The Lawyer (Epilogue)
I was in love with another woman. I don't know when it happened. My wife even knew
before I did. How did she know? Was it the time I spent away from home doing research?
Was it the fact that I had been bringing her name up in our conversations for more than
a year now, or was it the countless photos and newspaper clippings of her that I had
covering the walls of my office? She had become my obsession and now it was over. It
felt like that day again, that day in the office when I shredded her file. I tried to let her
go then, but I couldn't…not entirely. I still had the blue and white card with her name
on it. God! I never realized I loved her, but I knew that it was time to let her go.
….
"Honey! Where are my socks? I shut the dresser drawer and looked around the
bedroom. Kiera! I can't find my new socks!" Where did she go; where did my socks
go? Why was it that no one in this household ever answered me; and why did I
always have to be the mountain? I grabbed my dress shoes and headed downstairs.
I found chaos in the kitchen. I couldn't tell if four year old Samantha was trying to
conduct the chaos or zap it into oblivion as she stood on a barstool waving her
princess wand in the air. I almost wished latter. Kiera and my eldest daughter
Alexis were arguing at the stove while Claire and Emily fought over whose turn
it was to use the only unbroken iPod left in the house.
"Mom, I know how to make spaghetti, would you just go already!"
"You don't want to overcook the noodles, they'll turn to mush."
"I know what I'm doing."
I'd learned a long time ago not to wait for my turn. It was best just to jump into the melee.
"Honey, where are my socks?"
"Daddy!" Look, I'm a magician!" She waved her wand in a fury of circles.
"They're upstairs….you don't have to stir them the whole time."
"Mom!"
"Dad, tell Claire it's my turn to use the iPod. She had it all day yesterday."
"No I didn't."
"Yes you did."
I ignored the squabble. "They're not there, I looked."
"Well look again."
I huffed out a sigh. I had already spent five minute looking.
"I'll make them appear daddy!" Samantha waved her wand again. "Yabba dabba!"
"It's abracadabra sweetie, not yabba dabba."
"Yabba dabba, yabba dabba!"
I was getting impatient. "We need to be ready when the limo gets here."
My comment only made her head to the laundry room.
"Just let me put the clothes in the dryer real quick. Emily is going to need her leotards for ballet tomorrow."
"You broke them!"
"You pulled on them!"
"Dad, she broke the ear buds!"
I felt a tug on my hand. "Daddy."
"It looks like you've solved your problem; now neither of you can listen to it."
Claire shoved Emily and Emily punched her in the arm.
Another tug. "Daddy."
"If I hear that you two were fighting the whole time we're gone there will be no
ballet or gymnastics for a week."
Emily glared at me, crossed her arms and stuck out her bottom lip while Claire just
ignored me and attempted to twist the wires back together.
The tiny hand that had been pulling on mine yanked again "Dad!"
I finally looked down to acknowledge her. "What is it sweetie?"
"Abba dabba!" She waved her wand, and her other hand appeared from behind her
back clutching my socks.
"I'm glad to see that someone pays attention to me." My hands slid under her arms
and I hefted her up on to my hip. "Come on, lets go to the living room and you can
show me your magic tricks while I put on my socks and shoes."
….
We both managed to be ready by the time the limo arrived. I took hold of Kiera's hand
at the front door.
"Are you ready for this?"
"Me? Are you? This is an end to all your hard work."
"Yeah, but I couldn't have done it without you."
"No, you couldn't have done it without her."
I didn't know what to make of her comment.
"I'm sorry if I've ever made you jealous of the time I've spent with her. There was no reason to be."
"I wasn't"
The look I gave her said I didn't believe her, so she relented.
"Alright, fine. I was never jealous of her ghost, but I admit I was jealous of the time you
spent with her at the coffee shop."
"I love you, you know that, and I would never even dream of being unfaithful to you so
you have nothing to worry about."
"Oh, I'm not worried." She tiptoed up to kiss me and then playfully patted me on my belly.
"If you ever gave up the Poutine and went back to the gym, then I'd be worried."
"Hey!"
