The second that Rick Castle opened the door for Clark Murray he knew things weren't as good as he had hoped they would be. Murray just thinly smiled, held up the file under his arm and asked if he could come in.
The two settled down in his office, and with a grim sigh the medical examiner began to explain his findings.
"The original ME concluded that the stab wounds were random. Now, maybe the killer got lucky, but you see this wound right here?"
Castle nodded, wearily only looking at the photographs of Kate's father out of the edge of his eye.
"It's a low angle thrust to the kidney. The wound size indicated that the knife was twisted. His body would've went into immediate shock."
"What about these?" He gestured at the various other wounds in the photos, confused with what he was hearing.
"Well, their angles indicate that they were delivered after he was immobilized and on the ground – they're just for show." He firmly rested his finger on the mark he was most concerned with. "This is the one that killed him."
It all seemed too calculated for gang violence. There was no way a druggie or someone just looking for something good to steal would be that lucky. "This is sounding less like a random killing and more like a targeted murder."
"There's more," he paused, "on a hunch I checked the city ME files to see if this was an isolated incident, and found three other stabbings around that time that the me dismissed as…random."
"Were they related?"
Murray looked at him hard, "Are you sure you want to know?"
Rick stood still watching the rain come down outside the window, turning everything over in his mind. It wasn't what he wanted to hear, by any means, nor was it what he was expecting to hear. But…he argued with himself, what did he really think was going to happen. Murray would find absolutely nothing to suggest anything despicable and he'd have to tell Kate all her instincts were wrong? Would that have been any better?
Question posed, he thought, no. No, that would probably be worse.
Thunder boomed far above the city.
"You have to tell her, you know."
He turned from the spot he'd been standing in for the past forty-five minutes to look at his mother, ran a hand over his tired face. "You know what that would do to her?"
"You have information that could lead to her father's killer, you can't keep that from her."
"She said that the last time she looked into the case she almost lost herself. That it wasn't until she found her mother with a pretty brutal hangover that she stopped. I guess they both took it pretty hard, and Johanna was just as upset about what Kate was doing. Scared her into moving on." He shoved his hands angrily into his pockets, dejected, sighed - "I can't do that to them. I can't tell her."
Martha looked at her son, took in the dark circles underneath his eyes, the slump of his shoulders and the exhausted, nervous tone of voice. "I hope you're right." She shook her head and left the room with a sad sigh.
Alone, Castle rounded the desk and stared at the file. It was the last thing he wanted to do - to not tell Kate the truth. But when he thought of the alternative and what she might do, the fear of losing her to the case was paralyzing. She was in a good place - he knew that. She was happy and doing well at work, they were on the right track. Hell, he thought, they had even been talking about their future.
No, he could not tell her what he did. She'd hate him. He knew it. It would crush her.
He was angry with himself for even asking Murray to look at the case in the first place.
He yanked open his desk drawer, dropped the file in and covered it with a few sheets of paper he had been scribbling on. Didn't want to think about it.
And he didn't have time to.
He was meeting Kate for coffee before her shift.
It took everything he had to bury the file in the recesses of his mind as he picked up his coat and left to see her.
When she woke up in the dark hours of the first February morning it was with a quiet sigh and a stretch, her toes curling into the sheet, knee bumping against Castle's. Everything was quiet. Even the city was quiet. It made her uneasy and did nothing to help her fall back asleep. She hated that, and always had – that she couldn't fall asleep in silence because her mind would wander in circles and keep her awake.
Instead of angrily huffing into her boyfriend's shoulder she rolled out of the bed, adjusted the tie of the waistband on her sweatpants and slipped into the office attached to his bedroom, grabbing her cell phone from the nightstand on the way. With a tap of the home button the screen lit and she noticed the emails waiting. She decided she may as well deal with the few things for the precinct and the random family obligatory messages while she was awake, and began to read and tap out replies curled up in Castle's desk chair.
She reached for a pen to jot down phone numbers from Ryan about their latest case, only to find the black ballpoint scratching at the paper without leaving a trail. She groaned, frustrated that the writer could never seem to keep a sufficient amount of writing implements around. Mindlessly, she pulled open the top desk drawer, rummaged around to find something write with. The file came out amongst other random notepads and even a novel – she didn't even notice it until she went to put everything back after finding a fresh pen and it was the last thing to go in.
Beckett, James M.
The label was like a slap to the face. She knew exactly what was in the file – every word, every comma, every fucking crease in the pages.
Why was it here? She questioned.
With trembling hands she lifted it back out of the drawer, and somehow managed to make it to the couch, practically falling into it, even though her legs felt boneless. Her fingers numbly traced the worn edge of the file, feeling for the paperclips and up-curled edges that she knew too well, her head swimming with questions and…anger.
The loft was still quiet. Alexis was sleeping at a friend's house, Martha performing at a charity function in New Jersey and not expected back for hours– no one around but Castle.
