"Yo, Beckett, Castle, you're back up here already?"
Ryan and Espo quickly rose from their seats in front of the board to meet Kate and Castle as they got off the elevator with Jim and Alexis trailing behind them.
"Lanie was merciful and got us in and out—what do you got for me? Give me the run down." Kate started towards the break room, trusting everyone would follow for the walk and talk.
"Shouldn't we wait until Jordan and—this woman come back too? Agent Avery is setting up a couple things in the conference room. No war room this time though, I guess they don't really have an allowance for much back up on this one."
Kate sighed, "They're right behind us, I'm sure—just start now, they can catch up."
"Why are we talking in the break room?" Alexis followed everyone in, past Castle who was closing the door behind them.
Kate pressed her fingers to the bridge of her nose. "For now, we're keeping this under wraps. Not just because I don't want this spreading for all of our sakes—but also because if the federal prosecutor's office gets wind of this, they're not going to be very happy. Something tells me a possible reduction in charge to conspiracy rather than flat out murder 1 isn't what they wanted for their slam dunk against a scandal ridden corrupt senator."
"You're exactly right, Detective, which is why I'm going to have you all move the board into the conference room so that it remains as contained as it can be when the board has been sitting in plain sight for the past few hours—who thought that was a bright idea?" Gates walked in from the opposite side of the break room and closed the other door, drawing the blinds closed and putting her hands on her hips—eyeing Castle as he made every effort to look innocent in his handling of the board.
"To be fair, Captain, just having the board up doesn't necessarily mean we're investigating anything new on this case—it could just be us being thorough in what we give the US Attorney's office—."
Gates puts her hand up. "Save it, Mr. Castle. Your intentions were in the right place…I guess—but for right now we have to be very tight lipped on this, as it is having my top detective team not taking on cases right now has been pretty hard to convince the commissioner of seeing as you're supposed to be coming back from leave. We really need to get to the bottom of this as soon as possible so that I can keep it under wraps as much as possible."
"If someone could keep this a secret in the FBI, aka 'the gossip capitol of the world,' for 15 years, I think we'll be capable of not letting it slip for at least a little while longer," Jordan said sardonically as she opened the door to the break room, letting Johanna pass by her through the door to again be watched critically by every person in the room.
"Woah," Ryan murmured, to which Espo elbowed him in the side, using every ounce of his military training not to exclaim himself.
"Hard to—," Gates cleared her throat, her eyes betraying her as her gaze kept straying to Johanna, "Hard to keep things to our little bubble, Agent Shaw, when there are two FBI agents and someone who looks somewhat like the picture that's been up on my murder boards for years wandering around."
Jordan's eyebrows rose. "Don't you think it's even worse because we're all sequestered in the communal breakroom?"
Everyone tensed, looking at each other slightly ashamed. Gates pursed her lips and ran her tongue along the inside of her cheek, biting slightly to keep her frustration off of her face.
"Well then, Agent Shaw, we should join Agent Avery in the conference room—as I was saying before you interrupted."
Gates turned on her heel and led the others out of the conference room, Jordan smirking at Castle on the way. She stops just before the group enters the room, turning back to face them sharply.
"Ms. Randall, LT is going to take you over to Interrogation 1 while we have a discussion."
Johanna eyes LT standing in uniform and has to close her eyes against the inevitable eye roll that threatens to surface. "It's Mrs. Beckett. And I don't see why I shouldn't be there since it's me you'll be talking about."
Gates narrowed her eyes. "Because we need to talk about you without you before we talk to you about you. I'd think you'd understand that, Counselor. I'd also think you'd understand what this situation you've gotten yourself into will require of you from us. We will not just blindly believe anyone in this sort of situation. Especially when it involves one of our own."
Kate grabs Castle's hand squeezing his fingers, but keeps her stoic gaze on the floor. Johanna watches her and then looks at Jim, who again is unafraid of looking her in the eye—which somehow both strengthens her resolve and makes her feel contrite. She sighs and nods at Jim, before following the silent officer down the hall to interrogation.
Everyone files into the conference room slowly after Johanna turns the corner towards interrogation. Ryan and Espo move the murder board into the conference room, closing the door behind everyone.
"Jason," Castle greeted, shaking Agent Avery's hand.
"Rick, nice to see you again while you're not being a sore loser from our poker game."
Castle pulled his hand abruptly from Agent Avery's. He fought to keep the scowl from his face. "I have an excellent poker face."
"Really? Cause your face is saying it all right now." Agent Avery smirked, taking a seat on one side of the conference table.
"Boys, play nice," Jordan said, smirking, "Now is not the time to debate about just how bad Castle here is at poker."
