BEGINNING OF PART 4
9:14 a.m., Murphy's Kitchen
Danny Halloran was really beginning to enjoy this, and flicked a glance over at Murphy, who was also watching Richard Castle in fascination. Danny hadn't been sure before, but seeing the pretty woman flinch confirmed it: the writer had become one of them, maybe even better than Michael McGowran, turning on his own wife like this. Because when a man turns on his wife, his family, the world blows apart and comes back together like a pieced-together shell of itself. Danny knew it from hard experience with his father, from watching his mother rolled out of her home on a gurney for the last time. He needed to see it. Needed to understand it, finally, how his father could have slowly murdered his mother and himself over the course of his childhood. Danny was dead inside, almost all the time, feeling nothing unless he was in pain, screwing, hurting, or killing someone. Fear in the eyes brought his mother back to life in vivid detail. Fear made him feel alive. It gave him the power he couldn't find any other way.
Castle approached Beckett slowly, staggering just a little but pretty much in control, a finger skirting along the length of the kitchen table more for reference than for balance. "Seriously, these drugs are amazing. It feels like I'm walking through a lake of tar," he chuckled, then shook it off. He left the table as if wading up to his chest in a cold river, moving from rock to rock, and caught his balance on the sideboard. "Remember our first kiss?"
Little Patty watched the fear growing in Beckett's pale face, her wide eyes, tiny pupils in green irises that had darkened to brown.
She rasped, "You kissed me on the cheek."
"No, no, no..." Castle's voice went high, singsong, teasing unpleasantly. "Not that one."
"The front door. Your loft."
"Noooooo." He sort of fell into her, shoving her shoulders back against the kitchen wall.
Danny stepped closer. He wanted to see everything, Kate's face, wanted to see Castle start unbuttoning her shirt, wanted to see her fight and hear her whimper. He was ready to help take her down, tear her apart. He could feel himself hardening again, quite soon after what he'd done to Tiffany before he hung her up. But he hadn't had hands free for that. He liked firing a gun and his load at the same time, but they weren't quite at that point yet.
Beckett shoved back, grimacing. "Castle. Stop it."
Danny and Murphy both snickered. Danny mouthed, "This is gonna be good."
Castle had Beckett pinned. He took her jaw in his hand. "Our firsssst kiss. You know. The alley."
"The alley?"
Castle smirked at her. "You little liar. You pretended you didn't want to. Just like you're pretending now. Maybe I can make you change your mind." He shook her, just slightly.
Her eyes teared up. "Please," she begged. "Don't make me remember every stupid thing we did that night."
Castle leaned in, eyes locked on hers. "Oh, yes, Kate. It was stupid then. And it's stupid now."
Patty watched the whole thing with a confused mix of amusement and nervousness and lust. He hoped he was going to get a turn with her. As Michael had told them, the general consensus was true: she was extraordinary.
As Beckett stared at Castle in consternation, he planted a kiss on her.
•
9:13 a.m., Murphy's house, 2nd Floor
Ameena came to the top of the stairs and was seized with an overwhelming desire to run out of the building. After all this time of wondering and waiting and frustrating dead ends, every instinct told her this was a charnel house, a deathly place, the deadest end of all. She could smell bodies, mold, dust, plastic, cat-box, and it was much worse here, upstairs, than it had been in the foyer where fresh air blew through occasionally. She felt as if breath were being stolen from her body by a ghost.
As Castle had instructed her, she knocked on the first door on the left. She didn't know what – or who - she would find. Her wildest hope, her dream, was that her mother would be there, perhaps imprisoned somehow, chained to a loom and forced to weave rugs as she had back home. But this seemed an unlikely place for such a happy ending. She opened the door and stopped, staring at the creche in the low light. In the bed, an elderly woman sat up and said, "Hello, dear."
Ameena's heart leapt into her throat and she jumped back. "Holy crap," she breathed. She added more loudly, "Who are you?"
The old woman climbed out of bed and shuffled toward Ameena, leaving someone sleeping in the bed next to her. "I am Greta Schirrmacher Kristow." As she came closer, Greta peered at Ameena's face, then gently reached up her twisted hands, placing finger-pads on the agent's occipital bone, then her cheekbone, then the bridge of her nose, then her jaw, reading the younger woman's bone structure with eyes closed, as if she were blind.
