THREE
"Kate. Kate wake up."
Kate awoke to the feeling of someone shaking her shoulder. She gasped, sat up and groaned immediately. God, her neck; what was wrong with her neck? Oh, right, she'd slept curled up in a ball with no pillow; that would do it. Blinking her eyes, the detective gazed up at the red-head. "Wha…'lexis…what timsit?" she mumbled out through a yawn.
"Eight thirty. Why aren't you in the guest room?"
"I..." Kate hesitated as she gazed around the room and slowly remembered that she had curled up on Rick's bed after her breakdown not quite five hours earlier. Considering the real answer of "because I already miss your father so much my soul hurts" was not one she wished to reveal in that moment, she merely ignored the question and changed the subject. "Just let me get ready and then we'll go back to the bank. Okay?"
Alexis stared at her, her ice blue eyes reflection exhaustion as well as devastation. "I turned on the news. The local reporter said that no survivors were expected."
Kate could not say she disagreed with the assessment, but for the young girl's sake she decided to soften the blow. "At this stage of an event like this the press is always reporting things that aren't true. It's not intention—at least, I hope not—but there's just so much misinformation. We—the police—don't give statements in ongoing situations, unless they're of a public-safety nature. I'm sure even if the rescue crew was certain they wouldn't find survivors, they wouldn't say it at this juncture; it's too soon."
"But…" Alexis began hesitantly, her brain clearly working through Kate's information. "If they did find someone alive, wouldn't the announce it to…boost moral or something?"
The detective pressed her lips together. Well, the girl got her there; that is probably what would happen—assuming they did find someone alive, which was a large assumption. "Maybe," she continued, "but you saw that rubble pile, Alexis; you can't just move it—literally—overnight. We'll know more once we get to the scene, okay?"
Alexis nodded, Kate stroked a hand down her arm, and then she disappeared up the stairs to retrieve her bag from the guest room and change into clothing more suitable than yoga pants and an old t-shirt.
"God, it looks worse in the daylight." Alexis commented as they approached the scene.
Despite her badge and flashing lights, Kate had not been able to get her cruiser as close to the scene as she had been the night before. The NYPD had several surrounding blocks cordoned off in order to get heavy equipment vehicles in and out to begin hauling away debris. They were forced to park on a side street almost four blocks away and hoof it through the chilled morning air. As they rounded a corner and the scene came into view, it was certainly a punch to the gut. Alexis's assessment was right; it did look worse in the daylight.
Now that the air wasn't hazy with the sediment of crumbling concrete, the tower of decimation was plain. Of course, the crews shifting the rubble to uncover what lie beneath as quickly as possible did exacerbate the situation, but the view was certainly shocking. In addition to the building housing the bank, the one beside had mostly collapsed as well, which wasn't surprising giving the volume of explosives that were used in the blast.
The closer they got, Kate directed Alexis to go behind the barriers while she used her badge to sneak through and find the rescue crew's commanding officer. After briefly explaining who she was and why she was so vested in the bank hostage situation, the CO, whose name was Capers, took her over to their command center tent and explained their rescue operation.
"Based on what was observed yesterday," he said, gesturing towards a blueprint of the bank schematics on a table in front of them, "we believe all the hostages were taken into the back of the building, where the only rooms were a male and female restroom and the safety deposit box vault. Operating under the assumption that the blast was not meant to level the building, we theorized that the robbers may have secured the hostages inside the safety deposit box vault to either keep them contained, or protect them from what was intended to be a smaller blast that would open the main vault with the money."
"So you're focusing your efforts on the rear of the building, over the safety deposit box vault?" Kate guessed.
Capers confirmed with a nod. "We're making progress, but it's been slow so far. We can't just dig in one area because we need to secure what remains of the walls to keep our men safe and prevent cave ins. The prospects don't look good, either," he said, gesturing towards the blueprints once more. "If the door to the safety deposit box vault was left open, the blast could have reverberated inside that tight space and caused untold damage. If the door was closed, people inside might have been protected from the blast, but they would have also had a limited amount of air."
Capers shook his head. "Even if that was the 'best case scenario' we're talking about what? Twenty hostages in this space. We had a guy run the numbers on the cubic feet of oxygen inside and they only would have had a few hours of air."
Kate nodded. Surprisingly, his words did not affect her. Perhaps, by that point, she was simply too numb. Or he was telling her something her brain had simply already accepted. "So, what you're saying is that this is a recovery operation, not a rescue."
Capers looked at her solemnly. "It has been from the start."
"It's okay—you can tell me the truth; I can take it," Alexis said as Kate approached, sidling her way through the barriers. Evidently the younger girl had picked up on the detective's lackluster expression.
"They're focusing their search on the area where the safety deposit box vault was; it's their best guess as to where everyone might be."
Alexis nodded as she processed the information. "Would the vault be bomb proof?"
Kate shook her head. "They don't know, but even if it was…"
"Oxygen." Alexis concluded. Kate offered a small smile; she really was her father's daughter. "How long has it been since the bomb went off?"
"Ah, twenty…" Kate pulled out her phone to check the time, suddenly feeling in a haze. It really was as though the days weren't progressing forward and they were just stuck. "Twenty-three hours I think."
