From the other side of the glass, Espo, Ryan, and Beckett are watching Slaughter and Castle interrogate Vales, though Slaughter's the only one talking. Castle is being unnaturally silent, and Vales is unresponsive, at least for the moment. They've been there only a couple of minutes when Beckett gasps, jumps up, and almost knocks over her chair in her rush to get out, leaving Espo and Ryan to exchange puzzled looks.
She returns almost as quickly as she'd departed, carrying a bag of cotton balls and a plastic bottle. While Slaughter continues to strut and bluster, she removes her sparkly nail polish, finger by finger, surreptitiously monitored by Ryan.
"I want my lawyer," Vales says while she's swabbing her right thumbnail.
"Can't believe he held out this long," she says, screwing the top back on the bottle before dropping the damp blob of cotton into the wastebasket. "I think that's our cue to leave."
"What's with that?" Ryan asks, pointing to her newly bare nails.
"This?" She blows lightly on her fingertips. "I forgot all about it until right after we came in here. I was afraid that Slaughter might notice my manicure and put two and two together."
"He saw you?" Ryan looks shocked. "In your hooker get-up? How'd that happen?"
"Never mind. Suffice it to say he didn't recognize me."
"Guy's such a douche," Espo says in disgust, as he quietly opens the door. The three of them walk quickly to the elevator before Slaughter and Castle can find out that they'd been watched. Out on the street they go in three different directions; she heads for the subway. Standing on the platform, she wonders if she should have hung around for Castle, but decides not to torment herself. Anything she wants and needs to say to him can wait until tomorrow, or until the case is closed, or both. Besides, it's late. She doesn't want to talk to him when she's this tired.
Once she's home she washes her face, brushes her teeth, and changes into a SIZZLING HEAT tee shirt. She'd won it in the Nikki Heat Fan Club Facebook page trivia contest under the name QT Patooty, one that she'd chosen because Castle would never, ever guess that it was she. She'd even borrowed a friend's mailing address, just in case. Because she'd come in first—surprise!—he'd signed it. In indelible ink. She smoothes her hand over the signature, which is directly over her left breast, and turns out the light. She's just drifting off when her phone chirps with an incoming text; she groans and rolls over to pick it up. It's Castle. Of course.
"Is Svetlana there?"
She smiles while she types. "Nyet. She went home to Brighton Beach."
"You have her number?"
"Unlisted. Classified. Can't give it to you."
Here come the bubbles. "She took 500 bucks from my wallet."
"You want your money back?"
There's a longer pause. "No. I wanted to tell her that she's priceless."
Until the last year or so, she hadn't blushed since middle school. Now she gets red-cheeked almost at the thought of him. Before she can compose either herself or a response, he texts again.
"If you speak to her, tell her I said Cпокойной но́чи."
Her face is flushed, but she also has a lump in her throat. He must have looked up how to say "good night" in Russian, which she finds oddly touching.
"Night to you, too, Castle." She adds a little Zzzzz emoticon, hits send, and puts the phone back on top of her book. A minute later she retrieves it. "Sweet dreams," she adds, and holds on. There he is.
"Only kind I'll have."
"Me, too," she whispers into the dark room. She falls asleep with the phone in her hand.
So does he.
Castle doesn't come into the precinct in the morning since he's working with Slaughter, who remains convinced that Vales is the killer. Castle doesn't believe it and neither does Beckett, especially since she has traffic-cam video (thank you, Ryan) of Vales's car nowhere near the scene of the crime at the appropriate time. She's working the case at her desk and she's itching to call him. Yearning, aching, panting. But she can't, not yet. After a late lunch of two iced coffees and a one-ounce box of raisins that she found in her desk drawer, probably left over from several Hallowe'ens ago—her trick-or-treaters had been far more interested in the mini Snickers bars—she makes a breakthrough. She grabs the photos of the spot where Reilly's body had been found, underneath an overpass. She'd looked at them before, but while she chewed the very dry raisins she realized that though the area appeared to be brightly lit, all the illumination was from CSU equipment. She studies the photos again: it's obviously a high-crime neighborhood, and under ordinary circumstances almost certainly just as dark as the spot where they'd been last night. All the bits and pieces she and Castle had gathered but couldn't quite stitch together, and here it is. Reilly was hiding. Waiting for help, maybe. It was dark. The gangbangers who were after him wouldn't have seen him, just as Slaughter hadn't seen her when she'd been hiding by a pillar under the overpass last night.
