"There's an undeniable sense of superiority…sitting up here, watching the world go by."

His words were nearly drowned out by the raw wind that was rushing through the barren structure, its windows long gone, most of the inner walls stripped of any valuable material, the skeleton of a once successful apartment complex left behind in ruins, awaiting demolition.

Six stories up, the world looked so different, the smells and sights changing drastically.

The detachment didn't stop here. If anything, it morphed into physical and emotional denial, allowing their killer to view the result of his deed from the comforts of up above, musing like a gleeful, silent spectator.

Behind him, Beckett was checking all the access points on that floor, her trained eyes moving back and forth like a scanner, looking for the tiniest of clues that their killer had been here.

He had been; there was no doubt in Castle's mind when it came to that.

Maybe he'd sat up here several times, trying to find the right spot for that young girl's body, so close to the daily passerbys and yet so painfully out of sight.

He was taunting them, showing off his skills, trying to lay out a pattern.

The question was why.

"Did you want to go up to the last floor?", Beckett asked and reappeared by his side, the lengthy strands of her beautiful hair tangled from the strong gusts.

"We can…", he muttered, unable to disguise his disinterest.

"You don't think he went up that high?"

"No. He's too exposed on the top floor. People can see him. And there's no roof to keep out the weather. Besides, right here you can still see some of the details in what's left of the walls below but any higher and he'd lose the ability to…to paint his crime scene."

"Paint?"

With her brows furrowed, Beckett glanced back and forth between the writer and the ground below, patiently waiting for him to elaborate.

"That was the whole reason he brought the body over here…then moved it again. It's like a picture…a painting. The position of our Jane Doe leaning against the wall, her limbs spread apart, her eyes draining out of her skull. All of this is…it's like a metaphor. One that he wanted to shock us with. He made some corrections until he felt it was the perfect image which is why he moved the body."

"You don't think you're giving him a bit little too much credit here? What if he was just gloating and moved the body closer to the sidewalk so that it could be found?"

"I don't think so. And I don't believe he moved the body so that it could be found. There would have been easier ways to do that. No, he is sending a message, showing us how easy it was for him to visit the drop site over and over again, playing with the corpse right under our noses. All of it, the position of the body and the moving back and forth…it's about control."

Beckett fell quiet for a moment, letting the words sink in. Down below, she could see Ryan and Esposito return to the crime scene, looking around the perimeter until a uni pointed at her up above.

Waiving the boys up to add a few extra sets of eyes, she finally cleared her throat, unable to hide a chill running through her lean body.

"Once we ID the victim, we might be able to get a better angle at this guy. Whoever he is, I want him off the streets."

"As much as I want to believe that, I doubt he will make it easy for us to find him.", Castle replied somberly, his blue eyes full of dread, "If anything, he is showing us with this…display down there that he is just getting started."