The interrogation here will cut between the separate questioning of both of the witnesses / suspects (whatever you want to call them at this point!), just to keep the story moving in an episodic way. When you see the page break lines on the screen, that's where it cuts back and forth… hopefully it doesn't get confusing! LOL.

Chapter Seven

Beckett and Castle stood with Captain Montgomery in the gallery between the two interrogation rooms. In one room sat a young woman, quite beautiful in a girl-next-door kind of way. She had long, light-brown hair and piercing hazel eyes. In the other room sat a young man, athletic-looking and clean-cut, with short brown hair and stunning greenish-blue eyes.

"So what's your plan, detective?" Montgomery asked.

Beckett studied each of her witnesses, trying to get a read on them through the one-way mirrors. "Well, sir, we just need to hear their story, see if they both give us the same version of events or if one of them slips up."

"You really think these two had something to do with the murders?" Castle asked, not sounding convinced, but giving Beckett the benefit of the doubt. As much as he hated to admit it, she was rarely wrong.

"I don't know." Beckett admitted. "But something just doesn't add up with what we've found, and these two are the key to finding out the truth."

Castle nodded as Montgomery watched his determined detective. She was good, probably the best he'd ever seen, and he knew enough to trust her judgement.

"Let's go, Castle." Beckett said, as she entered the first room.

Ryan and Esposito joined Montgomery in the gallery, watching as Beckett began questioning the young man.

"Sean Michaels?" Beckett asked as she approached the desk and sat down.

The young man looked up at her and nodded his head, a little more at ease after hearing the soothing tone in the detective's voice.

"I'm Detective Beckett and this is Richard Castle" Kate said as Castle sat down beside her.

She instinctively folded her hands in front of her as she continued. "I'm so sorry for what you've been through this past few days."

Beckett's concern came across as genuine, putting the young man even more at ease. She needed him to feel comfortable if she was going to get the truth from him.

"We're trying to piece together what happened up at that house." She said. "Can you tell us what you remember?"

Sean took a deep breath, as if gathering up his courage to face the memories of that place. "The six of us have been friends for a long time. Most of us since tenth grade, some of us a lot longer than that." He started. "When Chris won those tickets for the murder-mystery weekend, we figured it would be the perfect way to end the summer before we all go back to college."

Sean paused for a moment before he continued. "Angie was the only one who didn't really like the idea. She thought it sounded fishy from the start."


"Yeah." Angela replied. "I just had a bad feeling about it, I guess." She paused for a minute, looking away before she continued. "I'd had this recurring nightmare ever since he first told us about it, and it just got worse every night up until we left. I took that as a warning." She looked back across the table as she finished. "But nobody else really put much stock in it, I guess."

Castle studied the young woman's expression as she spoke. "So what happened when you got there?" He asked her.

"We took a cab up to the house, unloaded our stuff, and walked up to the gates." Angela answered.


"It was like they were programmed or something." Sean continued. "They opened up for us when we got there, and they closed behind us and locked themselves on us once we were in. We figured it was part of the game, just trying to set the tone from the start." He was already visibly shaken by this trip down memory lane.

"So there was nobody else there when you got into the house?" Beckett asked.

Sean answered quickly. "No, we just thought that was part of it too."


"We found our rooms upstairs and settled in for the night, figuring we'd get unpacked before the game started." Angela continued. "A couple of hours later, we were all about to get together to look around the house. That's when they found Jessica. She was laying face-down on her bed with a letter opener in her back."

"Who found her like that?" Castle asked.

Angela paused for a minute, thinking. "Sean and Tom did, I think."


"Yeah, me and Tom found her. She didn't answer when I knocked on her door, and Tom wanted to check if she was in her room or not." Sean's face went pale at the thought. "At first we just thought it was part of the game…" His voice trailed off.

"So what convinced you that it wasn't?" Beckett asked.

Sean thought for a moment and replied, "Angie went in and checked her pulse. She didn't even have to tell us that Jess was dead, we could see it all over her face."


"So why didn't one of you call the cops? Or run for help?" Castle asked, genuinely puzzled as to why they would just stay there when one of their friends had been killed.

"Part of the game was that we couldn't bring our cell phones with us." Angela started to explain. "There was no phone in the house, no way of calling for help. And the gates were locked behind us."

