John's expression is blank again. Only the time it takes to marshal his thoughts alludes to any lingering turmoil within. Finally, he nods to himself and continues. "I wish I had the numbers for you now, all of the facts and figures regarding the things we've talked about. I don't want you to blow this out of proportion within your own mind."

"What do you mean?"

"What I mean is, yes, Richard was a special boy. Aware ahead of his time even. But that happens. It's not abnormal, merely uncommon. Nothing about this lends itself to the fantastic. The way he was beforehand is important; it's inescapably pertinent to what eventually followed. But so is keeping in mind that Richard was still a boy. He did what boys do. We all played together, bickered, laughed, and grew. It was life in motion, nothing more or less."

Beckett feels her abdominal muscles tensing. "That sounds like a preface."

"That's what all of this is."

"A specific one though," she volleys back at him. "Let's have it."

The other's hands come apart from one another and slide together as if to generate warmth via the friction. Again, it's the only tell he offers before the words come forth. "Not yet. There's one more element we need to examine first: his imagination." The pause afterward is pregnant with meaning. She doesn't interrupt this time, but even with that lack to work with John rises from his chair. Her eyebrows loft along with him, goaded into flight by the sight of him disturbed into pacing his half of the room as she did previously.

"What about it?" Kate prods, frowning.

"It's exceptional."

"No shit," she returns dryly. "He's a best-seller for a reason."

The sarcasm rolls right off of the man's broad back without garnering any return for its passage. "I don't know how to explain this part. There's a lot to go through in here that I don't understand, but this is something I can't even fathom. Its the way his mind works. How can I make sense of it for you when I don't understand it myself?"

"You said it's imagination. What's there to figure?"

"It's different in his case. More." He pauses abruptly, lit externally by the light of inspiration, and moves back to the table, leaning some with his hands gripping its edge. "Have you ever heard of paracosm?"

Beckett blinks, delayed a moment before she nods once. "Yeah. I worked a case where the term came up. The trauma of witnessing her father kill her mother was severe enough that a fourteen-year-old girl retreated from reality into a fantasy world of her own creation. She had to be institutionalized for almost two years."

"Yes, exactly. Richard's like that." Her eyebrows soar again, prompting the man to hastily add, "Minus the loony bin part, of course, and, uh, meaning no offense by the term. Richard doesn't lose sight of the real world. But..." John pauses, sighs, and rubs at the thick column of his throat in an odd gesture of discomfort, or perhaps unease. "But he can change it within his own mind. Damn. I'm sorry. I don't know how to word this. Ask him about it later. Tell him not to sugar-coat it."

"Not to—

"Not to sugar-coat it," John repeats sternly, his expression darkening. "Because he'll try to. And if he doesn't you'll understand why. I'm not trying to make it sound stranger than it is, or like a flight from reality in the way a paracosm is, because it's not in his case. But it's more than just imagination too."

"I don't..." Beckett huffs an exasperated breath. "What's this have to do with the case?"

"Everything," John growls, startling her with a sharp slap of his palm on the table. Both mugs rattle, the contents rippling from the impact tremor. "You've seen him work. Hasn't he ever made a deductive leap that turned out to be accurate?"

"Sure," Beckett concedes reluctantly. All the time. Something stops her from actually saying that aloud.

"Okay, good," her companion replies, as if that was a point in his favor. "And has it ever made you wonder how he does that?"

Oh shit. They're getting perilously close to something Beckett would really rather not touch. It sucks to do, but she hedges a reply that attempts to pacify the man. "He's a writer. It's his job to put himself in the mindset of his characters, including antagonists."

"Yes, and he does that very well. Enough to be the multiple best-seller you aptly mentioned. But this isn't just about the killers. His antagonists are vivid too. I wish I had one of his first drafts in one of these boxes. You'd see what I'm talking about then. A little better anyway." John exhales angrily and goes back to pacing.

"Just slow down," the detective says, her voice calm and even. "Stop, John. Take a deep breath."

"Fuck off," he replies right back at her, and even though the words weren't lashed out in the heat of anger she twitches away a tick in her seat. "Don't work me, Kate." Phew. When was the last time someone had the balls to come at her like that? She can't rightly recall now.

