Story isn't abandoned, same goes for The High King And The Bandit. Sword Of The Witcher is now taking me a long time, just that. Don't worry, I'm not giving this story up. Just let me finish that one, (won't take too long, by the end of the summer it will be done) then I'll be back to write this one full time. Or almost.
Also, tomorrow by this hour I'll be enjoying the music in Tolmin, Slovenia, at MetalDays festival (yes, the one mentioned in Can't Undress Your Heart) for a full week of blasting heavy metal and, apprently, hellish heat. Oh well, the river is there for us to swim into it. Hell yeah!
Chapter 13
"I swear to God this case makes no sense!"
Beckett's whining caught his attention and he turned towards her, averting his eyes from the murder board.
"What makes no sense?"
She sighed and rested her elbows on the desk. "We've got a dead con artist that was about to get married to a heiress killed in his living room where he was pretending to be a polar explorer in front of a class of ten years old kids. Now tell me how this case makes sense?"
Castle looked back at the board and sighed. "A man died. That at least makes sense."
"Yeah, pretty much the only thing that is coherent on that board. Is it so interesting? You've been staring at it for an hour now."
"I'm trying to understand what goes through your head while you do it. You know, character research."
"Still no books from the publishing house?"
He shook his head. "Niet. Nothing, they don't want leaks, apparently, but I'm going to ask Gina again," he replied, pulling his phone out and typing a quick message. "I've been pestering her for weeks, I hope she'll give up at least one copy for you now."
"If she doesn't, I'll wait, it's not a problem."
"Beckett, I made a promise and I mean to keep it. You'll have a copy before the launch party, next week. By the way, do you want to come?"
"I'll think about it," she hastily replied. "Now, let's go back to work, shall we?"
There wasn't much more to say. They had a dead man with multiple identities, all of them tied to major scams. They had even interrogated one of his victims and Steven Fletcher appeared to be a genius at scamming people, even his friends. Every person they met related to him in any way thought he was just a kind, hard working man that was about to marry the girl of his dreams.
Said girl appeared to be totally and utterly distraught by his death and she seemed to be completely in the dark about his "job" as a con man, and things started getting weirder and weirder when they discovered that the teacher of the class that had witnessed the murder did know about it. And he was taking advantage of it too, cashing in some easy money outside the job.
And the girlfriend's father knew too, apparently, having employed a private investigator to check on him, before he married his only daughter. His alibi was strong and he had been really collaborative with them, even allowed them to inspect his legally detained gun. That man was the picture of innocence.
It made no sense, anyway she tried to look at it.
Each time they discovered something new they were drawn back to square one and they had nothing to grasp at that point in order to make progress in solving the case.
"Beckett, we're running in circles here. Espo and Ryan are swamped just like us. Don't you think it's better if we pause for a moment? Just the time to eat something I mean."
She looked at her watch. "It's kind of early for dinner, don't you think?"
"Won't be by the time Esposito and Ryan will be back. Why don't we place the usual order and have it delivered in an hour or two?"
"Castle, are you hungry or something?" she asked, clearly annoyed by his insistence.
He made a guilty face. "Kind of…"
She shook her head. "Go ahead. You know the others' usual order. Damn, I didn't know your kind could be hungry all the time like that. Or is it just you?"
Her question made him smile. "It's a matter of really fast metabolism. Lycanthropes have higher than average body temperature, we burn more energy than a normal human being just by doing nothing, it's our biology. Hence, I get hungry more often. I still have to master your ascetic ability of forsaking basic needs like food and sleep."
Her right eyebrow shot up. "What does that even mean?"
"That I still have to learn how to survive on coffee and molecular oxygen."
Beckett laughed, wholeheartedly, at his joke about her horrible eating habits. "Come on, order for everyone. I'll try to be a good person and eat a normal dinner tonight," she added, still smiling. "Then we go back at solving this murder."
Castle picked his phone and stood to move away from the bullpen. "Yes sir!"
They kept working as they ate, going through Fletcher's misdeeds as a highly successful con man, until the conversation switched to con movies. Castle was utterly appalled when Beckett stated that she hated con movies, but a tiny flicker in her eyelid allowed him to see through it, and he realized it wasn't true. Still, out of respect, he didn't call her bluff and let her do her own little conning of her colleagues.
