Finding the Fit Chapter 71

Rick scowls at his phone. "This is more complicated than I thought. There are a lot of possible hospitals, especially around our best guess destinations, Cape Town and Johannesburg. On top of that, all sorts of diseases and conditions might need blood, let alone organs."

"Everything always costs more and takes longer," Linc declares, pulling the pepperoni from the other warp nacelle. "If I were you, Rick, I'd sit my ass down in front of my computer and get comfortable."

Rick jams his phone back in his pocket. "I intend to. I'll get the check on my way out. Do you mind if I leave you here with the Enterprise?"

Linc holds up his hand, the fingers spread in a Vulcan symbol. "Live long and prosper, Rick. Good luck."

"Thanks. Enjoy the rest of the ship."

"So, how did it go?" Kate asks Rick when he meets her at the precinct.

"Not as well as I hoped," He admits. "I think I might be able to narrow things down to flights between Albany and Cape Town or Johannesburg. And of the two, Cape Town seems more likely. But that's as far as I've gotten. I thought I'd do a quick check in with you before going home to work on it some more."

"It's almost end of shift and nothing's happening here. You want me to come along?" Kate asks. "Maybe I can help."

"I always want you to come along, whether you can help or not. But maybe you can. Something about one of the hospitals around Cape Town and Johannesburg might be attractive to kidnappers. Unfortunately, it's a surprisingly long list. Maybe you can go through it and see if any specific one catches your supercop eye. I thought I'd check out diseases, especially rare ones, requiring multiple blood transfusions. Then, we can compare notes and see if your choice of venues might meet the needs of a patient suffering from one of them. Ooh, your forehead's getting all wrinkly. You think I'll be wasting my time – and yours."

"No, not wasting our time, Castle, not exactly. But it does sound like a hell of a long shot."

"Which is probably why, so far, neither law enforcement nor the Witzenberger's private investigators have taken it. But at least it will give us something to concentrate on while the testimony in Bracken's trial slogs toward the finish line, and the jury can get their teeth into handing down a verdict."

"It would be worth it just for that," Kate agrees. The clock on the bullpen's wall ticks on five o'clock. "I'm done here. Let's go."

Rick hands Kate a fresh mug of coffee. "Any houses of healing jumping out at you?"

"Maybe. Most of the hospitals in South Africa are public and government-funded. That doesn't leave much room for a lot of private transactions. But one of the biggest hospitals, Tygerberg, around Cape Town, with great research facilities, is government-run but also has a private ward. If someone wanted to personally fund something below the radar, that might be the place to do it. How about you?"

"Blood is needed to treat a list of conditions that would fill a telephone book – if we still used them. But I'm trying to go glass-half-full, so I'm concentrating on the chronic ones that would require the kidnappers to keep Julia alive and well-treated. And I'm thinking maybe it's one of those rare family things, so they might need her to treat more than one person."

"That's a hell of a lot of assumptions, Castle."

"I know. Maybe I'm picking the ones that would make the best story, but I have to narrow it down somehow, or by the time I come up with an answer, Julia could be 45. Not that her parents wouldn't still be looking for her if they're still around. Or I could be so doddering by then that everyone would assume I dreamed the whole thing up.''

"I get the point, Castle. But it's almost midnight, and I do have to be at the precinct when the day shift starts tomorrow. If you want to come with me, we should both think about turning in."

Rick sighs. "You're right. You go ahead and do whatever it is you do to make yourself irresistible to the sandman. I'll join you in a bit."

The lights in the bedroom are out, but Rick can see Kate in the glow leaking in from his office. She looks surprisingly serene in sleep, something he's rarely seen, even at their cabin near Dark Lake. Maybe working on a case where the hope is life rather than punishing a purveyor of death has something to do with it. Or perhaps it's the realization that Bracken will soon face accountability. Now that she knows that she won't have to give evidence to the jury, she's had more freedom to follow the trial's progress as best she can. It has clearly not been going well for Bracken. Even with every motion and objection his lawyers can pull out of a hat, his guilt has to be transparent to even the most skeptical jurors.

Whatever may be giving Beckett sweet dreams, Rick hopes she can hold on to it. He strips down to his shorts and t-shirt and climbs into bed beside her. Breathing in the sweetly familiar cherry scent left behind by her shampoo, he closes his eyes. Sleep pulls him into its grasp.

Kate picks up The Ledger from outside Rick's door while he tongs crisp bacon onto their plates. "The prosecution is supposed to give its final statement today. The case could go to the jury tomorrow."

Rick lets out a breathy whistle. "Almost there, Beckett, at least for this trial. And a guilty verdict will mean multiple life sentences, so punishment-wise, it won't much matter what happens at the next one."

"Maybe Bracken can't spend more than one lifetime in prison, but the country and the world need to know about all the sh*t he's been pulling while he's supposed to have been working for the American people. The second trial will expose it all – or at least a lot of it."

"And you want everyone to know how much power an amoral sonofabitch like Bracken can and did grab," Rick assumes.

"Damm f***ing right I do. He betrayed everything the laws in this country are supposed to stand for. And if you count the deaths from all the drugs he brought in, he has more blood on his hands than any mass murderer."

"But aside from assassinating your husband, John Wilkes Booth isn't such a bad guy, is he, Mrs. Lincoln?" Rick teases. "Breathe, Beckett."

Kate slowly fills her lungs and lets the air flow gently out again. "You're right. I'm preaching to the choir, aren't I, Castle?"

"It's OK, Beckett. After the verdict comes in on this trial, the whole congregation will know Bracken for what he is. When the federal trial reveals the rest of his infamies, they'll be more than ready to hear them. And speaking of hearing things, I haven't told you what I stumbled across last night after you went to bed. I found an old article that was about problems that came out of HIV-contaminated blood supplies. It talked about a family in South Africa with a rare genetic disease that causes red blood cells to become fragile and break down. The only help for it is recurring blood transfusions. Until the HIV screening tests for blood were developed, almost all of the afflicted died. But I've started thinking that maybe some folks either survived from that family or from a distantly related one. They can get screened blood, but the wrong factors still might cause problems. Beckett, I have a gut feeling that I'm on the right track with this."

Kate loudly snaps a piece of bacon. "Then Castle, I hope you're right."