a.n. So first, I should say that the reason for my absence is that I'm disillusioned with the show right now. I despise the beginning of season 8. Castle is allowing himself to be walked all over again for no good reason. Anyways, I digress. I've pulled several of my multi-chapters. If you were reading them head to my profile to see why. I'm rewriting them.
This chapter is setup differently than anything I've done before. Think of it like the episodes where they show the most dramatic part of the episode first, then flash back a certain period of time to show what led up to those events. I hope I've done a good job of it and it isn't too confusing.
Also, I BEG you not to give up on this story at the end of this chapter. It doesn't end well, but there is a reason for it, and it is all resolved at the beginning of the next chapter. We're coming to a close here, so be prepared for the big twist I've been teasing since the beginning. The next chapter is already posted, so you don't have to wait for the twist.
Disclaimer: If I owned Castle, Rick would be furious with Kate, not playing the kicked puppy. Obviously I don't.
xxxx
Previously…
Kate sighed. This case had started off so similar to how it had been before, now nothing seemed to be going their way. "Okay. Listen it's 8 now, let's knock off for tonight. Tomorrow, we'll see if Lanie has anything for us." At this time before, they'd heard from Lanie, and found the fingerprint on the victim's eyelid. She was confused why they hadn't heard from the ME yet.
She had a bad feeling about where this case was headed. She just didn't know what to do about it.
xxxx
"Esposito! No!" Kate shouted as the bullet hit her partner in the back of the neck. Her breath was driven out of her as Castle tackled her to the ground just in time as more bullets flew over her head. When the bullets started to fly, the three of them had all rushed to find cover in order to return fire, but they hadn't made it.
She moved her head up, looking towards where Espo was laying motionless on the ground about 15 feet from where she lay with Castle covering her.
The gunfire ceased, and she heard footsteps coming towards them.
"Castle, we have to move." No response.
"Castle! This isn't funny," she said urgently. She rolled out from underneath him. "Rick!"
xxxx
20 Hours Earlier…
"I'm telling you, we've got nothing," Lanie said when Kate and Castle walked into the morgue the next morning.
"What do you mean nothing?" Kate asked after taking a sip of her coffee. She'd really needed it this morning. She hadn't slept well as she had a strange feeling that something was going to happen. She just didn't know what, but something felt off, and she couldn't shake the feeling.
"I mean," Lanie spat, "There's no evidence whatsoever that will help you. No finger prints, no DNA, nada. This was a professional job, despite the method of death. Not too many professionals out there use electrocution as a method of killing, but this one did."
Kate sighed. "Why can't anything ever be easy? Okay. Well…" She was interrupted by her cell going off. She pulled the device out of her pocket and glanced at the caller ID. "Beckett."
"We got another one boss," Ryan said. "Espo's old partner turned up outside an abandoned warehouse about a mile away from where we found Finch's body."
"Text us the address, we'll be right there. Is Perlmutter taking this one?" she asked.
"Yup, grumpy pants is here." Kate chuckled and ended the call. She turned to Castle, "Espo's old partner turned up dead. We need to get to the scene."
"Oh, you guys get to deal with Perlmutter today, I'm so happy for you," Lanie said.
"Don't be cruel, Dr. Parish," Castle chided.
"Better you than me, that's all I'm saying," she said before turning back to the body and giving it a dirty look. "I'll call if I find anything else, but don't hold your breath," she said to Kate.
xxxx
"Two stab wounds to the chest," Perlmutter said when they asked for the cause of death. The body had been found outside an abandoned warehouse. The alleyway where they found the body was filled with trash and looked like it was home to several species of rodents.
"Ryan, see what's around here and find out if there are any cameras that might have caught anything interesting. Espo, you going to be okay working this one?" Kate asked.
"Yeah, I'm fine," Espo replied gruffyly.
"Since you knew her, notify his wife. Castle and I are going to go back and start digging into his background, finances and such."
She turned towards Castle, "I need to talk to you." She tugged on his shirt and led him towards her car.
