Chapter Ten
The Professor

"I must not fear.
Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my fear.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the fear has gone there will be nothing.
Only I will remain."

Bene Gesserit litany against fear

Frank Herbert's Dune

Previously

It hadn't taken long for the major underworld bosses to crack. The near constant police presence in Washington Heights was seriously cutting into profits, both in prostitution and narcotics. They had come to a consensus.

Word was soon put out on the street that anyone who'd seen or had knowledge of the guy stalking the streets had a limited amnesty to speak to the cops about it.

Distrust of the NYPD was and always would be trumped by the bottom line. It didn't take long before word got around.

September 11, 2014

Ann Hastings stepped off the elevator and onto the 12th Precinct Homicide floor to a round of applause. She and her unborn child had been given a clean bill of health and been allowed to check out of the hospital that morning with the admonition that field work was out of the question. The doctor had made it perfectly clear that her pregnancy had been elevated to at-risk status.

She had stopped at home to change into more suitable work attire, and - much to her husband's chagrin- had decided to report for duty at the precinct. She noted more than a few sheepishly hung shoulders, likely belonging to the once merry band of pranksters who had hazed her for throwing up at the crime scene earlier that week.

They seemed chastened now - something she felt a little bad about. She hadn't been able to sit down yet, due to the fact that the chair was missing from behind her desk. At first she thought it was the opening gambit to another prank, but nobody said a word about it.

After the hubbub had died down a little, Captain Gates stepped out of her office, wheeling a comfortable looking ergonomic chair which was slid to Hastings' desk and indicating for her to have a seat. It was every bit as comfortable as it looked.

"Detective Hastings," Gates began, sounding almost regal, "the entire precinct chipped in towards this new chair for you...including Mr. Castle, who made a very generous donation and even covered the cost of overnight shipping."

Hastings blushed as she looked over at Castle and Beckett leaning against Beckett's desk.

Gates continued speaking, her voice taking on a slightly more commanding edge, the smile not leaving her face.

"Make yourself comfortable in your new chair, Detective, because you will be spending a lot of time there. The Chief of Detectives has ordered me to restrict you to desk duty until this Jack is caught. There will also be a detail on you and your husband until then."

The smile slowly disappeared from Hastings' face. She knew that Gates had always been suspicious about her cowboy tendencies since her Lone Vengeance days came to an end. It was why she'd had such a hard time getting into Homicide.

Gates had told her on her on her first day in the squad room"I already have one rogue detective and her sidekick in my house and I don't have room for another."

The last few days, Hastings realized, she had not only confirmed Captain Gates' suspicions, but she could have been killed in the process. Hastings settled behind her desk and slipped her holstered gun into the top desk drawer. She figured she was going to have to learn to dial her wilder tendencies back a notch. Her husband may be a talented graphic novelist and a dedicated journalist on the crime beat, but unlike Richard Castle, Paul Whitaker didn't have Mayor Weldon on speed dial to save her from her worst missteps.

'This is going to be a long case.' Hastings thought to herself with a sigh of resignation as she booted up her computer and began catching up on her paperwork. First and foremost on her list, a detailed written recounting of everything she had experienced the night she was taken. If she was going to be stuck here for the foreseeable future, she figured she might as well make herself useful. She and Tory Ellis would likely be spending a lot of time together.

Washington Heights
Later that evening

Though the NYPD had been loath to change tactics at the whim of a murderous psychopath, it had been made absolutely clear to them over the past thirty-six hours that this guy was different. He was obviously not only extremely high functioning, but also intelligent, patient and cunning. The man had not only identified who the female decoys were by identifying their security details, he had specifically targeted one of them, overpowered her and spirited her away under their very noses without her being able to so much as raise a hand to defend herself or raise an alarm.

Detective Ann Hastings had only been recovered alive because he hadn't felt like killing her.

The remaining female Vice cops on the detail were a brave and determined lot. Even after they had been briefed about the tactical situation - every one of them now knew the score - they were willing to hit the streets anyway. Every single one of them had stepped forward and volunteered to continue the surveillance operation, in spite of the risks. They were a credit to their badges, but, now that they had been made, the night shift watch commander could no longer even marginally guarantee their safety.

They were ordered instead to trade in the skimpy hooker outfits for tactical gear and use their knowledge of the street workers to get somebody to talk. Though not a single one of them much enjoyed dressing like hookers and walking the streets to be leered at (both by johns and some of their male coworkers) they liked the idea of caving to some deranged psychopath's demands even less.

They were not back on the streets long when they were approached repeatedly over the course of the night by both street walkers and some of the street level pimps about a guy known only as "The Professor" ,who had been harassing the local hookers for months.

They heard a litany of stories about the man, every story had sounded pretty much the same, that the man had been "messing with their business since Simmons got whacked" or that "...he used to work for Simmons...but now he was taking over."

None of them seemed to have an actual name and several pseudonyms had been offered, but "The Professor" moniker seemed to hold up the most often. He had obviously been a topic of much concern for the street prostitutes and drug trade for some time.

He was described as an older white guy with steel rimmed glasses and graying, short cropped hair, who dressed not only conservatively, but well. The Russian girls mentioned that he understood their language and was quite fluent. They also noted that if he was crossed he had no issue sending a guy he referred to as "Mr. Jacobs" to see them later. He was less than gentle, and nowhere near as articulate.

