Genre: Crime, Drama, Family, Romance, Humor
Rating: M for violence, language and sexual situations
Disclaimer: I do not own the characters featured on the show Castle, they belong to the creator of the show, ABC, and the others who do own them.
A/N #1: Definitely loved getting the reviews I did, and since I did, going to get straight to my thank yous. Beckett-Castle4ever (Really happy to see you liked the last chapter. And I'm definitely not surprised that you can't wait for the blind date, lol, get the feeling a lot of readers can't wait for that), vetgirlmx (Lol, yeah, you were right, she didn't see the attacker, since it couldn't be that easy as you said. And I was really happy to see your reaction to the way they opened the box. Same with what you said about the password being chords, I figured on going different from the usual combo of numbers or words, so went with that since it fit the ongoing theme of the story, lol. Not surprised that you want to know more about the picture and the connection to the case. Also not surprised too you're wondering how the investigation will go with their date coming up too) and sammysgirl78 (Really happy to see you liked the chapter! And not surprised the thing with the mom surprised you, lol. Thought you might like how Julia called them and wanted to let Castle and Beckett know she got to her dance class alright. And same with her asking to talk to them both later, knew you'd like that as well and was glad to see I was right there, lol. No surprise seeing you too are hoping the case doesn't cut into their dates, lol, you'll see what happens with that of course. But really glad that you want to read more, and of course now you can!). So thanks so much to those of you who sent me a review, I great appreciate it of course, as I always do, but more so 'cause I know people can get busy of course, so means a lot to me. And of course, loved reading the feedback sent my way about the last chapter!
Must Go Free
Watching as Beckett hung up the phone as he sat down next to her, Castle asked, "Another person set free from our list?" as she made an x over a copy of the picture from the notebook.
"Yeah, it doesn't help we have three little black books to go through too," Beckett said, running her hands over her face. "And those little black books are not so little. You know," she said, pulling her hands away and looking at him. "I don't know how this guy wasn't sick with something or have a hundred kids."
"Uh…" Castle started to say, looking everywhere but at her.
Sighing as she remembered, Beckett said, "Alright, that's why, but he's lucky he had that, or else he'd have both. But yeah, Seth Garrett is in London right now, a sound effects producer on the set of the latest Brad Pitt movie. The director; of sound; assures me if he was here during the times of the murders, he'd be out of a job and also have to explain why all his work has been completed."
"Okay, then, how much do you have left?" Castle asked, able to tell that his fiancée was stressed out. He leaned over the desk, looking at the picture and the people that she was contacting. "Look, only two left," he pointed out. "And after that you can head home."
"Yeah, to Lanie and her putting me into who knows what for…" Beckett started to say before looking towards Ryan and Esposito. Since they were on the phone and not looking towards them she said quietly, "Our date. But… I'm just trying to remember the dinner afterwards. Though Castle, I may not be able to do this tonight, there are just a ton of people in those photo albums."
"Who are virtually untraceable," he said. "No names, just pictures remember. And I should let you know, the boys were talking about having Ryan stay tonight if it's necessary."
Breathing out at that, Beckett couldn't fight her smile and said, "Lanie strikes again." She laughed softly at Castle's nod of his head, and picked up the phone before she could reach over to squeeze his hand in thanks for making her laugh and relax; if only for a brief moment.
As she made the second to last call, Castle went over to the conference room to look at the murder board again. In the time since the attack on Mrs. Porter, there hadn't been another murder called in, and he and Beckett had theorized that it was more than likely their killer was murdering because of the past and the Silver Hammers band. He took down the picture of their first vic, frowning a little as that one still was bothering him. There was something at the back of his mind that he couldn't really explain, though he guessed it had to do with the fact that their killer had obviously disguised himself. He heard footsteps coming up to the door then and he looked up to see it was his fiancée. "All set?" he asked.
"Yeah, and nothing, I was just going to ask Ryan and Espo if they've had any more luck than me," Beckett said before she left. "Guys," she called as she saw they were talking to each other hurriedly. "You have something?" she asked, a little bit of a hopeful tone edging into her voice.
"Got two names we weren't able to get a hold of," Esposito said. "Right here on the top of the picture. A Tyrone Max and Rosalyn Pierce."
"Have you searched them?" Beckett asked.
"I just searched for Max, and am about to call his brother," Esposito said. "Or should you make the call."