"Fair enough," Beckett replies quietly, though it goes against her grain to relent.

For some reason that does make him stop. The man observes her askance, sighs mutely and returns to the table to reclaim his seat. "Sorry," he grunts. "I really do appreciate your patience. I could even believe that it's as much for my benefit as it is for yourself in needing to hear about the case surrounding us here."

"It's both," Kate confirms easily. "You're, uh, not just describing imagination though. You know that, right?"

The Sergeant tilts his head in the classic symbolism of a question mark.

Here we go. This isn't going to end well. Beckett smooths both sweaty palms against her jeans. It's not so easy to dissuade the barest trace of unevenness from her voice. "There are plenty of instances where deductive logic and Castle's brand of lateral thinking have found the thread we needed to tug during a difficult case. In some circumstances, he's pointed the way by the sheer contrast of a particularly wild theory. In other words, by being wrong in such a way that the comparatively logical alternatives were far fewer, and within them often lay the correct one. That's how he hides from us."

Beckett pauses to expel a dispirited sigh. "It's more than merely intimating we ought to look left in order to make us look right, though in essence that's the formula. To actually do that though? You have to get inside of people, know how they think and why they think it. Castle doesn't really know any of us, not that well. He's successful regardless."

"I...happened to notice his method," she relents, her shoulders drawing inward some with regret. "That was months ago. I didn't say anything at the time, because...I'm not sure why anymore. There was no way to be certain I wasn't imagining things. I'd never seen anyone conceal themselves quite like that. At first I worried he might leave if he was confronted. Later, I worried that he might get kicked out of the twelfth if people considered him a potential risk to our team. Because imagination is all well and good, but in light of the facts it was clear there was something more at work."

"I did the necessary research independently, including making appointments with a state psychologist who helps on our cases sometimes. All I offered was the scenario, no names or details, of course, and with the benefit of confidentiality. We settled on hyper-empathy syndrome, but putting a name on Castle's modus operandi didn't answer much. It's neuroscience, which has been around forever, sure, but it's never been something any layman can grasp. I couldn't use it to explain to people how Castle sees into others the way he does. They wouldn't buy it. I'm not sure I'd blame them."

"Plus, as Dr. Holloway pointed out to me, most credible doctors would dismiss our theory and couch Castle's gift as one aspect of some personality disorder, which is just flat-out ridiculous. I've seen the man with his daughter, mother, and random goddamn strangers. He enjoys people, practically gets off on...brightening their day with a bit of laughter or what have you. Even after I was armed with some answers it was an impasse. It was—" She stops when her voice fails her and has to clear her throat before continuing. "In the end, it just seemed better for everyone to bury it."

"Sonofabitch," John whispers. "You knew. All this time you knew! Well no fucking wonder you didn't want to ask him about it!" His eyes narrow into baleful dark slashes. "Asking means investing, taking responsibility."

The sharp snap of her gaze finds him with flat reflections of the overhead lights painted across them. Her anger isn't hot. It sits in her chest as cold as polar ice. "It's interesting to me," she hisses, "that you knew what Castle was doing over there in The City and never contacted us. One phone call from you would have ended everything nice and neat." She doesn't lean away, but forward in her chair. "I can all but see the wall directly behind you, Sergeant. You're a glass man living in a glass house. Don't pick a rock-throwing fight with me if you don't wanna get cut."

John sits slowly back in his seat. Nothing more. He shuts that mouth though, sure as hell.

It takes a moment for all of the jagged edges of emotion to relent and fall back into their proper places. Beckett rolls her shoulders and forces them to lower and relax. "What was I supposed to do? Out Castle in front of everyone, have the press sniffing around about him leaving? Because he damn sure would be out and there would be questions that none of us would be comfortable answering. I was in over my head, so I took what I'd compiled to Montgomery, and we...decided on an alternative course that we took in turn to Robert Wheldon. The mayor had helped start this mess. It's not like he had a lot of wiggle room when it came to us making a few caveats. Actually, it was easier than I'd anticipated. Good press goes a long way, and by sifting out the more violent and disturbing crime scenes we were effectively making our situation more palatable to be written about in the public forum. We had approval before we left the meeting that same day."

