Castle: Beckett's Security Blanket

Chapter 7: Enough For Now

A/N: I'm sorry I know I said I would be updating very soon but I've come down with the flu and this is the first time I've left my bed in 3 days so... yeah. My apologies for the wait, but to make up for it this chapter is nearly twice as long as the last.

A cold shower, although not very pleasant, had worked wonders for Castle (not to mention little Castle). He emerged from his bedroom twenty minutes later feeling awake and refreshed and ready to hit the streets and hopefully dig up some answers. He and Beckett had a case to solve and so he was going to have focus all his energy on that and force the lustful images of his partner to the back of his mind.

For now at least. After all, he couldn't control his dreams and his subconscious. Right? Beckett would likely tell him that he should, but what Beckett didn't know wouldn't hurt her he figured.

Beckett meanwhile sat perched on the arm of the sofa in the living room, more than ready to get their day started. If this lead on the barista from the coffee shop worked out it would be their first witness and although she didn't want to get her hopes too high just yet she couldn't help it. She really needed a win today.

"I'm Ready" Castle announced as he stepped into the living room a few short moments later. Beckett swiftly stood from the sofa, grabbed her black leather bound folder which held the photos of her twelve suspects to show the barista and the two of them promptly left the apartment in hopes of finding some answers.

The pair had finally made their way to the small café on the corner of Third and Lexington after trying to fight a losing battle with the heavy morning rush hour traffic. No matter how many short cuts they took or traffic accidents they avoided by listening intently to the police scanner they still could not get there soon enough for Beckett's liking. Castle sensed her frustration but kept his thoughts to himself; silently praying that this lead would work out otherwise there was no telling what kind of rage this could set his partner into.

Finally after what seemed to be an eternity, though in reality had been less than an hour, the Crown Vic made its final stop in front of the Aroma Café.

The chime above the door rang when two of them entered, alerting the staff to their presence. The manager they had met the previous day looked up from the newspaper he was reading and quickly stood from his seat at the bar.

"Detective, Mr. Castle" he smiled politely as he walked up to meet them at the doorway.

"Mr. Hardaway, is Sarah here this morning?" Beckett asked; getting straight to the point and leaving no time for small talk.

"She is" he nodded over to the far corner of the café where an older woman in a bright yellow shirt was wiping down a table.

"Thank you Mr. Hardaway" Beckett quickly obliged him as she stepped away and her and Castle headed for Sarah Hoover.

"Mrs. Hoover, Detective Beckett, NYPD. This is my partner, Mr. Castle. We'd like to ask you a few questions if that's alright" she began in to her usual greeting of witnesses and the woman nodded in apparent understanding.

"Yes of course, Mr. Hardaway filled me in this morning that you were here for me yesterday. I'm sorry I wasn't available but I was babysitting over at my sister's place" she politely explained. "So what is it that I can do for you?"

After ushering the barista into the manager's back office for better privacy Beckett began into the details of the case; or at least the details that would be relevant to Sarah Hoover, leaving out all the rest of course. She gave the woman an approximate time frame of when their suspect would have been there and then started sprawling photographs across a table for Sarah to look over.

"Does anyone look familiar?" Castle asked cautiously after several moments had passed in silence.

"I really don't think so" the woman sighed; seemingly dissatisfied with herself. "And I'm pretty good with faces. Comes with the job you know" she continued.

"Take your time" Beckett offered with a tight lipped smile.

"I'm sorry Detective, I really don't recognize any of these people"

Castle looked over to Beckett; disappointment weighing heavily in her features as she slowly nodded in understanding to the woman. It wasn't her fault after all, it was very possible that none of these men were their guy.

"Forget about the pictures" Castle chimed in, somewhat to Beckett's surprise. "Can you think of anything else from that morning, maybe someone that seemed out of place here, or a little off putting? Anything at all that stood out to you?"

The woman mulled that thought over for a moment as her eyes stared up at the ceiling in an effort to remember something.

"You know now that you mention it," she began a moment later. "There was this one guy… Seemed kinda squirrely to me"

"What made him stand out from the other patrons?" Beckett snapped back into Detective mode as the likely promise of a new lead presented itself.

