Author's Note: To those whom I didn't have a chance to reply individually - thank you so much for the reviews!

Delving back into the case a bit this chapter.

Chapter 5

"What's in the folder?"

"CSU report from the crime scene," Kate answered automatically, eyes never lifting from the page as she scanned the findings.

"Anything?" Castle asked, his voice much closer now.

She looked up, passed him the file in exchange for one of the steaming mugs of coffee cradled in his hands. "Nope. No blood, no prints, nothing. If this was murder, she wasn't killed there."

Castle took a sip of the hot liquid, lowered the mug slowly as he contemplated the report.

"But her body didn't show any signs of being moved."

"Mmm, true."

"Hmmm," he ruminated, setting aside his coffee, freeing both hands to flip through the rest of the report. He pursed his lips as he scanned the pages, searching for any unusual bit of information. But after a couple minutes, he had to admit that nothing was jumping out at him.

Huh.

While Castle was heavily engrossed in the report, Kate fired up her computer, turned to eye the murder board while she waited. Not that she expected anything new to have appeared overnight but...

Wait.

She whirled around. "You guys talked to the bartender?"

"Yeah, owner returned our call last night right after you guys left," Ryan clarified, rising from his desk and making his way to them. "We were able to track down the bartender as well as a few regulars."

"Anything?"

"As a matter of fact, yes," Espo announced, jogging over. "Regulars didn't have much to say except that they'd seen her there on occasion, usually with Sara."

"But apparently she did say something to the bartender about a purse," Ryan recalled. "Asked if he'd seen one."

"So it was stolen at the bar, not from her body," Castle pieced together, setting aside the CSU folder and tuning into the conversation.

Esposito raised one shoulder in assent. "Seems like it."

Kate turned back to the murder board, considered what they knew. "Anything else?"

"Said she disappeared pretty quickly after that. Made a beeline for the door."

"She ran?"

"So it would seem."

"But from what?"

"Whatever it was that freaked her out," Castle suggested.

Kate tilted her head. "What do you mean?"

"You said Sara said she looked confused or scared, right?"

"Probably because her purse was missing," Kate pointed out.

"Then why didn't she say anything?"

"Good point," Ryan piped up. "You'd think she'd have told Sara.

"Maybe she hadn't noticed it yet," Kate theorized. "Think about it. Sara tells her she's gonna take off with her friends, Jenna turns to grab her purse and head back upstairs, only to realize it's gone. She panics, asks the bartender, and when he says he hasn't seen it, she runs to try to catch up with the roommate."

"Mmm, she would've gone outside, not upstairs," Esposito pointed out.

"And if that's the case, why did something look off before Sara left?" Castle pointed out.

"Maybe she saw something?" Ryan suggested, approaching it from a different angle. "And that's why she decided to leave."

"Maybe Sara isn't remembering correctly," Kate pointed out. "It's a bar. It was probably loud and dark. And she'd been drinking."

"Yeah, but forgetting a detail and thinking something is wrong with your friend are two different things," Castle argued.

"I admit it's an odd thing to misremember," Kate conceded, not sure what else to say on the matter.

Her phone chirped from behind them, signaling the arrival of a message, and she retrieved the device, unlocked the screen.

"What is it?" Castle asked, leaning in to glance over her shoulder.

She gestured with the phone. "Lanie. Tox report just came in. Apparently there's nothing out of the ordinary."

"How can there be nothing?" he exclaimed in irritation, reaching for the phone. "Let me see that."

She pulled the phone away from his grasp, shot him a halting look. "It's just a text. Report is on the way over."

"Oh. Right." Castle sighed, dropped into his chair with a dramatic flop.

Kate shook her head, settled into her own chair and opened her email. The tox report hadn't done anything to back their theories, meaning all they had to go on at this point was a supposedly stolen purse, which, while coincidental, didn't exactly scream murder. For all they knew, she'd simply misplaced it and it'd disappeared into the chaos of the Friday night bar scene.

But for Castle's sake, Kate almost found herself wanting it to be a murder, if only so he'd stop worrying so much about Alexis. Not that the murder of a twenty-something woman would ease his conscience either. She supposed it was only natural, the protective instincts of a father.

Maybe someday when they had kids, she'd understand.

Whoa. Wait.

Slow down, Kate, she scolded herself. They'd been married less than three weeks, and she was already thinking about kids?

No. Just. No. Not for at least another few months.

She shook her head to force the thought from her mind, focused on combing through her new messages. Nothing of importance, but at least it would keep her mind occupied until the full tox report arrived.

