The Devil's Mistress
By Dana Keylits
Chapter Three
"Wait!" Kate shouted, unable to disguise the tremor in her voice, the panic that had quickly reduced her once steely demeanor to nothing more than the courage of an asthmatic teenager. "Stop. Kelly, please, don't do this." She balled her hands into fists, her fingernails leaving crescent shaped indents in the palm of her hand, even as she tried to wiggle out of the uncompromising restraints.
Dr. Nieman frowned, but halted her forward progression, holding the scalpel in mid-air as she glared at Kate with complete disbelief. "What is it?" She barked, not a trace of good humor or patience in her tone.
"I don't want to be perfect," Kate blurted, her mind spinning in a chaotic loop as she desperately attempted to engage the mad doctor in conversation for as long as she could. Surely, by now, Castle knew she was missing, and he'd be looking for her. They'd all be looking for her.
"Don't be ridiculous," Dr. Nieman dismissed. "Everyone wants to be perfect."
Kate vehemently shook her head. "No, no. I don't. I want to stay the way I am."
Dr. Nieman placed the scalpel back on the instrument tray that she'd perched precariously on a cart beside the table. She held up one gloved finger. "You just think you like the way you are, Detective." She smiled sweetly. "But, once I'm done with you, you'll see. You'll be grateful. You'll be perfect."
Kate shook her head. "No, no. I don't want to be perfect."
Dr. Nieman folded her arms across her chest. "Of course you do."
"No," Kate protested.
"Yes, you do, Detective!" Dr. Nieman shrieked, losing her composure. "You do want perfection. Of course you do. You just don't know it yet." Beads of perspiration dotted the doctors forehead, the first sign that perhaps she wasn't as well put together as she liked to project. Her eyes blazing, her color reddening, Kate could practically see the steam shooting from her ears.
"I like the way I look," Kate calmly stated. "I'm happy just as I am."
Dr. Nieman's agitation was growing exponentially, and Kate hoped that continuing on this track would distract her long enough to buy Castle some time. But, be careful, Kate, she thought, she's got a whole tray of sharp instruments, and fingers that are just itching to cut into your flesh.
Dr. Nieman glared at Kate through narrowed eyes, her nostrils flaring, her breathing heavy. She began muttering, her voice so low that Kate could barely hear her. She appeared to be having an animated conversation with herself, or the voices in her head, or some imaginary person standing on the other side of the table. Whatever the case, it had the inexplicable effect of calming her down.
And, that was bad.
Very bad.
Dr. Nieman finally wagged one finger at Kate. "I see what you're doing here, Detective," she cautioned, picking up a syringe and checking its contents. "I understand." She approached the table and smiled wickedly, having regained her earlier Hannibal Lecter-like composure. "Everyone fears change, it's perfectly normal to have some reservations." She held the syringe up in front of Kate's face and gazed down at her sympathetically. She caressed the line of Kate's eyebrow with one glove-covered finger. "We all wonder if the devil we know is better than the devil we don't know."
Taking her cue from the syringe, Kate tried a different tactic, hoping to appeal to the woman's vanity, her obvious narcissistic grandiosity. "Doctor. Tell me, please. Before you do this, before you make me perfect, tell me what…"
Dr. Nieman plunged the syringe into Kate's cheek, and, shocked, confused, utterly bewildered, Kate's thoughts bizarrely turned to how this would play in the press. This was precisely the kind of senseless brutality that would grab headlines for the next twenty-four hours, making people tsk tsk and shake their heads.
And, then the dead cop memorials would begin.
"Are you sure?" Captain Gates asked, her hands on her hips, her coat and luggage dumped unceremoniously on the floor of her office. She'd come right from the airport.
"Yes, Sir," Esposito confirmed. "The video clearly shows Dr. Nieman injecting Kate with something." He gestured at his neck as though inoculating himself with an invisible syringe. "And, then leading her into the back of a waiting limo."
"Plates?"
Espo shook his head.
"Dammit!" She cursed, exhaling loudly. "Okay, I want to see the video."
"On it," Esposito replied. "We've got it queued up in the other room."
They hurried to the conference room where a murder board had been set up, the disturbing photograph of an unconscious Beckett hanging front and center. Gates stared at it, shaking her head. "And, to think we had this woman in our very house." She frowned at Esposito. "We can't let her slip through our fingers again, Detective."
"No, Sir," Esposito agreed.
He punched play on the remote and they watched the surveillance footage taken from the cameras mounted outside the Twelfth. Kate appeared thirty seconds into the video, walking down the steps, pulling on her gloves. When she reached the sidewalk, she turned right, and just as she came into profile on the video, Dr. Nieman strolled up calmly behind her, plunged a syringe into her neck, and then hustled her into the back of a limousine that was idling perpendicular to the parked squad cars.
"That takes brass," Gates muttered, shaking her head. "To take one of our own right under our nose like that?" She turned to Esposito who was nodding in agreement. "Play it again."
Captain Gates watched the film three more times before, on the fourth review, she hissed, "Freeze." Esposito hit pause and she pointed at the stilled image. "Look."
He peered at the image and then zoomed in. Standing across the street from the precinct were a couple taking pictures. Stills, by the look of it, and they were angled in such a way that if they'd snapped the camera at just the right moment, they might have gotten an image of the limo's license plate.
She tapped at the screen. "We need to find them. Make a copy of this, get it out to the media, let's see if anyone comes forward."
"It's a long shot, Captain."
"It's a shot," she argued. "Get on it."
Castle had offered to take Jim home when he'd left for the precinct, but Martha had protested, saying this was not the time for Beckett's father to be alone. "Nonsense!" She'd argued. "You stay here with us," she gestured at Alexis and Pi. "We're all part of Kate's family now. We all need to stay together."
