The second the door opened, Kate could see that turning up the heat in the room had had the desired effect on Castle. She could see the sheen of sweat on his forehead and noticed that his hands seemed to be damp as well; he kept rubbing them together. The door swung closed behind her and he tracked her movement with his eyes the entire way to the table. She tossed the thick file she carried onto the table between them with a resounding thump. Drawing back a chair, she seated herself slowly and deliberately, never taking her eyes off her prey. Using her patented "intimidation by silence" skills, she flipped open the file and started to read. She knew that the silence and studied indifference tactics that she generally used to get a suspect to start talking were not likely to work on Castle.
As expected, Castle didn't take the bait. He sat there, stone-faced, staring directly into her eyes. She knew this interrogation was going nowhere because she knew him - all too well.
"Mr. Castle, it seems that your file has grown since we last met in this room. I'm just curious to know how you've managed that. It was pretty impressive to start with."
Rick was not going to fall for it. He knew she was trying to get him to talk, and without the presence of his lawyer, he wasn't saying one damn word.
"Cat got your tongue, Mr. Castle? This can go one of two ways: you can be the person that makes my job easier or the person that makes my job harder. And trust me, making it harder is not going to go well for you."
Satisfied with reading the file in front of her, she looked up into his ocean blue eyes. And he still wasn't saying a word. She couldn't figure him out. Never had he been this silent. So, if he wanted to play that game so would she.
Decision made then, she thought. You're going to make me regret what happens next.
"Mr. Castle, can I ask you for your whereabouts between the hours of 8 p.m. and 11 p.m. last night? Because as of right now, you are my prime suspect for the violent murder of Dr. Joshua Davidson," Kate began.
Again Rick sat there stoically, not saying a word. He couldn't believe she could be this cold and impersonal. Just less than twenty-four hours ago he saved her life, along with half the population of New York City, from a dirty bomb. If he'd known then what he knew now, maybe things might have ended a bit differently.
"Mr. Castle, we have strong evidence that you were the perpetrator of this crime in our possession. Right now, our techs are going through your loft to find more evidence to prove that you are the one responsible for taking Mr. Davidson's life. It'll only be a matter of time before they come back and tell me that they have the evidence I need to put you away… for life."
Kate stumbled on the last two words of the sentence, knowing that if he was guilty she would never see him again. When she looked up at his face again she could see that he was going to say something and she waited patiently.
Rick waited until she was looking directly at him and he had her undivided attention before he spoke because he was only going to say this once.
"Detective Beckett, I've been in this interrogation room for the past two and a half hours. If my attorney does not arrive within the next five minutes I will file a wrongful arrest lawsuit against the NYPD, Captain Montgomery, Detectives Esposito and Ryan, and yourself."
Xx
Her calls had gone unanswered and it was starting to worry her. Never has her dad not taken a call from her, no matter what time of day she's called. She tried one more time just for good measure and still, she got his voice mail. Something was going on and she didn't know what it was. She ended the call and dialed her grandmother's number - and that too went right to voicemail. She didn't leave a message and now she didn't know who to call. She'd give it some time before she tried again.
Her studies had taken her from Oxford to the University of Edinburgh, and then finally to the University of Amsterdam where she had spent many months. The exchange program she signed up for had lasted six months and now all she could think about was getting all of her research down and into her paper. It was the opportunity of a lifetime for her. She had decided to study child behavior, and without even knowing it, her school offered her one of the first openings to travel abroad and learn about how other countries handled disruptive children. It was what made her want to become a social worker. At first, it was a hard decision, but seeing the pain and uncertainty of the children she interviewed in New York when she was trying to make up her mind to become a social worker made it clear that this is what she wanted to do. And now she couldn't figure out if she wanted to work on her own as a therapist or work for the city she loved. She had been back in New York for two months and couldn't seem to adjust to being back. She picked up the phone once more and dialed her dad's number, sadly with the same result.
Xx
Frustrated, Kate decided to go for broke. Josh had his face practically ripped from his skull. She knew that whoever did this must have physical evidence on their person.
"Mr. Castle, there could be one simple way for you to prove your innocence. I need you to show me your hands," Kate demanded.
When the second statement came out of her mouth, Rick removed his hands from his lap and sat on them. He was not going to give her any more ammunition to convict him for something he didn't do. He just looked at her with bleak resignation. He was not going to show her his hands.
Before he could even react, she lost her temper and launched out of the chair and around the table. She grasped the sleeve of his shirt and tried to pull his hands from under his legs. He refused to expose his hands no matter how hard she pulled. She'd give him this much, he was strong.
"Castle," Beckett admonished, her voice rising as her temper flared. "Stop it, let go."
Esposito, just walking back from the break room with a fresh cup of coffee, heard a chair scrape across the floor inside the interrogation room, then a thud as something crashed into the wall. He hastily set his coffee down and strode toward the room where Kate was presumably interrogating Richard Castle. Hearing Kate's shout, he automatically drew his weapon, thinking Kate was in trouble.
When the door swung open, Rick was backed into a corner with his hands behind him; Kate was struggling to pull them from behind Castle. Esposito already convinced that Castle was guilty, immediately grabs his shoulder and his right thumb pulling it backwards, dislocating it to make him sit back in the down in the chair. Then Esposito took out his handcuffs and handcuffed Castle back to the eye bolt in the middle of the table.
All Kate could do when she stood in front of Rick was look at him, hoping he would understand why she wanted to see his hands, but all she could see was the expression on his face morphing from hesitation to anger and disgust in the blink of an eye.
Even though Rick's hand was now throbbing with pain and the injuries Josh inflicted on him were stabbing him with white-hot bolts of agony, he kept his cool and said, "Detective, now would be a good time for me to call my attorney since you have been stonewalling me since I arrived."
Kate pulled her phone from her jacket and asked him for the number so she could dial it. Once she did, she put it on speaker for him and left the interrogation room with Esposito in tow. The second the door closed behind them Kate spun on Esposito, almost pinning him against the wall of the interrogation room.
"Can you tell me what the hell you were thinking by doing that to Castle?"
"Come on, Beckett, the guy is guilty. No two ways about it, he is just stalling the inevitable."
"Espo, what you did in there is going to put us in so much hot water," Kate said as she stepped back, closed her eyes, and placed her index finger and thumb on the bridge of her nose, thinking of what just happened in the interrogation room seconds ago.
Without another word she turned away from Esposito and headed back to her desk. She stood there waiting for a second before she sat down to make a mental list of all the evidence they had against Castle. But really all the evidence they have is circumstantial, such that the DA would never try to indict with, knowing it's not even close to being enough for a conviction. She sat at her desk and opened the email that Lanie had sent with a cause of death. The report gave the time and the specific cause of death, blunt force trauma.
In the last thirty minutes, Kate had read the same sentence over and over with no new insight. She was so immersed in the report that she didn't hear a man walk up to her desk and stand expectantly.
"Detective Beckett. My name is Marty Jones, and I'm here representing Richard Castle. I'd like to see my client now."
Kate looked up at the attorney, who was sharply dressed, and she imagines he's probably worth the $1,000 an hour salary that Rick pays him.
Kate stood from her desk and Esposito gave her a dirty look.
"Right this way, counselor. I'll bring you to him."
The attorney followed Kate down the hallway towards interrogation Room 1.
"Detective, have formal charges been brought up against my client?" the attorney asked.
"Counselor, we're still investigating this case, but no, he has not been charged with any crime yet."
"Good. I'll be requesting that he be released on his own recognizance after I speak with him then."
"Mr. Jones, while that might be your request, Mr. Castle is a prime suspect in a murder case."