Once they had gotten into the cruiser, she said, "This case started off the same as last time, but it's completely different now. Something feels off about it, I'm just not sure what. I've just got a bad feeling about it."
"Is that why you tossed and turned all last night?"
"You noticed?"
"Of course. Listen, all we can do is work this case like normal and be careful. I know better than to question your instincts, but there isn't much we can do. I'll be here, and I got your back."
Kate smiled as she put the car into gear, "Thanks, babe."
xxxx
When they got back to the precinct, Demming the douchebag was waiting for them. "I sent some guys to question Victor Racine."
"Oh? What did they find out?" Kate asked, taking a seat at her desk.
"Nothing. The guy is slimy. Puts on the front of the honest businessman and all that. Says he doesn't know Finch at all, but has heard of Espo's old partner, of course. Denies hiring him though."
"Of course." She took a deep breath. Castle came up behind her and sat a cup of coffee on her desk. She smiled in thanks.
"So anything else on your end?" Demming asked.
"You heard about Ike Thornton, Espo's old partner?"
"Dead?"
"Yeah. We're working up the board now, but you can go back to robbery. I'll let you know if there is anything we need." She really didn't want him around.
"Aww, come on, Kate, I can be of use," he said, wiggling his eyebrows. She groaned.
"Listen, douche. It's Detective Beckett. Now get out of here."
xxxx
It was three hours later when they got their first lead, and it shocked everyone on the team. Lanie had called them down to the morgue and said that she and Perlmutter had a lead for them and that she needed the whole team there to hear it, which was unusual. Normally she only asked for all four of them if the break was big. Or personal. Kate hoped that it wasn't personal, but the bad feeling that she'd had since the beginning of the case was bubbling in her stomach, making her regret the delicious lunch Castle had retrieved for them.
When the four teammates got to the morgue, they found Lanie and Perlmutter standing next to the body of their latest victim.
"What do you got?" Kate asked.
"What we have," Lanie said, in her usual manner, "is a problem. Perlmutter has his uses. He has an almost eidetic memory when it comes to cases, and when he got the body here back to his lab, he noticed that it was extremely similar to six other murders in the last twenty years."
"A serial killer?" Esposito asked.
"No, Javi, I'm thinking professional."
"Okay, I think I can see the problem," Beckett said.
"That isn't the problem, Kate. The problem is that two of the previous murders are known to members of your team."
Kate looked back in surprise. "What murders?"
Perlmutter spoke up for the first time, "The murder of Johanna Beckett and the murder of Alexis Castle."
Kate stepped closer to Rick. They hadn't had a lead on the case since they discovered they were connected. She grabbed his hand, not caring about professionalism at the moment. "Explain."
"I recognized the stab patterns once I got a better look. I looked up the information on similar stabbings in the NCSDB, and recognized the names of two similar stabbings immediately, though I had no information on those two murders before I looked them up. Luckily it looks like the files have recently been pulled, so it was easy to find that there was trace evidence in both the Castle and Beckett cases, and that they were a match. Seems our guy likes to use the same knife.
"After I looked them up, I was able to find the same trace evidence on our vic here, though it is tentative at the moment, as we await lab results," Perlmutter explained.
Castle had been very quiet since they had heard the news, and Kate was afraid to look at his face where she was sure to find the heartbreak she knew that this case brought out in both of them. Kate was reeling at this information, and she couldn't even fathom what Rick was going through. But she had a job to do.
"Send the files up, will you?" She turned to Espostio and Ryan, who both had similar looks of shock on their faces, "You two start looking for connections between the two older cases, any of the others, and Victor Racine. There is either a connection between the victims, or he uses the same contractor as someone else and there isn't a connection at all, we need to know which it is. Before I know what Rick and I'll do, we need to talk to the captain. With this information we might get pulled from the case."
The boys left to get started, and she turned to the two MEs, "Let me know if you can find anything else that's helpful."
She grabbed Castle's hand again, and dragged him out of the morgue. Once out the doors she pressed him up against the wall. "Rick? What are you thinking?"