Even Captain Montgomery, as experienced as he was, couldn't detect the lie.
Those were weird cops. Or they just looked like it to let the others think they fooled them.
Still they couldn't come up with decent ideas about who could have killed that guy. Not that he could, to be completely honest, he was as floored as they were, but he at least tried. Each theory he spewed made less sense than the one before, but at least he was trying.
There was only a theory he hadn't come up with, but that basically landed in their faces like a rock the next morning.
Out of options, they went back to the girlfriend, talked to her father and then with her again.
Her demeanor had completely changed. She looked jittery, nervous, and she kept looking at her best friend Susan, who always stood behind her. Strange.
"Miss Finnegan, are you alright?" asked Beckett when she noticed a slight tremor in her hands.
She gave them a quick nod. Too quick.
"Yes, yes Detective. I'm just fine…. it's just that…"
"Just what?" asked Castle.
The young woman looked again back to her always present friend. "Steven is alive."
To say that Beckett was baffled was reductive. "Excuse me?"
"He… I'm sorry, I haven't been completely honest with you, but I guess it's time you learn the truth about him. The whole truth."
Her tale made little to no sense. Just like the rest of that case.
"I can't believe it," snapped Beckett as they walked away from the Finnegan's residence. "Please tell me you don't believe it!"
"A lycanthrope CIA agent whose cover was being a professional con man that faked his own death on a live stream in front of a class of fourth graders in order to escape some unknown enemy? Makes so little sense it might even be true."
"Oh God for the first time in forever you say something that makes sense. I hate this case!"
"Come on Beckett! Have fun for a moment!"
She shook her head. "Castle. A man died."
"Yes, in some weird circumstances that, admit it, makes this a frustrating but funny case!"
"It'll be funnier when we'll close it. Really though, CIA? What was he doing on US soil? Is there even a way to find out if he was an operative agent?"
He nodded as they climbed in the car. "Yes there is. I just need to make a phone call."
"Like you called Juliard to check if your daughter's violin teacher was really a student there? Castle, you can't be serious!"
"Thai food is pleasing to the tongue." And then he hung up. "He'll call me back."
She shook her head and started the engine. "Let's go talk to Lanie. I want to know if Fletcher was a werewolf for real."
"I seriously doubt it."
"You think you'd pick up a trail or a distinctive smell?"
He shrugged. "Not really. It's not like werewolves or vampires smell differently from other people or they have distinct trace on them, you know that, or you'd have picked the fact that I am a werewolf up the moment you met me. I'm thinking more about bare statistics."
"Yeah, we're not that many and if he was really a werewolf he would have probably already healed by the time we found his apartment."
Later, at the morgue, Lanie welcomed them with a scowl for having interrupted her lunch. "This better be good."
"Apparently, Steven Fletcher is alive and left a message to his fianceè's voicemail. Are we positive this is Steven Fletcher?"
Lanie looked down at the body on the slab of the freezer. "Actually… I'm not really sure."
Beckett felt like the Genie in Aladdin, when his jaw drops to the ground. "What does that mean you're not sure?"
The ME shrugged her shoulders. "I mean that three quarters of his face were blown off by the gunshot and this guy had at least twelve aliases, and none of them went to the dentist. How do you expect me to be completely sure this is Steven Fletcher?"
"Could there be a chance this guys is an immortal?" asked Castle.
"Absolutely not. A wound like this isn't deadly for an immortal, there's no white phosphorous or anything incendiary involved. If this man was an immortal, be it vampire or werewolf, he would have healed before you found the body."
Beckett gave him a playful slap on his shoulder. "Just as I said. Come on Castle, we've got to find out if this guy is Fletcher or not."
As they quickly walked back to the car in order to avoid prolonged sun exposure for her, Castle started whining like a child, mumbling a series of words completely impossible to understand.
"Castle, stop acting like a kid!"
He huffed. "Is it weird that I really wanted him to be an immortal?"
"A little. Why?"
"Because… how many immortals do you know?"
