I don't even know what I'm going to DO with my life when I finish this fic, but this is the second to last chapter! One more and I'm closing the cover on this story.
Chapter Nine
god grew lonely
in the days before light
so he made himself an heir
and in the same breath
invented regret
- tumblr user screwballdame
When Javier returned to the now nearly deserted field of desks, his head was spinning. All he could think of was the way Kevin had looked, sitting alone in a cell, saying 'I'm fine' in an effort to get Javier to go back upstairs.
For once in his life, Javier wished that Kevin was capable of lying to him.
Leaving him there alone had felt like a betrayal, guilt lodged in Javier's chest like a block of lead. As he approached the clump of people around his and Kevin's desks, their words became audible.
"You don't have to be scared," Alexis was saying to Jenny. "If anybody can figure this out, it's Esposito and Beckett and my dad. If anybody can help him, it's them."
"Thanks honey but I'm not sure if even the best cops can work miracles," Jenny sighed, swiping at her cheek with the back of the hand not resting on her stomach. "And this time... well, unless we can find a miracle, I'm afraid it's over."
"We're not giving up that easy," Javier announced, picking that moment to make his re-entry. Upon seeing him, all five of them sat up straighter, looking at him expectantly.
"How is he? Is he okay?" Jenny asked, anxiety coating her voice.
Looking into his friend's eyes, he found that he could not bring himself to lie to her.
"No, Jenny. He isn't."
"What can we do?" spoke up Rick.
"Help me figure out who's doing this to him." Javier had – to Rick's memory – never sounded so determined as he did in that moment. "They're gonna take him to get indicted tomorrow morning. We can't let that happen. That means we have, oh, roughly twelve hours, thirteen tops, to figure this whole thing out. Alright?"
Rick and Kate nodded. Out of the corner of his eye, Javier saw Martha shoot Alexis a look, the latter of whom gave a small nod in return. Before he had time to figure out what that all meant, Martha had stood up, gently touching Jenny's arm.
"Why don't you let me give you a ride back to our place tonight, darling. You can stay the night there, instead of all on your own."
Jenny blushed. "Oh, Mrs. Rogers, I couldn't possibly impose like that."
"Nonsense!" Martha waved a hand, smiling at her. "We're all family here, are we not? I can't bear the thought of you being by yourself tonight. Really, it's no trouble at all."
A grateful expression ran across Jenny's tired face and she nodded. "Thank you so much." Before she spoke again she looked to Javier. "Is it alright if I go and see Kevin?"
"I'll take her down," Rick volunteered.
"Great," said Javier. "Alright. Jenny, go and see Kevin. Martha and Alexis will take you home after. Castle, come and meet me and Beckett back here when you're done. Got it?"
It was a sign of how truly bleak the situation had become that Rick made no quip about 'breaking the huddle' or a 'team chant'. Instead he just dipped his chin, holding Javier's gaze.
"Got it."
…
None of this made sense. Javier felt like he was trying to do a puzzle, staring at a board of evidence that just didn't add up, except the picture he was trying to piece together and the reference on the box did not match one another and half of the pieces were missing or damaged. They were running around in circles, chasing their own tails, and none of it was leading anywhere but sideways, backwards, and upside-fucking-down.
"Alright," Rick said, re-entering the room after saying goodnight to Martha and Alexis, instructing them to take good care of Jenny. "Let's start from the beginning. Cold, basic facts, what do we know?"
"Connor Brady Ryan," Kate read off, looking at the pristine photo clipped to the board. "Twenty five years old, youngest son of Brady and Quinlan Ryan and heir apparent to the Ryan family empire. Fiancée Riley Macke. Girlfriend Erin Collins. Collins knew about Macke but not vice versa. Stabbed then shot in an alley near a construction site.
"What's our suspect list?"
"Well there was Macke and her brother Justin, but they both alibied out. So did Collins. Other than that we're left with..." Kate trailed off, not wanting to go where that sentence was heading.
"We're left with Kevin," Rick finished for her.
"Right." Javier's voice was a quiet mutter, eyebrows furrowed as he stared at the board intently. Like maybe if he stared hard enough or long enough the evidence would rearrange itself, illuminating the path to clearing Kevin's name.
No such luck.