"I…I…" He scowled. "I think something is fishy about all this. I mean this isn't anything like your previous timeline, and now we have a connection between our case and this mob case? I've…oh. You know, I have had some dealings with the mob. Do you think that maybe that is what caused them to come after me and Alexis? What about your mom?"
"Her last case was a mob case."
"So there has to be a connection. Some mob boss or minion or something that all three have in common. Could it be this Racine person?"
"I don't know. But we'll find out." She leaned forward and kissed him softly on the lips. "Whatever happens, we'll do it together. I love you, Rick."
"And I love you, Kate."
xxxx
That night when they got home, both were disheartened that they hadn't gotten any further with the case. Every clue they turned up just led to another dead end. Kate was frustrated and had begun to snap at her team. She could feel the lure of this case, tempting her to shut everyone out and dive right back into the rabbit hole. But she couldn't do that this time. She had to think about Rick. She would not leave him behind just to satisfy her need for vengeance.
"God this has been a long day," she moaned, pulling off her heals and throwing them towards the closet. "I so want a bath, but I'm too damn, tired."
Castle grinned at her, "Why don't you go grab one and I'll throw something together for food. By the time you're done, dinner will be ready, then we can get some sleep."
"I hate it when you're the logical one," she growled. Castle chuckled and walked into the kitchen to start cooking.
Several hours later their sleep was interrupted by the sound of Kate's phone going off. Groaning, Kate fumbled for the damn device for several moments before she managed to grab hold of it and hit the answer key. "Beckett," she mumbled, her face still buried in her pillow.
"Say that again, Espo, slowly." She listened for a minute more then said, "Okay, we'll meet you in the precinct in a half hour or so. Have you called Montgomery? … Okay, see you there."
Kate hit the end button and flopped around to see Castle staring at her worriedly. "Rick, we need to get into the precinct. Ryan never made it home last night."
xxxx
"Play the recording again," Beckett ordered. As soon as they got into the precinct, they had received a call that troubled the entire team. The voice had been altered, but the message was what caught the entire team's attention.
"Hello Detectives. This case is beyond you; you just don't know it yet. Think of Kevin Ryan as a reminder that your partners are disposable. Keep investigating this case and you'll find that mystery writer of yours is the next casualty."
They all looked around at each other. Kate could see the worry on their faces for their missing teammate.
"Okay," Beckett said, "what do we have on the call itself?"
"It was sent from a pay phone down by the docks, not too far from where we found Ike Thornton's body. We've sent techs down to dust for prints, but it's a public phone so that will most likely be a dead end.
"Last night before we came home we finally pulled the mob case your mom was working on. It had been sealed, and for good reason. There were two witnesses in that case, both of whom went into WitSec. The mobster they put away, Pulgatti, died in prison a year after he was convicted, about a month after your mom visited him for the first time and took up his case."
"There's no way that's a coincidence, how did he die?" Castle asked.
"Shanked in the bathroom, so no, it probably wasn't a coincidence, but there's no way to prove it or trace it back to whoever ordered the hit."
"Do you have the original names of the witnesses?"
"I'm looking into it."
"Alright," Beckett said, taking a look at the murder board. "We're all worried about Ryan, but the best thing we can do for him is solve this case. Hopefully we'll find him along the way. Espo, keep digging into the mob angle. Castle and I are going tear apart Thornton's life and see if we can find out who he was working for. Whoever it is, they have to have some part to play in this mess."
xxxx
Four hours later dispatch called which had them rushing to the scene of another body drop, this one was the one they'd all dreaded since the early morning hours.
When she and Castle got out of the car, she immediately knew what they were going to find on the other side of the police tape. She could see Lanie's hunched form, could see her shoulders shaking. Kate stumbled when she saw the broken body. Bringing her hand up to her mouth to stifle the sob that threatened to break free, she looked down on what was once Detective Kevin Ryan.
She was broken out of her misery by a hand on her shoulder. She turned and buried her face into Castle's chest, no longer able to hold back the tears. What was the point? Her second chance wasn't adding up to much. Sure she had Castle and they were together and happy, but Alexis was dead, Kevin Ryan was dead; Kate wondered what else could go wrong.
