Hunting Grounds
Chapter 28
Gates stopped at Kate's desk the next day on the way to her office. "Detective, where is your shadow?"
"If you mean Captain Rodgers, sir, he has been telling all of us that he's the liaison for all of the NYPD. I assume he's in another precinct today. There are other precincts in the city," Kate responded since she had no intention of giving Gates any ammunition by telling her that Rick lived with her.
"Good, maybe he'll stay there." Gates stomped off and went to her office.
"Don't bet on it," Kate muttered to herself. "Why did they give her a precinct?" Kate shook her head. Roy might have betrayed her, but he was a million times better as a precinct captain than Gates was or ever would be.
[_] /\ [_]
Kate arrived at her next crime scene. "Where's the body?"
"That's an excellent question," Lanie said.
"You mean there's no body?" Why was she here if there wasn't a body?
"Nope, no body, just lots of blood. Whoever it is, there's no way they survived. There are indications that the body was moved." Lanie pointed that area out to Kate and then asked, "Where's Mister Hunk?"
"He's at the 54th today."
"Hey, Beckett! I've got witnesses that tell me they saw a white van fleeing the scene in a hurry," Ryan told her.
"Check for tire tracks. If there area any, get a cast and maybe CSU can match them to something we can use," Kate told him.
Kate spotted something else. "I've got footprints but no tread."
"They must be wearing booties," Lanie suggested.
"Lots of blood, so someone died, but there's no body. And they wore booties." Kate liked the strange ones but she kind of needed a body.
Espo showed up. "Pretty sure I got a cause of death. Gunshots at 6:40 this morning."
"Six forty this morning. You're sure? Ryan has witnesses that said a white van roared out of here at 7:00 am." It didn't take twenty minutes to kill someone, load them into a van, and take off.
[_] /\ [_]
Espo showed up while Ryan explained he had three white vans in the area. "An Econoline. Plates say it's registered to a PW storage," Ryan announced. "It's only six blocks from the scene."
"Alright, let's go." They at least had a lead. Gates had already dressed her down because she had so little to work with. What Kate didn't get was what Gates thought she would have when there was no body to work with? She still hated her.
[_] /\ [_]
Entering the building Espo pulled the door open, and they were confronted with two rows of large silver cylinders. "What the hell?" None of these made sense to him.
"Based on the size," Ryan wiped a glass panel and jumped back in shock. "People!"
Now all of them were wiping the glass clear of fog. "What the hell is this place?" Kate had never seen anything like this.
Espo headed for another door. "I've got movement."
Inside they found two men in hazmat suits sliding a body into a container.
"FREEZE! NYPD!" Kate yelled as she and her team leveled their weapons at them.
"DON'T SHOOT! We were just doing our job," one of them exclaimed.
"Killing people and freezing them is your job?" Kate yelled at them in disbelief.
"No, he was already dead." They knew what they had done, and they hadn't killed anyone.
[_] /\ [_]
"They steal our body and then threaten to sue us?" Gates was angry.
"It's a legal chicken and the egg problem. Since Hamilton's body is on private property, we can't get access to the body without a warrant. And it's going to be tough to get a warrant without a body. We can't even prove he was murdered," Kate told Gates.
"Did you get that doublespeak from their counselor?" Gates was ready to lower the boom on her.
"No, sir. My father is a lawyer. Anyway, trust me, this is the argument they will make. Added to that is the DA won't back us up; I've already talked to them."
Gates waved her hand dismissively. "So where are we?"
"The cryo techs said he was shot twice in the chest. They turned his clothes over to us and based on the holes, it looks like a large caliber bullet. There was still money in his wallet, so it wasn't a random mugging."
"And what about this possible briefcase?" Gates knew they had found something that might be that in the blood pool.
Kate shook her head. "The technicians told us that there was no briefcase. But his wife insists that he left with one."
"Find that briefcase and get the wife to hand over his body," Gates ordered.
[_] /\ [_]
"Sir, if we don't have that body, we don't have a case. We can't match the bullet that we don't have to anyone's gun. Right now we can't even prove that he's dead, just frozen."
"Then I will call the DA. We are going to get that body," Gates said with ice in her voice as she walked to her office.
[_] /\ [_]
Kate walked into their apartment and saw Rick was already there. "You're home early."
