Castle: Hunt

Wednesday 26 December

03.30

Condensation steamed the windows. It's funny, he thought, how the moisture in the air doesn't land evenly on the cold glass; it spreads and thins, leaving some edges clean and untouched.

Within twenty minutes of Esposito's call, he and Beckett were speeding north through the city in the back of a squad car. After pressure from Martha, Castle had confessed he was too tired to drive safely, and uniforms were despatched to collect them. Ryan, Esposito and the cavalry of both the Twelfth Precinct and local law enforcement in Connecticut were already on their way to the site of the abandoned Ford Taurus.

The journey was too long. Even with sirens and breaking the speed limit, it took over two hours. They ought to sleep, he had thought. There was nothing they could do, while back at the precinct the rapidly assembled task force was at full pelt gathering background information on Tommy Cawood, as fast as was possible in the middle of the night.

A patrol trooper had found the Taurus dumped off a state highway, a nondescript two way road with single lanes each way divided by a yellow line that cut through miles of Connecticut's heavily wooded terrain, indistinguishable from hundreds of other highways across the State. The car was poorly covered with branches by a stream. Hidden by the woods and set back on the other side of the road was a secluded neighbourhood. The sleepy enclave off the beaten track was proud of its big houses and large gardens and high hedges that would remain invisible to drivers who sped past oblivious. Their tight-knit community gave them a strong sense of security which deemed cameras unnecessary.

'He's avoiding the interstate,' Beckett had stated.

'Keeping away from towns and cities,' he agreed.

With one foot ceaselessly jiggling, he had kept his gaze fixed firmly out the window: on the blocks that became more residential the further north they went; on the blur of black trees on endless unbending roads that whooshed past as they left urban civilization. They could have chatted further - discussed the potential scenarios, built a theory together - Lords knows he could use a distraction, but the magnitude of dread coupled with hope rendered him speechless. He knew it was the same for her. Even separated with a seat between them, he could feel the anguish from her rigid body – a hand gripped the door armrest handle - like a flame hovering too close to his skin. Castle chastised himself for not grabbing a snack for her – their feast seemed a lifetime ago and his stomach rumbled. She would be immune to hunger. Beckett wouldn't eat, wouldn't sleep until Erin was home.

Revolving blue and red lights lit the cordoned-off road; state troopers in bomber jackets and wide-brimmed hats swarmed, their breath clouding the night air. A search in the dense woods beyond the stream was already underway; in the distance the barking of dogs competed with shouts of 'Erin! Erin!' and sticks beating the bush.

As the car slowed down, so did time. Before he stepped into the chaos, without facing her, he lay a palm upwards on the empty central seat. Her hand was already there. For a fleeting second, they clenched the tips of their fingers. Then they pushed open their car doors.

The cold, the noise and the blinding head beams hit him in the face, making him reel, the cacophony all the more shocking in its contrast to the hush in the car. Esposito and Ryan ran towards them. He glanced over the roof of the car at Beckett whose lips immediately started to fade to blue.

'Gates ordered a search of the area right away,' said Ryan, panting. The two men wore NYPD regulation puffer jackets and beanie hats. Ryan signalled to an officer to bring two jackets for them which Castle gratefully shrugged on after helping Beckett into hers.

'Are there footprints?' demanded Beckett, leaning on one crutch, her jaw solid as it jutted towards the stream. The first few lines of trees were lit by car lights but beyond that the solid darkness was only broken by the criss-crossing of white torch beams. The sky was cloudless but even the moon couldn't pierce the sea of trees.

'Not going into the woods, no.'

Castle marvelled at how quickly such a large-scale operation had been mounted.

As he watched a policewoman tug a German Shepherd on its lead across the few metres of the shallow stream, he suddenly had a thought. 'How are the dogs tracking Tommy or Erin when they don't know their scents?'

'They're not,' explained Esposito. 'They're just tracking human scent and, so far, there's nothing in the woods beyond the stream to suggest they went that way. There's nothing out there for them to head towards either, no cabins, no bunkers – it's wilderness.'