Beckett halted for a moment, as she realized what was going on with him. "Oh. I see your point. And to be sincere, you're the only immortal I actually know, right now. I had a friend, years ago, but lost contact after high school."
They entered her car and shut the doors at the same time. "Really?"
"Yep. I went to Stuyvesant, the first school that allowed immortals to enroll and had specific precautions for us vampires, to allow us to go to school with other kids. Maddie and I were the only vampires at the time, I never got to know if there were werewolves too, but we were the only vampires there. And we bonded over that."
"Then you understand why I kind of wanted him to be an immortal."
"You never had contact with any of us before you met me?" she asked, curious.
He shook his head. "No. I mean… I attended some conferences when I was younger, participated to some rallies and civil rights movement's pacific demonstrations, but always in the back and always trying to keep out of conversations."
"I bet you regret it now."
He nodded. "Yes, I do. My mother tried to support me the best she could but… although she tried her best she couldn't really understand how hard I struggled with this… thing."
"Castle, it's a medical condition," interjected Beckett when she noticed how uncomfortable he felt talking about it. "We're not cursed, we're not the spawn of the devil, we're people with two distinct medical conditions that unfortunately were not understood in the past, and that caused the legends to be born. There's no need to be ashamed by it."
"You say that only because you don't transform into a huge rabid wolf."
"No, but if I stay too long outside I start bleeding from my eyes and ears and other places you don't want to know. If I skip a meal I get the worst stomach pains, so bad I want to die, and let's not talk about period cramps because those alone are bad enough, and I get them whether I take all my meds or not. At least you got to learn how to hold back your shifts. Us vampires? We learn to run and hide in the shadows from the moment we get our diagnosis."
He opened his mouth to reply when her phone beeped in her pocket. She quickly picked it up and put it on speakerphone. "Beckett."
It was Esposito. "Uhm, I don't exactly know how to say it, but there's a guy here that wants to talk to you. Says it's urgent."
She looked at Castle for a moment, not sure if said person was his CIA contact or not. "We're almost there, let him stay in the breakroom."
When they finally arrived at the precinct, they found a short, blood man in a gray suit sitting on the old lumpy couch with a cup of coffee in one hand and a thick manilla folder beside him. When they walked in the room, he smiled politely and stood up. "Detective Beckett, a pleasure to meet you. Castle, good to see you again in one piece."
He was calm and polite, not exactly the man she had imagined when Castle had told her he had once killed a man with an ice cream scoop.
"Thank you for coming, I appreciate the effort."
"Not a problem, anything for Nikki Heat. If he dedicated that book to you, you must be a valuable person."
"You read the book?" snapped Castle. "How?"
The look on the CIA operative was worth gold, Beckett couldn't help but laugh. "Beware though Detective, the sex scene is steamy."
"Oh come on, always this sex scene... How steamy can it be?"
"A lot," added the writer. "Uhm, about our man, you know anything?"
The operative shrugged. "I can't deny or confirm that he was one of our own," he said. Obviously, by the way he had stressed some words more than others, Fletcher wasn't one of their agents and he had once again lied to his fiancee.
"Wait a moment how did you know..." she started, only to be interrupted.
"Detective, knowing stuff is my job. Now, since we are done, I think I'll be taking my leave. It was a pleasure. And before I forget, there's some stuff you'll find interesting in that folder. If you'll excuse me... "
He walked out without further words, leaving the folder on the couch. Exchanging a quick look, they grabbed it and proceeded to tear the brown paper away. Inside there was a transparent plastic sleeve with some pictures in them and an early print of Heat Wave with a hand written message scribbled on a scrap of paper tucked between the pages.
"Rick, if even half a sentence of the book ends up online before the official release, your detective is going to jail, understood? Gina."
"He intercepted the copy I asked for yesterday!" he practically screamed. "How the hell..."
"CIA, remember?" She took one of the pictures and examined it closer. It was a grainy but decent enlargement of a CC camera somewhere in New York. It showed the window of an internet cafe where Steven Fletcher sat at a table chatting with Elise's best friend Susan. Just the two of them.
Beckett flipped through the photo prints and pulled one out of the small pile. Steven and Susan in that one could only be described as intimate.
