Forty-Seven: Chapter 19
DISCLAIMER: None of these characters are mine, but they are memorable. Thank you, Mr. Marlowe.
A/N: I will be updating this story as I can, given current circumstances. Hopefully everyone understands. Thanks to all for reading and commenting. Most of all, thank you again to all of you who have offered prayers and best wishes for Dad. I've tried to respond directly to all of you, but if I have missed anyone, please forgive me.
God bless, and on to the story . . .
Wednesday, March 28, 2012 – 2:01 a.m. – At the Hotel Sanctuary in Manhattan
Detective Javier Esposito steps off the elevator on the top floor, and walks toward his room. He once again marvels at the generosity of Richard Castle. Having the means to do something like this is impressive, of course. Having the heart to actually do it? Beyond impressive.
He opens his door, walking into the dark room and decides to leave the lights off. He's tired, he's worn out, and the adrenaline rush required for his fight and flight session with Cole Maddox has long dissipated. Now he's feeling the natural weariness that comes in the aftermath. He gazes at the sofa, and mentally shakes his head, continuing on – by instinct – to the bedroom. Not bothering with discarding his shoes, shirt, pants – he falls forward onto the bed. He starts drifting but remembers Castle. He needs to get a message to the writer.
He fumbles behind him, along the pockets on his hips, searching for his phone. Finding it, he pulls up Castle's number and begins typing.
JAVIER: Need to talk. First thing in the morning. Nothing is as it seems/seemed. Your eyes only Castle. I'm trusting you on this one.
As he falls asleep, he is focused on one particular sentence that Cedric Marks shared with him back at the apartment. It was a small slip up, but as Javier re-thinks things, he also realizes that Castle – although wrong about Smith and his whole role in this mess – Castle was spot on about the potential identity of the man behind this
Marks' words ring softly to him as he drifts off.
"The Sen . . . my employer has a number of people within his employment, Javi."
The Sen . . . Sen . . . Senator. He works for the government. A United States Senator. He shakes his head, and smiles his way into dreamland.
Wednesday, March 28, 2012 – 4:13 a.m. – At Jim Beckett's NYC Apartment
Click.
Cole Maddox smiles, once again amazed at both how easily he is able to break a lock, and how few locks New Yorkers put on their flimsy doors. Chuckling at man's tendency to opt for the more trusting view, he silently acknowledges that what he is doing is way outside his normal MO. But in his mind, 'that bitch Beckett' deserves this. His orders were to leave the detective alone. Fine. He's a soldier first and foremost. He obeys orders.
That particular order, however, does not extend to her father.
He's still smarting from the beat-down given to him by Javier Esposito. He's always wondered who would be the better between them in a face-off, in a direct conflict. Esposito surprised him, and the Latino's quick strike capability was always the wild-card in Marks' mind. It took him a good fifteen minutes to fully recover from that initial kick to the groin. He has to give it to his old friend. Marks' believes that he has more staying power than Esposito, and the longer a match with him goes, the more into Marks' favor the match tilts. He just needs to survive that first opening barrage. Then he can wear his friend down. A cat playing with its mouse.
He pushes the thoughts out of his mind as he slowly enters the darkened apartment, and makes his way down the hallway. Reaching into his pocket, he carefully pulls out the small syringe and needle and makes his way into the first bedroom. He believes this will be the guest room, but has to make sure. He slowly opens the door and sees the empty bed. Smiling, he closes the door and almost glides down the hallway to the second – and final – bedroom.
He opens the door slightly, finding the snoring form of Jim Beckett laying in the bed, covered by a sheet and blanket. Seconds later, Jim's eyes startle open momentarily, as he awakens with start. Maddox's left hand easily covers Jim's mouth, while plunging the short needle into the man's neck. Once in, he pushes the entire dosage into Kate Beckett's father.
