Disclaimer: I do not own Castle, the idea belongs to ABC

"Yo, Castle, Beckett," Javier had finished talking to the witness and had joined Lanie and Ryan over by the victim. "We got an ID."

Kate looked back at Castle her hazel eyes wide. "You ready to find out who she is?" Castle asked her as he extended his arm for her to hold.

Looking down at the darkened asphalt under her feet Kate nodded. "Yeah," she said as she turned and headed over to the victim.

"So Esposito wanna tell us who our Jane Doe is?" Castle asked as he came up between Beckett and Ryan.

"Super said her name's Kimberly Holtz, lives in the building, with a roommate, we're trying to get in touch with her."

At Esposito's words Kate pulled in a sharp breath and closed her eyes, they burned from exhaustion. In her mind, she saw Kim playing in the sprinkler as a little girl and their moms sitting in the shade of an umbrella that covered the table while they sipped on iced tea. When the memory ended, she opened her eyes again and walked away without saying anything.

"Beckett," Rick called over his shoulder. When she didn't turn around he walked away from the body and followed her. "Kate," he said as he grasped her arm again and spun her around.

When she faced him again she looked up into his blue eyes. "It was her. I knew it all along. She's twenty-three now. Or she would be if she were still alive. When she was still alive my mother and Marie, Kim's mom, were best friends. Whenever they would go out I would babysit her," Kate made a small sad smile at the memory. "We used to stay up late; watch movies or play games. Then right when we heard their car in the driveway she'd run into bed and pretend like she'd been there for hours." Kate was quiet for a second before she looked up at Castle and spoke again. "I have to be the one to tell her parents."

Rick nodded his head in understanding. "Okay," he said just as Esposito walked over to the pair of them.

When Javier approached the detective and the author, he noticed the expression on Beckett's face and frowned. "Is everything okay over here?"

Quickly before Castle could answer for her Kate nodded her head. "Yeah, everything's fine, what's up Esposito?"

"Oh, well I just spoke with the super and he just got in touch with the roommate and-"

"He knows not to tell her anything, right?" Kate asked with big eyes as she cut Esposito off mid sentence.

Javier nodded his head. "Oh yeah, of course, he told her we were here and needed to speak with her so to come home immediately so she can show us the apartment, thing is she's Jersey so it's gonna take a few hours to get home."

Kate nodded her head. "All right, Esposito, you and Ryan hang out here and wait for Kimm-Kimberly's roommate. Castle and I are going to Staten Island."

Javier frowned at the female detective in front of him. "Staten Island? What are you going down there for?"

"Someone has to notify her next of kin, and since neither of you have the emotional capacity…"

The whole while Kate Beckett was speaking Javier was frowning at her. How did she know that her next of kin lived in Staten Island? Did she know the victim? It appeared so. "How do you know her Beckett?"

Sometime later Kate Beckett pulled up in front of a ranch style house in Staten Island. It was a quaint little house with a white picket fence and inpatients in the flowerbeds. Kate sighed for a brief second before she put the car in park. "Castle," she said as she turned to the right. "I want you to come with me."

Rick Castle looked at Beckett surprised. She almost never allowed him to come with her, and never had she said she wanted him there, especially when she was delivering the news to a family. "Are you sure?" he asked skeptical.

Kate nodded her head. "I need someone there who isn't close to this case; who isn't close to this family."

Rick looked at Beckett somberly. "Then why didn't you just let another one of the detectives—

"Because I owe this to them, this woman was my mother's best friend, I can't just let some stranger tell her that her daughter killed herself," Kate paused and shook her head. "No, it has to be me."

"Kate…"

Kate looked out the windshield and placed her hand on the door handle. "You know, truth be told, if this wasn't a suicide Montgomery probably wouldn't allow me to work the case."

Rick didn't take his eyes off Beckett. "Isn't it better when you're close to a case though? Doesn't that make you more passionate?"

Kate wanted to smile at his question but couldn't muster the strength to do so. "Passionate, yes. But it also makes you emotionally involved, and when you're emotions get in the way you stop using your head."

"So, I'm just there to make sure you use your head?"

Kate nodded her head and pulled the lever to open her door. "Come on, Castle, let's go," she said as she got out of the car and started up the drive. When she approached the front steps she took a breath before stepping on the first stair. Under normal circumstances excitement would be outweighing her nerves and her hands would be shaking for a totally different reason.

"You know," Rick said as he watched Beckett contemplate the steps in front of her. "The longer you wait, the harder it will be to do."

Kate glared at Castle from the corner of her eye before walking up the three steps leading to the Holtz's front door. With a deep breath, she opened the screen door and knocked on the one behind it. Kate stood there for a few seconds, with her hand on her badge, before the door opened slowly and a woman in her early sixties materialized behind it. Dropping her hand off her badge, Kate looked down at the woman she had grown up knowing. "Marie, I don't know if you remember me or not, my name is—

"Kate!" the older woman exclaimed as she looked at her. "Katie, how could I forget you, come on in," she said as she pushed open the door and allowed the two into her home.

