Finding the Fit Chapter 69

"Beckett!" Castle calls excitedly from his office. "I found something!"

Kate's sleeping brain reluctantly returns to consciousness, and she checks the time on her phone. "Castle, it's one am."

Rick peers into the bedroom. "It is? I'm sorry, but you have to see this." Castle plops his laptop on the bedclothes covering Kate's nearly nude body. "Look!"

Kate rubs her eyes. "What am I supposed to be looking at?"

"It's an article that came out just after the Witzenbergers' tech company went public. It's all about the family, including little Julia. Look what it says about her. She had been injured in a freak accident, and the doctors had a terrible time finding an exact blood type match for her because she's such a rare type. Her parents are from very different genetic stock, and neither was an exact match. They had to essentially put a call out around the world to find one. They paid for someone to fly in from Spain."

"Castle, maybe I'm still asleep, but I don't get the connection to Julia's kidnapping."

"Beckett, don't you see? The kidnapping had nothing to do with the ransom – or maybe it did to fund a medical procedure. But the kidnappers took Julia because they needed someone with her rare immunological type, maybe for a transplant or transfusions. They would have had to keep her alive."

"If that's what they needed her for, they could have killed her after the procedure if it didn't kill her first."

"Or they could be keeping her alive in case they need something else. She may still be out there, Beckett, as a living blood and organ bank."

"Castle, assuming for a minute your crazy theory is true, she could be anywhere in the world. You said her parents flew in her match from Spain. That country has had a lot of different ethnic populations over the years. A needy recipient could be Basque, Catalan, or any of the peoples that came through there from Africa. Julia could be anywhere."

"She could, Beckett. But there has to be a record of her exact immunological typing. That would narrow the possibilities down a lot. Then, a trace of flights from upstate New York to wherever she was taken might turn up something. It's worth a shot."

"Castle, Julia's medical records would be confidential. You know that. You'd have to go to her parents for permission to use them. You could be tearing their wounds open again for nothing."

"Or I could be tearing them open for something. Look, I know it's not the same thing, but Martha Rodgers kept looking for me, even after decades. And I kept looking for her. I'm still looking for my father. Do you really think six months is long enough for the Witzenbergers to give up on Julia – even if there's only the slimmest chance of finding her?"

Kate stares at the family, smiling from the laptop screen. "No, I don't, Castle. But by now, they'll be very wary. They've probably had a parade of con artists coming to them with some wild story or another. How are you going to get through whatever barricades they've had to put up?"

Rick strokes the stubble already sprouting on his jawline. "For one thing, I have at least some name recognition. But the important thing is that I won't be asking for money. I'm not interested in the reward. I just want to help."

"And solve the mystery of the barrette in the fish," Kate teases.

Rick cracks a crooked smile. "That too."

"Mr. Castle, I'm going to be straight with you, and I'm hoping you'll be straight with me," Norman Witzenberger says. "My wife Kahlia and I have spent countless hours working with law enforcement and private investigative services. Every path of investigation has been a dead end. And that doesn't even count the grifters coming to us with," Norman makes air quotes, 'secret knowledge.' I can't see what you can possibly say that no one else has."

"I don't know about say, but perhaps show," Rick responds, reaching into his pocket for a tiny plastic bag holding the two barrettes he found. "Believe it or not, one of these turned up in the belly of a walleye I caught in Dark Lake. Until then, I had never heard of your daughter. The host of the Dark Lake Lodge filled me in about Julia's disappearance. As a writer, I am irresistibly curious. Along with Detective Beckett of the NYPD, I checked out a ruined cabin on the land controlled by the lodge. That's where I found the other one. It was clear to me that Julia had been there at one time and most likely alive. At that point, it was impossible for me to let her disappearance go, so I started, as I'm sure all the fakers who've come to you did, looking into your family. However, I'm not interested in making money off Julia, you, or your wife. I do pretty well on my own. But I am fairly desperate to know if a theory I developed might pan out."

"And that theory is?" Norman questions.

"That your daughter was taken for her specific immunological makeup. Someone, somewhere, needed her to save a loved one and might even keep her around to keep said loved one alive."

Norman begins to pace the floor of his high-tech office. "I'll admit, Mr. Castle, that's a theory I haven't heard before. And if I decide to accept it, what do you need from me?'

"Just access to Julia's medical records to figure out whom I might be looking for and where."

Norman's lips come together in a hard line. "I'll have to talk to Kahlia about that. She's totally exhausted by the constant failures to find our daughter. I don't know if she can stand another one."

"I understand Mr. Witzenberger. Since Julia disappeared, the two of you must be going through Hell. And I obviously can't promise to find your daughter. But I can promise that I'll try, and I won't ask anything else from the two of you. I also won't bother you again unless I find her. When do you think you can discuss this with your wife?"

"I can talk to her now. She developed much of our technology and is trying to keep her mind on developing the next generation. Her lab is at the other end of the hall. You can wait here. There's coffee and bagels on the sideboard. Help yourself."

Rick tries not to notice that for a man with a company whose stock shot through the roof, Norman Witzenberger drinks lousy coffee. He passes on the bagels and sips his cup slowly for 20 minutes until Norman returns with a stunning woman. Rick wouldn't even try to guess all the elements of her genetic heritage, but that he can't, buttresses his theory. "Norman informed me of your request," Kahlia says in totally unaccented English. "I'm guessing that if this is some kind of a scam, you would have just bribed someone at the hospital where Julia was treated to get the records for you. You might even have hired someone to hack their system. But since you've come directly to us and you're not asking for money, I'll give you the benefit of the doubt. You'll have access to Julia's immunological records, but only those records. You will also not contact us again unless it is to tell us where our daughter is. That's the deal, Mr. Castle."

Rick extends his hand. "Deal accepted."