Kate and her team, with Castle as a tag along, sat surrounding a table that was scattered with mail. Their eyes scanning page after page, reading letters and studying drawings. They'd been at it for a few hours and Kate was already feeling like it was just another dead end. She sat back in her chair and looked at the piles of letters. They had barely made a dent. She stretched a little and wished for a coffee that she didn't feel like getting up to get.
"Ryan, Espo." The boys looked up at her intently and she could see the boredom and the sleep all over their faces and it wasn't even noon yet. "Why don't you guys go canvas the area of the crime scene again. Maybe there was something we missed or..." She didn't know how to finish that sentence because she didn't really know what else to suggest. "Bring back some lunch." She added. They nodded their heads, eager to get out of this stuffy room. She knew they were itching for something to do and this was the best she could give them.
A few more moments passed before Castle let out puff of anger and tossed a letter he'd been reading in the pile of gone-through mail.
"I feel like this is useless. They're all crazy at some level, but not crazy enough to commit murder." He leaned back in his chair rubbing his stomach a little, suggesting that the idea of lunch sounded just as good to him as it did to her.
"Hmmm well this job isn't all dueling matches and man hunts. A lot of it is this. Detecting as the muggles call it." She let out a sigh and set her letter down. "The only reason why they don't get to do it is because the killer was a coward and used an unforgivable curse and happened to be a wizard." Castle looked at her and tilted his head.
"You are a detective, Beckett. Homicide is what they call it, but it's all the same. Someone gets murdered and you hunt down who did it." She pursed her lips.
"Ya... justice I suppose." She nodded. He was staring at her, and she didn't like it but she didn't know how to make him stop.
"Is that why you do this? Is that why you became an auror, to help bring justice to those who get killed?" The question is genuine but she doesn't care.
"I don't know Rick, why do you do this? Why are you here? You just here to annoy me?" She crosses her arms and doesn't budge. She wants to know why he is willingly throwing himself into the most dangerous line of work there is.
"I'm here for the story." He says matter-of-factly, as if that's all it could be.
"The story?" She asks with a chuckle.
"Ya, the story. There's always a story. Why someone would commit murder."
"Sometimes it's just a psychopathic dark wizard who gets their kicks out of throwing around killing curses. There isn't always a story." She picks up another letter to distract herself but he keeps talking.
"No, there's always a story Kate. Everyone's got one. Like you. What makes a girl with your looks, talent, and smarts follow the auror track instead of higher law or... I don't know, something else?" He's slowly leaning into her space and she leans back to get away from his intent stare.
"You're the novelist, you tell me." Ya, she thinks. Try to write my story like you do for everything else. She doesn't know why her first instinct is to hate him and she doesn't know what to expect when she tells him to do this, but she certainly isn't ready for what eventually comes out of his mouth. He leans back and studies her for a moment.
"Well you're American, your accent tells me that but the way you speak tells me you grew up over seas. The lion figurine on your desk tells me you went to wizarding school over there as well, so your parents must have been high up in the ministry to be American and working for the European Ministry." He pauses to think some more and Kate can feel the muscles in her face relax as apprehension settles over her. "You don't just become an Auror nowadays, there aren't enough dark wizards out there to constantly need new recruits. By the time you rose in rank, the war would have been over. Something happened to you, not directly, but to someone you cared about, a loved one. And the person responsible was never caught. That's why you're here." Kate silently cleared her throat and reminded herself to breathe.
"Nice storytelling, but you don't know me." He just sat back a little further.
"The point is that there's always a story, you just have to find it." Kate just looked down at the letter in front of her, vision blurry, she was unable to focus on anything, so she quietly excused herself and walked to the break room.
She tapped a few things with her wand which made a plastic coffee cup shoot out and hit her in the head. Before it hit the ground she aimed her wand and it burst into flames and vanished. She leaned back against the counter, angry at herself for letting him get to her, and upset that he'd managed to peg her so easily. Her stomach grumbled and she wondered where the heck Ryan and Espo were, she'd expected them to get hungry and kill the canvas early. She rubbed her eyes, her vision more blurry from being tired than the emotions swelling inside her. She was about to try and make another cup of coffee when she saw Castle come running towards her across the bull pen waving a piece of paper.
"I think I've found it!" He hands her a piece of paper as she gives up on the coffee and walks back to the room while reading it. A vivid drawing of the crime scene is sketched out amongst words and phrases. Before she can make much sense of it Ryan and Espo come walking in with a bag of Chinese food, she reaches for it but Ryan sets it on the table.
"This is going to have to wait. We canvased the area of the crime scene again and something popped. A bartender said he recognized our vic, said he called her a cab around one am. And she left with some man who wrote down this address for the bartender to tell the cabby. He fished it out of the trash." Espo holds up a piece of paper with a few lines on it.
"We looked it up, his names Charlie Donner, he's a wizard who's been living here for a few months, and boy does he have a record." Beckett looked between the piece of paper Espo was holding up and the one Castle has taken from her hands, flipping through some pages, he holds one of them up.
"He wrote this letter, look here." He handed Beckett the letter and she saw clearly how the handwriting on the two pieces of paper were the same.
"Let's go." Kate grabbed her jacket off the back of the chair and a box of Chinese food from the bag, and Castle followed them out and down the steps.
"Hey, look, I've got a car. Could we maybe drive there instead of apparate?" Castle was slowly backing away down the front steps but Beckett just smiles at him and shook her head.
"Castle, we can't just apparate to a location we know nothing about. If it's a wizards home he could have warnings or precautions, plus theres too much of a chance of splinching." He watched as she walked down the sidewalk and opened the drivers door to an unmarked squad car. He had to run to catch up before she left without him. He slid into the passenger side and looked at her.
"You know how to drive?" He asked, shocked at how quickly she ignited the engine, tossing back some chicken from her box of Chinese food.
"You'd be surprised by how much muggle technology we have to adopt in the aurors office, especially living in this city." She put the car in reverse and started backing up. "That being said, it's probably best you put your seatbelt on."