"I—," Castle started, but at Kate's sharp, but amused look, closed his mouth and tipped his chin up in protest.
Jordan chuckled with Alexis as they all gathered around the table with the murder board at the head.
Gates leaned into the closed door. "Okay, let's get on with it—Detectives, what do you have on Sophia Randall?"
"Sophia Randall," Ryan started. "Lawyer, defense attorney, passed the Maine State Bar 15 years ago. Lives in Portland, Maine, moved from New York in 1999, but there's no record of her actually living in New York. Works at a law firm for low income and underprivileged clients, lots of pro-bono and lots of appeals in front of the Supreme Judicial court. Her colleagues are in the media quite often, but she is not. Her records, medical and otherwise only go back to 15 years ago. However she has no digital footprint, none, not past or present. Meaning she somehow didn't use or have any social media or internet based activity in 15 years. The only thing we found that points to her even existing before 15 years ago is her social security number—which goes back to 1951, a Sophia Maria Randall—who died at 2 months old."
Kate's jaw clenched. "That's… not WITSEC protocol, that's what you use when you're running away—illegally, that's what you use to create a fake identity."
"Are we sure she has had no digital footprint whatsoever this whole time?" Jordan asked.
"It's what I found as well," Agent Avery spins his laptop to show the rest of the table, "Her house was paid for in all cash, no links to government property, no foreclosure auction, nothing—and she is listed as the buyer. She did not have a cable or streaming account with any available service in the area. One phone—at least only one that was contracted, who knows about burners, and this bill was paid by check every month from the one bank account she has—which was opened in 1999. She didn't have any credit cards. She has had two cars registered in her name, one she bought again in all cash in 1999, a blue Toyota Camry if anyone was wondering, and the current car registered in her name, bought brand new in all cash in 2010, and this is also a blue Toyota Camry—not sure what the significance of that is. She also had a library card, but that's it. Suffice it to say, her credit score is pretty bad."
Esposito cuts in. "With more time, if need be, we can go through her phone records, see who she was speaking with, look into her acquaintances a little more—but this isn't sounding like someone who went into WITSEC. They obviously cover their tracks extremely well, but we know certain markers and those just aren't showing up."
"They never use a social security number of someone who died—they have connections to register new ones. It should appear like her social didn't exist until she did," Castle added.
"Agent Shaw, how did you two get this assignment?" Gates asked, her eyes squinting at the materials on Agent Avery's laptop.
"I was pulled into my supervisor's office yesterday morning—it was unusual to begin with because Agent Avery and I had just gotten off a pretty big serial case, the one out of Wisconsin you might have heard about recently. We had debriefed the day before and were finishing up our reports before we were supposed to get a week of leave. Our supervisor's name is SSA Luke Holmes, he has been our supervisor for years and when we walked into his office we knew there was something not right about this. He said that we had been hand selected to do a WITSEC reintegration case and that we were wheels up that afternoon. When we pressed him on it, he said that his orders had come down that day from his own supervisor who said they came from his supervisor—and so on and so forth. He said that he didn't know the specifics, not even the subjects name and profile, he said that should be coming down from his supervisor's supervisor's supervisor's…and so on, straight to us. He said it was an order and there was no protesting it. We received the subject's profile just before we got on the plane—straight to our tablets. We didn't read it until we were in the air—then we found out it was Sophia Randall, supposedly Johanna Beckett. We flew into Portland International Jetport, we picked her up at the address listed, we flew her to the safe house in New York where we were met with additional agents, and you all know the rest. We were given her name, her alias, her address, where to take her, first to ask her if she wanted to come back, to give her the option to continue on with her life—."
"You gave her the option not to come back?" Jim asked, sharing a look with Kate.
"Yes, we were told that she could have the choice of going back to Maine, being relocated somewhere else, just seeing both of you from afar, or to go through with full reintegration. You know what she chose. We were told who to bring to her and where to put her up for the night. That is it, after today, we have no orders other than to make sure it goes smoothly—when we check in we are just supposed to let our supervisor know time frame. Frankly, I've never been less prepped for an assignment in my life. Agent Avery can work on getting our profiles to you—for whatever they're worth."
Kate closes her eyes and shakes her head. "So you have no clue who this came from?"
"Someone high and deep in the agency, Kate. I could tell how pissed SSA Holmes was by having to give us this and how little he knew about it—I think his supervisor gave him the same treatment and felt the same way about it. When we checked in with him last night, we weren't supposed to give him any information about the subject—basically he's not even read in. This came from much higher up the ladder."
