Close Encounters 6
"Heel," Kate murmured. Sasha sank to her haunches immediately, ears flicked forward and to the side while Beckett tied the leash to the bike rack outside.
She nudged the dog's head with her knuckles and got a lick of the dog's tongue, and something in her chest trembled like it might break.
Beckett hurried inside the corner pharmacy, taking note of their cameras mounted strategically over the intersection. She pulled the badge out of her blazer - she'd had to go buy a damn jacket and a clean pair of jeans. She'd had nothing and she couldn't possibly demand video looking like she had been.
She flashed her badge at the clerk on duty behind the photo desk and asked for a senior manager. She was eventually led back to what looked to be a break room and Beckett shook hands with an older balding man, a tight smile on his face.
"Mr. Beeker," she nodded. "Detective Beckett."
"What can I help you with?" he asked.
"I'm sure you know about the explosion in the building down the street."
"Yes, ma'am. Crazy - you're investigating the bombing? Was it terrorists?"
She shook her head. "I'm not at liberty to say, Mr. Beeker. But no. Not terrorists; I can assure you of that. But I was wondering if you had security surveillance of the intersection here?"
"Oh," the man said suddenly, his face flushing. "Yes. We do. I hadn't even thought of that. Let me see if I can figure out this damn computer. Might have to get Rusty in here to do it."
Beckett waited through the interminable fumbling of Mr. Beeker as he tried to maneuver through the simple video surveillance program on the computer in the back room. He did have to ask Rusty to the back - a kid of no more than nineteen who set everything up in moments and then called up the exact section of the time stamp for them to view.
"Do you mind if I-?" she said with a raised eyebrow.
Beeker hustled out a reluctant Rusty from the back room and Beckett sank down in front of the computer, her hands damp with sweat.
She made the computer play back at half speed, studying the foot traffic minutely. There was such a narrow window of time for that bomb to have been placed; she'd left for the park with the dog and then Castle had gotten back only twenty minutes later.
And before that? No, she couldn't - it wasn't possible that the bomb was in their oven before that. She'd made a chicken dish when they'd gotten back a few days before. They'd been gone so much that she'd been trying to use things before everything got freezer burned. And then takeout when she was alone, but still. . .
Oh.
Castle.
There he was.
She leaned forward, her fingers coming up to hover over the monitor. Castle stood with a group of pedestrians at the light, his eyes brilliant blue even in the crowd. The light changed and he crossed, her eyes hungrily following the smoothness of his gait and the determined set of his wide shoulders.
And then he was gone.
She smashed the space bar and the view paused, everyone arrested, and then she gave in and scrubbed back through the video until she saw him again.
Frozen on the screen, his head turned towards this side of the street, his mouth set into a curling smile. He'd been coming home to her, and look how happy-
She ran a knuckle under her eye, then the other one, wiping away tears, cleared her throat to get past it. She couldn't do this right now. She couldn't.
She let the video play through and kept watching.
He was relieved by the summary reports; he only checked them sporadically, not letting himself think too hard about it. She was at the 12th for a few minutes, talked with Ryan, and then she'd bought a change of clothes. Good, good, that was good. Drug store on the corner, then she'd gone to the morgue but again - she hadn't gone inside. Oh, the dog was with her, wasn't it? That explained it. Conversation with Lanie - this one as short as with Ryan.
But that was good. That was so much better. He could - he felt easier about it now. It was going to be fine. Eventually. She'd be okay.
And meanwhile, he'd found some oddities in his father's service record. They could be explained away by the natural closed-mouthed, tight-lipped nature of the CIA, but Castle was beginning to wonder.
Just as he'd done when they were first investigating Bracken, Castle took a page from Beckett's book and made a timeline. He posted the times and places and events that the two men had been involved with and he looked for inconsistencies and overlaps.
And he found a few more. . .oddities. He didn't have a better word for it.
Things that didn't make sense placed where they were.
She couldn't be certain. Couldn't be certain of what she'd seen on that video - not at all. But it replayed in her head over and over.
Lanie had tried to set her straight, but there were just too many things that didn't make sense. Odd socks.
Beckett just didn't - it didn't make sense. The CIA had taken over the case, okay, fine. But the hour of blank tape from her building's security?
And then the pharmacy video. The cameras were positioned to cover the two entrances - one to each street on that corner - and so of course the angles were bad. But in the top left corner of the video, Beckett could swear she'd seen Agent Black.