Kate's breath was shaky and thin, and she sank from the edge of the couch down to the floor with the effort of just breathing, but she managed to gather enough strength to get her fingers underneath the front cover, and flip open the file she could probably recite from memory.
Rick Castle startled awake sometime after the sun rose. The bed was empty, the sweats Kate wore to bed last night dropped in a pile beside the bathroom door. Odd, was the thought that struck him, Kate never did that. She hated leaving anything close to being defined as a "mess."
He called out for her but got no response.
Curious, he pulled himself out of the bed and went looking. He found her sitting at the kitchen island with a single cup of coffee and a file.
Shit. The file.
His vision tunneled, his stomach sank like it was full of rocks.
"Hey," he managed to get out.
No answer.
"Um," he slowly began to make his way over to her, "what are you doing?"
Kate cleared her throat, "Trying to figure out why I found this in your desk." When he didn't answer she supplied what she knew he was afraid to ask. "I wasn't just looking, I needed a pen because apparently for a writer you don't use them very often."
"I see."
Finally she looked up from the cup of coffee - no longer steaming, he noticed, so she must have been sitting for a while. She turned her head only, looked at him with red-rimmed eyes, and something akin to betrayal. Disappointment, even. Her voice was a strangled crack, "Rick, why do you have this file?"
"I thought that if I looked at it, maybe-"
"You'd find something?"
It was his turn to be silent.
"Castle, I don't know what to say to you right now."
"Then...why don't we just put it away, forget this happened."
"You think that I can forget that this happened? I can just forget that you went behind my back and pried open the most private and...sensitive pieces of my life? Castle, that is not okay!" Even though her voice was strangled - he hated to think that she had probably been crying - she was fierce. Her words sharp. "Why would you do this."
"I have a friend, his name is Clark Murray-"
"You showed this to someone else?! Castle!" She yelled.
"Clark Murray is one of the state's top medical examiner who has been in this city for years, and knows more about the human body than you or I could ever hope to learn. He is a very respected professional, and like I said, one of the best. I would never, never trust anyone but him, Kate."
"That doesn't change the fact that you did this without my permission."
"Yes. I know," he sighed harshly, "But if anyone was going to get you more information for this, Kate, it would be Dr. Murray. So I talked a uniform into letting me into archives-"
"Who?"
"You know I wouldn't tell you that." She practically growled at him, but he took it as permission to continue, "I didn't tell anyone what I was looking for, okay? I found it on my own, made the copies and put the file back where I found it. Dr. Murray agreed to be discreet and just give me another opinion to compare to the ME of record. I didn't want to tell you because I knew how you would feel and I didn't think anything would come of it anyway," he whispered at the end.
"So," she sniffed, awkwardly trying not to cry when she wanted to be angry with him, "let me get this straight. You took my father's file from the records room at the precinct - let a uniform think you were supposed to be there-"
"Kate, I've been there before."
"With me, Castle! With me! You had no right to go down there, and to do this on your own! None!"
"I wanted to do something for you here! I wanted to help!"
"I didn't ask you to help," she argued. "This is my issue, Castle. My father, not yours."
The affirmation was like a knife to his heart. As if it wasn't already sore enough, pained with what he did and how she was reacting, she had to go there? "Trust me, I am completely aware of that! Look," he sighed, "I don't know what I would want if it were my father - and I will never know, but that's my burden, and this is yours. I know how much this means to you, and how much you want to solve it for your dad. And if I could...If I could help you with that in some way..."
"Castle, what were you going to do if you found something?"
If he found something, he thought. His mother's voice echoed in his ear about telling her the truth.
"Were you just going to run off into the night like some sort of superman and make a citizen's arrest?"
"Kate, I did find something," he managed. But his voice was too quiet to cut through her rage.
"Castle, this was too big for me, and it's too big for you. I don't care if you can afford the best medical examiner on the planet, I didn't want you to do this, and you shouldn't have." Her voice cracked more and more with every word.
"Kate," he reiterated, louder.
She snapped at him. "What?"
"I did find something. Dr. Murray," he corrected, "found something."
He watched as she froze with the news. Her face locking up, jaw open, eyes wide. She shook her head.
"He didn't put it in there."
"I noticed."
"But, if you want to talk to him, he said to tell you he'll make himself available."
"No," she shook her head again, firmer. "No, we're not doing this. This isn't up for discussion, and I can't- I can't be here right now."
"Kate," he pleaded, trying to stop her as she moved from the kitchen to grab her purse and coat from the couch and headed for the door. "Come on, please, can we just talk
about this?"
"No!" She rounded, her voice now thick with the anger and tears she had been holding in since the early morning. "No, Castle. We can't just talk about this!" She heaved. "You did the absolute last thing I would want you to do, and I can't deal with this right now." She heaved a breath, quieter said, "I just can't."
With that, she turned again, stiff and shaky on her feet, and left. The door swung closed behind her, separating Castle from her with a cold, loud thud that echoed through the empty loft.