Author's Note: I'd like to thank phnxgrl, southerngirl1, and TORONTOSUN for their reviews. So glad that some of you caught the CSI: NY reference! TORONTOSUN: The character is Jo Danville from CSI: NY, and I don't think Kate would dislike her. Sorry if it came off that way. southerngirl1: I know Sela Ward is from Mississippi, but Jo Danville is from Alabama (she mentions it a few times in the show, but I mostly remember it from the episode "Nine Thirteen" in the last season). This chapter starts off right where the last one ended. There is also a little Russian again. Enjoy!

Chapter 30

Ryan pulled up the mug shot database. "Yeah, no problem." He typed in Amber's name and her picture popped up.

Beckett recognized her. "That's the girl from the hotel elevator. We spoke to her."

Castle nodded. "She pretended to be a fan who had never met Tarmin. She got off on the seventh floor."

"How much footage do we have of the hotel?"

Ryan took a look at his notes. "Up to around the time the first responders arrived at the crime scene. I'll go over the tapes again looking for her."

"Good. Castle and I will go back to the hotel; see if we can get the records for her stay."

"Detective, a minute."

Beckett went into Gates's office. "Yes, sir?"

"I wanted to check in on the case. 1PP wants to give the public a suspect by the end of the day. Where are we on that front?"

Beckett sat down. "We just identified a person of interest. Her name is Amber Fisher. She has a history with the victim, was seen in the area within an hour of the time of death, and she just got out of prison where she would have learned how to make the murder weapon."

"We have the murder weapon?"

Beckett took the knife Danville made out of her pocket. "Trace from the wound came back to the components needed to make this. This particular knife was made in the crime lab while Castle and I watched. It's a prison shank made from a disposable coffee cup lid."

Gates reached across her desk to examine the knife. "A plastic lid? How?"

"It's a long process. I have a report on the board. The point is all the items you need to make one of these are easily available to an inmate."

Gates handed the knife back. "Do you like her for it?"

"I would like to talk to her before I jump to that conclusion. Physical evidence proving she did it is lacking right now. We need more information first."

"What's her connection to Tarmin?"

Beckett put the knife back in her pocket. "They were friends. They were arrested on misdemeanor drug possession charges together a couple of times. They were also in the same place when Fisher was arrested with a felony possession charge. We're digging into the details on that one."

"I'll let 1PP know you have a handle on it. Keep me appraised."

Beckett stood. "Yes, sir."

Castle was telling the boys about the knife, "…so she held it over the chips fire and it got soft enough to shape into a knife. Beckett has it."

Esposito saw Beckett come out of Gates's office. "Let me get this straight. You can make a knife out of a plastic coffee cup lid?"

Beckett pulled it out of her pocket. "Uh, yes, you can. This one was made right in front of us."

Esposito took it and turned it in his hands. "Not sure if I'll look at a coffee lid the same way again."

"Detectives?" Tory was leaning out of the video room. "I think I found something."

They all went into the room. "What'd you find?"

"When I went to get a refill of coffee, I noticed the new information on the board under the 'murder weapon' section, so I took a look."

"You found something?"

She nodded. "I was following the hoodie on camera. They enter frame here and exit frame into this alley." Tory pushed play and they watched the hoodie wearing suspect walk into the alley. "For a minute, I thought I'd lost them because I didn't see them come out on any surrounding cameras. Ten minutes later they did, and they threw that into a trashcan."

The item being thrown away was a black, plastic-looking blob. "Esposito…"

He had his phone out. "Already on it."

Tory gestured to the screen. "I'll keep working on it; see if I can get a face."

"Thanks, Tory."

Beckett and Castle returned to the hotel to see the same clerk posted at check-in. "He's going to love seeing us again." They went up to the desk and Beckett flashed her badge. "We need to speak to the head of security."

He looked up, saw Beckett, and mumbled in Russian. "Это вас опять. (Eto vas opyat'. It is you again.)"

Beckett responded in kind. "Да еще и что до сих пор никакой линии, так что если ты не против. (Da yeshche i chto do sikh por nikakoy linii, tak chto yesli ty ne protiv. Yes, and there is still no line, so if you don't mind.)"

He looked embarrassed that she understood him and got on the phone. "Uh, Peter, the Detectives from last night are back. They want to see you." He returned the phone to its cradle. "He's in the security room."

"Спасибо. (Spasibo. Thank you.)" Beckett and Castle went to the security room where they were greeted by Peter. "Thanks for seeing us again."

"No problem. What did you need this time?"

"We're looking for a guest we think may be involved in Tarmin's murder." Beckett showed Fisher's mugshot. "We saw her here yesterday evening."

Peter took the picture. "You're sure she's a guest here?"

Beckett shook her head. "Not entirely. She rode up in the elevator with us and got off on seven. That's all we know for sure."

Peter called up the video footage from that time period. Almost immediately they found the elevator footage. Just like Beckett had said, Fisher got off on the seventh floor. Peter called up the footage from the seventh-floor cameras; the girl bee-lined for the stairs. The chief of security switched to the footage in the stairwell. Fisher headed up one floor and then waited on the landing for a few minutes before opening the door to the floor.

