"Whoa! Where's the fire you two?" Korsak observed as Castle and Beckett came rushing into the conference room.
"Where are the financials for our victims?" Castle asked hurriedly and Frost handed over three letter-sized manila file folders.
"Just as I thought!" Castle exclaimed. "Josie Galloway made several charges to her American Express card for flights on Southwest Airlines."
"Yeah. The Bureau has an agreement with Southwest that all agents get the military discount for flying on official business. Josie flew all over the country for us before we put her undercover here." Dean explained."
"Her last flight was from Dulles in DC to here about 5 months ago on Southwest," Beckett said.
"And we know Beth Ferguson flew out west every month to check her on her grandmother and that Christy Sherman was a travel agent who probably flew all the time," Castle listed, his eyes lighting up with excitement as Korsak, Frost, Jane, Dean, and Lanie listened in rapt attention. "So what's the common thread?"
"The fact that they all flew on planes to or out of Boston?" Frost said dubiously. "Lots of people do that."
"Yeah, but on the same carrier and within two weeks of each other?"
All eyes now focused on Beckett.
"You're getting warmer, but that still doesn't narrow down things down much," Jane said.
"Listen, I know it's a long shot, but who would have the opportunity to interact with all three women between whom exists the singular commonality of having flown on the same airline within two weeks of each other?" Castle asked breathlessly.
"Someone with the airline," Jane realized. "Or someone working in the airport that day."
"That still leaves potentially hundreds of people," Korsak said.
"I know, and Castle's right. It is a long shot, but it's all we've got right now. So, Frost, get in touch with Southwest and get a list of flight attendants who worked every flight in those two weeks and we'll match them up with the manifests from the flights our victims were on." Jane asked.
"You got it." Frost headed to his desk.
"I'll update Cavanaugh and Lieutenant Van Buren," Korsak volunteered.
"Wait," Castle called out, noticing a third man's face had been tacked to the murder board, a man who bore a striking resemblance to Christy Sherman.
"Christy Sherman's twin brother, Alex. The two of them never got along terribly well, especially after Christy reported him for sexually molesting her neighbor's teenage daughter."
"So we've got a suspect in her murder, just like we have one in each of the other three murders," Beckett observed.
"Yeah, but also like the other suspects, Alex has gone missing." Frost said, as he waited on hold on his desk phone.
"Talk about an odd sock," Castle said and began thinking, but was interrupted when Jane approached him.
"I gotta say, Castle. I'm impressed," she said as Beckett updated the murder boards with their newly found information.
"Thank you, Detective. But I really can't take all the credit. Just most of it…"
Beckett cleared her throat loudly without turning away from writing. She firmly capped the dry erase marker she had been using and turned on her heel. "Say that again…kitten?"
"Kitten?" Jane said, both her eyebrows shooting upward while Beckett crossed her arms and stared Castle down.
"Oh yeah, that's his nickname around the precinct." Beckett said, barely able to contain her glee over Castle's embarrassment.
"Alright! Alright! My apologies. Beckett deserves half of the credit too." Castle relented and made a quick escape from the conference room.
"Nice one, Detective," Jane congratulated.
"Thank you, Detective." Beckett replied.
"Here we are!" Frost called out as two hours later he clipped a fourth photo to the section of the murder board marked Suspects/Persons of Interest. "Johnathan Thomas, 35, moved to Boston 6 months ago to take a job as a ticket taker with Southwest Airlines at Logan Airport. Not long after the paychecks started, his health insurance shows a claim for a plastic surgery consult at…one guess…"
"New England Baptist Hospital," Seven voices chorused, Maura having joined them all from the morgue.
"Bingo! We have a winner. His height matches that of Jerry Tyson, as does the timing of his appearance here in Boston, and if you'll notice, he even used the same initials." Frost said.
"So we know how Mr. Thomas here discovered his victims and how he killed them, but how did he get into Josie Galloway's and Christy Sherman's apartments?" Lanie asked.
"I got an answer for that one too," Frost replied and pulled a printout of the website of a computer maintenance service.
"He was a one man Geek Squad," Castle said. "So he meets the women on the flights, sizes them up, chats them up enough to figure out that they need help with their laptops or they want a LAN connection installed or something like that…"
"He gets their addresses. They let him in to their apartments thinking he's there to do the work they requested…" Beckett continued.
"Only he kills them," Jane finished. "But why then was Beth Ferguson killed in an alley?"
"Right here," Beckett answered. "Uniforms pulled this out of a file in her desk when they searched her office." She produced a verification of a complaint Beth Ferguson had filed with the local Better Business Bureau about someone failing to show up three times to perform work on her office computer.
"But why would he break pattern and just not show up? Especially since he gets such a charge out of killing these women?" Jane asked.
"Well, Beth Ferguson was a therapist who worked with kids from the foster care system. It's possible she got a weird feeling from her interaction with him and began asking questions that made him think she was onto him. So he figures he'll kill her in an alley where she won't be able to see him coming." Maura theorized.