He looked to Kate for instructions – she was usually the one to hand them out at this point – but all he received in response was a shake of the head.
"This one's yours, Javier."
He nodded at her, holding her gaze strongly. Kate nodded back. Her hand rested briefly on his shoulder as she passed him to stand by Rick. He felt her trust in that touch, her faith that he would move mountains if that's what it took.
And he would. For Kevin. For Jenny. For Kate and Rick and himself. For all of them. He had to.
"The autopsy report. I'm gonna go talk to Lanie again, see if there's anything she could possibly have missed the first time around."
"What do you want us to do?" asked Rick. Javier stopped halfway out of his chair.
"Go talk to Ryan. See if there's anything, anybody he can think of that would want to put this murder on him." Before the next words left his mouth, he hesitated. "And cross run all of this with 3XK."
Rick's hand slipped against his desk, a mug crashing to the floor and shattering into a hundred pieces. "3XK. Shit. Why didn't we think of that sooner."
But Kate was shaking her head even as he spoke.
"I'm not so sure. I mean think about it. Does any of this feel like 3XK?"
"We have to look into every possibility. Even if it doesn't feel like him, we have to check it. He's done this to us before, remember?"
Cringing at that unwelcome reminder, Kate shook herself. "Yeah. You're right."
As she started after Rick towards holding, Kate hung back for a moment.
"We've been through this before," she said quietly, even hazel eyes locked with worried brown. "We cleared Rick and we can clear Kevin too. This fight isn't over yet."
"No," he agreed, "it isn't."
…
The morgue felt colder than it usually did. For a fleeting moment Javier wondered if the perceived drop in temperature was due to the late hour or the sense of impending doom hanging over the entire station. Most likely it was a combination of both, he decided, pushing open the door to the chilled room where the secrets of death were unraveled, hoping that Lanie was – by some stroke of luck – still there.
She was, sitting in a rolling chair, cheek in her hand, staring down at a file with a pen dangling listlessly from her fingers. When she heard Javier's footsteps echoing towards her through the deserted room, Lanie looked up. Her eyes, while normally bright with a sparkle of humor in them, were dull and tired. Looking down at her desk, Javier saw that the file splayed open before her was Connor Ryan's autopsy file. All of the details were there, from the angle of how his partner's brother had been stabbed to the name of the artery the bullet had ruptured.
"Kevin's been arrested." In all the commotion upstairs, Javier figured nobody had bothered to call Lanie yet and update her on the case's progression.
"Damn," she swore quietly, shaking her head. "Damn. How's he doin'?"
"Not good. We..." he trailed off. "We need a miracle."
"What was that?"
"It's just something Jenny said upstairs. She said it'd take a miracle to save Kevin now. And I think she's right. But just in case there's the slightest chance there's something we missed, some possibility we haven't ran down yet, we're triple checking everything. Including the autopsy report. Is there a chance you could've missed something?"
Lanie gave him a look. "Any other day but today and I would kick you right outta here for even suggesting that. As the situation stands though, I'm way ahead of you. Went over the report maybe a dozen times before I noticed it."
Hearing that, Javier stood up straighter. "Noticed what?"
She stood and beckoned him over to the autopsy table upon which Connor Ryan's body lay. Moving his head with gentle hands, Lanie twisted the dead man's neck so that the smooth curve of shoulder and neck was clearly exposed. Javier peered into the magnifying lens she dragged over. There he saw, on Connor's pale, nearly pristinely unmarked skin, a dark, circular smudge.
"What is it?" he asked, choking down and smothering the flickering sense of hope that had alit in his chest.
"It's a bruise. Latent bruising doesn't show up right away so I'd been hoping that if I waited long enough something would pop and, well... There you have it."
"Do you have any idea what could have made it?" The mark was about two centimeters across with some sort of faint, in-discernible pattern in the center.
"If I had to hazard a guess?" Lanie grabbed a glossy photo from the printer across the room, handing it to Javier. It was a blown up image of the bruise a few inches above Connor's collarbone. "Cufflink. Got trapped between Mr. Ryan's neck and the killer's palm when he was stabbed. See?" She stripped off her purple latex gloves and made as if she was holding a knife in her left hand, putting her right out to steady herself as she mimed stabbing Javier. Sure enough, from the position she was in, if her sleeve had been just long enough it was feasible to imagine a cufflink being pressed so hard into his skin as to leave a clear impression that would appear hours later.