She looked at the detective. "Trust me, we thought the safest option for all of us was to separate to our rooms, lock the doors, and come up with a game plan in the morning when we could actually see outside and find another way out."


"Plus, some of us weren't sure if this was really part of the game." Sean added. "I mean, Chris was convinced that it was, that Angie was in on it somehow, and that she was pretending that Jess was dead to throw us all off..." Sean trailed off again. "He had the rest of us convinced that he was right."

"And what happened the next morning?" Beckett prodded him to continue.

"Well, Angie and I were the first to get up. Once everyone else was awake, we were going to find a way out of there together." Sean replied. "We waited a few hours, but Chris never came out of his room. So we got worried and went in to check on him."


"That's when we found him." Angela continued. "He'd been stabbed in the chest with a knife and his floor was covered in blood." She grimaced at the thought. "We all thought he was dead, but he had faked it. He used Tom's fake blood and a trick knife. I guess he wanted us to think he was dead so he could get around the house without us suspecting anything."

Castle and Beckett looked at each other, confused.

"What was Tom doing with fake blood and a trick knife?" Castle asked.

Angela looked up at them, shaking her head. "Tom was the class clown. Always playing pranks. I figured he brought them to mess around with us. He brought a noose and some handcuffs with him too."


"After we found Chris like that," Sean continued, "the four of us decided we couldn't just stay there like sitting ducks. So me and Tom stayed back to pack up while Nicole and Angie went out to see if they could get the gates open."

Beckett's brow furrowed. "So you let the two girls roam around on their own with a killer on the loose?"

Sean laughed off Kate's comment, or as much as he could laugh under the circumstances. "You don't know Angie, detective. Trust me, Nicole was safer with Angie than I was with Tom. She's a tough girl, she can take care of herself." He paused. "And everyone else, for that matter."

Castle looked over at Beckett. Remind you of someone? He asked, only in his own mind, of course.


"Sean came out to find us after a little time had passed." Angela continued. "We hadn't been able to find a decent way off of the property, so we decided to get Tom and try to climb the gate to get away."

Beckett already knew what was coming next. "But when you got back to his room, he was dead."

Angela looked down at the table. "Yeah, hung with his own noose from his ceiling fan."


"None of us knew what to do." Sean added. "We should have stayed together, but we panicked."

"So what happened next?" Castle asked.

"We ran to our rooms to find something, anything, to protect ourselves with." Sean answered.

Castle shook his head, not following the logic.

Sean picked up on his confusion. "I know what you're thinking…" He started. "It's easy to make jokes about the cheesy horror movies where the victims are always running back into the house or hiding under a bed when they should be trying to escape."

Castle nodded.

"But in the moment…" Sean thought back, consumed by the memory. "You just can't think. You only react." He paused. "Except you usually react the wrong way."


"The only thing I could think to do was find something we could use to protect ourselves at that point." Angie added. "So I told Nikki and Sean to search their rooms for anything we could use."

"And then what happened?" Beckett asked.


"Well, a few minutes later, I heard glass shattering. It was really loud." Sean explained. "I came running out of my room and saw the stained-glass window at the end of the hall upstairs had been broken."


"When we looked down, out of the window," Angela continued, "we saw Nikki lying way down on the walkway below. It was starting to get pretty dark out, but the lamp outside caught on the pieces of glass, almost glowing around her body."


Sean took a deep breath, composing himself again before he continued. "We knew we had to get out of there, so we turned to run."


"But when we turned around, Chris was standing there, his shirt still covered in the fake blood." Angela added.


"None of it made any sense." Sean said. "But he was standing there, and all I knew is that we had to get away from him."

"So what did you do?" Castle asked.

Sean looked down at the table. "When I heard the glass break earlier, I had grabbed a candlestick from the desk in my room." He explained.

Castle gave Beckett a quick "I told you so" look again at the mention of the candlestick. She subtly gave him a little kick under the table and refocused her attention on the young man across the table from them.


"He hit Chris hard enough to knock him down, at least for a minute or two." Angela recalled. "So we took off down the stairs and out the front door."

"But he followed you." Beckett added, prompting Angela for more of the story.


"We tried to get over the gate, but it had started raining and the bars were too slippery." Sean explained. "Angie noticed the ground had softened up, so she suggested we dig our way under the gate instead.


"Sean got under first." Angela continued. "I started to go but Chris had caught up to us at that point. I guess neither of us had noticed him, we were trying so hard to get away."