Beckett nodded, and after he'd dialed, set the call to speakerphone. She glanced at Castle next to her, seeing he was looking at the copy of the band picture. A stressed voice on the other end caught her attention and she quickly said, "Yes, I'm looking for Patrick Max, is this him?"
"Yeah," the man said. "Look I don't really have time-"
"My name is Detective Beckett, Mr. Max, I'm with the NYPD, and I'm wondering if you've been in contact with your brother lately," Beckett said quickly before he could hang up. She looked at the others as there was a muffled sound of yelling and said, "Sir, I'm prepared to-"
"No, he's here, Ty just has a raging hangover," the man said quickly. "So I don't know how much help he'll be. But if you want to talk to him I can keep him here."
"Thank you, there'll be two detectives on their way," Beckett said before she hung up.
"Dude better not throw up in our car," Esposito said as he and Ryan got up to leave. "And you better have some strong coffee ready for him Castle."
"What about the woman?" Ryan said.
"I'll look into her, see what I can get," Beckett said simply. Once the two were gone she went to her desk, and said, before her fiancé could sit, "Shouldn't you be getting that coffee?"
"Is this for you or Hungover Max?" Castle asked. He wasn't surprised when she shook her head, and he sat down next to her saying, "It can wait. I'd like to see what you get on this woman."
"You think it's her?" Beckett asked, looking at him in surprise.
"Not really, but she could help," Castle said before information came up at Beckett's search. They both read what there was together, and he said, "So she's a ghost."
"It looks like it, and time to make a call to the Porters," Beckett said, getting her cell phone. "Mr. Porter? Yes this is Detective Beckett again, I… he's there? I'll need to talk to Colton later. For now I need to ask you and your mother about two people you knew, back when you were with the Silver Hammers."
"Go ahead," Porter said. "I have you on speaker."
"We've come into contact with a Tyrone Max-" Beckett started to say.
"Ty? Oh yeah, I haven't seen him for a couple months," Porter said.
"He can't be your killer," Mrs. Porter said as Beckett and Castle shared a look. "He's a good friend, and I don't think he could hurt anyone."
"We'll need to verify that," Beckett said.
"How did you find out about Ty?" Porter asked.
"We found a picture of the Silver Hammers," Beckett replied simply. "And another name we came up with, Rosalyn Pierce." She glanced at her fiancé in surprise when there was a long moment of silence and said, "Mr. Porter?"
"Yeah, sorry, just, that brought back memories. Rosie was the only one set against the band breaking up," Porter said.
"Vehemently," Mrs. Porter added.
"I wasn't lying when I told you the break up was amicable, it's just she was alone so it was easy to forget," Porter said quickly.
"And have you been in contact with her at all?" Beckett asked.
"No, I haven't seen her since 2009," Porter replied. "I heard from one of the sound guys, Colin Spivey, that she kinda disappeared about two, three years ago," Porter said. "You might want to talk to Jay Solomon, he always tried to get involved with her romantically, never worked out, but he might have tried to keep in contact with her."
"Was she involved with anyone else in the band?" Beckett asked, knowing from the look on Castle's face that he wanted to ask the same thing.
"Not as far I know," Porter said.
When Beckett had hung up with the two; after thanking them for the information; Castle said, "She's looking more and more suspicious."
"I'd be interested to know if she could hit our last vic as hard as Kellogg was," Beckett said, searching the name they'd been given. When she'd gotten a number, she called the man and was surprised when he immediately responded to the name Rosalyn Pierce.
"Yeah, man, it was… so sad what happened to her after we disbanded," Solomon said. "She went into drugs pretty hard a few years ago, and died of an overdose in Little Rock."
"Are you sure?" Beckett asked, looking at Castle in surprise.
"Yeah, from what I heard, was a bathroom in a bar, she was shooting up," Solomon said.
Since Ryan had talked to the man already, Beckett thanked him and hung up before getting a number for the Little Rock police. As she was dialing she could feel her fiancé's gaze on her and said, "I have no clue why that's not in her information."
"I'm sure you'll find out," Castle said, nodding to the elevators.
Glancing over, Beckett saw Ryan come out first, struggling with something before LT rushed over to help him. She wasn't at all surprised to see that it was Tyrone Max that was struggling against him, yelling something about him not knowing he'd been with an underage girl. She looked up at Castle, and nodded to the break room so he could make a cup of coffee for the man, who was finally wrestled into the first interrogation room the boys and LT could get him inside of. She then had to turn her attention to the phone, as someone finally took her off hold in Little Rock.
