Chapter Two
The End of an Era

The public funeral for Martha Rodgers was every bit as over the top a production number as the woman had been herself in life. Luminaries of the Broadway stage who had at any point in time worked or played with his mother during the past forty five years showed up.

He stood in the appropriate place at the head of the receiving line and nodded when people spoke to him, but the thank yous were handled by Kate. Since that night in the alley four days ago he hadn't spoken a single word to anyone, not even to her and it was killing her inside to know he was in such undeniable agony.

It was as if he was there and yet the part of him that really mattered, his heart, was a thousand miles away. His countenance betrayed nothing, like he had erected a wall of his own to keep the world at bay, even his own daughter. Kate didn't like it one bit, in fact it tore her heart out to watch. When the service began he simply sat and stared at the open casket, his face a mask of stone only his eyes betraying the emotions roiling inside of him. Eyes Kate wished she couldn't read so well

Though everyone in attendance had expected him to do so, Richard Castle did not give the eulogy. That task had instead fallen upon a teary eyed Alexis Castle who had only been done with classes for a few days from Columbia University when Detectives Ryan and Esposito had showed up at the door of her studio apartment in SoHo to give her the news that would change her life forever. Her stirring eulogy ended in the same spirit of her high school Valedictory address several years before.

"...but just because we have to move on without her, and it hurts, Grams is so much a part of us, she'll be with us...no matter what...our solid ground...our North Star...and...the small clear voice...in our hearts that will be with us...always. Au revoir grand-mère, I love you and I will miss you."

Alexis Castle's control finally slipped and she burst into tears at the podium, her choking sobs could be heard across the entire funeral parlor, for the first time cutting through the stunned silent spell that her father had been in for the past four days. He rose from his seat to comfort his little girl with Kate close on his heels. Alexis fell into his arms without prompting as he wrapped her up in his embrace and held onto her for dear life.

Kate stood a few inches away, not sure what to do, she felt almost like an intruder, and interloper much like she had all those years ago in front of the shattered facade of New Amsterdam Bank and Trust, until she saw Alexis looking at her with the same teary eyed expression she had that day so long ago, this time holding out her small, slender hand to beckon the detective in.

Both Rick and his daughter wrapped an arm around her and all three of them stood in front of the podium sobbing and shedding tears for the force of nature that had once been Martha Rodgers, now forever silenced.

Nobody noticed a man sitting in a wheelchair with a black blanket on his lap matching his black Armani suit at the back of the funeral parlor, a woman dressed in a nurse's uniform holding the wheelchair's handles. Jerry Tyson, a fake beard and horn rimmed glasses disguising his features watched the scene playing out before him at the podium, barely able to keep the grin off of his face.

He had signed the register using the name Jameson Rook, just like he had done with the name plate on the police uniform back then. He had even gotten through the receiving line without Castle or even Beckett recognizing him. Even he was amazed at how people only seemed to see the chair, wondering why he had never used this particular ruse before.

'Soon,' he thought, 'soon the time will come to burn down your happy little world. Soon, but not yet.'

He nodded to Caroline and she turned the wheelchair to roll them out. Secure in the knowledge that everything was going according to plan.

Another man, this one crowding seventy with white hair and intense eyes stood with his back to the wall watching his son, daughter in law and granddaughter break down together in front of the podium tears of sadness welling in his own eyes. Jackson Hunt had filed all of his retirement paperwork the day before she had been killed. He had finally come home after forty eight years only to find he had come home too late.

If he ever found the man responsible for Martha's to death in that alley, he would use every torture technique he had ever learned or heard of in his years with the CIA to make sure the piece of shit had a short very unhappy life tagged by as long, slow, painful a death as he could dream up, and he could dream pretty damn dark.

He slipped out of the funeral parlor, and stopped to sign the register with the name Jackson Hunt. For the first time in ages he wanted his family to know he had been here. Even if guilt had kept him at arm's length. The CIA may have finally put him out to pasture, but he still knew people, still had resources, contacts, people who owed him favors and a frighteningly high security clearance.

He was a man on a mission and just like when Volkov took Alexis, this time the mission was his own.

Two Weeks later

Kate Beckett, was signing the guest register at Riker's Island to visit Former Senator William Bracken (now inmate 11638) He was sentenced to prison in Ossining, but had been temporarily moved to Rikers to be deposed about his involvement in the Ghost crew scandal. It had been the plea bargain he had made to reduce his sentence and have lethal injection off of the table. It was strange that New York City was finally looking into that mess now that nearly all of the players were either dead or in in prison.

It felt strange to be sitting in the same waiting area where she had once sat across from Hal Lockwood, knowing that this time she would be speaking to the architect of it all, and for once about something other than the case that had defined her for most of her adult life. When the guard led him into the room in chains, wearing an orange prison jumpsuit, she did derive a certain satisfaction that killing him herself would not have given her.

