It was more than a little weird to ride with Ryan to a crime scene, Castle thought, without Esposito there. It was like trying to have Reese's Pieces without peanut butter. More strange than being without the Puerto-Rican's easy sarcasm was the fact that it meant Castle got to ride shot-gun with his Irish counterpart.

'Okay, you're right, that was weird,' Ryan said when they stopped outside their crime scene. 'Besides, Espo usually brings the snacks courtesy of Mere.'

'You've gotten spoiled, Detective.'

'I prefer to think of it as becoming accustomed to a certain standard of living.'

'Like I said.'

Ryan shook his head as he badged the uniform and he and Castle crossed the tape to find Newman on the other side already waiting for him. 'Hey, what are you doing here, man?'

'K-Pow's off on bereavement leave, her father-in-law passed away last night, so she's in Baltimore until next Tuesday.'

'Dude, sorry to hear that, tell her she's in my prayers alright?' Ryan patted his fellow detective's shoulder once. 'You with me on this one?'

'Sure am,' Newman replied and flipped open his spiral book to give him the rundown while they headed into the basement of the building. 'Patrick Dent, of Brooklyn, found by a cleaning crew coming to put their gear away for the night.'

He dipped into his pocket, held out a little travel-sized jar of Vicks Vapo-Rub. 'Trust me, you'll want this for going in there. Close quarters and it is foul. Even Doctor Parrish-Robbins was looking green.'

Castle watched fascinated as Ryan took the jar and smeared a dollop under his nostrils; Newman repeated the process, as did Castle himself. 'I have to say this is a first, I've never seen Kate do this.'

'All due respect to your wife, Beckett's nuts. You ready?'

They went in the door and even with the camphor-menthol jelly acting as a barrier, the two detectives and the writer felt their heads spin. The smell was very distinct and very disgusting - charred flesh, no question. Castle saw Lanie crouched in her lady heels, wearing one of the masks she'd usually saved for when she was pregnant.

'Wowzers,' was all he could say as he saw the body. The man, or what had recently been a man, had been hogtied front-ways, with the left side of his face entirely scorched so that it was blackened from hair-line to collarbone.

Ryan, who'd seen some pretty twisted things especially when he'd worked Organized Crime, could only stare in slack-jawed shock. 'Lanie, what the fuck happened to him?' he breathed.

'A great deal that no one should ever have to go through. He's been beaten, choked, had his fingers broken, not to mention the obvious barbecuing, plus a whole host of other things I'm sure I'll find during autopsy.' Lanie studied the writer. 'What?'

'It's rather eerie the guy is named Dent.'

'What are you driving at?' Newman said at length; he'd heard campfire tales from Karpowski about the writer's wild theories.

'Look at him the burns on the left side of the face. And look at this.' Castle took a few bracing breaths as he crouched beside Lanie, pointed with a gloved finger at the face. 'Too neat to be accidental. Almost like one side was covered up.'

'You can't be serious,' Ryan said, cottoning on to his friend and shadow-partner's idea.

'It's nine days until Hallowe'en, it brings out the crazies who get it in their heads to be even more creative with their MOs.'

'This isn't Gotham City,' Newman started, then stopped when he saw Lanie pick up the victim's left hand. In it were two laminated cards. 'What are those?'

'One is a city ID badge. Our boy was a legal assistant in the DA's office and according to his driver's license, his full legal name is Patrick Harvey Dent.'

Castle had to grind his teeth together to keep from squealing like a Justin Bieber fan. 'That is too juicy.'

'Before you start looking for Commissioner Gordon's Bat-Signal on top of the Major Crime Unit building, let me take Mister Dent to the morgue so I can give you a real cause of death.' Lanie waved in her assistants, effectively nudging the detectives and Castle back into the fresh air, where they found some tissues to wipe away the Vapo-Rub, adding under her breath, 'and if I find any clown makeup on him, I will have a little freak out.'

Since such a graphic death was tagged as a high priority, Ryan wasn't surprised that he and Castle got a call from Lanie only hours after she'd left the scene, directing them to come straight to the morgue.

'Did she say what she found?' Castle asked as they walked down the hallway.

'Nope, just get down here now in her usual 'do not pass go, do not collect two hundred dollars' tone.'

They walked into the autopsy theatre and weren't surprised to find the doctor herself uncoiling Mister Dent's intestines like they were link-sausage. She dropped them into a scale, murmuring her notes into her Audiovox and then depositing them into a bio-hazard bag for contents-testing later. As it was the final step of her examination, she stopped her Audiovox bluetooth and snapped off her gloves as she saw the men walk in.

'Boys, you got my message.'

'Yeah, 'cause you're scary when you mean business. No wonder Carey and Violet never step out of line,' Ryan teased her, making his friend roll her eyes.

'Since my time is limited right now, I'll give you the down-and-dirty. Cause of death is drug overdose.'

'He OD'd?' Castle was dumbfounded. 'That's not not even in my top five guesses.'

'Nor was it in mine. Our Mister Dent went through about seven levels of hell in his final hours. To start, he was restrained with duct tape and from the splinters I find in his wrists and ankles, it was to a wooden chair. Then we move on to round two.' Lanie passed them gloves, put on fresh ones for herself. 'See this? Your killer dosed him with a low-grade neuroinhibitor, methamphetamine and PCP, all in liquid form.'

'What the hell was he trying to do to him?' Ryan asked incredulously.

'Neuroinhibitors are commonly used in conscious sedation cocktails, so that the person receiving the mix is awake but relaxed and cannot fight back, like if a child has swallowed something that's too big to pass through the intestines and needs an endoscopy. They're also popular amongst mob crackers and twisters so that the subject is fully conscious while they're tortured and they can't fight back, they can't even open their mouth to scream for help.'

'Which explains on our canvass why no one heard anything,' Ryan concluded. 'So this poor bastard was awake for all of it?'

'Which brings us to hell door number three. The neuroinhibitor kept him paralyzed, which means the body can only take so much before it protects itself and that's where the methamphetamine comes in. Every time this guy passed out, he was dosed to wake him up and they mixed it with angel dust on the final dose.'

'Why?'

'That would be up to you to figure out, because the methamphetamine was the kicker. In medical use, it's usually prescribed for ADHD in ten-milligram tablets. This guy had nearly two grams in his system. Combine that with the dissociative anesthetic like PCP and the body's in overdrive until the heart gives out.'

Castle could feel his writer's brain clicking and whirring away as he made notes while Lanie spoke. 'And the rest of it?'

'Torture, mostly likely for information.'

'Possibly by the Falcone crime family?' Castle said, trying to lighten the mood.

Lanie just gave him a little shrug of the shoulders. 'At this point, anything's possible.'

R&R&Enjoy