Though the pimps and street level toughs only saw a threat, the underling of a once-feared crime boss making a power play of his own in his former boss's territory, upsetting the natural balance, the street prostitutes were nervous when they spoke of him, feeling genuine fear. Not of Mister Jacobs, (rough treatment was something street hookers were sadly accustomed to) but of a woman who didn't have a name.

She was quiet, and they had been told that the only people who had ever seen her up close were dead. She carried a gun, but she did her dirty work with a knife. The Russian girls were particularly terrified of her, but nobody had seen her since before the killings had started. She was a ghost.

Though Kate Beckett had already ruled her out of the current killings, she knew they were speaking of Elena Markhov. She had seen Elena's skill with a blade up close and personal, and in spite of herself, even she felt a shiver run up her spine at the mention of her, partially because she knew who Elena really worked for, only she couldn't prove it:. Bracken.

The following day, the officers doing the canvas on-site were able to track down somebody who had actually spoken to "The Professor" in person, and convinced her to come in to the precinct for an interview. A young street prostitute named Melody Lyons.

After a short discussion with Kate and Rick in interview room two, informing her both of her rights, and that she was not under arrest, Miss Lyons opened up to them. She responded more readily to Rick than to herself, so she let him run the interview. The woman was quite brazen, not even mildly put off by the fact that she was in an NYPD interrogation room flirting with a married man. Kate doubted Melody Lyons would care even if she knew that his wife was sitting right next to him as she tried to seduce him.

"Knowing her," Kate thought spitefully to herself, "she would probably charge extra to let me watch."

Kate trusted her husband implicitly and knew deep down Rick was merely playing the woman to get the information they needed for the case. A tactic she, herself had employed more than once in her career, and at least twice right in front of him. (the incident with a Russian mob-run poker game rose immediately to mind) She still found herself becoming increasingly frustrated and more than a little jealous after twenty minutes of watching his "Richard Castle playboy author" persona on full display as he shamelessly flirted with her, though. She simply could not help herself and it took everything she had to school her features and keep her breathing even.

Rick noticed, of course, and stealthily rested a calming hand on her knee under the table, his thumb working a soothing pattern along the seam of her jeans without so much as skipping a beat in his performance. It helped.

'And Rick wonders why I refuse to attend book signings with him,' she thought to herself, 'if this is any indication, Paula would either have me escorted out, or I'd be carted off to jail for assault and battery on some blonde bimbo within half an hour.'

She hadn't realized until that very moment how easily he stepped into and out of that role nor how complete the change was until she had seen it for herself. He had simply closed his eyes for a moment, took a breath and when he had opened them he was a different person. Nor did she realize how very taxing it was for him to maintain that persona until he was done. Rick visibly deflated in front of her eyes after Lyons had been escorted out of interrogation to the more comfortable conference room. Kate wasn't sure if it had always been like this for him, or if his recovery from the crash had cut into his reserves.

As frustrating (and to some degree nauseating) as Castle's display had been for Kate to watch, it had, nonetheless been effective as hell. Rick managed not only to get her to willingly part with more information than she could have without making threats, he had also convinced Miss Lyons to sit down with their sketch artist. Once Miss Lyons was finished in the conference room and was being escorted out of the precinct by a uniform, however, Kate broke her own rule about PDA in the precinct and made a point of kissing Rick full on the mouth after the prostitute had walked past and winked at him.

Rick's loyalties she was entirely certain of, but that woman's were suspect and Kate felt the overwhelming desire to mark her territory. Rick did not seem to mind one bit and certainly offered no objections that she could discern. Besides, it really did make her hot when he helped her solve things.

All trace of humor was gone however, when she saw the artist's sketch of "The Professor." Looking back at her from that drawing was a man she had known only as "Mr. Jones."

It was a face she knew she would never forget, from a time of uncertainty and fear that still haunted her almost as deeply as the day she had been shot. She still had nightmares about that small dark room in the basement where she had been ruthlessly tortured for information she simply hadn't had. Then tortured some more... long after it was readily apparent she didn't have the information they wanted... simply because Vulcan Simmons had felt like it.

The whole time, Mr. Jones had been watching. She had seen him clearly standing in the background while Simmons and Harten had taken turns forcing her head under the cold water again and again until she had finally passed out, completely at their mercy.

Kate had given the sketch to Gates, who had ordered the drawing copied and circulated in every precinct and station house in Manhattan, then simply acquiesced when Castle had called his car service to take them home as if she was on autopilot. It had been hard enough for her to deal with the fact that there was a second psychopathic serial killer on the loose who now knew where she and her family lived, but this new piece of information was just a little too much for her to deal with.

As soon as they were safely in the confines of their bedroom, she wrapped her body around that of her husband, seeking the reassuring distraction only Rick's strong arms could provide. He was quick to oblige her and soon his loving hands had the desired effect upon her, soothing her fears and insecurities then engulfing them both in a wave of passion as clothes were shed and their bodies sought sweet union.

Before long she would once more be in a confined space with that man, but tonight she wanted only to forget, a service her loving husband was all too happy to provide, helping her to empty her mind of fear and doubt as he made love to her well into the night before she fell sated into a dreamless sleep safe in his loving embrace.

Tomorrow would take care of itself.

**Author's note** Thought I would have a bit of fun with this one. Sorry it took so long to get this one out, but it's hard to write angst than I thought it would be when I have photos of my great-niece on my phone. *cuteness overload*