"Look at the date," she said as she passed it to Castle.
"What the hell? Liar, scammer and cheater? Bastard!"
"A dead bastard that had a tryst with the bride's best friend. To me it sounds like a motive."
"We need to speak to Elise. Right now."
She couldn't agree more. They rushed to the car and drove to the Finnegan's house, hoping to find Elise outside Susan's reach and interrogate her about the photos and Steven's relationship with her best friend.
Unfortunately, as they rushed inside so Beckett could walk away from direct sunlight. Elise wasn't home, but her parents welcomed them and were more than willing to help.
"I'm sorry to bother you once again but… how long has Elise known Susan?" asked Beckett, quite bluntly.
"About a year, maybe a year and half," replied her mother. "Soon after they met, Susan became Elise's best friend, they share everything."
"And you said she met Steven about six months ago?" she asked the father.
He nodded. "Yes, they clicked immediately and he asked her to marry him about two months ago. They seemed to be rushing things, but Elise seemed so happy and…"
"Beckett!" Castle had been wandering off the room and came back with the wedding brochure. "It looks a lot like Fletcher's presentation for the North Pole project. Who made this?"
"Susan, she's a graphic designer and she offered to handle the design of the invitations and everything else," replied her father.
At that point, all the pieces of that completely messed up puzzle started sticking together for both of them. It felt like they were both watching and commenting the same movie.
"Castle, Susan is part of the con."
"Or at least she was. She approached Elise way before Steven, became her best friend and confident then Steven comes in and knowing what she likes and such he makes her fall in love with him practically instantly!"
"But he falls in love with her too and decides to give up the whole thing, change his life and stop being a scammer. He calls of the con, but Susan wants her money."
"So she waits for the right chance and kills him and then plans to fool Elise to get the money she wants!"
"That means…"
"...The con is still on!" they basically shouted at the same time.
Less than two minutes later Beckett was driving towards the bank where Elise had her money stored while organizing a little scam herself with the help of the director of the bank. If they wanted to arrest Susan, they needed to catch her red-handed.
It took less than an hour to get Susan, make her confess and have Esposito and Ryan escort her to the precinct and start the bureaucratic part of the arrest, while Beckett tried to console the poor, disheartened Elise in the lobby of the bank. She was sobbing on one of the padded chairs, as Beckett tried to explain that, unfortunately, Susan wasn't actually her friend, but she was only sent in early to test her and gather information about her, so that Steven could hit the right keys and make her fall in love with him.
It didn't help much when she told the poor girl that Steven was killed because he wanted to call the scam, because he had fallen in love with her for real.
Once her parents arrived, they brought her to the precinct, along with the bank director, so they could give their statements for the DA.
"Nice con you pulled," said Castle, handing her a cup of steaming coffee from a nearby cafe.
She shrugged. "Sometimes you need to work with what you have. And I think the only way to catch a con artist is to con them yourself."
"Come on Beckett, I know you like con movies. I could see your lie the other day."
She shrugged. "I know. It was written all over your face."
"Eh, sometimes I forget it's impossible to lie to vampires."
"Not impossible, just very hard. If it was impossible, I would catch every murderer of every case I get, but there are still cases I can't solve," she replied, swishing the coffee in the paper cup.
"Still nothing from Lanie?"
She shook her head. "No, but I told her to take her time. I've waited for ten years, I can wait for a while longer."
"You'll find the bastard that killed your mother, with time. I'm sure of it. But while you wait, why don't we go out with the boys after you dealt with paperwork? My treat."
As tempting as it sounded, she had to decline. "Sorry, Castle, but there's a hot bath at home and a book at the precinct waiting for me. You wrestled with your ex wife to get me an advanced copy, the least I can do is reading it."
He grinned. "Page 105."
She turned to face him. "What?"
"The sex scene you so want to read. Page 105."
Beckett chuckled. "Perv. Come on, let's get you back home so I can go and fill paperwork."
Truth be told, the sex scene was the first thing she looked for, as soon as she arrived home.
She didn't get much sleep, after the long relaxing bath. She read the book all in one sitting, thankful that she had to be at the precinct only the next afternoon and could take it easy next morning.
And she loved it.