She tugged at my hand and laughed as she pulled me down our walkway to the limo. It was hard
to argue with her, especially since I had to wear a new tux because my old one no longer fit.
….
The forty minute drive to the hotel gave me time to reflect on all that had happened in the three
years since her death and how it all began with the card that I was reluctant to destroy.
….
I hid her card in the safest place I could think of. I hid it on me. I slipped the case off my iPhone
and laid the card inside before slipping it back on. I couldn't save her but I felt an obligation to
save something of her. I pulled it out from time to time during the first month after her death
and wondered what had become of the investigation. There had been nothing more in the paper
after that initial disparaging article. Had the Commissioner decided to suppress the mess long
enough for a new headline grabbing story to come along, and then quietly bury the truth about
what really happened in a storage box amidst the hundreds of thousands of others housed in
evidence? Probably.
Why did I feel a sense of obligation? Why did I feel she deserved justice when those closest to her
were content to walk away? Why did I feel so guilty? There was something about that damn card.
Two months later it started to feel like I was pulling a dead albatross from my pocket every time I
reached for my phone. I almost destroyed it, twice. The first time, I held my phone out the window
of my car while driving on the Jersey Turnpike. I was so tempted to drop it. Just to let it fall so that
it could be crushed and pulverized into a million unrecognizable pieces along with her card. But I couldn't.
The second time was after a disturbing dream in which I pulled a live albatross from the pocket of my
coat. It began flailing around, pecking at my hands and face as it squawked, "Why, why, why?" I woke
up in a sweat, grabbed my cell phone and practically ran to the kitchen. I pulled out the card, lit the gas
burner on the stove and held it over the flame. I really believed I would have burned it had Kiera not
followed me downstairs. She wanted to know if I was ok. My back was to her and she couldn't see the
card, so I told her that I'd had a dream about the stove being left on. I turned off the burner and hoped
she couldn't see me fumbling around in the darkness as I tried to slide card and the phone back into the
case. It would be another four long months before I had an answer to that 'Why'.
Those intervening months were the worst. The senior partners told me that the "company" Jimmy used
to work for now wanted me to represent another one of their "employees. When I refused, they began
dumping all the crap cases they could find onto my desk. Gloria was concerned, but I told her not to
worry about it. I was sure it would blow over, eventually. Eventually, it got worse. I came to work one
morning to find that my office…and only my office had been ransacked. Nothing was untouched. If it could
be broken, it was. Every scrap of paper had been pulled from my files, piled on the floor and urinated on.
The carpet was ripped up, all the upholstery shredded and every stick of furniture upended.
Gloria quit. I didn't blame her. I didn't know if it had been Jimmy's bosses or Detective Beckett's 'sinister
forces' that had paid me the visit. I was tempted to quit too, but this was all I knew. This was my first
and only job and I had a family to support. Lawyers were a dime a dozen in this town and when word
got out about what happened to my office, and it would, no firm in town would want to hire me. So I
stayed. I couldn't seem to keep a new paralegal for longer than a week, as soon as they heard the
gossip about what happened to my office, they were gone. I had to struggle along on my own and hope
to god they weren't going to fire me. I started working longer hours, and eventually even the weekends
just to keep up. That was the real low point for me. I had made a promise to Kiera after our second
daughter was born. No more weekends at work. They would be reserved for family only. I had kept that
promise for eleven years, but I couldn't do it anymore. What was even worse, I couldn't tell Kiera why,
and we argued about it constantly. I felt I was on the verge of losing my job, my marriage and even my sanity.
It was an unexpected visit from Gloria that finally changed everything. I thought I was hallucinating
from lack of sleep when I looked up from my desk and saw her standing in the doorway with a
newspaper in one hand and a bottle of champagne in the other. It wasn't until she clunked the
bottle onto my desk and told me I looked like shit, that I knew she was real. I thought she'd come
back to help me, but I was wrong. She was only there to help me celebrate.
