Shared Obsession Chapter 154

Kate holds out a hand to Castle, who gets up slowly, rubbing his back. "Are you OK, Babe?"

His words come in a whispery rasp. "Yeah, sure. Nothing broken – I think – except the chair. But I have been giving it a lot of use since we've been working together. It was bound to give out sooner or later."

Kate pulls out her Mag-Lite and shines it on the floor, revealing the reflections from two screws. She uses a glove to pick them up and whirls on Ryan and Esposito. "If I run these for prints, what do you think CSU will find?"

"Hey, chill Beckett," Esposito urges. "Castle's OK."

"It was just a joke," Ryan protests.

Kate's eyes send dark daggers. "And how many times have we heard that from suspects? You guys should know better. I should…."

A ring from her desk phone blasts through Kate's outburst. She draws a cleansing breath and picks up the receiver. "Yes, OK, thanks. Could you fax it over right away? Thanks. You guys have lucked out," she tells Ryan and Esposito as she hangs up. "We have work to do. TSA reports that a Mayan named Cacaw Te arrived in JFK four days ago on a tourist visa."

"Cacaw Te?" Castle repeats. "That's C.T.!"

His visa application puts his home address right in our pollen zone," Kate adds.

The fax spits out a menacing image Kate pins to the murder board. "I'm guessing that guy was not a class clown in high school," Castle says.

Kate points to the attached address. "This is local. Let's go get him."


"Can we call you Mr. T?" Castle asks as Kate points a hulking Mayan to a seat in the box."

"That's 'Tay! Chakotay!'" the suspect corrects.

"Like the first officer on Star Trek Voyager," Castle observes. "Small world."

Kate zips open her black folder and pulls out a document. "You've got quite a resume, Mr. Te. According to the Mexican Embassy, you were arrested in 2007 for assaulting a group of tourists."

"They were trespassing on Mayan soil," Te declares.

"You sent two of them to the hospital," Kate points out.

Te shrugs. "Things got out of hand. But that's not why I'm here, is it?"

"Sending death threats through the U.S. mail is a felony," Kate informs him.

"And so is murder – or as your ancestors liked to call it, human sacrifice," Castle interjects.

"I don't know what you're talking about," Te claims.

Kate takes one of the death threats from her folder and holds it in front of Te's face. "Does this jog your memory?"

"Medina refused to see me when I went to the museum. And he needed to be told that the museum must return the items he stole to my people. I sent that because I had no other choice," Te asserts.

"Those items weren't stolen," Kate argues. "Your government made a deal with the museum."

"But not with us," Te retorts. "We are not a dead race. There are seven million of us in Mexico and Central America, direct descendants of Kan-Xul."

"Considering how many people Kan-Xul wiped out, there probably weren't many left but his descendants," Castle says. "Looks like you inherited his violent tendencies".

Te scowls at the writer. "His remains and all that was buried with him belong to us. I have a right to recover them."

"Is that why you sent the death threat to Medina?" Castle queries.

"It wasn't a threat," Te insists. "It was a reminder of the fate that awaited him if he didn't return what he stole."

"If you wanted to be sure he got the message, why send it in ancient Mayan?" Castle inquires. "He would have had to take the time to decode it, if he bothered at all. Your English is excellent. Why not use it to dash off a note that would immediately make your point?"

"You have to admit," Te says, "that the Mayan makes a much greater impact."

"Someone made an impact on Medina all right. Where were you last night between seven and eight?" Kate demands.

"I didn't kill him," Te replies, "because I didn't need to. All who suffer from the mummy's curse are doomed to die."

"As are all who don't suffer from the mummy's curse," Castle points out. "The inevitability of death is the one unifying human condition. But that didn't give you or your bloodthirsty ancestor the right to bring it on prematurely."


"Hey, Beckett," Ryan calls as Kate stares at the murder board. "Looks like Cacaw Te isn't our C.T. after all. He was at an uptown meeting with a Telemundo reporter about the, uh, injustice of the exhibit at 5:30. He didn't finish until after eight."

"What about the pollen?" Kate asks.

"Turns out the area where the expedition was camped was covered with the stuff. Lanie says it's a safe bet that there are traces of it all over the exhibit."

"That might have been what made Castle cough," Kate murmurs to herself. She turns away from the board. "OK, but let's hold Te on the death threats. I've got a feeling he knows more than he's letting on."

Esposito strolls over from his desk. "Contents of Medina's phone. There was nothing interesting in the call list or the calendar. But we hit the girlfriend jackpot with the photos." He hands Kate a file folder with 8 x 10s.

She holds one up. "He was sleeping with a mummy?"

Esposito's mouth gapes. "What? no! You have to flip to the last one."

Kate gazes at a sexily posed photo of a half-naked woman.

"Bam!" Esposito exclaims.

"That's Rachel Walters," Kate says.

"And no one at the museum knew they were seeing each other?" Ryan questions.

"Not much covered up in the picture," Esposito notes, "but maybe she's still got something to hide."

"Yeah," Kate agrees, "like murder."


The cold metal of the chair in the box adds to Rachel's embarrassed discomfort. "It started after we got back from Mexico."

"Why did you lie to everyone?" Kate asks.

Rachel stares down at the table. "I didn't want to get fired."

"Why would Raynes fire you?" Castle queries.

"Because he and Will hated each other," Rachel explains.

"Why?' Castle probes.

"Stanford blamed Will for Nicole's death."

"The girl who was killed in Mexico?" Kate asks.

Rachel nods. "Yes. Stanford was in charge of all the grad students. He wanted Will to teach them how to survive in such a hostile environment. When Nicole died, Stanford was devastated. He felt Will had betrayed his trust letting her go into the jungle at night. And ever since we got back Stanford's been trying to get rid of Will, but he couldn't, because Will's the one who discovered the burial chamber."

"Do you think he would have gone so far as murder to get rid of Will?" Kate asks.

"Stanford told me," Rachel confides, "that Will is the one who should have died that night, not Nicole."

"We need to go talk to Raynes again," Kate says as she and Castle leave Interrogation. "Why are you scratching your arm?"

"Hives. I've gotten them before after Alexis and I went camping. The doctor says I'm sensitive to some pollens."

"And Lanie said there would be that Yucatan pollen on the stuff from the exhibit," Kate recalls. "It must have gotten on you when you were playing Indie. Can you take something for it?"

"My doctor told me to take Benadryl before, but it's not helping."

"You should call him for a prescription."

"I did, but he didn't know of anything specific for a pollen that rare."

"Sorry. You OK to go to the museum with me?"

"Better than sitting around scratching."

A/N A reader from Brazil posted a sad review that they do not have a vaccine for Dengue fever in that country and there is a lot of death from it. I checked. There was an announcement at the end of March 2023 that Brazil is the first Latin American country to adopt a vaccine for Dengue fever. Hopefully, that will save some lives.