She has to call Castle, this minute. Trouble is, he has a ringtone for her, and it's a giveaway: an old Donna Summer song, "Hot Stuff." She can't text or call from her cell. What about Ryan's? She has to think for a minute about what Castle uses to ID him. Aha, she's got it: the theme from an old soap, "Ryan's Hope." No way Slaughter will recognize that. She gets up and goes to Ryan's desk.
"Could I use your cell for a minute, please?"
"Sure," he says, pulling it out of his pocket. "Your battery dead?"
"No, it's fine. But I have to text Castle, and the ringtone he uses for me—." Shit, she doesn't want to tell him what it is. Too embarrassing. "Uh, I have to text him about the case and Slaughter will probably know that it's me."
Ryan's blue eyes light up. "Because it's 'Hot Stuff'?"
"What? You knew that?"
"Everyone knows it, Beckett," Espo says cheerfully.
She covers her face with her hands and shakes her head before saying anything else. "That does it. Next time I see him I'm taking the goddamn phone away from him and deleting that freaking song. It's not like I haven't asked him a thousand times."
"Beckett?"
"What?"
"You're blushing."
"I'm not blushing, Esposito. If my face is red it's because I'm irritated."
"Okay. If you say so."
She stomps back to her desk and stabs a text to Castle.
"It's Beckett on Ryan's phone. Pretend I'm your mother—and no wisecracks PLEASE—and call me back. Tell Slaughter you have to step away, wherever you are, and talk to her for a minute."
She'd expected him to respond immediately. He always does. How long could it take him, anyway? Twenty minutes, that's how long.
"Hi, Mother. Just got your message."
"Please tell me you're alone."
"I will be in a minute." There's some muffled noise. "Hello. What can I do for you, Mother?"
"Cut the crap, Castle."
"What a way to talk to your son."
"Castle!"
"Sorry. So, what's up?"
"Break in the case."
"Seriously?"
"Yes. We need to go to the crime scene. Can you get away from the Widowmaker?"
"I'll say I have to go home."
"I'll pick you up in front of your building. Half an hour."
"Okay."
It's only 4:30, long before sunset, when they park beneath the overpass, but it's pouring and gloomy and as dark as a tomb.
"There had to be a reason he stood under here instead of running down into the subway, right?" She's pointing down the block. "He didn't want the Mexican guys who were chasing him to see him."
"Okay," Castle nods. "So, he's on the run, and he needs someone to help. Who's he gonna call?"
"His father?"
"Yeah, but there was no cell on him, so how could he have?"
"Look, look," she says unconsciously gripping his arm. "Across the street. Pay phone. How about that?"
"Worth checking. Amazing that there's still one here."
"I'm calling Ryan. He should be able to find out if anyone phoned from there around the time of the murder."
She speaks briefly with the detective. "He says he should have it in an hour," she says. "What number or numbers were called from there, if any."
"Wanna head back to the precinct?"
"No. What I really want to do is get coffee. I'm freezing. Doesn't feel like April."
"That's why it's called the cruelest month, Beckett."
She shrugs. "I like Edna St. Vincent Millay's vision better than T. S. Eliot's."
He tries not to react. She likes poetry? Why hadn't he known that? He wants to burst into song. "Yeah?" He tries to sound casual. "What exactly did she have to say about it?"
"Exactly?" she asks, buckling her seat belt. "Lemme see." She scrunches her eyes shut.
"Beautiful Dove, come back to us in April.
Come back to us, be with us in the spring.
If we can learn to grow the grain you feed on,
You might be happy here, might even sing."