"See what you can make of it," she said, closing the folder and handing it to him. "I'm afraid that's all I've got."
He took it, nodding distractedly. "You should go home. Get some sleep. I'll update you in the morning."
"You should too," Lanie said with a shrewd raise of one eyebrow, "but I know you, and all three of you'll be here 'til the last possible second. Good luck. I hope you find your miracle."
"Me too." The words hung in the air behind Javier as he left, the door swinging shut after him.
By the time he reached the sea of desks again, the building was completely deserted save himself, Kate, and Rick. The night ticked on, the ability to visit down at holding long since closed off to them, theories thrown this way and that, all seemingly leading nowhere. Kevin had been able to give Kate and Rick no names when they went to talk to him, no idea who could possibly have this kind of a vendetta against him. All the evidence was still saying the same thing.
Their one bright spot – the realization that 3XK deserved consideration, especially given his history with frame jobs – soon dimmed as they took a look at the facts. Other than the frame up there seemed to be no crossover with his methods or habits. Connor Ryan wasn't his type, the method was too sloppy, none of it matched up. And when 3XK was behind something you damn well knew about it. There had been no calling card, no visit in disguise, no voicemail on an answering machine or piece of evidence displaying his name in flashing lights. No, he took credit for what he did, and this he did not do.
The three of them were left staring at the photo together, chugging down coffee and twisting it this way and that and trying to force their foggy, exhausted minds to come up with the answer.
Hours later, along with the morning light, came the chilling realization that the marks on the cufflink were initials, and that they spelt out 'KR'.
Kevin Ryan.
…
Even with the proof laying right there in front of them, every cell in Javier's body was screaming at him 'this is wrong'. It didn't make sense. Objectively all the evidence was there, it was irrefutable. But intuitively? From somebody who knew Kevin? No chance. No chance in hell.
He sat and stared at the picture thinking 'no'. Thinking about the man he knew, about Kevin Rick who he'd seen laughing and crying, unconscious in a hospital and watching the love of his life walk down the isle. He'd seen Kevin shot twice and stabbed once, held hostage by various suspects upwards of a dozen or so times, Javier had seen all manner of terrible and wonderful things but out of all of that, this was the one that stopped him dead in his tracks.
Javier stared at the photo of the bruise while Kate and Rick stared at him,a ll three of them trying to make any semblance of sense of it. Soundlessly, Javier pushed himself away from the damning photo – like separating himself from it could some how prevent it from existing or meaning what it meant – and clicked on his computer monitor. The page it displayed was still the Ryan Global Inc. homepage, and from there it was just a few short (albeit hard to find) links to a memorial page buried where almost no one would find it.
Ignoring the shocked murmuring from Kate and Rick behind him, seeing the extent of Brady's severing ties with Kevin for the first time, Javier raked his eyes over the page, looking for the thing that had snagged his notice when looking at the picture of the bruise.
In Loving Memory of Kevin Ryan
1981-1999
He had to suppress a shudder at that many lies condensed into one place, focusing instead on the photo below the words. Kevin looked so young and so unhappy. It was him but at the same time it wasn't, Javier mused, a sullen kid with his partner's eyes, trapped in a facade slowly suffocating him from the inside out. What he was looking for though lay not in the face of the boy whose past Javier desperately wished he could erase, but just above a pair of tightly clasped hands.
Cufflinks, embossed with the initials 'KR'.
"Somebody please have a uniform go and get Kevin."
"His arraignment ins't until-"
"Please. I need to talk to him. Now."
Kate exchanged a look with Rick then flagged down Officer Alsley, speaking a few quiet words to her and watching with a pensive look on her face as Alsley and Brenner, a pair of recent hires, headed towards where Kevin was being held awaiting the arraignment.
The way he was led up through the desks was a spectacle. His hands were held tightly behind his back in cold metal bracelets that dug sharply into his wrists. As he approached the desk, flanked by Alsley and Brenner, Javier looked down away from him, to the photos of the cufflinks in the picture and the bruise on Connor's neck.
