Raglan sits in a café on the corner of 14th and Liberty streets waiting for Detective Beckett. He knew that giving her what he knew about what happened to her mother so long ago would piss her off. But he thought that the information he was going to give her would ease her pain somewhat…
He thinks back to when his wife was still with him. When they were together they were inseparable. They did everything together. Experienced new places to travel to, they went to street fairs on a moment's notice, and they even had the opportunity to renew their vows after forty years of marriage. But reality has come center stage and now that she has moved on to the hereafter and he has an emptiness in his soul. An emptiness that makes him throw away everything that he worked so hard for in his life into the trash. The sound of the café's small bell shakes him back to the present.
Raglan looked up when he heard the small bell chime when the door hit it. The sight he saw coming towards him was like seeing a ghost. She looked exactly like her mother in every aspect.
"Detective Beckett, what part don't you understand about coming alone? I thought I made myself perfectly clear. You and no one else, especially another cop!" Raglan says in an elevated voice while looking directly at Rick.
"Raglan he's not a cop. He's someone who I trust. I trust him with my life." Kate says as she takes a seat in the booth with Rick.
Rick just looked at her when she made that statement. He knew that they were getting closer, but he was only hoping that it could be something. With what she just said he'd need to talk to her about it. But now was not the time. He had been on the mend ever since he was shot two months ago and she was by his side almost all the time. He loved the fact that she was but he really needed to know she really wanted to be there and this was not her guilty conscience playing a part. Her statement ten seconds ago proves otherwise.
"Tell me what I don't know about my mother's murder." Kate blurts out.
Raglan is surprised by her boldness. She's a person who wants answers but he can only give her so much.
The waitress comes up and offers him another cup of coffee. When the cup reaches the halfway point he puts his hand up for her to stop pouring.
"Everybody drinks their coffee out of cardboard containers nowadays. But there's something about a ceramic cup the way it warms your hands." He says as he looks directly at Kate.
"I was just diagnosed with lymphatic cancer. The doc tells me that I have six months to live at the most."
"I'm sorry to hear about that," Kate says.
Rick is still trying to figure this guy out. It's like he wants to tell her something but he's stalling. Maybe he's just trying to gather his thoughts and then put them in a context that she can understand. But whatever the case, he'll have her back.
"I remember every year the local TV station broadcasts A Christmas Carol. Bob Marley's character scared the hell out of me. He was forced to drag that chain around with him into the next world. If there is a next world."
"I wear the chain I forged in life…"
Rick says. then Raglan picks up the rest of the phrase.
"And I made it link by link." Raglan looks over directly at Kate and tells her what she needs to hear.
"Detective Beckett I've hidden a lot of sins behind my badge. Now I have to carry them. But your mother's case, that one weighs a ton."
"Why? Was it because you might have written it off as random gang violence when we both know that it wasn't." Kate accuses.
"Listen, Detective, I was just doing what I was told to do. I kept quiet because I was afraid. Afraid for my family, for keeping my job, and most of all afraid for my life. You can't go up against this guy and come out alive."
Kate gives him a look that could kill but he pushes on.
"A short time ago there was a hostage situation involving your friend here. You killed the hitman named Dick Coonan. It made the papers and TV. But it also caught the attention of the man who hired said, hitman. That did not go over well with him."
"Who hired Coonan to kill my mother? What was his name?" Kate demands.
Raglan waves his hand at her getting ready to explain who this guy is.
"You need some context here detective. This started nineteen years ago back before I even knew who Joanna Beckett was. This incident in question involved an FBI agent named Bob Arman. New York City was a different city back then and we got away with a lot of shit. But what we didn't expect was to be caught at our own game. I made a bad mistake back then and that started the dominoes falling. One of them was your mother's and now I am going to pay for it."
Raglan raises his coffee cup to his lips to take a sip and it explodes right in front of them spewing hot coffee everywhere.
Kate responds to the threat shouting to everyone in the café to get on the floor and stay away from the window as she removes her weapon from its holster and sweeps the cafe for the threat. Rick, who has never been in a situation like this, sits there in shock. His reaction time is a lot less than Kate's, but in less than five seconds after the shot was fired, he sprung into action and pulled Raglan down onto the floor not to provide a target for a second shot by the sniper and try to administer some sort of first aid. His training and instincts take over automatically. Even though it was years ago right about when he graduated college everything came flooding back into his head. For the short three years, he was with the agency he learned things that he doubts even Beckett thinks she knows about him.
