A/N : This is the first part of my idea of Hollander's Woods in this universe. There are some POV changes in one of the sections of this chapter. Hopefully they don't detract from the story.
Disclaimer : Castle comes from ABC and the minds of the writers responsible for it. I just like the show so much that it inspires me to write this. Quite a bit of the dialogue and situations from 7x23 Hollander's Woods appear in this chapter. No infringement is intended just homage.
Night-time – Woods in Upstate New York
Emma pants with a mixture of fear and exhaustion as she pauses with her back against the tree and whimpers at the pain and terror she is feeling. She never would have thought that her search for her missing friend would lead her to this.
She can feel the warm sticky sensation of the blood running down her neck from the wounds she can all too painfully sense on her face. She'd woken up to the sight of a blade millimetres from her face and a frightening, black and white painted face looming over her. She'd used her legs both to propel her attacker away from her and to then run, panic ridden, into the dark woods she found herself in.
She has to get away. She has to tell people about the monster that obviously killed her friend. She has to live. Gathering up her courage she peers around the tree and terror grips her renewed as she spies a dark figure and the glint of a knife, in the moonlight, in their hands obviously looking for her. Emma looks around for a path away from the horror stalking her. She has to run. She has to run NOW!
Low hanging branches scrape at her as she barrels her way through them in her desperation to get away. She pauses again, trying to hear something, anything that will indicate if her attacker is near.
She screams as a dark figure brushes past her in the dark, forcing her to stumble backwards before she scampers off as fast as her legs can carry her and away from what must be the thing trying to kill her. She runs blindly through the trees and shrubs with no idea where she is going. Only the terror she is feeling and her all too natural thought to get away from what is chasing her as fast as she can are in her mind now.
Emma stops suddenly as she breaks out of the foliage and her panicked mind just barely registers the asphalt under her feet. The next and last things she registers are two white lights blinding her and the loud blare of a horn.
Beckett's cruiser on the way to the crime scene
Castle looks at the dwindling indications of civilisation in the scenery that is passing the passenger window of Kate's unmarked, NYPD Dodge Charger and turns to his wife and asks, "Tell me again why we are called to a traffic accident, in upstate New York and way outside of our normal jurisdiction?"
Kate spares her attention from driving to give him a brief glance as she replies with a shrug of her shoulders, "Captain Gates said it is some sort of cross departmental co-operation exercise that the Commissioner has organised with the State Police. Apparently he offered and they agreed that if a case comes along that their own investigators are too busy for or is too unusual for them to handle then a team from the NYPD will take it off their hands. There just has to be a link back to our jurisdiction to justify our taking over the case. According to what Gates was told the victim has some link back to the city and as we don't have an active case at the moment, we've been called in."
"Well, I'm glad for the break from training to work on a real case. With three quarters of my training done I just want it over and to graduate. While this might slow that down I'm happy to be doing something other than attending classes at the Academy or running around after Espo and Ryan," declares Castle with mild impatience.
"Yeah, well be careful what you wish for. This might be just a routine traffic accident. Before you know it you'll be back at the books or running after the boys," suggests Kate as she continues to drive them assuredly to the scene.
Castle gives a sigh at that. He wants to be an Auxiliary Detective already. It has been going well, for the most part. He's aced all the exams he's been given so far and he's more than successfully completed all the tasks the boys have set him. All with a minimum of grumbling on his part. Those tasks of the boys haven't been as onerous as he thought they'd be. Especially those set by Espo after they had their baton training session in the precinct gym.
That's not to say to two detectives still don't try to have fun with him. He'd be disappointed with them if they didn't. He swears he can still smell the stench of sewerage clinging to his pants from the time Espo had him wading through that sewer line looking for a murder weapon that their killer had flushed down the toilet a few weeks ago. That's despite the fact that the slacks he's wearing now are not the ones he wore on that day. Oh, no, he threw those pants out the moment he got home that night.
Then there was the twenty page treatment on case law and proper legal procedures to follow during an arrest that Ryan demanded from him, at short notice, for his evaluation. He spent a very sleepless night typing that up in his study with the only thing keeping him going the bottomless cups of coffee supplied to him throughout the night by Kate and Alexis.
On top of it all there was the traffic cam footage that both of his TO's set him to sift through. He'd spent hours going through the footage on the off chance of spotting their suspect leaving their crime scene only for him to discover later that he was looking through old footage that had nothing to do with the murder they were investigating. Their justification was that they wanted to see how long it took for him to realise. He's ashamed to admit that it took him far too long to figure that out. His only excuse the fatigue he was feeling from the physical and intellectual demands of undertaking the training to be an Auxiliary Detective all the while still contributing to his normal level to Kate's cases and while also still churning out chapters for the next Nikki Heat.