"I wouldn't let a guy like that anywhere near my apartment," Lanie observed.
"You know what they say about hindsight," Korsak offered.
"Ah, the knew-it-all-along effect, also known as creeping determinism," Maura recited matter-of-factly. "What?" She asked confused, after seeing the others' bewildered expressions.
The whole time everyone had been talking, Castle had been unusually quiet and focused on the faces of the four men staring back at him from the murder board.
"Castle? You OK?" Beckett asked. She became more alarmed when his shoulders slumped.
"It's not him," he said. "It's not any of them."
"What do you mean, Castle?" Beckett asked, her jaw hanging slightly slack. It felt like the air had been let out of the room.
"I looked directly into this guy's eyes that night he had me tied up and I've been doing the same to these four. None of them match the look I saw, the level of evil."
"Well, it was a while ago," Maura said. "Time could be clouding your memory."
"Or creeping determinism," Jane teased.
"Jane, have you forgotten Charles Hoyt's eyes?" Castle asked pointedly, ignoring both Jane's and Maura's last comments. "Beckett, could you forget Hal Lockwood's"
Both women shifted on their feet and uttered quiet No's.
"There is one possibility we haven't considered that would confirm beyond a shadow of a doubt if one of these guys is Jerry Tyson," Dean said.
"Retina scan," Lanie blurted out, realization dawning on her. "It's a biometric technique that uses the unique patterns on a person's retina in their eye to identify them."
"It's like comparing their DNA or fingerprints. No two people's are alike. It's supposed to be the wave of the future in identity verification because it's much less intrusive than the other means." Maura added.
"But wouldn't you need the person's actual retinas to scan?" Jane asked. "Is a photograph on paper gonna be enough to gain a match?"
"It may have to be," Dean said with deadly seriousness. "Grab those photos and let's head over the bureau and see what we can do."
"Do we have an address for Mr. Thomas?" Beckett asked breathlessly.
Frost nodded as Lanie and Maura hurriedly slipped into their coats while Dean pulled the four photos of their four suspects off the murder board.
"You three go," Korsak said. "I'll get a SWAT Team on standby just in case you come up with something conclusive so we'll be ready to go at a moment's notice."
An hour later, Dean, Maura and Lanie stood hunched over the computer monitor of the Boston FBI office's resident computer geek, Stephen Sachs, a five-foot-ten inch beanpole who sported thick glasses, the remnants of untreated acne, a single stud in his right ear, and a Browncoats United t-shirt.
"All we have to do is feed Jerry Tyson's mug shot into the facial recognition software, then do the same for your other four suspects, blow up the view of their eyes, start the retina scan application and overlay each one at time to see which is a match," Sachs explained calmly. Within minutes, five sets of giant eyes were staring back at the group from his computer.
"Here we go," he said and cracked his knuckles. One by one he clicked and dragged each man's eyes over those of Jerry Tyson's. Everyone's hearts beat a little faster and their spirits sank each time a negative match popped up. But on the last attempt, the software indicated a perfect match.
"Here's your guy," Sachs said. Dean had already dialed Jane's cell phone and slapped Sachs on the shoulder as he turned to leave. Maura and Lanie thanked him profusely as well and followed Dean.
When all three were out of sight, Sachs spun himself in his desk chair like a child who has just discovered a new toy. "I'm a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar!" He fist pumped then cracked open a fresh celebratory can of Red Bull and resumed his work.
Castle, Beckett, Korsak, Jane, Dean and Frost, all wearing bulletproof vests, waited in a white minivan made up to look like something owned by a commercial painting company while the SWAT Team members fanned out around the modest-looking two story townhouse rented to Johnathan Thomas. Korsak gave the order for them to go in on his radio and the van's occupants all waited with baited breath.
The minutes felt like hours. Nobody spoke and as a result, it seemed to each person that the sound of their own heartbeat was resonating off the cold metal walls. Korsak and Frost, seated next to each other, noticed how Beckett picked up on the disconsolate look on Castle's face and nestled her hand in between their knees so she could gently rub his kneecap through his dark jeans. They also noticed how Dean kept his gaze fixed on Jane and how once she realized this and looked back at him, one corner of his mouth tipped upward. The silence, not to mention the sexual tension, was palpable.
Finally Korsak's radio crackled. "Building's clear, Sergeant. Suspects in custody." The SWAT leader reported.
"Suspects?" Castle wondered.
They filed out of the van and made their way around the corner of the block to the townhouse. They entered through the front door and found nothing really amiss until the SWAT Team leader led them to the bedroom loft. There they found Jerome Fields, Burt Nesbit and Alex Sherman, all blindfolded, bound, and gagged and sitting on mattresses which lay on the floor.
One of the SWAT members brought over a note on which letters of varying sizes, fonts, and colors had been clipped out of a magazine and pasted onto the page to form sentences. Everyone crowded around Beckett as she read Johnathan Thomas' handiwork:
Close, Mr. Castle, but no cigar.
Again.