A/N: Thanks again to all of you readers, especially those who have offered helpful comments. I am revamping this narrative in response to those inputs; AND some ongoing training I'm receiving, and in preparation for an upcoming post of a whole new AU version of the Castle-Beckett story. But for now, I hope you enjoy the less choppy, plot-line tweaked, and somewhat improved version. We continue in season 2, episode 24: "A Deadly Game" with Castle mentally reviewing his experiences and where he fits it (if at all) on his way to the crime scene.
Disclaimer: I do not own Castle – all credit goes to Andrew Marlow and the writing team for ABC's Castle; my thanks to them for providing a foundation for this little exercise.
2
Even at NYC latitudes the threat of frost at night had completely vanished by the third week in May. Most of the trees were in the process of flowering or had already finished and were putting out leaves. It continued to be a pleasant day and the sun was already starting to feel hot. Along with the heat one could sense the air was becoming more humid than experienced in the previous weeks. These harbingers of summer were amplified when sitting in traffic; and one vacillated between leaving the car windows down or closing up and starting the air conditioner. Kate Beckett was glad to be out of the stuffy office and back in the field, choosing to keep the patrol car windows open. Since it was a Saturday, the traffic wasn't quite as bad as usual, and the natural ventilation felt adequate. Meanwhile Richard Castle kept the convertible top down on his ride over to the crime scene. As he drove, he mentally reviewed how the process worked and how his professional friends approached their jobs.
Richard Castle knew the drill. The order in which the various NYPD members arrived at a crime scene was not fixed. It depended more on where each individual member happened to be when they received the call and what mode of transportation they had at their disposal in order to make the trip. Obviously, those already on duty would usually get there first and those on call would arrive later. If a homicide had been reported via the 911 emergency call system, it was very probable that uniformed police officers would be there first, followed in short order by paramedics and the NYFD. Since that network was carefully monitored, the dispatcher's office would send out the Crime Scene Unit (CSU) to begin investigation and collect evidence before the scene became contaminated by other activity. The CSU could be as small as two persons or it could be a dozen depending on the scope of the incident. If only a single dead body was found, CSU and a city medical examiner's van would be dispatched along with homicide detectives. Based on all the details he had compiled for his books, Castle imagined that CSU was on the scene checking for ballistics, looking for tracks, dusting for finger prints, and generally going over the immediate area looking for anything unusual or anything that might offer clues or evidence for the case.
He assumed that Kevin Ryan and Javier Esposito would be assigned to cover the case since he had heard directly from Kate Beckett. Assistant detectives might have to attend in the rare instance when both Ryan and Esposito were assigned elsewhere and could not drop what they were doing; however, Ryan and Esposito were part of Kate's close-knit team. Castle had come to like both Ryan and Esposito a lot and he hoped, or at least imagined, that the feelings were mutual. For the most part, they were. Of course, it helped that Castle could be counted on to return favors by getting the two of them floor seats or front row seats to various events using his considerable connections and means to obtain those coveted tickets. They didn't lean on him often, for which he was grateful. The detectives would appear, to the untrained eye, to be performing much the same tasks as the CSU members; and to some extent they were. The difference was in the degree of detail. CSU members were trained in very specific means and methods of obtaining forensic evidence. Each one was tasked with producing usable data, whether it might prove to be hard evidence, or background material, or a most probable sequence of events. On the other hand, it was the detective's job to take all of that evidence and somehow make sense of it with the goal of catching a killer. In effect the detectives were on a one thousand-foot reconnaissance fly-over while the CSU was down below rummaging through the weeds. Each detective had a different way of examining a crime scene and processing information. The multiple points of view and the different theories they generated were more often valuable aids in solving the crime than they were food for debates. Occasionally, depending on how passionate the parties became in their defense of a theory, these differences served as a basis for some good natured, in-house bets.