He assesses the man lying in front of him as Kate scans the outside for a possible sniper. The second he looks at the man he can tell that his life will end very soon. He applies pressure to the wound that is just below his throat and to the right. He knows that whoever shot at this man did so by miscalculating the thickness of the glass. What likely happened is that he used the wrong grain required to go through glass making the round he fired change its path when it met resistance going through the window.
Rick is startled when the man grabs his shirt by the neck and pulls him down towards his head.
"You need to contact Smith. Michael Smith. She is no longer safe!" Raglan points to Kate then his arm drops having used the last of his energy.
"Smith is the key who can expose Bra…"
"Who can he expose?" Rick practically shouts, grabbing the man by the shoulders. But it's useless because Raglan is already dead.
Rick looks at Kate who has now turned to him after finding no sniper. All he can do is shake his head in the negative because Raglan is dead.
The second Roy shows up on the crime scene he knows that it's going to be a total cluster fuck. A retired NYPD Detective is gunned down in the middle of his precinct. But that's not the worst of it. What he can't understand is why Beckett and Castle are here long before he was. Something is going on and he needs to get to the bottom of it.
"Beckett tell me that what I see in front of me is a mirage. Before you say anything, think very hard about your answer. Now, where is your backup?" Roy asks.
"I had Rick and …"
"We were backing her up, Captain," Espo tells Roy as he and Ryan walk up hurriedly to them.
"Cap, we had her back."
"Yeah right! You two can go and canvass the apartment building for possible witnesses. Go now!" Ryan and Espo turned and left. Once they were out of earshot Roy laid into Kate.
"Beckett what are you doing? And what am I going to do to stop this? This is serious. You can't be running to dead end after dead end. I thought I was lenient with putting you into the homicide squad and giving you your own team. But now the second you get word from a retired detective you go at his information head-on with no regard for your own safety or life. And what about Castle? He's an untrained civilian. He could have been shot as easily as Raglan was!"
"Sir, that didn't happen."
"You're right it didn't today, but it could have very easily. I want you back at the 12th. You are done here."
"But sir!?"
"Beckett get your ass back to the precinct now or you are gone! And I don't mean by way of a suspension either. Am I clear?"
"Yes sir."
Kate turned towards her car not caring if Rick was following or not. Right now she was so upset because she knew that Roy was going to pull her off this case.
They say when you retire you start to slow down. For Gary McAllister, it was the total opposite. After he retired he did a stint as chief of security for a medium-sized firm in South Carolina. He liked Charleston, South Carolina because it was close to the ocean and he loved to fish.
After he called it quits with the security firm ten years after he retired from the NYPD he bought himself a Yellowfin 36. This fishing boat was his pride and joy. He had it outfitted with three Mercury outboard engines giving him over 1250 horsepower. More than enough to do the job. He decides to go out early because on Sundays the marina he parks his boat at is usually jam-packed with weekenders trying to get out of the East bay all at the same time.
The sun hasn't even crested the horizon and he is stowing all of his gear on the boat. He starts up the engine, walks to the bow, pulls the line that holds the boat securely into place, and stows it on the deck. He does the same with the stern and then he steps back onto the boat. Knowing that it is Sunday he quietly idles out of the marina and heads towards the open water of the Atlantic.
He's going to a location that is very abundant and what he is fishing for. He baits his hook casts out and sits down in the chair on the stern of the boat. Close-by is his cooler which contains two six-packs of his favorite beer. With the reel set, he cracks open a beer and waits.
In the end, he snags two Greater Amberjacks and one Pompano. The Amberjacks put up a hell of a fight and he is happy that they are now sitting in his livewell fish box. He makes his way to the console, turns the key on to start the boat once again. Nothing happens. He turns the key off and initiates the sequence again. The second he does the C-4 that's planted under the console detonates and as simple as that Gary McAllister is no longer among the living.
His phone rings for a second time that day. The first call was to tell him that a certain detective had met his fate with a bullet to the chest. The second call was from a totally different number and the caller reported that a man had died after the boat he was in exploded two miles off the coast of South Carolina.
Things are looking up from William Bracken. he only needs to deal with two more or maybe three more issues and he is home free.
TBC