Chapter Twenty Six
Epilogue

"Blessed be the LORD, my rock
who trains my fingers to fight
and my hands to war."
Gen. George S. Patton paraphrasing Psalm 144:1 (KJV)

Previously

Detective Kate Beckett had visited her at OCME the day before, had actually thought her patronizing words would fix the hole she had opened in her soul by stabbing her mother to death then stood and watched while she bled to death on the floor like a piece of garbage. She'd smiled and nodded and pretended to accept the woman's empty platitudes, but inside, Sally Keller raged, and hated and plotted.

"One day," she thought to herself, "Kate Beckett will die screaming, begging me for mercy," But not before she killed everything that Kate Beckett loved, starting with the redheaded stepchild she was so fond of.

The very next day, Sally Keller resigned from her internship at OCME and disappeared.

Two Years Later

Kate Beckett's injuries had not been severe, nor did the night she spent in captivity (the majority of which she was unconscious) cause her much more than the expected amount of anxiety. What took the most time for her to reconcile was the death of Elizabeth Keller. After a month of sessions with Dr. Burke, Kate had begun to accept in her head that she'd been given little choice but to defend herself in that darkened room that night. That it had been kill or be killed.

But her heart and her conscience were a different matter.

Even after a year of therapy, her heart still had trouble letting go of the notion that she had left two people without a mother, neither of them much older than she had been when her own mother had been taken from her under similar circumstances, the thrust of a knife in the dark. That she had done nothing to help the woman once she was no longer a threat came back to haunt her again and again, even though by the time she had freed herself the woman's death had been a foregone conclusion.

Her own feelings of guilt and remorse never ceased to remind her that she had done more to save Dick Coonan, the man who had murdered her own mother and for John Raglan, the man who'd covered that murder up, than she had for their mother - in spite of the fact that, by all accounts, Elizabeth Keller had been every bit the fringe religious sociopath that her husband had been and would have left Alexis alone in this world without a second thought.

It took her nearly the whole two years to come to terms with that night. Longer than it had taken to come to terms with her shooting, Castle's declaration of love and the torture session at the hands of Vulcan Simmons combined.

The top brass had offered her a promotion to Lieutenant, it was a political appointment, and she knew it, but she'd accepted anyway, unsure if she ever wanted to be on the street again.

Such a promotion should have filled her with a sense of accomplishment, but had only served to make her feel even worse. After she had been handed the box with her new shield in it and her rank insignia, she'd stood next to that podium in her dress uniform while Mayor Weldon pinned a Medal of Valor to her chest, and she felt sick inside.

She'd torn it from her dress uniform jacket as soon as they'd gotten back to the loft, not caring that she'd torn a section of material off with it, locked herself in their ensuite bathroom and cried.

Just like he always had, it had been her husband who saved her from herself.

He'd picked the lock, taken her in his arms and let her cry herself out, speaking not a word until he was sure the worst of it was over. After the final spasm of sobbing was done, he whispered the only words in her ear he could think of.

"Kate, Elizabeth Keller was not your mother."

"I know... but... I just... she was somebody's mother... I should have."

"But nothing" he stated almost angrily, "you had one option, and only one. You took it. She's dead and you're not. She put you in that room and put a knife to your throat."

"But..." Kate was only halfhearted in her attempt to refute him.

"There was nothing you could have done after either," Castle stated, giving her the facts, "Lanie walked me through it, Kate. She was dead before you had any chance of getting out of those restraints. I did the research, even had Alexis help me walk through it with the very same style of restraints. Not even cutting them off would have given you enough time to stop her from bleeding out."

She opened her mouth to say something else, but Castle stopped her. "Don't even think that you should have found another way to subdue her. You were bound to a table and she was going to slit your throat, Kate. Had she succeeded, I would have put two in her head as soon as I walked in the room. She would still be dead."

"But her children?" she asked.

"Will have to figure things out for themselves just like you did." Castle said, hating how cold he sounded about it. "Kate, those two kids have much larger issues to tackle than the fact that you killed their mother in self defense."