Castle considered Ryan's approach to the job and to life in general. He appeared to be as young as, if not younger, than Kate; but in reality, he was several years older. Castle had learned that he had spent a number of years in the services of the NYPD's narcotics division before moving to the homicide department. At first glance one might judge Ryan to be just an office kind of guy. In reality working the streets for the homicide department was actually less dangerous than his previous assignments, including a stint as an undercover agent for some fourteen months in order to infiltrate an Irish drug dealing gang. He only looked like a good old Irish Catholic boy leading a sheltered life, but he had the stomach for dealing with the dirty business of crime and violence. Frequently, back at the precinct office, he didn't seem to have it all together; sometimes bumping into things and on other occasions, dropping stuff. One time he tried to imitate his partner's skilled office chair rolling technique but kicked so hard he would have rolled past the interrogation room if someone hadn't grabbed the chair arm to slow him down. He'd often misjudge the direction of a conversation and firmly insert his own foot in his mouth; usually drawing glares from Kate or Javier. Again, those surface impressions could be deceiving because he proved to be an excellent detective. He was living the bachelor's life when Castle first showed up at the precinct. Castle mentally compared him to Javier. With a little more self-confidence and a slight devious streak, he could be the Artemus Gordon character in the Wild, Wild West. There was even a slight resemblance between the two; if one could imagine Ryan dressed in 19th century clothing. His partner, Javier, could have passed for the character Jim West at least in personality. Castle made a note to himself to drop that comparison into the mix back at the precinct someday just to see what would happen. Castle had noticed that Ryan was a good deal more impressionable than either Kate or Javier. When friendly debates over Castle's off-the-wall theories ensued between the team members, it was frequently Castle and Ryan vs. Kate and Esposito; nevertheless, Ryan was fiercely loyal to his team. He had a dry sense of humor that even caught Castle himself off guard at times. Castle had only been associated with the homicide department for a number of months when Ryan had announced he found a steady girlfriend named Jenny. Things had been going fairly well between the two of them; certainly more stable, Castle thought, than his relationship with Kate Beckett of late.
Castle's thoughts shifted to Javier Esposito. The man had a great, outgoing personality and a good sense of humor. He was slightly shorter than Kevin Ryan; Castle estimated about five feet seven inches. Esposito hadn't offered too much about his past since Castle's appearance at the precinct and Castle knew when not to play busybody; although Kate would take umbrage with his point of view. He supposed there were either Puerto Rican or Dominican genes in the family somewhere. He didn't want to hazard a guess. Javier spoke fluent Spanish of course; and had been used on occasions to provide translation services for the precinct. Castle's ear wasn't tuned well enough to determine the country of origin or what class, grammatically speaking, of Spanish it was. Castle had overheard a conversation between Javier and Kevin that "mama" could make the best mofongo on the planet. He was hoping to get the chance to try it one day although he wasn't even sure what is consisted of. He also gathered that Javier had seen lots of bad things in his life; perhaps having grown up in a neighborhood where the presence of cops would not be viewed as a thing to be welcomed. Up to this point, Castle had never heard Javier mention anything about his father, and that was something the two of them had in common; Castle had grown up without a father figure in his life as well. He further imagined that Javier had grown up defending himself, and the other the little guys; and he wanted to do what was right in order to make his close friends and family proud of the things he would accomplish. Castle could tell he still had that tendency. It appeared to him that Javier viewed himself as Kate's big brother; and Castle was sure Javier would do just about anything to protect her. What Castle did know was that Javier, when pressed to the limit, could become the James West shoot first and ask questions later character. Castle learned that Javier had served in the military Special Forces as a sharpshooter. He had served time in Iraq. He apparently kept and active life style because he remained trim and muscular in the years that followed. He had also worked as a uniformed beat cop with the 54th precinct before he moved over to the 12th and joined the homicide team a couple of years prior to Castle's appearance. On the very rare occasion where Kate briefly lacked motivational energy for the team, Javier filled the gap.