After getting a cup of the strongest coffee he knew how to make, Castle went to observation, looking on as Ryan was asking him about the first three vics.
"Nah, don't know," Max said, seeming to be calmer after being told the woman he'd slept with the night before was not underage after all.
"And these two?" Esposito asked, putting down the pictures of their last two victims.
"Yeah, Jace, and Eva," Max said with a laugh. "Wait," he said, his head shooting up to look at them. "They're not dead right… five people?"
"So you know these last two, why don't you tell us about them," Ryan said.
"Uh, yeah, they're, he was Paul in our band the Silver Hammers, and Eva was manager," Max said slowly. "He's a great guy… was a great guy, Eva too. They were… who did this?"
As the boys asked Max about his alibis for the five murders, Castle looked over as the door opened and his fiancée walked inside. "Well?" he asked her quickly.
"Apparently Rosalyn Pierce was her married name. Just before she died, she went back to her maiden name after her divorce went through, Rosalyn Wilder," Beckett replied, looking in on the interview. "How does he look?"
"Like a man who hadn't seen his good friends in a while, only to find out they're dead," Castle said. He wasn't surprised when Beckett breathed out a heavy sigh and said, "I don't know if his alibis will check out of course…"
"No, but you can tell," Beckett replied. "And the underage girl?"
"A mistake, drunken mistake, she's twenty-two, LT got it confirmed so he'd talk to Esposito and Ryan," Castle said. "So what do we do?"
"I'm thinking of something we need to do ourselves," Beckett said.
"Scrapbook?" Castle asked. When she nodded, he followed her out of the room and back to the conference room where the scrapbook was. "I have to wonder why the killer didn't just destroy the box and get to whatever they wanted inside."
"The scrapbook," Beckett reminded him. "And they probably didn't have a chance. Planning and committing five murders and trying to commit a sixth can take up a lot of time."
Sitting at the table next to her, Castle looked on as she flipped through the pages until they came to the last three pages they hadn't looked at, as Gates had insisted they search for the people in the picture of the band. When she got to the second to last page, he grabbed her hand tightly, staying her from getting to the next page.
"What?" Beckett asked, surprised as she looked at him. At his nod, she turned her attention to the picture on the right page, at the very bottom. It was of a man with their second to last vic and the two Porters at what she thought was a hospital. That was confirmed when she read the writing underneath the picture, and saw it read, Mayes, me, Wes and Mrs. L, July '09. Getting her phone, she called the Porters, asking them about the man named Mayes.
"So is there anyone else that left the band before that group picture that we should know about?" Beckett was asking as Castle watched. When she hung up shortly after he asked, "No one?"
"Alfred Mayes was the only one to 'jump ship' as Porter put it," Beckett replied. "He moved to Arkansas after leaving, to take up his family's lumber business. Mayes never kept in touch after moving though."
"Hey, Max is a bust," Esposito replied. "Got a hold of his brother when we finished talking to him, and Max was doing a bar crawl for the past two days."
"Any reason why?" Castle asked as Ryan came up behind.
"He's getting married next week," he said as the others looked at him. "That's why he was panicking about sleeping with someone. He's still panicking actually, asked us not to tell his fiancée."
"Alright, get in contact with his friends, if he had anything with-" Beckett started to say.
"I did, the groomsman and best man actually, it took little time to get confirmation, but I also got the names of the bars they could remember they were at, at the times of the murders," Ryan said. "If you'd like me to check on them to be absolutely sure."
"Check just one," Beckett said.
"What about Ms. Pierce?" Esposito asked when he'd left.
"She overdosed a few years ago, in Arkansas," Beckett said, looking at Castle. "And we found someone with the band, but who left before that group picture was taken, an Alfred Mayes. We'll check on him, can you look into Washington Park?"
"On it," Esposito said with a nod before he left the room, Castle and Beckett following to get to her desk.
"Alfred Mayes, he was arrested for drug possession…" Beckett said, reading the man's record first.
"Drugs, I knew-" Castle started to say.
"Back in 2001," Beckett said. "And there's no other record of drugs, possession or dealing."
"I was close," Castle said.
"Not that much," Beckett said simply before she opened the next page. "Castle, listen, Mayes was found in a bathroom of the Jackson BBQ and Grill in Little Rock, dead with a syringe in his arm. He OD'd the same place that Wilder died at, the same night."