I had been so consumed by my work that I had no idea what was going on in the world, much less
New York. And when I read the newspaper that she handed me I felt like I had been handed a
reprieve, a reprieve from the unknown. Gloria knew what I was going through, she had been there,
and not knowing was the worst part. The article itself wasn't forthcoming with many details, but
what it did say left me optimistic
Senator O'Brien Arrested, Multiple Criminal Indictments Pending
Senator James O'Brien (NY) was arrested at his campaign offices Monday morning after and extensive
six month joint investigation by the FBI and the Justice Department. The Senator is being held without
bail until formal charges are presented at his arraignment on Friday. The FBI did confirm that his arrest
was as a result of the ongoing investigation into the shooting deaths of Captain Roy Montgomery and
Detective Katherine Beckett, of the 12th precinct. The investigation into their deaths was taken over
by the FBI after evidence surfaced linking the Senator to past and possibly ongoing criminal activities.
I didn't need to read anymore. I had what I needed. He had been exposed and now I could give
up the fear that her final words had caused me. I popped the cork, and Gloria and I drank our
champagne out of a pair of mismatched coffee mugs scrounged from the lunch room. We drank
and reminisced. Thirty minutes later, we weren't even halfway through the bottle when Gloria
said she had to leave. I found out she'd come by on her lunch break and had to get back to work.
I'd forgotten she had a new life, filled with new people. This was probably the last time we would
see each other so I hugged her and wished her the best. Gloria didn't say goodbye, it wasn't her
style. She had to smack me upside the head with her parting words instead.
"She was a brave woman, how brave are you going to be?
I spent the rest of the afternoon trying to figure out what both Gloria and Detective Beckett wanted from me.
…
As much as I tried to put this all behind me, I still couldn't let it go. I watched the media circus as events
unfolded. The foremost charge against the Senator was First Degree Murder for the solicitation deaths
of Johanna Beckett and her colleagues. The damning proof against the Senator was in the files that the
FBI received posthumously from Captain Montgomery. Soon added to the murder charges were numerous
charges of Racketeering, from bribery and money laundering, to obstruction of justice and embezzlement.
There were even whispers he had ties to organized crime. New arrests and repercussions from the
Senators downfall were a daily occurrence, but I never heard another word about her.
The fallout from Senator O'Brien's arrest overshadowed the investigation into Detective Beckett's death.
She had received justice for her mothers murder, but where was hers? She had sacrificed everything for
the truth and yet the only eulogy she ever received from the press was the two damning words in that
initial article, "apparent suicide". She deserved better. Day after day I checked the papers, TV and internet
for any more information about her death, and every day I came up empty. I finally resorted to a more
hands on approach. I called the NYPD's media liaison and pretended I was with the press. I asked about
the outcome of the investigation into their deaths and was told that since the FBI had taken over the case
the NYPD had no official comment. Next, I contacted her partner Detective Esposito, but as soon as I told
him who I was he told me to "take a hike" before he hung up on me. I tried to find Captain Montgomery's
wife but discovered she had moved away shortly after her husband's death. I was frustrated at constantly
coming up empty. It was the only reason I made my next call. I called the FBI. That was a mistake.
The following weekend agents appeared on my doorstep. I could see the worry on Kiera's face when they
introduced themselves and asked to speak to me. She wanted to know what was going on, but I asked
her to please take the girls upstairs and to wait with them. I promised her we would talk later. She wasn't
happy but she complied. I was never worried about the Feds, my real worry was Kiera. How was I supposed
to explain this…this…whatever this was that I had been obsessing over. I didn't understand it myself.
As soon as they were out the door she was on me, scared, worried and demanding. I knew I had to tell
her, but why did I feel so guilty. I hadn't done anything. The truth of those four words shocked me. I hadn't
done anything. I hadn't done anything to stop her from walking away, and afterwards I hadn't mentioned
to the police about her connection to Senator O'Brien. I hadn't even told Kiera what happened at work. I
had been scared, and now I felt like a coward. I was tired of being scared, and suddenly I realized, that's
what bravery was all about, it wasn't about being fearless; it was more about just being tired of being scared.
