A/N - thank you for all the alerts and patience. I started this with an idea, scrapped and had to rethink. So, I hope I do the second round of it justice. Here is the second chapter of this one. I have tried to proofread it, but that seems to never work exactly as planned. Please R&R.

Chapter 2 – Nothing Funny

Castle followed Beckett through the double doors and found Lanie in her trademark scrubs but covered head to toe in protective gear. Beckett glanced at Castle and put her arm out in a quick attempt to stop him. She had seen Lanie dress like this before and the extra gear was never a good sign. "Drastic measures today?"

Lanie glanced over as Beckett handed Castle a gown and gloves. "Just a precaution. Seems our John Doe here had been dead for an hour or so before he came flying out the window."

Castle looked at the man's arm. "Those are the pin pricks Alexis was talking about."

Lanie glanced at Castle in surprise and then at Beckett. Coming around the body, she lifted the man's arm up carefully and pointed. "They aren't your normal puncture marks; they don't appear to be needles. They don't match up to any veins. There are no other signs of trauma on the body, but when we tried to sample his blood, it came out like this." Lanie held up a vial of the vic's blood.

"It looks like red cottage cheese," Beckett sneered as she handed the vial back to her friend. "What would do that?"

"Yummy, what does the rest of the insides look like?" Castle grimaced at the thought.

"We're running the tox on the sample. We'll hopefully have an answer back soon, but all the internal organs look relatively normal. He did show signs of respiratory failure." Lanie put up her hands in the universal 'I don't know' signal and looked back at the body. "Someone wanted you to think the fall killed him by his obvious Peter Pan out the window, but this is definitely not because of that."

"What then are we looking for?" Beckett asked as she moved the arm in question back in place. "Feels stiff, more than our normal vics."

"I honestly have no clue without any tox screen, but I have this sneaking suspicion that it's going to come back clean as well."

Castle typed something in on his phone as Lanie and Beckett went over some other details of his description to hopefully track the man's family down. "Did you know that thrombosis usually ends in stroke? How can that be and not find anything wrong with the victim?" Castle typed something else in the phone and turned his nose up, not being able to come up with any connections.

Castle continued reading from his phone as the two made their way back up to the precinct floor. Looking around, Beckett saw Esposito. "Hey, when the uniforms canvassed the building last night, did they find anything else? Anything out of the ordinary?"

"No, but the report is on your desk. What's the vic's cause of death?"

Beckett waited until Ryan made it across the room and continued spying on Castle in the background still reading to himself and wincing at some of the details. "We're not sure. The blood is coagulated but there are no other abnormalities except for a bunch of broken bones."

Ryan interjected, "Well, we ran our vic's prints through the database and got a hit. Jacob Harper was convicted of assault back in 2006 for a bar room argument over a girlfriend at the time, but nothing since. He was working at the Port of New York loading and unloading heavy crates. Never married with no kids on file. He's close to perfect."

"And the building owner?"

Esposito shook his head, "Nothing solid. The building has been under renovation on the inside for a few months. They have sold a few of the loft areas, but not all of them. This one hadn't been finished out, so the reason for the plain look. But the officers did find these in the construction dumpster outside." He handed a picture to Beckett as Castle leaned over her shoulder to look.

Beckett looked through the series of pictures of evidence already bagged. "Everything's still there from what we could make of it. There was still cash in the wallet. The last number dialed was a couple of days ago. CSU is running down any other details on the phone."

Castle eyed the list of the cards that had been removed from the wallet for filing. "What is SHHS?" He asked as he looked at the card that had initials on it.

"Looked like he was writing himself a reminder," Ryan interjected. "It's on the back of a card for a cleaners. We already contacted the cleaners. The owners have no idea what the letters mean, and the vic hasn't had anything cleaned there in a couple of weeks."

She could still feel him behind her. Turning back over her shoulder, she stared at Castle. He was breathing in her ear. There was no way he was not doing that on purpose, she thought. "What is this?" She asked about the picture in the folder.

"CSU blacklighted and then dusted the floor. There was a marked trail part way to the stairs, but since it wasn't something with color, we didn't catch it last night. They're not sure on the substance yet. They're running tests on what the substance is. We'll get it back hopefully this afternoon."

Castle stood up. "So we need to head down to the docks, maybe check out some co-workers."

Beckett turned and looked at Esposito, "Work up some financials for our vic. He's turning out too squeaky clean for my taste. I also want to get a look into his apartment, so work with the apartment manager."

The four stared at the white board with the picture of the vic and a blank space all around the board. The only things anyone had right now were a couple of puncture marks.

Feeling her phone vibrate, she stopped writing and flipped it open. "Beckett." The guys started pulling up information about the docks and where Jacob lived to start running down more details. Following her to another desk, Castle looked over her shoulder and rolled his eyes at the picture in front of them.

"Ryan, get this rag on the line. I want to have a word with them," Beckett barked as she felt Castle tense up behind her.

"Castle," she paused as he had already started down the hall.

Alexis started out of the school building as quickly as she had arrived. She wasn't the one involved with the murder; it was her father. But the questions kept coming. She picked up her pace as others started looking and pointing at her. After the first hour of questions and getting nothing accomplished at school, she was done. Getting homework assignments for the next day, she walked out, telling the office to call her father if they had a problem.

"Nikki Heat Creator and Daughter Find Own Murder Mystery" the headline read. Alexis knew that Kate had tried to shield her from any of the pictures, but some of the photos were taken even before Beckett arrived. Alexis had explained to everyone that she knew nothing and didn't want to talk about it. Talking about it made her see it again and again.

"Lex?" Alexis turned around and saw her father pull up beside her in the street and pop the lock on the car. She quickly got in the front seat and took a deep sigh. "I guess I don't need to ask how school went today."

She sat silent for a few minutes and then stared out the window. "The kids were just horrible, asking if I touched the body and what it smelled like and if you were going to use it in a book, if your character would have a daughter visiting that witnesses a murder."

Castle swallowed and held his daughter's hand. He knew his mother would be calling from the other coast soon enough. She would see the picture and be on the next plane home from her latest acting endeavor. "So what did you do?"

"I got my assignments and left. I'm not getting anything accomplished there. Besides, the more the kids asked questions, the more I couldn't put it out of my mind. Last night it was so fresh it didn't seem to bother me, almost like a shock, but it's creepy the way the kids talked about it."

Castle closed his eyes at the red light and pursed his lips together. He and Beckett both had tried to hide this from her, keep her out of the limelight in their investigations, but bodies typically didn't fall on top of them. "You want me to take you home?"

Alexis looked over at her dad and then thought about it. "Could I go with you? I know you're going to the precinct and if you have to leave with Beckett, I'll stay there. It just seems if this is all that's going to race through my head all day, I might as well be somewhere I can talk about it."

Castle made a quick right turn and headed back to the precinct to catch up with the others on the trail.

The two walked through the elevator just as Ryan passed by. "You ok kid?" he asked as he put an arm around her. Alexis looked up at him and smiled weakly.

"Yeah, I just didn't want to be interrogated at school, so I brought my assignments home for the next couple of days. Do you mind if I'm here?"

Castle looked up at Beckett, who now leaned against the desk that Alexis sat down at. Alexis looked at the nameplate that was Ryan's. "Sorry."

"No problem; we won't be working too much desk today. Boss?"

Beckett looked at Alexis and then at Castle. "Yeah, make yourself at home. Let us know if you need anything." Alexis thanked her and eyed the others as they continued to work on possible ideas for the case.

TBC

A/N - Things will start to flesh out soon enough.