THE MASK OF VIRTUE
SEASON 6
Villainy wears many masks, none so dangerous as the mask of virtue.
-Sleepy Hollow (1999)
He couldn't have scripted it better if he tried.
Well…maybe he wouldn't have written the car going into a ditch and breaking an axle.
But they're both okay - a little banged up, but mobile - and he's sure that he and his fiancée can salvage their weekend, despite the minor inconvenience of being stranded.
Because they're stranded in Sleepy Hollow.
"It was a dark and stormy night," Rick says in a low voice, shuffling his feet through the damp leaves on the ground to add ambiance.
Kate swings her flashlight into his eyes, and even though he's temporarily blinded, he can tell she's annoyed. "Very funny, Castle," she snaps before pointing the light back in front of them. "I wanted a relaxing weekend at home, just the two of us, for the first time in weeks. Weeks," she emphasizes. "But you insisted on this freaking road trip, not to the Hamptons, which would have been perfect."
Despite the chill in the autumn air, Rick's cheeks warm. He thinks - hopes - that his fiancée knows he had the best intentions by booking them a cabin getaway up the river. He knows - hopes - that she's mad at the situation more than him, and he's just a convenient target.
"But I went along with it," she continues, "because I love you, and having time with you without any distractions sounded really damn good, no matter where it was. But then-"
He winces. He knows where she's going with this.
"-you just couldn't keep your hands to yourself. So now we're stuck here, in the middle of damn nowhere, with no signal, no car, and no damn idea where we are!"
"Not necessarily." Rick grabs the flashlight, ignoring her protests as he shines it just ahead. As he does, the thick fog clears - seriously, who's writing this, Stephen King? - to reveal a sign.
Welcome to Historic Sleepy Hollow
He turns back to Kate and grins.
She just rolls her eyes.
"You gotta admit," Rick whispers as he follows Kate up the rickety old stairs, "this place totally fits the vibe."
Her silence probably means one of two things: she's concentrating hard on not tripping on the steep, truly hazardous stairs, or she's so annoyed at him, she can't even think of what to say.
When she unlocks the door to their room and shoves it open with more force than necessary, he decides it's the latter, and he winces.
Okay, she really is pissed.
Commence Operation: Make Up For His Wrongdoings.
"I'm taking a bath," she says once he shuts the door.
He glances around, taking the room in, and notices an en suite bathroom. He breathes a sigh of relief; they may be in an old, dusty, creaky B&B, but at least they have their own bathroom.
Under normal circumstances, he'd make a comment about joining her. But he recognizes the hard line of her shoulders, so he just sets their bags on the bed and searches for local mechanics to take care of their car.
It takes him a few minutes to realize that the water is shut off, but he doesn't hear Kate get into the tub, so he moves towards the bathroom.
"Kate?" he calls out, knocking on a door with a few quick raps. He pokes his head in when he hears her grunt of acknowledgment. "Hon, you okay?"
She's standing at the counter, still fully dressed, and her back heaves with a sigh before she lifts her head and meets his eyes in the mirror. "I'm sorry," she says quietly.
He shakes his head and steps behind her, wraps his arms around her waist, and props his chin on her shoulder. "No apology necessary," he murmurs.
"No, it is." She turns in his arms and loops her around his neck. "I'm tired and cranky, and I took it out on you. You're just trying to go above and beyond, like you alway do, and you don't deserve my anger for it."
He brushes a soft kiss to her lips. "To be fair, I am the reason we're in this probably haunted B&B, and definitely haunted town," he points out. "It was my hand that wandered."
Her cheeks flush, and she draws her bottom lip between her teeth, sending blood rushing to one very attentive body part.
"Still, taking it out on you isn't fair. Since we're stuck here until tomorrow-"
"Monday at the earliest," he interjects. "No mechanics are open this weekend."
Kate winces. "Until Monday," she echoes, "we should make the best of it."
Rick grins. "That's what I'm saying! There's tons of stuff to do. Hayrides, haunted cemetery tours, there's even a-"
Kate interrupts him with her palm over his mouth. "Not what I mean," she husks, sliding her other hand down his chest.
He tugs at the hem of her sweater. "Right. Everything else can wait." His hands slide under her shirt and circle her bare waist, and he smiles as he lowers his head, closing the distance between their mouths.
There's a loud buzzing sound, and the lights go out, throwing them into darkness.
"What the-"
Before he can finish the thought, the lights flicker back on.
