This chapter is following episode 3x06. I have made a little time jump, to the third season. In my storyline I say that is about six or seven months. How long it really is, I don't know. My fifth chapter was Halloween and as far as I know Halloween is in late October. After going back and reading my own story I got reminded that Alexis and Kevin had already been together for two months at Halloween, and that means that after the time jump, it is May, and Alexis and Kevin have been together for about 9 months. I am sorry if the time line doesn't fit perfectly. And the time line in this chapter does not necessarily follow the time line in the episode. Because sometimes one episode covers maybe 3 days and I write them as one or two.
In this chapter the team is hunting a serial killer and by the end of the episode it affects Kevin a bit more than the others, because there will be some aftermath of it in a later episode/chapter. There is not a lot of Kevin screen time or Alexis screen time in the episode, so I will add some of my own story to the story from the episode. This is one of my first chapters that involves a lot of Castle and Beckett and Esposito too.
Chapter 8: 3XK and the secret admirer...
It was May. Alexis and Kevin had been together for almost 9 months now, and they were still as much in love as they were in the beginning, if not more. School was soon out for the summer and Alexis had a lot of tests and exams for the next three weeks. So, she and Kevin hadn't been able to spend that much time together lately. They talked on the phone every day, but hadn't seen each other for three days. They were both very busy right now. Yesterday Alexis had received a note on her desk at school. On it someone had written a poem. She didn't know who it was, but she concluded that she had a secret admirer. Now she was talking to her grams about it. As Castle entered the kitchen, coming out of his office, he walks in on Martha and Alexis talking and he participates in the conversation.
"Gram, what about Kevin? I mean, shouldn't I tell him?" Alexis asked.
"Darling, in matters of the heart it's best not to over think these things."
"That's your advice, mother? With your track record? What chasm of doom has she led you to by way of her tips on romance?" Her father asks
"As it happens, we were discussing secret admirer etiquette."
"Alexis, You, have a secret admirer?"
"I always thought it was silly, but now I'm kind of intrigued. She replied.
Alexis smiles. She has to admit that it is kind of nice to get this kind of attention even if she didn't know who it was from.
"And there is no need to tell Kevin." Her Gram adds.
Curious Rick wants to know one thing.
"How exactly does this secret admirer express his admiration?"
"He left a note at my desk dad. "As you walk down the hall, a shard of sunlight glanced off your rope of flaxen hair and set it aglow, and I was enchanted."
"Oh, that's so poetic." Martha gushes.
"I figure the rope of flaxen hair is my French braid, which I wore after my poetry class, which means he saw me in the hall on the first floor between my fourth and fifth class."
"Wait a minute. What are you doing?"
Alexis is writing something down on a paper in front of her. Rick is curious.
"Narrowing down the suspects."
"You can't do that. No, you- that'll ruin the secret. No, it's like a mystery novel. You don't just go to the last page, do you?"
"Yes." Alexis admitted.
"You do? Well, you shouldn't. It's not- You can't... The-the joy doesn't come in knowing who did it. The joy comes in the journey and allowing the ending to blossom like some magnificent Himalayan blue poppy." Rick said hoping that she'd understand.
Castles phone starts ringing. Castle answers. It is Beckett telling him that there has been a murder and to meet her at the crime scene. He leaves the apartment to meet with Beckett. When he arrives at the crime scene, Beckett is waiting for him at the entrance to an alleyway. Beckett tells him a little of what she knows so far, as they walk to where a blond girl lies on the ground with strangulation marks on her neck. The victim is Linda Russo. She's a customer relations worker at a cable company. Sanitation workers had found her body under a couple of boxes. The way she was killed and posed, reminded Castle of a serial killer that had been around 4 years ago but never been caught. He had researched him for one of his books. Beckett hesitates, but acknowledges that he can be right.
After questioning the victim's mother, back at the precinct, they learned that there had been this one guy at her office who had been staring at her a lot, like a pervert. Then they get called down to autopsy. Lanie texted 911, that meant it was urgent and important. So, they had to cut the questioning short and go down there.
"Lanie, what'd you find?" Kate asked.
