Moment in Time Part 3

Chapter 114

Hell to Pay

Part 1

Thunder rattles the windows of Richard Castle Investigations as Alexis stares through the glass. "No sign of it letting up."

Hayley shrugs. "Then we'll have to be late. Frankly, I'm in no hurry to leave the comfort of this office – thanks to your father's excellent taste in scotch and daughters."

"Well, the man knows his stuff," Alexis agrees.

"Do you hear something?" Hayley asks, "like metal against the floor?"

The lights go out as a man shambles into the hallway outside the door dragging a bloody fire ax behind him. "I've got a flashlight in my desk," Alexis recalls, feeling her way. She illuminates the room just as the intruder uses the ax to smash his way inside.

"Bloody hell!" Hayley exclaims. "Someone's breaking in."

Alexis's beam finds the invader as he mumbles, "Finis omnium venit est."

Hayley pushes Alexis into the safe room and runs to hit the button that pops up the concealed gun from Rick's desk. As she aims the weapon, the ax wielder falls to the floor. Cautiously, Hayley feels for a pulse but finds nothing. "We're all right," she calls to Alexis. "The bugger's dead."

Rick breathes in the scent of vanilla as he lights one of Kate's candles. "So the power is out, and the cell towers are down. You know what that means? No late-night calls from work to interrupt our private amusements. Wait, why are you putting on your raincoat? Are we trying a new game?" he asks hopefully.

"Sorry, Babe. I've got to go to the precinct. There's nothing more dangerous than a blackout, and as captain, I have to be there to supervise. When the lights go out, bad things happen." She holds up a walkie-talkie. "At least these still work."

"And landlines with attached receivers probably will, too." Rick figures. "They have a line voltage. That means the vintage phones on some of the desks in the bullpen will be ringing."

"And I have to make sure they're answered," Kate declares. "Hey, I know you were looking forward to a romantic evening, but raincheck?"

"Wow! That's almost literal!" Rick plants a parting kiss on her lips. "Count on it."

As Kate starts for the door, an alert screams from Rick's home office. "What's that?"

"That's the panic alarm I had set up in the PI office for when Alexis is there alone." He picks up the wireless receiver for his landline. "Damn! No power to the base. Modern convenience bites back."

Beckett thumbs the switch on her walkie-talkie. "This is Captain Beckett to central, responding to an alarm at 77 Walker Street. Dispatch a unit."

Castle's arms immediately engulf his daughter. "Are you all right, Baby?"

"I'm fine, Dad."

In the light of portable lanterns, Hayley points at the body on the floor. "But this guy isn't."

"What happened?" Kate asks.

"The man broke in yelling something in Latin, and then he just dropped dead," Alexis explains.

"One unexpected advantage of attending all the schools your Gram shipped me off to was mandatory Latin classes. I brushed up on my skills when I wrote 'Hell Hath No Fury.' Do you remember what he said?" Rick queries.

"Sorry, Dad. It all happened so fast. I don't know."

A uniformed officer hands Kate a bagged ax. "Is this what he broke in with?" she asks Alexis and Hayley.

"Yes. Talk about crashing a party," Hayley quips, gesturing toward her unfinished glass of scotch. "Turns out it came from the downstairs lobby."

"So our intruder must have grabbed it on his way up," Kate assumes. "But why? There are easier ways to break into this office."

"Yeah, and more silent," Hayley agrees. "He certainly wasn't planning on sneaking up on anyone."

Beckett crouches next to a newly arrived Lanie to examine the body. "You get an ID on this guy?"

"No wallet on him, and the fingerprint scanner can't get a connection. He bled to death from a wound on his left side," Lanie reports. "My guess is whatever he was stabbed with punctured his subclavian artery. After that, he would have had thirty minutes to an hour, tops."

"Well, he came in here bleeding, around 9 pm," Hayley recalls. "He keeled over as soon as he started shouting."

"So he must have been stabbed between 8 and 8:30," Kate figures. "Look, he's wearing a hospital bracelet." Kate shines her Mag-Lite on it to make out the name. "His name is G. Shaw. He was a patient at – wow – Peakmore Psychiatric Facility."

"Yikes!" Rick yelps. "That's the Arkham Asylum of New York City. It's an institution for the criminally insane. Our Jack Nicholson impersonator is an escaped mental patient."

"The generator's not working so well," Ryan observes as the lights in the lobby of Peakmore flicker.

Esposito gazes at the drab walls. "Yeah, you'd think a place like this would be state of the art."

Rick approaches a security guard. "We're here about an escaped inmate. He just tried to kill two people with an ax."

The guard blanches. "Uh, wait here. I'll get somebody."

Shouts and wails emanate from rooms down a hall as the three men cool their slightly damp heels. "I'd try to escape too if I lived here," Esposito offers. "Who knows what they were doing to him?"

"Can't be any worse than what mental patients endured historically," Rick asserts. "Many cultures mistook mental illness for a sign of sorcery. Treatments ranged from, well, prayer to drilling holes in their skulls to release the demons."

"Definitely a case of the cure being worse than the disease," Ryan declares.

The guard returns to the lobby. "The director's coming out now."

"Thanks, guy," Esposito acknowledges.

A balding and bespectacled man in a white coat nods a greeting at his visitors. "I'm Dr. Brock Martin. Did you find Gabriel Shaw?"

"No, he found us," Rick explains. "But not before he was fatally stabbed."

Martin stumbles back a step. "That's terrible! Gabriel Shaw's been here at Peakmore for the last twenty years."

"Why was he sent here?" Rick inquires.

"He broke into the house of a man named Warren Crowne and tried to kill him and his entire family."

"Warren Crowne, the philanthropist? That break-in was a front-page headline. From what I recall of the story," Rick continues, "the attacker claimed he was some kind of avenging angel."

"Gabriel is an archangel," Ryan inserts. "Catechism class."

"Gabriel Shaw was convinced that he was on a mission from God to rid the world of evil." Martin sighs. "It was a mission that even twenty years of antipsychotic drugs and electroshock therapy couldn't dissuade him from."

"Any idea who might have wanted him dead?" Esposito asks.

"None. Gabriel's contact with the outside world was virtually nil." Martin points toward a hallway. "His room's down there." Striding to a sturdy door, Martin pulls a keycard out of his pocket and opens the lock.

"Any idea how he might have escaped?" Ryan probes.

Martin's pale skin reddens. "Uh, yes. He stole a keycard from one of our orderlies. We, uh, realized he was missing around noon today."

"Noon!" Esposito echoes. "You had a potential killer on the loose for hours! Why the hell didn't you call the police?"

Martin stares at the floor. "I should have. I realize that now."

Rick's eyes blaze. "He came to my office wielding an ax. He threatened my daughter!"

"I'm sorry," Martin responds. "I sent out a group of orderlies to find him. They searched all day, but they all obviously returned empty-handed, except for…."

"Except for what?" Esposito presses.

"One of the orderlies hasn't come back yet, Dave Holmby. He's the one Gabriel stole the keycard from. I tried calling him, but the phones were out."

"Have Dave and Gabriel had any issues in the past?" Ryan questions.

"They've had, uh, issues, yes. But Dave's been with us a long time. He's not the kind of person to kill anyone," Martin insists, "if that's what you're thinking."

"There's always the possibility that Dave didn't come back because he couldn't," Rick points out. "There may be another body out there."