Kate mumbles under her breath only loud enough so that Castle standing next to her in the back of the room can hear, "Stupid cloak and dagger FBI bullshit."
"Could we bring Tory in here? Maybe she could find something we haven't?"
Kate and Jordan are already shaking their heads before Espo finishes his questions. "We can't read anyone into this case until we know more, Detective. If this involves someone inside the FBI, there are going to need to be no mistakes—and we can't let on we know until we have conclusive proof—."
"Mr. Beckett, what has she told you? To try to convince you?" Gates asked, cutting off Jordan's response and all eyes turning towards Jim sitting back from the conference table, his back going rigid at the questions.
Jim clears his throat. "She told me things that… it seems like only my late wife would know."
"Specifically?"
Jim swallows roughly, staring at the table and ignoring the eyes on him. "About…our relationship, the early years, a nickname I called her before we were married, an incident before we started dating, how we met through law school—I brought her a coffee this morning and she knew Johanna's coffee order and my own," Jim paused as Kate closed her eyes and ground her teeth, "But none of this is conclusive proof of anything. There are things that she's said that seemed like no one but Johanna and I knew. But I can't be sure of anything anymore."
Alexis scoffed. "So what I'm hearing is we have no idea how Johanna Beckett could have existed alive all these years but we also have no idea how this Sophia Randall could have possibly known these things about Johanna Beckett without being Johanna Beckett? We have nothing?"
"Nothing but questions to ask her," Kate says quietly, turning her gaze to Gates who nods at her.
"Detectives Ryan and Esposito will question Ms. Randall, they will have earpieces so that those who know the case more personally can speak to them. Everyone else can watch from observation if they would like," Gates paused, keeping her eyes on Kate, watching as her jaw clenched until she nodded reluctantly in response and dropped her gaze, "I, on the other hand, will have to be in my office, fielding calls and trying to put out fires so that the US Attorney and the Commissioner don't catch wind of anything that's going on here."
"I'm going to stay and keep digging into her record. If you could get me some names of acquaintances, friends, anything to go off of, I can get you more," Agent Avery said and the boys nodded.
The rest of the group made their way to observation, looking in on Johanna who was sitting in the chair across from the mirror, her hands clenching the arms of the chair and her eyes staring at the mirror—past the mirror where she heard a door open and close. She has to breathe in through her nose and out through her mouth slowly to calm her heart rate, racing in preparation, in anticipation.
Ryan and Esposito put the earpieces in and looked at Kate, who was staring at the woman in the room with her arms crossed.
"Dad, you don't have to stay."
"Katie—there's no way I'm leaving. Or are you really going to make me play the attorney card?"
Kate takes a deep breath, turns toward Ryan and Esposito, and nods. They enter the interrogation room with Kate, Castle, Alexis, Jim, and Jordan watching.
Johanna sits up in her chair and narrows her eyes at the Detectives as they enter, closing the door behind them.
"Ms. Randall," Esposito and Ryan pull out their chairs facing away from the mirror at the same time and sit.
Johanna forces herself to lean forward to rest her arms on the table. "It's Mrs. Beckett."
Esposito opens the file in front of him. "So you've said—quite a few times."
"Yes, but now I'm putting it on the record—I would like the record to reflect that my legal name is Johanna Rose Beckett."
Ryan clicks his pen and poises it over his legal pad. "But even you admit that you have supposedly been living as Sophia Randall for the last 15 years, if that's not true we should know now. Cause we're here to speak to her."
Johanna shifts in her chair. "Is there a question in there?"
Esposito clears his throat. "Are you denying that you have been living under the name Sophia Randall?"
Johanna looks at the mirror. "No."
Jim stares, his brow furrowed, and he stands from his stance leaning against the back wall of the observation room.
"Great, I'm glad we cleared that up," Esposito says, tilting his head slightly, "Do you want to tell me why you're so adamant, then, that everyone calls you by another name?"
Johanna's lip twitch downward. "Because it's my name—because I've spent 15 years living as someone who wasn't me and I can finally live as myself again and be with people who really know me."
"But what we're trying to say, Ms. Randall, is that you are Sophia Randall, correct? There is no one else living in Portland, Maine, working at your law firm, living as Sophia Randall, but you," Ryan says casually.
"Except for the baby who died that you stole that identity from, of course," Espo tacked on, looking at Ryan before they both turned again to Johanna.
Her careful mask slipped just slightly and she leaned further forward. "What? What do you mean?"
Esposito pulls a photo from the file. "Sophia Maria Randall. She died at 2 months old in 1951. You and she share a name and a social security number. So while you're correct that you were living as someone else—you failed to mention that you were living in a stolen identity."
