wow thanks so much for all the reviews and alerts!
a great theory came up in the reviews, someone thought the mystery man/murder with the scalpel is josh; thoughts? ;)
enjoy!
WEDNESDAY
It wasn't until just after dawn that Lanie finally closed her eyes, head resting on her folded arms on her desk. She'd been up all night doing the autopsies on Jack Young and Sydney Logan and was now waiting for the results from her tests.
It didn't take long, though, for her to get caught up in a nightmare. Images of Kate lying on her autopsy table, waiting to be cut open. Skin pale in death, eyes blue and bruised. Cuts and slices all over her body and a gaping hole in her chest where a bullet had exploded her heart.
Lanie woke with a start when her computer beeped. She took a deep, shuddering breath and swiped at her cheeks, fingers coming away wet with tears. She glanced over at the autopsy tables and saw only Jack and Sydney, not her best friend.
She closed her eyes and pressed the heels of her palms into her eyelids, hoping to force the images away, before taking another steadying breath and opening the results.
"What'd you find?" Esposito asked the moment he, Ryan and Castle hit the morgue a few hours later.
"Tox screen is just like the other victims, blood alcohol was zero, so no drinking. There weren't any foreign prints on either of them and particulates are specific to walking down any street in New York City, essentially."
"Can you narrow down the particulates at all?" Ryan asked.
"Nothing useful, just that they had walked through a park, based on the stuff on their shoes, maybe went down to the docks from the water on them, but that's it. Nothing that suggests a specific location."
"Anything else?" Castle asked hopefully, begging with his eyes for her to pull something magical out of the manila folder in her hands.
"Well, there were traces of paint chips on both sets of victims. Faint traces, residue, could have been painting their own places and got it on themselves," Lanie hurried to point out before the boys could get too hopeful. She'd already been through that earlier.
"Are the paint chips the same?" Castle asked.
"What do you mean?"
"I mean, are the paint traces the same? Same colour or type or a specialty mix, anything like that?"
Lanie checked her results and bit her lip. "I can't be sure. Looks like a more expensive brand if the techs got it right, but as for colour? No way to tell."
"So we still have nothing. Four people dead, Beckett missing and we still have nothing." Esposito said angrily, clenching his fists.
Lanie came around the slab and laid a gloved hand over his trembling fists. "We'll find her. And the monster who did this."
"She's like my sister. We need to find her." he replied softly, not looking at anyone. Ryan laid a hand on his shoulder, feeling the same way.
Castle stayed back, not quite sure what to do. There was no way he thought of Beckett as his sister, no way at all. But without her here, knowing she was in danger...
She was family, whether she was ready to admit to it or not. He loved her, whether she was ready to hear it or not. They needed to find her. he didn't think he'd be able to to handle it if they didn't.
Beckett tried to breathe evenly as the man cut into his next victim. The poor man screamed, the woman he'd been brought in with was crying and pulling on her restraints. Beckett didn't bother.
Her wrists were sore and aching, crusted with blood. Her arms alternated between being numb and on fire, the change happening so swiftly it stole her breath. Her shoulders screamed and her neck and back felt like they were misaligning one vertebrae at a time. Her mouth was dry and her throat parched and tired from begging, from yelling, from crying.
Her legs felt like jelly, from not being used and her feet were cold.
She tried to focus on her aching body instead of the one being sliced into not four feet from her, but his screams still penetrated the self-induced fog.
And the attacker spoke, still, in an almost soothing voice, one that threatened to lull her and sent shivers down her spine simultaneously. He didn't flinch when blood spurted up to splatter warmly on his face and didn't waiver when the woman cried or pleaded.
Beckett was giving up. He'd been at it for hours now, it felt like. Nobody was coming for her.
Ryan and Esposito, while great detectives, weren't going to figure out where she was. Castle wasn't going to come up with some crazy theory and find her on some wild tangent. Lanie wasn't going to find some key piece of evidence and save the day. She was alone. And she was going to stay that way.
Finally, finally, the man died, and the gun cocked and fired, the smell of blood thickly filling the air as it spilled from both bodies. Beckett slumped back against the wall and waited, almost welcoming the needle the man pulled out from his pocket.
But this time he paused in front of her, the scalpel in this other hand still dripping with blood, the gun poking out of his front pocket.