"Thank you," Kate said as she smiled sadly at the older woman. "Marie, this is Richard Castle," she said as she motioned to the man behind her.

Marie smiled and shook his hand before leading them through the foyer and into a brightly lit living room. "Why don't you two have a seat? I was just having some coffee when you knocked, would either of you like any?" she called as she walked into the kitchen.

Castle opened his mouth to respond but Kate spoke up first. "Castle. No," she whispered before calling out, "No, thank you, Marie."

Rick looked at Beckett and leaned over in his chair to say something to her. "Beckett, I know this is difficult…"

Kate closed her eyes in frustration as Castle spoke and opened them up again. "Castle, this isn't like any other news I've had to deliver, I can't just come out with it."

Just as Kate was sitting back up Marie walked into the room holding a cup of coffee, she sat down on the couch across from the pair of her visitors. "Kate Beckett, it's been near eight years since I've seen you last. What brings you around?"

Kate sighed, this was going to be harder to do than she thought. "Marie, I-" she stopped, she couldn't do this. Desperately she looked at Castle for help before looking back to her mother's best friend. "There's something, that I need to tell you," she continued her voice thick.

Marie looked at Kate confused and frightened. Something had happened, she could tell that much, Kate was never one to come out of her way to drop by and say hello. "What is it, Katie?"

Kate closed her eyes, swallowed and took a deep breath, trying to fight away the emotion that she felt building up in her chest. "It has to do with Kim."

Ashley Moore knew something was terribly wrong when she walked in her apartment building and there were two detectives, one clearly Hispanic the other clearly Irish, waiting to speak with her. as she approched them the Hispanic one stepped forward. "Ashley Moore? I'm Detective Javier Esposito," he said as he held up his badge for her to see. "This is my partner, Kevin Ryan," he motioned to the irish looking detective. "Do you have a few moments to spare, I'm afraid we have some bad news."

Upstairs, after Javier delivered the news he watched the twenty five year old club singer cry off her stage makeup. "This makes no sense, she was happy!" she asked as she lifted her teary blue eyes to look into his brown ones. "Why would she do this?"

"That is exactly what I intend to find out," he said as he looked at his partner in the recliner that was next to the couch that they were sitting on.

Kevin nodded his head in reassurance as Ashley looked over at him for conformation. "But in order for us to do that, we are going to have to search the apartment for any evidence, or clues to why she may have done this. Is that going to be a problem?"

Ashley let her deep blue eyes fall to her lap as she shook her head. "No, I don't mind, go ahead, her room is the one on the right."

"Thank you," Javier said as he stood and walked to the back of the apartment. After a moment Ashley, too, rose and followed."I'd start with her bedroom, if you're going to find anything it's going to be in there."

Javier looked over his right shoulder at the young woman beside him and smiled with a single side of his mouth. "Thank you," he said graciously, he knew how hard this had to be for her and still she was offering her help.

"Umm, Detective, I can't just sit still while you two search our apartment, please, if there is anything I can help with…"

Javier thought for a second and paused. He knew, full well, how hard it was to sit still while you were awaiting something. "Would you like to help me look for anything? You'd be a better judge than I would with something like this."

Ashley nodded her head graciously. "Yes, thank you," she said as she opened her roommate's bedroom door.

As it swung open Javier felt his eyes grow wide, the room was completely trashed. "Wow, is her room always this much of a disaster?" he asked as he looked over at Ashley.

"No," Ashley responded her eyes wide as she took in the warzone of a bedroom. "Something's not right…"

Frowning Javier looked at the girl next to him. "What do you mean?"

Panic started to seep its way through her as she stood in the doorway. "If this was anybody else, I wouldn't think twice about their room being a wreck, but Kimmy, she's so obsessive with cleanliness and order," she said as she tore her eyes off the war zone to look at the detective. "She'd never leave her room like this!"

Javier frowned, he did not like where this was headed. "Well, maybe there's a simple reason why her room is such a disaster. Maybe she was looking for something before she went out and was late and didn't have time to clean up."

Ashley shook her head. "No, everything of Kim's has its place. The only time she ever loses something is when I take it, had she done this to my room it would have made more sense. But to her own, the only thing I could think of is maybe she met up with Scott again, he is one of her old boyfriends, and things got a little more heated than expected."

Javier frowned, that wasn't exactly something he'd be telling the police right after he found out that his best friend had died, but he shrugged it off, girls were different after all. "Is that something that happened often?"

Ashley shrugged her shoulders. "Well, her last two relationships ended in infidelity on her part because they would…'catch up'" she said as she made quotes in the air, "and then things would get a little more heated than she originally expected them to."

Javier nodded his head as he looked at the girl in front of him. "Right," he said as he shook his head. "You wouldn't happen to know his last name, would you? we'd like to talk to him, maybe he knows the-"

"Esposito!" Kevin called in an urgent voice, from the kitchen. "Could you come in here, there's something that you need to see!"

