Aftermath
She's on hold with TSA, cradling the phone in her shoulder and leaning her hip on her desk. Castle is pacing along the wall of the bullpen, running his hand through his hair.
"Why is this taking so long?" he complains, stopping at her side. "How many Mayans from the Yucatan lowlands could have possibly flown into the New York area in the last few days?"
Her voice is a low whisper as she angles the receiver of the phone into her body. "TSA computers are down."
"Oh. Well, that's reassuring," he returns, sitting in the chair heavily.
"You know, Castle," says Ryan, holding up the book on myths that he's been carrying around all morning, "legend has it that Kan-Xul personally conducted hundreds of human sacrifices."
"And his own people buried him so that he couldn't come back from the grave and get them," adds Esposito.
"Beckett," Castle says, leaning on her desk even as she raises a brow at the men, "we so need to go see this thing."
She ignores him, answering the phone when the TSA agent asks if she's still on hold. Hanging up the phone after asking the agent to fax over information, Beckett turns to Castle, Ryan, and Esposito. "TSA reports that a Mayan named Cacaw Te arrived in JFK four days ago on a tourist visa."
"Cacaw Te," says Castle, looking over at Ryan and Esposito. "Cacaw Te. He's C.T.!"
"And his visa application puts his home address right in the middle of our pollen zone," she continues as she goes over to the fax machine, snagging up the paper that spits out.
Castle takes one glance at the man's passport photo and turns to the others. "I'm guessing that guy was not class clown in high school."
"This is a local address. Let's go get…" Beckett shakes her head, taking a deep breath because she can't go get the Mayan. "Here," she says instead, handing the paper to Ryan. "Pick him up and Castle and I will see if we can find more info on him."
"You know," says Esposito even as Ryan moves to get their stuff, "I think Montgomery might let you ride along."
"I'll stay here. Go," she says, nodding toward the elevator. As soon as they disappear behind the sliding doors, she sits at her desk. He's sitting next to her, looking far too excited. No hint of the quick flash of desire from the morning or how he stood a little closer to her in the elevator on the ride up to the fourth floor. Which is good because she can't handle work and whatever he has going on with his emotions at the same time.
Instead of glancing over at him, Beckett starts pulling up any information she can get on Cacew Te. She has to pause every few seconds to reach across the keyboard and click the mouse or scroll down the page.
"Beckett," he says, nudging her elbow out of the way to get at the mouse even as she glares at him. "Switch the side of the mouse. It'll be easier."
She nearly protests just for form but he's already got the cord switched over, tucked under the keyboard so it's out of the way, and he's giving her a soft smile to counteract her scowl. So she takes a deep breath, letting her body relax as much as possible, and tries a smile in return. "Thanks."
"Montgomery gonna let you run the interrogation?"
Beckett shrugs. "We'll see. Why? Got some Mayan jokes you want to run by Te?"
"Could come up with some. How long you think I got?"
"Not long enough, I'm sure." But he already has his phone out, typing away on the touchscreen as he searches for good jokes.
He has a list on a Post-It by the time Ryan and Esposito appear with the tall man between them. She doesn't let him bring the note into the interrogation room, crumpling it up and dropping the yellow square onto her desk.
They meet Ryan and Esposito outside the room once the guys get Te settled at the table.
"He say anything on the way over?" she asks, scanning the sheet of information she was able to find through her searching.
"Not a word," Ryan says, stuffing his hands in his pockets. "Silent from his place all the way here."
"Good to know." She hands the paper over to the boys before stepping toward the door. Esposito catches her wrist.
"Montgomery clear you for interrogation?"
Beckett nods just once as she shakes him off. "Yeah, we're good."
Te looks up when she turns the knob to open the door, folder with Te's information tucked under her good arm. Castle is at her heels, closing the door behind them as she sits in one of the metal chairs.
And Castle starts in right after she reads of the Miranda rights for the record.
"Can we call you Mr. T?"
Beckett turns, narrows her eyes at the man sitting next to her even as Te corrects him, straightfaced to the one of personal amusement spread across Castle's face. She weighs the pros and cons of kicking Castle under the table and decides to ignore him; maybe if no one reacts his list of ridiculous jokes, he'll stop.
"You've got quite a resume, Mr. Te," she says, looking down at the rap sheet. "According to the Mexican Embassy, you were arrested in 2007 for assaulting a group of tourists."
"They were trespassing on sacred Mayan soil," the man replies calmly, meeting her gaze.
"You sent two of them to the hospital."
"Things got out of hand. But that's not why I'm here, is it?"
Perceptive. She gives him points. She lays the paper back on top of her folder, resting her left hand on top of them. "Sending death threats through the U.S. mail is a felony."
"Also is murder," Castle adds, drawing the Mayan's eyes to him. "Or, as your ancestors used to call it, human sacrifice."
Now she wants to kick him. She nearly does, has her foot pulled back and everything, but the man across from her talks again and she holds off.
"I don't know what you're talking about," Te says, leaning forward on the table.
Beckett finds the crime tech photo of the death threat, sliding it onto the cool surface. "Does this jog your memory?"
Te sighs, looking up from the red symbols. "Medina refused to see me when I went to the museum. I sent that because he left me no other choice and he needed to be told that the museum must return the artifacts that he stole from my people."
"Those artifacts," Beckett starts, "weren't stolen. Your government made a deal with the museum."
"But not with us," Te protests. "The Mayans are not a dead race. There are seven million of us in Mexico and Central America, the direct descendents of Kan-Xul. His remains and all that was buried with him belongs to us."
"Is that why you sent the death threat to Medina?" Castle asks.
Te shakes his head. "It wasn't a threat; it was a reminder. Of the fate that awaited him if he did not return what he stole.
