Life Goes On

Chapter 21

Kate snuggled into the curve of Castle's body as she pulled the comforter up over both of them. She could feel the tension in his arms as they encircled her midsection. "Babe, what's wrong? Is it Alex's death?"

"That's part of it," Castle admitted. "It is a loss to me, a loss to his family, and a loss to the literary world. But it brings into focus how complicated things are going to be. Even after we solve this case, I'll be working on the book, and I mean working hard. You'll still be working on unraveling the problems at Rikers, along with everything else on your project list. You'll be picking up a law class at Columbia come January and we'll be remodeling so we can have a nursery next to the bedroom. Then before the baby comes we'll have to figure out exactly how we can take the best care of it and still cope with our professional obligations. That's a lot on both our plates."

Kate turned in his arms to face him. "Babe, you're the one who always says we can work everything out and it's going to be great. I'm usually the one who obsesses on the downside. Why the role reversal?"

"I'd say it's been a really bad day, but it started before that," Castle confessed. "It all started coming home to me when you won the election, how different things are going to be. Not bad, just different. But then Alex was dead. He was so young Kate. He had so much ahead of him and now he's just gone. And at the conclave, I was discussing with the other writers, how to tweak plot lines to attract shippers without putting off male readers, and it all seemed trivial and crass. Then when I realized that what bothered Gina most about Alex's death was making sure she got the next book, well it all sort of threw a shadow on my usual sunny outlook. I'm sorry. The last thing I want is to bring down the mother to be."

Kate pressed her face against his, their minds melding with the touch of their foreheads. "Castle, it's all right. We've been through more changes in the past couple of years than most couples face in a lifetime, a lot of them my fault, and you've rolled with all of it. You're entitled to a down moment or two. Ooh!"

"What?" Castle asked anxiously.

"It was like, I don't know, like a butterfly inside of me. Oh, there it is again. That was bigger than a butterfly."

Castle pressed a hand to her belly. "Yeah I can feel a little of something. It's supposed to be too early for you to be able to feel a kick, but it seems like junior may be precocious. It is a family trait. Many a criminal has been brought down by your lovely legs, Alexis kicked a bit early too, and to hear tell Mother tell it, I never gave her a moment's peace during her entire pregnancy. But that may be as apocryphal as her going into labor on the subway. Here, snuggle up against me."

Lovingly cradling the firm globes of her behind, Castle pulled her abdomen tightly against his. "Now we can feel any flailing feet together. Maybe we ought to watch a Hard Kill marathon, give our little martial artist a good example."

"Castle I think we can put that off for a while," Kate decided. "I don't need any Lance DeLorca roundhouses. But you seem to be feeling better."

Castle kissed the top of Kate's head. "I am. I was immersed in so much death, I needed a reminder of the circle of life. And I couldn't have asked for a better one."

After Marissa Conrad formally identified Alex's body, Kate settled her in the interrogation lounge. "It was really nice of your husband to come get me from the airport," Marissa remarked. "Alex really looked up to him as a friend and a mentor."

"Rick was very fond of him too," Kate responded. "He's working with us to solve his murder. Now Marissa, I know this is a really hard time, but did Alex tell you anything that might have indicated who would be angry enough at him to want to beat him to death?"

"Alex didn't tell me that much about his work. He wouldn't even let me read any of his books until they came out," Marissa confided. "He was nervous about coming back to New York, though. He had been receiving death threats on twitter. He blocked them and reported them as abuse."

"Did he contact the FBI?" Kate queried. "Sending death threats is a federal offense."

"He did," Marissa confirmed, "but they didn't do much about it. Apparently for anyone with any celebrity at all, death threats on Twitter are pretty common. I mean people send them if they don't like the way a relationship is going on a TV show. It's crazy, and they don't have the manpower to keep up with all of them. They told Alex that most of the posters are just idiots blowing off steam who wouldn't even know how to find the celebrities they threaten."

"Right," Kate declared grimly. "Would you remember the name of the agent in charge of Alex's case?"

"You know, normally I'm terrible with names," Marissa confessed, "but when Alex told me about her, it struck me as funny, because it was the name of Robin Strasser's character on One Life to Live, Dorian Lord. It stuck in my mind because Dorian had an affair with character played by an actor who looked kind of like a young version of your husband. Yeah, it was Special Agent Dorian Lord."

"Alright, I will reach out to Agent Lord and see what I can find out. Would you like an officer to run you back over to your hotel?" Kate offered.

"No thanks," Marissa declined. "I need to sign some kind of paperwork at Black Pawn and I want to take a walk to clear my head first. I'm told Alex's publisher there, Gina Cowell can be quite formidable."

"That's one word for it," Kate muttered. Kate handed Marissa her card. "If you think of anything or just need anything, give me a call."

Marissa gave a tiny nod. "You husband made the same offer. You are both very kind and I know Alex would appreciate it."

Kate nodded to L.T. who escorted Marissa from the precinct. Kate pulled out her cell phone. "Special Agent Dorian Lord, huh? Well you sure dropped the ball on this one." she grumbled to herself. Kate called the highest contact at the FBI she knew, Assistant Director Anthony Freedman.

Castle sucked on a fingertip, cut for the third time on the edge of an N.Y.P.D. file folder. It contained a list of healthcare workers at Rikers Island, but they were not city employees. All the health services at Rikers had been provided by Core Zone Super Care. As Castle recalled from the scandal surrounding the company, their care had been anything but super. At least two inmates had died on their watch and there were many more cases to be investigated. Before his resignation, Bill DeBlaze had announced his intention to find a new provider, but hadn't had time before he left office. It all tracked with what Castle had read in Alex's notes. He had outlined an evil healthcare entity extending it's tentacles into the prison, with corrupt managers and underpaid staff. Had Castle given Alex a critique, he would have pegged the situation as overly melodramatic. But now it seemed that Alex may have been required to do little, if any, embellishment on reality. It was possible that the former mayor had just scratched the surface of Core Zone's offenses and Alex had been about to blow the whole sordid situation wide open. For Core Zone, that would have meant not only the loss of millions of dollars of revenue from Rikers, but from other prisons across the country. It looked like the case embodied two of Cannell's primary motives: greed and covering up a crime, or in this instance, many crimes.