"The 54th is boring, and the people that work there will put you to sleep."
Kate smiled since he was being sweet. "I'm sure they're not that bad." Kate walked quietly over to the table where he was sitting. "You bought dinner." While she did see hamburgers, she also saw other things that she couldn't talk about.
"Your strawberry shake is in the refrigerator. You looked like a strawberry kind of girl." Rick smiled at her and then began looking over all the stuff he had bought.
"And you would be right." Kate leaned down and kissed him. "So, did you get everything?"
"No, I told them to hold the pickles, but the burgers are nice and juicy, or at least they were when I bought them. Now where do you suggest we eat them?" Rick smiled at her again.
"Nice try, but you're not using my body as a table." Kate looked for her burger, chose one, and went to the refrigerator to get her milkshake. "We had a new case today. This one is definitely different."
"Define different."
"Lots of blood, but no body because this cryogenics company showed up and took it. And we couldn't get the body to prove he had even been murdered. Then Gates manages to get the body so long as the cryo company got to keep the head." Kate sat down next to him, stuck her straw in, and took a nice long suck on her shake.
"I swear you get the weirdest cases, Kate. I don't suppose a horse, a pumpkin, and a covered bridge are also involved?"
Kate loved that and grinned. "Good guess, but no. Though we could go shopping to try and find it and watch it tonight."
"Which one? The original or the remake?"
"Your choice." Kate was willing to watch either one.
"Eat your burger." Rick bit into his and watched her eat.
Once they were done eating they went out to look for a store to try and find that movie. "I saw your pile of junk. Do you have everything you need?"
Rick shook his head. "Not yet, no. For once, I'm glad to be back in New York City. This place has everything. Give me another day or two, and I can start working on it. Then we can plug it in and see if Rosie's right."
"Two more days," Kate moaned. Two more days without sex. She was dying here.
Rick took her by the hand and pulled her over by a brick wall. "I don't know how to break this to you, but...I desperately need you right now, Kate, and I'm having trouble concentrating."
Hearing him say that made Kate smile. She wanted him to want her. At least she wasn't the only one suffering.
"Go find your movie, babe. And if you take longer than two days to finish whatever it is you're making, then I'm telling Lanie we're taking over her bedroom the next night."
[_] /\ [_]
"So, do the lab results tell us who his test subjects were?" Kate questioned Lanie. She was alone yet again because Rick had gone back to the boring 54th.
"Everything came from the same person, a Lester Hamilton," Lanie said. "But we have a problem. This ambrosia implant stuff is supposed to be in his arm. I checked his entire body all over again, and I found nothing. But what I did find was brain tissue in some of the needles."
Frustrated, Kate shut her eyes for a moment as she rubbed her forehead."His head? That's the one part of his body that we don't have!"
"Get me his head, and then I can tell you what this is all about," Lanie assured her. Kate knew just what Gates was going to say to that.
[_] /\ [_]
"The storage unit should be right there." He pointed out where the head should be.
"Are you saying you lost his head?" Kate couldn't believe it. Between the movie last night and what Gates was going to say about this, she wanted to be somewhere else. Anywhere else. Strike that, anywhere but on an alien planet, being hunted.
[_] /\ [_]
"There actually was a break-in. Watch this." Espo pressed PLAY.
Kate watched as someone walked in and looked around. Then he picked up a container. "Hamilton's head, I assume."
"Now watch this." Espo froze it and zoomed in on him.
"Doctor Boyd!" What the hell?
[_] /\ [_]
Kate was stuck and out of suspects. "He had a tumor that was going to destroy his brain. Once that was gone, cryogenics was useless. So what does that tell us?"
"Ryan, where is the wife?" She was adamant about cryogenics and getting another life with him. If she knew she had to kill his body to save this brain...
[_] /\ [_]
"Detective Beckett. Permission to have my technicians come and get her," Kate was asked as she looked at the dead wife of Lester Hamilton in lockup.
[_] /\ [_]
"I wonder if they make it. Her dead body and his dead head." Kate was home sitting next to Rick and he was holding her.
"We'll never know. Medicine is going to have to progress a long way for this to work. Get enough DNA from each and clone a body, perhaps. I wonder how long a person can be frozen and not suffer any damage."