Rick looks around, half expecting to see a disembodied figure in the mirror, or a shadow, or some stationary object suddenly moving.
When none of that happens, he turns his attention back to his fiancée, who tugs his mouth down to hers and shows just how well she can salvage the weekend.
It isn't the love of his life who wakes him a few short hours later, as preferred, but several loud knocks on the door.
They both sit straight up in bed, and Rick scrapes a hand down his face before sliding out of bed.
"What the hell?" Kate rasps, pulling the sheet over her chest.
Rick tugs on his boxers and tosses Kate her shirt, looks around for the rest of his clothes. "Have you seen-"
"Mr. Castle, Ms. Beckett?"
"Is that the old lady from downstairs?" Kate whispers, jumping out of bed and grabbing a pair of leggings from her suitcase. "What does she want at five in the morning?"
Rick shrugs. "Beats me. You good?" When she nods, he opens the door to reveal the same elderly woman who checked them in the night before. "Ethel, right? Can we help you?"
If he were writing this, he would say that Ethel may have been present at the town's founding, or inspired Washington Irving as he wrote The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. Since this is real life, though, he just offers her a cautious smile, despite the concern on her weathered, worried face.
"I'm here on behalf of the mayor," Ethel explains in her low, gravelly husk.
Rick glances back at his fiancée, standing at the foot of the bed with her arms crossed, a muscle twitching in her set jaw. "The mayor, huh?"
"Yes."
"What can we help the mayor with?" Kate asks.
The answer turns the blood in his veins to ice.
"You can solve his murder."
"Someone was really pissed off," Rick murmurs an hour later as they watch the coroner wheel away the body bag containing the mayor's mutilated body.
Kate nods, her hands on her hips, gaze going around the mayor's office. "Yeah, that was a lot of stab wounds," she agrees. She presses her palm to his chest when he starts to walk past her. "Hey. We'll help, but I don't want this to turn into another Hamptons weekend."
He nods, clearly remembering their first visit to the Hamptons, which had also been interrupted by a murder that they helped solve. "Don't worry, it won't," he assures her, cupping her cheek for a brief moment. "I won't let it."
"Okay." She sighs and crosses her arms. "Okay, let's go."
"Go?" he echoes. "What do you mean? We have a dead mayor."
Kate pats his arm. "No, the town has a dead mayor. I gave Chief Beaumont some pointers, and he'll call me if he needs to. Otherwise, it's not my jurisdiction. We should go about our weekend," she explains.
He hesitates, looking back at the crime scene, but Kate tugs on his arm until he meets her gaze. "Right. Okay. Coffee?"
Her lips lift in a smirk. "As if you need to ask."
At first, he thinks it's a shadow, his eyes playing on him on the gloomy, overcast day.
But then he sees it again: a black figure ducking out of sight.
"Castle."
Rick jumps, his cheeks warming with embarrassment. He shifts his focus back to his fiancée, notices her staring at him with concern etched on her forehead. "Thought I saw something," he explains, following her inside the café.
Kate lifts a brow but remains silent as she tucks her arm through his and joins the line.
The café is busy, mostly with tourists he assumes, but it only takes a few minutes until they order, and less to get their drinks. What little seating is taken, so Kate leads him to a nearby park.
He grins when he notices a swing set. "Are we due for a serious conversation?" he teases, motioning to them.
She chuckles and shakes her head. "Not today."
They settle on a bench, and he smiles when she leans into his side and sips her coffee. It never fails to send warmth through him when Kate shows this side of herself, the open, warm person that she kept hidden all those years ago.
He feels something vibrate, and she shifts and pulls her phone out of her coat pocket, utters a curse when she reads her message. "Everything okay?"
She sighs. "Chief Beaumont wants to ask me some questions at his office. Sorry, I was hoping he wouldn't actually call." She stands and holds her hand out. "Come on, Castle. I guess we do have a murder to solve."
Rick's first impression of Chief Beaumont at the crime scene was similar to Chief Brady from Hamptons PD: competent, but a little out of his depth with a major case.
"We mostly get pranksters and petty crime, vandalism, tourism-related calls," Beaumont explains as he leads them into his office. "Not many violent crimes, and definitely nothing like this. I appreciate your willingness to help, Agent Beckett."
Kate just nods and turns her attention to the murder board against the wall. "Hopefully we can. Did you get the security footage?"