"Hey, guys," Ryan greeted, stepping off the elevator and hustling towards them.

Castle and Esposito paused their conversation, turned to greet their partner.

"Nice purse," Castle japed, received an approving pat on the shoulder from Espo.

"Yeah, haha," he shot back, unfazed. "It's Jenna's."

Kate lifted her head sharply. "Wait, what?"

"Unis found it in a dumpster near the bar." He reached inside with a gloved hand, extracted her wallet. "ID inside is a match to Jenna."

"Her wallet's still there?"

"Mmhmm, along with her cash, credit cards, keys, and phone. Doesn't look like anything was taken."

"Where'd they find it?" Kate asked, getting to her feet and crossing to the murder board. She uncapped a marker, began filling in the blanks on the murder board.

"In an alley off Mott Street, mixed in with a bunch of old Chinese food."

"No wonder it smells like egg rolls," Castle joked.

Esposito wrinkled his nose. "That's gross, bro."

With a grimace, Ryan slipped the wallet back into the knockoff leather purse, dropped the whole thing into an oversized evidence bag. "I'm just gonna," he tilted his head to the side, "pass this on to CSU."

Kate nodded her approval, turned back to the board to complete her sentence. Esposito headed off in the direction of the break room to refill his coffee, leaving Castle sitting in his chair, once again contemplating the facts at hand.

"So. Hmmm."

Kate turned, regarded him curiously.

Castle cocked his head. "You know what still doesn't make sense to me?"

"What's that?"

"Why would you mug someone and get away with it only to come back and kill them?"

"We don't know that anyone killed her, Castle."

He held up a hand, conceding her point. "Okay, but let's say that someone did. Why would you steal her purse and risk getting caught by coming back to kill her?"

"That's assuming it was the same person."

"Well what are the odds of having someone steal your purse and then getting murdered on the same night but by a different person?"

"Mmm, true," Ryan agreed, reappearing sans purse.

"So our thief and our killer are one and the same?" Espo rejoined the group, sipping from a fresh mug of coffee.

"But why kill her? I mean, he got what he wanted, right?"

"But nothing was missing," he stated.

"Maybe he found something in the purse," Ryan tossed out.

"Like what?" Kate prompted.

He shrugged. "Drugs. Money. Any number of things."

"Blackmail," Castle suggested eagerly, the story already forming in his mind. "Picture this. He's being blackmailed, though initially he's not sure by whom. He does his research, narrows it down to Jenna, and then steals her purse when she's not paying attention. Inside, he finds what he's looking for. Maybe it's photos, maybe it's information. Whatever it is, it's enough for him to realize that she's the blackmailer."

"And so he kills her?" Ryan questions. "He had the materials, why not just lock them up somewhere?"

"Maybe that wasn't all of them," Castle suggested. "Or maybe he's afraid there're additional copies somewhere."

"Or maybe he didn't find them in the purse," Ryan considered.

"He had her keys, why not toss her place?" Kate asked.

"You guys were there, right? Said everything was fine?" Ryan asked.

"Yeah, and CSU said the lock hadn't been tampered with," she recollected.

Castle shrugged. "Maybe he didn't want to risk getting caught?"

"Guys, you're forgetting one thing," Esposito cut in. Three sets of eyes turned to him in interest. "Nobody 'came back,'" he curled his fingers into air quotation marks, "to kill her. And we haven't talked to a single person who witnessed anything out of the ordinary, except for her suddenly running out of the bar."

"Is it possible someone followed her?"

"Not from what anyone's said."

"And even if they did, we still don't know how they killed her."

"There's really nothing on the body?" Castle questioned.

"You read the CSU report."

"I know, I just. This case is so frustrating."

"Maybe that's because we're making it into a homicide when it really isn't one," Kate suggested.

"So Jenna, by all accounts a lovely, friendly, healthy young woman," he ticked off the points on his fingers as he spoke, "gets her purse stolen from the bar, abruptly rushes out, and then drops dead on the stairs up to her apartment?"

"I admit it's an unusual string of events," Kate agreed. "But if she died of natural causes, we don't have any grounds to investigate it as a murder."

Castle shook his head, unconvinced. "There has to be something else. Twenty three year old women don't die of heart failure."

"I don't know what to tell you, bro. It's all right here."

"Well there has to be something." Castle reached for the file but Kate was faster, snatching the folder from Esposito's grip and flipping it shut.

"You guys," she stated, features sharp and determined. "We have no cause of death, no evidence of foul play. I think it's time to consider that maybe this wasn't a murder. Maybe she just...died."

Thoughts?