Ten
The following morning, Castle had drained his first cup of coffee before he even arrived at the precinct. He could already tell it was going to be one of those running-on-caffeine-only type days, which wasn't much of a surprise considering how little sleep he'd had the night before. He'd stayed with Kate until after ten when she'd fallen asleep on the couch. Then, he returned to his apartment and tried to decompress from the day, but his mind was spinning.
In the blink of an eye, their case had tripled if not quadrupled in importance. Of course catching the man who murdered five women was important, there was no doubt about that, but in Castle's mind the connection to Kate's father's killing escalated things. He needed to figure this out for her and it was very possible that this gigantic break in the pattern was exactly what they needed to find the suspect they were so desperately searching.
Upon arriving at the twelfth, Castle went directly to the captain's office. Normally, he tried to tread lightly, but he also knew that withholding vital information from the C.O. was a one-way ticket to being benched, possibly forever. In certain case, preemptive communication was the way to go; this was one of them.
"Sir," he began, "with regards to the serial killer case."
"Ah yes," the captain said, immediately sitting up straighter in his chair. "Did you ID the latest victim?"
"Not yet, Sir, but I think we may have a new lead. You know the reporter that's been helping me?"
Captain Brown's face softened and he said warmly, "Kate."
"Yeah…well, you see, ten years ago her father was murdered in the same alley where we found yesterday's victim and I believe his murder may be connected to these cases," Castle said.
The captain's eyes widened. "Did…do you know about this before? Did she?"
"No!" he said firmly. "No, Sir, I was with her when we made this connection; her reaction was genuine shock. She had no idea and neither did I."
Castle went on to explain the details of what they'd discovered to the captain and he agreed that the murder of James Beckett needed to be involved in their current investigation. When their conversation was through, he returned to his desk and requested the murder file from the records room before conferring with Ryan and Esposito about his findings.
"Aw man," Esposito sighed with an expression of irritation when Castle's story was through. "Now you made me feel bad for her."
"Don't feel bad for me," said a voice behind him. All three men whipped their heads in the direction of the noise and spotted Kate standing there. "Just let me help you solve this case."
"Kate," Castle began, stepping around the other two detectives and approaching her. He walked close enough to her to lower his voice significantly and continued. "Are you sure about this? Are you sure you want to-"
"I'm fine, Castle," she said, cutting him off with a smile. "Really."
He nodded in agreement, though still was not certain this was the best idea. He understood her wanting to be involved and couldn't blame her for it. If the situation was reversed, he knew nothing would have kept him from investigating the case. At the same time, it wasn't going to be easy for her and he hoped she understood just how distressing their continued investigation could get.
"So what do we look in to now?" Kate asked.
"Well, I requested your father's case file; that should be here sometime later this morning. Ryan and Espo are still trying to ID the vic, right guys?"
"Right," Esposito told her. "Still searching the missing person's reports for an Amanda or Mandy; we're hoping something pops soon."
"If you don't mind, I'd like to keep looking at the girl's financial records; I feel like something has to be there," Kate told him.
"By all means," he said, gesturing towards the large stack of paperwork on his desk. She nodded to him, scooped up the stack, and took her usual position on the chair next to his desk. Castle suggested she take the conference room, which for that moment was empty. She thanked him and disappeared from the main squad room.
Two hour later, after reviewing through the crime scene report from the alley and sitting through a tense staff meeting where their C.O. stressed once again the utmost importance of their casework by liberally sprinkling his speech with the mayor's name, Castle was back at his desk. James Beckett's murder file felt heavy in his hands. The file wasn't very thick, but he knew that once he opened it things would never be the same.
He let the file drop on to his desk pad with a slap. After taking a deep breath, he flipped open the folder and began his review. The first layer of items in the folder was pictures of the crime scene. He noted the familiar alley and the body of the victim much like Kate had described: propped up against the brick wall, several maroon patches dotting his pale blue shirt which read Todd's Camera Shop in black block lettering.
Castle flipped past the photos and moved on to the coroner's report. The official cause of death was organ trauma and exsanguination. The knife wounds had punctured his kidney and liver. Castle shook his head as he read those words; unfortunately, Kate's father's death would not have been quick or painless.
Reading the detectives report was a bit of a surreal experience for him. It read much like Kate had described with Detective Smith reporting their findings at the scene: the lack of wallet and defensive wounds on the hands leading them to believe the crime was a mugging gone wrong and the lack of DNA or trace evidence to lead them to the killer.
Finally, he read the portion of the report where the detective mentioned speaking with the victim's daughter. The detective reported that the daughter informed him of her father's tendency to take long walks in the middle of the night due to his insomnia. This tidbit furthered the belief that James Beckett had been a victim of a random mugging and thus the case was filed away.