"She loved him, I think. Or maybe she loved the idea of living forever," Kate mused.
"Death can be really scary for some. I'm not afraid of dying. It happens to everyone eventually, even these two."
"Me, neither." Kate wasn't afraid of dying. She had come to terms with it when she became a cop and even more so when she made detective. "Anyone call you?"
Rick knew what she meant and they had to talk in riddles that only they understood. "No." He hadn't heard anything about the house. His offer had been countered, and Rick had accepted since the owner agreed to fix that window. Now they needed the inspector to see if the owner had done what he said he would do, and send them his report. Once that was done, an appraiser would go and look over the property and decide what it was actually worth. If their determination was less than the asking price, then Rick would offer less. If it wasn't then he and Kate would go ahead with the purchase and find a mortgage company.
"And my cushion?" Kate asked him since he needed a better one before she would ride again for seven hours in that death trap.
"Still working on that, too." Rick was aware that they knew he had a truck. They had bugged it after all.
Now Kate held up one finger followed by two, then three, followed by four. At five, Rick stopped her. Kate tilted her head back in shock. Their apartment now had five bugs, not just two.
Kate watched Rick point at the living room and hold up three fingers. Then he gestured toward the bedroom and held up two fingers. Seeing that, Kate growled. She'd had about enough of this shit.
"I need a drink, and we're out of beer and wine! Let's go." Kate got up and reached for Rick's hand. Then she pulled him out the door and downstairs to go walking and find a noisy bar that was close.
[_] /\ [_]
"This has to stop, Rick. It has to," Kate insisted.
"Tell me something I don't know." Rick wanted them gone just as badly. "So, how was Gates?"
"Her usual charming self. Mean, insulting, and difficult to work with. Even Ryan and Espo are taking it on the chin. I haven't been able to talk to anyone else." She wasn't the only one Gates was treating badly. It was just that she felt like she was being singled out for more of her abuse.
"I won't tell you to ask the others. If you talk to a Gates lover, she'll know almost immediately and be even harder on you," Rick cautioned her.
"Yeah, I know. Rick, I want to arrange a visit with my dad. Can you make one with your mother? I think it's time we met each other."
His eyes lit up. "I would love to! Mother is going to adore you. She's been worried about me ever since I joined the Navy."
Pleased, Kate smiled and said, "Dad's going to love you, too. Based on my history he's going to be impressed."
Rick raised an eyebrow. "History?"
"I went through this phase when I was a teenager. My friends called me Rebel Becks and I lived up to that name. If I knew then what I know now, I would never have done it. Not a time I'm overly proud of," Kate admitted to him.
"See, this is why we need to go on dates when you finally get days off."
"Yeah? Then where are we going on this date?" Kate smiled at him since any date anywhere would be good.
"I'll think of something, never fear." Rick tapped his beer bottle against hers and took a drink.
[_] /\ [_]
Rick was home and busy working on the device that Rosie wanted him to build. He was trying to be careful with this soldering gun since he had no alternative but to use it to put things together. Thankfully he had used one of these before. Just not for this length of time.
He put the soldering gun aside and was looking at his work under a magnifying glass. Suddenly there were arms wrapped around him from behind. Somehow Kate had come home and he hadn't heard her. He blamed it on what he was working on. Still, it was a weakness he didn't need to get used to.
Kate could see he was making progress. She put her lips to his ear. "Outside, please?" She really needed to talk to him and their apartment was still bugged.
Once downstairs, outside, and even around the corner, Kate began pacing. Rick waited patiently. At last she stopped and began to speak. "We had a case about a year ago. Our killer was strangling young girls with the same rope. He was impossible to find, never left behind DNA. We worked out that he stalked his victims and learned all about them.
"We finally got a lead from someone and gave him police protection, even put him up in a motel room. Ryan went to cut him loose. Not because we had our killer, but we didn't think he was really in any danger.
"While Ryan was there, he suddenly figured out that the man we were protecting was our killer. We called him 3XK." Kate needed to explain before she got to the really bad part.
"Damn! You had him and never knew it. I'm guessing here, but he got away? Or wasn't there when Ryan showed up?"
"No, he was there. He got the drop on Ryan and left him unconscious on the motel room floor. But he took his service weapon." Kate finally stopped and looked at him. "We caught a case this morning. A young woman's body was found, and she'd been executed using Ryan's old service weapon. That service weapon."
