Serving Justice, Castle fanfic, 1/6
Title: Serving Justice
Rating: T
Spoilers: All that's aired
Summary: A murdered judge causes Beckett and Castle to examine their own lives. Caskett.
It began with the rain.
Maria Velasquez, minutes away from finishing her shadow night shift on the hotel cleaning staff, had always hated the rain. Where she’d grown up, in Colombia, the rain had smelt fresh, loosened the dirt from the ground, brought nature upon her, but here in New York, it had another quality entirely. It wasn’t clean, she thought, and it made her somehow uneasy. There was something acrid to it; she flinched sometimes when it touched her skin. It made the sky hang grey over grey buildings and moods rise and fall like a pendulum. It beat against the window, trapping her inside, obscuring her view.
She was thinking about the rain, as well as what she could buy her son for his birthday, whether she was going to make the payment on the electricity bill that month, and what she had left in the refrigerator to cook for dinner, when she opened the door to Judge Humphrey’s room, humming a melancholy tune under her breath.
Moments later, she stopped in her tracks, tune stopping somewhere in her throat, jaw clenching in fear.
Judge Humphrey was laid on the floor in front of the wardrobe, a pallor creeping across her skin, somewhere close to the colour of the rain soaked sky. Her eyes were wide open, glassy and staring, and her face was contorted in fear, mouth twisting in an unspoken scream.
Maria Velasquez, minutes away from finishing her shadow night shift on the hotel cleaning staff, ran from the room, screaming.
***
“Pick up your goddamn phone, Castle!” Beckett hissed into the receiver, pulling on her jacket with one hand, grabbing her badge in the other, the phone tucked between her ear and her shoulder.
“You know, it probably wouldn’t hurt you to go to one crime scene without him.” Esposito mused, raising a suggestive eyebrow, making Beckett turn her eyes away. She sighed as the line clicked to Castle’s voicemail for the third time.
“Castle! Where are you? We have a case… look, I can’t reach you on your cell, so I guess you’re asleep and you’re ignoring the phone again because you think it’s your alarm clock, but, look, if you get this, meet me at the Palm Hotel, we’ve-”
“I’ll be right there.”
Beckett spun, eyes connecting with Castle’s. Castle, who was standing in the doorway, two cups of coffee in his hands, smiling at her.
“You’re late.”
“Sorry, Mother attempted to make Alexis pancakes this morning - she has a French final - and managed to set off all the smoke alarms in our building…”
Beckett gave a slight smile, taking the coffee from him, taking a long drag, her eyes drifting closed for a second, revelling in the taste of it, the caffeine zipping its way through her veins.
“So, what have we got?” Castle asked, as they took the lift down, heading out to her squad car, bracing himself without even thinking for anything crime could throw at them.
“We don’t really know much, Jane Doe, middle-aged, we’ll get something more accurate on that from Lanie, found dead in her room at the Palm Hotel¸ by a maid, she’s not saying much, she’s still in shock, but we’ve got something, the vic was here for a wedding apparently, so we’ll have a whole crowd of people to ask from there…” she took a long sigh as she settled into the driver’s seat, turning the key in her ignition, Castle just stretching his seatbelt around him. There was something strangely familiar about the case, something she couldn’t put her finger on.
“Any idea on the method of murder… scratches that, any proof it was a murder?”
She rolled her eyes slightly, more to herself than anyone else, wondering when Castle had started saying exactly what was on her mind.
“We don’t have much idea… the maid says there were no wounds, so I guess strangling or asphyxiation… and it’s suspected murder because, according to the maid, there were bruises all down her arms…” She cocked her head to one side, glancing at him quickly, “Castle, I don’t like it any more than you do that we don’t know what the hell’s going on with this case… I haven’t had a bad case, not once like this, since before… you know…”
Silence reigned for a second, and she knew they were both thinking about it, on her behalf the sunlight shining through the trees that were suddenly above her, and those words coming out of Castle’s mouth that she’s still denying hearing. And on Castle’s behalf, the way her bullet wound had felt between his hands, the feel of her blood spilling through his fingers, shouting those words out half like a mad man at the thought of the woman he loved slipping from beside him.
“I know.” He said softly, although they both knew he didn’t have to. Neither of them said another word all the way to the Palm Hotel, dwelling on their memories of that day she was talking about, both of them wishing they could shut it from their minds. Wishing they could never see it, never think of it again, but that wasn’t the way. For either of them.
They reached the hotel and within minutes they were inside Room 46 on the third floor, and Jane Doe was laid out on the floor, eyes wide and her mouth twisted in some form of permanent scream, giving both of them the instant feel, despite not knowing anything more, that this was murder. There was something more to this than suicide; the two of them could both see that. And it would be minutes before they knew that, with Lanie already there, seconds before them, leaning over the body, already calculating everything she knew to work out exactly the manner of death for the woman laid before them.
Castle swallowed slowly, hanging back slightly as Beckett moved forward in the room. The woman who lay on the floor in front of him, somehow she was prettier than he expected. Not really looking her age, not really looking like she fit this. Somehow he found crime scenes like this harder than he used to, after the events of Montgomery’s funeral, the feeling of Kate in his arms… half-dead Kate… There’s something not so unfamiliar about murdered pretty women now, something that makes him realise how they’re not invincible, however beautiful they are, however much someone has loved them. And he doesn’t want that thought, because somehow it brings thoughts of Alexis in with it, and how she could be touched by any of the dangers the last three years have shown him. He swallowed, bracing himself against the woman laid on the floor in front of him for a moment. There were a lot of things he was, but defeated wasn’t one of them.