"I pulled all the files on all his past murders just like you asked."
"He choked them using a three-strand twisted quarter-inch rope. Based on the fibers found imbedded in the skin, we know that the rope is green and white nylon."
"I don't remember that." Rick said.
"Those details were never made public. Now check this out." Lanie said as she walked away from the table.
They compare the old crime scene photos to the current victim's body. The marks are identical. When Lanie tells them that she found the exact same green and white fibers, they come to the conclusion that the Triple Killer is back. A while after they get back to the bullpen, all of the detectives at the 12th gathers around to listen to Montgomery, who is standing in the front, in front of the murder board, ready to tell the story of the 3XK murderer.
Roy starts telling them about the case.
"For those of you living in a cave four years ago, the Triple Killer, or 3XK, got his nickname by strangling three women in a week, dropping out of sight for a month, and then killing three more. Then he disappeared. I served on the task force that investigated those six murders. An FBI profile was as close as we came to IDing the suspect. Feds say he's a white male, 25 to 45 years old. With a dysfunctional relationship with his mother... He has a menial, unimportant job. He'd learn their habits, and then gain access to their apartments by disguising himself as a security guard or a repairman, and then he strangled them and he posed their bodies as if they were lying in a coffin. Two final points. The Triple Killer seems to be back after four years. There must be a reason. Maybe he just got out of prison, or returned to town. He may have altered his M.O. But let's assume that he's working under the same clock. Three murders, one week. Based on Linda Russo's time of death, we're already into day three. Let's move on this, people."
Montgomery walks away, back to his office. The group of detectives that was gathered around, start to leave the bullpen to, when detective Ryan comes walking back in and up to Beckett and Castle. He tells them that they have figured out who that man at Linda Russo`s job was, and that his car was seen outside her apartment building on more than one occasion. Beckett orders them to bring him in. The suspect, a man with the name McCardle is brought in for questioning. Castle and Beckett questions him. He is claiming his innocence. Tells them he was bowling with some friends at the time of the murder. He tells them he was threatened to stay away from the victim by a security guard. But he does not know who the security guy was. McCardle has a medical condition that makes him sweat a lot. Castle believes he is sweating because he is nervous and is lying.
A while later, in the bullpen, after they get back from interrogation. Esposito comes up to them with some updates. He can tell them that McCardle's alibi is solid. The manager at the Galaxy Lanes bowling alley confirmed it. The security guard was hard to locate, until Beckett remembered that the triple killer often used to dress like a security guard, and decides that that is probably it. They just need to find out who he was. Just as Beckett is done talking, Montgomery is walking over to them to tell them that they have a second victim. They leave to go to the scene of the second murder.
When they get to the apartment, Lanie is already there. She can tell them that the victim is Kim Foster, a 28-year-old interior designer. She has the same marks on her neck and everything else is the same as Linda Russo and the other victims. She died sometime in the early evening last night. They look around in the apartment to see if they can find anything that can tell them who the killer is. Their theory is that there was a struggle, the pillows on the couch indicate that. Beckett and Castle lifts the pillows and search through the couch thoroughly. Almost immediately Beckett finds something. She pulls out a name tag. A blue plastic name tag, with the name Vince on it. It could belong to the killer or it could have been there for a while. Either way they were going to have it dusted for fingerprints when they get back to the precinct.
Back at precinct Beckett is looking over old transcripts in hope of finding something they can use to track down the triple killer. The transcripts are from four years ago. She took a look at calls made to the Triple Killer tip line and this one stood out to her. It's from May 21, 2006, which was a week after the sixth murder. A woman called and left a message, but she was too afraid to leave her name. But she did mention that she lived at 24th and 10th. The same corner as Linda Russo lived on. She said that she had been riding an elevator with a cable repairman who creeped her out so much that she got off a floor early to get away from him. He wasn't a cable guy though. She said he wasn't carrying the right tools. And working for a cable company, Linda Russo would have known that. Which is why Beckett is taking a look at Linda Russo's phone records from four years ago. She's the one who made the call to that tip line. That is why she wasn't killed in her apartment. She had seen his face and would never have let him in. Esposito walks in and tell them they got a partial on that nametag. They got a match. Now they knew who they were looking for. Beckett informs the others about what they had found out and who their new suspect is. Kate needed to let everyone know what they found and she calls everyone involved with the case to the murder board.