He didn't say anything, setting the pictures in front of Kevin. He couldn't. Everything he could have said had been said already.
"Those were mine, yeah," Kevin admitted in a soft, hoarse voice. "But I pitched those cufflinks off a bridge the day I was disowned a decade and a half ago. Even if I had killed my brother, I couldn't have left that mark. I know it's weak but... It's all I've got." Javier watched him look away and down, rotating his shoulders awkwardly in an attempt to ease the pressure the handcuffs put on his joints. It sounded bad. Worse than bad. It sounded like a 'guilty' verdict.
I went for a walk alone.
I threw the cufflinks off a bridge.
I didn't buy the gun.
I don't know why the dealer identified me.
I have no idea who killed my brother.
It was a lot of words that all meant the same thing – in a court of law, in a murder trial, exactly nothing.
Alsley and Brenner were escorting Kevin away towards the door when the sound of loud, furious footsteps drew the attention of everyone.
The truth of how the Ryan family had found out that Kevin was being arraigned right then was lost in the confusion, the handful of officers in the building standing stock still doing their best shocked-owl impressions as Brady Ryan thundered down the hall, a brick wall of rage and power headed straight for Kevin. Officer Brenner – all 5'2" of her – was knocked easily to the side, taken completely by surprise by the sudden accost. Before anybody had any idea what was happening, Brady had seized Kevin by the hair, wrenched his head back, and was screaming at him, sending the room into a flurry of motion as everyone in the vicinity attempted to subdue the man.
"You killed Connor. YOU MURDERED MY SON, YOU BASTARD."
The sound Kevin's head made when it was slammed violently against the glass window set into the wall was sickening. Kevin hadn't even hit the floor, Brady still bellowing obscenities at the crumpled form of his oldest son, when Javier made it over. It took every ounce of restraint in his body not to shoot Brady right then and there, instead grabbing the man by the back of his jacket and his collar, hauling him away from Kevin, spinning and shoving him into a desk.
"Touch him again and I swear to god I will shoot you right here and now," he hissed in Brady's ear, ignoring whatever Quinlan Ryan was shrieking at him. It took him a few moments to register that Kate was shouting his name, looking over at her with fury bright in his eyes.
"What?"
Kate was kneeling on the floor beside a dazed looking Kevin, making eye contact with Javier and holding it. "Don't you have other things to worry about?"
"Go see if Detective Ryan needs a doctor," spoke up a voice from just beside him. He turned to see Captain Victoria Gates, looking at Brady Ryan with more contempt than Javier had ever seen out of her before. When she spoke, her voice reflected the loathing in her eyes. "I'll deal with... this."
Confident that Victoria had the situation handled sufficiently, Javier unclenched his hands from the expensive fabric of Brady's suit and quickly crossed the room to where Kate and Rick were crouched down next to Kevin. One glance at the glass pane he'd had his head slammed into displayed a blood smeared impact point, thin cracks spiderwebbing away from the central mark. Brady had thrown him against the window hard enough that his head had left behind slight breaks in the glass.
Javier swore under his breath, directing his attention to his downed partner. Kevin's hands were still held tightly in the cuffs, surely uncomfortable trapped between his back and the wall he slumped against. Rivulets of blood trickled sluggishly down his jaw from the injury just at the hairline of his left temple. Being as gentle as possible, Javier tilted his head to the side, trying to get a better look at it.
"I'm okay," Kevin said unsteadily, blinking slowly and peering up at his friend. "I'm alright."
"Yeah I doubt that," muttered Javier. He stood and, with Kate's help, carefully maneuvered Kevin up onto his feet. Sweeping his gaze around the room, Javier caught sight of something he wouldn't, not ever in his life, be able to forget.
Keelan Ryan, standing a few feet away, watching the proceedings with neither the vitriol of her father nor the hysteria of her mother. Her entire demeanor was calm, unflustered and unconcerned, as if she hadn't just witnessed her father crack a window with her little brother's head. Her eyes shone like glaciers and she smiled like a viper.
She folded her arms smugly and as she moved the light bounced off something, catching Javier's attention and drawing it to her visible wrist. He stared in abject shock at the two centimeter metal cufflink fastened to Keelan's sleeve.
The carved initials 'KR' glinted back at him