Rick frowned. "This 3XK is back?"
"We don't think so. 3XK never used a weapon, he always killed by strangulation. It gets worse. We found her clutching a cross in her hand. She was praying while she was killed. She knew who was going to kill her and let him."
Rick groaned. He took her in his arms and felt her melt into him.
"Kill an innocent with a gun that used to be mine because I lost control of it. Ryan has to be beside himself." Rick felt Kate nod. "Even if it's not 3XK he still has to be involved somehow. He sold the gun? Maybe spent it to get a favor?"
"Damn it. I really should be back in the 54th again tomorrow. Do you need me at the 12th?" He would be there if she did. Rick felt her shake her head.
"Just hold me," Kate asked him.
"That I can do." He kissed her temple. "If I work late tonight I should be ready to test Rosie's machine tomorrow." Rick had something else to tell her. "The house inspection is scheduled for tomorrow, so we're getting closer."
"Just finish whatever it is that Rosie's having you make." Kate realized she really wasn't in the mood for sex anyway.
[_] /\ [_]
Kate was home and she was not happy. Her case with Jane – the young woman killed with Ryan's gun – included the Chinese Mob and that wasn't good. However, as she walked in she saw a smiling Rick sitting there, waving her over.
So she quietly walked up to him and saw he was still smiling. She leaned over and looked what he had been working on for the last two days when not at the 54th. It looked like a hodgepodge of junk to Kate. Then she noticed it was plugged into the wall outlet.
Rick flipped a toggle switch and the thing lit up. It didn't really seem to be doing anything but sitting there, offering an unimpressive light show.
What she wanted to say and what she thought she could say were two very different things. Finally she bent down, put her lips to his ear, and whispered, "Does it work?"
"According to Rosie it does." Rick pointed to her laptop that should still be with Lanie, not here. And he had said out loud the magic name they didn't want anyone to hear. Though Rosie could be anyone who was listening.
Kate pointed at the laptop. "You?"
"I knew I would be done today, so I went and picked up the laptop and used it to talk to Rosie about what I had done. Provided the parts all work and aren't defective, it should be working. All anyone hears now is white noise, basically static."
"I don't hear a thing." Kate thought sure they would hear something.
"That's because the noise doesn't work for our ears, just those things." Rick meant the bugs.
"And you're both are certain that it works?" Kate really needed to be sure.
"Yup." Rick grinned at her.
"Good! Screw dinner. I'm so damn horny I'm ready to burst. Bedroom. Now, mister." Kate grabbed his hand and escorted him to their bedroom where she even helped him take off his clothes.
[_] /\ [_]
A tired but very sexually satisfied Katherine Beckett was resting against Rick. "How do we know if it ever stops working? And I assume we have to leave it on forever."
"One of the lights goes out, and yes, we do. Which presents its own new problem," Rick replied.
"They're going to come looking to find out why their bugs don't work and find your little toy. Maybe they'll put two plus two together, and then we've got even more trouble." Kate adjusted herself against him. "So all this effort may have only bought us tonight." She definitely needed the sex and based on how Rick had reacted, so had he.
Rick had a plan. "But."
"But?" Kate would listen to anything that meant they could keep making love to each other and finally talk in their own apartment.
"I bought this police scanner. Now, I haven't run a dummy wire from that thing to the scanner yet, but when whoever it is finds it…,"
Kate finished his sentence for him, "they'll think you're doing something to the scanner. And since your toy is homemade, they won't know what it does." Kate liked it for about a minute. "Till they turn both of them off and check their bugs to see if that did anything." They were right back to square one.
"Perhaps they will, but give Rosie some credit. In there somewhere is enough battery life for a few weeks. They can't see the batteries unless they take it apart, but just unplugging it won't get them anything. Unless they decide to take the whole thing with them, that is." It still had one slight flaw.
"I wouldn't think to do that immediately. I would try replacing my bugs first. Maybe even get different ones, a whole new system." Kate shrugged.
"They'll still only hear white noise, and that's all. So long as it's active, they won't hear anything that we do or say."
"Good, then you can add the wire in the morning. For now, make love to me again," Kate murmured. "And that laptop goes back to Lanie in the morning."