"Well he sat in the back corner for quite a while, still on the same cup of joe that I had given him nearly an hour earlier and when I went over to see if he needed a top up he slammed his laptop shut and politely thanked me but told me it wasn't necessary" she began into what she recalled from that morning. "I mean Detective, I'm sure I don't have to tell you that I've seen just about everything on these people's computers when they sit in my shop and they're usually not too shy to hide it, although some of them really should" she paused to let out a small chuckle. "It felt to me like I spooked him somehow and he pretty much scrambled out of here right after that. Great tipper though" she shrugged.

"Did he pay by credit card?" Both Castle and Beckett asked simultaneously and their eagerness startled the woman slightly.

"Sorry" Beckett quickly apologized. "We do that sometimes"

"No, no credit card I'm afraid. He tossed a ten down on the table and his coffee was only $3.50 so of course that seemed rather strange to me as well. I tried to offer him change, but he insisted that he needed to go and he left" she finished with a light shrug of her shoulders.

"Mrs. Hoover are there any cameras in the shop?" Beckett asked hopefully.

"Only on the cash registers at the front counter. And like I said, I served him at the table and he paid me right there" she finished and Beckett frowned slightly.

"Do you think you could describe what this man looked like to a sketch artist if we brought you downtown to our precinct?"

"Well I suppose I could certainly try" the woman answered with a small shrug.

"We really appreciate that Mrs. Hoover" Beckett nodded before leading the woman out of the office.

Sarah Hoover had spent the better part of two hours sitting in with the police sketch artist to get all the details perfectly and with there being little else for the team to do at the moment Castle decided to take advantage of the unprecedented down time and go pay a surprise visit to his daughter in the sub level of the precinct.

"Hey Kiddo" Castle had called out as he stepped up behind her and gripped his hands on her shoulders and she shrieked in surprise to his actions.

"Geez Dad, give me a heart attack why don't you" she said gasping and clutching her chest, trying to will her heart rate to return to a normal pace. "You shouldn't sneak up on people like that, especially in a morgue"

"Get a lot of dead bodies popping out to scare you do you?" he asked teasingly and she rolled her eyes at him.

"Dead bodies I can handle, it's the live ones I don't expect to see coming"

"Fair enough" he shrugged. "Now, are you about ready for a coffee break or what?"

"Dad, I don't drink coffee" she gently reminded him.

"Settle for a juice box?" he asked instead; pulling a small tetra box of orange juice from behind his back and holding it out to her. She smiled at him and reached for it.

"Thanks Dad"

"No sweat" he smirked. "So, what's new down here in the morgue? Busy day so far?"

"Actually, it's been pretty dead" she smirked and he raised an eyebrow at her.

"Ah, I see what you did there" he beamed and held his fist out to her which she bumped with hers.

"Don't encourage me Dad, that was inappropriate" she huffed; always the more mature of the two of them regardless of the fact that it should be the other way around.

"Look who you're talking to" came his simple response. "Besides, we all have our outlets of dealing with the job, if your worst is to crack a few jokes it's alright. Dealing with death is not easy, as you found out last night" he gently reminded her and she nodded.

"I know Dad" she smiled at him again and he offered her one back. "What are you doing down here anyway?"

"Got some time to waste, waiting for a sketch artist to finish up with a witness. Thought I'd come see you"

He continued to chat with his daughter for the better part of an hour while she went about her tasks of filing through paperwork and tidying things throughout the M.E.'s lair. When his phone buzzed to life in his breast pocket a short while later he quickly reached for it and read the text from Beckett letting him know the sketch was finished.

He said goodbye to his daughter and headed back up the elevator to meet with Beckett who was already huddled with Ryan and Esposito around the murder board.

"Well?" He asked as he approached them.

"Meet prime suspect number one" Esposito said as he stepped to the side to let Castle see the sketch they had just received.

It was a middle aged white male with dark sunken in eyes and a goatee. A small scar above his right eye and short light coloured hair. His face was thin and if Castle were to guess he would approximate his weight at around 180 tops. If he was being honest the guy didn't look like much at all; little to stand out of a crowd with, save for the scar above his eye.