"Yes." He motions towards his computer, where he has footage queued up. "This is actually why I called you. I'm a bit baffled."
In his time shadowing Kate, Rick has seen his fair share of weirdness: a Santa Claus convention, vampires, old Victorian steampunk club, and zombies. He was almost cursed by a video, and they both came literal inches from being eaten by a tiger.
But as he watches video from the security camera at the back door of the mayor's house, he thinks this might be the strangest – and most exciting – piece of evidence he's seen.
"Is that-"
Chief Beaumont nods.
Kate pauses the video and pinches the bridge of her nose. "Don't," she murmurs.
Rick rewinds the footage and watches it again, almost shaking with excitement, unable to keep a grin from overtaking his face. He watches the figure appear in the frame, and he pauses the video just before the person exits, when they appear to turn around.
He says "appear" because, well...
It's hard to tell what direction someone is facing when they have no head.
He continues the footage, and something at the edge of the frame has him squinting and leaning forward. "What's that?" he asks, pointing.
Chief Beaumont opens another screen. "This is from the camera on the fence," he explains before pressing play.
Out of the corner of his eye, Rick sees his fiancée's mouth drop open.
The headless figure climbs on the back of a horse, pulls a pumpkin out from under their cloak, puts it on top of their head, and rides away.
"Holy crap," he blurts.
Kate lets out a long, annoyed sigh and mutters something under her breath that contains some very creative language.
"The Headless Horseman is a fictional character," she says slowly, obviously anticipating what he's about to say.
"Are you sure?" He turns to her and points at the screen. "Because that looks like a guy without a head, and he's on a horse. The literal definition of a headless horseman, and he's leaving the scene of a murder. Ergo, the Headless Horseman killed the mayor."
"Okay," Rick says later, "in the movie-"
"The one with Johnny Depp? The fictional movie, based off a fictional story?"
He ignores her. "As I was saying, the Headless Horseman came out of the woods."
Kate sighs next to him. "Out of a tree. That isn't real, Castle."
"I know, Beckett. But whomever this person is, they're obviously taking inspiration from the story. The horse, the whole-" He motions towards his head. "-headlessness of it. So, this person – yes, person, not ghost, give me some credit – could also be using the surrounding land to their advantage. Camping somewhere, maybe."
"That's-" Kate pauses long enough that he looks over to make sure she's still there. She turns her attention from the board and rolls her eyes when he grins. "Yes, Castle, that theory actually makes sense. Don't let it get to your head. I'll tell Chief Beaumont."
Rick pumps his fist in excitement. "I'll get my coat."
"Hang on." She stops him with a hand on his arm. "We're not going."
"Come on, Beckett."
"No," she insists, squeezing his arm. "Call me crazy and overprotective if you want, but after the close call in DC, I don't want you taking any unnecessary chances."
"What if I wear my vest?"
Her brows have never moved into her hairline faster. "Do you have your vest? I swear to God-"
"No," he admits, slumping his shoulders in defeat. "I see your point. Okay, I won't follow the police into the dark, scary woods."
Although he's fine and had no lingering ill effects from the poison he'd inhaled in DC a couple months ago, his near-death experience still lingers in the back of his mind.
It's obvious that it lingers in his fiancée's, too.
He drapes his arm around her shoulders and pulls her into his side, drops a quick kiss to the top of her head. "Sorry," he murmurs. "We'll tell the Chief, then mind our business. Wanna grab lunch?"
Kate takes a step back and grins up at him. "That's more like it," she teases, tucking her hand in his back pocket and squeezing his butt. "And I can think of a few other ways to pass the time."
It's hard for Rick to hide his disappointment as he and Kate finish up their lunch. Chief Beaumont had all but ignored his theory about the perpetrator setting up camp somewhere; although the Sleepy Hollow in Washington Irving's story had been surrounded by dense forest, the modern-day town is much different.
"Maybe the park," Beaumont had said. "It's a few miles out of town. But someone would see them coming into town. Most likely, we're looking at someone with a grudge."
Rick sighs and sets his sandwich on his plate, his appetite disappearing.
"What's wrong?"
He looks up to meet Kate's eyes, and he shrugs. "Noth-"
"Rick," she interrupts. "Your theory was solid, but Beaumont knows the town better than we do. He said the mayor had pissed off a lot of people lately, remember?" He nods, and she reaches across the table to cover his hand. "Let him do his job."