"I didn't—," she swallowed, looking up to the mirror and then back at the boys, "I didn't know they did that."
"They?"
"The FBI."
Esposito breathed in deeply, smirking slightly, leaning back in his seat. "Ah yes, who you claim brought you to Maine. I have a hard time believing the FBI has a policy that allows committing identity fraud—does your version of events have an explanation for this?"
Johanna's jaw twitched. "I have correspondence, I have phone numbers, I have names, I have lots of proof—but neither of you seem to be interested in this information. Not to mention a friend of yours in the FBI is standing behind that glass right now having already told you the assignment she got from her superiors—although I'm just guessing that came up in the conference room before you sat down with me seeing as I wasn't allowed to sit in."
Espo and Ryan kept their gaze on Johanna, pausing.
"So no explanation for the fraud?" Ryan asked, writing this down in his notes.
Jordan snorted, "They're good. I don't think I've ever gotten a chance to see them in action before."
Kate didn't take her eyes off of Johanna but nodded her head in response. "They're very good. Exactly what we need."
Johanna looked at the mirror and clasped her hands in front of her. "I guess you'll have to ask Agent Matthew Harris. He is who I've dealt with for the past 15 years."
Jordan stood up straight and stepped up to the mirror. "The Director?"
Kate uncrossed her arms and stepped forward closer to the mirror as well. "He wouldn't have been the Director in 1998 and 1999. He would have been a low level agent."
Esposito and Ryan sat still, except for Ryan's pen against the page, writing the name down.
"We'll have to look into that then—because it just strikes me as weird that you wouldn't know, even given your story as to what transpired."
Jordan scoffed. "Remind me never to play poker with these two."
"They should ask about the fact that she claims she didn't know until after the fact that they were going to fake her death," Jim spoke from his spot at the back of the room, causing everyone to look back at him as his gaze remained on interrogation.
Kate swallowed and took a breath before pressing a button on the side of the mirror and speaking into the microphone wired to the boys' earpieces. "Ask her how she wouldn't know that they were faking her death too."
Esposito leaned forward onto the table. "I mean, you claim you don't know they had you using a dead girl's identity, you didn't know they were going to fake your death, call me cynical but wouldn't that sound suspicious to you—Counselor?"
Johanna's heart clenched and her eyes fell to the table. "I'd be worried if you weren't skeptical given the circumstances, Detective."
"So, Ms. Randall, I guess I'm just wondering, if you understand our questioning, why you've been so ambivalent to it, to our tests? Would you do anything differently if you were in our shoes?"
Jim watched Johanna's face change and took a step towards the mirror.
Johanna looked up sharply. "Because you're asking the wrong questions and requesting the wrong tests."
Ryan stopped writing and narrowed his eyes. "But is that not our prerogative being the ones with questions and you the one with the answers? Tell me Ms. Randall, you get to Maine under duress, or so you claim, and then you sit there and do nothing for 15 years—how does that make sense as someone desperate to go back home?"
Johanna clenched her jaw. "I didn't sit there, I called and called, I can give you the number and you can look at my phone records. For a long time I called every day to know what progress was being made and when it would be safe to come back."
Kate pressed the button to speak to the boys. "Alexis looked, there were many news stories regarding this case that she could and would have seen in Maine—while she just sat there and waited."
Kate looked back at Alexis, sharing a small smile.
Esposito pushed away from the table and stood, starting to pace the room. "You mean to tell me that you just sat there while whoever you were talking to told you platitudes about the progress on the case—we know that news of this case made it all the way up to Maine and I find it very hard to believe that you saw some of what was happening and you stayed in Maine patiently waiting to come back."
"It just doesn't make sense, Ms. Randall, you must understand that," Ryan interjected.
Johanna ran her hand through her hair, several strands falling from her bun. "It was a condition of my hiding, I couldn't look at any news, I couldn't use the internet, I couldn't watch anything that might compromise me and my family's safety and I couldn't take anything behind with me."
Esposito scoffed, leaning on his hands against the table. "And you're telling me you listened? Never in 15 years did you go on the internet? Watch the news? Pick up a magazine?"
"No. The minute I did, I put my cover, my family, the case at risk. I had a computer at work that I only touched to draft briefs and motions, one of the paralegals and my assistant ran my email, under the company name, not mine, and gave me any case research I needed from the internet. If anyone ever asked why, I had the excuse that I was too old school. The minute I touched that computer, they would know, they were monitoring, and they would pull me from my cover and take me underground and it could jeopardize the whole case—they showed me exactly how they were monitoring me when I first got there. If you're asking if it was convenient, of course it wasn't. Nothing about living there was convenient. But I did what I had to do."