Yet while the men have occasionally had their fun with him they have mostly kept the tasks they have set him professional and appropriate. He has a feeling the woman sitting in the driving seat next to him might have had something to do with that. After the traffic cam incident he'd come back to the precinct from a class at the Academy to the sight of both male detectives obviously limping as they made their way down the stairs at the end of the homicide floor, not far from Kate's desk. Moments later Kate had bound down those same steps to join him and from the the sheen of sweat on her brow and the towel around her neck he could tell she'd just come from the precinct gym.
Upon asking her what she had been doing and if she knew what happened to Ryan and Esposito she had just looked over at the two men pointedly as she'd said, "Oh, I challenged the boys to a kickboxing session. I just wanted to show them some new moves I've learnt. I thought it would be an opportunity to teach them both something."
From the chagrined looks on the two men's faces Castle could well imagine the 'lesson' his wife and dealt out to the two men. From then on none of the boys training demands got out of hand.
Turning his attention back to the present he asks, "But why your team out of all the squads in the NYPD? Do you think it might have something to do with you taking the Captain's exam?"
"I don't know, Castle. I doubt it has anything to do with my taking the exam. Anyway, the results haven't even been published yet so there's no way that could influence them selecting us for this case," reasons Kate as she brings her car to a halt at the side of the road near the numerous official vehicles stopped there. The blue and red lights on their roofs flashing, indicating they have arrived at their scene.
"You know, with my getting the Poe's Pen Award, becoming the first Auxiliary Detective, you going for Captain, we could be New York's newest power couple," posits Castle as they both exit the car and start walking towards the scene.
"Oh Castle, don't jinx it. As I said I haven't even got my exam results back yet," protests Beckett superstitiously.
Castle waves off her protest casually yet confidently, "It's you. You aced it."
They continue walking and approach Esposito and Ryan's red Charger as the two men get out and Ryan is obviously continuing a discussion the two men were having in the car.
"No man. It was the guy with the axe in his heart. He bled out in the Barcalounger. We called him 'Lord of the Flies', remember?" asserts Ryan to Esposito.
"Nah, Nah, Nah, you're wrong, bro. It was the pet shop owner whose wife fed him to the dogs," responds Esposito gesturing to make his point.
"What are you guys fighting about?" interrupts Kate curiously as she and Castle join the disagreeing partners.
"Ah, the first case that Captain Montgomery partnered us on. Ten years ago today," replies Ryan with pride in his voice.
"Really! It's your maniverssary? And I didn't get you anything," chimes in Castle with surprise at the start but with a subtle dig in his voice at his TO's at the end.
"There's still time," responds Esposito giving Castle a look that indicates he expects a drive of Castle's Ferrari in his future.
Before their banter can continue they join a dark haired woman in a State Police uniform and with lieutenant's bars on her collar.
"You the folks from the 12th?" the trooper asks and from the look of assent from Beckett she continues. "I'm Trooper Collins. Thanks for coming out of your jurisdiction….."
Trooper Collins then proceeds to fill them in on the details of the case as she leads them past a crashed tanker truck on the side of the road. Castle takes in the details, asks a question and listens again as she passes to the boys the evidence showing a link to the city that justifies their being called in on the Commissioner's exercise. Everything stops for Castle the moment he sees the victim for the first time, laid out on the ME's gurney.
As he walks closer to the body the crosses that have been carved into her forehead and cheeks stir a long suppressed memory. He's seen this before. He knows what this is. Can it be true? After all this time he wasn't imagining things. It was real. HE was real!
After asking about the marks on the woman's face and learning of the driver's sighting of a tragically familiar sounding dark figure he is even more certain. A fist seems to be gripping his heart as thinks about what this all means.
As Trooper Collins walks away, taking a call on her radio, Castle says to Kate with cold certainty, "We need to talk to that driver."
The 12th Precinct a couple of hours later
Castle studies the sketch that the tanker driver has supplied and all doubts about what this is vanish. In truth they vanished the moment he starting hearing what the driver saw.
His interruptions of the driver's testimony with his own, accurate, descriptions of what the man saw had surprised and puzzled Kate. So, after getting the sketch he is holding, they'd returned to the precinct with his promise to her to explain how he knew exactly what the driver as going to describe and why it has rattled him so.
As he continues to study the sketch Kate's voice starts to make its way past the focus he is giving the image before him. An image he thought for so long was all in his imagination. An image that is all too real for him now.
'….You want to talk about it?" he registers the concern in Kate's question as he finally puts down the sketch and takes a breath.
"I was eleven years old…Ah, my mother was touring with Pippin. I was in New Hampshire staying with the family of a classmate for President's Day weekend. Their home abutted a few hundred acres of State Forrest called Hollander's Woods. We were told never to go into the woods alone….," Castle responds to Kate's questioning eyes as he turns towards her.