Heading away from her apartment building. He hadn't gone through the same crosswalk that Castle had only thirty minutes earlier, but instead he'd turned the corner and kept his back to the camera.
She couldn't be sure. She'd had her epic run-ins with the man but she couldn't be sure about his gait and build from a poorly angled camera twenty feet away.
But if it was him, what had he been doing there?
She sank to the park bench in jeans that scuffed the dirt and a blazer that was too loose on her shoulders. She hadn't been paying close attention, just grabbed what she could find. Her shirt was a nondescript white button down that didn't sit right across her chest.
Beckett leaned forward and pressed the heels of her hands into her eyes, focused on breathing. The leash clanked loudly against the metal foot of the wooden bench and she lifted her head.
Sasha was running back to her.
Kate straightened up, a prickling awareness numbing her lips, her fingers, and the dog came straight for her and whined anxiously, turning towards some unknown threat as her hackles rose.
Kate stood and met the man coming up the path.
Black regarded her with steely eyes and a blank face, and then his gaze traveled carefully over her ill-fitting outfit and down to the dog.
Sasha growled once in her throat and pressed against Kate's leg.
"What's going on?" Beckett asked first.
Black lifted one thick eyebrow and reached out for her; she flinched and moved back but it was only a card in his hand.
"The memorial service," Black said. "Tomorrow morning."
"You - that's not up to you," she rasped.
"This is how it works," he replied, dismissing her and pressing the card into her hand. Her fingers closed over it without her permission. He regarded her a moment more and then turned around. Like he was going to leave.
"No. Wait. What's going on? You took his - the body. You took it but it's not-"
Black pivoted on one foot, seemed completely unwilling to listen to her. "I have it under control."
She felt it clench in her, tightly, and she had to avert her eyes.
"But the tape was wiped clean," she added. "Ryan told me - he looked at it before your guys took everything. Why was the tape - and those bone fragments weren't the bones of a forty year old man. He was your son. Don't you-"
Black was stepping closer, something on his face that she couldn't fathom, couldn't understand except to say that it looked like -
pity.
"Ms. Beckett." He gave her a long look that seemed - seemed sympathetic. Like he was being kind to her. "Richard is gone. The questions - whatever you think you've found - he's dead."
He was dead. He was really - there wasn't - she'd been building some ridiculous edifice of hope on all these unanswerable, strange events when there was only - only this.
He was dead. If his father was being civil with her, niceto her. . .
"The CIA service," she rasped, heard her voice crack and break away. "When is that?" She needed something else to focus on, needed to stop - feeling it. All of it. But when she heard nothing from the man, she looked at him.
"There is no service," he said quietly.
Her mouth dropped. "No. You - you wouldn't do that. Tell me when it is." And fuck, she didn't even know where. Eastman's - Castle had gone to that alone, but Carrie had been there, right? She'd ask Carrie.
"Ms. Beckett. There is no service."
"No," she cried out, stalking towards him. "You don't get to do that. To take him away from me like - like - it was nothing. He's not nothing."
"There is no service," Black said quietly, his voice pitched to a decibel that brooked no questions.
"Like hell there's not. He was your son. He's my - I will show up at your door every fucking morning until you tell me. I will call every reporter-"
In a flash, his fingers were gripping her wrist tightly, a grip that made her bones grind against each other. She welcomed it. Let him fucking break her arm. She wouldn't back down. She had a right - he was hers, he was everything-
"There is no such service," he said quietly. "And if you show up on Company premises, I will have you thrown in the deepest, darkest detainment facility. And you will miss his public memorial service as well as the next few years of your life."
Beckett realized suddenly that the dog was snarling, pressed tightly against her leg and snapping out at Black. Kate couldn't break his gaze, just let him release her wrist and step back, tug his jacket back into place.
And then he walked off.
That was it. That was all there was.
Castle was gone.
She stumbled when she saw the woman in the lobby of Castle's building. Lanie came to her then and wrapped her arms around Kate until the pressure of the embrace made her crack.
"Lanie, stop. Stop."
Her friend let her go and pushed Kate's hair back behind her shoulder. "I got your text. About the service. I've brought you something."
Kate wrapped her arms around her stomach and shook her head. "What."
"A dress."
She cut her eyes to the garment bag hooked over the stair banister and felt it coming up again, all the things she couldn't.
"How'd you find me?" she said quietly.