"So what happened next?" Castle asked.


"I heard Angie scream and I looked up." Sean replied, getting more and more visibly shaken as he recounted the story. "He grabbed her and pulled her away from the gate, hard enough for her to fly back a bit. She hit the ground pretty hard."

Beckett watched as Sean tried to compose himself.

He took a deep breath and continued. "I reached through the gate and grabbed Chris as hard as I could. He grabbed me too, though, so we struggled for a bit."

"You pulled him into the bars a few times?" Beckett asked, remembering the bruise patterns on Chris' chest.

Sean looked up at her before replying. "Yeah, I did. But it didn't do much good. He pulled me pretty hard into the bars and then everything went black."


"Sean's head hit the bars pretty hard." Angela recalled. "He fell to the ground and wasn't moving. I know it was a dumb thing to do, but I went after Chris after that. He threw me down to the ground pretty hard again." She paused. "That's when I saw the rock."

"So you hit him in the head with it and knocked him out…" Castle filled in, thinking back to what Lanie said about the rock.

Angela looked at him and replied. "Yeah, he dropped pretty quickly."

"Then what?" Beckett prodded.

"Well, I had found Ryan's handcuffs inside the house and grabbed them earlier." Angela answered. "So I cuffed Chris to the gate, in case he came to before I had a chance to get away."


"When I came to, Angie had somehow found a pair of handcuffs and had cuffed Chris to the gate. We got up and headed off down the road. We figured we'd get back to the city and call you guys to arrest him." Sean explained. "Except we must have passed out somewhere on the way."

"And Chris died at the scene." Beckett added.

Sean looked up at her, confused. "Chris is dead?" He suddenly realized why they were questioning him and Angela. "It's not her fault. It was self-defence, detective. You can't charge her for that."

Castle saw the genuine concern that Sean had, the need to protect Angela, and he felt compelled to console him. "It's okay, Sean, we know. Don't worry about her. Both of you have been through a lot, we're just here to get some answers, that's all."

He looked over at Beckett.


Castle and Beckett are sitting at her desk, looking back up at the murder board again. Sean and Angela had been escorted home an hour or so earlier and it was quiet now in the precinct. With the late hour, most of the department had headed home, leaving the two of them in silence.

Castle looked over at Beckett, as if to ask what she was thinking.

"It just doesn't make any sense." She started.

Castle nodded. "It feels so forced…" He added. "Like a bad horror movie. No real mystery, no story. Just a random killing spree."

"Exactly." Beckett agreed. "Where's the motive? Where's the intent? If he planned this whole thing out, why do the murders seem so spontaneous?"

"Why don't we head over to the crime scene tomorrow morning and try to figure it out?" Castle offered. "Maybe re-enact Sean and Angela's version of events and see if we can find any holes in it?"

Beckett nodded. "Yeah, that's actually a really good idea, Castle." She turned back to look at the board again.

Castle watched Beckett for a minute as she studied the information. She could feel him staring, so she turned to him, eyebrow raised.

"What?" She asked, somewhat annoyed but more just intrigued.

Castle smiled. "Why don't we go get a late-night burger at Remy's?" He said. "It'll take our minds off of the case and we can catch up on what we both missed over the summer."

Beckett appreciated how genuine he sounded and she seriously considered the offer for a minute. But the professional in her won out in the end.

"Sorry, Castle, but it's been a really long day and we need to get to that crime scene pretty early." She felt pangs of guilt almost as soon as the words had come out of her mouth, but she knew she was doing the right thing. "It's probably best if we both just go home and get some rest."

"You're probably right." Castle tried to mask the disappointment that he knew was showing on his face. He smiled as another thought came into his mind. "Will you at least let me walk you home?"

Beckett knew there wasn't an excuse she could come up with for turning down that offer. Plus, she simply couldn't resist that charming glint in his eye. She knew this probably wasn't the best idea, but she reluctantly agreed. "Sure."

Castle's smile widened and Beckett laughed. They grabbed their stuff and headed for the elevator.

Okay, so I promised some full-out relationship writing in Chapter Eight, especially after the last few chapters with mostly case-related material, so that's exactly what you'll get as Castle walks Beckett home! I think it's been my favourite chapter to write so far, and I just have some minor tweaking to do still, so stay tuned, it should be up very soon…