Castle followed Beckett's concentrated gaze out into the woods, her stare unblinking as though if she focused hard enough she could penetrate the wall of black. His stomach dropped as he thought of Erin out there in the plunging temperature. She sniffed deeply then turned her head to look first south then north of the highway. He could see the cogs turning: If they didn't go into the woods then which way did they go?

'What's that way?' she asked turning to point with the other crutch into the woods on the other side of the road from the stream.

Ryan flipped through the pages of his notepad. 'A community. A small development of upscale houses. There's a private single-track access road up ahead, about half a mile. We're waking people up. Cops are all over the houses. No one saw anything.'

Theorising aloud, she said slowly, 'He dumped the car here on purpose. He knew about this neighbourhood. What did the fuel gage say?'

'It was almost out,' said Esposito.

'So, he had enough fuel to get this far on a tank and chose not to fill up at a gas station. He planned this. Why? What's here?' she asked to no one in particular.

Ryan shook his head, frowning. 'If he knew someone in the neighbourhood, if they were in one of those houses, then why would he dump the car out here? That doesn't make sense. It would lead us right to the houses. He would hide it in a garage or further into the woods or something surely?'

'There's nothing here.' Castle gulped as he realised the inevitable. A vein in his temple throbbed: he didn't want to voice what they must all now be thinking. 'He must have taken her somewhere else.'

He let her have a few seconds to catch up to that possibility, to let her regain control of her twitching facial muscles.

With outstretched palms he further conjectured, 'Could he have an accomplice?' He was stung by the dissonance of the familiarity of standing around with these three detectives working through a case, unpicking the evidence, with the nightmare of being in the middle of a road in Connecticut in the middle of the night looking for their kidnapped child. Nothing felt real.

'There's nothing to suggest he spoke to anyone about this. He didn't have any close friends,' said Ryan.

'Okay but Connecticut. Why here?' exclaimed Beckett. Like Gandalf's staff, she stamped the asphalt with a crutch. 'You don't come all this way and not know where you're going. Has Tommy ever been here? He's an 18-year-old kid, not a mastermind,' she insisted.

Esposito nodded in understanding. 'On it.' Esposito stepped away but Castle could still hear him bark instructions on his cell to press the Walkers on any time Tommy had been to the area and if he knew anyone out here.

Beckett touched his elbow and nudged him towards her. 'Castle, let's look at the options,' she said quietly, pulling him for the first time into her orbit, just the two of them.

Standing either side of the central yellow line, the detective and the writer faced each other and pretended that this was any other case, just another other story.

'One, he stashed a car ready to change into.'

'Unlikely,' Castle replied. 'The Taurus was found easily; a waiting car would have been spotted, and out here would look suspicious. If he doesn't have an accomplice, how could he have left it here?'

'Okay,' she agreed. She chewed the inside of her bottom lip, a sure-fire sign of her hyper-focus, the rapid movement of her mouth reflecting the speed of her thoughts as she untangled the puzzle. 'Two. He does have an accomplice and they waited for him here.'

'Again, that's looking unlikely.'

Ryan called from a few feet away, 'His phone records show he barely made any calls other than to his family.'

'Then three.' She turned to peer into the distant horizon of the highway, an infinite black tunnel bordered either side by triangular pointed tree tips under the blue star-studded vast expanse above. 'He stole a car. He couldn't drive into the community and transfer' – she swallowed – 'Erin where he might be spotted. He hid the car here – at night and undercover he gambled it would go unnoticed long enough for him to cross the woods on foot-'

'And steal a vehicle and drive back and make the switch where no one would see,' he finished.

Ryan broke the pause. 'A road like this gets virtually no traffic at night, especially not on the holidays. The patrol car only spotted the Taurus because of the manhunt.'

Neither he nor Beckett voiced that they understood that Erin was in a trunk. For the first time they both looked towards the car itself, nestled in the dirt several feet from the asphalt. They saw now that the trunk was open. He didn't want to look, to see up close where Erin had been held, and he didn't want her to look either. Esposito and Ryan sensed their hesitancy. Esposito positioned himself in front of their line of sight of the car.

