Kate could smell it in the hallway and there was no mistaking the source of that delicious odor. Her stomach growled in protest, a very persistent reminder of the fact that she hadn't had any breakfast yet. The cup of coffee that she had gotten on her way to Tribeca not counting, of course. With a sigh, she knocked on the door and waited ten, maybe twenty seconds until she saw exactly what she had been expecting after waking him with her call an hour ago: Castle, wearing a blue apron with the words Kiss the cook stitched onto it in large, golden letters, a big, quite charming smile on his lips and a plate with an enticingly golden waffle in his right hand, complete with icing sugar, a melted marshmallow and chocolate spread. This guy had too much time on his hands and too many weird ideas in his head. Seriously.

"Gooooood morning to you", he said with that boyish grin of his and waved the plate in front of her nose teasingly. The smell was enough to let her stomach give another one of its dissatisfied rumbles, which Castle acknowledged with a "Somebody's hungry", but as much as she would have liked to taste that weird pile of sweetness, now wasn't the time. It was far too early for … well, whatever that was.

"Morning, Castle", she answered with a slight smile of her own and waved at Alexis, who was sitting at the kitchen counter with her head in a book and an untouched waffle à la Castle next to her. "Ready for your daily dose of murder?"

She could have sworn that he lit up like a Christmas tree for a fraction of a second, but then his face turned serious and he grumbled: "And here I thought you came by because word had gotten out about my fantastic smoffles."

Smoffles… Smoffles?! Sometimes she didn't know whether to kick or to hug him, so she decided to stay neutral as she had done so many times since they had begun working together (or what their unusual partnership could be called) and just shook her head. "Sorry, no … uhm… smoffles. But I still think you're going to enjoy this case. It has two shocked paramedics, an outdoor composting bin AND a GPS tracker." Castle's confusion was worth every second she had spent on preparing her entrance after she had gotten the call concerning the murder on the Upper East Side, and she savored the expression on his face for a few heartbeats longer than necessary. Long enough for Esposito to catch up with her and add in a dramatic tone of voice: "And a body. Not to forget the battered body of a young woman."

This time, the Christmas tree was unmistakable. "I'll be right with you", Castle promised, handed her the waffle and disappeared inside the apartment.

"Hey, is that a smoffle?", she heard Ryan's voice and turned around to face her colleague, who stared at Castle's creation with hungry eyes. Apparently she wasn't the only one who hadn't had time for breakfast.

"Help yourself", she replied with an inviting gesture and couldn't help but grin at Esposito's disgusted expression followed by a: "Dude, really? At seven in the morning?"

Ryan's: "What?! I'm starving!" was almost unintelligible due to the large chunk of waffle… smoffle… in his mouth and actually made her chuckle. After everything they had been through, it was good to know that they could still make her day even at such an ungodly hour and on their way to a new murder scene.

CCCCC

As they arrived at the address, the two paramedics who had made the call were already waiting for them. The one to the left couldn't have been at this job for too long judging by his young age, and considering that he was still shaking and pale as the moon after almost two hours had gone by, he probably wasn't that experienced either. The other one was older and had maybe three or four years on Kate, and he was not a happy camper. His expression was that of a man used to do something – save lives, for instance – instead of sitting on a staircase with a cigarette in his hand and waiting. Maybe that was just his way of dealing with the macabre find, Kate mused as she approached the pair with Castle on her heels like a well-trained puppy. One of these days I will have to teach him some tricks.

"Good morning", she said with something she hoped would be regarded as an encouraging smile. "Are you the ones who…"

Kate didn't get to finish the sentence, because the older paramedic, Grumpy, interrupted her halfway with a sigh. "Yeah, that would be us. So could you please ask us whatever you need to ask us, so we can get on with our job?"

Castle gave an almost inaudible snort and she exchanged quick looks with him. No, I don't like this guy either. But we are professionals. Or at least I am. She had no idea whether he understood any of the thoughts she was trying to convey through her gaze, but he didn't make any other sounds, so he probably got the message.

"Alright, Mr. … Isaacs, is that right?", she asked after checking out his name tag and offered him a hand. He took it without getting up, which seemed to hint either missing respect or an agitated state he was trying to hide.

"Call me Sam", he muttered after a few seconds. Then he looked at his partner and continued: "And that's Tomaz." Tomaz looked up at hearing his name and it wasn't hard for Kate to discover the deep shock inside his eyes. He opened his mouth as if to say something, but then seemed to decide otherwise and exchanged glances with Sam. "He's a little bit shaken. It's not every day we're called out to assist a heart patient in need and end up in the middle of a murder case."

Kate had gotten the details on their find through the phone, but she still liked to hear the story from the involved persons themselves, so she asked: "You said Ms. Carrera was a heart patient. How do you know this is a murder?"

At that, Tomaz made a sound that seemed to be a combination between a squeak and a grunt, before exclaiming: "Because heart patients normally don't break their bones and then climb into their own compost bins!"

"Ouch", Castle remarked and was echoed by Lanie, who had just been on her way out of the house and apparently had heard the last part of their conversation. "Ouch indeed", she repeated with a serious expression.

Kate directed her attention towards her friend and offered her a sip from her coffee mug, before asking: "What did you find?"

Lanie accepted the coffee with a thankful smile and pointed at the house, most likely meaning the garden behind it. "You better see for yourself, girl. But prepare yourself; it's not a pretty sight."

