lv2bnsb1: Rory was three when she disappeared. The average weight of a three-year-old female is 31 pounds, give or take. Take into account the fact that she'd spent the last year or so in and out of the hospital, receiving radiation and chemo, which can cause loss of appetite and the inability to keep anything down, and 25 pounds is pretty reasonable. She would've been skin and bones.
Everyone else: Thank you so much for the amazing response to this story. I don't think I expected to get this much attention for the entire thing, let alone the first few chapters.
Castle spends the next couple of months struggling to put together a timeline akin to the precinct's murder board. He orders a fancy touch screen monitor a few days after visiting Captain Mikhail, sketching out a preliminary outline while waiting for it to come in.
By the time it arrives he's got the skeleton perfected based on what he knows, starting from the day Rory was born and reaching out to the day that she vanished. He transfers it to the screen, taking the time to mess with the font and organization, color-coding everything and adding pictures.
Once the skeleton is done he moves to elaborate, filling in details from the case files, the internet, and what little Kate has told him. He makes little off branches for theories and sections of a blank space for questions, of which there are many, before he has finally done all that he can. All in all it takes about three months between the waiting, keeping up with his regular schedule at the precinct, and taking a three-week book tour around the states for Naked Heat.
When he's sure that there's no more he can do with the information he has he marks off a day, one in which he is supposedly supposed to be in back to back meetings with Black Pawn, and heads off to try and get his hands on the last thing that might be able to shed any sort of light.
He takes a taxi this time, unwilling to battle the traffic around Central Park and Madison Ave on his own, and tips the cabbie generously, thanking him for his patience despite Castle' general antsiness. He stops at the security desk just before the main lobby of the hospital, identifying himself and requesting to speak with somebody who would've been on duty the afternoon that Rory disappeared.
"What business do you have regarding her?" the security officer asks suspiciously.
"I work with her mother. Nikki Heat?" he offers. "She's the inspiration. I've come across a couple of discrepancies in Rory's case files," he lies smoothly. "I'm hoping to be able to compare them to the tapes; James Mikhail said that if any of the footage was still available it would be here."
"I'll make some calls. Sit over there," the officer orders, nodding to one of the many benches around the room.
Castle stares at the same painting for nearly an hour waiting for somebody to get back to him. "Richard Castle?" He looks up to find a man, in his mid-fifties at least, standing over him.
"Yes?" He jumps up, eagerly awaiting what the man has to say.
"Sullivan," is all he says, holding out his hand. "I do not have the authority to give you copies of our security footage, nor do you have the authority to receive them, but I've checked your story and if you'd like to come with me, I will give you a couple of minutes to look them over."
"That would be fantastic," he grins, sighing in relief. "Thank you so much." The man nods, turning to lead Castle through the crowd in the hospital's main lobby, past the sorry excuse of a bookstore tucked into a corner and into an elevator.
When they got off at the right floor, they take a few turns and enter a box of room, thin carpeting with coffee stains covering the floor. "Phil, this is Rick Castle," Sullivan says, sounding bored. "He's gonna use the desktop to watch the footage from a case he's involved with."
Phil grunts in acknowledgement, eyes not darting away from his laptop screen, and Sullivan points to the ancient PC in the corner. "It's all queued up."
Castle nods, thanking the man once again before squeezing past Phil and taking a seat in front of the screen. He presses play, eyes greedily taking in every little detail. The time stamp reads 12/19/07 4:42:46 pm and seconds later he can see Beckett stroll through the door nearest the camera. She stops for a second, just outside, and glance towards the camera before heading the other way.
He takes a moment to rewind, pausing just before she turns away. Her hair is dark, probably almost black, falling down to the middle of her back at least. He's never seen her so exhausted, so defeated before. This doesn't even compare to her demeanor after she'd had to shoot Coonan in the precinct.
There are flats on her feet, her arms are wrapping a sweater at least twice the size of her around her body, her shoulders hunch, causing her body to cave in on itself, and it could just be the grain of the quality but it looks like she's got mascara smeared under her eyes. His heart splits right down the middle as he hits play again, a shudder running through her entire body before she walks down the hall and out of sight.
As he waits for the nurse to leave the room he studies the hall; a cart, probably for laundry or cafeteria trays, sits right outside of Rory's room. There are photographs of things like puppies and flowers adorning the walls, as well as what he supposes must be colorful bulletin boards and children's drawings. There are two other doorways clearly defined in the frame, the edge of a nurse's station, and the grainy hall beyond it.