The quick acting drug does its work, as less than ten seconds later, Jim Beckett slumps back into a very different kind of sleep. Maddox easily lifts the thin man onto his shoulders and carries him back to the front of the apartment where he has left the laundry cart. It's a large and deep cart, the kind you see being pushed in larger hotels. Dumping the body into the cart he slowly makes his way out of the apartment and down the hall. At this hour there is no one wandering the halls. He follows the hallway to the garbage shoot, and suppresses a chuckle as he dumps the contents – Jim Beckett – into the shoot, for a one story drop into the dumpster below.
"Bon voyage," he smiles, as the body descends with a slight echo bouncing along the inner walls back up to him.
He whistles as he walks toward the elevator and punches the first floor. Getting off the elevator, he walks out of the apartment complex in the side entrance and finds the garbage dumpster with Jim Beckett's body. Checking for a pulse to make sure the man is still alive and functioning, he smiles as he lifts the body and carries it less than ten feet to the waiting vehicle parked in the alley. He glances up and waves at the surveillance camera that he had already covered with black tape. They'll never see this.
This time the car is a black Lexus RX300. Not exactly the Ford sedan, but he knows that they are looking for the Ford. This car won't attract their attention. He guns his car to life and then pulls away, heading south toward the tunnel with his package in tow.
Wednesday, March 28, 2012 – 4:55 a.m. – At the Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn
Cole Maddox is barely breathing hard at all, as he approaches Johanna Beckett's row of headstones. He carries a slumping Jim Beckett in a large, canvas bag. The ten minute walk with his package has been no more difficult than a few of the carry-out rescues he's had to perform when deployed in combat situations with fellow soldiers slumped across his shoulders.
He gazes ahead at the large hole he arranged through a funeral home to have dug yesterday morning, just a few plots down from Johanna Beckett. The fresh grave is still roped off. Anyone viewing it will think it to be part of preparations for an imminent burial.
"Not too far from the truth," he chuckles to himself, taking the last ten to fifteen steps and bending over to lay the still unconscious Jim Beckett onto the ground. He thinks for a second, and then decides to leave him in the canvas. He isn't expecting anyone out here – not at his hour. The sun is still an hour and a half from rising. There isn't even a bird chirping out here.
He jogs this time, making the ten minute walk in less than six minutes. He opens the trunk/hatchback door of the RX 300 and pulls out a large box. It's about four feet long and two feet wide, with a handle. Retrieving the box, he walks back to the new gravesite, glancing down at Jim Beckett's still body. He takes down the rope around the hole, and drags Jim's body to the edge of the hole. He jumps down into the hole, smiling that no one seems to have paid attention to the roped off area. Why would anyone pay attention? He had gone through a funeral home to set up the excavation, and ensured that it is only five feet deep. No need to make this too difficult.
At six feet tall, his head is a full foot above the lip of the whole, and he drags Beckett's body into the hole. Then he pulls the box he has retrieved from the car into the hole with him. He unwraps Jim's body from the canvas and lays him out on the long board he had placed in the hole previously. Opening the box, he slowly begins to assemble the make-shift, field IV-stand and unit. Child's play, from his time working for Uncle Sam officially.
Minutes later, he turns on the IV unit, connected to the small battery pack he has brought. He sticks Jim Beckett in the arm, stabilizes the needle with tape, and starts the flow of propofol into Jim's system. Smiling, he walks to the opposite end of the hole, and sits down, closing his eyes and taking a series of deep breaths.
Opening his eyes, he smiles. He can't take the detective. Not yet. But he can take her father, if the whim strikes him. And he can take the writer. That will hurt her. He injured her heart last summer. Time to break it completely.
He glances at his watch. It's 5:27 in the morning. Good enough. He wants them sleepy, groggy. They won't be on their A-game. Especially Javi.
Taking out his phone, he enters the phone number for Kate Beckett, and begins typing his message, smiling.
"Come to papa, detective," he says aloud with a smirk, then breaks into laughter as he recognizes the duality of his statement.