Chapter V
Castle had managed to safely make it to one of the pre-arranged safehouses that Gray had briefed him on, while managing to avoid a tail in the process, not that it would have been that much of a problem. He was on a motorcycle after all, and that granted him windows of opportunity that his pursuants wouldn't be able to take. The point would've been moot, though, with him receiving a new scar to add to the ever-expanding collection, would've made it difficult for him to steer quickly. But the hypothetical chase was over now, and here he stood in front of a mirror, examining the wound on his arm, determining how bad it truly was.
Thankfully, it wasn't much, it was practically a walk in the park compared to a few other injuries he had gathered over the years, most of which he had… self-inflicted, so to speak. One was a knife incident at home when he was slicing up some vegetables and he got a little too animated, which resulted in a prompt trip to the emergency room, so naturally his daughter banned him from using knives for a while, at least until he agreed to be less expressive in the kitchen, which he did eventually agree to after a week of being knife-less.
Back to the present here, Rick, he thought to himself. The wound was a deep graze, and was a bit of a bleeder, thankfully, there was a well-prepared first aid kit in the overhead cabinet in the small bathroom he now had taken up residence in. He had already stripped off his jacket and underclothing, the latter, unfortunately, was going to have to be thrown away, too many people would ask questions about why he had quite a large red spot on his shoulder. After he opened the first aid kit, he quickly grabbed some gauze and applied a moderate amount of pressure to the wound to staunch the bleeding. It hadn't been long since he had fled the scene, but it had been long enough for the blood to have started coagulating, so the gauze didn't have to stay for long before he replaced it with some running water and soap to clean the thing. He didn't need any kind of fabric becoming a permanent fixture under his skin any time soon. Or ever.
After getting the wound cleaned and properly dressed, Castle left the bathroom and he walked into the dark living room, where there sat an old laptop and the flash drive that he had just gotten from a dead man. Still suspicious that he had been followed, Castle made sure to have all the blinds drawn on the windows and left the room dark, the only light he had turned on the entire time he was in there, was the bathroom light so that he could take care of his newest injury. Curious as to what the drive held, he sat down and lifted the lid of the computer, quickly typing in his credentials after it came to life. He was then greeted by a rather… bland desktop, nothing special or cool for him to look at. Even though he still had this old life, some of his antics from his current life were very much him, he was definitely like a nine-year-old on a sugar rush, but when he was on the job, he curbed that feeling as much as possible.
But now back to the matter at hand. Castle picked up the drive and twisted it in his fingers, examining it, one last time before he placed it into one of the USB drives, and got some answers. As soon as he plugged in the device, the file explorer appeared on the screen of the laptop, showing a few files that were on the drive. One was labeled "Serpico," which of course, immediately attracted his movie-loving self, but was quickly assaulted by the imagery inside, specifically early pictures of the now presiding Captain of the 12th.
Castle had all but almost forgotten Smith's confession after the adrenaline had worn off from the shooting, and now he was angry. Angry that Montgomery had kept this secret for so long, kept this secret from Kate after the man had mentored her, took her in under his wing. How could he do such a thing? As he eyed the files, his eyes narrowed when he realized the significance of one, "Serpico," he muttered to no one in particular. As he had said the name out loud, his cinephile self re-emerged as he remembered the plot of the movie. The naming of the file was no coincidence. Smith was a powerful lawyer and had the ability to ruin other powerful people at the drop of a hat, and Montgomery was going to him about something going on either in the NYPD, or somewhere in his life, and his money was on the 'something,' being corruption. Because why else would the file be named that?
He quickly left that file behind and ventured into the others. One file was nameless and had a few photos inside, deciding to investigate the photos, Castle pulled them up to see if there were more clues about how this drive was the 'key' that Smith was so adamant about it being.
But as the first image had loaded across the screen, Castle felt the air whoosh out of his lungs as he stared at a photo he had seen before. It was a crime scene photo, the crime scene of Johanna Beckett, but this one was… before that? Castle eyed the photo closely, and, thanks to the aftermarket timestamp on the photos, realized that the photos were taken at least five years before Johanna's death. But why? Why take photos of a crime scene, where a crime hadn't taken place yet? Or better yet, what happened there before Johanna's death? Was this the reason that she had been killed, over old crime scene photos? He'd be sure to return to that before too long, there had to be some kind of tie-in there, but for now, he needed to see what other photos were in the file. With a click of the arrow key, he found himself staring at a new photo, this one was a bit different though, this photo was of an autopsy report on one, Bob Armen.
