Chapter 2
Since Richard Castle was pronounced dead at the scene of the shooting, as per his wishes his corpse was delivered to the Gramercy Park Memorial Chapel on 2nd Avenue. The EMT backed the ambulance to the loading dock door and they both moved to the back of the rigs rear doors. John releases the stretcher as they both pull it out of the rig.
Wheeling him up the ramp to the funeral home, they entered the exam room.
"Ok, John on the count of three let's transfer him…One…Two…Three." Walter said as both men heaved hard to place his favorite author on the slab.
Walter paused after the effort in paying thanks to a great writer. The moment was soon over. They collected the gurney and departed.
/
The mortician walked back into the exam room. Looking at the body bag, he wants to put his embalming duties off until the morning. He decides against it. Unzipping the bag from the head down he sees Rick's eyes were still open. He places his fingers on his eyelids and caresses them closed.
Now with the body bag completely opened, since he is the only one there he slides the top half of Castles body over from the exam table to the embalming table. Walking over to his feet he then slides them over too. The official cause of death was gunshot wounds to the back. So just to examine the wounds before he starts the embalming procedure he rolls Castle towards him. As he places his hands on him he notices two things.
Blood has now been seeping out of the bullet wounds. This is not unusual since he was hit in a major organ. Noting the wound location he rolls him back onto the table. What he hears next is what sounds like a very low sounding groan.
Reaching for his throat, he finds a very faint pulse, almost nonexistent. Now he does not know what to do. Does he call the hospital or the cops? Not knowing what to do he looks back at Castle's face. He sees that his eyes are now slightly open again. Stepping back petrified, he is now scared shitless. What he hears now is a very low whisper from the man's mouth.
Now getting closer placing his ear next to Rick's mouth he hears the following statement from him
"ple..sss ca...ll 2125486501 te...ll t...hem to com...e here ri...ght away." Rick managed to say before the effort was too much.
The mortician rushes over to the phone and makes the call. He walks back over to Rick not knowing how to help him and just stares at him. Less than 10 minutes later a black sprinter van arrives at the funeral home. Tracing the same path that the ambulance took it's now backed up to the loading dock.
The two men who are with the sprinter rush up to the loading dock. They burst through the doors. Seeing Castle lying on the table they immediately take up a position near him and assess the situation. The lead man dressed in commando fatigues barks out a command on the radio and within seconds the room had 4 more visitors. The mortician is now beyond scared. The new visitors were all armed with handguns.
/
Castle's body is wrapped in a plain white sheet as he is transferred to the sprinter van. As the lead commando is just about ready to leave he turns to the mortician then looks him squarely in the eyes.
"We were never here and neither was Mr. Castle. I am sure you will do the right thing and find me a cadaver that closely matches Mr. Castle." The lead man said.
The Mortician nodded as the commando now reaches behind to his shoulder pouch and pulls out two plain brown paper envelopes. He placed them into the terrified man's hands.
"This is for me?" the mortician asked with a puzzled look on his face.
"Yes, this will guarantee your silence about what happened here today and find a replacement body." The man said as he quickly followed his comrades out the door.
The mortician waits a few moments in the stillness of the room. Once he was sure that there would be no more unexpected visitors he took time to sigh with relief. He was not dead at least not yet. He looks into the envelopes and finds cash. There was lots of cash.
He empties both envelopes on the table which just had the Author occupying it. He meticulously counts a total of two thousand five hundred 100 dollar bills. He almost fell over. He was speechless at his new found wealth. He did not see anything. Though, the warning of needing a body was now front in center in his mind.
He thought then he remembered the corpse of a homeless man brought in two hours earlier. He did have a sort of familial passing to the author. He thought his makeup person could work with that.
\
"Rescue One this is Leader what is the status of our guest?" The leader asked into this military style handset.
"Leader this is Rescue One. The patient is fading fast. We have to stop and operate we can not continue to base" The lead medic said.
"Rescue One acknowledge we have you on tracker. Do you need any assistance?" The Leader asked.