"Somebody told you not to so you had to do it anyway," she adds with a slight smile because he knows that she is exactly the same as him in that regard, even when she was young. That if someone told little Katie Beckett that she couldn't do something then she would make it her mission to do just that.
Castle pauses again as he takes another glance at the sketch and remembers that day, thirty or more years ago, before continuing in a sombre voice, "I walked for hours. I was cold, completely lost and that's when I saw him. A figure clad in black, kneeling. After a few moments he left and that's when I saw her on the ground."
"Who?" ask Kate mesmerised by the obviously deep and significant memory Castle is recalling for her.
"A body! The first body I ever saw. Her throat had been slit and those same symbols were carved into her forehead and her cheeks. I touched her arm and I remember thinking how cold it was."
As he remembers the rest, through the fog of his childhood memory, he tells Kate of how the figure in the mask on the sketch grabbed him. Pushed him against a tree. Thrust a knife against his throat and warns him not to tell anyone about what he has seen. The masked man's voice reverberates in his mind as he shouts at him to "GO!" all those years ago and then he hears Kate ask, "Why do you think he let you live?"
Back in the present, standing before is wife he responds to her honestly with a hint of his own curiosity at the reason he is still alive, "I don't know. I waited until I got back to the city to call the police, from a pay phone, I was too scared to let them know who I was."
Castle looks haunted at the memories of that time as a small, frightened boy as Kate asks, "And who was the girl?"
"That's just the thing. They searched the woods with cadaver dogs. They never found a body," answers Castle.
"So you never figured out who she was," adds Kate as she nods slightly in understanding of Castle's distress at not knowing who this woman from his childhood was. His own personal angel of death.
"I checked local papers, no one in the area had been reported missing. When I got older I checked with missing persons, even the FBI database for anyone matching her description or any crimes involving those symbols or that mask but there was nothing. It's like it never happened and after a while I started to wonder if it had," continues to assert Castle in an almost resigned fashion. As if he's gone over this so many times to himself that he knows how strange and insubstantial it sounds.
"That day in the woods, Kate. That's why I do what I do. I'm driven to figure out the story because I could never figure out that one," finishes Castle as he studies the sketch yet again as if the black and white drawing will finally give him the answers he has sought for so long.
"Why, didn't you tell me this before?" asks Kate with honest curiosity but no judgment.
She well remembers the first time she asked Castle why he became a mystery writer all those Halloweens ago and the sympathetic and blatantly untrue story he'd told her just to mess with her. She really just wants to know why he hasn't shared the truth with her before now. Not that she's angry. No, she can see how deeply Castle is affected by this. She's just intrigued, especially as he is well aware of her reasons to become a cop. Then again, since she'd gotten him back for his fake story with that Alien gag back then, she didn't ask him again so it's partly her fault that he hadn't shared this pivotal moment from his childhood with her.
"I think I didn't want it to be real. But it is real. He's real. He killed before and he just tried to kill again," he tells her, looking into her eyes with conviction and resignation.
"Well, this time you are a successful mystery writer that is a hairs breadth away from becoming the first NYPDA Detective. You have me, the boys and the entire NYPD behind you so this time you are not alone. You are going to find him and stop him. I promise you, Castle," Kate affirms to him earnestly, looking him in the eyes and reaching out to grip his hand reassuringly.
"Thanks, Kate, but if I'm right this guy's operated freely and undetected for over thirty years. How are we going to stop someone who has obviously honed his craft to perfection to stay in the shadows for all these years?" asks Castle with a hint of desperation.
"By doing what we always do. The boys and I will gather the evidence and then you'll put it together to find that missing something that will let is find this guy. And when we do you'll be able to lay this demon to rest, once and for all," asserts Kate confidently, giving him a squeeze of his hand.
Castle looks at her with gratitude, squeezes her hand back, takes a breath and says, 'Well then, we better get started, hadn't we"?
Outside Connie Lewis' home later that day
As Kate's Charger pulls up in front of the Lewis home Castle sees a nondescript, white, single story home. Is this the place? He wonders. Is this where his nightmare has been all this time? In this unpreprosessing suburban home?
They've followed the trail of evidence left by their victim, Emma Malloy, of her search for her friend, Zoe, to this address thanks to a good catch by Tory. As he gets out of the car he spots the white sedan with the NYC sticker in the back window and the partial plate that led them here.
That Zoe was seen getting into the car matched his theory of his nightmare's MO. That he targets women that are alone and, when he finds out that they won't be missed, he kills them. He is certain now that Zoe was the masked man's victim and when Emma did what he hadn't been able to do for all these years, track him down, he'd tried to kill her too.
As he and Kate walk side by side up the path towards the home's front door he studies the car, sitting in the driveway.
"There it is. White sedan. X and Z in the plate. NYC sticker in the window. Exactly as Emma's witness described," Castle recounts for his wife feeling justified that his theory and therefore his childhood experience is proving true. For so long he had been doubting himself and what he saw when he was eleven. Now, everything they are encountering is corroborating what he encountered back then.