The report was nothing special, mostly just statements of fact. There was the date that the body had been examined, blood type, full legal name, social security number, and such, all the things that you would find in the basic information for an individual. The major addition to it, though, was a diagram of a man's body, showing where he had been killed and a full work-up that was expected from the city's medical examiner's office.
The man had been shot once, in the chest, by a .38 special round. That had been the killing blow, he would've crumpled to the ground immediately after being shot where he had been. There were a few more notes, notably, that there was gunshot residue on the man's clothing, and muzzle burn around the entry wound, along with evidence of a large dispersion of energy that had made its imprint on the skin around the hole. All these signs pointed to a struggle between Armen and whoever it was that was holding the gun, but in the fight, the gun must've gotten pressed against his chest and discharged. That would easily explain the burns and gunshot residue, so now it begs the question of why this was in there with the first set of photos of a crime scene.
Almost as if a switch had flipped in his brain, Castle zoomed in on the report, sometimes the ME would leave a note of where the body had been found, and if he was lucky, the examiner on duty did just that. He scrolled up, down, left, and right trying to find it, until he eventually found exactly what he was looking for at the top portion in the page, almost hidden in all of the information that had been imprinted onto the document. And with his brief detective jaunt, he realized that the dates of the crime scene photos and the autopsy lined up, which he was crossing his fingers for that he would get at least a semblance of a lead.
He was still weary from the adrenaline rush wearing off, and he was starting to come down from that high, he still wanted to look at the files more, but for the moment, he needed some rest. Before he ejected the drive, he made a copy to the laptop and uploaded it to a secure server that he could access at any time he needed to, just in case he lost this important piece of the puzzle that he and Beckett had been trying to solve for a long time.
Before he was going to get some shut-eye though, he logged into the home security system that had been set up for the safehouse, double-checking that no suspicious vehicles had appeared in the last hour, or police vehicles. He absolutely could not get found by Beckett and the boys yet, he still had work to do, starting with Montgomery's involvement and the other part of the puzzle that Smith was unable to produce. Happy with his perimeter checks, he dropped onto the couch and stretched out, leaving his pistol within arm's reach, and let his eyes droop shut, letting the adrenaline crash carry him to sleep.
Halfway across town, Beckett, Esposito, and Ryan are all scrambling to get street security footage for Park Avenue, still following up on the lead of Castle fleeing the scene and trying to find him. They had, somehow, managed to hit a few roadblocks with their warrant and Judge Markway, but they should have the footage to them soon. But for now, the three detectives sat at their respective desks, Beckett had resorted back to lightly chewing on her thumbnail with a faraway look in her eyes, while the boys were huddled into a conversation, trying to not set off Beckett with any kind of reminders of Castle.
Ryan looked to his partner, nodding to their boss across the bullpen, "How do you think she's holding up?"
Esposito's face held a hesitant look as he thought about the past six hours, "Not great bro, Castle's in the wind, and his blood is at a crime scene, and I've never seen her look like this, not even back in Vice."
"Not even in vice?" Ryan asked, darting a look at Beckett across the bullpen once more as he mulled over the ramifications of his partner's statement. Esposito, too, had allowed himself to look, more, check on her. He just wanted to make sure that she was doing okay at least, considering her partner was in the wind and they had just a handful of strings to pull on in this case. He sighed as he turned back to face his partner, hoping to bring some hope back into the investigation.
"On the bright side, we got that street cam footage coming in soon, so we can at least find Castle." But thinking back on the hotel footage, he recalled that Castle had gone to at least some lengths to avoid being recognized, wearing glasses and then a helmet as he charged out of the room, clearly showing signs of not wanting to be found. "Unless," he began, more somber than his previous address to his partner, "he ditched the bike and we'll be back to square one."
Ryan, the ever-optimistic one in their partnership, wasn't about to let Esposito sink his ship, especially not when they still at least had the stolen rifle cartridges used in the shooting. "Maybe, but if Castle did ditch this hypothetical bike, because let's be honest, we haven't seen it yet." Esposito just rolled his eyes, but still lent his friend an unbiased ear, "We could shift focus back to the stolen ammo we found on scene."