Greta turned and pointed toward the mummified effigy of Mary, the mother of her Holy Spirit Incarnate, and said, "More importantly, Ameena, who is she?"
9:14 a.m., Murphy's Kitchen
Beckett pushed her husband away, hard. He staggered back against Murphy, who grunted in surprise at a loud buzzing noise, and fell over with a shout of pain. Castle had tased him with the device hidden in his cast.
In a blur too fast even to see, Dan Halloran found himself on the receiving end of Kate's boot smashing into his genitals. He collapsed into himself with a guttural cry, pulling the pistol's trigger spasmodically, but to his chagrin, the gun was unloaded and nothing happened. On the floor, he lay writhing as Kate stomped on his crotch again, then on his hand, and kicked her gun away from it. Castle was on him then, the newly infamous left hook employed in demolishing Little Patty's carefully constructed visage.
Patty bellowed, "Not the face! Not the face!" The killer felt his cheekbone implant smashed in, and then his chin implant dislodged. At each new injury, he screamed in pain, and Castle responded by closing his hand around Patty's throat and squeezing, his full weight on the killer's windpipe. Little Patty pawed desperately on Castle's iron grip. Castle's eyes were blue with cold fury, while Patty's vision became obscured by blood running into his own eyes, pooling over the lenses, stinging and salty.
Kate stopped him. "Castle! Rick. Stop! He needs to live long enough to testify, babe." She grabbed his shoulder. "Rick. It's okay."
Castle looked down the front hall at Murphy, who had gotten up and tottered away, fumbling with the front door key, gritting, "He's getting away."
Kate just smiled. "I don't think so..."
"Mmpft," said Patty. Rick punched him one last time for good measure.
Murphy was half out the front door, then stopped and raised his hands, backing into the kitchen again, mumbling, "I'm just an old man. I haven't done anything."
Jackson Hunt stalked forward, a gun to Murphy's chest. He said cheerfully, "That's never stopped me before."
"Hey," Castle said. He was still a bit breathless and riled up, trying to calm himself. "That's not what we're here for."
Hunt grinned down at his son. "Well, at least you got to beat someone up."
"He hit me first," Rick whined. Kate pulled a chair out, and Hunt cuffed Murphy to it.
They heard Esposito pounding on the back door. "Police. Open up."
Kate called out, "It's okay, Espo, stand back and we'll let you in." While Castle sat on Little Patty – mostly for the satisfaction, since he really was out cold – Kate opened the back door, and Ryan and Esposito came charging in. She spoke to Esposito. "Gashkouri's upstairs. Back her up."
Rick's eyes were a little glazed. Still down on the floor, he stared up at Kate and choked, "I should've just tased him."
Ryan searched Little Patty for weapons and ID, finding Gashkouri's gun tucked into the back of his waistband. It was loaded, but nearly impossible to access through the clean-suit. "Tasing doesn't always work with the big guys. Pounding the crap out of him... probably a longer-term effect," Ryan observed. They positioned him so that the blood running out of his nose and mouth wouldn't cause choking. Ryan repeated what he and Esposito had discussed previously: "Hey, Castle, remind me not to make you mad. Ever."
Castle stared down at his left hand. The knuckles had opened up again, and this time his hand ached. He hadn't held back.
Kate started to say, "We should bandage that..." when Betsy came barreling in the front door, trailing her leash and a piece of laurel bush, baying joyfully, running circles around Rick, then into the front parlor, her feet up on the window sill, halfway up the stairs to the second floor then back into the kitchen to circle the table, jumping over the prone body of Patty Halloran, and into the basement to find Tiffany, finally. "Tiffany, Tiffany, Tiffany!" The dog practically flew down the stairs.
There was a scream and a yelp, then Betsy started up an awful yammering cry.
9:16 a.m., Greta's Room
Esposito heard two women talking, and stood at the door to Greta's room, just leaning against the frame. Ameena Gashkouri was standing by the manger, slowly removing the veils and robes from the Virgin Mary, and Greta was prattling on.
"...certain it is her. See her teeth? Just like yours, and look at the delicate structure of her browbone." Greta smiled. "Of course, I made her paler and bleached her hair blonde, since the Virgin Mary was white, but she did have such lovely features, and I tried to capture them as well as I could."
