Armed with a plethora of questions and with her team by her side, Beckett knocked on the front door to Jeffrey Hughes row house, the building looking like a cookie cutter mold of the dozen others surrounding it.
While the neighborhood itself was decent, readily supplied with working middle class families, there was a certain kind of drab to be found here. She could sense the struggle around every street corner, families trying to stay afloat despite the rising cost of food and utilities that had plagued the country for a while.
The metal railings to either side of the front entrance were worn down, some of the supports barely attached to the concrete foundation. An older planter to the right hadn't seen water or vegetation in what looked to be months.
She'd waited several seconds to give the boys time to cover the back exit, taking no chances of their killer getting away again.
If Castle was right, and he had been so many times in the past, this could be the case break they had been desperately thirsting for.
Rushed footsteps could be heard from the inside and she waited patiently until the door opened before retrieving her badge and showing it to the man she easily identified as Jeffrey Hughes.
With his expression a mix of surprise and dread, he frowned, then opened the door wider.
"If you guys found my car I…well, after two month the insurance just pays you for the car and I got a new one. But if I can have my seat covers and expensive floor mats, that would be sweet."
"Mister Hughes, I am afraid we haven't found your car yet.", Beckett explained evenly, then cocked her chin toward the living room, "My name is Kate Beckett, I work for NYPD and this is my associate Richard Castle. I have a few questions for you. Is there any place inside we could talk?"
With the color draining from his face, Hughes let them in, then closed the door behind them as he gestured toward the nearby couch.
"I heard about you two before. A homicide detective and a successful novelist. And you want to talk to me…and it's not about my car. Now you have me worried."
"Well, this is about your car…indirectly.", she tried and sat down across from the man, Castle joining her so close that she could feel his body heat against her thigh.
"Your car is being used in a crime…", the writer helped and clasped his hands, keeping his expression as neutral as possible.
"What kind of crime?", Hughes wanted to know and nervously fidgeted with the newspaper by his recliner.
"A homicide…"
She'd kept her response as vague as possible, hoping not to trip off their suspect- or any of his accomplices.
Hughes was a widower of ten years, raising his sole son by himself and working a factory job throughout the day. It was absolutely conceivable that the carjacking had been a well-played sham and that he was in fact aiding and abetting his son as he committed all these murders.
What better than to have an extra person to help wipe the crime scene of any physical evidence? Better yet, having been without female attention for so long made him thirst to join in on the rapes.
"A homicide, eh? And you…you haven't caught the killer yet? Or my car?"
"Correct.", Beckett replied hesitantly, using the time to read his body language but not getting very far, "I guess we are trying to find out more about the matter in which your car was stolen and if there was anybody in your circle of friends that might have wanted it…"
"I…I don't understand. I answered all these questions months ago when it disappeared. I have no idea who would have wanted it. It was dented and had 150,000 miles on it. Hardly worth much. The insurance just gave me two grand for it when they totaled it out."
"What about your son Peter? Did he have any friends that might have been interested in it? Has he seen it around since it was stolen?"
Castle's question immediately raised the other man's ire and he frowned, then shook his head in undisguised frustration.
"Listen, I don't know what you guys want from me. I haven't seen the car since it was stolen and Peter would have told me if he'd seen it. He's an upstanding kid. Strange, but honest as they come."
"What do you mean by strange, Mister Hughes?"
Beckett leaned forward, her attention momentarily shifting to Ryan who was near the back window of the building, fighting his way through a thorny rosebush that was blocking his access, waving at her with a cringe-worthy smile as he peeled a branch off his sleeve.
"Well, he's gay. It's just who he always was. I accepted it early on. I could do without the pink hair and the voice and…what are you seeing back there? Is the neighbor's cat in my backyard again?"
She could see Ryan duck the moment Hughes looked back there, the outer branches of the bush moving slightly where the young detective sought cover.
"I am sure it was nothing…", she continued, hoping to draw their suspect's attention toward them once more, "Is Peter home so we could talk to him for a moment?", to corroborate your earlier statement she wanted to add, not surprised when Hughes shook his head.
"Not yet. But he should be home any minute if you guys want to wait. Although I can assure you right now he won't be able to tell you any more than I did. So, what murder case is this about anyway? Is it about the young girls that have been killed? It's been all over the news lately."
"That one.", Beckett confirmed, subtly glancing over at Castle who nodded.
"Well, if you ask me, you are dealing with a real suave kind of guy here, somebody who can just lure in these girls before he…he gets his way with them."
Shaking his head disapprovingly, Hughes glanced over to his back window once more, visibly pleased when he didn't see anything out of the ordinary.
"And what makes you think that?", Castle pried, his jaws clenched, itching for the other man to trip on his answer.
"I don't know. Call me paranoid and all but it reminds me so much of a serial killing spree from the 70's back in Michigan."
