Chapter Seven: The Broken Boy
Esposito glared at them both with disgust written all over his face when they arrived at the precinct and kept doing so all the way through an update.
"Martin's gonna' be fine. Split lip, black eye. Worst of it's a cracked rib. Concussion was what sent him to the hospital. He was a bit out of it when the bus got there. He'll be sore as hell for a few days, but he'll live. Kid's in interrogation."
She went in alone. Danny, both eyes now bruised - the new mark matching the one Kate herself had given him when she'd popped him in the nose and dropped him after he'd attacked Castle - and both glazed and skittering about, swung to face her. He had his fingers clenched in his hair, pulling at it painfully.
"It was self-defense!" he told her as soon as she closed the door.
"Sit down, Danny."
"That fucker hit me first," he continued. "And so I just lost it on him. He deserved it! He's been hurting my mom. He killed her!"
She crossed to his side, put a hand on his shoulder and tried to steer him into the chair. "Danny, just sit down and we'll talk."
"He killed her!" he repeated, hysterical. "She's dead!" He stared wide-eyed at Beckett and she watched his heart break all over his face. "She's dead. She's dead." He started crying and, to her surprise, leaned in to do it against her shoulder.
"She's gone," he rasped and it hurt to hear it. "What'm I gonna' do? What'm I gonna' do without her?"
The words were a painful echo of her own, years and years before and though she'd frozen for a long, uncertain moment when he'd started sobbing on her, the tragic understanding she had for his grief moved her to lift her arms around him.
"She's gone."
"I know."
"Coffee?" Castle offered as soon as she walked out.
"Yeah," she agreed on a sigh.
In the break room, he set about making it for her, his mind not entirely on the task as he kept shooting her worried looks. She was drained and it showed with her slumped shoulders and the way she rubbed at her temples.
"It sunk in," she told him. "When you cry when you're first told, it's more a response to the shock. It hurts, but it's still not quite real then. That, what you just saw …"
"It sunk in," he repeated.
She nodded. "It takes a little while, but once it does it's so much worse."
Any idiot would be able to recognize how Beckett identified with the boy. She hadn't gotten Danny talking yet, but she'd calmed him somewhat, gotten him in the seat and was now giving him a little time to come back to himself.
"Can you make one for him too?" she requested.
"I've got a better idea," Rick told her, opening the cupboard and searching. He grabbed the tin out and held it up with a triumphant smile. "This might make him feel a bit better than caffeine would."
"Hot chocolate." She smiled warmly at him, gratitude in her eyes. "Yeah, Castle."
"What's next?" he asked, finishing up her coffee and passing it over before setting about to make Danny's drink.
She wrapped her hands around the mug like she was drawing warmth from it. "He'll be numb for a while. The pain just gets to be too much after you truly realize what you've lost, you shut down to it. There'll be a while when he just … wanders around blankly."
The voice of experience. He ached for her. "You think he'll be okay?"
"I don't know, Castle. I just … don't know."
"You were."
"I wasn't, for a long time."
"But you came out of it eventually. Stronger. Maybe he will too."
"I hope so."
He gave her a gentle smile. "You like him?"
She shook her head. "He's a drug addicted kid who thinks he's hard core. He just beat up his step father, and he knocked you on your ass."
"You like him."
"I sympathize with him, Castle. I know where he's coming from, all the anger, needing someone to blame. And he's just a kid. He's sixteen, a child, and his whole world will never be the same. I … I understand him, is all."
He let her have that because it was true, but there had been something wonderfully maternal in the way Beckett had held Danny. Castle had filled with the sight of it. She was going to be an amazing mother. He couldn't wait to watch that side of her grow and develop with their child.
Shit. Their child. He'd never get over that thought. They were going to have kids together one day. His wife was going to carry his children. Kate Beckett. His wife. He couldn't remember a time when he was happier with the state of his life.
"Come on," she said, rising from her place leaning against the table. "Let's take him his hot chocolate."
They entered the interrogation room together. Danny sat at the table, his head in his hands. A pale, tear-streaked face looked up at them when they entered, eyes wide and red. Yeah, okay, despite the lump on his temple, Castle sympathized with the boy too.
"This is Mr. Castle, Danny, my partner. I don't know if you remember him."
Eyes shot to the bruise on the older man's temple and Danny winced. "Yeah … yeah, kind of. I … I'm really sorry, man."
"It's okay," Castle assured. "But maybe, you should remember it the next time you hit the drugs?" He placed the cup in front of him. "Here."
"Thanks," softly whispered.
"Are you ready to answer some of my questions now, Danny?"
