Staring at his phone on the desk he made the decision that what he went through this morning was just a test. He was sure that the results would be negative.
Getting up from his desk he made his way over to the liquor cabinet after the day he had he needed to lose himself in a good single malt scotch. He perused his collection of bottles and selected a 1958 single, single Highland Park, poured a medium sized tumbler full and threw the first glass back and let the amber liquid scorch down the back of his throat.
This was a smooth scotch, well worth the $1500.00 dollars he spent on the bottle. He finished his nightcap and then looking at his watch noticed Alexis should have been home hours ago. Looking in her bedroom she was not there so he figured that she was studying at the library. He pulled out a sharpie and a piece of paper and left her a note on the island counter
"Hey Pumpkin, I decided to call it an early night I'm just a little tired. I made a little something to eat and left your share of it in the fridge for you. Put it in the oven at 425 degrees for 20 minutes. See you in the morning, I Love You, Dad."
Climbing the staircase up to his bedroom there was still a little pain in his hip and he really wanted to remove the gauze, but he decided against that for once actually listening to the doctors orders. Setting his alarm clock for 5:30 he would bring his team breakfast and hoped he could keep what he went through today hidden from them.
"Business as usual, " he thought. Before he knew it he was fast asleep waking only to the alarm that was blaring 6 hours later to a preset radio station announcing that it would be a mild day today. Turning off the alarm he threw the comforter off his body and made his way to the bathroom. Removing the gauze, he examined the bone marrow target site. To his surprise, it had only bled a little bit during the night, but the surrounding skin around the needle marks had now changed an ugly purplish/green/yellow color. Taking a shower, he went through his daily routine. In no time, he was dressed and ready to hit the street. He walked through the lobby of his building and threw a wave to Edwardo who told him to have a great day.
Walking out to hail a cab, he would stop at Everyman Espresso before heading over to the precinct. It was just a couple of blocks away from his place, but it would be well worth the time to stop there because they had great baked goods. Getting his coffee order and getting an assortment of bagels, rolls, scones and a coffee cake he got back into the cab and told the driver to bring him to the 12th precinct. Arriving there he was by his own surprise the first one there. Taking the elevator to the homicide floor he set everything up in the break room. Taking his and Beckett's coffee, he walked over to his chair and sat down very gingerly. Looking over to the murder board he studied what facts the team had put together already. The crime scene pictures were up and the timeline was started. They had determined that both victims had died about an hour apart from each other, but Castle still could not shake the fact that he knew Mark.
This worried him because he thought if whoever killed him and his girlfriend, could Alexis become a target as well?" Ryan and Beckett arrived first with Ryan edging Kate out by a full two minutes and she noticed him first sitting at his chair by her desk. Taking off her coat she walked over to him and hung her coat on the back of her chair sat down and just stared at him. Then after about a full minute of staring at him Rick was starting to get a little paranoid when she asked him what had happened to him yesterday. He was so involved in looking at the crime scene pictures and thinking about Alexis and her safety that he never noticed her take her seat or ask him anything.
"Castle!" She exclaimed. He jumped at the sound of her voice and he asked "When did you get here?" trying to hide his surprise.
She told him "I just sat down, is this for me"? pointing to the vanilla latte on her desk. She looked at him with an anxious look on her face. So he says "what?"
"I am still waiting for an answer to my question about yesterday's disappearance from the face of the earth Castle."
"Oh, I'm sorry, well after I went home I slept for about 3 hours and then Black Pawn called. They wanted to talk about a new book tour promoting the latest Heat book. The cities that were talked about were in the Far East. This book launch tour would be the biggest one on that continent. The meeting lasted all day and I was so tired when I got home that I went to sleep by 10 pm.
"Castle I called you and I left voice mails"
"Beckett, I know, I listened to them after the meetings, but I did not want to bother you by calling back so late"
"Castle you are never a bother to me. I always like to know where you and that you are safe, so please next time call me whatever the time is I will always answer."
He did not know what to say, who was this woman and what happened to her. She really never cared to the extent she was caring right now, he was seeing a different side to her but why? But still he hoped that his little white lie was believable enough for her to swallow.
"I picked up breakfast for the team"
She looked at him and said "Really, why? You have never brought in breakfast. At the most it's just a box of coffee for the guys. Castle, are you feeling okay?"
"It's just my way of giving back to the people I work with. Wheres the harm in that?"
She was not an idiot something was going on with him, but she accepted his explanation of what he did yesterday anyway. Thinking to herself, he never buys anyone breakfast and he is never here before any of us, something is definitely going on. Just then Espo interrupts her thoughts and calls her to the break room she leaves Castle still sitting in his chair looking back at the murder board.
"Whats up Espo?"