"The man that we're looking for is Marcus Gates. 42, six-foot tall, 180 lbs, with light brown hair. He also has a snake tattoo running down his left arm. A print match ties him to Kim Foster's murder. Now, a prison psych evaluation calls Gates a brutal, highly intelligent sociopath. He's done time for manslaughter and attempted murder. His last conviction was for breaking a bottle over a man's head in a bar, almost killing him, for which Gates served four years in Sing Sing. He just got out last month. No known address, no family. His mother died when he was four years old, and he was placed in a series of foster homes since then, so he will not be easy to find.
After spending a lot of time hunting down Marcus Gates, Castle finally walked in to his loft late that evening. Alexis sitting on the couch reading, is the first thing he sees when he walks through the door.
"Hey, Dad."
"Hey."
"Must be quite a case if it's keeping you out this late."
"Oh, you know, someone died, someone else did it." Castle points to the rose on the table in front of Alexis. "From the secret admirer?"
"As a matter of fact, it is."
"Figure out who it is yet?"
"Dad, I took your advice and decided it's better not knowing. And he left another note, but this time in the mail box. He said, if I like the rose, I should show him by wearing it at lunch time tomorrow. Isn't that sweet"
"Well, is that a good idea? What would Kevin think?"
"I get a feeling it's not Kevin who has the problem."
"I'm just not sure it's smart to go wearing some flower when you don't know who it's from. Your-your school is not exactly Fort Knox, alright? Anyone could have put that note on your desk or in the mail box. Your secret admirer could be some pervert watching you from afar with high-powered binoculars."
Alexis went to bed, but Castle stayed. He was thinking. This secret admirer thing bothered him more than he liked to admit. Maybe because he saw what he saw every day. There were a lot of crazy people out there. A lot of perverts. The idea of this person leaving a note for her in the mail box, showed Castle that this person knew where she lived, and had access to the building. Maybe he should try and figure out who this secret admirer is, without Alexis finding out. No, he couldn`t do that. Could he?
The next day when Castle entered the bullpen, Ryan and Esposito was in a friendly banter about Ryan`s system in casefiles. Esposito thought Ryan's system was dumb, Ryan said it was efficient, and that's what mattered to him. Castle went over to Becketts desk. Beckett talked to someone at Sing Sing. It made Castle curious, so he read something written on a note in front of Beckett.
"Jelly Tyson"? He commented.
"It's Jerry, Castle. When Gates got released, he gave all of his stuff to Jerry Tyson, a fellow inmate. So, if the two of them were friends, Jerry might be able to tell us where we can find Gates."
Beckett leaves and Castle gets up to fix her notes before following her out. They go to Sing-Sing, to talk to this Jerry Tyson guy. Tyson gave them information about a place Gates used to go drinking. Some place called Hogs Neck Tavern. That's exactly where they found him, and they arrested him. They bring him back to the precinct to interrogate him. Beckett is in the interrogation room with him while Castle and Captain Montgomery are in the other room watching. He explains that his fingerprint probably was on the nametag because he worked at the Empire Prop House, a place that rents out props to movies and tv shows. His job is to stock props. Tons of name tags just like this one. He bet he had touched a hundred of them. They also have all kinds of uniforms there. After searching Gates' apartment, they come up empty handed, and since he explained the fingerprint they didn't have probable cause to hold him and have to let him go. But Beckett and the others are still sure that he is the killer, so Beckett orders surveillance on him.
Castle went home at lunchtime. When he got there, he sat down at the kitchen counter. As he sits there drinking coffee and looks through his phone Alexis comes down the stairs. He didn't even know she was home. She must`ve had a short day today.
"Oh, don't you look adorable this afternoon."
"I meet my secret admirer today."