Ameena turned from the mummified, wax-encrusted face of her mother, to the woman who had so blithely turned her body into an unintentionally racist craft project.
"Were you with her? When she died?"
Greta shook her head regretfully. "No, dear. I was acting as her decoy, flying to London on her passport, four seats over from Richard Castle. I returned on my own German passport, and then when I got home, they gave me this to play with."
"They?"
"Michael and Joseph. Murphy."
"They killed her here?"
Greta nodded. "In the basement. I reconstructed her face based on her passport picture. Isn't she beautiful?"
Gashkouri's hands clenched at her sides a moment, and then she looked over at the doorway. She stared blankly at Esposito, and then seemed to realize he was actually there.
"If he comes here, don't let my brother in this house," she gritted.
Esposito nodded. "We told him to wait in the van."
9:16 a.m., Murphy's basement.
Betsy's crying grew into a howl of pain. "Oh God, no!" Rick ran into the basement to find Tiffany in a corner, still crouching behind her spiked lion-tamer's chair, crying hysterically, and Betsy creeping back, limping and bloody, pawing at her eye. Tiffany had taped a 2-quart stainless bowl to her head, fastened it under her chin, and also made a sort of sandwich board out of a couple of metal baking sheets, front and back. Really, for makeshift armor, it was kind of clever – better than some of the things Rick had seen at Renaissance Faires.
"I didn't mean it! I didn't mean it!" Tiffany babbled. "Ohmigodomigodomigod!"
Kate was right on Rick's heels. "What's – oh, no."
She hurried to Tiffany, who had her eyes closed, crouched in the corner, with the chair's legs out in front of her and its back over her head, her elbows by her shoulders, her grip the iron of panic.
Rick said, "It's okay, Tiffany. You're safe now. Beckett's here." Seeing Beckett caring for Tiffany, Castle bent over Betsy. 'Hey, Betsy. Hey, little girl. You're okay." Betsy was whining in agony, and he had trouble preventing her from pawing at her face. It was badly cut, and she had possibly lost an eye, though it was hard to tell for all the blood. Being a dog in pain, she was panicking.
Tiffany was keening. "I'm so sorry. I was so scared, I... oh, my God, she's bleeding!"
Kate said, "Can you put the chair down?
Tiffany peered wildly out at Kate and shook her head, staring in misery at the crying, wounded hound.
Some lion tamer. Best intentions. Mice and men. Whatever. Things screw up sometimes. Kate spoke again to Tiffany. "If it makes you feel safer, you just stay there, okay?"
"Kate," Rick said calmly. "Do you have that other handkerchief?"
"Of course I do," said Beckett. "When I got back to the hotel room I washed it out and hung it over the shower rod."
She handed the handkerchief to him, and he smiled at her gratefully. "I love you more every day," he breathed.
She nodded and knelt by him. "I'll muzzle her, you hold her steady," she said.
Kate's touch was light, but poor Betsy moaned and cried, yet kept enough presence of mind not to snap as Beckett made a lightweight muzzle.
Rick said, "This is almost as bad as the ending to Old Yeller. Tiffany, what happened?"
Tiffany's voice was small and thick with tears. "You told me to make some armor, so I did. I heard you guys fighting but I didn't know... I didn't know who would win, you know? So I just stayed down here. I heard the police come and I was gonna come up but I thought it might be a trick so I brought the chair, and then the poor dog just came flying down the stairs at me, she didn't see..."
Castle said, "This is my fault. I should have thought..."
Kate said, "I should have caught her leash. She was overexcited."
Tiffany said, "I'm so stupid."
Castle said, "My mother always told me that when you feel like hammered shit, the best thing you can do is help someone else."
Kate looked askance at him and murmured, "She told you that?"
"More or less," Castle whispered back.
Kate frowned and applied pressure to the wound with a clean towel (the linens in this house were completely forfeit as far as Kate was concerned). "She's really bleeding." Betsy whined, and Rick stroked the dog, trying to comfort her. It was heartrending.