There's nothing suspicious about it all, not even another person until the nurse finally leaves the room and takes a seat behind the counter at the station. She writes something down on the clipboard in her hands, sets it down, and pushes away, leaving just the back of her head in the frame.
That's all that happens for five minutes, before the nurse rolls back to the counter and Beckett reappears at the edge of the field of vision. She stumbles down the hallway in a daze, stopping again just outside the door, leaning her head against the wall in what is more than likely an effort to pull herself together for her daughter's sake. She takes a deep breath and pushes off, steps into the doorway and freezes. Suddenly there's a rush from the nurse's station, the same one from before and another that'd been hiding out of view, and moments later a doctor dashes into the picture.
It's chaos from there, calming down for a few minutes while the doctor explains something, but after he makes a couple of phone calls all hell breaks loose again. Kate is hysterical through it all, not knowing what to do with herself as life carries on around her while she's suspended in time. She trips into Rory's room as everybody else edges off camera and he stops the feed, knowing that nothing else will be of any use; just the investigators looking around.
He leans back in the seat, drags his palm over his face as he sighs. He knew that there would be nothing, but actually seeing it…. Rory was in that room when her mother left and gone when she returned, and not once did anybody pass through that door besides the leaving nurse. Where could she have possibly gone?
Castle shakes his head, at a complete and utter loss. There's no way he can figure anything out with this footage, not here. But could it be enhanced? Really, though, should he bother to try? It's not like they'd shrunken the poor girl and it would take HD to pick her out of the background. She had not come through that doorway.
It doesn't matter, though. He needs this file. He throws a glance at Phil, who is still enraptured with whatever it is he's doing on his own machine, so Castle pulls the flash drive from his pocket and slides it into the tower, dragging the file into the window that appears and pulling the device out as soon as the loading bar has reached its end. He closes out the windows and clears his throat, standing up as he does so.
"Well, thank you for your time, Phil," he says, politely making a beeline for the door. Phil grunts once more and Castle darts out of the room, forcing himself to walk calmly and inconspicuously back down to the lobby. He doesn't see Sullivan as he leaves but throws a thankful wave towards the man who had first spoken with him. The guy nods his acknowledgement and Castle bolts, shoving the revolving door roughly and hailing a cab a six blocks away.
When he gets home he downloads the content of the drive to his laptop, locking the file and labeling it so that anyone who might happen to see it would think it had to do with Nikki Heat. Then he pours himself a glass of scotch, sinking into the couch in frustration. This is like a real life forty-eight hours. How would he ever solve it?
xxx
He doesn't sleep much that night, his writer's mind coming up with fantastical plots that involve taking her through the ceiling and out through an air-conditioning duct. Unfortunately, nothing he comes up with holds any amount of plausibility. Still, it might be a good idea to map out the hallway, find out where all of the vents would run in comparison to her room.
He gets out of bed to start a new outline, filling in what he knows from the security camera and making a note to track down the floor plan for the hospital, or somebody who would know it.
He supposes that, with the right equipment and size, a person might have been able to sneak her out through the drop ceiling. It's not likely, but it's really the only thing he has to go on right now. She didn't go through the door and she couldn't have gone through the window, so for now the ceiling is the only option.
His minds starts wandering to scenarios involving ninjas, elaborate rope lifts and the like, and he knows it's time to stop. This is a serious matter, one that does not deserve to be fantasized. This isn't one of his books and ninjas did not take Kate Beckett's daughter.
xxx
He shuffles into the precinct two hours late the next morning, so tired he hands Kate the wrong coffee, failing to realize even as he takes a sip of hers that it is far too fatless for him.
She tugs her cup from his grip, sliding his into his fingers. "What's wrong, Castle?" she asks with concern, as his eyes drift shut.
"Ninja's didn't take your daughter," he mumbles through a yawn, her eyes going wide as she chokes on her drink.
"I never suspected that they had," she says carefully, looking around to make sure nobody had heard him.
"That's why you're the sensible one," he reasons, eyes still closed. "Because she didn't go through the door, and she couldn't have gone through the window, so that leaves the ceiling as the last path of escape which, in theory, would require ninjas. That's the only way everything would've been done and left undisturbed in such a short amount of time," he shrugs his shoulders clumsily, knocking his hand into the arm of the chair and spilling some of the coffee down his hand.