He looks sideways at her. She's gorgeous even in this grim, grimy light. "That's beautiful."
"It is."
"It's hopeful."
"That surprise you, Castle? That I like something hopeful?"
"Maybe a little."
She turns and gives him a brief, dazzling smile. "I've been feeling kinda hopeful lately."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah." She makes a sharp turn. "There's a coffee shop I like. Parking space right in front, too. My lucky day."
Mine, too, he thinks. When they're in a booth, each with a mug of coffee, he asks what he's wanted to ask ever since she'd called him. "So. Speaking of Ryan. Which we were a minute ago."
"We were? I thought we were talking about poetry a minute ago."
"Okay, a few minutes ago. You called Ryan."
"I'm glad hanging around with Slaughter hasn't impaired your short-term memory, Castle."
"I was wondering why you called me on his cell and not yours." He nods at the phone that she put down next to her spoon. "Yours is working."
"You're a smart guy. See if you can figure that one out all on your own."
It takes him three sips of surprisingly good coffee before he gets it. "Oh. 'Hot Stuff'."
"Bingo. I knew Slaughter might guess it was me. If you don't change that ringtone right now, I'll confiscate your phone."
"No need to threaten me." He grabs his phone, works on it briefly, and returns it to his pocket. "Done."
"You gonna tell me what it is?"
"Nope."
"Fine." She picks up her phone, calls him, and laughs. "The Isley Brothers. 'Busted.' Good one, Castle. You're quick."
"Only when it counts, Beckett. I like to take some things very slowly." He looks innocently at her. "May I have the cream, please?"
If she hadn't already finished her latte, she might have choked to death. Her phone buzzes: it's Ryan, and for the first time ever she's grateful for his interruption.
"Beckett." The rest of her end of the conversation consists of "Mm hmm. Mm. Wow. You're sure? Thanks, Ryan, great work," spread over two minutes. She ends the call. "We were right, Castle. Reilly called his father from the pay phone."
"And? Because that doesn't sound like all you got."
"And we have video from the subway down the block, before and after the TOD. Want to guess who it was?"
"Dear Old Dad? Pride of the Westies?"
"You got it."
"No, we got it. Slaughter will be pissed."
"Probably, Castle. But even he doesn't want the wrong man to go to prison, does he?"
"Good point."
"Let's go. We have a case to wrap up. Ryan and Espo are bringing in Reilly Senior. You want to call your partner and have him meet us?"
He stares long and hard at the formica tabletop before meeting her eyes. "Doesn't make any sense to call my partner, since I'm looking at her. But I'll call Slaughter." He drops a $10 bill on the table, starts walking to the door, and makes the call. They're only a few minutes from the Twelfth, and ride there silently.
Castle watches through the glass as Beckett and Slaughter interrogate Brian Reilly, who puts up no defense.
"All those years, all those screw-ups," Slaughter says. "Must have been unbearable for a stand-up guy like you, huh?"
"And then he calls you to tell you that he screwed up again," Beckett adds, leaning in. "But this time it was different, wasn't it?"
"He'd crossed the line," the ungrieving father says. "He was my responsibility. So I did what had to be done. He wasn't even surprised. 'Twas if he'd been waiting for it his whole life."
It's a cold-blooded confession, as cold-blooded as the murder of his flesh and blood.
"Nice collar," Slaughter says bitterly a few minutes later, after Reilly has been taken away.
"Your collar, too," she says. "We'll share it."
They exchange cool stares. Finally he nods, and leaves. He doesn't say thanks, or goodbye, but he does raise his hand a few inches, in a grudging sort of salute.
When the elevator has carried him down, Beckett checks her watch. "Time to go home."
"Long day," Castle says. "Long day. Time for me to go home, too."
Her eyebrows rise and her eyes widen. "You're going home?"
"Well, yeah."
"I meant it was time for you to go home with me."
TBC
A/N My life has calmed down at last, and I hope to post the next chapter over the weekend. Thank you, everyone.