Since the crime scene had been reported by one of NYPD's own personnel, Castle knew there would only be the CSU, the homicide team, and someone from the city medical examiner's department. He was already familiar with the duties of an ME or an assistant ME as the result of his research for the Derrick Storm series. He had even consulted and interviewed retired ME's from other jurisdictions. He had met a retired individual in the Hamptons that had spent considerable time with him regarding the discovery of the causes of death; and how to identify an unknown dead person. He had also learned that not all jurisdictions required the chief ME to be a fully degreed medical doctor or even have specific training in forensic pathology. In places where life was not as complicated as it was in the big cities, the town or county mortician's position had morphed into the ME's position as well. These interviews had proved invaluable in lending realism to his murder mysteries. The New York City medical examiner's office required fully degreed medical staff; and it was not part of the NYPD, but in the case of the 12th precinct, the main office for the city ME was in the building next to the precinct house. One did not even have to go out to street level to cross between the two facilities. Castle thought that was pretty cool. Neither the NYPD in general nor the 12th precinct in particular had control of the work order in those offices. With a city the size of New York, the offices were always tasked with a backlog of work in determining causes of deaths, performing autopsies, issuing death certificates, and maintaining death records for the public. Upon learning that deaths in mass disasters were also assigned to that office he had shuddered to think of the mayhem the terrible incidents of 9/11/2001 had caused. One thing was for sure – it was a hard job; hard to endure the terrible things seen; hard on the feet since one could spend hours and hours on an examination. It needed attention to every detail and generated mountains of paperwork. On this particular day, Castle hoped that the paperwork would fall on Dr. Sydney Perlmutter; leaving Dr. Lanie Parish available for field duty.
Dr. Parish was a petite black woman with lots of charm and well-developed powers of observation; especially of an individual's behavior patterns. Perhaps that heightened sense came from dealing with dead people on her job all the time who displayed only physical characteristics but no social behaviors; although investigation of said social behaviors leading up to their deaths was fair game. She was the stereotypical southern black woman, but it wasn't an act. She was the genuine person through and through. If Kate Beckett had a commanding presence, Dr. Lanie Parish could eclipse it. She was also Kate's best girlfriend. Castle was seriously envious of how accurately Lanie could read Kate's moods and motives. But Lanie was discrete; she never went for the kiss and tell routine. On the other hand, she was quite extroverted and didn't mind telling things the way she saw them and that was especially in Kate Beckett's case. To make sure Kate got her point she would accentuate her slight southern drawl and let the sentence out slowly for added effect. She knew Kate and Richard saw something in each other, but she never tried to play one against the other. She had been known to play matchmaker in order to get Kate to at least attempt a social life; but in the case of Richard Castle, she sat back and let things take their course. Castle rather wished she would intervene, if that could help. She could read him pretty well also. There had been a crime scene not too long after he had been allowed to tag along with the homicide department where Dr. Parish had only been on call for the evening. She had been out to a formal social gathering with someone. She showed up at the crime scene directly from leaving the party, wearing a marvelous evening gown that showed her figure and plenty of chest cleavage. It was a grand departure from seeing her in medical scrubs and it took Castle by surprise. He had had trouble keeping his eyes off her. Dr. Parish had started right to work, and without missing a beat, she shot him a side remark 'Castle stop looking at the girls' and then kept right on working. She looked younger than her actual age. She had already been working of the ME's office for eight years or so; and it wasn't her first job out of medical school.
Meanwhile Kate had arrived in the vicinity. In NYC parking was where one found it; and legal parking was even more difficult to find. Kate had managed to find such a spot a couple of blocks from the park where the body was found. Kate insisted on the walk-up to the scene. It gave her time to clean the slate so to speak. She noted a convenient meeting point and sent a text message to Castle as to its whereabouts. She would wait for him there. She hoped he wouldn't be too far behind her. His prompt return text indicated that he wasn't. He had found parking about two blocks in the other direction; and to his delight there was a coffee wagon on the way to the rendezvous point. He stopped and bought a coffee for each of them; it had become an unwritten protocol for their meetings. They met at a point where a jogging path departed from the sidewalk level.