Tiffany set down her chair and approached, her face the picture of misery. "Oh, you poor thing," she whispered, teary-eyed. "I'm so sorry, puppy." Then her expression grew resolute and she took off her stainless mixing-bowl helmet. "I'm a student veterinary assistant, you know," she said. "Help me with this tape." Kate grabbed a spare knife and carefully snapped the tape, helping Tiffany out of her makeshift armor.
Rick spoke to Tiffany. "What should we do?"
"Let's get her up on the table."
Kate helped Rick lift the dog. He'd carried Betsy just the night before, but then she'd wanted it. Now she was a dead weight of 80 pounds coming up off the floor, and he already ached all over from the fighting and scooting his butt down the stairs. He groaned a little. Tiffany found a clean towel and spread it out to keep the dog off the cold stainless steel surface.
Tiffany said, "Put her on her right side so I can examine the left."
Rick looked around and found rubber gloves and wipes. "Give Murphy credit, his butcher shop's clean as an operating room."
"Butcher shop?" Kate said.
Tiffany said, "Can you get a first aid kit and a needle and thread? Maybe Ms Crisco has a curved one." She looked over the wound, trying to get it clean while Kate held Betsy as still as possible. "Maybe some ice, too."
Rick went to one of the large freezers, opened the door, and slammed it shut. His eyes wide, his face chalk-white, he huffed out a breath.
"No ice," he rasped. He shook himself, pulled himself together. Now was not the time to fall to pieces. Others had done that job for him.
"Maybe some drugs? Local or sedative?"
Rick nodded, then added sarcastically, "Gee, I wonder if they have any drugs." He stepped back out of the basement to find Matt had just come through the front door. He asked Murphy where to find the first aid kit, then bade Matt follow him to the downstairs hall bathroom. "Betsy's hurt herself. Where were you?"
Matt shrugged, his face flaming with embarrassment, and took the opportunity to wash his hands with soap. "Had to see a man about a dog."
Rick would have laughed under any other circumstance. "Well, you go down to the basement and tell that dog you're sorry. You ever dress a field wound?"
Matt nodded and sighed. "Yeah, but I'm not a medic."
"Tiffany's got some veterinary training. She might know what she's doing. Then again, she might not," said Rick. "I'll meet you there in a minute." He headed up the stairs, while Matt went down.
Passing the kitchen table, Matt noticed the plate of bacon, and was just about to reach out for a piece when Hunt said, "Don't even think about it."
Murphy chuckled nastily. "Damn."
•
9:20 a.m., Greta's room
The room was fully lit, with every horror plain as day and somehow ordinary and worse in the light of economy fluorescent bulbs. When Rick arrived, Esposito glanced over at him, his face grey with shock. Castle made an incomprehensible mime gesture and ducked into Greta's bathroom. There he found a veritable trove of medications – some of them possibly stolen – many of those not stolen prescribed by one Dr. Kelly Nieman. He threw them all into a basket decorated with dusty, fake hydrangea blossoms. Stepping back into Greta's room, looking more closely at Gashkouri, he said, "Did you find what you needed?"
Agent Gashkouri's face was the picture of professional calm on the surface, but her eyes were dull with pain. "No, but I found what I was looking for."
"I'm so sorry," Rick said. She could tell he meant it, and she nodded wordlessly.
He added to Greta, "I need a curved needle and some nylon thread."
"What for?"
"Sew up a cut."
"Oh, upstairs, in the little plastic drawer unit. Top middle, there are curved needles. I used one on Arne."
"I'll sterilize it," he said
Gashkouri turned back to Greta. "I'm going to arrest you, now."
Rick passed Esposito on his way out, and Espo patted him on the shoulder, whispering, "Good work, bro."
Bro. "Watch it," Castle said quietly. "That woman is a lot more dangerous than she looks." Esposito nodded, and Rick continued up to the attic to get needle and thread, this time making sure he turned the stairway light on.
Greta's proud smile fell. "But I saved her. For you. She'd be nothing but a pile of bones, and of course little Jesus there, he'd be all alone..."
"If you'd actually saved her and little Jesus there, I'd have a mother and a little brother," Gashkouri glared.
"I did save them. In the best sense of the word. They're in the arms of God on High."
Gashkouri closed her eyes a moment, staving off rage and frustration. Javi stepped in. "I'm here to assist Agent Gashkouri with your arrest. You have the right to remain silent. Is that how it goes here?"