Ryan carefully eyed the photos of the spent casings on the rooftop and pushed it across Esposito's desk, matched with his tapping of his index finger on the top right corner, he opened his mouth once again. "There's gotta be someone who got paid to look the other way, we just need to look into financials on whoever was on shift the night they were stolen."
Esposito shrugged; he did have a point. There easily could've been someone who received extra padding in their wallet for being courteous enough to leave a door unlocked, or a gate open for their thieves to break in and steal the bullets. "Alright Ryan, let's leave the street tapes to Beckett, give her something to focus on for a bit, and we'll go on this little expedition of yours, see if anything shakes out."
Ryan couldn't help but grin, he was happy that he could at least find something to focus on in all the bad that was happening, given the state of the floor on homicide, they needed a win, and fast. "Alright Javi, let's go on a witch hunt."
The two detectives stood up and grabbed their coats, along with a few files as they strode through the bullpen, stopping at Beckett's desk to mutter something unintelligible through the glass of his office to her before they resumed their brief trip to the elevator.
Roy Montgomery had a faint trace of a smirk on his face as his best three detectives were quick at work, Ryan and Esposito, no doubt, had found something credible to work with. But there was still the matter of Kate Beckett, one that he knew he was going to have to face before too long. He had been standing at his desk, watching his detectives work into overdrive as the case they caught today was much too close for any of them, no, all of them.
Roy sighed as he turned and plopped himself into his office chair that sat behind his desk, letting the faint smile fall from his face as he was once again, assaulted with the images of his dead friend, lying crumpled up against a wall in a 4-star hotel, along with the blood of a man that he considered another close friend. He felt as though he had failed Smith, he had saved the man's life before, so to speak, but he was unable to do it again, and he reasoned that it could be nothing other than the exchanging of the damning evidence that Roy once held in his home.
He let a hand swipe down his face as he still was coming to terms with what happened. He had tried to hide his emotions when he received the ID on their newest murder board alumni, and he felt he was doing a good enough job with it, but that didn't stop the pain that he felt inside that was festering and would soon, no doubt, boil over and he would sell himself out if he did that. So instead, he put on his best public service face, and opened a drawer he saved for special occasions like these. Dropping his hand inside, he felt the cool metal on his fingertips, graced by the sloshing of a liquid inside the flask as he raised it out of the drawer.
His brow had fallen as he recounted the few times he had pulled this out of the drawer, but the one that stuck with him the most was after Beckett had killed Coonan in the Precinct after he had attempted to take Castle hostage, and recalled the words he said to her that he now muttered to himself as he brought the flask to his mouth, "Poor man's painkiller."
He sighed as he swallowed the last little bit of burning sensation that kindly made its presence known in his throat, courtesy of the whiskey in the flask, feeling a bit better, and more able to leave the comfort of his office and talk to Beckett before it was time for both of them to go home. Go home? He chuckled silently to himself as he knew that there was no way on God's green earth that she would leave this place until Richard Castle was back in his chair, staring at her as she filled out paperwork, making some quips in attempts to make her laugh, bringing her coffee when she needed it, or being silent playing on his phone during the more serious portions of the paperwork.
Roy knew that Castle had been good for Beckett, that's why he had kept him around for so long, she needed someone to inject something good into her life, and Rick Castle provided the laughter that he thought he'd never see on her face after finding her going through her mother's case file as a beat cop.
He knew she wouldn't be able to rest properly until this case was solved, and that fact was a two-edged sword for him. Because what waited at the finish line was a truth that would damage everyone's trust in him as their captain and confidant, and the very thought of that shook him to his core.
Taking one last look at the paperwork across his desk, he decided it was high time to face the music, so to speak, and have a word with his best and brightest. He silently placed the flask back into his desk drawer and drew up the strength to stand and make his way across his office. When he reached the door, he leaned out and was surprised to see that Kate had managed to stop staring off into space at nothing, but instead her eyes had met his, so Roy tried his best to offer a comforting smile as he walked to her desk. When he reached his destination, he knew better than try to even touch the chair that sat next to hers, so he stood offset from her desk. Her eyes had left his as he had made his way over, and was now more or less focused on the witness statements that they had gathered during canvasing, attempting to brace for whatever it was that the captain was about to say.
