Moment in Time II
Chapter 10
Clear and Present Danger VI
Henry Wright fidgeted nervously, across the table from Kate and Castle in interrogation. Castle shook his head reprovingly. "A pool cue, I would have expected at least a sword or a goblin ax. Pretty lame for a king."
"I didn't murder Will, Alright?" Henry protested. "He was my friend."
"Then why did you run, Henry?" Kate questioned. When he remained silent, she pressed harder. "Look, we know that you went after Tom Talmadge. You were behind a cyber attack that brought down a government lab. And then you cleaned out your apartment and you disappeared."
"Because I was afraid they would come after me next," Henry countered.
"And in the midst of all this fear you did battle on Mount Orr?" Castle queried skeptically.
"I thought the den was a safe place, okay?" Henry asserted. "We're all a nerd band. I didn't think they could get me there."
"Who?" Kate demanded.
"The same people who killed Will, alright?" Henry retorted. "If they found out that I knew..." Henry pressed his lips together, crossing his arms protectively across his chest.
"That you knew what?" Kate prodded. "You helped him, didn't you? You helped him build a working suit."
Henry slumped in defeat. "Will came to me with an out there idea. He wanted to adopt nature's camouflage to meta materials. But there wasn't anybody in his lab that had my programming skills. And since there was no way I was going to get security clearance, we worked on the down low."
"And in exchange you got to use the suit to exact your revenge against Talmadge, right?" Kate prompted.
"That wasn't supposed to happen!" Henry exclaimed. "I was just looking for proof that Tom stole my idea for Hytch. Tom wasn't even supposed to be there. I couldn't find what I needed. And then Tom came home early. I just wanted to mess with him. But I snapped. Will heard the struggle, he came in and pulled me off."
"You got angry with Will for stopping you," Kate assumed. "So you decided to use the suit to kill him instead, right?"
Henry rose in his seat. "No! We both realized that I had become Frodo, and the suit was the one ring to rule them all. Will knew it was too much power for anyone to have, especially the government. The Feds were Gollum. They would never stop hunting for the suit. It needed to be destroyed, cast into the fires of Mordor. I wrote the code to sabotage the lab so they couldn't rebuild the tech, at least not right away. And without the equations Will derived from cephalopods, they may never be able to."
"Cephalopods, like squids?" Castle asked.
"Actually, Will, he based his equations off of the cuttlefish," Henry replied.
Kate and Castle looked at each other. "I knew those cuttlefish didn't like me," Castle declared.
"Let's find out something about them," Kate suggested.
Castle nodded. "There's gotta be something on YouTube. There's something on YouTube about everything."
Kate rolled her eyes. "Yeah, whether you want to know about it or not."
Castle pulled out his phone and began a search. "Here," he told Kate. "I'm sending you a link. We can watch it at your desk."
"The cuttlefish is known as nature's king of camouflage," the narrator announced. "The papillae of cuttlefish are unique in their ability to rapidly polarize reflected light waves and change the creature's skin color."
Kate turned off the feed and examined a stack of papers. "That's why Will got back in touch with Donna. He didn't want her. He wanted her research. Castle, look at Will's phone records. For weeks there were phone calls going back and forth between the two of them, and then three days before his death, right when he got that suit to function, there were only incoming calls from her. Will wasn't answering."
Castle read over her shoulder. "And right after Will was murdered, she stops calling, almost as if she knew he was dead."
"Hey guys," Ryan called from his desk, "I called the university. Guess who canceled their class the night Will was killed?"
"Donna Brooks," Kate and Castle answered simultaneously.
Kate and Castle were searching Donna's office when she stormed in. "What's going on here? This is a private office."
"Which belongs to the university," Kate replied mildly. "The dean gave us permission to search it as a part of our investigation."
"Wait, you think I had something to do with Will's death?" Donna asked, her fingers ticking nervously against her thigh.
"Donna, you missed your class the night that he was killed. Where were you?" Kate questioned.
"At home, with a cold," Donna returned. "And I never would have hurt Will. I loved him."
Castle looked at her, projecting a subtle air of sympathy. "You loved him, but then he betrayed you. That must've made you angry. To find out that he was just using you for your research."
"That was the second time that he left you and you couldn't live with the embarrassment," Kate added.
"This is ridiculous. I'm not going to stand here and let you accuse me of killing my boyfriend." Donna headed for the door.
"Donna, that was you in the suit in the apartment with us," Kate called after her. "It was the same suit that you used to kill Will. You found out about his project. And before he could destroy it, you used his own creation against him."