Ameena nodded absently, and wearily rattled off the rest of the Irish version of Miranda rights, her eyes never leaving her mother's corpse. She looked down at the mummified baby, and her whole body seemed to spasm. Esposito's hand was tight on her shoulder.
•
9:22 a.m., Murphy's Attic
Rick continued to the attic and found a curved needle and some strong nylon thread. He smelled something chemical – maybe burning plastic – but he was in a hurry and saw no smoke, so he dashed back down to the basement. He left the attic door open behind him. The hot glue gun, which someone (nobody's sure who) had knocked over, had burned through its own wiring. The wiring sparked, and since it was a cheap knockoff and wasn't plugged into a GFI, bad things started to happen. (You realize of course that this is an understatement.) The updraft from the stairs carried the little flame into a pile of ribbon, and the flame spread into the stacks and shelves of fabric, then pieces of ember floated down to the carpet, and soon the bejeweled angel was fully engulfed in a glorious blaze, followed by Greta's little German domicile and the collection of bones. Which is why you should never buy a glue gun not listed with Underwriters' Laboratories.
The constellation of Christmas lights (also cheap ungrounded knockoffs) flashed out as the breaker blew.
9:22 a.m., Greta's Room
The lights in Greta Schirrmacher Kristow's room went out, leaving two officers, one nutcase, and several bodies in dusty shadows.
They heard an odd sound in the distance: POFF. Then PAFF, and FOOMP. Loud noises, but muffled. Esposito wrinkled his brow, the sound familiar and terrifying but out of place. "IEDs?"
He hurried to the window and peered out cautiously. There was a crunchy, gravelly, tinkling sound, and slate tiles showered down off the roof above them, followed by a fireball about two feet wide. It crashed down to the ground, spewing flames on the walls of the house, then bounced on the pavement only a couple feet from the SUV.
Gashkouri said, "What the hell?"
Neither of them knew that the attic was full of flammable art supplies, including cans of spray paint, spray adhesive, tubes of solvent-based glues, turpentine, 99% alcohol, mineral spirits, and all kinds of plastic. Upstairs, small bombs were going off, but because of the updraft, nobody smelled any smoke (not even Betsy, who was dreaming about flying squirrels and having her face stitched up very neatly by Matt, assisted by Tiffany). And because Michael McGowran had intended the old house to burn down eventually anyway, he hadn't installed sprinklers.
Esposito stepped out of Greta's room and looked down the hallway. A few cinders from the conflagration above had skittered down the stairs, and bounced onto the hallway carpet.
"FIRE!" Esposito bellowed. "We gotta move. Now." He turned to Greta. "You have an extinguisher?"
A 2-gallon can of alcohol-based primer blew its lid with a PUNG! Thwak! The lid hit the roof, and WHOMP the fumes from the primer exploded. Esposito felt a slight shock wave. He ran to the attic door and closed it, hoping to both reduce the updraft and the rain of sparks down the stairs. He stomped on the little circles of blaze forming around the embers on the hallway carpet.
"I think I have one around somewhere," Greta called out vaguely. She rummaged in her desk drawer.
Esposito said, "It can't be in there!"
She handed a binder to Gashkouri. "This is my inventory," she smiled. "Everyone's in there. Establishing provenance. Passports, identification... I got these wonderful little pockets to organize it all..."
Gashkouri seemed to understand. "Javi, you get her out of here. Take the binder, too. It's evidence." She grabbed Greta's duvet, and spread it on the floor. Then she took up the baby and set his body in the middle. Trying to lift her mother's body off the stand, Ameena grunted in frustration, the sobs now wracking her. "Come on. Come on, goddamn it." The shoulder crosspiece was a little too high for her to get leverage.
Javi tried to push Greta toward the hallway. "Go on down," he said. She shook him off and pulled Arne, the leather man, out of her bed and carried him with relative ease to the doorway, his long, sausage-like legs dragging on the floor.
Javi said, "Leave that, it'll only slow you down."
Greta smiled. "Polyster fiberfill. He's very light."