"Ms. Randall—," Esposito shakes his head, pulling his chair back out but leaning against the back rather than sitting down again.
"That is impossible," Ryan finishes.
Johanna's elbows dig into the hard metal of the table. "I know how it seems, but I lived it. Therefore, it is not only possible—it happened."
Esposito stepped around his chair and sat back down. "You talk about your 'cover'? What exactly was your cover?"
Johanna sat back in her chair slowly and crossed her arms. She looked intently at the mirror as Ryan and Espo glanced at each other.
"My cover—if anyone asked, I told them that I had a family, a husband and a daughter, and they died tragically and I needed a fresh start. That I changed my name and moved away due to the grief. That I couldn't talk about it, because it hurt too much."
Kate turned her back and stepped into Castle, who was waiting behind her, stopping just short of pressing her face into his chest. He caressed her back, pressing into the dip in her spine, doing anything to try and sooth some of the tenseness that settled there. Unlike her, Jim stepped forward again further towards the mirror, his gaze roving over Johanna's face.
Espo's jaw twitched and Ryan scoffed slightly. "That's awfully advantageous of you."
Johanna face was tight and drawn. "It wasn't my choice."
Jim stepped up the mirror, leaning against the sill on his hands. "You need to tell them to stop poking and start asking the right questions."
Kate turned back to Jim and sighed. "That's their job, Dad. They're just getting started."
"So is she," Jim murmured, causing Kate to eye him suspiciously.
Esposito leans forward onto the table, mirroring Johanna's stance. "You claim that this isn't your choice, and yet no matter if your version of events is true or not, it's all based on your choices. All of those culminating in your choice to come back here when you were given the option not to. You could have gone on living your life, and yet you chose to come back and submit yourself to this—our questions and our suspicions, but now that the reality of that is in front of you, you are refusing to be forthcoming—."
Johanna takes a deep breath and interrupts him, having enough of playing along. "My name is Johanna Beckett. I am a lawyer, a wife, and a mother. I lived in New York my whole life—until I was looking into the appeal case of Joe Pulgotti in 1998 when I was approached by the FBI after receiving death threats that they felt were not threats, but certainties. Agent Matthew Harris had worked with Bob Armen and knew what he had been working on—the suspicions he had about Joe Pulgotti's innocence and the work of an outside actor in the kidnapping and ransom scheme. He said that they would need me to testify and he needed to take me into hiding to protect me from those threats. I told him I wasn't going to back down that easily—I initially refused the protection. However, in the weeks following I received more threats, not just on me, but on Jim and Katie—on my family. I brought these to him and he wanted to take me in immediately, but I told him I couldn't leave before the holidays. Not to mention the fact that I was right on this person's tail. I knew it had to be someone in the DA's office, possibly working with the NYPD—which I was right about, by the way. I thought if I had a little more time I could get to the bottom of it. We put into motion a plan for me to leave after Katie went back to school after break. I was going to tell Jim after Katie left—so that we didn't worry her. But Agent Harris told me I couldn't tell anyone, that if my family knew they believed this person would go after them in my absence. So I didn't tell anyone. I thought it was going to take a few weeks, a couple of months at most. So while Katie was home from school, I did very little on the case, what I could do from home or while Katie was off doing her own thing, and was planning to work hard as soon as she left until it was time for me to go. However, I was on my way to meet Katie and Jim for dinner the night before Katie was supposed to go back to Stanford when I was approached by Agent Harris. He told me the timetable had moved up—that there was an active threat that night and that I had to leave, right then and there. I didn't even get to say goodbye, I didn't have time to leave a message or to set up anything I thought I would. He picked me up on the side of the street, I had to leave everything there, including my clothes and my jewelry. Leaving my wedding ring just about killed me."
Johanna swallowed and blinked her eyes rapidly. "I was flown to Maine and given my identity, Sophia Randall, I was given a car and a house and a bank account and a phone and I was told to pay everything in cash or by check from that account, no credit cards. Again I was told no news, not that internet was as much of a problem then, but no internet either—and absolutely no investigating. Nothing that would threaten to expose me or my cover. I had to dye my hair—I was a red head for the first few years there until I gave up on that requirement—hoping that aging and the time from my disappearance would alleviate the need for that. I was set up with a time to take the Maine Bar a few weeks after and already had a job offer lined up based on records closely resembling mine. Only once I was there did they tell me they were faking my death—that everyone, including my family, had to believe I was dead. All of my arguments fell on deaf ears, they said it was the only way, with how the threats had escalated, there was nothing else that could be done to keep my family safe. And then I was left in Maine with nothing but phone calls as a way to get updates on the case, on my family. But every time I spoke with him, Agent Harris reiterated how much of a danger Katie and Jim were in if this person was able to find out I was alive. So I did the only thing I could—I waited. I waited to see the end of the case, to see this person behind bars, and to see my family again. As long as they were safe, weren't hurt or worse because of me, because of the case I took and didn't want to back down from. As long as they were here to come back to, I would withstand whatever I had to. And I will withstand whatever I have to now in order to have them back in my life. Before you accuse me of not cooperating, you might want to start asking the right goddamn questions."