He looked worn and, like Beckett had said, a little numb to the situation. "Yes," he told her, not much inflection in his voice. "Anything you want."
She'd gotten to him. She always did get to the people sitting across the table from her, that being her forte, but it was rare she did so with such warmth and tenderness and, hot as badass, hardcore, scary as hell Detective Beckett was, Castle liked the change up.
"Let's start with tonight. You said it was in self-defense. What happened, Danny? I was told you were staying with a friend. Why'd you leave?"
"I wanted to go home," he mumbled. "Wanted to make sure, you know?"
"Yeah," she told him. "You wanted to make sure she wasn't there, make sure this wasn't all a big mistake. I know."
"It wasn't. She wasn't there." Blank, no emotion in it, until a flash of anger. "But he was."
"What happened?"
"He was drunk. We argued. I don't really remember what was said, just, it was loud and then he swung at me." He briefly touched his blackening eye. "He hit me. And I just … I lost my shit. I didn't mean to hurt him so bad." Anguished eyes looked up at Beckett. "Will he be okay?"
"Yes," she assured. "Just a cracked rib, a few scrapes and bruises, but he'll be fine."
"Good," he breathed and then shrugged. "Don't really matter though. Doubt I'll be going home again."
There was a long silence. Beckett broke it. "I'm sorry I have to ask you this, Danny, but where were you yesterday between nine in the morning and one in the afternoon?"
His gaze had gone flat again. "That when she died?" He shrugged. "I don't know. I hoofed it early that morning, before either of 'em were awake, went to my girl's place. Her parents had left late the night before for a couple of days at some conference, so we … well, you know. Then I went to a friends place. I … I got high."
"And you don't remember where you were? What you did?"
He shook his head. "No. It was good stuff. I checked out. Came to in a cell. Everything's pretty vague before that." Another look at the mark on Castle's head, then he turned back to Beckett. "You think … did I -? Was it me?"
"I don't know," she told him honestly and then said, not threatening but rather that the result would put the boy's mind at ease, "But I'll find out. What's your friends name?"
"Jake. Jake Livingstone. He's the one I was staying with tonight. His folks are cool, don't mind having me for a bit."
"And your girlfriend?"
"Fiona Burr." A haze of panic. "Please don't let her parents know. They'd kill her if they knew she was having sex with me."
Beckett didn't agree to his plea, one way or the other. She moved on. "Let's go back a bit further, Danny. Tell me about witness protection. What happened?"
"I'm not supposed to say anything."
"I know, but it might help me find out who hurt your mom."
Danny shook his head. "He couldn't have hurt her. He's in jail now."
"Who, Danny?"
The boy sucked in a deep breath, let it out in a rush when he answered, "My dad."
The story unfolded.
Danny Portman, Daniel Lane back then, had grown up in Nevada. He remembered that when he was little, his mom was high a lot and his dad was a cool guy who sometimes took him for rides on his bike. He wasn't around a lot, but he wasn't absent either.
He found out later his dad was a one-percenter, a member of an outlaw motorcycle club. Craig Lane of the Las Vegas chapter of the Pagan's, or Pug, as he was colloquially known.
One day when Danny was ten his dad had picked him up from school and taken him for a ride. They'd gotten a pizza and leaned against someone else's car in a parking lot to eat it.
An old car with loud music playing had pulled into the parking lot. A big man who looked like Hawaiians Danny had seen in movies, with a blue bandana hanging out of his back pocket, got out and, not noticing them, walked away.
"Stay here," Danny's dad had told him.
Every single day for years after Danny would wish that he had listened. He'd gotten impatient only a minute after his dad had left and followed.
Behind the pizza place, he'd found his dad. He had a gun pointed at the other man. He fired it.
Danny ran. He ran and ran and ran until he was lost and then he curled up against a wall and cried and cried. Hours later, he was found by a patrolman and taken to the nearest precinct.
When they'd realized who he was, who his father was, the cops had put two and two together and connected the boy, and his criminal dad, to the murder of an infamous member of a prominent street gang earlier that day.
They'd gotten the child to tell them what he knew. He'd become a witness in his own father's murder trial, and part of a larger effort to do some damage to the organized crime network in Vegas.
The Marshal's were contacted, WITSEC was sorted and he and his mother were whisked away to their new lives in New York City.
Everything had been okay, mostly, until Danny's mother had died.
Sixteen years old, Castle mused. His father in jail, a murderer; his mother, dead, likely a murder victim.
But, Castle reminded himself, there was still the chance that it was the kid himself, high as a kite, who had killed the woman.