Javi returned to Ameena, set the binder on the blanket, bracing the baby, then said, "Okay, you hold the stand steady, I'll lift her up." With a tug, the late Mrs. Gashkouri's body came loose, and her leg dropped off, tangling in her robes. It smelled like rot, and felt like it was made of sticks and cobwebs, and he couldn't look at the face as the delicate neck gave way and the head slumped against his shoulder, its dyed golden curls bouncing gently. They laid the body on the duvet and rolled it up, the baby at the center, and then each grabbed an end, and they carried the funerary roll down.
•
9:24 a.m. Murphy's house, First Floor
Ryan met them at the base of the stairs, his face an almost-comical blend of worry and relief. He was carrying a satchel with Murphy's desktop computer under one arm. He guided them to the back door, where they now heard the fast approach of sirens. Castle met them, for some reason carrying a couple of large aluminum baking pans, whose use was made clear by the shelter they gave as pieces of roof and exploding art supplies rained into the back yard. Ryan and Castle covered Espo and Gashkouri to shield them and their burden from the falling roof slates, sharp as stone Frisbees as they spun to earth. A couple of embers fell onto the duvet, through the gap between the two pans, and Castle brushed them away.
Zameer Gashkouri had moved their father's delivery truck – containing all of John Halloran's worldly goods and his filing system about the team of serial killers – forward about fifty feet, a bit past the backyard and safe from the blast zone. And their other van was just past it, the back wide open, the elephant god beckoning with uplifted trunk, happy to remove all obstacles. Beckett, Tiffany, and Betsy in her carrier were already inside. Castle and Esposito lifted Mrs. Gashkouri's body into the truck, and Ameena hurried to her brother, hugging him. "I found her," she said.
He said, "Where is she?"
"Her body's rolled up. In there." She pointed to the duvet roll, deciding to wait on telling him their mother had been pregnant when she was murdered.
Zameer said, "I don't believe it. I wanna see..."
Esposito said, "I've seen it, and trust me, you don't want to. Not here."
Castle's face was full of sympathy, then puzzlement. "Wait, I thought you'd - that's not Greta?"
Esposito said, "No. Maybe she's out front. I told her to get out." He phoned Hunt, who was out front with Matt, watching over Danny Halloran and Joseph Murphy, who were securely cuffed and tied up separately in back of the SUV. Matt and Jackson were keeping the street clear, and waiting for the fire trucks and Gardai to arrive at any moment. They could hear the barking and howling of seven very excited dogs in the distance.
"Hey," Esposito said. "Is ol' Greta with you? She's wearing a nightgown and carryin' a creepy doll... Like... Thing."
"No," Hunt said. He addressed Murphy. "Is there a woman named Greta inside the house?"
Murphy chuckled softly. "Huh. Most likely."
"Well, where do you suppose she is?" Hunt pressed angrily.
"I dunno. Patty, you guess Greta's up in the attic?"
Patty shrugged, his voice nasal from the blood backed up in his sinuses. His eyes were swollen shut. "Guess so."
Hunt cursed and started to hurry into the house. Fortunately Greta had the sense to die screaming just then, leaping from a hole in the roof in her nightgown, the flames flaring out like the robes of an angel.
Her smoking corpse lay splattered on the pavement, with Matt, and even Hunt, speechless a moment with shock. Hunt spoke into his phone. "We, uh, found her. She's... out. So to speak."
Murphy's nostrils flared. "Smells like ham."
"Eh, fuck off," snorted Patty. A bubble of bloody snot popped in his nose. He sat there trying to decide whether to sniff it in or blow it out. He considered this a pretty miserable turn of events. Nobody offered him a handkerchief.
•
9:25:18 a.m., Side Street
A copter flew over the DART tracks and west toward the cemetery only a few blocks away.
Standing next to the SUV, Hunt smiled up at the sky and said, "There's our ride."
•
9:25:18 a.m., Back Alley
Back in the alley, Castle smiled up at the sky and said, "There's our ride."
He turned to Gashkouri and enveloped her in a big hug, which she belatedly returned in utter surprise. He continued, "Your brother's going to drop us off at the cemetery to meet the copter. You can keep the SUV and everything in it..."