"Oh, I can just picture the scene. You and your secret admirer agree to meet in the cafeteria. You scan the array of pimply faces. Which one is his? Your secret admirer uses the prearranged signal of a double helping of mashed potatoes on his plate. He's handsome. Charming in an asexual, non-threatening kind of way."
"Nice try. But it'll be so much more mysterious. Listen to this. "If you want to meet, I'll be at Strawberry Fields at two o'clock. I hope you'll be there, too."
"No. No, no, no. No, you're not going." Rick insists.
"Dad, before you were practically forcing me to find out who it is."
"Not in the park. Not by yourself."
"But I've been there a million times Dad."
"Whoa, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. The first note you got...rope of flaxen hair? Rope? Flaxen? Flaxen is blonde."
"Dad, I'm a redhead. You're totally overreacting. I'm meeting my secret admirer, and that's all there is to it."
With that Alexis leaves. Martha had overheard the conversation and says that she will go to the park and keep an eye on Alexis, but keep her distance. That makes him feel a little better about it.
When Castle gets back to the precinct after lunch, Beckett is not any closer to finding any evidence against Gates. She`s a little frustrated, so she decides that they will go back to the prison and talk to Jerry Tyson again. To get him to talk to them they offer him a deal, to get out early and to protect his girlfriend, Donna Gallagher. He takes the deal. A little later, Detective Ryan is escorting Jerry Tyson to a motel and stays with him for a while going over everything he knows about Marcus Gates. Tyson tells Ryan that Gates sometimes had a partner and that gives Beckett, Castle and Esposito something to work with. They soon discover that he lied about his alibi and used someone else to pretend to be him so he could be at two places at once. They find out that McCardle was his partner. When they try to find him, they discover that he is in the hospital. And they find Gates at Tyson's girlfriends house, trying to kill her. But they get there in time to stop him.
Kevin has taken a little break from the case, to go to the park and meet his girlfriend. But she doesn't know that it`s him she is going to meet there. Kevin was the one who was giving Alexis the notes and the rose. He thought it was nice and funny to pretend to be a secret admirer, and not tell her. To get her excited and curious. To get her mind away from the exams for a while and make her relax and enjoy some unexpected attention. He hoped she would be there and not get mad at him when she realised it was him. When he came to the spot where he had told her to meet him, she was already there. He went up to her, holding a red rose in his hand. She saw him coming and smiled at him. When he was close enough he gave her the rose.
"Hey beautiful! I am glad you showed up."
"It was you? I mean it is you, you are my secret admirer? I didn't think of that. But now I am glad it is you and no one else. I don't understand how you was able to get that note to me at school without me knowing, but I don't care.
She wasn't mad at him and he was happy about that. She took a step closer and he opened his arms for her, pulled her in for a hug. And then they kissed and agreed to meet up tonight and spend the evening and night together. Then they kissed again before Kevin had to leave to get back to the case.
They had Gates back in the interrogation room, with Beckett.
"Gates, we found Paul. He's at St. Benjamin's. We know that he pretended to be you the night of Kim Foster's murder, and I'm gonna get him to testify against you.
"You don't know Paul." He smugly said.
"Well, then we'll go another way. I'll charge him with accessory to murder."
"You can't do that."
Actually, we can. Sing Sing might have been a picnic for you, but how long do you think Paul is gonna survive in there?
"Paul didn't know what was going on. He only did what I told him."
"The only way to prove that is by telling me the whole story."
"Only if Paul gets immunity. And I want that in writing." Gates demands.
He gets it in writing. That Paul McCardle will have immunity.
"Mr. Gates, did you kill Kim Foster?"
"Yes, I killed all of them."
"I want their names." Kate asks him.
Knowing that they have him dead to rights he gives her the names of the women.
"Linda Russo. Before that, it was Sarah Townsend. Five other women."
Marcus Gates confess to all of the murders, and they can close the case after four years. Or at least that is what they believe. But when Castle and Ryan go back to the motel where Tyson is, something happens.
Kevin looks at Castle and says "Gates confessed to everything. You get to chalk one up for the good guys, why the long face?"
"Because if this were a book, I still wouldn't understand the operation."
"Valve replacement. It's no big deal. My dad had one."