Gloria knew. It just took me a lot longer to figure it out. I sat down next to Kiera at the kitchen table and she
watched as I pulled the cover off my cell phone. I handed her the blue and white card and tried my best to explain.
She cried. I hadn't expected her to cry. I expected anger, maybe even a little jealousy, but not tears. I didn't
know how to react to tears.
"You're not mad?"
She wiped her eyes. "Why would I be mad?"
"I've been carrying around the card of a dead woman and the Feds were just at our house, so yeah I thought you'd be mad."
"You were just trying to protect your family; I'd have done the same."
"But I can't seem to let it go, I feel she deserves some sort of justice of her own."
"It just means that you care, that you still have a heart. I've always been afraid your job would take that from you."
I hated to admit it, but I'd begun to worry about that myself. Dealing with Jimmy and others like him had begun
to take its toll on me and I'd begun to realize since Detective Beckett's death that what I did was less about
perception and more about lying. It was lies had pulled the trigger on her and her mother, and it was these
same lies that had kept Jimmy out of jail and put two men dead on the street. Only this time, the lies were mine.
It was Kiera who suggested that I take my weeks of accrued vacation time and use it to try and find out what
had happened to her. I jumped at the idea. It took a few weeks for me to close all the cases I'd been working
on and I couldn't believe the sense of elation I felt when I finally locked my office door. What I discovered about
her life had me taking for an extended leave of absence for another month. The month after that…I quit. I was
about to find out just how brave I could be.
…
Someone was pulling on my hand.
"Babe, we're here…babe?"
The limo had arrived at its destination. Shit, I was nervous. I'd never done this before. Paula had said not to
worry, the hard part was hers and all I had to do was "schmooze". It was easy for her to say, she'd been to
hundreds of these. This was my first. Thank God Kiera was with me. I felt sorry for her as she pulled me by my
hand from the back seat; I'd probably wind up cutting off the circulation to her hand before the evening was
through.
Everything felt surreal as I walked into the foyer of the hotel. There in front of the doors to the reception room
stood a giant placard bearing my name.
BlackPawn Proudly Presents New York Times Bestselling Author Richard Castle
Bestselling author, it was still hard to get my head around that. How could I be a bestselling author before the
book launch? Isn't that what this party was all about, to premier my book to the public? It seemed a little 'cart
before the horse to me', but this was a different world from what I was used to. Looking at the placard, I still
didn't care for the cover art they'd chosen for the book, a lone woman holding a gun in silhouette against the
New York City skyline, it didn't do anything for me but supposedly they had 'people' who researched that kind
of stuff. I did manage to keep control of the books title, it was one of the few things I insisted on before I signed
their contract.
"Final Justice"
For me, it stood for the justice that Kate had achieved for her mother and the final justice that I was able to
achieve for her by telling her story. I had a lot of help along the way. I learned about the dark days after her
mother's death from her friend Madison, and her ex training officer Mike Royce was more than eager to open
up to me about her time as a rookie officer. I think he loved being able to mold her, to try to make her into his
ideal woman more than he actually loved her. The same went for all the men in her life. They loved the woman
she presented to the world but none of them ever truly loved her. Once they caught a glimpse of her frailty and
emotional baggage she carried they quietly slipped away. There had been one man who could have saved her,
he hadn't been on the list I had. He was a surgeon who had wanted to love her, baggage and all, but in the end
he loved his work more and he quietly slipped away to save people in Africa. The man was a fool. He couldn't even
save the one person who needed him the most.
All the men in her life had failed her, including her father. He never recovered from his wife's death and drank
himself into an early grave. She had lost her mother in one swift act of violence and her father to the slow
decrepitude of alcoholism. I wondered which death hurt her more.
A lot of the people I'd met from her life would be in that room tonight. I'd become friends with most of them,
especially the ones closest to her. None were closer than her partner, Javier Esposito, and her best friend
and medical examiner Lanie Parish. I can honestly say, without them this book would never have come to
fruition. Javier carried her heart and Lanie carried her soul, and it was their intimate knowledge of her that
brought her to life for me, and for my readers. The depth of her strength and her heart amazed me. Justice
for the victims is what drove her life and made her a damn good Detective.