"Don't worry, Beckett," Lanie waved her off. "I ain't staying. Just brought you the dress."
Kate slid her eyes back to her friend and realized she'd hurt her. She'd hurt her friend. She had no idea how to make it right, though.
Lanie sighed and shook her head, and then she reached in and hugged Kate again, despite the stiffness to Beckett's shoulders and the tremble that seemed to make cracks in her whole being.
And then Lanie left and there was the dress and tomorrow.
And tomorrow.
And tomorrow.
Without him. But so much still with him.
She found the wine, a dusty bottle but a good vintage, and she needed it.
She wandered to the bedroom and the dog followed. She pulled the closet door open and ran her fingers over the top shelf; she was avoiding the one thing she wanted by exploring the things she didn't know.
A nail, the scuffled clumps of dust, a box. She tugged it towards her by the lid and popped it open.
His weapons. Of course. He had guns in his closet because he was - had been a spy. She pressed the lid down and pushed it back onto the shelf, stared sightless into the emptiness of his closet. All of his stuff had been mixed with hers, and the closet in her bedroom had been filled up with his black shirts and his suits, and the flannel shirt she'd appropriated, the expensive shoes.
Was it worse to have it - gone? Was it better?
She turned away from the closet and canted towards the bed, let go of the clenched fist of her control and slipped under the covers, opened the notebook to read the last one. The very last letter he'd ever write to her.
I have a dream for us. I have dreams. They're a million different realities, other earths waiting. We have a son, we sleep in late on Saturdays and take him to the park. On Sunday you try to distract me from finishing the crossword puzzle, on Monday we do our normal jobs, our normal lives, argue about money and disciplining the kid and who has to take the dog out. Friday is date night and your dad baby-sits and we joke about trying for a second, but we both think - maybe this time. All these dreams because of you, because you opened me up beyond my abilities. Now, anything is possible, Kate. I love you.
"Oh, Katie," her father whispered, standing in the entrance of the apartment in his best suit.
She leaned hard into him and pressed her face into his shoulder, damming up her tears against his shirt.
"I don't know what to do for you, sweetheart."
She shook her head against him and felt the dog butt against the back of her thighs, stumbling her forward into her father. She felt the choke of hysterical laughter and strangled it down, lifted her head to look at him.
"Let's go, Dad," she said quietly. Sasha pushed up against her again and her father glanced down to the dog, eyebrows knit together.
"Kate. What are you going to do?"
"What I have to," she murmured back, pressing a hand over her eyes and struggling to keep it back. She felt strange in the dress Lanie had given her, the shoes that rubbed at the backs of her heels, and then the dog. . .
"All right, okay," he said finally. "I've got the truck outside - parked a few blocks down, like you asked."
She nodded tightly and her father stepped away. She saw then that his eyes were tense and grey with his own grief. And not just for her. He had loved Castle too.
"I know you - and he. . ." But she didn't know what else to say, or how to make the words come out. That'd always been their problem. When her mother had been murdered, she and her father had floated on their own lonely islands of grief.
But she didn't know how to close that distance now either.
Not when every movement ached.
Castle was clear on one thing: his father and Bracken had a history. He'd gotten nowhere on the research, and every time he teased out a thread, he'd been met with a brick wall.
It'd been carefully covered. Professionally covered. He'd been working around the clock, and he was just now coming up for air when he realized his phone hadn't alerted him in ages.
Castle called up the summaries from Deleware and skimmed the information. She'd gotten out yesterday, Lanie had come by, Ryan had talked with her, she'd stayed in the apartment that night, took Sasha to the park, was in bed by nine - which was a little early, yes, but-
He got to the last summary report and froze, then he checked the time.
She was at the memorial service. She'd brought the dog.
Shit, Beckett had brought the dog to the funeral?
He staggered up from his chair and hit the door at a run then headed down the hallway to the command center. Black was nowhere around, maybe at the memorial service, and Castle toggled through the sources on the main computer, looking for the camera that had the footage from inside the funeral home.
And then there she was.
A black dress, deep vee, her hair half pulled back, her shoes a pair he'd seen before so they must have survived the damage. Her eyes were closed; she sat on the front row, knees pressed together, her hands tucked tight up under her ribs like she was physically holding herself together.
He sank into the desk chair and stared at the image projected on the far wall, her form swallowing him up.
Oh, Kate.