"Did you come here to gloat, Detective? You didn't strike me as the type. Or were you merely disappointed the that the FBI beat you to the punch?" he said with the same infuriating calm he had shown when she had first confronted him with a gun pointed at his head in a deserted hotel kitchen so long ago.

"...you're a disgraced cop obsessed with her mother's murder, and who am I? I'm a decent man looking out for the little guy."

"It's not who has the gun, it's who has the power. Do you really think that's you?"

He seemed for all the world like he still had the power, still held all of the cards. She closed her eyes for a moment to push back her own feelings of anger and righteous indignation. When she opened them again, both Katie Beckett and Katherine Castle were gone, replaced by Detective Kate Beckett in full interrogation room mode.

He was no longer Senator William Bracken, the man who had contracted the death of her mother and had secretly pulled the strings of her life for over thirteen years. He was no longer the Washington DC power broker who had sent a highly trained assassin to kill her, not once but twice. He was now a convicted felon whom she was interrogating for information on a current homicide.

She removed a photo from the file folder she had with her of Martha Rodgers' crime scene, her face betraying none of the emotions she was feeling for her self, her husband and former partner, and his daughter, and slid the photo in front of the man without looking at it. (a photo eerily similar to a crime scene photo that had once adorned the shuttered kitchen window of her previous apartment) She couldn't bear to look at it if she was going to keep her composure.

"Did you do this? Did you put out a hit on Richard Castle's mother to send me some sick message from in here?" she asked.

She already knew that the wound pattern was inconsistent with her mother's murder, or the others that Dick Coonan had committed, nor did they seem to be attributable to professional killers like Cole Maddox or Hal Lockwood. The initial stab wounds had been far too shallow, as if the killer was inexperienced at killing with a knife or any other type of weapon.

Still didn't put it past him, nor could she fathom that this was a random spree killing or a "random wayward event," it hit just a little too close to home. She had been barred from taking primary on the case almost since the beginning, due to her personal involvement with the family, "hell Martha was family" she thought to herself, but she had to play out this hunch if she wanted to be able to sleep at night.

"Detective," Bracken replied with that condescending tone he had used with her after she had saved his life three years ago,

"If I was going to call in what few favors I have left in the halls of power, expend the kind of resources necessary to put out a hit from inside of a federal penitentiary, do you really think you would be alive to ask me these questions? If it were me, it would be you dead in that alley, and I think that deep down, you already know that. On that note I think we're done here."

What was worse, was that Kate Beckett knew he was right. Such a hit would not get him out of here, it would more than likely triple his stay, ordering a hit on a cop, even if it was unsuccessful, would earn him a lot more style points and respect in here with the other inmates than killing an elderly Broadway diva turned acting coach would have.

Bracken called for the guard, and as he was marching him out the door in lockstep, her turned and said the final words that would ever be spoken between them.

"Detective, for what it's worth, please offer my deepest sympathies to Mr. Castle and his daughter. I really was a fan of his mother's work."

As soon as he was removed from the room and she was sure nobody but the single security camera could see she allowed a single tear to trail down her cheek. She had expended her last lead, her only lead and the official investigation had ground to a halt a week ago due to lack of evidence.

The Martha Rodgers Homicide had officially gone cold. Leaving an emotionally devastated Richard Castle, an angry determined Alexis Castle in it's wake. She only hoped that she was up to the task of helping them pick up the pieces of their lives an move on.

She could take care of Rick, and if not get him back to the precinct at least get him functioning as a writer and human being again, it would take time, but she loved him enough to put in the work. He would have done no less for her. She owed it to Martha's memory to try. The Lieutenant's exam was opening up and Captain Gates had recommended her for it, just as Roy Montgomery had done years before. Now she had a reason to accept. The more regular hours would offer her more time at home.

She was most worried about Alexis who was showing signs of heading down the same path she had at nineteen. She had already filed the paperwork to transfer from Columbia to NYU with a change of major to Criminal Justice and forensic science. She would do her best to make sure she had made the right choice for herself and her potential.

Kate didn't want the girl to end up like she had been when her father first met her. An emotional cripple, seeing the world only as it pertained to the case that had defined her for over thirteen years. Shepherd her through the worst of her bad decisions mentor the girl like Roy Montgomery had done for her.

She deserved so much better, and she swore on Martha Rodgers memory that she would not let what happened to her to happen to Alexis too.

"Not again...mother, I won't let history repeat itself. I won't let the rabbit hole claim her too...I swear."

August 22nd 2022

Detective Second Class Alexis Castle stepped out of the newly refurbished elevator into the the Homicide squad room of the 12th Precinct for the first time in over a decade. She was no longer the fresh faced eager to please little girl she had been all those years ago when she had first come here to bail her father out of jail after her dad had stolen police files in the case that had first paired him with Kate Beckett. Detective Alexis Castle, NYPD was a completely different animal altogether.