Wearing Tiffany's steel-bowl-and-tape helmet, Matt passed them and relayed a message as he spoke on the phone, his voice echoing oddly against the metal surface. "Mo's in the copter with Agent Soames, and Rourke's at the end of the street, heading in. Good luck explaining - all … that!" He vaguely indicated the burning house, and climbed into the back of the van. He peered into Betsy's crate. She was still drugged asleep, reasonably well sewn-up, bandaged, and feeling no pain. As a bonus, she still had both eyes. Not that she used them much anyway.
Gashkouri spoke first to Castle, "Thank you." Then she turned to everyone in the van. "Thank all of you."
Kate had her arm around Tiffany, whose head was on her shoulder, passed out in exhaustion. Kate looked rather like she needed to cry but had no intention of doing so. Ryan gave her a cheery wave and a "Good luck!"
To her surprise, Esposito climbed back down out of the van and walked over to shake her hand, but it didn't feel like an entirely businesslike shake to her. His brown eyes were kind, his smile sincere. "It was nice working with you," he said. "You're a good cop." He glanced at the rolled duvet. "You call if you want to talk, okay?"
Ameena nodded, overcome. He kissed her on the cheek and walked away, climbing into the back of the van with the others.
9:28 a.m., Back Alley
Sammy went to the passenger seat and climbed in, waiting to start the engine, his expression hazed with the newly-reopened wound of grief. Castle smiled down at Ameena, but it was a sad smile. "You have a long road ahead of you. A lot of paperwork, a lot of digging... your forensics team is gonna have a field day with that house, and there were rooms I never even went into."
"McGowran had the other holdings, too. Will you come back to help?"
"I'll probably have to. But for now, keep our involvement to an absolute minimum. You never saw us here, you never saw Tiffany here, and you just found the place like this when you arrived. Correct?"
"I understand." Ryan handed her Murphy's computer, from which he had duplicated all the salient – and sordid - details onto a backup drive. Sirens were growing louder. "Thanks. I have to go."
9:29 a.m, Side Alley.
Ameena Gashkouri grabbed a pan and held it up over her head. She hurried past her father's van and encountered Jackson Hunt, wearing an actual hard hat and probably a fireproof jacket, looking every inch the very prepared secret agent he was.
He spoke in passing as he tossed her a set of keys. "There's a lot of toys in the SUV, just ping me if you need help working anything."
She nodded, "Thanks again."
"Also call me when you get tired of being yanked around by that Agency of yours. I might have a job for you. One where you're not treated like crap."
Agent Gashkouri stared a moment. "Really?" But "Jackson Hunt", as the Commander referred to himself for this operation, kept walking
She hurried on through the gate, and stood by the SUV full of the two crestfallen serial killers.
A Dublin City Gardai car had picked Rourke up from the helicopter at the cemetery. Closely followed by several more patrol cars, a coroner's van, and a couple of fire trucks, it arrived first, pulled up, and stopped before the smashed, smoking heap of dead Greta. A swarm of emergency personnel set about putting out the fire, managing the body, and cordoning the area.
Rourke stepped out on the passenger side and shook her hand briefly. "Gashkouri. Never thought you'd pull this off," he said.
She made a mental note to email Hunt once all the fuss had died down.
•
9:29 a.m., The Back Way Out
Meanwhile, Zameer Gashkouri's delivery van drove out the narrow back alley, through the wooden gateway they'd broken down, and down the back road, then onto the main road, heading toward the cemetery. Suddenly Tiffany screamed "Oh, my God, Fabio! I have to go back!"
She pleaded with Zameer. "Stop the truck, it's my cat, I let him out, oh, my God, he could be anywhere..." she was crying.
"Cat?" said Esposito. "You're kidding, right?"
Castle said, "You let him out of the house, right? He can't have gone far. We can have the locals keep an eye out for him. He'll be safe."
"No!" Tiffany was actually hysterical now, more upset than she'd been at any time at Murphy's. "He's my baby! I can't leave him, I can't, don't do this to me!" She unbuckled her seat belt and tried to open the door.
Ryan said, "Wait, what kind of cat?"
"Black and white. Short hair. He's kind of small, he's only a few months old."
Zameer pulled the van over. "Now you knock that shite right off, lady, or one of these cops will make sure you do." He didn't mind hauling stuff around, but he really hated the responsibility of having a bunch of live people, a dog, and apparently his mother's body in the back of his van. They had turned back south on the main road on their way to the cemetery, and just passed the unnamed street with the chaat house.