Jim nodded and Castle reassured him. "I'll keep you informed. We'll find her."
Castle kissed Alexis on the cheek, reluctantly shook Pi's hand, and nodded at his mother. "Keep the door locked," he warned. "Just in case."
"Of course," she replied, following him to the foyer. She spun the deadbolt as soon as he was through the door, and then turned to face the others, clapping her hands together. "I know none of you are probably hungry, but I think we should eat."
Pi jumped up, "I'll help."
"Oh, Pi. Darling. Thank you so much. But," she gestured for him to stay in his seat. "…as much as I enjoy your delightful fruitarian creations," she held her hands together as though in prayer and bowed her head. "I think this night calls for more traditional fare." She picked up the phone and glanced at Jim, one slender finger poised over the keypad, her bracelets jangling as they journeyed innocuously up her arm. "Jim, dear. Pepperoni or sausage?"
"I want you awake, Detective. But, I'm not a sadist," Dr. Nieman whispered. She withdrew the syringe, seeming to enjoy the way it had completely silenced Kate. "This is a numbing agent. You'll probably still have some pain. But, this will help." She laid the syringe on the table and Kate felt her cheeks and lips grow numb as the anesthesia journeyed through her nervous system, dulling her sensations.
Dr. Nieman slowly peeled off one of her gloves and inched closer, her finger poised above Kate's forehead. "You have exquisite bone structure, Detective," she whispered. She traced the line of Kate's cheekbone, studying her face as though admiring a rare piece of art. She ran the pad of her finger along Kate's lower lip like a lover preparing for a kiss. "I know you've used these lips to kiss your partner," she stated matter of factly. "Mr. Castle, right?" She didn't wait for an answer. "I've seen you."
Kate recoiled.
"I've seen the two of you together."
Kate whimpered, closing her eyes against this most personal of assaults, Kelly's words ringing in her ears like a harbinger of the macabre.
"I've seen the way he touches you, the way your body responds." She drew a gust of air in through her teeth, making a sucking sound that echoed from the tiled walls of the barren room, her eyes drifting to Kate's lips. "You look almost perfect together."
"Stop," Kate choked.
Dr. Nieman laughed, softly, wickedly, the laughter of someone who was very much in control, someone who was thoroughly enjoying herself. "He will be grateful when I make these perfect." She gently tapped Kate's lips. "He will be very grateful."
"Stop!" Kate screamed, struggling helplessly against her restraints, pain radiating up her wrists as the leather dug into her flesh. "Do not touch me!" She scanned the room wildly, searching for anything, anything that could save her, could give her time. But the room was empty, her mind blank. Where were they? Where was Castle? Her heart sank as she realized she might actually be out of options.
She hadn't really considered that possibility before.
As though immune to Kate's protests, as though deaf to her screams, Dr. Nieman painstakingly re-gloved her hand, picked up the scalpel and secured it between her thumb and fingers. She smiled at Kate, "You will be my greatest achievement, Detective."
As soon as she felt the cold steel against her skin, Kate whipped her head from side to side, immediately feeling the sting of the cut.
Dr. Nieman gasped, "Stop that!" She dropped the scalpel onto Kate's chest and grabbed the detective's head with both hands. She glared at her with heated eyes, and Kate thought she saw multicolored fireworks reflected in them. "Now, look what you've made me do!" A bit of spittle landed on Kate's face as Dr. Nieman struggled to maintain her composure. She reached for a pad of gauze on the instrument tray and held it to the bleeding wound. "You almost ruined it!" she scolded.
"Kelly, you still have time to stop this," Kate pleaded. "You still have time to get away."
"Oh, shut up!" Dr. Nieman barked. "I had wanted you awake," she hissed, carefully replacing the gauze with steri-strips, meticulously placing them on Kate's skin as though repairing a priceless work of art. "I had wanted you to experience this transformation with me." Her eyes grew misty, her expression sorrowful. "So we could enjoy it together." She held Kate's chin, squeezing her mouth so her lips puckered. "Like lovers." Kate shuddered. "And it would have been good. It would have been the best you'd ever had, Detective." She let go roughly, disgust in her voice. "But, you've left me no choice now," She sad flatly. She crossed the room and opened a cabinet, pulling out an I.V. bag and kit and then wheeling over an I.V. cart. "I'm going to have to put you under."
Kate watched wide-eyed, wondering if this was what would would break her, what would finally cause her to shatter into a million pieces. She'd survived an assassin's bullet, her apartment being blown up by a determined serial killer, almost being eaten by a hungry tiger, nearly falling off the roof of a twenty story building, and Castle's ill-conceived smorlette. But would she survive this? Would she survive it if Dr. Nieman altered her face?
Would Castle?
Kate mulled her options, which were pitifully few, as Dr. Nieman prepared the I.V. She slid a steel tray from under the table, securing it so it jutted perpendicularly from the table and Kate watched in disbelief as Dr. Nieman moved to unbuckle her restraints.
This was her chance.
The scalpel lay forgotten on Kate's chest and she prayed with the fervor of a monk at vespers that Kelly wouldn't notice it, so distracted with her anger at Kate, her disappointment that this sick seduction she'd had planned was not going her way.
Kate held her breath.
Dr. Nieman slid the belt through the buckle and lifted it up to release the clasp.
As soon as Kate felt the belt loosen, knowing it was her only opportunity, and in spite of the pain in her wrists, the lack of blood flow to her numb fingers, she jerked her hand free, grabbed the neglected scalpel from her chest, and, with every last ounce of strength she possessed, lunged at Dr. Nieman.