It had not been one of their happier conversations, but it did lead to the breakthrough she'd needed to begin to heal. She had been well on her way back to feeling like herself again by the time she made Captain.

The murder of Sebastian Keller was never solved. There were only a handful of people who might have had motive to kill him, including Richard Castle and Kate Beckett, but everybody had been accounted for during the window of opportunity. The only evidence to work from had been an impression of the knife used to kill him, which left more questions than answers.

It almost exactly matched the knife he'd used on all of the victims which was supposed to have been in evidence. Only it was gone. Dr. Lanie Parish had spent more than a few days in the hot seat, both for the disappearance of the knife from her lab's evidence storage vault, and as a suspect, but was eventually cleared of any wrongdoing on both counts.

In the end, with little or no evidence, a dwindling suspect pool and no new leads, his case went cold. Nobody suspected his killer had been on a plane halfway across the Atlantic Ocean, never to be seen again.

Two more years later
London, England

Dr. Sally Keller climbed the steps out of the London Underground, making a beeline for her flat. It had been a long night's work. Her latest prey had been difficult to track, just like Elena Markov had been for her father, but Sally had fixated on her because she so closely resembled Detective Beckett that she could not let this prostitute go. She had been hard to pin down... streetwise, smart and quick, just like the detective was. But in the end she managed to catch her unawares and stick the needle in her shoulder.

After that, Sally had driven her to the abandoned warehouse on the Thames where she did most of her dirty work and took her time taking the whore apart, just like she wanted to do to the woman who killed her mother. Her screams were music to her ears... She mutilated her face, and upper torso, cut her abdomen open to remover her viscera and somewhere during the process, the woman died.

"What a pity," Sally had thought when she removed the surgical gloves from her hands, "I was so hoping to draw it out longer."

She made a mental note to curb her excitement when she got her hands on the actual detective. Keep her alive as long as possible. Make her agony last for days and days. Make her beg to die, before sending her back to her husband one body part at a time.

Savor each scream and whimper as she cut her.

Sally couldn't help the small smile from crossed over face as she opened the door to her building. This had been her tenth kill in the six weeks since she had begun in earnest. Abomination though he was, her father was right about one thing. Planning was key. Know the ground and the players. Know who the cops are, how to spot the decoys by their security details, how to avoid the security cameras that were part of every day life in London.

Her father had kept meticulous notes during his initial planning stage, she did the same. It made hunting so much easier, left so little to chance. She added her own tricks to her repertoire, however, making her kills a little harder to find than father had. Not that she faulted his technique, but because she needed more lead time to clean herself up before her phone rang.

Her job with the London Coroner's office made it so much easier to control what Scotland Yard's finest knew and when they knew it in order to keep them off the scent. This was not the backward Metropolitan Police of her great, great, great grandfather's day. She could not trust to luck and the sewers to keep herself from being discovered.

The address Scotland Yard had on file for her was on the other side of the Whitechapel district from her flat. The former location of great great great grandfather's meat market, which as it turned out was a tenement house now. She rented a mailbox with the delightful elderly lady who ran the place who thinks she uses it as fake address to give men trying to pick her up the slip.

Her "friends with benefits" relationship with the lead detective on the case, Chief Inspector Colin Hunt didn't hurt either. She had him wrapped around her little finger. His fragile male ego would never allow him to believe that the woman who had occasionally shared his bed for the last two years was the killer he'd spent the better part of six weeks chasing.

That he was easy on the eyes and a fantastic lay was simply a side benefit. "Detective Beckett had no idea what she'd been missing" she mused to herself as she stepped into the lift and pushed the button for her floor. His connection to the Detective she despised made her relations with him so much sweeter.

If he ever did get too close, she would eliminate him, of course. It would be quick and painless, she owed him that much consideration given his entertainment value. Until then, however, he was useful to her and she would continue to enjoy his obvious talent in the bedroom.

