Visitations
Chapter 8
Waiting
"Watching police work on your day off?" Johanna inquired as Kate stared intensely at the flat screen in Castle's office.
"It's a hostage situation at a bank," Kate explained. "I know this guy Peterson. He's a jerk."
"How do you know him?" Johanna asked. "Hostage negotiation is a little out of your ball park isn't it?"
"It is," Kate agreed, "and I never want to be involved in it again. But when Castle and Martha were taken hostage in a bank hold up, I got pulled into it."
Johanna studied the expression in her daughter's eyes. "We need to look at that."
The New Amsterdam Bank and Trust was surrounded by police cars and a trailer housed the hostage negotiation team. Earlier Kate determinedly made her way through the crowd to the command center.
"I need SWAT analysis, sit rep, building blueprints. Five minutes," Peterson ordered as Earlier Kate came through the door.
"Who are you?" Peterson asked brusquely.
Earlier Kate answered matter-of-factually, "Detective Kate Beckett, homicide."
"I'll be sure to call if someone dies." Peterson returned. "Meanwhile, I need you step outside."
"No," Earlier Kate protested. "Sir, my partner is in that bank."
Peterson looked hopeful. "Wait, we got a cop in there?"
"He's a civilian investigator,'" Earlier Kate replied, polishing the truth a little. "He and I were on the phone when they took over the bank. He said there are four suspects in there, they're dressed up in doctor's scrubs."
Peterson lost some of his edge of nastiness. "Anything else you can tell me?"
"Yeah," Earlier Kate responded. "I spoke with one of the suspects."
Peterson probed further. "And what was the demeanor?"
"Calm, actually. Very calm," Earlier Kate reported.
"Thanks for the intel," Peterson told Earlier Kate dismissively. "We'll do everything we can to get your partner out safe."
"Okay, so what's our next move?" Earlier Kate asked urgently.
"Well," Peterson replied snarkily, "your next move is to leave my command post."
Earlier Kate stubbornly remained where she was.
An annoyed Peterson continued. "You want to help your partner? Let me do my job."
Earlier Kate turned away but didn't leave.
"I need a line on that bank." Peterson ordered Officer Monfriez, who sat at a terminal. "I want to talk to his guy."
"Yes, sir," Monfriez responded.
Peterson turned back to Earlier Kate. "You missed your cue, Detective," he said, giving her a pointed look.
Earlier Kate left reluctantly.
"I see what you mean about Peterson being a jerk," Johanna commented. "What was going through your head?"
"I wanted to do something and that idiot wouldn't let me. I hated that!" Kate exclaimed. "Unfortunately for Peterson, though, one of the robbers intervened."
"That I want to see," Johanna crowed.
Officer Monfriez approached Earlier Kate as she spoke with Ryan and Esposito. "Detective Beckett! Captain Peterson would like a word."
"Tell me. What were you thinking?" Peterson asked her as she entered the trailer.
"I was just trying to help out, sir," Earlier Kate answered, trying to understand what he was getting at.
"What, by charming the bank robber?" Peterson asked sarcastically.
"What!" Earlier Kate exclaimed confused.
"We get him on the horn, but before I can get two words out he says, and I quote, "'I will only talk to the lady cop,'" Peterson replied nastily. "'The one with the bedroom voice.' Yeah. You wanted in? Well, you're in."
"No sir," Earlier Kate protested. "I don't have any training in hostage negotiations."
"Well I don't have time to give you a seminar," Peterson returned, "so think of it like this: you do the opposite of whatever your homicide training tells you, okay? So don't yell, don't bully, don't – don't threaten him in any way. It's all about keeping him calm."
Earlier Kate fidgeted nervously.
"Detective, you up for this?" Peterson demanded.
Earlier Kate squared her shoulders. "Yeah. Yeah, absolutely." Sweating, Earlier Kate removed her jacket, put on a headset and took seat at a station.
"Now it's important to keep him talking," Peterson instructed. "You've gotta build rapport. As long as he's busy talking, he's not busy hurting hostages."
That sounded reasonable to Earlier Kate. "Okay."
The head robber, Trapper John, picked up the phone inside the bank. "Who's this?"
"This is Detective Kate Beckett," Earlier Kate told him as calmly as she could. "I understand you wanted to speak with me."
"Yeah, I don't like that other guy," Trapper confirmed.
"Yeah, me either," Earlier Kate quipped, drawing a look from Peterson.
"You said to build a rapport," Earlier Kate explained covering the headset.
Johanna smiled as Peterson shrugged.
Earlier Kate started to do as Peterson had instructed only to be interrupted by Trapper. "Oh Kate, Kate, Kate. You're running that idiot's playbook, aren't you?"
Johanna chortled.
"What did Captain Confidence tell you?" Trapper asked. "Keep me calm? Build rapport? Extract information? Here's how it's going to work," Trapper warned. "You lie to me, I kill hostages. You jerk me around, I kill hostages. You storm the bank, I kill hostages. And Kate? I'll start with your boyfriend."
The smile dropped from Johanna's face as Trapper hung up the phone. "He meant he was going to shoot Castle, didn't he?"
Kate nodded.
"You must have been terrified," Johanna observed.
"I was," Kate agreed."If I did the wrong thing, said the wrong thing, it all could have been over. Obviously Peterson wasn't going to be much help. Peterson wanted me to sit and wait, but doing nothing was killing me."
"It always has," Johanna agreed. "So how did you help Castle?"