Rick flips his hand and squeezes. "Okay. Wanna hit up that corn maze?" he suggests, his mood lifting when her face lights up and she nods.
He knows the corn maze was his idea, but now that they're standing in line for tickets, he wants to be back in the B&B, enjoying precious one-on-one time with his fiancée. She's practically shaking with excitement, though, so he doesn't say anything, just buys their tickets when it's their turn.
Something in his peripheral vision catches his attention as they turn away from the booth, and he stops, looks around to try and figure out what it was.
Kate puts her hand on his arm, but he pulls away and moves to the side, in the direction that he thinks the movement came from.
"What is it?" she asks, her hand on his back.
He looks around, trying desperately to figure out what he saw. It was almost a shadow, someone ducking behind a tree, and he swears that it was a dark mass-
He tilts his head.
Does he hear a horse whinnying?
"Rick."
Finally he looks down, notices the worried look on his fiancée's face, and tries to relax. "I thought I heard something."
"'Something?'" she echoes. "Want to be more specific?"
"Not really. My imagination must be going crazy," he says, hoping that he sounds more convincing than he feels.
The corner of Kate's mouth quirks. "Call me surprised," she teases, wrapping her arm around his waist. She leans into his side before pulling him towards the entrance of the maze.
He's looking down, watching his steps so he doesn't trip on the uneven ground, when he hears Kate gasp, and he freezes.
He looks at her, notices her mouth open in shock and her wide eyes looking at something in front of them. "What's wro-"
Words die in his throat when he follows her gaze and sees it.
"Kate?" he whispers.
They watch, frozen in place, as the black-coated, headless figure digs his heels in the horse beneath him, turns, and disappears into the maze.
Kate pushes off him to pursue, yells at Rick to call Chief Beaumont before she enters the maze.
"Wait!" he calls after her, but it's no use.
He's so focused on dialing Chief Beaumont that he doesn't see the item on the ground until he trips on it, pitching forward and falling. Groaning, he pushes himself up, looks around for the culprit as he brushes the dirt off his jeans.
It isn't until he recognizes the black piece of electronics that he notices the other patrons around him; or, more specifically, what they're not doing.
Nobody's acting like they saw a headless horseman ride a horse into the maze.
"He disappeared," Kate gasps, appearing next to him, breathing hard. "Did you get a hold of the chief?" When he doesn't answer, she looks at the item in his hands "What's that?"
Rick lifts his gaze to hers. "A projector. He wasn't here."
Kate puts her hands on her hips, looking every inch the annoyed, frustrated detective he fell for years ago. "What the hell is going on?"
What the hell was going on, they learn the next day, is that Chief Beaumont was the culprit all along.
After giving their statements about what transpired at the corn maze, Rick and Kate were so tired and confused that they picked up dinner from a local restaurant and took it back to their room.
The next morning, they got a call from the deputy chief, who explained the whole thing.
Mayor Williams and Chief Beaumont had been at odds with each other for years, stemming from a college rivalry that reared its ugly head when Beaumont moved to Sleepy Hollow. A year later, Williams was elected mayor, and their rivalry came back with a vengeance.
The final straw, apparently, was Mayor Williams blocking permits for an addition that Chief Beaumont was trying to build onto his house. Beaumont snapped, and he dressed as the Headless Horseman to disguise his identity, borrowed a horse, and broke into the mayor's house to kill him.
What Rick and Kate saw at the corn maze, then, was the chief's attempt at a red herring. He'd recorded it to play on the projector while he was at his office, with multiple cameras giving him an alibi.
In the end, someone recognized Beaumont's slight limp, and the chief – former chief, now – confessed.
"So," Rick sighs when the now-acting-chief leaves the room, "a years-long feud, a small-town reunion, construction permits, and a limp that solves a salacious murder."
Kate rolls her eyes and slips on her boots. "Before you get too excited, remember that a man lost his life, and the entire town leadership is in shambles," she points out. She stands and grabs her coat, pats Rick on the chest. "Come on, babe. I want to actually enjoy the corn maze this time."
Rick tucks his phone in his pocket and follows her out the door. "Tempted to quit your job and move? I hear the police department may have an opening."
Kate chuckles as she laces her fingers through his. "Not a chance."
-FIN-
A/N: Inspired by prompts #9 and #26 from Castle Fic Promoter's Halloween Bash list, and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. As always, any mistakes are mine, and should be ignored. Thanks for reading!