"How you holding up Kate?"
For once, she looked up at him and produced a smile that he saw right through, but he wasn't going to say much other than giving her the support that she needed. "Fine, sir."
"Okay, well look. I don't know where Ryan and Esposito went, but I just got a call from the department of transportation," that statement certainly perked her interest, she was as close to standing at attention as she could be at her desk, "And we should have that footage within the hour."
Instead of a smile, Beckett closed her eyes and drew out a long exhale from a breath she didn't know that she'd been holding in, not before long, she was going to have a lead, and she was going to be on the hunt, no way was this slipping through her fingers. As she re-opened her eyes, her captain still stood there, with a half-smile plastered on as he glanced down at his watch, "I think you might need to take a lunch though, detective, you've been at this for a while now, and it'll give you a chance to kill some time until that footage gets here."
She didn't take the news as gracefully as she could've, she really didn't want to leave her desk because she felt as if she stood up and walked away from her desk, she'd be walking away from her partner and letting leads slip through. But she knew he was right, she hadn't eaten anything since this morning and that felt as if it had happened last week, but her stomach had chosen that moment to release the tiniest of growls, but enough to elicit a slight chuckle from her captain. Since her body had chosen to betray her, she muttered, "Fine," before she quickly pushed away from her desk and made her way to the elevator, set in the goal to get the quickest and closest meal to the precinct so she could get back as fast as possible.
Satisfied with getting Kate out of the precinct, Roy turned back around as the elevator doors closed and headed back to his office. He still had a good four hours left before he was going to go home, he needed some quality alone, after all, he couldn't exactly let his relationship to the victim be known, and that was a losing battle right now with all of the conflicting feelings at war inside him. But he had a job to do, regardless of his personal involvement, and the knowledge of who it was that killed him, he had to let his detectives seek out the truth, and he knew that they would find it eventually, so he just had to wait.
Hours later, back at the CIA safe house, Rick stirred in his brief slumber as his mind wandered through the crime scene he had just barely escaped from with his life. In his sleep, his mind had managed to reconstruct the scene that he was in just a few hours before, replaying the events that had led him to this moment, stretched out on a rugged couch, trying his damnedst to get at least a little bit of shuteye to recoup his expired energy from the adrenaline rush.
Unfortunately, he had only gotten three hours of sleep, which helped him a bit, enough to get him back around again, but he still laid there and fought it, trying not to think about what his next logical move would be.
Ugh, this is definitely not working, he thought to himself before propping himself up on the couch, rubbing his face with his left hand as his right reached across to the coffee table and grabbed his phone to check the time. His eyebrows raised as he squinted his eyes at the sudden intrusion of light from the phone, but before long, his eyes adjusted and he was able to see the time, 6:25, it read, and he knew he needed to get a move on if he had hoped to avoid the detectives being hot on his trail.
Thankfully, he had the foresight to ditch the bike at a parking garage that wasn't too far away, but far away enough to make it difficult for them to find him, and that was exactly what he needed right now.
He quickly stood up, and waivered for a moment from the fast movement after being reclined for such a long period of time. "Mental note… don't stand up that fast," he silently admonished himself as he gathered himself and headed for the clothes that hung up in the tiny closet that stood next to the front door.
He was thankful to Gray for thinking about leaving a change of clothes in the room, just in case Rick needed a change of clothes to either disappear with in case he got spotted, or something happened to the ones he was wearing before. After getting changed into his new attire, which wasn't too different from his previous clothes; jeans, black dress shirt and dark sports coat, let him blend in with the darkness a little bit easier. With that thought, he headed back to the coffee table and retrieved all the tools he had previously discarded there, along with the flash drive, which reminded him of his next move, he was going to have to visit an old friend, and he wasn't particularly looking forward to it.
After taking a last look around the room, ensuring he left nothing behind, except for the laptop that he had ripped the hard drive out of and stashed in the shoulder bag he now had added to his look, and saw that there was nothing he was leaving, turned and he was out the door.