Montgomery came up behind them; Kate could see the defeated look on his face. He put a hand on Esposito's shoulder as the latter stood looking down at his partner. After a moment he said, "Come on, you three, you can't be here."
"Captain," Espo started, angrily.
"No, Detective Esposito, just no. You know damn well you can't work this part of the case. I should take you three off the entire thing, but I'll let you keep working it, but you can't be here. I've got Karpowski on the way, her team will handle the details of this one, you guys will keep going through trying to find how everything fits. That's an order, no get back to the precinct."
Kate pulled away from Castle, knowing that the Captain was right. "Come on guys, let's catch whoever did this."
xxxx
"Beckett, I found something," Castle said two hours later. They'd been going through everything they could find in the Finch and Thornton murders, trying to find a connection between them and/or Racine. They were sitting around the conference table shuffling through papers when Castle's voice broke her concentration.
"What did you find?"
He got up and walked around the table, bringing two files with him. "See here," he said once he leaned down on the table, "both Finch and Thornton received money from the same account, that can't be a coincidence."
"No, it can't be, but it'll likely lead nowhere. Still, we need follow it and see if there is any information on the other end. I'll do that, you keep looking here."
"Wait. One other thing we should do is re-listen to that tape that you found. Maybe we can find something we missed. I'm going to go back to the loft and get it."
Kate nodded. "Okay. Be careful, okay, Castle?"
"Of course."
xxxx
She had just hung up from a call to the bank when Castle, who had been in the conference room after his trek back to their loft, came up to her and said, "Kate, you need to come with me."
Kate looked up and saw the pale complexion of his face. "Rick?"
"Just come on, you have to hear this." Kate nodded, stood and followed her partner into the conference room where they had been working for the last several hours.
Rick pressed the play button on the tape player that sat on the table. The tape was the one that she'd found in the elephants on her desk.
"Oh. My. God." She said when the tape was finished playing. "How did I not recognize his voice before? It was right in front of me this whole time."
"It isn't your fault, Kate. He had to have been damn near a rookie when this tape was made. He isn't that much older than you are."
"He's six years older. We need to find him, now."
xxxx
The voice of the cop on the tape was Tom Demming, and they were pretty sure the boss was Victor Racine. Kate couldn't believe she hadn't recognized Demming's voice when she had listened to it, though looking back she had always felt that the voice was familiar in some way.
They had played the tape for Captain Montgomery after explaining how they had gotten it. He had berated them for holding onto evidence, but in the end he had issued orders to bring Demming into the precinct for questioning.
They didn't find him in Robbery where he should have been, which to Kate wasn't surprising. He had been party to the murder of a fellow cop, he wasn't going to stick around. The feeling that had been plaguing her for the entire case was getting progressively worse, but she shoved it down.
After donning their Kevlar vests, they made their way to the address Demming had on file, which was only a block from where Finch's body had been found.
The entrance to the building was in an alleyway strewn with trash and detritus. The entire area reminded her of the alley where her mother had been found. It only made her feeling of pending disaster get worse as they walked towards the entrance to Demming's building.
They were halfway down the alley when the first gunshot sounded in their ears.
xxxx
"Esposito! No!" Kate shouted as the bullet hit her partner in the back of the neck. Her breath was driven out of her as Castle tackled her to the ground just in time as more bullets flew over her head. When the bullets started to fly, the three of them had all rushed to find cover in order to return fire, but they hadn't made it.
She moved her head up, looking towards where Espo was lying motionless on the ground about 15 feet from where she lay with Castle covering her.
The gunfire ceased, and she heard footsteps coming towards them.
"Castle, we have to move." No response.
"Castle! This isn't funny," she said urgently. She rolled out from underneath him. "Rick!"
Kate's soul was destroyed at the sight before her. She lost consciousness as she stared into her partner's cold, lifeless blue eyes. Her second chance had failed. Castle was dead.
xxxx
a.n.2. I know, right? What a crappy ending.
If you remember what I said in chapter one about what this fic is not, you'll not be panicking right now. Either way, the next chapter is already up. I promise everything makes sense.
Reviews are welcome.