Thus, began the walk-up; or rather the walk down in this case. The path continued from street level down into an area reserved as one of the green spaces in the city. It was much, much smaller than Central Park, over which the 12th Precinct did not have jurisdiction. The path was closed in on one side by trees and shrubs, which had leafed-out to a good degree due to the warm spring weather. On the other side of the path was a small stream. Kate was glad to see that the Parks Department had maintained the place – it was remarkably free of litter. The path wound along the streambed for a few blocks with the street traffic contained on overpasses. As they walked slowly, Castle took advantage of getting Detective Beckett's womanly point of view on things usually pertaining to his daughter, and in this instance, it was about the dreaded summer program. He went on to explain how the Memorial Day weekend at the Hamptons had become a family tradition; and how father and daughter had been doing these kinds of things together since Alexis was age five. Kate thought to herself how sweet that was.
"It sounds wonderful . . . almost magical," she replied.
Castle liked her reaction, so he launched his plan.
"You know, you should come . . . it has a wonderful beach, a secluded pool; you could lay out and work on your tan," he suggested.
"You're working really hard to see me in a swimsuit," she replied.
"Well, if you're not comfortable in a swimsuit, you could always skinny dip," he suggested with a smirk.
Kate casually turned her face away from his and tried her best to suppress a broad grin. She was flattered that he had made such a suggestion; but at the same time not surprised. She too had remembered the crime scene with Dr. Parish and the evening gown. Castle had never seen Kate in anything but normal, everyday work clothes and she was sure the change of wardrobe would be a real shocker for him. She briefly enjoyed the mental picture it created; she was also sure he had done the same. She turned back in his direction, with the grin mostly stifled, but said nothing. By this time, they could see the NYPD crowd gathered near the streambed just beyond the upcoming overpass. Castle could sense she was already mentally gearing up for the tasks ahead; he dropped the Hamptons proposal for the time being.
He was also satisfied to see that the crime scene and the personnel attending to it had unfolded much like he had expected. He was also glad to see that Dr. Parish was the one collecting the preliminary field data. CSU had put up the yellow 'Crime Scene - Do Not Cross' barrier tape, and the members were hard at work combing the area for evidence. There was also the uniformed officer who had made the discovery. Ryan and Esposito had also arrived and were in the process of taking his statement. As was frequently the case, Richard and Kate were the last ones to arrive. Dr. Lanie Parish shot a discrete glance at them just to check the particular chemistry for the day.
"Well, what have we got so far?" Kate asked, not addressing anyone directly.
They were staring at a fairly young white male, who apparently had been found lying face down in the stream bed below the overpass. Just fifty yards or so beyond the overpass, the pathway began its assent back to street and sidewalk level. They surmised that the victim might have been shot from somewhere in that vicinity. He had been facing in that direction, they surmised, so he must have seen at least the figure or silhouette of his killer; then he fell forward. The cause of death was obvious. He had received five gunshot wounds – GSW's as Dr. Parish usually abbreviated the term, to the chest. They had passed clear through the victim and the exit wounds were evident on his back. Dr. Parish continued her analysis. Based on temperature and lividity, she estimated the time of death to have been between 11:00 PM and 1:00 AM. Castle knew from his previous research that the ME would use three indicators to approximate time of death. The degree of rigor mortis, and the evolution of it, could be used in conjunction with core body temperature at the time of the field examination; and the degree of lividity exhibited by the body. He also knew that Dr. Parish preferred to use temperature and lividity more often than not. He figured that since rigor mortis progressively developed and then progressively eased in reverse order, that might be the reason why Dr. Parish avoided making any initial assessments based on it. He had learned that it set in as a compound called ATP began to drain out of the body's muscles since the was no fresh blood circulation to replace it after the heart stopped. The ATP was what kept the energy transport in the muscles and helped them stay in a relaxed state. Without it the muscles would become stiff and inflexible. It affected all muscles simultaneously but the smaller ones such as those in the face, neck, and arms would be affected first; and the larger ones visibly affected later. The process often caused the faces of the victims to contort into grimaces or expressions of terror