After her kidnapping at the hands of Alexei Volkov, and her grandmother's unsolved murder had gone cold, she had grown a thicker skin and developed a harder edge to her features, one only her father could now penetrate, simply by pouting and calling her pumpkin. Only for him would she ever be the little girl she once was, though she was no longer certain now which was the real her and which was the facade she now showed the world.

She had transferred to NYU the very next semester after her grandmother's funeral, changed to a double major of Criminal Justice and Forensic Science and never looked back. She breezed through the prerequisites for the NYPD Academy within a year with her doubled up course load.

After the academy, she had managed to avoid working Vice (though with her slender body and fresh faced appearance many had thought she would be a natural fit there) and still managed to make Detective within two years to beat Detective Kate Beckett's record as the youngest female detective by a year and a half.

Unlike her stepmother, she wasn't saddled with the single minded obsession to find Martha Rodger's murderer. She knew that with the evidence available at the time, and with Kate Beckett in her corner that it had been investigated as well as it could be. The evidence simply wasn't there, in spite of both Lanie Parrish and Dr. Perlmutter's best efforts there just hadn't been enough to go on. Losing her Grams the way she had had nearly destroyed her family and galvanized her to take action and refocus her ambitions accordingly.

It had taken a nearly two years of therapy and the constant love and devotion of Kate Beckett to get her father functioning as a human being and as an author again. Though he switched genres from murder mystery to Action adventure after a chance meeting with Clive Cussler, (he and his NUMA crew had been diving on a WWII wreck site when He and Kate were on vacation in the Bahamas) which had turned his life around. Murder had forever lost its appeal for him, yet Nikki Heat and Jameson Rook managed to survive the change, simply reworked as federal agents chasing spies and terrorists as the members of an elite FBI task force.

Some things never change, his books were still love letters to his wife, at least allowing Nikki to have the dream job that Kate had given up to stay with him. An act of contrition and love that Kate recognized for act of love it was meant to be.

Kate had challenged her more than once about her choice to pursue a career in law enforcement. Made her examine it closely under the microscope of her own choices at her age. The way Alexis knew she secretly wished her father had done instead of turning to the bottle. Something she had also managed to keep her dad from doing, for which she would always be in Kate's debt.

Her first two years as a detective had been spent in the Major Case squad followed by a year undercover in the Irish mob in Boston on temporary loan to the FBI. She was shrewd, meticulous, and above all...driven. The FBI had offered her a job as a field agent in the Washington DC field office, but like her stepmother she knew her place was in the NYPD. She wanted homicide.

Unlike her stepmother, she cared more about how she got there. She was going there to speak for the dead, not to avenge her dead grandmother. She had made peace with that years ago. This was her mission in life now. Tragedy had taken the NYPD from her father, she was determined to see a Castle there again. She was exactly where she wanted to be.

As she rounded the corner to the familiar squad room, she saw that the desk Kate had once occupied for so long now had the nameplate "Det. Alexis Castle" on the side of it with one last surprise...her father sitting in the seat he had occupied when he had shadowed Kate all of those years. He rose from the chair at her approach.

"Daddy!" she whispered, shocked but overjoyed to see him here as she allowed herself to be pulled into his embrace. She knew he was risking a relapse of his anxiety disorder simply by being here.

"Hey pumpkin," he whispered back. "a little bird told me my baby bird would be back in the old digs and I just had to come and see."

Lt. Kevin Ryan gave the elder and younger Castles a moment before he tapped on the door to the Captain's office.

"Cap. She's here."

Captain Katherine Beckett stepped out of her office into the squad room to see Rick and his daughter catching up. Nobody had seen her since she left to work undercover in Boston. She had been kept sequestered until the trial was over and she was well aware her stepdaughter was wanted dead by the Irish mob in Boston. She had done too good a job getting evidence on the top leadership when she was undercover, having even found time to root out a mole in the Boston Field office.

When she had found out that Alexis' FBI case officer was none other than Will Sorenson, she put him on notice that if he didn't take proper care of her that she would beat him to within an inch of his life. Obviously he had taken her at her word.

She let the festivities go on for a few minutes before she did her duty, shut it down and assigned Alexis to a seasoned older homicide detective as her partner. Namely, Detective Ann Hastings, lead detective of the 12th Precinct's homicide squad. She tugged Rick back toward her office where she had his anxiety medication and a glass of water for him and admonished the squad to get back to work.

Being back in the precinct for even this long had taken enough of a toll on him and she needed to get him home before he spun out.

Alexis worked her her now, and if she didn't want her to be cited for a conflict of interest she had to show from day one that, in spite of her stepmother as her captain, she could and would pull her weight around here if she wanted to stay. The brass were watching her carefully, in spite of her exemplary record, especially Chief of D's Victoria Gates.

Kate knew something that nobody else did. Pound for pound no two cops in the the whole department, herself included, measured up to Alexis Castle in the ethics category. She had learned long ago never to underestimate "Little Castle."

The NYPD brass, however would have to be convinced the hard way.