"So, you saw the glint of vulnerability in Richard and magnanimously responded by cherry-picking the marginally less horrifying cases. Remind me to send out flowers when we're done. I have so many people to thank for their consideration."

"Fuck you, John. Castle came to us, and if you want the truth, he's never given me a reason to think he couldn't handle anything we might throw at him. We had no idea of the what drove him at the time. And why is that?" Kate flings an arm out indicatively to the boxes and cabinets. "Oh yeah," she drips with venomous disdain, "because in Montauk a few rich pricks wanted their cherished privacy. And no one who could say anything about it ever chose to. Don't paint him as a victim now to assuage your guilt, or because thats what you see when you look at him; he's earned far more than that."

John's chair scrapes loudly, abruptly as he shoots to his feet with his fists knotted. He isn't blank anymore. Malevolence is a shadow behind his eyes and ticks of shifting muscle at his jaw. His eyes don't waver from hers, so it's impossible to know if he's aware of her right hand settling on her thigh, perilously close to the holster of her weapon. He turns away rather than advancing, exiting the room with a slam of the door into the wall outside. She can hear the shattering of the plaster and the raining chunks of it that clatter to the floor before the portal rebounds closed.

There's no satisfaction in having cut back at him the way she'd warned. All Beckett feels is tired, impossibly drained.

It was easier than expected, as she'd said. The brass looks more at closure percentages than they do at the cases themselves. CompStat tabulates every recorded detail for all to see, but it still takes someone willing to sift through the raw data in order to find a pattern. Who would be looking for a homicide team taking the less gruesome or senseless murder cases? Who would care even if they did notice? The cases they took were solved, bar none. There's nothing to complain about, no cause for that kind of scrutiny. No, it wasn't logistically infeasible to keep Castle away from certain exposures; the impossible part was always the idea of talking about it, even after it seemed like a superfluous measure.

Now that she's discussed it aloud like this, Kate's all but convinced that Castle is, and probably has been, aware of the machinations taking place. That isn't a outlandish idea. If he can deduce patterns of criminal behavior, he would be able to discern what was going on with the NYPD right under his nose. Not a shocking thought, no, but Kate does feel foolish.

She should have had the conversation with him from the start, and she might have done so if she'd known he wasn't the man-child he feigned all too well to be. How could any of them have guessed the truth? One brightly burning imagination and an empathy disorder is far from an indication of the kind of past she's becoming acquainted with. Dr. Holloway had cited brain chemistry and an overabundance of mirror neurons as the underlying causality. Simple. Biological. Couple that with his egocentric behavior and there was never a reason to suspect a traumatic origin.

Being wrong for taking someone else's word on it isn't the same as complicit. Isn't that true? Or was the truth as visible as the rest of it to someone willing to look? Did she not see, or not want to see? Jesus Christ, Rick. You're killing me here.

Beckett is keenly aware of the cell phone sitting close by upon the table. It isn't a conversation she wants to have that way though. He could hide from her, and even if he didn't, she probably would from him. They're on more level ground face-to-face, so let it happen that way, later. It's a date.

Right now, there's a dark ocean waiting to be swam through. She stands and reaches for one of the boxes nearby instead of the phone, pulls the lid off the first of the four. The scent of old paper wafts up stronger than before. The olfactory data kindles a generally familiar sensation in her. Given the wealth of paperwork she deals with and what her parents often sifted through at home, it's almost comforting in a way, like the company of an old friend.

A lonely loose photograph is waiting right there on top of the accordion-style files stacked within.

It might as well be an image of the gates of Dante's lamented Inferno, with all the multifariousness of human suffering depicted in its varying grounds of perspective. Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.

Beckett sees the photo, and for an indeterminable span she can't move or even breathe. There's no memory of sitting again, only the dimly noted sensation of impact after she drops like a stone into her chair.

And here it all comes, everything so carefully imprisoned from way back then up to right now, like a dam straining its seams to a final, furious burst unto liberation. Her eyes close tight and her hands lift to bury herself in them, but that cannot contain the hot, calamitous flow behind them.

It's a picture of an achingly young Richard Rodgers, hauntingly expressionless, blue eyes vacant, with his pale face and youthfully skinny form covered head to toe in blood.