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Chapter 2

The car drive to the precinct was a quiet one. Even though Beckett had tried to comfort Castle a little, he still had the boy and his close age to Alexis in mind and so he stared texting his daughter. Beckett didn't interrupt him she knew he needed to know that his little girl was alright.

His daughter had been the first thing to make her see the real Richard Castle and not the playboy writer that signed chests at book openings like he had done the first time she'd met him. A smile crossed her face when she thought about the young woman that was in a way so different from her father and still so like him. Alexis cared so much for her family, for everyone she loved actually. Kate remembered the hostage situation in the bank quite a few while ago. Alexis had been so concerned, had even shouted at the Detective. She had never seen her like this but considering that her family had been in the bank, it wasn't surprising. Kate herself had been a wreck that day. She had been very, very close to telling Castle everything.

The look in his eyes after they had found the hostages after the explosion was so full of relief and love and she had seen her own eyes reflect in his with the same expression. She sometimes wondered what would have happened, had Martha not interrupted the moment.

And the situation with the tiger? Not in any way less dangerous. But at least they went through that together, her and Castle, and somehow she had felt like she had just caught a glimpse at their possible future.

Beckett had felt so bad afterwards, knowing that once again she had put a child's father into grave danger. Of course she could never have known that they would get drugged while trying to solve the case and get trapped in a basement with a tiger on the other side of the wall but it didn't change the fact that she put Castle in danger with every new case. They never knew how dangerous it could get. They could solve a crime in just a few days, maybe it took them much longer and maybe they could never really solve it just like her mother's murder or her own shooting…

She pulled up by the 12th now and parked her car. Castle looked up from his phone when the motion of the car stopped and turned his head towards her. He smiled apologetically for being preoccupied by his phone but with a smile and a wave of her hand she signalled him that it was okay. They didn't need words for this; they completely understood each other without them.

They both got out of the car, entered the building together, passed security and stepped into the elevator where they already found Captain Gates inside.

"Good morning, Sir" the two of them greeted in unison while Captain Gates nodded her head.

"Any information on the body yet?" she asked.

Beckett shook her head. "Ryan and Esposito are still canvassing the area, Castle and I were just on our way to go look through missing persons."

"Good, keep me updated," the Captain said before the elevator came to a halt on the fourth floor and the three got out.

It was almost noon when Ryan and Esposito returned to the precinct where Castle and Beckett had feverishly been trying to find anything on the victim. They had just extended the search on missing persons to six years because nothing had popped up before.

"Anything?" Beckett asked Esposito with a hopeful look on her face but he just shook his head. "Nothing useful. It's not really an area with many street kids hanging around and the neighbours didn't notice anything."

"Yeah, it really isn't an area for a those kids to hang around…" Beckett thought aloud and with a pensive look on her face. Castle looked at her.

"You got any ideas?" he asked but she shook her head no.

"Not yet."

At that moment her computer gave a signal and the picture of a young boy popped up. "Matthew "Matty" Downing. Born July, 3rd 1996, went missing six years ago." Ryan read out loud what everyone could see on the screen.

"Downing, Downing…," Esposito heard Castle murmur beside him.

"Yo bro, you know him?" he asked and released Castle from his mantra.

"Yeah…I think so, at least the name sounds somewhat familiar. But I can't place it right now …," he said and once more sank back into thoughts while Beckett spoke of the old case.

"I remember the case. It was big in the news. Some wealthy kid went missing in Central Park in bright daylight. The family never got a ransom call or anything. It became a cold case after about a year and the police assumed the boy was dead." The two other detectives looked at Beckett and nodded. They remembered it as well.

All of them jumped as Castle suddenly shouted: "HA! Frederick Downing, of Downing Corporation."

Beckett – the first one to recover – nodded, "Yeah, that's the father. Why?"

"I know him. Or well, I've met him at one of Alexis's schools parent's nights. Matty is not their only kid. They have an older daughter, Nicole. She and Alexis are the same age," he explained while Ryan checked in the report what relatives had been listed.