"So, we've got the face" Castle breathed out with a small sigh. "Now, how do we get a name to go along with it?"

Ryan took the liberty on this one; "Well we've got uniforms canvassing around the diner in case our suspect decides to show up to send another e-mail. We'll reach out to the media and get his picture out to news stations and any publications that we can. I figure Espo and I can bring the victim Jonathan Drake's family in again and show the picture around see if any of them recognize the guy and can give us an ID"

Castle nodded and Beckett picked up where Ryan had let off. "Sounds good, Castle and I will go down to the Docks where Drake worked and show our guy's face around there, see if it turns any heads"

"Cool, meet you guys back here later then" Ryan nodded and the four of them dispersed; Ryan and Esposito heading back to their desks to call the family and Castle and Beckett heading towards the elevator.

It was late afternoon by the time Castle and Beckett had finished interviewing anyone and everyone who had even so much as passing conversation with their fallen co-worker Jonathan Drake and so far they had come up with nothing. Nobody had recognized the man from their sketch or could even remotely help them with putting a name to the face. The guy was a ghost. Or, at least he was so far.

"Somebody somewhere must know who this guy is" Beckett mentioned with a heavy sigh as she dropped herself into her desk chair once they had returned to the precinct. Castle sat on the corner of her desk and wouldn't take his eyes off the murder board. They must've missed or overlooked something. He just wasn't sure what it was.

"So we re-interviewed everyone in the victim's family" Ryan began as he walked up to Beckett's desk.

"Let me guess" Beckett cut him off before he could finish. "Nobody has ever seen the guy"

Ryan frowned and nodded his head. "Yeah no luck, sorry. But we've got his picture out everywhere, somebody's gotta recognize him eventually"

"Yo Beckett" Esposito suddenly called from his desk. "Think I got something"

Beckett swiftly left her chair and made her way over to Espo's desk with Ryan and Castle trailing closely behind her. She rounded his desk and came up behind him to lean over his shoulder to see his computer monitor.

"Ballistics came back on the bullet that killed Drake. 9mm like we figured, but the striation patterns struck a match with a previously unsolved case from two years ago in Jersey. Just your run of the mill pop-and-drop mugging gone wrong but the guy was never caught and the case went cold"

"Okay" Beckett nodded as she took in the information. It wasn't much, but it was a start. "Let's get on the phone with Jersey P.D. and get all their notes and case files for this unsolved and see if we have anything more to link these two cases"

"Already done" Esposito continued. "Got a call in to the staff sergeant who ran the case back then and he said we'll have everything we need messengered out to us, we'll have it first thing in the morning"

"Good" Beckett sighed with relief. "This guy can't be as clever as he thinks he is"

Ryan's desk phone began ringing and he quickly excused himself to go answer it. A few "uh huh's" and "okay's" were overheard and finally a "thank you" as he returned the receiver to its base and spun his chair around to face back to Esposito's.

"That was my IT guy" Ryan began to explain with a more than pleased look in his eyes. "Seems our mysterious e-mailer may not be as smart as he thinks he is. Took a lot of digging but they found a digital finger print linking a website domain that runs a service of hosting blocked untraceable e-mail accounts to a credit card number belonging to one Darren Fitz. And," he paused to grab a piece of paper from his printer that had just spat out. "Mr. Fitz has quite the track record here, dabbling in all sorts of internet scams, credit card theft, identity theft, you name it"

"Well that's great news" Castle chimed in.

"No, that's good news. This, is great news" he smirked as he turned the paper in his hands around, revealing to the rest of the team the mug shot of Darren Fitz; a mug shot that bared an unmistakeable resemblance to the police sketch currently hanging on their murder board.

"Do we have an address on Mr. Fitz?" Beckett asked hopefully and Ryan looked back to the document in his hand.

"221 West 37th. Apartment 4A"

"Great, let's bring him in"

Beckett slammed her hands down onto the hard metal table in the interrogation room while Ryan and Esposito watched from behind the glass. She was getting tired of going around in circles with this guy and needed to let him know that she was serious.