Kate shook her head and smiled wryly. "Castle was trying to help me. He used Morse code to get a message out about a safety deposit box. That ended up being a clue to a murder and to the whole reason for the standoff. Then it got even more complicated. It turned out that the mastermind behind the whole thing, a munitions dealer named Ron Brandt, was pretending to be a hostage named Sal Martino. He told Castle there was C-4 in the bank and then faked a seizure. Trapper told me he wanted an EMT sent in to get Brandt in exchange for a bus. That was a ploy to get Brandt out with some information that the robbers took from the safety deposit box Castle saw. Of course I had no way of knowing that. I convinced Peterson to let me go in as the EMT to scope the place out. I managed to see Castle, even hold his hand for a second, and he slipped me the note about the C-4."
"That must have been a nightmare," Johanna empathized.
"Even more so," Kate agreed, "because Alexis showed up looking for Castle and Martha. I had to tell her they were in the bank yet try to reassure her somehow,"
"When you were scared to death yourself." Johanna added."So did Trapper get his bus? Did you use it to get the robbers out of the bank?"
"No," Kate answered. "That was the diciest thing of all. It couldn't get there in time. I had to handle it with Trapper John, or at least I thought I did."
"Let's see," Johanna suggested.
Earlier Kate was talking to Trapper John on the phone from the trailer. "Where's my bus?" Trapper demanded.
The bus is on" its way," Earlier Kate soothed. "It'll be there in 20 minutes."
"A hostage will be dead in two," Trapper warned.
Earlier Kate tried to quell her panic. "No, nobody needs to die, okay? It's coming, it's just – it's stuck in traffic."
"We have rules, Kate," Trapper rejoined. "I said I wouldn't kill anyone, you said you'd get me a bus. I lived up to my end of the deal."
Earlier Kate could barely get the words through her throat. "And I'm going to live up to mine, it just –"
"I warned you not to jerk me around. Now I was clear about the consequences. Do I have to prove how serious I am?" Trapper threatened. "Is that it?"
Earlier Kate struggled to draw air into her lungs. "Okay, I – I think we both just need to take a deep breath and we can talk about this…."
"I'm done talking!" Trapper declared as Earlier Kate heard a gunshot.
"What was that?" Earlier Kate asked in terror.
"A warning shot, Kate." Trapper replied smugly. "The next one's for the kill! I'm going to make pretty red stains out of your boyfriend, Kate. I got my gun to his throat and I'm going to paint a Jackson Pollock with his insides."
"You need to calm him down," Peterson instructed, but Earlier Kate was not about to take his advice.
She turned the threat on Trapper. "Listen to me, jackass. I do not control traffic, so you're going to have to give me 20 minutes."
"Now you got one minute, Kate!" Trapper insisted.
"No! I've got twenty," Earlier Kate returned. "Do you hear me, twenty? Because if you pull that trigger, I will walk through those doors and personally put a bullet through your skull."
To Earlier Kate's massive relief, Trapper John capitulated. "Okay, Kate. You've got 20 more minutes."
"Well, that's one way to negotiate," Peterson noted in surprise.
"I think you really would have done it," Johanna told Kate.
"My face would have been the last thing that bastard saw." Kate confirmed, but it turned out that Trapper was just playing for time. He never wanted the bus. He and his gang had other plans, but they blew up on him."
What do you mean?" Johanna asked.
Trapper and his compatriots were going to use the C-4 to escape. They were going to blow through the roof of an abandoned subway station. But Brandt double crossed them and rigged the C-4 to blow early, killed them all."
"What happened to Castle and the other hostages in the explosion?" Johanna queried worriedly.
"You should see that," Kate told her. "It was actually pretty amazing."
The sound rocked the trailer. Earlier Kate exited to see the dust rising around the bank. She and the SWAT team made their way through the haze searching for the hostages as she urgently called out to Castle.
"It must have seemed like an eternity until you heard him call back," Johanna speculated.
"You have no idea," Kate told her, "but it was worth it when I found him."
"You must have wanted to kiss the daylights out of him," Johanna offered. "I would have."
Kate shook her head. "I wanted to, but I wasn't there yet. We weren't there yet. But to see his eyes looking up at me, even just to touch his collar, I think that may have been one of the happiest moments of my life."
"I saw that on your face." Johanna told her.
"Seeing him and Martha with Alexis afterward was pretty great too," Kate added.
"So what was the grand plot? Why did Brandt engineer all of that?" Johanna wondered.
"Well, that all comes from the clue Castle gave us about the safety deposit box," Kate explained. "Ron Brandt was an abuser, the kind you used to help women get away from. Well his ex-wife, Tanya, wasn't lucky enough to have someone like you, so she ended up staging hers and her son Connor's death. She was using the box as a drop to communicate with her mother Agnes. But somehow Brandt found out, had Agnes murdered to get the key. Then he used the robbery as a cover to get the bank manager's key so he could get into the box and locate Tanya."
"Oh no!" Johanna exclaimed."Did he find them?"
"Yeah, but Castle, Ryan, Esposito, and I figured it out in time to notify the local police about what was going down. We were actually on hold with them when Connor and Tanya were rescued. That was another few minutes that seemed like forever, but it worked out okay. Tanya needed a few stitches, but she and Connor are both fine and Brandt will never see the light of day. With the death of those robbers, he had to worry about more than abuse charges, he was found guilty of four felony homicides."
"That must have seemed like the longest day of your life," Johanna opined.
"It did, at least until the two months Castle was gone," Kate agreed. "But it also taught me that waiting can be worth it, and that helped me get through Castle's disappearance. I was able to convince myself, at least a lot of the time, that I'd find him and he'd be all right, like at the bank. Except now, I can kiss the daylights out of him."
Johanna laughed. "Somehow, I doubt that he minds."
A/N Johanna helping abused women is not canon, but somehow it seems like something she would have done.