Chapter 25 – Worth A Thousand Words
"Don't look so shocked on my behalf, fellas." DeWitt quipped. The sound of chains dragging across the floor filled the room and seemed to do the same to Castle's gut. "Or did they not teach you two proper detainment protocols during training?"
"You-" Beckett words turned careful and low. "You think that we are MP?"
He wanted to speak up, to rattle out some off-the-wall theory that could dissolve his confusion, but nothing from the case sprang up. Unsure if he even trusted his voice at the moment, Castle simply turned to Beckett, hoping her eyes didn't hold half the befuddlement coursing through his. Something was off, terribly, terribly off. Quickly skimming over his memories of his brawl with DeWitt in Rose Hill mansion, he recalled the flurry of threats- and bullets- DeWitt had hurled at him, and nowhere in their little parlay did he give any indication that he thought they were there to detain him. He distinctly recalled the man before him not so delicately warning them to stay away from his brother.
"What else would you be?" A single brow slightly rose from the bruise covering his swollen eye.
"One; I'm asking the questions here. Two; nowhere in that lovely stack of files by my right hand will you find your name." Beckett said coolly, casually pushing the stack of files to the side of the table further and further from his suddenly piqued eyes.
"Humor me, Marcus. Why do you think we're Military Police?"
And just like that, a proverbial bulb seemed to ignite inside Marcus DeWitt's head. A glimmer of suspicion trickled through his indifference. The playful smirk etching along his bruised cheeks faltered-
-But only for a single, hopeful moment.
"Don't play dumb with me, lady." DeWitt leaned forward, looking positively insulted. His large hands appeared from his lap, clasped so tightly his flesh began to pale. "Let's see. You've got me in handcuffs, haven't read me my rights, and all you've done is answer my questions with more questions. But most importantly, you haven't shot me in the head. So, if you're not MP, what do you expect me to think you are? My ex-wife's lawyers? No one carts a guy like me on to an airplane and tosses me in a building with a bag over my head unless they're two things: military or friends with too much spare time. And considering that all of my friends are dead, that kind of simplifies this dilemma."
"If you were in any way neither of the two, before you shot me in the head, the only question out of your mouth would have been about my brother. And judging by the poorly veiled look of confusion on your partner's face, Miss, I think it's safe to assume that firing on you two was a case of mistaken identity. So, what I'm trying to say is that, yes, you're military police. Nothing else makes sense."
"Fine, who did you think we were then?" Beckett didn't miss a beat. She leaned forward, mimicking his same perturbed expression and continued.
"Oh, no," DeWitt quickly recoiled back from the table, shaking his head vigorously. "I'm not answering that."
"You will."
"No, I won't. This ain't the time or the place for that discussion, and it has very little to do with my arrest."
"Actually, Marcus, it does."
"Is she serious…?" Marcus looked over the Castle and groaned. "Save your breath, lady."
"It might come as a shock to you, Mr. DeWitt," Castle spoke up and pointed to the nearby stack of folders. "But, that discussion is exactly why we're here."
"I doubt that. Trust me, who I thought you were is not exactly in an MP's jurisdiction."
Castle sighed as softly as he could. There wasn't any doubt the certainty in the large man's voice was legitimate. But why would he think that? How could a dead man, who admittedly had the craft and guile to evade the world of the living for two decades, be mistaken so soundly?
"Look, Marcus- we're not military personnel. We're here about-"
"Prove it." DeWitt interrupted him.
"How?" Castle replied. To be certain, there a few ideas floating around the author's mind on how to prove their identity- but that involved a trip to the bookstore and maybe destroying this case faster than Ryan in a game of Halo.
But before the stocky, raven-haired man could reply, Beckett pulled the very top file from the stack of folders and promptly slid it across the table, right under DeWitt's nose.
"Open that and you'll find out."
"What is it?" He asked. His voice was laced with curiosity, but his hands didn't budge from his lap.
She merely replied with a testing smirk before reaching across Castle.
"Why would the military police be looking for you, Marcus?" Beckett asked as she grabbed a pad from the stack of folders and began to scribble down a few words.
"The Army thinks I'm dead…?" He replied with a strange quirk in his brows and looked over to Castle. "She is serious, isn't she?"
He gave the larger man a knowing smile and replied. "So, they think you're dead? Did you desert or something?"
DeWitt immediately scoffed. "No… it's more like they deserted me."
Beckett reached inside her jacket pocket and pulled out a familiar looking folded piece of paper. Quickly opening it, she briefly glanced down to it before laying it on top of the closed folder in front of their suspect.
"I take it that," she extended a lone finger down to a series of tiny dates underneath his name, "is when you left the army, Mr. DeWitt?"
Castle leaned closer and immediately recognized the paper. It was the very same copy of county census records that Sheriff Teague had handed them moments before they rushed off to Rose Hill. A strange thought flitted through him, trepid and barely above the many whispers narrating every flinch and telling expression the man across from them was giving. The author leaned back, his eyes carefully glancing between the beaten man and his stone-faced partner.
Why did she keep that?
Marcus' eyes flickered down to the sheet and back to Beckett in an instant. "Yes, that's when I left: February 6th, 1991."
"You're positive." Beckett ventured.
"Of course I'm positive," Marcus sighed heavily. "That's a day I'm never going to forget for obvious reasons."