When Javier and Ashley arrived in the kitchen they found Kevin Ryan with an emotion on his face he rarely showed, fear. "What is it Detective?" Ashley asked with worry in her voice.

"Look," he said as he pointed to the doorway that led out of the kitchen and into the living room. Carved into the wall, above the doorway, was seven words, "I told you this wasn't over, Heat."

After Kate Beckett delivered the life changing and devastating news, Marie Holtz sat on the couch in her living room with her hand covering her mouth. She felt like she was going to be sick. Her daughter had killed herself? It just didn't make sense. "Kate, are you sure it was her?"

Kate looked at Marie sadly and nodded her head. "Yes, we're sure it's her. Lanie Parrish, our medical examiner compared her to her dental records, it's her."

A new wave of tears escaped the woman's eyes before she looked up at Kate again. "It just doesn't make any sense."

Kate closed her eyes and sighed and reopened them again.

"When was the last time you spoke to your daughter, Mrs. Holtz?" Rick asked speaking for the first time since Beckett had delivered the news.

Kate looked over at Castle in utter shock, he had never overstepped her in an investigation before. She knew she should be irritated at him for doing that, but she couldn't get past the gratefulness she was feeling right now.

Marie looked up at Rick and dabbed her eye with a tissue. "We went to dinner last night, then we came back here and talked for a while. She left to go home around one thirty."

Kate looked at Marie and spoke again. "When we were younger, you and your daughter were very close, were you still?"

Marie nodded her head and actually smiled. "You see these strained mother/daughter relationships where they hate each other, Kimmy and I never had anything like that. After her father died we became closer than ever."

Kate nodded her head and leaned over and took the older woman's hand. "Marie, I know how hard this is for you, but I have to ask you, in the past few weeks had you seen any change in Kimberly's behavior?"

Hopelessly Marie looked into Kate's eyes and shook her head. "No, it doesn't make sense; she was happy. She had a good life, a decent job, great friends, no boyfriend at the time, but Kimmy never needed a guy to make her feel complete. It doesn't fit, why would she kill herself?"

Kate looked at the woman in front of her completely bereaved. Just as she was about to try to offer some words of comfort her cell phone went off. She closed her eyes in annoyance and looked at the screen. It was Lanie, she was probably calling with the tox results from Kimberly's body. With a look of apology toward Marie Kate picked up her phone. "Beckett."

"Beckett, there's something strange about the body that was brought in here earlier. I ran the tox results and see had a few drinks about an hour or two before she died."

Kate frowned as she listened to Lanie's words, there was nothing unusual about that, the girl was twenty-three, so she went out and had a couple drinks with her friends or mother. "So what's the strange part?"

"There is a pretty significant amount of Ketamine in her system, not enough to kill her or make her unresponsive, but enough for her not to use her judgment. The amount one would get on the street."

Kate nodded her head as if Lanie were sitting across the table from her rather than Marie. "Thank you, Lanie. Let me know if you find anything else out," she said just as Castle's phone began playing Michael Meyers theme song. "Castle!"

Quickly Rick picked up his phone and looked at the screen as he hit a button on the side of his phone to silence it. "But it's Esposito," he said as he showed the phone to Beckett and pointed to the screen. With a roll of Beckett's eyes, that Rick took as the go ahead, he hit the talk button. "Castle."

"We think Dunn escaped prison!" Esposito said in a hysterical voice despite his best efforts to keep his voice calm for Ashley's sake.

"Would you like me to tell you now, or call you right back after we hang up?" Lanie asked Kate sarcastically.

"No, no, tell me now."

"Dunn?" Castle said unable to comprehend what Esposito was saying. "Tell me you don't mean Scott Dunn," Castle said praying against everything that he would say no.

At the mention of Dunn's name, Kate Beckett, looked up at Castle, her eyes wide. She would never admit to it, but the name still haunted her, still gave her the chills. He had called in the prescient to report a murder he had committed. He toyed with them for days letting them believe that he was Ben Conrad as he committed three more murders to innocent people, one of them being the real Ben Conrad. When they finally thought the case was over and finally let down their guard he blew up Kate's apartment and almost killing her, which is who his target was from the beginning.

With a silent shutter of the memory, Kate realized Lanie was speaking. with a shake of her head Kate focused her attention back on her phone call. "There are bruising patterns in the shapes of fingers, large fingers, on her upper arms, contusions on her inner thighs, and…and quite a bit more evidence suggesting that she was raped."

"Yes, Castle, Scott Dunn, there is something here that leads us to believe that he's escaped and he's coming after Beckett again."

Kate felt her jaw fall of the hinges of her mouth, Kimberly had been raped, there was the reason there. "So you believe that's the reason she killed herself?"

"Beckett!" Rick said trying to get her attention. When she gave him the one-minute finger, he turned his attention back to Esposito. "What is there that is making you believe that?"

"Beckett, I don't think she killed herself, I think she was murdered."