as if this were the last thing the victims expressed as they died. That wasn't true. Anywhere from two to about twenty hours after death, the rigor, or stiff stage, would set in and hold, but if the body remained in ambient even longer, the process would begin reverse and the body would eventually become limp again. Measurement of body temperature was a perfectly logical and straightforward thing to do, but it had to be body core temperature; and to obtain this, one had to stick the temperature probe where the sun did not shine. The most accurate place to obtain it was the interior of the liver. The ME would measure the current temperature of the body core, the ambient temperature outside the body, and would work backwards using a linear formula from the present time to a time when the interior would have measured a normal, healthy temperature of 37.5 degrees Centigrade. It wasn't quite that easy. It required a good knowledge base and a reasonably accurate assessment of the ambient temperature over the past twelve hours or more. One thing that puzzled him about the procedure was the linear approximation. Why wasn't it an exponential relationship? He would try to find a time where he could get Dr. Parish's view on that matter. He didn't dare approach Dr. Perlmutter about it; knowing the storm of scorn that would ensue as to his ignorance. Dr. Perlmutter was clearly one of those people on the city's payroll that considered him a nuisance rather than helpful. Castle knew why lividity might have been Dr. Parish's favored indicator. Lividity was associated with how the blood pooled in the lowest portions of the body after circulation stopped. Lividity also displayed itself as a dark purple discoloration of the body and could also be referred to as Livor Mortis or Post Mortem Hypostasis. The longer a body had been dead, the more permanent the colored areas. One checked that by pressing hard on a discolored area; if it lightened significantly under the pressure point, the test was being made closer to the time of death. After about the six-hour mark, the lividity pattern generally became fixed, which meant that the pressure test would not lighten the affected point significantly. Lividity often proved invaluable in helping the ME determine if the body had been moved after death occurred. So, when the pattern was fixed, the perpetrator or a third party could move the body from a crime scene or pose the body in a different way, but the light and dark patterns told the tale of the original position anyway.
Meanwhile Ryan and Esposito had been debriefing some of the CSU members. One of the curious features of the scene was the lack of those bullets which had exited the body. They should have been lodged in some surface nearby. Ryan showed Kate a section of river birch tree trunk and reported that the killer had taken the time to extract the slugs from it and the other points nearby. Fingerprints were also lacking at the scene. It might have sounded either silly or obvious, but all team members had been trained to check to see if the victim was wearing a watch. Many people still preferred an analog model; and many who had been slammed against a wall or had sustained a long fall with a very short stop at the end of it also had broken watches that indicated the time the impact occurred. Castle had used this clue numerous times in his novels. The victim did not have a watch but what he did have intact was his wallet and his car keys. An examination of the wallet's contents revealed the victim to be a Mr. Sean Caldwell, supposedly employed by FastWater Global Services. No one on the team had ever heard of such a company. There was still money in the wallet as well as a collection of other cards and ID's. Some indicated that he might be from out of town, but there was also a local gym membership card. The whole thing was puzzling at best. Nevertheless, the murder did not appear to be the result of a mugging gone wrong. Castle remarked that with the strange collection of ID's, coupled with the fact that the victim had received a close grouping of shots, and that the killer had been cool enough to clean up after himself pointed to the possibility of hit by a highly trained assassin. Kate wondered if his theory would go spinning out of control from there. To her surprise that was as far as he went. The teams finished up their work and headed back to their respective bases of operation. Fortunately for the homicide team, Dr. Parish had an opening in her schedule and could start further analysis as soon as the ME's van arrived back at the facility. Richard and Kate walked back up to street level together. Each seemed to be lost in their own thoughts; so, conversation was minimal. They split up with a mutual 'see you back at the office' and headed to their cars.
A/N: I'm leaving the uncorrected chapters in place since I don't know if anyone's currently reading them. If you're visiting for a first or second reading, I'd sure like to hear from you regarding to narrative and plot development. It will help me plan for my next narrative.