"Where did all this food come from?"
Kate answers with a bit of curiosity "Our generous benefactor out there."
"Who Castle?"
She shakes her head yes. He can't believe it and says
"Somethings going on here"
"I know right!" Kate needs to get to the bottom of this.
They both look out of the break room blind slats and just observe him. After a while, Ryan comes over and asks, "what's going on"?
"We are trying to solve another mystery Bro."
"And what could that be." Ryan asks?
"Castle was here at zero dark thirty and he sprung for all this food."
Ryan looks puzzled and then says, "Maybe he is just in a giving mood." Both Espo and Beckett look at each other then to him and then he says "What? that might happen"
Meanwhile, Castle has been studying the murder board with great detail since they all went to the break room. He knows that they are looking at him through the window, but he does not want to look back at them and hopes he did not give too much away. When they all file out of the break room they look in his direction. Then Kate sits back down at her desk.
"So Castle any wild ideas or outlandish theories?" He thinks and says "Beckett, no I got nothing."
"Okay. Hey, Espo I think we need to re-canvas the apartment building tenants to see if we missed anyone from the initial canvas, take Ryan and see what you can find out. In the meantime, Castle and I will meet with Lanie and see if anything has popped there. She should have at least found something by now."
Now he is in trouble he needs to get up from the chair and try to walk normally, boy this was going to be harder than he thought. Walking slowly to the elevator he keeps staring at the murder board to cover his stiffness. Luckily Kate had rushed to the elevator and missed his slow walk over. Riding down to the morgue they step off at the medical examiners floor in the sub-basement. They walk into the office and Kate greets her with a contagious "Good Morning, Lanie."
Placing her paperwork on the desk Lanie turns to face them. "So Lanie, what have you got for me?" Lanie looking up to Castle's face can see he is in obvious pain and seeing they way he is shifting his weight from one leg to another she knows something is very wrong with him, but she hides her suspicions from them both. She looks back to Kate and tells her that her about the case. "Your 1st victim was a 19 y/o male in perfect health and the weapon pierced his heart he never felt anything and died in seconds. He was free of any drugs in his system." Then she continues.
"The 2nd victim was 20 y/o female and also in great health. But she had actually suffered a lot more than her boyfriend here. She was also impaled, but the killer had missed her heart and she died, but not for about an hour after she was impaled. Kate asks a very disturbing question
"So let me get this straight Lanie she could have been alive when we got there?"
Lanie tells her "My guess is she could have been, but that seems highly unlikely."
Then Kate asks why? Lanie tells her that because her chest cavity was surrounded by so much blood, it was basically strangling her heart inside her chest and it would stop beating due to constriction in a couple of minutes. Kate really wanted to catch this sadistic son of a bitch now.
Looking to Castle to see what he thinks she gets a blank look from him. Then Lanie tells Kate that she will have the toxicology screen results back in about an hour and she will call her later about the results. They both turn to leave but Lanie catches Castles eye and when Beckett says "Thanks, Lanie" he breaks away from her glare. Damn he thinks, she knows somethings up.
Lanie is determined to find out what is going on with Castle, she knows that they are in love with each other, but neither of them wants to admit it. It's just so obvious and she can't understand why they don't see it so she will take it upon herself to find what's going on. Making a couple of calls, it doesn't take her long to find out some information about him because she has very faithful friends in almost every department in almost every hospital in the city. The benefits of being the ME. She finally narrows it down to The Metropolitan Hospital Center. But then she comes up against a solid Castle brick wall. Her friend Lynda had found his file and it seems that he had placed a gag order on all his medical history, and any type of test results that could be accessed from an outside third party. The order, if violated would pull all the funding that he donated to the hospital, and then he would file a very hefty lawsuit. So there was no way anyone would find out anything about him or what he was at the hospital for.
Lanie felt bad for Kate. She is her best friend and she would want to know what was going on with him, but, on the other hand, these results are actually a private issue for Castle's eyes only. She could get the gag order lifted, but it's still against the law for her to invade his privacy and his medical records even if she is the M.E. of the City of New York, so deciding against it. She tells Lynda that she can't take this information she has found.
Now Lanie was having a moral breakdown. Now that she knew that Castle was in the hospital but for what she had no idea. She could not say anything to Kate or her team, hell she could not even let on to Castle that she knew he went to the hospital. So now it was time to put this matter on the back burner and forget about it for now if Castle wanted to talk to her about why he was there this would be the only time she would tell him that she already knew he went there. Sure he might be a little mad about her knowing but she would wait for him to come to her and tell her himself.
The tox results had come back on both of the murder victims so Lanie called Kate and gave her the news. Everything was normal.