The dog was hidden under the row Beckett sat on; he saw only the peek of Sasha's muzzle as feet walked past, offering Kate condolences. At her right was her father, and the ragged lostness in the man's eyes made Castle scrub at his face with both hands.
And then his mother.
Martha Rodgers had come to his funeral.
Who. . .who had even told her?
And, oh God, Kate - as she half rose and embrace Martha and the way her eyes closed and stayed that way.
Suddenly the view shifted as the agent with the lapel camera moved, and Castle broke away, put his head in his hands.
No more torturing himself. He had to stop. He had work to do; he was going to finish this so that he never - he never had to see that look on her face, she never had to endure this kind of grief and brokenness ever again.
Never.
Carrie clutched her fingers and didn't try to hug her, for which Kate was grateful. The well-wishers milled around, obviously not understanding who Carrie was or what Beckett was doing. She didn't care; she found empathy in the woman's eyes.
Sasha came to Carrie in an instant, nosing into her hand and wagging her tail in that slow arc. Carrie bent down and loved on the dog, giving Kate a moment to take a breath, gather herself in.
When Carrie lifted up again, she regarded Kate with knowing eyes. "You're coming home with me."
"What?" she stumbled out.
"It's over, Kate. This is the end of it. You need things - around you. Not people. Just things. And if I knew Richard at all - his place is scary empty, isn't it?"
Beckett couldn't speak, could only nod at the woman.
"Then you're coming home with me." Carrie reached out and took the bag Kate had found in his closet and had been using as something of a purse, a clutch, but Carrie didn't try to take the leash from her.
Kate was grateful.
She was also grateful for the silence that stretched between them as Carrie drove her out of the city. Endless sunlight flickered through the window, coming and going until the buildings thinned and it was just the long line of the interstate and the unraveling of Kate's own heart like a ribbon.
Kate sat on the back porch with her bare toes in the grass that came right up to the steps. Her fingers were chilled and the glass of iced tea was still full and resting by her hip; she couldn't manage to want it.
Black had been so. . .nice to her. A hand on her arm, guiding her to a seat. No words, just -
Castle was gone; he was really gone.
The dogs were playing together just past the trees, their barks echoing in the warm air. Kate wrapped her arms around her knees and put her cheek against her shoulder, took in a breath.
That was one.
And now another.
It was a miracle, how the breaths kept coming. Just when she expected to never be able to breathe again, to never take a clean gulp of air into her lungs, there it came.
"Kate."
She turned her shoulder and glanced at Carrie coming through the porch; the woman had a dish towel in her hand and she swiped it along the railing as if knocking off a fly.
"Kate, how about-"
"I can't," she said preemptively.
Carrie paused but then nodded and sat down beside her. "I know that too."
Kate drew her arms tighter around her knees and suddenly saw the whole thing clearly. "I'm - not good at people knowing - at being close. And that's not fair to you, your hospitality. I should-"
"Kate, love, you don't have to be or do anything," Carrie said calmly. And just the way she said the endearment, how naturally it rolled off her tongue, Kate had the sudden realization that Castle had - well - borrowed it. He'd been a part of their family and he'd heard the way Carrie and Eastman had talked to each other and he'd used the only word that ever meant anything good and right and pure about love.
For her.
She feathered her fingers over her cheeks, swiping one tear after another, but she couldn't catch up, couldn't hold on to them.
Carrie said nothing but pressed her shoulder to Kate's and sat with her in the noon light.
"I can't do this," she said suddenly.
Carrie startled beside her and Kate took in another breath, since it was there.
"I'm done," she said again, nodding to herself. She stood up and opened her mouth to call the dog, but Sasha was rolling in the grass under the tree and Kate paused.
This was really the wolf's home. And Kate didn't know where her home was.
"Carrie, can you keep Sasha here for me? My place is. . .just until I figure things out."
"Of course."
She turned to find Carrie standing at her side, eyebrows pulled together. Kate nodded again and stood there a moment, then realized she had to call a cab. She pulled out her phone but there was no service.
"I'll call a cab," Carrie said finally. "Or you can take the truck."
Kate blinked and lifted her head to see the rusted Ford in the driveway just past the barn. She shook her head. "I'd - no. Thank you. Just a cab. Please."
Carrie went into the house and Kate watched Sasha flip up to her feet and pad across the pasture towards the Eastman's dog, the two of them taking off at a run.
Kate turned but didn't follow Carrie into the house.
She couldn't stay here.