Her heart and soul otherwise belonged to the work, ever since that fateful day in her gynecologist's office when she learned that she was barren. That the gift of the voices had come with a price. Her hope for the future would have to depend upon her brother David and his twin girls. They were mere infants now, she had plenty of time.

When the time was right, she would have to return to New York and look in on her brother and his family. Watch the twins carefully for signs one of them heard the voices. Keep them from straying if they did not. She would not repeat her grandfather's mistake and create another abomination like her father. If the gift skipped a generation she would be patient and continue the work.

Sally contemplated a lot in the slow moving elevator to her fourth floor flat. She had taken the so-called "Jack the Ripper" tour on her first day in London. It had been both educational and infuriating in equal measure. Not nearly as illuminating as his personal journals had been. He was still feared, still seen as something of a boogeyman, a shadow haunting this district, even though it had grown and prospered since he had conducted his cleansing back in 1888.

"One day," she thought to herself, "Great, great, grandfather will be exonerated by history, proven right for the visionary he was." It did not matter to her if that day never came in her lifetime.

Sally unlocked her door and stepped inside, not noticing anything was amiss until she toed off her shoes, walked into the living area and the floor lamp next to her reading chair suddenly switched on.

"You are a very difficult woman to track down, Dr. Keller," said a gray haired man who had to be pushing eighty, sitting in her easy chair, a silenced automatic in his hand, pointed directly at her chest. His voice was almost casual, as if he was an invited guest in her home and they were merely having a conversation about the weather.

"I value my privacy," Sally responded coldly.

She could tell the moment their eyes met, however, that this man was no amateur sleuth like Richard Castle. She could see in the cold, icy depths of his cobalt blue eyes that this man was well acquainted with dispensing death. That she was a strikingly beautiful woman in her own right - much like her mother had been - made absolutely no difference.

"I imagine so," he continued, undeterred, "considering what you've been up to for the last few years. What is it, nine women dead now?"

"Ten," Sally corrected, in spite of herself. "What does it matter? They were all whores, women of no value or importance."

"They were still somebody's daughter, somebody's sister..." he began, though he didn't let himself get worked up. His use of the word "sister" did strike a nerve, however.

"My father's sister was a whore, and she died like the rest of them, by his own hand no less!" she spat at him. "The world will drown in their blood and be washed clean."

He shrugged as if he was nothing more than a neighbor there to inquire about borrowing a cup of sugar. She never even saw the two shots coming as he pulled the trigger, never even registered the pop-zing of the silenced weapon, only the pain as both of her kneecaps evaporated in a pink mist, sending her toppling to the floor.

She keened and whimpered in pain, knowing nobody would hear her. She had chosen this place because nearly all of the other tenants in the building were deaf.

"It... it can't end... like this," she gasped, "I have... a...a destiny...I was...chosen... like grandfather..."

The man interrupted her, passion suddenly filling his words with emotion,

"Let me tell you something about Jack the fucking Ripper," he said with obvious disgust, "or whatever the fuck his real name was." He walked closer bending low to make sure she would not miss a word.

"I don't care what line of bullshit you've been fed your entire life, but he was not a messenger, not a reformer, not a prophet, nor a hero or anything to aspire to. He was just a psychopath and should have been put down like the mad dog he was before he ever had the chance to breed."

He gave that a moment to settle, before he spoke again,

"Tell Jack on your way to hell, that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle sends his regards."

His words were punctuated by two more silenced shots from his pistol into her forehead. She jerked twice and lay still.

Jackson Hunt felt a strange sense of accomplishment, having just finished something that three generations of his family line had been working toward for over one hundred years. With any luck the sickness that plagued the Keller family line was finally extinguished.

He searched her place methodically, until he found all of the journals, everything of Jack the Ripper's that could be found. The last thing he did was take the knife that had shed the blood of so many innocent lives, set the blade into the stone counter top and snapped it in half, leaving both halves on top of her body.

"Only one more thing left to do, Great granddad," he whispered softly out loud.