As that very last word from Marcus DeWitt's mouth met Castle's ears, it was as though a heavy feeling of déjà vu clouded away the pale room and its other occupants from sight. And if by some waking instinct alone, he relaxed his gaze and he felt his writing hand give a subtle twitch.
He said reasons…
To an author, every word has its own merit. There were moments for him, often late at night when Alexis and his mother were already fast asleep, and he would be staring down at an utterly blank screen. Listless, frenzied, all at once. A deadline or three would have already been eclipsed by this point, and one would think that nerves would will his fingers to dance over the keys stretched under that pearly immaculate screen if for nothing but his own dignity.
But dignity never became party to those moments. It was a silly thought, the reprimanding, and trifle more judicious angels of his talents never failed to remind. But there were times when a single word would so fervently burrow its way in his thoughts that it played more a dam than a stream to follow. And there, staring down at that screen and that blinking, taunting black bar waiting to be chased down line by line- by senses and sensation, he would leave himself and his digital agitator. He would leave the mantle of composer, if for only a few quiet moments, to reacquaint with the equally unharried wanderings of a philosopher.
A Shakespeare, he was not. Still, the anatomy of a word ensconced in those enticing jaunts appealed to the romantic in him. They were, after all, the atoms that mingled and married to form bodies, be it of thoughts, ideas, or earth-shattering proclamations. Without them, expression, human expression, wouldn't exist. But on those nights when a single word, a perfect word for a perfect expression, escaped his every fevered thought, he would think about those atoms… but on a grander scale.
Within every speck of matter in existence, these particles existed. Somehow, little by little, they coalesced into unique forms, each with purpose, and each with its own body or state of being. Billions upon billions of these things that would otherwise demand not even a glancing thought over an entire lifetime was the very fabric that made everything possible. In some way, by some indescribable genius, it formed perfectly to make existence. As with any body, sentient or not, the procession of these atoms were the most important parts of that body's creation. So too was it true with words; it was all about the order in which they were formed– rather, the idea that they, too, could grow flesh.
Expression could breathe and live as wondrously as the mouth that formed it; particularly when the nuance of a single word could irrevocably alter its existence.
"…that's a day I'm never going to forget for obvious reasons."
Something was hiding inside this man's words, something all the years of putting a restless pen to paper beckoned him to expound.
Reasons, he wondered. Hadn't they only cited one…?
"Marcus," he couldn't help but blurt out. "Could you elaborate on those obvious reas-"
But he was cut short when Beckett's hand flew up between them in a placating blur. He looked over to her, rather confused at her interjection.
"And you've been hiding since then?" She asked.
"For the most part," DeWitt nodded. "Do you mind telling me why that even matters at this point? I'm already detained, I'm already in your hands."
"You've been in the Savannah area this entire time?" Ignoring his question, Beckett continued as she scribbled something else down on her notes.
"Well…" DeWitt cocked his head to an awkward angle. "No. No, I haven't."
"Where were you seven days ago?"
"I was where you found me," he replied a little slower, a little more confused.
"…And why were you there?"
Silence was his only reply.
"Marcus, do you want to tell me or do I have to say it for you?"
It came as little surprise to Castle as DeWitt remained utterly silent, glaring down to the folder Beckett placed in front of him as though he were trying to disappear inside of it. To his left, he heard Beckett give a loud sigh before setting down her notes on to the table. She casually reached for the stack of files and pulled all of them to herself.
"You see, Mr. DeWitt, my partner and I are leading a special investigation." She explained with a curious lilt of calm. "We went to Rose Hill for a reason, but it wasn't to find you. For the past seven days, we have been collecting evidence for a double murder that took place in New York. And do you want to hear the really coincidental thing about that double murder, Marcus?"
Taking his continued silence for further curiosity, Beckett resumed her explanation. "I have absolutely no doubt in my mind that you had anything to do with these murders- I think you're genuinely certain that we're MP. But here's the thing: these other guests you were expecting- you know, the ones you wanted to shoot at instead of us? They had something to do with these murders, and from what we can tell they killed these two people because of something they knew. And you know what? Something tells me that since you were ready to kill them… they think you do, too.
"So you were there for a reason, right? Did it have anything to do with this man?"
Ever so deliberately, her darkened brown eyes stayed on Marcus as her hand slipped underneath the front of the very top file labeled 'Confidential'. And time seemed to slow to a crawl as the glossy, airbrushed photograph of a smiling Senator Burbury came into view for every occupant in the room to see.
Castle would have been lying to himself if he said that he hadn't dreamed up a few scenarios for this very moment ever since they were on the plane back to New York. Visions of Beckett in her truest and most terrifying element were plentiful: she, a righteous arbiter of justice looming like a Fury over the trembling form of Marcus DeWitt, and he, finally cracking and spilling the secrets of Rathborne like a dam bursting under the ferocity of a raging surge. He envisioned names, dates, vindication in so many ways. But as they say, reality can often be stranger than fiction.
Not a single thump of a heartbeat passed before a rush of angry tears poured from their suspect. A glimpse of a thirsting fire woke behind DeWitt's swollen and bruised eyes. And they grew darker.
Darker.
And then, all hell broke loose.
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AN: Sorry for the delay guys :( Had no access to my story files since Monday. Next update will be tomorrow!