"Leader, Rescue One negative we will resume after operation. Wish us luck Leader." The lead medic said as he scrubbed up in the portable ER.
\
The two ex-military medics were working on Rick.
Frank was monitoring the vitals as the other was continuing the operation to find the bullets lodged in near his kidney.
"Keith he is fading you need to hurry," Frank said after relaying the information he hung another bag of plasma.
He did a quick inventory there were only 2 bags left.
Keith redoubled his effort and was rewarded in finding the first bullet lodged in his kidney. Removing that round the repair was minor, but the other bullet was becoming a pain. Keith finally located it by a section of the large intestines. He removed it then irrigated and closed that wound too. It was not a too bad of surgery. It was far removed from the meat grinders he faced in the Army.
"Keith you did it vitals are improving" Frank congratulated his partner.
"Ok let's work on that shoulder wound too and then call Leader we are heading to base." Keith said.
Soon the much improved Rick was speeding to base where the Leader waited impatiently.
/
Kate looks out through the bars from the holding cell. She is trying to recreate the events that happened today in her head. Breaking through the door she only saw what she thought was Tyson holding a gun to Ryan's head. Being that she thought his life was in immediate danger she opened fire. Since there was a threat for loss of life she never identified herself as a cop and just opened up.
She thinks to herself "this is where I went wrong."
She was startled from her thoughts when Javi called her name.
"Javi…Wha…What do you need?" she asked.
"Kate, I need to know if you feel up to have a couple of visitors?" he asked
"Javi, who would be coming here to visit? There is no one left who would want to see me." Kate said morosely.
"Well, they insisted but I am not too sure if you want to see them." Javi warned.
"They insisted? Come on Javi who is here?" Kate asked.
Javi grimaced for a moment.
"Chica, it is Martha and Little Castle I'm so sorry but they are insisting on seeing you." Javi said hanging his head.
"No Javi, No…there is no way that they are going to come back here. They will rip me apart right through these damn bars, Don't even..." Kate cried out.
He cuts her off mid-sentence.
"Chica calm down…I really don't think that's why they are here." He implored.
"Why did you say that, Javi? Do you think that seeing me is a good idea?" Kate honestly asked.
"Kate, they are hurting just like you. It would not hurt either of you. Just do the right thing here." Javi coaxed.
Kate took a deep breath and really listened to Javi's words. They were hurting so it was her obligation to comfort his loved ones.
"Ok Javi, go ahead and bring them in…" Kate said girding for the onslaught which she deserved.
Javi turns then opens the outer door where Martha and Alexis are waiting. He escorts them to Kate's cell. Martha is almost in tears when she sees Kate there in the cell, Alexis, on the other hand, is still looking downward at the floor. Kate looks up to see Martha almost in tears.
"I can't bear to do this Katherine. It hurts me to see you in there. I do need to ask you. Why did you need to do what you did?" Martha asked between tears.
Alexis is not so shy but only asks one question.
"Why did you shoot my Father?" She bluntly asked.
Kate wants to tell her what happened, but she thinks against it.
"Alexis, Martha I wish I could take back what I did but I can not. I made a very huge mistake in judgment." Kate said crying along with the other two women.
"Yes I'd say so, what were you thinking? Now I will never see him again." Alexis said with a cold fury which is building in her.
Alexis is disgusted with the sight of her and turns to leave Kate speaks but in a very low whisper
"Alexis, I am so sorry." She said.
"Detective, I know you are sorry. How will I know that bring back my Dad?" Alexis asked as she walked away leaving Kate in misery.
Alexis held her Grandmother as they exited the building. They had to plan a funeral in two days.
/
Black Pawn offices were buzzing with the news that Richard Castle has died at the hands of his muse. The general public had already labeled her a murderer. The public wanted to see her fry in the chair. There had been way too many unjustified police shootings in the city recently. Kate was not doing so well in the eye of the public. There were death threats against her. She would soon need to be moved to a more secure facility to make sure she was safe.
There would be about one more day before the Grand Jury had to decide to either indict her or not to investigate the matter at all.