"Why wasn't that mentioned… were they in separate bathrooms?" Castle asked.
"There's a notation here," Beckett said, clicking on a link which brought up the front page of the Little Rock Chronicle. "They were," she said, reading the article before going back to the attachment which was the police report on Mayes' death. "Everything checks out, but look, there's a notation that confirms what the officer told me in Little Rock. The Grill was well known for drug dealing, out back."
"So they both bought and got high, just not together," Castle said. He nodded and said, "I don't buy it, was there an autopsy?"
"On Mayes… no, like Wilder, he had insisted on no autopsy in his will, and his family threatened to sue the state if they went ahead with it," Beckett said. She then frowned and went hurriedly to the report for Wilder's death, and said, "I thought the name Mayes was familiar, they insisted on no autopsy for her either."
"Something weird about that," Castle said. "What if… what happened to them both?"
Looking around, Beckett found the answer and said, "Their bodies were given to the Mayes family and according to this, both were cremated, their ashes spread in the Gulf, off Louisiana. I need to contact the family."
Castle watched her go through a number of files before she opened a newspaper article. "Family of four found killed in home. Don't tell me that's the Mayes family," he read in slight shock. When was that?"
"About seven months ago," Beckett said. "I need to make a call, have the Little Rock PD send the autopsy reports to Lanie, and see what she can tell me."
Castle saw that Esposito was standing in the doorway to the room where he'd been looking for footage, motioning him over. He looked at his fiancée before he left her, going to the detective. "What? We just got some weird news," he said.
"Just making sure you're going out tonight," Esposito said.
"Tell Lanie that yes I am," Castle said, rolling his eyes.
"Lanie?" Esposito asked, startled.
"Yes, I know she's trying to set me up with whoever this woman is," Castle replied simply. "And I'll meet her, I promise. But how will I find her at the restaurant?"
"Lanie said she'll be wearing a necklace with a colored pendant," Esposito said.
"Okay, I just hope I find the right woman," Castle said.
"Just mention Lanie's name bro, then you'll be with the right one," Esposito replied.
"What if two friends of Lanie's are there?" Castle asked. He wasn't surprised when the detective just looked at him, and he was about to speak when Beckett and Ryan approached the doorway at the same time.
"Let's hear what we all have, Ryan, you can go first," Beckett said.
"Right, well, the bars I called; their trips to them overlapped the times of the first two murders; confirmed that they were there, they have security footage which is on my computer," he said. "If you want to see."
"I trust what you saw; cut Max loose; Espo?" Beckett said with a nod.
"No cameras near that bench, and I went through the footage at the time the pick up was supposed to happen, got this," Esposito said, showing them the image he'd printed from the TV. "Though," he said as the other three crowded around to look at the picture of the man he'd recognized from the other footage they had. "We don't have anything but just barely the side of his face. Oh, and the sketch artist called me, no luck, even with a nose."
"As I was expecting," Beckett said. "Alright, as for what Castle and I got, we should go to my desk so you can see the reports and articles we found." Once they were around her computer, she explained what they'd discovered, and how she'd tried to get the autopsy reports on the Mayes family, but had been unable to reach the coroner, who'd gone home early to start vacation. "They're going to try and reach him, and then get the files to Lanie in the morning before he leaves, but other than that we don't have much." She jumped suddenly when she felt her phone start to shake before it started to ring, and she hurriedly pulled it out.
"Lanie?" Beckett asked in slight surprise. "Yes, I'm aware of the time, okay, I'll leave as soon as I wrap things up here, bye." Looking at the three men she rolled her eyes and said, "If you have to know, I'm going out tonight, at her insistence."
"Alright, well, I can stay late," Ryan said, Esposito echoing him. "Anything we could do since it sounds like you need to leave now."
"We're a little dead in the water, so I would like you both to contact the family of Sunderland and Kellogg, mention Mayes and Wilder, and then try the friends of those two," Beckett told them.
"We're of the opinion they faked their deaths with the help of Mayes' family, and are working together," Castle said, though he and Beckett hadn't spoken about it.
"Got it, have fun, and you on your date too Castle," Ryan said.
"Yeah, have a nice night. Thank you guys," Beckett said as she'd been packing her bag. "Call if you have anything." And with that she was slinging her bag over her shoulder, knowing her fiancé was watching her, wondering how things would go since their arranged night out had arrived.