The strange feeling Castle had had this morning when they had found the boy just got a little worse. Now the boy was not just close to his daughter's age, he knew the family, it was more personal now. Sure, he didn't know the Downing's very well but he had met them after their son had gone missing. It broke them.

"Carrie and Frederick got a divorce I think," he now said. He remembered only seeing one of them at every parent's night, two years after Matty's disappearing.

Ryan nodded at that point. He had his eyes still fixed on the screen while he said: "Carrie has custody, Nicole lives with her in Manhattan. Mr. Downing is still living at their old place on the Upper West Side." They all exchanged a quick look, all asking themselves whether it was a coincidence that they found Matty pretty much just around the corner or if he had been on his way to see his father.

"Okay, come on Castle, let's go see Mr. Downing," Beckett spoke while grabbing her coat and walking towards the elevator. She quickly turned around to wait for Castle and gave the boys some instruction.

"You guys check out the old case, see if you can find anything that could help us!"

As soon as they were in the elevator, Beckett's phone buzzed. She identified the caller as her friend down at the morgue and took the call.

"Hey Lanie, got anything?" she asked.

"Yeah. Can you come by? There are a few things I'd like you to see," Lanie answered and Kate nodded, forgetting for a moment that Lanie could not see her.

"Sure, we're on our way," she then said and hung up.

"The morgue, and then ," she stated, still looking at her iPhone.

"You mind if we get something to eat as well? We haven't had our lunch yet…" Castle reminded her and she smiled.

A few minutes later Beckett parked her service car outside the morgue and she and Castle went inside to find Lanie waiting for them.

"Hungry?" the writer asked her and handed her a bag with a huge sandwich in it.

"You read my mind, Richard Castle, you read my mind. Or my stomach for that matter." She smiled and thankfully took the bag.

"Okay, first work, then eating," the ME claimed, put the bag aside and drew back the white sheet a little that covered Matthew Downing's body from head to toe.

"First things first, before you ask. I narrowed TOD down to sometime between 11pm and 1am last night. COD is as I predicted blunt force trauma to the head with a sharp edged weapon of some kind. I found traces of rust and iron in the wound."

"And the bruises?"

"I'm coming to those. Again, as I said, they are strangulation marks. Here, you see the different spots? They're from the person's hand and those fine lines indicate that he was wearing gloves," she explained, pointing with her finger at the victim's neck.

"Okay but that's all stuff you could have told me on the phone," Kate stated impatiently.

"Now just let me finish, girl… Here comes the thing. The marks are definitely pre-mortem and stating from coloration I'd say they pretty much fit the timeline of his death. Now look at this," she said and turned to the X-Rays. "See that?" she asked, pointing at the skull where the deep fracture from the deadly blow could still be made out although all of it looked pretty much shattered. But Castle and Beckett nodded in unison, seeing where their friend pointed at.

"Here, the angle clearly shows that whoever killed him was standing behind him. He had to have enough force to do this so he was probably standing above him as well…"

"He?" Castle interrupted her, "could it not have been a she as well?"

"The killer, Castle. It's a habit to say he so yes, it could also have been a girl if she was strong enough. What I'm trying to tell you is…"

Castle interrupted her again: "That if the strangulation marks fit into our timeline of Matthews death…"

Kate caught up with his chain of thought and continued: "And he was killed from behind…"

"And the marks clearly show he was strangled from the front…"

"He might have been attacked by more than just one guy," Beckett finished all the while looking at Castle who, very intensely, looked right back at her.

When she turned around to Lanie again, her friend was looking at her with a smirk on her face and a raised eyebrow. Kate blushed slightly. "Thanks Lanie," she said and was about to turn around and leave when the ME once again called her back.

"Not so fast, Detective Beckett. I have one more thing to show you and you are not going to like it…," she spoke and put on the other X-Rays. What Castle and Beckett saw on those pictures made both feel sick. The boy's bones had been broken several times, there was almost none that didn't have a mark on it and those breaks were not from the beating he had before his death, those breaks were years old.

Matty Downing had been abused.