Hunt, in the passenger's seat, pointed up into a tree and chuckled. "Will that one do?"
Twelve-year-old Jaimini Rajawat was sitting about halfway up the tree, reaching up to a small bundle of fur in the finer branches near the top. Below stood his sister, her hands on her hips, yelling up at him. Zameer rolled down his window and smiled at Yasha. "Hey. Is that your cat?"
"Oh, hey there. No, it is that stray which your dog was chasing."
"Not my dog," said Zameer.
Tiffany peeked out the window. "Oh, migod, that's him. Fabio!"
Fabio said, "Yew?"
Castle said to Tiffany, "You wait here."
He got out of the van and positioned himself under the tree, speaking up to Jaimini. "Can you reach him?"
Jackson chuckled and called out. "Son, have you ever seen the skeleton of a cat up a tree?"
"No, but we're in a hurry."
Jaimini said, "He keeps hanging onto the tree. I can't climb down and hold him at the same time."
"Well, jump then. I'll catch you. There's a clear space here, between the branches."
Kate called out, "Are you sure that's such a good..."
But before she could even get it out of her mouth, the boy had grabbed the cat, climbed down as far as he was able, and jumped the last seven feet. Castle caught him with a grunt and an "ow". He pointed to the van. "Can you, uh, bring the cat over there?"
Jaimini carried the struggling Fabio (who was really having one hell of a day, and it wasn't over yet) to the van. Hunt took the cat and swung him around into Tiffany's waiting arms, and she burst into tears again. The wide-eyed cat clung to Castle's turtleneck in terror, the girl cooing and stroking his bristling fur.
Castle picked something up off the ground then returned to the back of the van, and pulled the door closed behind him. He patted Kate's knee with his right hand. His left was pressing hard on his nose.
"Hey," she said. "What happened to your cast?"
He produced the taser mechanism and a couple of pieces of shattered cast out of his pocket. "Guess I didn't need it anymore."
She took his hand and kissed it. "Guess not."
She handed him a tissue. He rolled it and stuffed it up his nostril. "Romantic, huh?"
•
9:34 a.m., Dublin Cemetery
Still sedated and safe in her comfy, padded crate, Betsy didn't notice the van turning in through the cemetery gates, or her crate being carried by Ryan and Esposito. She didn't notice being loaded onto a helicopter. She barely recognized Mo's beloved voice as he exclaimed over her in love and concern then yelled at Castle and Matt, calling them names that they accepted, shamefaced, just hoping he'd eventually forgive them.
She slept obliviously through the short, thumpingly loud copter flight halfway across a tiny, green country. She snoozed comfortably right through the transfer to a private jet at Shannon Airport (which has a bit less traffic than Dublin). And she slumbered peacefully through the short flight to Iceland, the refueling, and the longer flight to New York, and the SUV-ride back to Manhattan.
Betsy was having the time of her life, her long ears acting as wings as she flew over a green meadow full of rabbit holes. The rabbits were dancing in an intricate circular pattern that any art historian would have recognized as an illustration from the Book of Kells. An astute choreographer would immediately recognize that pattern brought to life by the Busby Berkeley Dancers. Eventually the rabbits turned to dolphins and fish and mermaids, leaping over the cold, salt ocean, nuzzling with polar bears and slapping their wet tails against the flanks of a mighty volcano, then riding short, shaggy ponies across glaciers, juggling tiny balls of moss in their giant paws.
Mostly Betsy dreamed that everyone she loved was safe, and nothing could have made her happier.
Some people dream in black and white. Some dream in color. Betsy inhaled a million molecules from the landscapes over which her team flew. She dreamed in shades of gray and blue, yellow and green, in emotions, and smells, smells, smells. Any neurologist would have laughed her dreams off as random firing of the scent processing neurons in a dog's brain. Any neurologist who didn't know squat about dogs, or dreams, or art, or dancing, or rabbits, or love.
I hope you found that worth the wait. :-) Please, if you run into discrepancies or feel anything could be trimmed, run it by me. It's all very clear in my head but we all know that sometimes the head-to-page-to-reader transition is bumpy. Thanks! -CharacterDriven