Johanna took a deep breath to try and calm her seething after her outburst. Esposito and Ryan shared a look after Ryan finished jotting down what notes he could write from her long explanation.
Kate blinks her eyes rapidly to keep her tears from falling and grips her mother's ring under her button down. Jim had kept his eyes on Johanna for her whole speech, but had look away in the silence that followed, shaking his head and leaning heavily onto the sill of the glass.
"Kate."
Kate turned to Castle, as he hesitated.
"What about the tape?"
Kate's mouth fell open as she nodded and pressed the button again.
"Guys, the tape."
Esposito mouth twitched. "Well it's a good thing I have a question that's just right. What about the tape?"
Johanna's eyebrows twitched downward. "What?"
"The tape that was key evidence in the case."
Johanna shook her head. "I remember hearing something about a tape when I was finally able to watch the news last night, but otherwise, I don't know of any tape."
Esposito and Ryan tried to mask their surprise but Johanna saw the flickers of confusion on their faces.
"Why? What should I know about this tape?"
Esposito got up and walked to the back of the room to pace, eyeing the mirror.
Kate scoffed and exchanged a glance with Jordan. She bit her lip briefly before approaching the glass again, speaking to the boys.
"Tell her."
Esposito's lips twitched and he turned back to the table. "Ms. Randall. The tape was found because the location was deciphered from Johanna Beckett's notes. And the tape was found in something that was located on Johanna Beckett's desk at her office. If you were Johanna Beckett, you would have known about this tape."
Johanna's eyes went wide and her jaw dropped before she could stop her natural reaction. "That's impossible."
"No, Ms. Randall, it's not," Ryan said, shaking his head.
Johanna looked down, gripping the edge of the table. "What was the tape in? The drawer at the bottom of my lamp, carved wooden box Jim gave me, my elephant family?"
Ryan gripped his pen despite himself and Esposito's eyes narrowed.
"My elephants?" Johanna paused, looking between the boys and then the mirror, "I didn't put it there, I didn't even know it existed, there's no way it was in my elephants before I…left."
"That's right," Esposito pulled his chair out again with much more force than necessary, sitting down and hitting the table with his palm, "Because you're not Johanna Beckett."
Johanna leaned forward in defense. "I knew that my elephants were on my desk, I knew what else was on my desk, and I also know that the last thing I wrote in my notebook was about the dinner I was supposed to go to with my family—nothing about any tape."
"Then how did it end up there? How were we able to find it from Johanna Beckett's notes? Ms. Randall, you're wrong," Ryan said.
"I'm not—," Johanna paused, taking a breath and lowering her voice, "I'm not wrong. Because I am Johanna Beckett. And that tape was not placed there by me."
She looked at the mirror and Jim looked back at her from the other side. Kate was pinching the bridge her nose at the pressure building there when her phone buzzed.
She pulled it from her back pocket and looked at the others, their gazes expectant. She breathed shakily and knocked three times against the glass.
"We have results."
Johanna and the team gathered in the morgue around the autopsy table in the middle of the room. Johanna was by one end of the table with everyone else gathered around the other. Kate was well surrounded by the rest of her team, not that Johanna would think of trying to approach her yet. Castle has a hand on her back but is having a murmured conversation with Alexis on his other side. Agent Shaw, Agent Avery, and Captain Gates seem to be having a conversation of their own and Ryan and Esposito are talking to Lanie on the other side of the room. Johanna's stomach dropped and she suddenly felt deeply alone—more alone than she felt being away from her family, the divide much longer and more profound than just the distance of the table. She pulls her cardigan tighter around her, somehow still anxious though she knows exactly what the results will say.
She is in her own head when she feels Jim's hand on her arm. She whips her head to look up at him and his eyes are expressive—anger and sadness still there, but buried deep at that moment under a current of hope and understanding that makes her breath catch.
"Jo…Johanna."
She turns to face him fully. "Jim?"
He rubs his hand along her arm. "I know."