After reading the entire file, Castle leaned back in his chair and brought his hands up, clasping them behind his head. He considered what he had read and decided it made sense. If he put himself in Detective Smith's shoes, he would have made the same call. Sometimes a random mugging was just a random mugging, especially with no trace evidence to follow.
"Castle, I think I-" Kate hurried over to his desk but stopped short when she saw the grisly photos spread across his desk.
He bolted upright in his seat and scrambled to cover up all the pictures with the file folder. Once he'd clustered them all together he put both his elbows on top of them and rested his chin on his fists in a childish attempt to pretend like the photos did not exist. "Did you find something?" he asked nonchalantly.
She sank down in the chair beside his desk and asked softly, "Is that my father's murder file?"
He nodded. "But Kate you don't-"
"What does it say?" she asked, her tone barely above a whisper.
He relaxed his shoulders and rested his forearms against the desk. "It's consistent with your story. He was stabbed in the alley and died there. There was no trace evidence, no DNA and the scenario seemed consistent with a random mugging."
She nodded her head, staring down at the folder cover. Then, she looked back up at him, her eyes beginning to show signs of redness.
"I was, ah, going to add his picture to the murder board…unless you'd like to do the honors?" he offered. She shook her head. He lifted the top edge of the file, being careful not to expose too much, and retrieved the DMV photo of the victim, figuring that considering the circumstances it would be unnecessarily cruel to post a crime scene photo.
He tacked the picture of Kate's father above and between victims one and two. Using a black marker, he went to write the name above the picture, but she stopped him midway through. "No," she said. "He went by Jim, not James."
Castle nodded, erased the first name he'd written and corrected it before sitting down. He gave her a sympathetic smile before asking, "Did you, um, find something?"
"Wha-oh! Oh yes," she said, sniffing slightly and pulling a notepad out of her lap. "Remember that coffee shop? The Baker's Bean? Victims one, two, and four went there, but victim three never did? Or, so we thought. It turns out she did go there. Or, at least, she may have gone there."
"Okay?" he asked with curiosity.
Kate displayed her notebook to him and photocopies of several sheets of paper. "We originally only looked at four weeks of history on the girls' purchases, but with Bethany I went back further. Turns out, three months before her death, Bethany went to The Baker's Bean."
"So she'd been there before," Castle said.
"Yes," Kate smiled, "but there's more. I noticed that Bethany's debit card purchases stopped completely four days before her death. Weird, right? So I looked up the statements from her boyfriend. Turns out her debit card number was stolen so she had to close her account and get a new card…except it didn't arrive until after she was killed."
"So in the four days before her death she was only using cash," Castle continued.
Kate nodded. "Right, so she may have gone to The Baker's Bean and just paid cash."
"But," he sighed, leaning back in his chair. "There is no way to prove that."
"Well," she said, smiling soft. "Maybe not prove definitively, but check this out. Bethany doesn't live in Gramercy Park so it makes sense that none of her purchases are around that area. But, when you look at the purchases right before The Baker's Bean, what do you see?"
"Toni's Nails?" Castle said, reading the sheet in front of him.
"Wanna guess where that is?"
"Gramercy Park," Castle responded. She nodded. "Why, Ms. Beckett, I do believe you've just earned your first field interview."
As they headed south through Manhattan, Castle warned Kate that she should not get her hopes up. The odds of someone at the nail salon recognizing Bethany were very slim. Witness's memory degraded exponentially by time and since several months had passed since Bethany's death it was a long shot at best. But, as Kate pointed out, it was still a shot.
Upon arriving at the salon, Castle flashed his badge and pulled out a DMV photo of Bethany. "You don't happen to recognize this girl, do you? It's probably been a while since she's been in here."
"Wait, I think…isn't this Ashley's cousin? That girl who was murdered?" one of the employees asked another.
"Could be."
"Is Ashley here?" Castle asked.
"She's on her lunch break, should be back in fifteen. Have a seat."
"You wanna get some French tips while you're here?" Kate asked Castle softly once they were seated.
"Funny, but somehow I don't think I could pull that off," he retorted.
While they waited, Castle leafed through a Good Housekeeping magazine while Kate surfed her iPhone. As promised, a young girl with brilliant red hair returned to the salon a quarter hour later. When she entered, Castle stood and presented her with the photo.
"Yeah, that's my cousin Bethany. What's this about? Do you have a lead on her case?" Ashley asked.
"We're not sure. Do you by any chance recall the last time Bethany came here?" Castle asked.
"Of course; I know exactly when," Ashley told them. "The last time she came here to have her nails done was the day she was murdered."