When he had hit the street, he decided to take a brief detour by walking down the street of the parking garage to see if the cops had found his bike yet, he needed to know how close they were getting, and that would be a good way to get a head start on the matter. And as he rounded the corner at the end of the street, he first saw the flashing red and blue lights that reflected off the glass windows above him and down the street. There were a few regular patrol cars that were parked at the entrance, but he wasn't looking for regular patrol cars, he was looking for a certain detective's police cruiser as he continued his slow stride through the crosswalk.
Then as he stepped onto the opposite street corner, he saw it, and he simultaneously wanted to smile at how quickly she had found his bike, and also curse himself for being careless enough to leave it where he did to be found as easy as it had been.
But there was nothing he could do now, it had already been done, and he hoped and prayed that whoever it was that was behind this would leave her alone since all signs pointed to her hunting him down. So, he settled on a deep sigh that he hoped would help dispel the feelings, until in a fleeting moment, he saw her, and the breath that he was releasing caught and he stood as a deer in headlights staring down the street at her as she ordered around a few uniforms, probably to start a canvas.
He couldn't leave yet, he needed to see her, because he wasn't sure if he was going to again after this was over. He could tell how exasperated she was by the way she ran her hand through her hair and glanced all around the street, trying to find the answers that it couldn't provide. He had hoped that the time away would help with the hurt and love he felt when he saw her, but it came back in full-force, maybe even stronger than before, and that made it that much harder to leave the spot he was rooted to.
At least until he noticed that she had stopped looking around, and she was facing the street that he was at the end of. Surely she couldn't see him, right? He was a good block and a half away, there could be no way that she could see him. Besides, he was still in full disguise mode, glasses and different colored eyes, and now an added beanie, and not to mention, it was bordering on nighttime.
But that didn't stop his eyes from widening when she continued looking his way, he tried to will his feet to move but nothing happened, and he stayed there, swallowing the lump in his throat that somehow had appeared in the last ten seconds. Then in an instant she started walking his way, with a slight tilt to her head, and that meant it was time for him to move, but not too quickly, at least not until he had the safety of the building in front of him that would allow him to go into a full sprint to get some distance between them.
As his motor skills returned and he started to move, he heard her shout from down the street, "NYPD, STOP!" And he started to move a little faster, needing to really get some distance now, since she – he glanced back in her direction to see what was happening – yep, she was starting to run, and he couldn't let her catch him, so he broke into a full sprint, barreling down the street, pushing people to the side as he made his way through, attempting to lose himself in the crowd, not letting himself look back.
Beckett had cleared through the crowd as quickly as she could, trying to round the corner to catch the familiar man that ran when she called out for him to stop. She knew that he had to know something at least, since nobody that is innocent runs from a cop calling out for someone to stop, and she needed more leads after finding Rick's bike.
When she rounded the corner, she was assaulted with the presence of a shuffling crowd of people on the sidewalk, and there was no way that she was going to be able to find the man. She was too far away to make out what he was wearing, other than it was dark clothing and a beanie he wore, the crowd almost was wearing all the same clothing in her eyes. It was practically perfect and she silently cursed under her breath as she pushed through the crowd still trying desperately to find the man.
She had made it halfway down the street before spotting him again, he was in a group just ahead of her, and she wasn't going to let him get away. Now that she finally had eyes on him, she pushed through the crowd with strength that she didn't know she was holding back, until she was at his back, holding her badge in one hand, and her other cradling her pistol grip in its holster with the other, she tapped the mans back with her badge as she yelled for him to stop and turn around with hands extended.
The man quickly froze and raised both hands out after removing his earbuds as he slowly turned around to face the voice that had just shouted at him, and just as soon as he had turned, she was disappointed at the face she now had seen, hoping that it was Castle that she had seen, but nope, just a regular New Yorker, on his way home from work. "Shit," was all she could mutter before she released the man.
A/N: Sorry for the late update everybody! I had a little bit of a difficulty figuring out a good direction for this chapter, so I do apologize if it isn't up to par compared to the others. But I know where I'm going with the next chapter, I've already given a hint for one interaction in this chapter, but the next I'm sure everyone will enjoy one that I have planned out, it'll be a little angsty, so I'm hoping that I'll really be able to deliver what I have planned out. As always, thank you so much for all the feedback and I'll try to get the next installment out much faster!