She swallows thickly. "You do?"
"We'll get the test results. But I don't need them to know."
She drops her eyes from his. "I'd understand if you did."
He squeezes her arm before he pulls his hand away. "I know. But I don't."
She misses his touch even more at this moment but he doesn't take a step back from her to the group on the other end of the table and that at least makes her stomach settle, her breath less shaky.
"Alright," Lanie says to Ryan and Espo and to the room, her voice low and resigned, "Alright. Let's make this as quick and painless as possible."
Lanie puts an open file down in the middle of the table and looks between both ends as she speaks. "We collected Kate and Ms. Randall's blood and DNA today in the lab. We ran these samples against each other and against DNA we collected from a blanket Mr. Beckett brought in that had been Johanna Beckett's and had been sealed from air contamination for the better part of the last 15 years. The results show—," Lanie clears her throat, "The results show that Ms. Randall is Johanna Beckett."
Kate closes her eyes tightly and grips Castle's fingers.
"The sample given by Ms. Randall—or Mrs. Beckett—shares 23 DNA segments, or genes, with Kate's DNA, as well as the same homozygotes, meaning that she is Kate's biological mother. We still tested the sample against the blanket. With the blanket, we found three different DNA markers, which was better than we could have hoped, one that matched Kate, one partially matched Kate's, but was male and likely Mr. Beckett's, and one that did match Ms. Randall's sample. We also got dental records from Ms. Randall's dentist in Maine. These records match Johanna Beckett's records we have on file. Suffice it to say, Sophia Randall—you are Johanna Beckett."
Jim sighs and takes a step back from Johanna, leaning back against the table behind them, the results washing over him harshly despite his previous knowledge and belief.
Johanna rubs her hands against her thighs, turning to look between Kate and Jim. Her heart drops at the devastation she put there.
"You're sure, Lanie?" Kate whispers, staring at her shoes.
"I ran them three times, Sweetie. The results are conclusive."
Kate feels the pitying gazes of the others in the room and has to breathe deeply against the oppression she feels because of them—because of one gaze in particular.
"Katie—."
"Don't." Kate's gravelly voice travels in the small echoing room. "Don't you dare. You don't get to talk."
Johanna steps forward. "Katie, I know that this is—."
"You don't know," Kate says deep and low, blinking against the moisture gathering in her eyes. She rounds the corner to step behind the table, past Castle and Alexis, pointing at the woman across the expanse of the length of the table beside them. "You don't know because you weren't there. I was 19, Dad and I were on our way home and I was mad as hell because my mother left us waiting in the restaurant for hours for my last dinner with her before I went back to school across the country, and we come home to a detective telling us that you were dead—murdered in an alley like trash."
Johanna breathes deeply against Kate's words and Kate takes a step forward, her words spurring her momentum.
"You weren't there when Dad had to go identify your body. You weren't there for your funeral. You weren't there when they told us your murder was random gang violence, wrong place wrong time, and they were closing the case after barely a week. You weren't there to watch Dad drown in the bottle over grieving you—the love of his life. You weren't there when I was so untethered, half orphaned, that I dropped out of Stanford and transferred to NYU to try and keep my only remaining parent from drowning too deeply, to keep myself afloat. You weren't there when I joined the academy so that I could solve your murder."
Johanna's breathing picks up and she takes a shaky step backward, but Kate matches her stride forward.
"You weren't there when I spent my first few years on the force down in the archives going over your case file every moment off duty, foregoing sleeping or eating when I should have—because it didn't make sense, because no one could give us answers, the truth—what you strove for above all else. You weren't there when I realized if I didn't stop I was going to drown just like Dad was in the bottle. You weren't there when I finally managed to put it behind me—learned to live everyday with the fact that I had failed you, that I had failed—and it came popping right back up again too shortly after, with a murder that matched yours. You weren't there when I found the person who was hired to kill you—and I had to kill him because he threatened the lives of my team."
Johanna swallowed and willed her eyes to stay dry, a losing battle. Kate took another step forward towards her.
"You weren't there when one of the detectives that was assigned to your case was supposed to be giving me information but instead was gunned down by a sniper right in front of me. You weren't there when my team was tortured for information by this hired gun. You weren't there when the case popped up again, when I found out that my Captain, my mentor, was in on it the whole time—while he was telling me to stop investigating, acting as if it was for my well-being."
A tear fell silently down Kate's cheek and her voice became deathly low, anguish seeping through every word.
"You weren't—weren't there when he futilely sacrificed his life for me. You weren't there when I was giving his eulogy and I was shot in the heart—at the word of the man who had tried to kill you."