Peter pulled up the footage from the eighth floor. Fisher wandered down the hall until she found room 862. There, she pulled something out of her purse, stuck one end to the bottom of the door and the other into her ear.

Beckett had Peter pause the tape. "She listened into our entire interview with Tarmin's entourage."

"And she told us another lie. She said it was cool to find out Tarmin was here. But she already knew Tarmin was here. She even knew which room was hers."

Beckett nodded. "Where does she go after this?"

Peter started the footage again. A few minutes later, Fisher jumped up and ran toward the stairs without packing up her listening device first. Seconds later Beckett and Castle exited the room and headed for the elevators. Fisher stopped on the stairwell landing to pack up her listening device and catch her breath. She then headed down the stairs, bypassing seven, then six, then five. She paused on four long enough to let a small group pass her and then continued her downward progress until she reached the ground floor and went into the lobby.

Peter turned to a different computer. "What was that name again?"

"Amber Fisher, though she may be using an alias if she's checked in here."

He typed in the name. "Sorry. How about this? You leave that picture and your email and I'll go through the check-in records. Maybe we'll find her that way."

Beckett wrote her email on the back of Fisher's mug shot. "Let's go to the footage before she was on the elevator with us. I want to see where she came from."

"Sure." Peter pulled up the footage of the lobby. Fisher could be seen shadowing Beckett and Castle their entire route through the lobby. "She was following you."

"Yes, she was. Can we get a copy of all that?"

Peter nodded. "You got it."

Beckett's phone rang. "Beckett.

"We found Fisher. She wasn't staying at that hotel. She'd crashed at a friend's place. We're bringing her in now."

"Great, we'll see you back in the precinct." Beckett ended the call. "Fisher's on her way to the station now. Peter, you don't need to look for Amber in your records anymore. She wasn't registered here. All we need is a copy of the tapes for evidence."

"You got it."

"Thank you so much for your help."

Beckett stood in the Observation Room watching Fisher glance around the room without any sort of fear or concern. It was as though she had expected to get caught and she didn't seem to be at all surprised or upset that she had. Not only that, but she had also refused an attorney when she'd been read her rights. Now the detectives were just waiting for the lab report on the hoodie recovered from the friend's house.

Jo Danville was the one who brought it in. "There was blood on the hoodie. It was a match to the victim and the spatter pattern was consistent with arterial spray. Also, there was blood from the victim in the hoodie pocket. The pocket also contained one AA battery with traces of chicle on the ends and a pair of gloves with carbon, polymers, fatty acids, and the victim's blood on them."

"Thanks." Beckett gave it a quick once over. "Is there anything else I should know before I go in there?"

"A black blob of plastic was brought in. We took it apart carefully and it tested positive for human blood, but the DNA was too degraded from heating to provide a positive match to the victim."

"Okay, thank you." Beckett and Castle went into the Interrogation Room. "Amber Fisher. You've been brought in to talk about Tarmin, a.k.a. Carley Martin. When we spoke in the elevator, you said you never got to meet her, but that's not true, is it?"

Fisher rolled her eyes. "Let's just cut to the chase, shall we? You obviously know I knew her or you wouldn't have asked. What do you want to ask?"

Beckett placed the still of someone wearing a bloody hoodie throwing something into a dumpster on the table. "We found the plastic knife you used to kill Tarmin five blocks from the crime scene in this dumpster. It was more of a blob now, but it did have blood on it from the victim. We also got a warrant to search your friend's place where we found this." She placed the photo of the bloody hoodie on the table too.

Castle leaned forward. "Should have dumped that too."

"I was in a hurry and it was cold outside."

"Tarmin's blood is on the outside and in the pocket where you kept the supplies you'd need to turn your makeshift shank into a blob. Why'd you kill her?"

"It's all I've thought about since the day I was convicted." Fisher sat back looking smug.

Castle settled back in his seat. "You were after revenge."

"I was convicted of a crime I didn't commit. Those drugs were her drugs. No matter how many times I told them that, it didn't matter. Especially not to Tarmin. She was my friend! I trusted her."

"How did the drugs come to be in your possession if they weren't yours?"

"We were getting high at my place. I provided the place; she provided the drugs. That night, she got a phone call; said she needed to step out for a minute. Next thing I know, the police have busted down my door and are putting me in handcuffs."

"You both had been arrested on drug possession charges before. The drugs were in your apartment."

"In her bag!" Fisher took a moment to get her anger under control. "They were Carley's drugs. Hers. She should have come forward. But instead, she says that I stole one of her oversized handbags a few weeks before. Claimed the bag was empty when I did."

Beckett folded her hands on the table in front of her. "Why kill her?"

"She was going to pay. I got her back for what she did to me."

Beckett gathered up the photos and stood. "Was it all worth going back to prison?"

"She ruined my life. So, yeah, it was worth it."

A/N: And that's the end of this side case. Next chapter will start a new "episode", though I'm not sure exactly when I will start posting it. Shouldn't be more than a couple weeks. Thanks for reading and leave a review below!