'CSU are going over it. There's no obvious sign she was injured.'

Castle clenched his teeth, the pressure painful, unable to speak; he had been avoiding all speculation as to her physical well-being. As if on cue, a member of the CSU team approached Esposito and spoke quietly into his ear. Esposito's shoulders slumped ever so slightly, the news clearly not being what he had hoped.

Sighing, he said, 'You better come and see.'

A man in a white protective coverall and blue latex gloves led them to the trunk. He shined a torch, lighting up the back of the car. He pointed to two fresh stains on the outer ridge of the car, where the trunk would meet the bumper when closed. Castle knew immediately what they were. No wider than an inch at most, one larger than the other, were two blood splatters.

'There is no blood inside the car,' he stated, making no attempt to indicate any sympathy or otherwise to the abductee. The man is simply doing his job, Castle thought. It's Christmas and he's been pulled away from his family. He wondered what he had been doing yesterday, how he had celebrated.

Beckett's authoritative voice took him by surprise. 'She hit him. Or kicked him.'

She bent forward to peer more closely. 'They're exactly like drops from a nosebleed, and they're no more than four hours old.'

The man from CSU nodded slowly in reluctant agreement, his eyebrows raised, impressed.

Beckett straightened. 'He didn't tie her up; he opened the trunk to move her, and she attacked him.'

A shout from across the road broke through the milling police force.

'A car has been stolen!'

Esposito was the first to react. 'Get the license plate and get a BOLO out!' Ryan and Esposito ran to meet the shouting officer. Esposito waved his arms, pointing at various officers in a flurry of coded signs that Castle couldn't follow.

Castle watched frozen to the spot as the officer spoke to Ryan.

'Good news, guys!' Ryan called. 'The owner says she's been meaning to fill her up, the tank has maybe 30 miles in it. He's not going to get far.'

'So, either he's heading somewhere not too far from here, or he's going to have to stop in a gas station,' rushed Castle, his lungs filling too quickly.

'It's a mistake,' she gushed, hopeful, her eyes widening. 'He won't be planning to change cars again. Too risky. Look what he had to do to make this change.' Her long hair cut through the air as she turned with force and bellowed to the closest officer. 'Get CCTV from all gas stations in a 50-mile radius!'

xxx

06.37

There being nothing more they could do at the scene, Castle and Beckett, followed by Ryan and Esposito, were driven to the local police headquarters, an unassuming, local town station. The Chief had invited them to his office, the largest room, which they transformed into their own war room, in contact with the Twelfth. However, now all they could do was wait – they were homicide detectives used to reviewing evidence after the fact. A manhunt required specialised teams. Gathering CCTV footage over a wide area was a big undertaking, even slower in the middle of the night. The primary focus was on gas stations on the main highways spidering north, east and west from the one where the Taurus had been found – many rural gas stations wouldn't be open all night forcing Tommy Cawood away from more backwater routes.

No one suggested they try to sleep. Castle took an officer to one side and instructed him to source some sandwiches for everyone.

At first, they had been buzzing with energy, fuelled with adrenaline – they had a solid lead - but as the hours slipped past heading to morning, tiredness took over and gradually the men had sunk into chairs. Only Beckett sat upright at the chief's large desk, harshly lit by an old-fashioned desk lamp, focused on a laptop screen, her fingers tapping away, her eyebrows knitted permanently together.

Hauling himself from the small corner couch where several springs had been digging into his back, Castle stretched, cricked his neck, widened his eyes as far as he could and slapped one side of his face to wake himself up. To others Beckett might look as alert as ever, but he spotted a tell-tale twitch in one eye.

Exploring the station, he found its poor excuse of a coffee machine. Leaning over her shoulder, and giving it a quick squeeze, he placed a mug next to her and looked at the screen. She had been scrutinising Tommy's school records. Putting together a profile. He nodded his understanding as he pulled up a chair beside her. If she could understand him, she could predict his movements. She was looking for the story.