His eyes snap open and he shakes his head roughly, wiping the scalding liquid on his pants. "I am so sorry, Kate. I didn't sle-"
'That much is obvious," she interrupts him. "Go home and take a nap Castle," she says quietly. "We can talk about your ninja theory later."
"C'mon, Bro," Esposito stops next to him. "Really? You think ninja's would've just left Gregory's body on a park bench?" He rolls his eyes and continues on to the break room, tossing back over his shoulder, "they'd have chopped him into tiny pieces and fed him to sharks."
Kate can't help the tiny sob that escapes her at chopping him into tiny pieces, slapping a hand over her mouth and quickly morphing it into a cough.
"You're right, Espo," Castle shakes his head, putting his hand on Kate's shoulder and squeezing softly. "Don't know what I was thinking." He leans in closely to whisper, "Not ninjas, remember?" before letting go of her.
She nods, catching her breath as he stands up again. "Of course. Go sleep, Castle," she reiterates, giving him a shove. "I'll see you later."
xxx
She knocks on his door a few hours later, takeout under one arm and a bottle of wine under the other. "So, ninjas?" she quirks her brow at him, sidestepping into the loft as soon as the door swings open.
"About that," he groans, letting the door swing shut on its own as he moves to follow her. "Look, I didn't mean to bring anything up, especially not at work and especially not that."
"I know you didn't mean anything by it, Castle," she assures him quietly, handing him a burger. "I'm just curious as to what prompted it." She shrugs casually, taking a bite of her chicken sandwich as she watches him. "Why ninjas?"
"Are you sure you want to talk about this?" he tries to evade, selfishly playing on her emotions. "We do-"
"Castle. I'm not a porcelain doll," she huffs, rolling her eyes. "I might crack but I'm not going to shatter. We can talk about it."
"That's not exactly what I meant…"
"Castle, you're my partner. Regardless of whether I wanted it to happen or not, it's your business now. You don't have to pretend to not think about it; you don't have to avoid the topic. Yeah, it's a sore subject. Of course it is, but that doesn't mean that we have to pretend nothing ever happened." Her eyes tear up and she presses her fist to her mouth, shaking her head. "Not anymore, because it did happen and that's…. that's the way it is, and it's okay to talk about it."
He watches as she quickly stitches herself back together, waiting for him to explain. He gives in, nodding his agreement, and begins. "Ninjas," he mutters, shaking his head. How stupid could he get? "I was just thinking about how she didn't go through the door. She couldn't go through the window. That leaves the ceiling. How could she have possibly gotten into the ceiling?"
"And you went with ninjas," she laughs, matter-of-factly. "Ninjas swept Rory away through the ceiling."
"Well do you have anything better?" he counters, not even thinking, treating the theory as though it were that of a regular case.
"No." Her eyes cloud over, staring into space as she hugs herself tightly. "No, I don't."
"Dammit," he curses, stepping forward and pulling her into his chest. She shoves her face into his neck, clutching at his sides as she collapses into him.
"I guess I am a porcelain doll," she mourns, squeezing him tightly.
"But think about how beautiful they are, even after you glue'em back together," he counters. "Make'em one of a kind. Y'know, s'long as they're not the ones that follow your every move and try to kill you in your sleep."
She pulls away to meet his eyes, crinkling at the corners as he smirks down at her. "Collector's edition," he whispers, rubbing the tears off of her cheek with his thumb. She rolls her eyes, letting him catch just a glimpse of her grin before returning to her spot under his chin.
"I guess you're not so bad yourself, Castle," she pinches his sides, delighting in the high-pitched shriek he emits.
"Devil woman," he corrects, disentangling from her and moving to hide on the other side of the island.
"Wuss," she counters, stepping towards him slowly. He slaps her hand away as she reaches to pinch him again.
"Devil woman," he repeats, jumping away. "Have you no mercy?"
"Pour me a glass of wine and we'll talk." She steps back, grabbing up her sandwich and fries as she leaves him behind to situate herself on the couch.
He stares after her, in awe of her ability to snap right back into herself. She really is a porcelain doll, but not one of those stalkery ones. Fragile, yet exquisite. And so much stronger than he ever would have been.
