to do with me?" he asked.
"Fisk was found murdered two weeks ago in his office. We didn't put it all together until we found Allison Tisdale crime scene earlier this evening." She put a photo of the scene in front of him.
From his jolt and slightly horrified grin that twisted his face for the briefest moment she knew he wasn't the killer. She had already checked his alibi with his daughter, mother and publisher, that detail was just for personal satisfaction.
"That's Flowers For Your Grave!" he exclaimed.
She placed another photo from a murder that had happened about a week earlier. "And this how we found Fisk, straight out of Hell Hath No Fury. You seem to have a deranged fan."
Castle took the pictures in his hands and looked at them, both fascinated and disgusted. "You don't look deranged to me," he quipped, never looking away from the pictures.
Beckett frowned. "What are you talking about?"
"Flowers For Your Grave and Hell Hath No Fury? Those are… only hard core Castle groupies have read them, they're not my best books. You must have read them a couple of times to make the connections between the murders and my books."
She decided to ignore his tasteless joke and go on, although she felt the sudden need to hurt him. "Do any of your groupies write you fan mail?" He nodded. "Disturbing letters?"
"All my fanmail is disturbing, it's an occupational hazard. I can have it delivered here in a couple of hours, if you can wait."
"Good, because sometimes in cases like this we find out that the murderer tried to reach out to the…"
"...subject of his obsession," he completed her sentence. "I've got quite an extensive knowledge of psychopathic behavior. Another occupational hazard. Do you think I could keep the pictures?"
Again, the instinct to bite rose. Instead of pushing her fangs in his neck though, she bit down her tongue, drawing a small drop of blood that managed to escape the tiny wound before it closed by itself in the span of a second. The coppery scent didn't escape his extremely sensitive sense of smell.
"Why?" she asked, trying to sound as calm as possible.
"You know, I have a little poker ring and we're going to meet tomorrow night. It's mostly composed of mystery writers like Cannel, Patterson… this is like the Holy Grail for mystery writers like us! It's a badge of honor!"
That was the last straw. She could bear his disrespectful manners towards her, but towards the victims? No way. She stood up, fast enough to make him jump a little bit in his seat and banged her hands on the table before leaning forwards towards him. She saw him holding his breath and move back a little bit; finally a sign of worry for his situation, his whole cocky attitude trembled a little bit.
"People are dead Mister Castle. If you're going to joke about it, you can get the hell out of here now, since you're not being helpful."
He remained silent for a moment, before smiling slyly. "I didn't ask for the bodies, just the pictures."
The look on his face made her want to slap him. "I think we're done here."