"Almost a day." The younger girl said softly, turning her eyes towards the building, which could not be clearly scene from their vantage point due to the dump trucks and equipment. Turning back to Kate she asked, "Do you think they're alive in there?"
Silently, Kate shook her head. She didn't want them to be dead—god, she didn't want it, but she had to be realistic and the odds were simply too stacked against them. Assuming the blast had not killed them instantly, which given the street-level devastation was quite an assumption, their oxygen would have long run out by that point. Even if by some twist of fate they had managed to obtain an air supply they were going on a day without water and the rescue crews had not yet reached the vault area. It could be hours until they did. Survival simply wasn't feasible.
"Do you want me to take you back home?" she offered as the girl's chin dropped to her chest.
"No, I want to stay. I want to stay until they bring them out."
Kate nodded and squeezed the girl's elbow. "Okay. I'm just going to call and check in with my team and maybe find us something to eat?" She offered. Alexis nodded, though continued to stare at her feet. With a heavy heart, Kate walked away to find a quiet place to call her colleagues, trying not to think about what lie beneath the battered concrete.
"I can't stop thinking about it—all the 'what if's."
Kate looked over at the younger girl, curious. For the better part of an hour they'd stood together on the sidewalk in silence. At first they were eating the bagels and cream cheese Kate purchased for them, but then they were just watching. Watching and waiting.
"What if Gram had waited until today to go for her loan? What if she'd used a different bank? That wasn't dad's usual bank. If she'd used his bank or a different branch of this bank then-"
"Alexis." Kate cut off the girl's increasingly frantic speech pattern by placing a hand in the center of her back. With red-rimmed eyes, the girl looked at her. "You can't—you can't do that; you'll drive yourself crazy." Kate would know considering she had mentally been doing the same.
What if she had told Castle that she loved him? What if she'd just grabbed him and kissed him one of the dozens of times she'd wanted to? If they had the prior few months together as a real couple, would that have made losing him any easier?
At least she could be satisfied with knowing that the answer to the last question was probably no, but still, she wondered.
Now slightly tearful, Alexis looked at her, imploringly. "But if they had just-"
"I know," Kate said calmly. "I know, Alexis; I understand. I know how hard it is to what to find logic and reason in a situation, but sometimes there just isn't any and you have to try and let it go. The man responsible for this is in custody, he will be prosecuted. Your father and grandmother will have justice and that is, truly, the best you can hope for."
Perhaps that was the key difference that would prevent Alexis from turning into her, a fractured woman ruled by her past unable to have a future due to scars and old wounds. Her mother's murder had always been a giant question mark in her life. She never had the satisfaction of justice and she'd never been able to move on because of it. Alexis would get that closure, hard as it was, and Kate could only pray it saved her from a fate of loneliness.
"Are those…are those the search dogs?" Alexis asked when a bout of riotous barking hit their ears. They had been standing on the sidewalk for four hours, waiting with no avail. The activity around the site had continued at a persistent hum, but nothing had dramatized until a minute earlier when the barking began.
Kate craned her neck, but she still could not see past the heavy equipment. "Sounds like they could be."
"So what does all that barking mean?"
The detective swallowed, steeling herself to answer. "If those are the cadaver dogs it probably means they found them."
Alexis breathed in sharply and stood up on her toes to try and see over the equipment, but of course she could see no more than Kate. She moved down the row of barriers, hunched down and looked from a different angle, but found nothing so she returned to the detective's side. "Will we be able to see them when they come out?"
Kate shook her head. "No, no; they'll shield them from the crowd with sheets or bags."
"What about in the morgue? Families go there to identify bodies, right?"
"That depends on...it depends." She didn't want to go into graphic detail for the girl, but it really did depend on the situation. If, theoretically, Castle and his mother were sealed up tightly in the safety deposit box vault and had died of asphyxiation, then Alexis would be able to see them. They would not be outwardly harmed and would look largely similar to how they had while they were alive.
If, however, they had been damaged by either the blast or the debris from the falling building, the odds of being able to see them decreased rapidly. If bodies were damaged—particularly if the faces were damaged—family members were often kept away to avoid traumatization. Though Kate had seen her fair share of bodies in gruesome conditions, she was not sure even she would look upon Castle's blast-riddled face and she certainly would not allow Alexis to do so.
As though the girl had heard her internal monologue, Alexis said defiantly, "I want to see them."
"No, you don't."
"Yes I do."
"No, you don't." Kate repeated more firmly. When the girl huffed out a breath, Kate turned towards the wreckage and sighed. "Take it from someone who has seen their parent dead—you can't un-ring that bell, Alexis." If, given the opportunity, would Kate go back in time and refuse to see the images of her mother's bloodied body in that alleyway? Probably not, but as it was a picture that haunted her nearly every day, she would do her damnedest to prevent the same fate from tainting someone as innocent as Alexis.
The younger girl's face flushed. "I-I'm sorry Kate."
The detective offered a reassuring smile. "It's okay. You never know—maybe we can see them." But would she really want that as their fate? To know that they had survived the bombing only to die because rescue crews could not reach them quick enough? True, it wasn't the crew's fault—they had been moving as fast as they could to move the tonnage of the fallen building, but such knowledge would break her heart all over again.
"Hey! Hey! Over here!"
Kate's attention was pulled back to the scene when frantic shouts reached her ears.
"Get a medic! We got someone alive in here!"