"Where were you last night between seven and eight?" Beckett questions even as Te continues to watch Castle.
"I didn't kill him." His head swings over with his next sentence. "I didn't need to. Because all who suffer from the mummy's curse are doomed to die."
Beckett gets up, refusing to look over at Castle who she knows would be there offering help, and grabs her folder. "We'll be in contact, Mr. Te. Thank you for coming in."
"Not at all, Detective," he says on his way past them and out to the elevator.
They aren't back at her desk fifteen minutes when Ryan shows up with his notes.
"Looks like Cacaw Te isn't our C.T. after all," Ryan says, leaning against Karpowski's desk chair. "He was uptown meeting with a Telemundo reporter about the injustices of the exhibit until five thirty. He didn't finish until after eight."
"Well, what about the pollen?"
"Turns out the expedition was camped would have been covered with the stuff." He shrugs, looking just as disappointed in the lack of leads as she's feeling. "Lanie says there's a safe bet that there's traces of it all over the exhibit."
"Okay, but let's hold him on the death threats. I got a feeling he knows more than he's letting on."
Esposito rounds the corner just as Ryan pushes off the desk, waving a manila folder. "Contents of Medina's phone," he says, handing it over to Beckett. "There's nothing interesting in the call list or the calendar but we hit the girlfriend jackpot with the photos."
She glances down at the things in the folder, furrows her brow, then looks back up at Esposito. "He's sleeping with a mummy?"
"Yeah… What?"
Beckett holds up the photo, a close-up of a mummified face.
"What? No, sorry," Esposito says even as Ryan tries to get a good look around his partner's shoulder. "You got to flip to the last one."
And there's Rachel Walters, holding a pale purple sheet to her bare chest, smiling up into the camera.
"No one at the museum knew they were seeing each other?" Castle asks.
"Maybe she's got something to hide," suggests Esposito with a quick shrug.
Beckett snaps the folder closed. "Like murder?"
"We'll get her in tomorrow, see what she has to say for herself," says Ryan, taking the photo from the folder and sticking it up on the murder board.
With goodnights spoken across desks, Beckett rolls her head as she gets up from her chair, Castle mirroring her motion next to her. She loops her jacket over her left arm, snagging the strap of her purse as she heads toward the elevator. He's following; she can hear his shoes on the scarred hardwood of the precinct floor.
"I'll call us a cab," he decides, nearly stepping on her heels while looking for the right contact in his phone as she hits the button to call the elevator to their floor.
"Actually," she says, turning to face him. "I'm going home with Lanie."
"For, like, the night?"
Beckett shifts, fighting the urge to shout or look away or flee to the stairs. "At least." His face falls for a moment. So she touches his elbow before getting into the elevator car. He's a moment behind her, catching the doors before they close on him. "Castle, you need to write and I need to" – be somewhere away from a man who is only twisting up her already-tangled emotions – "heal."
He's silent, so far away from her that she couldn't touch him if she were to reach across the elevator.
It hurts a little.
It hurts a lot, actually.
On the sidewalk, she starts toward the intersection to go meet Lanie at one of their favorite restaurants but Castle catches her shirt. She has her mouth open, ready to insist that this is the best for both of them but he shakes his head, looking torn.
"Just… let me give you a ride to Lanie's place," he says. "You don't need to walk there, Beckett. Just a shared cab to wherever you're going."
"Castle…"
His hand wraps around her fingers, pulling her back toward him. "Please?"
It crosses her mind to say no, to just turn away and go toward the restaurant and rant to Lanie for a few hours over drinks. But he looks so heartbroken behind the carefully placed façade that she sighs, shrugging her single shoulder. "Fine."
They sit apart from one another in the back of the cab that Castle hails once they're on the main street. Her fingers are tangled in her jacket, eyes averted out the window as the buildings and people zip by. She can sense his hand on the seat between them and one quick glance over tells her his shoulders are tensed. She didn't want to do this to him but she can't figure out her own problems when she's got him giving her looks and smiles loaded with too much emotion.
Outside of the restaurant, Castle helps her out, his hand tight on hers. She murmurs a 'thank you' to him.
"Beckett?"
She turns back and he's telling the driver to give him a minute, to keep the meter going.
"Um, you'll need to get your stuff, right?" he asks, hand on the door of the cab to keep the guy there.
"Yeah, probably. But I can do it once I have Lanie with -"
"Come over tonight? Just to get what you need," he's saying, quick to clarify. "Promise."
She takes a step toward the restaurant, nodding. "Okay. I'll call, let you know when I'll be there. Hey," she says when he starts to get back into the cab. "Maybe we can go pick up Rachel Walters tomorrow if Montgomery lets me leave my desk. See those dinosaurs?"
"Sounds good." But he sounds unenthusiastic. "See you later, Beckett."
Lanie is at the bar, two glasses of wine in front of her as she flirts with the bartender. She's taken her hair out of the ponytail she keeps it in for work, dark hair tumbling over her shoulders while she laughs at the handsome young man wiping down glasses.
"Hey," Beckett says, nudging her friend with her elbow as she slides onto the cushioned stool. "Hate to break it to you, but no alcohol for me." So she distracts the bartender by ordering a Sprite.
"How you doing, chica?" Lanie asks, sipping the red wine from the glass in front of her, pulling the other closer.
"I need to stay with you."
"What? Thought you were bunking up with Castle." When Beckett narrows her eyes, Lanie corrects herself. "Staying with Castle."
"Well I can't anymore." She takes a deep breath, curling her fingers around the warm leather of her purse. "Lanie, I think he loves me."
The medical examiner nearly spits out her wine all over the bartender as he returns with the soda for Beckett.