While continuing to stare at the screen, she wrapped her hands around the mug and gratefully swallowed a mouthful. Startling backwards, almost spitting out the coffee, she scowled at him. He grimaced back an apology – the coffee was tepid in both temperature and flavour despite the extra sugar he had added - and with a finger on the bottom of the mug he lifted it again to her lips. With a look of resignation, she nodded and knocked the disgusting coffee back in several quick gulps.

She dragged her fingers through her hair, entwining them behind her head and leant back in the chair.

'Why did he take her, Castle?' she sighed.

He wished he could say he knew. Twelve hours ago, he had been playing Who Am I? with his potential adopted daughter and now they didn't know if they would ever see her again. It was like he'd entered the Twilight Zone.

'There's nothing here to indicate this kind of behaviour – he's jumped too quickly from being inappropriate towards girls to abduction,' she huffed, the desk shaking as she thumped it with a fist.

He spun her chair to him, their knees bumping into each other, and he leaned forward to grip her thighs. 'The fact he's travelled so far, that he's moved her from one car to another tells me he has a plan, but he's never done anything like this,' he said firmly. 'He's already made a mistake, he's out of his depth. We will find her. And,' he said, with more confidence than he felt, demanding she meet his eyes, 'I don't think he's going to hurt her.'

It hadn't taken long to ascertain that the only blood they had found was Tommy's, there was nothing in or around the area of the car. He had no evidence of his assertion, no certainty other than an understanding that she needed him to say it, that they needed to try to believe it. They had investigated so many cases where the crimes had been unimaginable. He turned those murders into stories, into puzzles to be solved, everything neatly tied in a bow by the final page. But this wasn't a story, he had no control over the ending.

Kate's eyes shined back at him.

A ping ran through the room. Ryan and Esposito had been receiving regular updates from the precinct but so far, the Walkers had remained tight-lipped. Ryan sat up straight in the plastic chair and scrubbed his face and rubbed one eye.

'They've been checking CCTV footage around your loft for the last couple of weeks. The Walkers were wrong,' he continued, reading from his phone. 'He didn't have a job. Since Friday 14th December, every day he's parked in different places outside your building, for hours at a time.' Disgusted, Ryan looked in turn at Castle and Beckett.

They stared at each other open mouthed; a wave of nausea shook him blurring his vision.

'He's been watching her all that time?' said Beckett through gritted teeth, her hands clasping the table edge, the knuckles whitening, her cheeks reddening. They had suspected it – Beckett had extracted from the girl at the Walkers' house that she knew Tommy was obsessed with Erin and guessed he was stalking her - but it was something else to have the hunch confirmed, to know that he had been outside their home waiting and watching. The girl had only voiced her belief once told Erin was missing and the family car was the one connected with the abduction.

'That's the day Erin was suspended,' she added, pushing herself to standing. Anyone else, he thought in awe, would be on the verge of hysteria, the unspeakable worry sending them out of their mind. It was there, simmering and frothing beneath the surface, but she could contain it. Instead, she was weaponizing it to fuel her focus.

Taking her lead, he pulled himself together. Straightening his shirt, he stood up too, ignoring the sudden vertigo. 'She hasn't been out alone since that day,' said Castle, frowning.

'He's been watching since then,' she repeated, her slowly shaking head heavy with disbelief. He could see her totting it up, thinking back over the last couple of weeks. As she met his eyes and her cheeks paled, she didn't have to say that she was remembering the day at the playground with Erin when she had proposed adoption. Had they been under observation then? Had they been so consumed with navigating their new relationships that they had missed the real danger?

That was days and days before yesterday, before the abduction. 'Even on Christmas Day, he didn't stop,' Castle murmured, terrified by Tommy's determination.

Limping, she stepped around the desk. She paced the thin carpeted floor, quashing the emotions threatening to swamp them. 'Did he travel anywhere else on those days?' she asked.

'No,' confirmed Ryan.

The three men watched in silence as Beckett bit her thumb nail and her eyes darted in concentration. Suddenly she stopped in her tracks, her eyes widening in realisation.

