"I swear, I just grabbed the pizza and delivered it to you guys. I didn't even know what type pizza they were."

At all but twenty-one years old, Randy Anderson wasn't the typical murder suspect. And nothing he had said or done so far brought him anywhere close to their profile. But even if he wasn't the killer- he had been an accomplice.

Whether it had been intentional or not was a different story.

"You've got quite the track record of drug busts, resisting arrest, possession of a controlled substance. So now you decided to get into the hard times by aiding and abetting a dangerous murder suspect…"

Beckett deliberately raised her voice, her hands firmly planted on the table in front of their suspect, her expression stern as she analyzed his body language.

"Yeah, well, maybe so, but I didn't touch the pizzas and I damn well didn't put no body parts on it. That's disgusting."

"The kitchen staff said that they inspected the pizzas before they left and that nobody would have had access to them. So these body parts got on the pizzas while you were delivering them, which makes you a prime suspect."

"I swear I didn't do it."

Next to her, Castle leaned over, having been a silent observer thus far but deciding to chime in now.

"Unless his acting skills are better than his personal hygiene, I think he's telling the truth.", the writer whispered and wrinkled his nose, then pulled back again to let her resume.

"Listen Randy, at one point during your delivery, these pizzas were tampered with. Unless you come up with a damn good excuse, this little…stunt here is going to be on you."

She'd ignored the heavy odor of sweat for the longest time, but couldn't help but back up when he raised his handcuffed arms in a pleading gesture.

"I'm telling you, I have better stuff to do than put body parts on pizza. I wouldn't even know where to get them from."

"You'd cut them off the victim you just killed…", she interrupted, noticing that his skin color was quickly paling.

"I…I didn't kill anybody. Why won't somebody believe me?!"

With tempers flaring, Beckett backed off for a moment, waiting for the short haired young man with the unkempt clothes to calm down before continuing. The message had gotten lost on Castle who used the opportunity to clear his throat.

"We want to believe you, Randy, we really do. But in order to do that, we need to figure out how these…these body parts got onto the pizzas.", the writer began, immediately earning himself their suspect's attention, "So, somebody called the pizza parlor to order these pizzas and used a stolen credit card to pay for them. Nobody but the regular cooks had access to the pizzas. Then you went to pick them up and delivered them here. Are you sure you didn't let them out of your sight for even a minute? That somebody who might have been following you had a chance to get to them while you…say, got out to pump some gas?"

Randy was about to rebut when Castle raised his hand, begging for patience.

"You see, while we had you sit here and wait, we did some research. And we have the exact time of when those pizzas were ordered and baked, and when you arrived here. Pablo's is about twenty minutes north of here, figuring the occasional traffic light that isn't timed well, some nitwit tourist slowing down the left lane, it should have taken you no more than half an hour to get here. But instead, it took you forty-five minutes. Now, what exactly happened in those extra fifteen minutes, Randy? You're not going to tell me that the '98 Honda Accord with the loud exhaust pipe parked downstairs is that slow, are you? So what really happened?"

Temporarily stunned by the homework that had been done on the situation during his time in the interview room; Randy seemed to struggle with the situation, his eyes welling up with tears. Experience told Beckett that they weren't tears of guilt- more so, they were tears of self-pity.

"I just…I just stopped real quick to…"

Hesitating yet again, he looked back and forth between them, trying to vocalize what seemed to be a tough thing to say.

"Come on, spit it out. You'll feel better afterward.", she coaxed, knowing it was a cliche but also knowing that it wasn't entirely false either.

"I just stopped for a few minutes to smoke a doobie. I swear that was it, just a few minutes."

Frowning, Beckett looked over at Castle, then frowned in disbelief.

"I…I beg your pardon. You smoked weed on your way to deliver pizzas to a police station?"

"Yes. I waited an extra few minutes so you wouldn't smell it on me that much."

It would be his sole response for many long moments as he broke down into another bout of elephant tears, none of which made her feel any better about the situation.

"It could have been worse…", Castle whispered from the sidelines, "He could have been hacking fingers off dead people. Instead, he just indulged into the herbal exploits the world of drugs has to offer."

Trying hard not to imagine the conversation going on behind the one-way mirror to her back, she rolled her eyes, her tense shoulders starting up the mother of all headaches.

"Is there anybody you noticed following you? Anybody that was near your car when you…when you went out to smoke?", she asked, unable to hide the dismay in her voice.

It was no surprise when Anderson shook his head sheepishly, then shrugged.

"I didn't see nobody. I went to smoke and when I came back, I felt too good to think about the pizzas."