Donna halted in her tracks. "What suit? What are you talking about?"
Castle held up a card. "The suit you wore when you went after Will's key card and you got my credit card instead. Just found it, buried in the back of your drawer. Thank you for that, by the way. I forgot to cancel this thing. It would be such a pain."
Donna's shoulders slumped in resignation. "What was I supposed to do? Let him get away with it? He stopped calling, stopped texting. He used me and then pretended like I didn't exist. He wanted me to just disappear from his life. So I did and he never saw me coming."
"Turn around," Kate ordered, "Donna Brooks, you're under arrest..."
Donna pulled away suddenly, upsetting an antique diving suit to block the door. Kate tried unsuccessfully to move it, until Castle came to her aid. "I've got it, he told her, lifting it up enough to allow her passage. "You go."
"Okay," Kate agreed taking off after Donna.
Castle put all his effort into moving the suit enough so that he could follow her, letting it fall back again as he cleared the doorway.
Kate carefully scanned a laboratory filled with beakers, flasks of blue liquid, some on Bunsen burners, and a poster of the Ebola virus on the wall.
Castle pointed, "Her backpack and clothes, she's wearing the suit!"
"Castle, block the door," Kate advised.
"Right. She is not slipping past me this time," Castle swore, closing the door and using a stool to break off the handle.
"Donna, there's nowhere to go," Kate yelled at the air.
A beaker careened at Castle's head. He ducked, letting it smash against a wall. Castle and Kate scrambled to find cover as a hail of glassware followed. A burner fell, and flames spread across the lab bench. Castle grabbed an extinguisher to quench the blaze. As he released the vapors, he realized they could be used to visualize Donna, as CSU used a spray to visualize lasers when determining trajectories. He turned to Kate who immediately caught his thought and grabbed an extinguisher of her own. Together they filled the room with chemical fog.
"Ah ha, got you now!" Castle shouted gleefully and turned lovingly to Kate. "I so missed these mind melds. We really are back now." Castle spotted movement in the cloud. "Two o'clock," he pointed, "she's right there!"
Kate dropped her extinguisher to go after Donna, who tried to climb a set of shelves. Kate pulled her down and cuffed her. Coughing slightly, Castle set to work replacing the handle on the door while Kate called in back-up.
When officers had led Donna off to holding, Castle settled in at Kate's desk to play with the suit. Elena Sarkov approached the desk with her head of security, clearing her throat. "We'll be taking custody of that, Mr. Castle."
The security head held out an open case. Regretfully, Castle folded the suit and placed it inside. "You know," Castle told Sarkov, "Will thought this was too much power for any one person to have, and with everything that's happened, I think I agree. This kind of science is a bit of a deal with the devil. Be careful not to lose your soul."
Sarkov headed off wordlessly with her escort. Castle sighed and looked for Kate. "I believe we have a score to tote up," he murmured, gently nuzzling her neck.
"More than that, Castle,"she whispered softly.
Castle lit a cluster of spicy scented candles on the bedside table and gazed expectantly at Kate. "Mother is out for the evening. Alexis is pulling an all-nighter at the library."
Kate smiled, running a finger down the front of his shirt."So we're actually, truly, really alone?"
Castle pointed to headset with infrared sensors. "This came in this morning." He put on the gear and carefully scanned the room. "All clear except for the very hot object in front of me.
Kate flipped up the eyepieces. "Give me a minute and let me slip into something special, okay?"
Kate started to turn away, but he called her back. Sitting on the edge of the bed, he patted the spot beside him in invitation. "Talk to me a minute."
Kate sat down beside him, confused. "Babe, I thought the last thing on your mind was talking. It certainly has been the last couple days."
Castle cradled her hands in his own. "Kate, we've been trying to get back to us, partners, ying and yang, two halves of a whole. We've been doing that with - other things - and it's been addictive, intoxicating. But today was the first time we really were the old us. I feel like we've finally found ourselves again. The understanding, the total wordless sharing, that's what was missing. There's been a barrier between us since I came back, and today I feel like it's fallen. Do you feel it?"
Kate nodded, framing his face in her hands. "I do Babe, and," she agreed. "I think we should celebrate. I do have something special," she purred, heading for the bathroom.
Castle grinned as he flopped backwards on the bed. "If it's the something special I got you for Valentine's Day, I approve." He flipped his eyepieces back down to wait for the glow of heat to arrive.
"It's even better." she called before she reappeared, the blaze of her body completely uninterrupted.
Castle jerked upwards, pulling off his headset. "Best outfit ever!" Kate fell joyfully into his open arms.