a/n: took a mini hiatus from writing for the holiday. if you celebrate, i hope you had a wonderful thanksgiving! now back to writing this cute little story that totally isn't about to become heart wrenching :) this chapter is an "after" chapter, so if you don't remember where that timeline leaves off, halloween has just past and our couple is heading into the heart of holiday season.
The end of daylight savings time should mean nothing in the city that never sleeps, right? For so much of his life, Rick Castle would have agreed with that. That the earlier it got darker, it just meant that the city lights would shine brighter. But this year he finally understood seasonal depression.
It had only been a few days of 7AM sunrises and 4PM sunsets, but he could feel his already dark mood getting darker and darker by the day. It didn't help that he and Kate weren't getting out much these days. They weren't really up for it most of the time. Most days, they stayed in bed until noon and found themselves back there again a few hours later, which makes the end of daylight savings seem pretty irrelevant, except it really, really, wasn't.
A few days before Kate's birthday, Rick woke up (relatively) early one morning to the sound of the file cabinet in his office opening and closing and opening again with the occasional expletive thrown in with the ruckus.
Rick slowly rolls out of bed and rubs his eyes as he leans against the entrance to the office. "Hey, uh, whatcha...whatcha doing?"
"Uh, Ryan texted this morning asking for the original version of one of my reports," Kate says. "So naturally, I'm sorting through all my old case files."
"Naturally, right, of course," Rick says with a yawn. He looks down at his watch knowing she's up much earlier than usual. "You're up pretty early."
"Yeah, I guess," Kate shrugs. "There's coffee for you in the kitchen."
"Thanks," he smiles. He navigates the stacks paperwork that cover the office floor and returns with a fresh cup of coffee for him and for Kate. "What report was Ryan asking for?"
Kate sighs and says,"the Amber Josley case."
They silently felt the weight those words carried. It was such a difficult case, with such difficult timing as it intersected with life changing milestones in Rick and Kate's family life. It was one of the most important and defining cases of Kate's career as a Captain. And it was the last homicide case either of them have worked for the NYPD in over six months.
"Right, so uh, what should I do? Are we alphabetizing? Chronological-ing?" Rick takes a seat crisscross-applesauce on the floor just as Kate was.
"Oh, ah, chronological. These three piles are already sorted, if you wanted to put them back in to the cabinet for me?"
Rick smiles and nods. They work together silently but in perfect sync for the better part of the next hour until the only file that remained was the one that detailed their last case.
"You know, we never did actually debrief this case together," Castle points out as they both stare at the thick file.
"Do you...do you want to?" Kate asks. "Debrief the case, I mean."
"If you...if you want to," Rick says.
"Well, I don't...I honestly don't even think I remember much. So much has happened since then," Kate sighs.
"That's okay because we have a whole report right here," Rick says, grabbing the folder off the desk and pulling it into his lap. "Unless you really don't want to. I'd understand."
"No, no, I actually think it's a good idea," Kate nods. "You know, one thing I do remember about that morning was how sick I was before you got there. I had never been humiliated like I was on that bathroom floor."
They both chuckle with a glint of nostalgia as if recalling a happy childhood memory, but their smiles quickly fade back to glum dispositions.
"You were great, you know," Rick says, giving Kate a squeeze on her thigh. She smiles but ultimately pleads for him not to dwell too long. "Right, uh, what I remember from that day was how all of our leads seemed to lead to more questions than answers. And then I left to get Ruby and it sort of just came to me that Katie was the only part of the story that wasn't making sense."
"Yeah, so you had a hunch and absolutely no evidence to back it up like usual," Kate laughs.
"You love my gut feelings," Rick protests.
"Oh, I do, I do," Kate jokingly admits.
"So, then what's the evidence that pointed you to Katie as our killer?" Rick asks.
"I remember now," Kate says before opening up the file to her evidence. "Right before you called, I was looking at the list of students who enrolled in that LSAT course at NYU that all the victims met at and one name stuck out to me." She pulls out a piece of paper containing the official class roster and pointed to the name.
"Kathleen Ropkowski?" Castle reads.
"It wouldn't have stuck out to me if I hadn't noticed a few things from the interview with Katie earlier that day," Kate says, pulling out another piece of paper with evidence, this time a photograph of a coffee cup in an evidence bag that Kate herself recovered from the precinct garbage can. On the label, the name "Kathleen" was typed out. "Katie was short for Kathleen and I also noticed that she had a wedding ring on, which confirmed my suspicion that Katie Hammerville's given name was Kathleen Ropkowski."
"So, then you realized she lied even though she wouldn't have had any reason to," Rick adds.
"Unless she was the killer," Kate smiles. "She knew all of the victims even though she said she only knew Amber and Brooke."
"I think what got me was the part of the interview where she claimed to recognize Chris Trevino from that FaceTime call," Rick says. "Pretty sure Trevino was still in prison when she said that call happened. Seemed implausible."
"Obviously, just being caught in a lie isn't typically enough to convict someone for multiple homicides, but when the DNA on the coffee cup came back as a match for the traces of DNA found on all of the victims, that's what made the case ironclad," Kate says.
"So, why does Ryan need the file?" Rick asks.