Johanna gasped despite herself, her breathing fast and choppy, losing the battle with the moisture gathering in her eyes, tears falling down her face but she made no move to wipe them away.
"You weren't there through months of agony, fighting to stay alive, to recover—all so I could go back and find the son of a bitch who had killed you, who was after my life. You weren't there when months of no leads led to a break—a break that nearly cost me my life again as I hung off the side of a 10 story building. You weren't there when I had again decided to put it to rest but the case wouldn't let me. You weren't there when I finally found out Senator William Bracken was behind all of this, had put a hit out on your life and mine. You weren't there when I didn't have enough evidence to put him away and I had to make a deal with the devil to protect those most important to me. You weren't there the countless days and nights me and my team spent searching for that one piece of evidence that would combine with what we had so that we could end this once and for all. You weren't there when he framed me for murder and I had to go on the run. You weren't there when I worked with Castle to find a clue in your notes in order to find that one piece of evidence we needed—the cassette tape where Bracken admits to hiring someone to kill you. You weren't there when I arrested him and thought I had finally moved past this case, finally had a chance to live my life without that burden weighing me down, affecting every decision I made. And now I find out—it was all for nothing. Because you weren't there—but you weren't dead, you weren't murdered. You weren't there because you were hiding. You weren't there because you chose not to be."
Johanna closes her eyes and takes a step forward, toe to toe with her daughter. "Katie, I—I had no—."
"No, you didn't. Because you weren't there," Kate pulls her mother's ring out from under her shirt and cradles it in her hand, "I wear this for the life I lost. It turns out I didn't lose anything."
She pulls the chain from around her neck, breaking the clasp and she drops it on the table next to Johanna.
"You can keep that. It doesn't mean anything to me anymore."
Kate spins in her spot and goes back to her team, her tear tracks drying on her face, untouched.
"Sir, I—."
Gates cuts her off. "Whatever you need, Kate."
She immediately goes to Castle, gripping his arms when she steps up to him too fast, to save from toppling over.
"Castle, get me out of here, I can't be here right now."
Castle's nodding before she finishes. "Of course, let's go home."
"Further than that," Kate says, her gaze staying trained on the exit.
Castle nods again slowly. "Ok, I think I can manage that, Alexis?"
Alexis nods, "Text me, I'll stay and see what happens."
Kate grips Alexis' hand in gratitude and holds it until the distance is too much as her and Castle move towards the door.
"Katie."
Kate turns at her father's call, locking eyes with him, seeing the understanding in them.
"Call me, let me know you're okay."
Kate nods before her and Castle make their leave from the room, the door swinging in their absence.
Johanna hears them leave but cannot take her eyes away from her ring that was around her daughter's neck—for the last 15 years. She grips it in her hand and holds it over her heart, closing her eyes in an effort to dry her eyes and staunch the slow tears that haven't stopped.
"Jim, I—."
"Not now, Johanna. Not right now," Jim says from behind her as she turns to meet his gaze, but his eyes stay trained on the floor.
Johanna swallows thickly and rubs at her cheeks roughly clearing the tear tracks. "What happens now?"
"Now—now is up to you. You're here and you are free to be Johanna Beckett again. I don't know how this tracks with Bracken's court case, we should probably read in the federal prosecutor as soon as possible. You should also decide what you're going to do about your life in Maine," Jordan responded.
"I think I should go back to Maine."
Jim looked up at her sharply, her eyes calm and piercing his with honesty.
"I need to tie up that loose end so that I can fully be exactly where I need to be."
Jim breathed deeply. "I'm coming with you."
Johanna swallowed, her brow furrowing.
"Not about to let you go without me after all this, Jo."
They stare at each other for a moment longer before Johanna nods, turning back to Jordan. "How do we make this happen?"
"I think we can arrange the ride and I think at least until you get settled, you should remain under our security. I'll be letting my supervisor know we'll be going and coming back to keep investigating."
"Speaking of investigations, I want to know how the hell this happened and who the hell is in the ground right now," Gates said to the room, not to anyone in particular.
"Captain, I have papers ready to exhume the body, I just need permission." Lanie looks towards Jim, along with the rest of the room, except for Johanna, who looks down at her feet.
"Do it. You have my permission. You can ask her, but Katie will agree with me."
Gates eyed Jim for a second before nodding. "Then that's what we'll do first."
"All right, everyone has their assignments," Jordan said to the room before turning to the Becketts with a smirk, though one weighed down by the events of the past few hours, "And we're headed back to Vacationland, Mr. and Mrs. Beckett. Wheels up at 1300 hours."