"Amen to that", Sam mumbled. Tomaz just stared blankly at the ambulance in front of them, making Kate wonder whether he would require psychological assistance. Finding a body was never easy, and even after solving countless murder cases, she had never really gotten used to the sight of eyes left lifeless and broken by the injustice that had been done to them. Before following Lanie, she knelt down in front of Tomaz and took his hand, trying to catch his gaze. When she didn't succeed, she pulled out a card from her wallet and handed it to him, placing it gently into his hand and closing his fingers around it.

"She's a good friend of mine, and she's a fantastic listener", she told him with a warm smile. Tomaz didn't answer, but Sam unexpectedly returned the smile and thanked her. So just the shock then, she thought and got up to follow Lanie and Castle into the garden. When she met Ryan on the way, who had been canvassing the neighborhood with his partner, she pointed at the two paramedics: "When they're ready, try and get the whole version of their story."

"You got it", he replied with one of his charming smiles. It wasn't hard to see why Jenny had fallen for him. "It might interest you that the neighbors didn't hear or see anything. Or if they did, they are not interested in sharing with the rest of the class. The old lady in the house next to Ms. Carrera said she had seen her get in at around ten last night and then got woken up by the sound of the ambulance."

That wasn't all that helpful, but then again – if solving a murder was easy, she would be out of a job. At least it narrowed down the timeline they would have to establish once they got back to the precinct. "Thanks, Kevin", she acknowledged his information and hurried up to catch up with the other two, who by now had made their way through the impressively beautiful garden and had come to a stop at the compost bin Tomaz had been talking about. The lid had been lifted off and both of them were staring at its contents; judging by the greenish look on Castle's face, he by now regretted both the smoffles and not to have heeded Lanie's warning. But he wouldn't have been Castle, if he didn't have a comment on the ready for her despite the gruesome sight, because once she had reached them and taken the murder scene in, he muttered with a weak grin: "Bet the city's waste not initiative never thought about putting the word "body" on the What not to throw into your compost bin sign."

"Very funny, Castle", Kate retorted with a snort before looking down at the victim once more. Oh, the poor woman. She was thankful for her friend's warning, which had allowed her to prepare herself just a little bit for what waited down there. The container wasn't big enough to hold a body in its natural size, so somebody had helped the situation along by … folding … the body to match the bin, breaking arms, legs and apparently the neck too on the way. Her face, framed by blood-clotted, black hair, was almost not to recognize due to large, almost black bruises and quite an amount of blood stemming from her mouth and the broken nose. The eyes were swollen shut, and her throat had been cut, leaving a deep, dark gap. Ugh.

"The limbs, were they…", Kate began with a side glance at Lanie, but her friend shook her head.

"They were broken post mortem. Without getting her out of there, I can't be completely sure, but I would say the bruises stem from a brutal beating that she took before being murdered. Then somebody used a knife – a really large one, with saw teeth, see the ripped lines here – to work on her throat, which probably killed her."

"And nobody heard a thing. Sure", Kate sighed. Well, what did she expect? This was New York after all.

"What do we know about her?", Castle asked – probably to distract her, if she knew him right. She was thankful for the change of subject and explained readily while looking at a file she had been carrying: "Her name is Nina Carrera, and she's… she was thirty-six. I couldn't find that much about her; the hospital provided me with her file. She suffered from bradycardia, that's why she had been implanted with a pacemaker – one of the newest models with built-in GPS technology that is activated once the pulse gets too low. Says here she was part of a trial group to see by how much the GPS tracker would shorten the time to respond to a distress call. There's nothing in here about her current occupation, but she has listed her cousin, a certain Lila Jensen, as her emergency contact." After she had finished, she looked at Castle expectantly: "So, any wild theories?"

"Well", he answered with a gaze back at the container. "It's possible somebody wanted to teach her a valuable lesson about recycling…"

Esposito joined them, coming out of the house with a note block in his hands. "But why then would the killer turn her house upside down?", he asked in reference to Castle's random shot. "Looks like a tornado went through there."

Kate glanced back at the composter and pondered for a moment about this new information before saying: "So our killer was looking for something. And he … or she…"

"Oh, with the way the bones were broken, we're definitely talking a he", Lanie helped out.

"Or one of those Eastern European female body builders", Castle added. "You know, the ones that fill themselves with testosterone to…"

"Yes, yes, we know about them, Castle", Kate hurried to interrupt and continued her musings: "So he was looking for something and decided to ask Ms. Carrera in a not so polite manner. When she didn't tell him about the object's whereabouts, he decided there was no further use for her and got rid of her, trying to make sure nobody would find her body. Even if somebody reported her missing, who would look inside a compost bin in an untouched garden?"

"But", Castle jumped in with a pensive expression, "the killer didn't know about her heart problems or the GPS tracker, so the question is – did he actually find whatever he was looking for before our paramedics showed up unexpectedly?"

"How about we let CSU deal with that question, while we invite Ms. Jensen to a little trip to our nice precinct?", Esposito suggested with a nod at Kate's file.

"Sounds like a plan", Kate agreed and closed the file. "See what you can find out about Ms. Carrera's time of death once CSU has swept the garden", she then said directed to Lanie before turning on her heel and walking back to the car with a deep sigh. Just another day in the old town.