AN: This chapter begins our return to the regular plot line, so it's pretty much just the beginning of Knockdown. There are some slight changes, but essentially it's an intro to the next part in the story line. Like always, read and review!
Disclaimer: I own no part of Castle or it's characters. The dialogue used belongs to the owners of Castle, it is only borrowed for this chapter.
Over the weekend, most of the interaction between Rick and Kate was over the phone, except for one lunch date on Sunday. Everything seemed to have been going great, so when Kate showed up at his doorstep Monday morning, Rick knew something had happened.
"Kate," he exclaimed softly. It wasn't like her to show up unannounced.
"Hey," she responded distantly, as if she only said it to avoid an awkward silence.
"C'mon in." He couldn't mask the worry in his tone, her lack of movement only adding to his concern.
She paused a moment, seemingly at war with herself. "Can we talk for a second?"
He nodded and gestured for her to come inside, leading her to his office when she seemed too hesitant to move. After taking a deep breath, she explained the phone call she had gotten earlier from John Raglan, the detective who worked her mother's case. Rick took hold of her hand the moment she spoke the man's name, immediately recognizing the importance of the call. When she asked him to come with her when she met up with the retiree, he agreed before she could even finish her question. She gave him time to change, and then the pair left for the coffee shop, tense with anticipation.
As they walked into the shop, she made a small gesture in the direction of one of the booths. "That's him," she said, only loud enough for him to hear.
"Lady, what part of 'no cops' didn't you understand?" Raglan asked as they slid into the seat across from him.
"He's not a cop," she replied shortly.
"Well, who the hell is he, then?" He seemed irritated, but at the same time was too nervous to seem the least bit threatening.
"He's someone I trust," Beckett responded easily.
Raglan looked over at Castle with disapproval in his gaze. A waitress came up to ask if he wanted more coffee, and he thanked her as she refilled his mug, holding up a hand when he wanted her to stop pouring.
"Tell me what I don't know about my mom's murder," Beckett said the moment the waitress walked away.
"Everybody drinks their coffee out of cardboard cups these days," he said, ignoring her demand. "Or those plastic travel mugs. But there's- there's something about the way ceramic warms your hands." He chuckled. "It's weird, the things you notice. I just got the long face from the doc- lymphoma; six months."
"Sorry to hear about that," she offered, consciously focusing on keeping the impatience out of her voice. It wasn't that she didn't sympathize for him, it was more that she wanted him to cut to the chase with what he thought she needed to know.
He sat up, leaned back in his seat, and let out a sigh before speaking again. "Every year around the holidays, they- they run that Christmas Carol on local TV." He smiled slightly at the memory, but his eyes remained downcast. "When I was a kid, I remember Jacob Marley scared the hell out of me, forced to drag that- that chain around in the next world."
"'I wear the chain I forged in life,'" Castle supplied, his voice solemn as he made the connection to the character and the man sitting across from them.
"'I made it link by link,'" Raglan finished. Finally, they seemed to be getting somewhere in this conversation. Beckett knew these were the words of a dying man, and as much as she wanted the information he held, she wouldn't rush him. The retired detective leaned forward and looked between the two. "I hid a lot of sins behind my badge," he said, pausing a moment before continuing, "and now I gotta carry 'em. But your mother's case, that one weighs a ton."
"Why?" Beckett asked, anger leaking into her words. "'Cause you wrote it off as random gang violence when you knew it wasn't?"
"I did what I was told," Raglan defended, explaining further after she scoffed in response. "And I kept quiet because I was afraid. About a year ago there was a hostage standoff in your precinct; you killed a hitman named Dick Coonan. It was a big deal in the papers. People noticed."
The way he spoke was as if she needed the reminder, as if it wasn't burned into her brain what had happened that day. It was ever present in her mind, even more now since Castle had been shot.
"Who hired Coonan to kill my mom?" Beckett couldn't keep herself from asking.
Raglan raised a hand to shake away her question. "You need some context here." Castle reached a hand under the table and looked over at her to make sure she was doing okay, but her face was too difficult to read. "This thing started about nineteen years ago," he started, "back before I ever knew who Johanna Beckett was. Nineteen years ago I…" He trailed off for a moment as he gathered himself to admit what he had done, continuing where he left off with a shaken tone. "I made a bad mistake, and that started the dominoes falling." He picked up his coffee mug as he took a breath. "And one of 'em was your mom."
The ceramic in Raglan's shattered and he fell out of his seat onto the floor. Beckett screamed for everyone to drop to the ground as she pulled out her weapon. She turned to the window next to where they had been sitting and saw the bullet hole in the glass. "Back away from the window, away from the window!" she shouted as she moved towards her partner who was wide-eyed with his back pressed against the side of the booth they had been sitting in.
"You're hit," he said with a gasp, his gaze focused on the blood spatter on her shirt.
"I'm fine, Rick," she reassured, trying her hardest to keep her voice calm. "It's not my blood."
His eyes flicked over to the man lying on the tile floor choking on his own blood. Castle took a deep breath and grabbed a towel that had fallen to the floor to press to Raglan's chest, desperately trying to ignore the way his scar throbbed in memory of his own shooting.
"One Lincoln Forty," Beckett said into her radio. "I have shots fired on Fourth and Main, I need backup and an ambulance."
With horror, Castle watched as the man died in front of him. When Beckett called to him in question when dispatch asked her to repeat what she had said, he could only shake his head as an answer. He's dead.
"One Lincoln Forty," she spoke into the radio once more. "Please be advised, this is now a homicide."