Beckett didn't meet his gaze, just stared at the opposite wall. She wasn't going to escape, couldn't run on her numb feet anyway. He had a gun, a scalpel, a needle and presumably an accomplice. She was restrained with no way of getting free. What was the point?
This time there was no voice telling her to stay strong or to fight for the victim. Or herself. There was only quiet, filled just barely by the sounds of their breathing.
"You know, I think you've caught on. Why don't we save this for later, hm?" he slipped a cap back on the needle and clicked it into place, sliding it back into his pocket. A smooth hand reached out and gripped her chin, tugging gently, but insistently, so she had to look up at him.
"Done fighting now? You're going to give yourself scars, darling." he taunted quietly, reaching back into his pocket for a single key. Beckett knew it was for the handcuffs keeping her chained to wall and briefly considered lunging for the gun, but the spark died even before the man released her chin and reached around her.
He unsnapped the cuffs and took hold of either side of her sweater, pulling it up and over her head. Her hair caught in the zipper and tugged painfully, but she didn't say anything.
The man didn't remove anything else, and instead pressed a kiss to her forehead before reaching around to refasten the handcuffs. He rose and left with the sweater and without another word.
Moments later, Beckett, who was left without a blindfold now, glanced up as another person came in.
It was a woman, tall, with naturally sunny blonde hair and big, round blue eyes. She was pale and looked fragile, with small hands and slim limbs.
The woman spared Beckett a glance, one filled with what seemed to be jealousy and hatred and admiration all at once before taking hold of the dead woman's arms and hauling her out into the hallway. Came back and did the same with the man, struggling under his weight.
When she came back, she had another sweater in her arms and advanced on Beckett. This one had no zipper and looked large, like it belonged to a man. The woman slipped it over Beckett's head carefully and she realized this woman must have been the one to dress her before.
The realization came to a sudden halt, however, when the sweater was worked over her face.
The material held a scent, one familiar and overwhelming and comforting, one that made her want to cry. It was a sweater given to her one rainy night, after she'd left her jacket in a cab, one she kept hanging in her closet, meaning to return it but always forgetting; it smelled like Old Spice and soap and coffee.
It smelled like Castle.
"Anything?" Montgomery asked. The bullpen was dark and near empty, the only exceptions being Ryan, Esposito and Castle, who were hunched around the murder board.
"Nothing," Ryan answered on a heavy sigh. He brought a thumb up to his mouth and worried the nail there.
"No connection between the Brights and Beckett, nothing between Jack Young and Sydney Logan and the Brights and nothing between Beckett, Young and Logan. Aside from the fact they all look like her and Castle," Esposito said.
"The only other connection is the chemical substance in their bloodstreams." Castle piped up, a picture of Beckett in his hand.
Before Montgomery could speak again, the phone on Ryan's desk rang. The four men glanced at the phone and then at each other before Ryan went to answer it.
Upon hanging up, he faced the others with a grim expression. "Two more bodies."
"Gabrielle Adams and Ben Allan." Esposito read from the wallets in the plastic baggies a CSU tech had handed him. They'd made the trip to Brooklyn this time, the sun long set. The man, once again, looked like Castle and the woman looked like Beckett.
Something was different this time though.
"Weren't the others more, dressed up?" Castle pointed out.
Esposito and Ryan both stopped what they were doing and looked down at the pair.
"I don't know bro, Ben Allan looks pretty fancy," Esposito pointed out the well-tailored jeans and expensive looking jacket and shoes.
"What about her though, the shoes are right, the pants, blouse, but then a sweater?" Ryan crouched by the woman, Gabrielle, and touched the fabric with his gloved hand. "The blood hasn't soaked all the way through it. And there's no hole,"
"Meaning it was put on her after she was shot."
Lanie crouched over Gabrielle Adams now and touched a darker patch on the side of the sweater. The spot was fading into the material, like a spill that was drying. She pulled out her equipment and took a quick swab before it was completely absorbed and tucked it away.
"What's that?" Castle asked.
"Not sure, looks like some kind of fluid. Not blood," She said.
"Well, let's get them back to the morgue and call next of kin."
alright, this chapter is short, so look for thursday coming up right away to make up for it :)
reviews are love!