"Yeah, but how is a seventy-two year old woman connected to all of this?" asks Kate as she walks beside him and then stops and looks back as Castle stops looking apprehensively at the house.
"You, ok?" she asks concerned.
"After all these years I may finally get some answers," he responds, his eyes fixed on the home in front of them. His tone expressing his hope that the building they then continue to walk towards holds those answers.
Inside the Lewis home
Noah Lewis is in the back bedroom, with the closet pushed back and cleaning the double barrelled shotgun he has stored in the bolt hole he has in the wall and floor there, when he hears the knock on the front door. He stills and hears a woman's voice call out for his mother and something about NYPD. The police! They're here to see mother. Probably going to have him committed again. If they come in they'll find her and they will commit him. He has to hide.
He faintly hears the front door creak open and a man's voice make comment on the obvious fact as he crawls into his bolt hole and, quietly as he can, pulls the closet into position in front of his hiding place. Through the thin walls of his mother's home he hears the man's voice call for his mother followed by footsteps and the closing of the front door. He grips his shotgun tightly as he tries to make out if the footsteps are getting any closer.
No, they seem to be staying in the front room. He can barely hear them over the noise from the TV that his mother is watching. Not that she can see what she is watching but he likes to think that part of her is still in the room enough that she needs the distraction of the TV.
The woman's voice calls out for his mother again and he almost giggles at the fact that there is no way they are going to get an answer. Boy, are they going to be surprised when they meet his mother.
He hears the woman's voice repeatedly ask for his mother until it stops. There is a long silence and Noah strains to hear any more noises coming from the front room. They must have met mother, he thinks.
It is at least an hour later and he is still in his bolt hole. He's heard the woman make a phone call which, about fifteen minutes later is followed by the sounds of many feet walking through his mother's house. He also hears many voices. Voices of the man and the woman that first entered the house and that made him hide. Then he hears the voices of many more people, all over the house. He'd daren't try and leave as there are too many people around and they are sure to hear him. He'll just wait them out and leave after they're gone.
Noah tenses as he hears footsteps enter the bedroom where his bolt hole is. Through a tiny crack in the wall of the bedroom he sees a man in a blue windbreaker with the initials CSU on his back and wearing blue rubber gloves enter the room and start looking around. At that moment his cell phone starts ringing in his pocket and he freezes hoping the man in the bedroom can't hear it. He doesn't even think of shutting it off.
He sees the man in the windbreaker point at the closet as four people enter the room, three men and a woman and two of the men and the woman are all holding guns. The two armed men make their way over to the closet, guns at the ready and then open the doors. Upon seeing nothing but what you'd expect in a closet, hanging clothes and shoes and other junk on its floor, he sees them relax.
Noah silently moves back, directly behind the closet and readies his shotgun. They are in his mother's home. They are not supposed to be here. They can't find him. He'll show them.
He hears one of the men declare the closet empty and the woman tell him to check inside it for his phone. Then the voice of another man, the man that he first heard with the woman earlier, says that he can see that the closet has been moved. No, they're going to find him!
Before they can he fires both barrels of his shotgun through the thin wood of the back of the closet not caring if he hits anyone or not. Just as he jumps down the hole in the floor, into the void underneath the house, he spots the woman stride forward boldly and fiercely as she fires repeatedly at where he has just been standing.
As Noah scrambles desperately through dark void towards the light he hears the closet being moved aside and the woman call out for him to surrender. Then there is pounding of feet above his head as he hears the woman discover his bolt hole and order pursuit.
Noah emerges into the light of the backyard and rushes desperately around the side of the house and vaults over the wall leading to the neighbour's yard. Desperate though he is he has prepared for this day. The day when they would come for him again. That is why he prepared his bolt hole and why he knows exactly where he is going when he escapes from the house with the intruders hot on his heels.
Before the two men pursuing him join him he quickly ducks back into the bushes along the fence that he just vaulted over and makes his way to the wall of the stand-alone garage. He just makes it to the niche he made between the wall of the garage and the fence and which is screened from view by the bushes, when his pursuers jump into the yard.
With satisfaction he watches as they look around for him in vain and then, obviously thinking he has continued to run, as they run across the yard and jump over the next fence. He waits a moment before, quietly, making his way down the side of the garage and into the alley behind his neighbour's house. There he calmly walks in the opposite direction his pursuers have just taken.
They won't find him. Not now. Not ever.
A/N : So this is the first part of Hollander's Woods appearance in my story. I've previously said that I enjoyed the episode and as it turns out the events in it are significant for my story. Therefore more of the episode will appear in my story than any episode previously. I hope you all continue to enjoy it. I'll try not to make it too much of a straight regurgitation of the episode, good though it is.