On the third day of the investigation, Beckett and Castle were on the 4th floor studying the murder board. It had a lot more information on it than it did yesterday. Ryan and Espo arrived and had come up with nothing from the second canvas yesterday and were just a little too short with Castle when he suggested that there might have been people who could have been away or elderly people who were not able to get to the door in time when they went back to canvas the second time.
Espo laid into him saying or rather screaming quite loudly "Who do you think we are Castle? Dime store cops? Don't you think that we would have already thought of that on our own? We were the detectives who have done all the legwork to get to where we are now. We are the cops who were trained to be looking for specific clues to solve cases like this. Tell me Castle where have you gone to school to learn about crime scenes, collecting evidence, and basically BEING a cop? Hell Castle, 90% of the time you forget to put on your crime scene gloves when you are poking around the scene!"
Rick was crushed at what Espo was saying and that he thought so little of his theory, but it was apparent by the look on his face. Before Rick could defend what was said, Espo came back with one last quip.
"Castle your not even a cop so don't go spouting out things we should do during OUR investigation."
Ryan just stopped and looked at Espo slack-jawed "Dude what the hell?"
Kate went ballistic and hauled Espo into the break room away from Rick and Ryan.
"Really Javi, What the hell was that out there? What were you thinking?"
Kate was pissed and when Espo said nothing in his defense she asked him again.
"You know what I am really sick and tired of? It's when Mr. Wannabe comes up with something we have already checked out and he thinks that he's had an original thought. And Kate you agree with him. What ARE you thinking?"
Kate says, "I know you really don't mean that right Javi? And before you open your mouth again you better think about what comes out of it next." Waiting before answering her he says, "No I don't mean it. It's just this case this damn case."
"Javi, this case? Really? That's your excuse for blowing up at him? Now, I am not really going to tell you what you need to do next, am I?"
He looks to the floor and tells her that he will apologize to Castle. He just needs time to get his head on straight. Kate returns back to the murder board but noticed that Castle had moved from the murder board back to his seat. After rethinking his actions from earlier Espo walks over and opens his mouth to speak to Castle, but Rick raises his hand signaling him not to say a word. Kate looks on not knowing what he is going to say, but she knows that it won't be anything good.
He emotionally centers himself for a while then Castle forms his thoughts into the next statement "Detective Esposito, while I am not a duly sworn officer with the state of New York specifically the N.Y.P.D., I'd like to let you in on a couple of facts about myself that you are probably unaware of, or that for some foolish reason you have never bothered to look into.
First, I am one of about 15 people in this city licensed with a permit to carry a concealed handgun. I am not one of these 15 people who decided one day and thought it would be a kick to see if they could actually get one just for the hell of it, then to go out one day and apply for a permit to carry a concealed weapon. No Detective, I trained, and completed the proper courses that were required by the department. And I completed them all at the Fort Drum Army base upstate.
Secondly, I am an active member and representative on many large corporations boards within this great city of ours. A shadow director shall we say on most of these boards that will help get laws passed to actually protect police officers against frivolous lawsuits.
And lastly I will donate somewhere around three to five million dollars of my writing profits annually to provide most of the patrol officers and detectives with bulletproof vests, tactical gear, weapons, and ammunition.
Rick continues on to tell Espo that for the officers who die in the line of duty there is a fund in place that in addition to what the NYPD and State pays their families, which is usually the bare minimum at most, that this fund makes up the difference so families that lose their loved one can live life without wondering if they will be able to make it financially. My company funds that fund Detective Esposito. Oh, and just a parting word of advice for you, I have been doing this long before I decided to shadow Detective Beckett and her team, meaning you and Ryan probably while you were still in blues! But now since you see me as just a wannabe as you so charmingly put it, I do know now what you actually think of me. You have made it so perfectly clear that I am not wanted or needed by you or your team here anymore. SO Detective Esposito, you can keep your imaginary excuse for an apology! I don't need it and even better I don't want to hear your sugarcoated bullshit!."
Rick could not help but to get the last word in "Oh and by the way Inspector Clouseau why don't you take a hard look at the Ex-boyfriend as a suspect in your current case." Kate giggled at that comment. Everyone in the 12th heard what Castle said, he was not loud but what drew everyone over was when Espo was yelling at Castle. No one had known any of these things about Castle and his generosity before today.
Ryan, Beckett, and Espo were all speechless. They never knew Castle did all these selfless things for the department. Rick got up and limped over to the elevator pushed the down call button and waited for it to arrive. Kate watched him limp away and wondered what hell that was all about. Kate called out to Castle before the elevator doors closed
"So...Castle see you tomorrow?"
He countered with "Probably not Detective. Have a good life!" as the elevator doors came to a close. As Montgomery looked on, he knew that this was going to be a problem. A really big problem.