'He's done it before.'

'What do you mean?' said Castle, confused, looking at Ryan and Esposito - now also standing - who looked equally nonplussed.

'There's no evidence he's stalked or kidnapped anyone-' Esposito began.

'No, no, Erin. He's stalked her before. That's why she ran away,' she said, punching one fist into the other palm.

'Ohhh,' breathed Castle, catching on, the story forming in his head. 'We know that Tommy was depressed after Erin was sent away from the Walkers but then he cheered up in the few days before Erin ran away from the children's home and afterwards returned to feeling down. He must have approached her or stalked her and-'

'Thinking no one would believe her, she did the only thing she could, she took action herself and ran,' she finished.

He had imagined that maybe bullying had been the catalyst for Erin to run away but he hadn't imagined her to be the single target of a stalker. That idea was too sinister, too improbable for him to have contemplated, he reasoned to himself, not that there was anything probable about the events of the last few months.

'And when a month ago or so he perked up again, that's when he discovered her whereabouts,' added Ryan.

'So, what happened a month ago?' quizzed Esposito 'How did he even find her?'

Castle felt his stomach bottom out as the truth spelled itself out to him, like a giant neon sign turning on letter by letter. 'It's longer than a month ago but when we went out for your birthday, there were photographers outside the restaurant. Those images could be anywhere on the internet, in gossip magazines – hell he could have seen them at the doctor's surgery.'

As the story took hold of them Ryan and Esposito began pacing away from each other, taking a few steps before turning back and crossing each other again. Oblivious to Castle and Beckett's presence, at rapid-fire speed with increasing volume, they said:

'Maybe Tommy didn't see them straight away?'

'Or he did but then it took him some time to find where novelist Richard Castle lives-'

'And then he had to work out the details of where he wanted to take her-'

'Make sure that everything was in place, so he was ready to pounce at any given time-'

'This time, he made sure he kept hidden so Erin wouldn't escape again-'

They were silenced by a wail. As if hit by a shockwave, Beckett jolted forward, releasing a strangled moan, and bent over clutching her stomach – reminding Castle of the horrendous moment she had been shot in the heart - and concentrated on the floor as she tried to regain control of her ragged breathing. Castle instinctively stepped close to wrap an arm around her waist, but she held up a hand to his chest, on his heart, shaking her head, and kept him at bay for a few more seconds. She fisted his shirt then straightened up and nodded. 'I'm okay, I'm okay,' she insisted, holding the back of a trembling hand to her lips. Shocked, the three men stood still, narrowed their eyes at her then eventually satisfied, nodded too.

Sure that by some miracle she wasn't going to fall apart, Castle carefully ventured, 'He must have planned his route, his destination. Did he drive out of the city before he started the stalking?' He pointedly avoided looking at his girlfriend as he did his best to keep his voice steady.

'On it,' said Ryan. Before he could make a call, his phone pinged again. 'Oh,' he proclaimed. 'Gates has got the Walkers talking.'

Gates had been busy and persistent. Quickly, Ryan shared that she had learnt that when Tommy was 14, he had made a rare friend with a boy at one of his schools, and he had been invited for a week up to the family's summer home close to Green Mountain National Forest, Vermont. It was the only time they knew of that he had left New York City.

'It's about 150 miles north of here. He spent a week doing nothing more than riding his bike in the local area,' he hurried. In one movement, they collected their jackets and laptops, leaving the office and in a single line marched through the station.

At the end of the line, Esposito's phone rang out, stopping them. Ryan, Beckett and Castle turned to look back, waiting with baited breath while Esposito held them in limbo with an upheld finger.

'He's been caught on camera at a gas station 20 miles north of here.' Like guiding a troop of soldiers in a war zone, he signalled them to move to the exit.

'He's heading to Green Mountain,' said Beckett.

The sun had started to edge its way above the treetops. Ryan held the door of the station open and as Castle watched Beckett framed by the door, she swung her jacket over her shoulder like a cape, her outline backlit with streaks of orange and pink.