"Darren, not only do I have a digital fingerprint that links this e-mail account to you, but I have an eye witness who saw you at the diner where the e-mail originated from" she explained to him for what she hoped would be the final time.

"Man I told you I didn't write any e-mails" he smugly replied; arms folded across his chest as he leaned back his chair back on its hind legs. He was so cocky and irritating that Castle was almost compelled to reach across the table and give him a little shove so that his chair would tip over and land the guy on his ass. It was the least he deserved.

"Alright fine, is that how you wanna play it Darren?" she asked as she pushed her chair back away from the table and stood up. "You can take your 'I didn't do it' story right to the D.A. and we'll let a jury decide your fate. You can try and talk your way out of a murder conviction"

"Woah, wait a second, wait!" Darren Fitz called out as Beckett's hand rested on the door handle to exit interrogation room one. Castle hadn't bothered moving from his seat, he knew this was just about to get good and it seemed Mr. Fitz wasn't going to disappoint.

"Look I didn't kill nobody, and I didn't write any e-mails I just…" he paused for a moment and then shifted his gaze to his hands that were clasped together on the table.

"You just what, Darren?"

"I sent the e-mails, okay? But I didn't write 'em. I'm just the messenger"

"Really, this is the defense you're going with Darren? Don't prosecute the messenger?" Beckett spat back at him; less than amused with his story telling.

"It's the truth" he simply shrugged.

"Sent it for whom?" Castle had now joined in; his curiosity peaked.

"I don't know, some dude"

"You're going to have to do a hell of a lot better than 'some dude' Darren" Beckett snapped back.

"I don't know the guy's name alright, he knew I had a certain… skill set for getting an untraceable message sent so he paid me 500 bucks to send out a couple e-mails. He forwarded them to me, I sent them off to the address he gave me" he finished with a shrug.

"And you didn't know this guy?" Beckett raised her eyebrows at him. "Tell me Darren, how did he find you?"

Fitz paused for a moment then gave a small shrug before answering "I have an add on Craig's List"

Beckett rolled her eyes and rubbed a hand over her face. Craig's List. That was just perfect.

"So how did this guy pay you? You said he gave you $500 to send the e-mails. Was it a wire transfer?"

"I deal strictly with cash" came his smug response.

"So you've met this person, face to face?"

"Yeah" he shrugged.

"And? What did he look like?"

"Man I don't know" Fitz huffed, throwing his hands in the air in frustration. "White dude, six feet maybe. That's all I know, it was dark"

"Oh, that's all you know huh?" Beckett leaned into his personal space once more with her hands laid down on the table. "Well we'll see how much you can remember after a night in lock up" she challenged.

Fitz rolled his eyes and crossed his arms back around his chest and Beckett walked out of the interrogation room with Castle following closely behind. Ryan and Esposito headed her off in the bullpen on her way to her desk.

"We'll meet back here in the morning and check out that unsolved. Then we can check in and see if Mr. Fitz feels a little more inclined to share with us. I'm not buying his story yet. Throw him in lock up for the night, maybe that'll jog his memory. I also want a warrant to search his place, see if we can find that smoking gun" Beckett directed and both Ryan and Esposito nodded before heading back to interrogation.

She heaved a heavy sigh and ran a hand through her hair while she stood next to her desk and Castle took note of her defeated posture.

"Hey" he began softly as he walked up to stand beside her. "He'll crack by morning. They always do" he assured her and she gave him a small nod.

"You look pretty wound up, do you wanna get a drink or something?" He asked but she simply shook her head.

"Can we just go home?"

"Of course" he offered her a smile before they both grabbed for their jackets and headed out of the precinct.

Home. He liked the way that sounded coming from her, even if it wasn't under the circumstances he hoped would one day be for them.

Maybe it wasn't enough, but it was enough for now.

A/N: Thanks for taking the time read this update everyone. Again it's kind of a filler chapter, not much in the way of Castle/Beckett development but I needed to get some parts of the case out of the way so I hope you're all alright with that. Another update will be coming your way soon with some more Caskett for you ;) As well as another heap of angst as the case takes an unexpected turn, so stay tuned! And don't be shy, leave me a review before you go. Please? Xoxo.