A/N: Oh look! It's working again. Finally I get to upload. Anyway, my darling readers, I'm winding off the story soon – Chp.15 will be the last. I hope you enjoy it while it lasts. Thank you all for sticking with it, and me. : )
Disclaimer: I don't own Castle.
Chapter 12When they entered the loft, she immediately went to freshen up while he went to the kitchen to get some food ready. He noticed in the car that he'd left the recorder on and turned it off just then. He decided to rewind and listen to figure out what had her that angry while he cooked dinner. By the time she came back down, already changed for bed, he was done listening and he was just as angry.
She sat at the kitchen counter as he got both of their plates ready and then sat down besides her. "So I guess I should fill you in" she said.
"No need" Castle replied. She detected a hint of anger in his tone.
"I'm sorry about earlier Rick. I couldn't bring myself to talk." She looked down as she said it.
"What?" he asked. Realizing what he must have sounded like, he hastened to explain. "Don't apologize, Kate. I literally meant that there's no need. My recorder caught everything. I'd left it on" he finished sheepishly.
"Oh!" she said, surprised. "Good. I'd actually rather not re-live it."
"He's definitely our guy. I can just feel it."
"Me too, Rick. But our feelings don't count for anything in court."
She thought she heard him mumble something along the lines of "they do for different scenario", but thought better than to dwell on it.
More clearly he said "We'll get him. Let's not think about it for now though. The guy's are doing their best and so are you. Have dinner in peace then head off to bed. You're tired, we both are."
She nodded and ate the rest of her food hungrily.
They followed their routine again with a quick breakfast and coffees to go. Once they were at the precinct Beckett dumped her jacket on her chair and went straight to the murder board. She needed perspective. He sat on his chair, deciding to give her some space and only joined her about half an hour later when Esposito went to talk to her.
"Hey Beckett! Ryan and I were here till late last night. I know you told us to go home soon but we were too mad to let it go. We thought we'd channel it into the case."
Ryan joined in next to him "And it's a good thing we stuck around. His house was clean and he did look surprised briefly when he first saw us, but seemed prepared enough to face us later. So we thought that maybe the surprise was because we showed up earlier than he anticipated. Not that we showed up at all. He was expecting us to be there."
Esposito picked up "Which means that he probably has another place. We thought it might be an apartment or a storage unit or something."
Ryan continued "But then we called his neighbors and they said that he didn't stay there every night, rather almost every other night. We thought about what the barista had said, that he comes almost every other day and that he hadn't been there in the past two or three days – until today actually. It fits together and so we think it's an apartment. Maybe another small one, but he's definitely living somewhere else when he's not living here."
"So now we're looking into that again, trying to find this other place. He probably has his bike there and possibly the weapons too." Esposito finished.
Castle and Beckett looked like they were watching a tennis match. Their heads were jumping between Esposito and Ryan. 'Is this what they usually see us doing?' Castle wondered.
"Okay, great work guys" Beckett said with pride.
"Just how many coffees have you guys had already?" Castle asked them.
Ryan shrugged and looked at Esposito "Umm. Two, maybe three." Esposito looked at him with a grin and said "Yeah, something like that."
"Uhun."
Beckett divided the work between their team and went over to her desk to start making calls. After a long day's worth of phone calls which included everything ranging from profuse apologies to downright heated arguments, they were still nowhere.
"Thanks" she said as she finally put down her phone. "Any luck, you two?" she asked, looking toward Rysposito.
"Nope" Ryan said. "Nada" Esposito added.
"Ugh!" she growled. "Then that leaves only one option."
Castle raised his brow in question.
Esposito answered "Stakeout." Beckett nodded.
The 9 year old that Castle was, he had to start almost jumping in his seat. She was surprised he wasn't clapping his hands and yelling in excitement. Before he could get any more excited she added "Not us Castle. We stay here and try to make sense of it all. Ryan and Espo figured this whole thing out, so they get the honors."
It was hard for her not to laugh as his face comically deflated and he slumped on his chair, grumbling to himself and then showed Rysposito his tongue. Much to her dismay, they showed him theirs too. She wanted to head-desk herself, instead she gave them an eye-roll.
Taking their cue, Ryan and Esposito headed off. It had taken a whole day of phone calls and it was early evening by the time Castle and Beckett were once more seen to lean against a desk and stare at the murder board. Every now and then Castle would start with a new hypothesis which both of them would eventually shoot down. "Occam's razor Castle" Beckett had said.