"Yeah, it is if you don't have the money. Who paid for it?"
"I'm guessing Gates did. Maybe he stashed away some money from before he went to prison."
"Yeah, but he was out of prison for a month. Why wait till now to do McCardle's operation?"
"Well, he needed McCardle to help him with Linda Russo and Kim Foster."
"I guess."
Ryan and Castle enter Jerry's safe room.
"Packing up? Kevin asked him.
Tyson replies: "Oh, I was just getting stuff together."
Rick asked him "All that stuff is from prison?"
"Well, you accumulate a lot of stuff, you know, even in the slammer."
"You were right about Gates. He did try to go after Donna, but she's okay."
"And Gates?"
"He confessed. It's all over." Ryan tells him putting him at ease.
"Thank god."
"Aren't you going to ask what happened? To your girlfriend, Donna. You didn't ask about her, you just asked about Gates. Doesn't make any sense. Unless..." Rick slowly puts it all together "she was supposed to die."
"I- I don't know what you—"
"And McCardle didn't get the money from for the surgery until after you got out of prison. He's removing all evidence he was even there. It was him all along. He's the real Triple Killer."
Ryan pulls his gun, but Jerry gets to him too fast, knocks Ryan out, takes the gun, and aims at Castle.
"Guilty as charged."
As Ryan lies unconscious on the floor, Tyson ties him up. Castle is already tied to a chair.
"That story about Gates getting arrested, that was your story, wasn't it? You were afraid you were gonna get caught, so you hid in prison."
"Too bad you didn't figure that out sooner Castle."
"Too bad you didn't leave sooner. The cops will be here any minute."
"Looks like Detective Ryan called the precinct just before he got here. There won't be anyone missing me for a while. By the time they do, I'll be long gone." Tyson mocks.
"You won't get far. They already have your name, know you face."
"Changed those. Done that before. That's part of the fun of it."
"Fun, like setting up Gates?"
"Paul McCardle was the only person in the world that he cared about, and once I learned that, the rest was easy. You never know when you need one of these." Tyson says.
Jerry takes Ryan's badge and reloads the gun. Pointing it at Castle again. They have a small conversation and then Jerry leaves the motel with his duffel bag. As he exits through the gate, cop cars pull up with sirens blaring. Beckett and Esposito rush to the motel room. Beckett kicks in the door. After Beckett and Esposito unties them, they help Ryan outside to the ambulance to get him checked by paramedics. Castle goes outside and sits down on a bench, lost in thought. Beckett approaches him with a cup of coffee. She sits down beside him and hands him the coffee. Rick thanks her for the coffee.
"Mm-hmm. Tell me something, Castle. Why did he let you live? "
"Kate, he wants to punish me. Make me pay for ruining his plan. Now he's gonna kill again all because I couldn't stop him. And I feel so...
Kate places her hand on his thigh and says, "I now the feeling." Rick reciprocates by taking her hand in his and holding on tightly…
Kevin is not hurt that bad and is cleared to go home. He calls Alexis on his way home and ask her to meet him at his place. When he gets there Alexis is waiting for him. He leads her inside and closes the door. Sitting down at the couch, he tells her everything that had happened that evening. He is mad at himself for not being able to overpower Tyson.
Then he tells Alexis that he dosn't want to think about it right now, he just wants to be happy and enjoy her company. Alexis moves to sit on his lap, she put her arms around his neck and kissed him tenderly. When they break the kiss, Kevin speaks.
"Alexis, there is something I planned on asking you tonight. Under the circumstances I probably should wait, but I don't care anymore. Do you want to move in with me? I mean, you have your own key and a lot of stuff here, but you don't officially live here.
She is shocked at first, but knew that they would eventually get to this point.
"Yes, yes, of course I want to officially move in with you. We have been together for 9 months now. It is time. Has been for a while."
After that they celebrate and seal the deal by spending the night together, in bed. Making love.
That was chapter 8. Tell me what you think. I already have chapter 9 ready and going to post it in a few days.
I have most of this story figured out in my head, but if you have any ideas or suggestions for the story, please let me know.
