They sat at their desks going over and over details of the security company's printouts - the discs were with the daddy-to-be Cheese Whiz; Beckett had indeed called it right - and so far, they were not terribly helpful.

'There's got to be something in here to tell us how she got in,' Esposito sighed, tossing down his reading glasses and grinding the heels of his hands into his eyes. 'You have anything yet?'

'No.' Beckett, who'd needed a break on the records before Esposito did, stared at her murder board, looking at the crime scene photographs. She picked up a red whiteboard marker and wrote underneath a photo bloodtrail out before capping the marker and mumbling to herself. 'She doesn't have wings or a hoverboard and even if she were airborne, there would still be drops of castoff blood, just from a higher altitude.'

'Talking to yourself, Detective?'

Beckett glanced over, saw Karpowski walking towards her with a file in her hand. 'Sir, just thinking aloud. There's no apparent bloodtrail out of the house,' she explained. 'We're going on the theory that Elaine Hammond was dropped off at the corner intersection near her house and then used the back-alley entrance through the kitchen to make sure she didn't get caught on camera during the window for the time of death.'

'That's what I'd do, if I wanted to get back at my husband for being an asshole,' Karpowski said so easily Beckett had to check her mouth; Karpowski was infamous for her disdain of foul language. 'I wouldn't be comfortable with the what-ifs of the plan as described by Aurora White. I'd need to see it in person.'

'We figured that too, so that's the angle we're trying to work out now. Hold on, sir.'

Beckett went to her ringing desk-phone, pressed the speaker button. 'Beckett.'

'It's Adam, and we're at the Hammond house, in the back alley. You were right, the trashcans labeled Hammond are empty but there is a red smear on one of them near the lip of the can.'

'Good. Photograph it, get it to CSU. Andrews is home for the day so send it to her underling Jackie.'

'What are you thinking, Beckett?'

'I'll tell you when you're back here.'

She hung up, looked at Esposito and Karpowski. 'You get what I'm thinking?'

'That Elaine ditched her bloody clothes into the trashcan the night of the murder and they are currently rotting in a Newark landfill because we got there after pick-up on Monday morning? Yeah, that's pretty obvious where you're going.'

'What if...what if Elaine strips down out of her fancy theatre clothes so she's in her underwear, stabs him, then puts on fresh clothes outside the house and tosses the bloody ones in the trashcan?' Beckett pondered, tapping the marker against the board.

'Keep me posted, Detectives,' Karpowski informed them as she moved along to Geoffs' desk to deposit the file in her hands.

'What do you think, Javi,' Beckett asked him.

'I think that in the right circumstances anyone can be pushed to the point of being a secret agent and have the awareness to leave as little as possible of themselves at a crime-scene. Would she remember the interior cameras though?'

'No interior cameras, just exterior on the front of the house. But...' BA thought sparked in Beckett's mind and she went back to the stack of hotel records, smirking triumphantly when she saw the I'll call Riley, see if he's up for a visit.'


They found Riley in his AV lab, though how he was on the ground and not on the ceiling floating away from the pure love and happiness in his eyes was a wonder that Andrews was indeed pregnant.

'Can you believe it?' he all but sang as he offered Esposito and Beckett chairs for viewing, something he'd never have done in other circumstances. 'We went to the clinic last night, and the ultrasound-sono-thingy said she's about nine weeks into it, which means we probably made the baby celebrating the Steelers win against Green Bay on Thanksgiving.'

'Congratulations, Riley,' Beckett told him warmly, 'if you need any advice, between Ryan, Espo and myself, we have eight kids so we've been there.'

'She's being looked after by a Doctor Bishop, you know him, is he any good?'

'Henry Bishop?' At Riley's nod, Esposito gave him a wink. 'He is a colleague of the OBGYN Ryan's wife works with, and our friends Andrea and Daniel too. He did an emergency at-home birth last summer for us too, for a friend of Alexis Weaver's. He's one of the best.'

'Good, good, because we didn't plan this and we're terrified but we are so excited.'

'How about a little cross-referencing of video footage to keep you centred?' Beckett teased him and Riley bobbed his head like a robin drunk on worms.

'You got it, Detective. Voila.'

He pressed a button on his keyboard, brought up the traffic-cam footage. 'That is the footage you looked at previously. And this-' he pressed another key '-is Elaine Hammond coming into the hotel at approximately twelve-fifty am the night of the murder.'

Esposito squinted. 'You sure? It doesn't even look like her.'

'Yeah, she's wearing a wig. But if we do this, then we'll get undeniable proof.'

Riley pulled up two still frames from the footage, enhanced and clarified once more, focusing on the feet; the leather ankle-boots were identical. 'Those shoes are custom-tailored Dante Brunetti boots. The standard off-the-rack ones run about four-hundred a pop. Custom job like those are anywhere from fifteen hundreed to four thousand dollars.'

'For shoes? Women are crazy,' Esposito blurted out and Riley chuckled.

'You're telling me. Susie's already getting antsy she'll have to return the pumps she got for the wedding in favour of wedges or flats.'

'Is there any way to get a further confirmation on the shoes, Riley?' Beckett asked, not will to admit that she'd received a pair from Castle for their sixth anniversary in the same hibiscus pink as her wedding dress.

'Oh yeah. Custom jobs like that are very rare and very expensive. I checked it against any purchases from Elaine Hammond or Victor Hammond's credit cards. Victor Hammond spent seventy-five hundred dollars on those very shoes for his wife at Christmas.'

Esposito moved closer to the screen, then looked back at Beckett. 'If she wore those boots into the house and wore them out, there is still probably spatter on them.'

'One step ahead of you, Detective,' Riley informed them. 'Her clothes from the hotel room are all over with fibres and DNA. They should have a report to you by lunchtime.'

His phone rang and when he the normally surly AV-tech went soft and gooey as a melted Mars bar, Beckett and Esposito both knew he was talking to Andrews. Deciding to give him some privacy, they stepped into the hallway to wait for the remainder of his report.

'You know what is still really confusing me, Kate?' Esposito murmured to his partner.

'What's that?'

'We seem to be getting like three different pictures of Elaine. There's Elaine the happy wife, Elaine the abused wife and Elaine the criminal mastermind. And none of them seem to fit with the lady we met in the hospital, nor do any of them seem like the type to OD on sleeping pills.'

'Yeah, I get what you mean, but I have a feeling that it is going to make sense soon.'

'You know something?'

'No, no more than you, but my instincts are telling me it's somehow going to make sense.'

Riley came to the door of his lab and passed them a stack of sticker-sealed discs along with a printed report. 'It's all there,' he hissed. 'You have any questions, come find me.'