"I think it's for Katie's sentencing hearing," Kate shrugs. "Coming up in a few weeks."
"Why'd she do it?" Rick wonders, realizing that even though Katie was the missing piece of the puzzle, that still wasn't the whole picture.
"I was already with you in the Hamptons when she confessed, so...I don't...oh, here's the statement," Kate says as she shuffles through the file and quickly reads the confession in Katie's own words.
"So, it did all come back to that Halloween party?" Castle asks after they speed through the confession and Ryan's post-arrest report.
"Yeah, Katie told me she and her boyfriend left early," Kate recalls. "But that wasn't true either."
"This reminds me of those fairytale murders we solved together a while back," Castle says. "Remember? The bows? The killer looked like Meghan Markle?"
"Yeah, except this wasn't a drunken accident that turned into a decade of blackmail," Kate sighs. "It was a skeezy frat guy."
Kate reads through the report for what she realizes is the very first time in its entirety and all she can think is how she wished she'd been there to help these girls the night of the Halloween Party. Of course, she recognizes that Katie's retelling of that night and the events that followed was likely biased, but it was so clear how it could have all been avoided. She reads about how Katie and the other girls had all become friends through the LSAT course, so when Amber scored an invite to a Halloween party at the most popular fraternity at NYU, they all went together, with Katie's boyfriend (who later becomes her husband) there as a sober friend to help them get home safely.
It was getting late so they had decided to leave when they realized they couldn't find Brooke anywhere. They start searching the bedrooms upstairs where they find her passed out on a bed with a guy on top of her. Katie's boyfriend pulled the guy off of Brooke, but the frat guy was pretty big and pretty drunk so he throws a punch at Katie's boyfriend. The boyfriend doesn't want to escalate things, but the frat guy is belligerent and trying to hurt the girls, so he fights back the best he can. The drunk frat guy pins the boyfriend and starts pushing him toward the open window. Afraid that the drunk guy is going to throw the boyfriend out the window, Katie grabs a lamp and hits the frat guy over the head with it. He stumbles and falls out the window himself. The bedroom is on the top floor of the house, so the guy falls into a coma and eventually dies. Since no one else saw what happened, the boyfriend and the women all swore to keep what happened that night a secret, but the secret caused a rift in their friendship and changed the trajectory of their lives.
Things became even more complicated when Amber learns her father had been hired by the family of the dead frat guy to take a deeper look into his "accident". All of the girls realize that the more that night was scrutinized, the more likely it would be that the truth would come out, so Amber does her best to get her dad not to investigate without revealing the facts. Eventually, Katie secretly puts the investigation to bed with the mysterious death of Dale Josley. Years later, after the women had mostly all gone their separate ways, Katie still kept tabs to make sure that they'd all keep the secret of that night. What she didn't expect was for Brooke to somehow know about her involvement in Amber's dad's attack. After learning that, plus having the knowledge that Brooke was struggling financially, she knew she had to stop Brooke from spilling the truth by selling the story to get out of debt. And once she knew she had to get rid of Brooke, she decided that if one of them was a threat, all of them were a threat, even her own best friend.
"That's convoluted as hell," Castle says. "But I knew Dale Josley's death would somehow have something to do with it."
"The irony is that as law students they should've realized that what Katie did was an accident and could've been defended as self-defense," Kate sighs.
"I can't imagine what the weight of that secret felt like all those years," Castle adds.
"What I do know is Maura Josley must be going through hell right now," Kate says. "The families of the other victims, too."
"Yeah, but losing your husband and your daughter, your whole family, over...this...that's brutal," Castle sighs.
Kate closes the file and sets it on the desk. She leans back and rests her head on Castle's shoulder as he takes her hand into his. They're silent for a while, a long while, sitting on the office floor. Castle is nearly lulled to sleep by the familiar sounds of the city below, but a sob pulls him back to solemnity.
"Kate?" He whispers, realizing the patch of moisture on his shirt where she'd been resting on his shoulder. "Hey, are you okay?" He rubs his hand on her cheek to wipe her tears and then gently nudges her chin to make her look up at him. Her eyes are puffy and bloodshot as she subverts her gaze.
"Yeah, I'm fine," Kate lies. "Just weird to finally read that case. Cathartic, I guess."
"Feels finished," Castle agrees. "It never felt finished before."
"Is that part of our lives over?" Kate ponders vaguely.
"I don't know," Castle admits. "Doesn't have to be."
"I don't know if I can go back," Kate confesses. "I don't know how to start living again without the grief...the guilt...just consuming me."
"Kate, you have nothing to feel guilty about," Castle reminds her. "But I know what you mean."
"Castle, I don't know what I would do without you," Kate says, cuddling into his chest.
"Good thing you'll never have to find out," he tells her as he plants a kiss in her hair. "You wanna climb into bed? Maybe put on a movie?"
"I don't know, I'm afraid I'll fall asleep," Kate shrugs.
"Naps are good," Castle says with a smile.
"I just...I've been having this dream lately, the same one," Kate says. "And I just really don't want it to happen again."
"What dream?" Castle asks.
"It's about...those days...I just keep seeing all the blood," Kate explains, tearing up again. "So much blood."