I wish I could say that I was the one who had found justice for Kate, but fate stepped in to claim that honor.
It was a misfiled slip of paper that Lanie found in a toxicology report that reopened the investigation into her
death. The paper was a report on the finding of blood samples collected from the hangar where their bodies
were discovered. It detailed five distinct donors. Five! There had been others in the hanger that night. This
evidence contradicted the Police Commissioners official report of the crime scene. Lanie hid the original and
sent multiple copies to the FBI and the Justice Department. Within days the Commissioner was arrested for
obstruction of justice. He was the last man standing after O'Brien's arrest and there was no one left to save
him. He quickly confessed to working for the Senator and to covering up what happened in the hangar. He
told investigators that O'Brien had ordered her death and that Kate had been shot and killed in an ambush.
He also said that Captain Montgomery had tried to save her but was killed in the ensuing gun battle. It was
little comfort now, but at least there had been someone in her life willing to stand with her.
"Rick! There you are. How long have you been standing out here?"
Paula's head was sticking out from between the doors and her body soon followed. She grabbed my free hand
and pulled me towards the doors. "You can't keep your public waiting."
Oh crap, I still wasn't ready for this. Kiera was pulled inside with me by the death grip I had on her hand
…..
Once I got through the photo Op's and the 'meet and greets' with a pretentious literary critic from the New York
Times, the uptight editors of the New Yorker, they were going to publish excerpts from my book in their magazine,
and the diminutive rep from The Letterman Show that reminded me of a Chihuahua on meth, Paula said it was
time for a break and that I could mingle for a while. Thank God!
I was surprised at the number of Kate's friend's, co-workers and ex-boyfriends that had come to the book launch.
Half the 12th precinct seemed to be in attendance and they couldn't praise me enough for honoring one of their
own. I ran into Mike Royce and listened as he praised himself more than Kate. I just shook his hand politely,
thanked him for coming and then excused myself. I finally tracked down Kiera and saw that she was talking to Lanie
and Esposito. And standing with them was the last person I expected to see here. Dr. Davidson was with them.
I thought he was in Africa. That's where he was when I conducted a phone interview with him. I had never met him
in person, I'd only seen him in some of Kate's photo's that Lanie had kept. He was a lot bigger than I could tell from
the photographs and I felt a little intimidated by him, especially after the less than flattering picture I painted of him
in my book. It was too late to try and hide, Esposito had seen me.
"Yo, Castle! Where have you been? We've been here for like an hour and we haven't even gotten to see the guest of honor yet."
"Kiera probably told you I was hiding, didn't she?"
Everyone but Kiera laughed. She just playfully swatted my arm. "No I didn't, I told them you were working."
I felt it I'd best break the ice with the doctor before the conversation paused and we both just stood and stared at one another.
I held out my hand. "You must be Dr. Davidson, nice to finally meet you."
He shook my hand and I could gauge by his grip that he wasn't angry with me. "Nice to meet you too. Congratulations
on the success of your book."
"I just told her story, Kate's the one who deserves all the credit; it was her life and her sacrifice after all."
"Yeah, but I believe if her story had been told by anyone else but you it wouldn't have been the same."
"Why do you say that?"
"Because you're in love with her."
"What?" My face began to burn. What did he just say? That was impossible! How could I be in love with her and how
could he dare say something like that in front of my wife. I thought about giving an indignant reply to his remark but
I was too shocked by what Esposito said next.
"Seriously bro, the man's right. You are so in love with her."
I could see Lanie's eyebrows arch as she nodded her head in agreement.
"Wha…I…how could you possibly think…"
Kiera's laugh cut short my feeble attempt at denial. "Oh honey…don't be embarrassed, I've known for years."
How was it that I was the only one here who didn't know and why did it take me until now to realize that what I'd
written wasn't a true crime novel, but rather a 579 page love letter to a woman who needed to be loved.
I was in love with another woman. I don't know when it happened…
NEXT: "The Grifter"