Little did his son know, that not only was he a direct descendant of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, but that consulting for the police was something of a family trait. Though admittedly he had strayed from that part of the family legacy. For what needed to be done, the life of a CIA assassin was a much better fit.

As he walked out of the apartment building, he opened his cell phone and checked his reservations out of Heathrow for Syracuse international airport. He would deal with the grandfather shortly. Though David Keller and his family would have to be watched carefully, he seemed like a true anomaly in the family line, much like his father, Sebastian, had been. By all accounts. he was a straight arrow. A decent man.

"A shame I couldn't have gotten to the old bastard years ago," he thought to himself, allowing a small amount of guilt to enter his heart, "I might have been able to save Sebastian and his sister, too." He had no further need to dwell in his sorrows as he had a plane to catch.

Two weeks later

The following article appeared beneath the fold
of the Syracuse Herald

Dr. Robert Keller, a retired cultural anthropologist was found dead yesterday morning from what the Syracuse Police Department are reporting as an accidental self inflicted gunshot wound to the head.

Most noted for his work with the Chicago Field Museum, Dr. Keller consulted with the Chicago police department during a series of violent murders between 1947 and 1949. The Killer or killers were never caught. His son was Sebastian Keller, the infamous Manhattan Ripper.

He is survived by his grandson, David Keller of Albany, NY and two great grandchildren, Alicia and Christine. Calling hours are scheduled between two and four o'clock with the funeral the next morning at seven When he is to be laid to rest beside his beloved wife Gretchen.

Jackson Hunt put away the newspaper he'd been reading on the train to New York City. "Maybe it's about time to finally retire. Perhaps someplace sunny," he thought to himself. He might check up on Richard and his family first, it had been a long time since he was last there and he had not yet paid a visit to Alexis personally since rescuing her two years ago. She at least deserved to have a face to go with the name of her grandfather. Even if that name was an alias.

He knew Kate didn't really like him all that much, but he did hear that she was expecting, and he knew how much Martha wanted more grandchildren. It would be nice to see them all under pleasant circumstances for once, even it it was for the last time. He still had a few enemies who were active and didn't want to cause them unnecessary drama, so he would disappear unless he was needed.

He might let it slip to Richard in private before he left though, that a certain black SUV which had run him off the road, complete with its occupants, were at the bottom of the ocean in international waters so he could stop looking over his shoulder.

Jenkins should have known better, he'd told the damn fool he had the situation with Al Qaida handled. Taking care of these sort of things was his job, NOT his son's. it was what the CIA paid him handsomely for. He'd made that perfectly clear when he'd told him to leave his son out of it. The idiot didn't listen, still tried to kidnap his son as a go-between, screwed it up, nearly killed him in the botched attempt, then tried to frame Bracken to cover it up.

It was a mistake he would never live to make again.

Though Richard and his wife seemed content to blame former Senator Bracken, he was well aware that the only assassin who had still taken his calls always turned that one down. Detective Beckett didn't like him, but she preferred the truth to even her own imaginings. He would tell her what he could, without breaking security and then leave it alone.

After that, Jackson Hunt would let his family live in peace, they had certainly earned it. He had stared for far too long into the abyss, hunting monsters and did not want to bring the darkness he'd found there too near to his grandchildren, lest they follow in his footsteps.

This would end with him.

The End
(for real this time)

**Author's note** What a long, strange trip it has been, writing this. I want to thank Cofkett for being my Beta through this whole affair, Dtrekker for making the cover art, not to mention Lou and Berkie for still operating the ficathon, and putting up with me, even though I can be a pain in the ass. Looking forward to working on something not quite this dark. But you know me, anything can happen.

Yes, I couldn't help but mention the "new mythology" here. As screwed up as it was, it is still canon like it or not. Part of me hopes Castle's dad comes out of the woodwork in season 8 (if there is one) to deal with the guy. Maybe give Caskett some real closure. (even if they have to find somebody else to play him)

Until the next tale.