After a few minutes she heard him repeatedly mumbling "Occam's razor. Occam's –" Suddenly he gasped and jumped off the table so heavily that it tilted ahead with him, causing her to fall. Before she could fall fully though, he was facing her and had caught her by the waist, helping her stand but holding on to her waist. Her hands were on his chest for support.
"Castle! What the hell?" she shouted.
"Huh. Sorry, got excited." He didn't look sorry at all but let go of her all the same. She missed the warmth around her waist, but this wasn't the time or place, both literally and figuratively. He told her "You're brilliant, you know that?" She couldn't help the pink hues creeping up her cheeks. He said, "Occam's razor basically states that the simplest solution is probably the most correct one. We're supposed to think of the theory that makes the least assumptions. That's where we messed up!"
"What are you talking about Castle?" she looked thoroughly baffled.
"You remember I said that all of this sounded too convoluted."
"Yes, you said it twice" she said as she started nibbling on her lower lip.
"Yup and that's cause it *is* too convoluted. When I write my books and I think that I'm getting too twisty with the plot, I try instead to find a more realistic solution – something that makes more sense – which is hard to do when you're further into the chapters. So I usually backtrack to the previous chapters and just make a small change – I create a lie. Now the problem comes in when the one changed sentence while keeping everything else the same part is hard to keep up with. Then I have the added weight of making sure that my characters don't let something slip to give up that lie until I want them to."
"And what does all of this have to do with our case? Who do you think is lying and why do you think that?" she asked, completely drawn in but needing clarity.
"This has everything to do with our case. Someone's lying and I say that because I think I heard the unintentional slip – by pure chance. You heard it too." he looked at her with a large smile and a twinkle in his eyes.
Finally catching on, with a smile of her own, she said "You'd have missed it if it weren't for the recorder."
He nodded and said "So the liar in our case is – "
"Our suspect - Daniel Smith" she completed.
"What's going on out here? Why are the two of you smiling like idiots?" Gates asked as she came to stand next to them.
"Sir, we uh – Castle had an idea about the case" Beckett said.
"He did, did he? Enlighten the rest of us Mr. Castle. This I'd like to hear." she said crossing her hands.
"Um. Okay, uh, sure." Castle looked confused for just a minute before he broke into story mode again. "We've been going about the whole case wrong. We've based a lot of our assumptions on facts that his brother and his friend told us. But who told them what they know?" he asked.
"Daniel Smith" Beckett replied.
"Right. Let's revise the assumptions from the beginning of his story and reconsider them" Castle said as he started ticking them off on his fingers. "Assumption one: Daniel Smith told Sanders that he had applied for a job on the field but that they were impressed by his scores and decided to put him into their genetics research division."
Beckett said "It seems unlikely that the army – no matter how considerate they could be – would randomly look at his college resume and decide to put him into their labs if he had just been trying to get recruited. He intentionally wanted to join their genetics division."
Castle continued "So the question is *why* did he want to do that? This brings us to assumption number two: Daniel Smith dropped out of a prestigious university where he already had a position in the same field. I bet that he didn't drop out. Either he was kicked out due to some reason or something. I don't know."
"Easy enough to confirm" Gates said. "Make the call detective" she told Beckett.
Beckett quickly made the call to the university and spoke to the Dean. "Yes, very helpful. Thank you" she said as she put down her phone and turned to them. "Daniel was working in the division dealing with certain advanced projects. He thought he was on the verge of a breakthrough but the division as a whole was yielding poor results. This division was being funded by a private company and they pulled away when they didn't get results. The lab was going to be closed and all the research destroyed. The Dean offered another position to Daniel because he was one of their star students but he refused, turned it down. He said that Daniel came to him angrily one day to quit and just upped and left. That's not the best part though. Guess the man and the company he belonged to that pulled the funding."
Castle said "Mr. James Wilkins from Turbofuels." He'd guessed as much when he thought about the recording. Because he couldn't see the exchange between his team and Daniel Smith, he could be unbiased and pick up the subtleties of the recording. He used his powers of observation for what they were worth. He explained to Gates "When Beckett asked Daniel about Wilkins and White, he replied a smidge too quickly and with a hint of nervousness – a slight quaver in his voice, that he didn't know Wilkins. When people do that, it usually means that they want to pass the subject quickly."
"He slipped up in his haste" Beckett said. "One lie too many."
"Okay, so you found a connection between Daniel Smith and Turbofuels. What about the symbol, the second murder, everything else?" Gates asked.
"Ah. For those, we strike down more assumptions – the biggest one we made because he tricked almost everyone. Assumption number three: Daniel Smith has MPD."