Learn to Have Been
February 2015
"Beckett," she answers. She knows it's the ME's office because of caller ID, but she can't understand why. The only open case she cares about is Castle's, and thank God, no dead bodies are attached to that.
Yet.
She finds Volkov, that might change.
"Kate, I think you need to see this."
"Lanie?"
"Just - just get down here. Get down here because this is not making sense."
The line clicks and goes dead and Kate pulls the phone back from her ear and stares at it, stunned by Lanie's call, by the strange shake to her voice. Lanie never freaks out over the dead - well, not unless for very good reason.
Like when Tyson started killing their look-alikes.
Kate shoves her phone into her back pocket and snags her keys from the desk. She doesn't see Espo or Ryan anywhere, but they could still be out canvassing Washington Heights, interviewing the meth kid, the Stop-n-Go manager. Could be.
But maybe they're at the morgue, called in on something.
Look-alikes. Is that what this is? Are they coming back to Tyson? She just doesn't know. The guy in Washington Heights is Volkov, according to Castle. But that doesn't mean the guy who ran Castle off the road and kidnapped him is the same person. There is a dearth of information on this case, and Kate has spent entirely too long circling the wagons, staying close to home, unwilling to distract either of them from Castle's recovery. To chase down guesses or random hotline tips? Not worth it.
Maybe that's been a mistake.
She hasn't been doing her job. She's been afraid to look, afraid of what might have been done to him to cause this kind of damage, certain that if she turns aside to the investigation, she'll never get back to him.
She'll never get him back.
It's not just the loss of certain memories or ways of doing things; it's not that the jokes disappeared for a while or that she's stuck making her own coffee. No. She thought he would leave. For her own good, or for some other stupidly noble grand gesture, because at the beginning, it was looking like he'd leave her. He refused to jump back into the wedding, he was reluctant to touch her, he didn't even want her to know how therapy was going.
That's changed, of course. It's not like that now, and she figured out why he was acting that way - protecting her, protecting himself from her rejection, embarrassed by all of it, afraid he lost some key knowledge of her - but it means she hasn't spent time on this case like she should have.
And now she's playing catch up and she doesn't like it.
Too many variables. Volkov, Lanie's cryptic call from the morgue, the hints of Tyson's fingerprints all over this.
The whole drive to the ME's office, she's berating herself for not paying more attention to this case, to Castle when his nightmares drove them both awake, when he shied away from answering before that too-convenient I don't know.
He might truly not know; she doesn't think he's lying. This winter has been about accepting that he might never get those things back - never make her coffee quite like he did on those too-early mornings, with the heart in the foam - never be confident enough about writing that he can sit down and churn out the next chapter and then come back to her ready to play.
It's okay; she really does believe they'll be okay even if it never happens. She just wishes she paid more attention to the details.
Kate parks in the ME's lot at the back of the building, the echoing multi-level garage that chills her to the bone. Her heels click and grind into the cement as she walks quickly, drawing her coat tighter around her body, and she hits the elevator nearly at a run, jabbing her thumb into the call button more than once.
Finally the doors open, but a coterie of dark-suited men shoulder their way past her from inside, heading out, a gurney between them with a black body bag.
And Kate knows, with that cascading numbness of shock, that these men have whatever it is Lanie called her about. That this is why she called.
Her phone rings. She answers, turning away from the now-empty elevator, jogging back to shadow the men in suits - nine of them, two pushing the gurney with the body, the wheels clacking and spinning against the parking garage's third level concrete.
"Beckett!"
"Lanie. What's going on?" she says quickly, trying to keep her voice down. "I'm in the parking garage and I got shoved aside by some guys in suits-"
"Feds," Lanie hisses. "They came here about five minutes after I called you. Confiscated the body."
"What body? Lanie, what body? What case is-"
"The John Doe. Remember? Badly decomposed, Central Park-"
"I remember," she says, slowing down now. John Doe has nothing to do-
"His hand, Beckett. Javi was telling me about how this fake-hand guy was out in Washington Heights, that the sketch-"
"Wait. Wait, the fake hand?" Pieces are coming together now, connections being made.
"John Doe - from Central Park? - he was missing his right hand. Remember? At the time, I thought wild animals, but I hadn't finished the prelim-"
"It wasn't wild animals," Kate realizes, jogging after the men in suits now.
"It wasn't. Someone knew enough to rip that prosthetic off of him, and then do some careful cutting - I was thinking bolt cutters or-"
"You know for sure our John Doe had a prosthetic?"
"There are signs on the bones, signs of grinding where he had one that maybe didn't fit right at first. It's hard to get right, very hard, constant adjustments. But I couldn't be sure. I sent X-rays in to be analyzed - months ago, Kate - but only now do those black suits show up to take him?"
Because Volkov is involved in this, because she and her team are making noise on this case, finally getting somewhere. If it's the Feds, then it's the CIA, she has no doubt of that. Maybe even NSA. Last time Castle's father showed up, he wasn't exactly in the middle of a by-the-books mission. She doesn't know what to think of him or his loyalties.
Time to find out.
"Excuse me," she calls out. "Excuse me. Detective Beckett of the NYPD. Identify yourselves."
The one at the tail end does actually turn to look at her; they've already started loading the body bag into the back of what looks like a refrigerated white storage truck. She jogs up to the one waiting, angles her hip towards his scrutiny, proving her own credentials, the badge flashing, but she gets nothing back.
"I'm here for this body," she says. "I need you to take it back into the ME's office so that I can continue my case."
The guy puts his hands on his hips and shifts - not subtly - so that he's blocking her from the rest of them. "I'm sorry, Detective, but that's not going to happen."
"I know who he is," she says, recklessly. No pain, no gain. She has to have that body. "I know his identity, we have a-"
"Not happening." The man turns away from her, completely dismissive, but she darts around him, sliding her body between him and his team.
"I won't take no for an answer," she says. Her voice is like ice. "I need that body. I have reason to believe this man abducted my partner and held him for-"
"We know what he's done." The man steps around her, but she shuffles to the side and they collide. "Detective. Step aside."
"Whatever your issue is with him, I need that body. I need those forensics." Does she dare bring Castle's father's name into this? "I have an open case-"
"This is a national security matter. Now step aside, Detective, before I call your Captain."
"Call my Captain," she shoots back. "Do it. She'll back me up."
"Not when my boss calls her boss. She won't thank you for that. Now step aside, or I will remove you."
She doesn't doubt he'll do it, but she stands her ground, completely unwilling to let the body go. It's Volkov; she knows it's Volkov, the missing hand, the signs of a poorly-made prosthetic. Body dumped in Central Park, and where is Jackson Hunt?
She has to know where Volkov has been, what happened to him, what happened to her husband.
Suddenly the man is reaching out and gripping her wrists; the truck is starting. She doesn't hesitate, rotates her forearms out in a circle, breaking the man's hold, twisting out. He recovers, but he simply makes himself a wall, keeping her from the truck, knocking her back when she moves forward.
She dodges to one side, but his body is there, a teeth-rattling jolt as they collide even as the truck backs out of the space. She makes a desperate move to dart around him, to stop the truck, but he reaches out and gets her around the waist, sweeps her up before she can move.
The truck is going, rumbling towards the exit ramp, and she's digging her elbow into his ribs, kicking his shin like nothing more than a petulant child.
The truck is gone. Truly gone. She doesn't even know if they're NSA or CIA.
The suit puts her gently down on her feet, and then he straightens his jacket, doesn't look at her.
"Apologies, Detective. But it's a matter of national security."