“Strangulation.” Lanie said, without even looking up from the corpse, “And I’ll have her PM to be sure when I get back to the lab, but I’d say her time of death was just over 24 hours ago, between six and eight yesterday morning, dependent on her state of rigor mortis…”
Beckett gave a tiny nod, unable to bring herself to give any more acknowledgement to her friend, still working on counting the breaths that were travelling through her system, still physically having to swallow the panic. She hadn’t handled a case like this yet, not since someone almost shot her life away, and she was unable to quell the slight fear that it had made her less of a cop. The things that used to be second nature to her, understanding a victim, absurd guesses that always turn out to be true, a preparation slightly before something happened, she didn’t know what she would do if those had been shot away from her as well. She wasn’t sure who she was if she wasn’t Detective Kate Beckett.
“There’s no sign of a break in,” came suddenly from across the room. A young cop was talking, she looked barely old enough to be out of high school, Kate thought, remembering for a second how she’s been when she’d just qualified, desperate to solve only one case. One case she still hadn’t got close to solving. “She must have known her killer. Or it must have been a member of the hotel staff… with a key to get in…”
Kate sighed slightly. There was something easier about a case with motive, a killer that knew the victim, being able to place some blame on something the victim had done or known, no matter how insignificant it was. However cruel it still was, however difficult, she found it far easier that not having an answer, not having a reason. There was something too familiar about that, something she wasn’t ready to face yet. She ran a hand tiredly through her hair, wondering what it meant that the crime scene she’d been in for about twenty minutes felt like it had been there all day. She sighed. She was tired already, and the sun had barely risen.
“I’ve got some ID.” One of the CSUs was saying from where they had been raiding the pockets of her coats and found a wallet in one of the pockets of her jacket, “Her name’s Natasha Humphrey, she was born in 1976…” he gave a slight sigh, “I know her face on here, Detective, something about her on the floor down there made me unable to recognise her, but she’s… she’s a judge just outside the city…”
Jesus, a judge. Beckett took deep breaths. Someone like her, someone slightly too involved in everything criminal that went on, and to top things off, she now had a practically infinite number of possible culprits. Being a judge, there were quite a few people you’d put away for however long that didn’t have that much of an ability to forgive you. You had an almost infinite number of motives.
Someone came through the door into the hotel room just behind Castle, a young member of the homicide squad. “Detective?” she said, and she sounded almost unsure that what she had to say was worth listening to. “I’ve checked all the hotel CCTV, and it’s not that helpful, the hotel only has CCTV on the elevators, nothing on the corridors… anyway, the victim came up to her room not until 2 in the morning, and there’s no one on the elevators over the night who doesn’t look like they’re either dressed for the wedding and some hotel cleaning staff… there’s about thirty people coming up from the wedding, but none of them are on their own… it doesn’t give us anything…”
Beckett gave a tiny sigh as she nodded to the young cop, hardly able to even voice her thanks. Everything about this case was getting more and more complicated by the second. Everything was getting seemingly more and more familiar, more and more bizarrely like her. She sighed. Something told her finding an answer about Natasha Humphrey wasn’t going to be the easiest thing in the world.
Rating: T
Spoilers: All that's aired
Summary: A murdered judge causes Beckett and Castle to examine their own lives. Caskett.
It began with the rain.
Maria Velasquez, minutes away from finishing her shadow night shift on the hotel cleaning staff, had always hated the rain. Where she’d grown up, in Colombia, the rain had smelt fresh, loosened the dirt from the ground, brought nature upon her, but here in New York, it had another quality entirely. It wasn’t clean, she thought, and it made her somehow uneasy. There was something acrid to it; she flinched sometimes when it touched her skin. It made the sky hang grey over grey buildings and moods rise and fall like a pendulum. It beat against the window, trapping her inside, obscuring her view.
She was thinking about the rain, as well as what she could buy her son for his birthday, whether she was going to make the payment on the electricity bill that month, and what she had left in the refrigerator to cook for dinner, when she opened the door to Judge Humphrey’s room, humming a melancholy tune under her breath.
Moments later, she stopped in her tracks, tune stopping somewhere in her throat, jaw clenching in fear.
Judge Humphrey was laid on the floor in front of the wardrobe, a pallor creeping across her skin, somewhere close to the colour of the rain soaked sky. Her eyes were wide open, glassy and staring, and her face was contorted in fear, mouth twisting in an unspoken scream.
Maria Velasquez, minutes away from finishing her shadow night shift on the hotel cleaning staff, ran from the room, screaming.
***
“Pick up your goddamn phone, Castle!” Beckett hissed into the receiver, pulling on her jacket with one hand, grabbing her badge in the other, the phone tucked between her ear and her shoulder.
“You know, it probably wouldn’t hurt you to go to one crime scene without him.” Esposito mused, raising a suggestive eyebrow, making Beckett turn her eyes away. She sighed as the line clicked to Castle’s voicemail for the third time.
“Castle! Where are you? We have a case… look, I can’t reach you on your cell, so I guess you’re asleep and you’re ignoring the phone again because you think it’s your alarm clock, but, look, if you get this, meet me at the Palm Hotel, we’ve-”
“I’ll be right there.”
Beckett spun, eyes connecting with Castle’s. Castle, who was standing in the doorway, two cups of coffee in his hands, smiling at her.
“You’re late.”
“Sorry, Mother attempted to make Alexis pancakes this morning - she has a French final - and managed to set off all the smoke alarms in our building…”
Beckett gave a slight smile, taking the coffee from him, taking a long drag, her eyes drifting closed for a second, revelling in the taste of it, the caffeine zipping its way through her veins.
“So, what have we got?” Castle asked, as they took the lift down, heading out to her squad car, bracing himself without even thinking for anything crime could throw at them.
“We don’t really know much, Jane Doe, middle-aged, we’ll get something more accurate on that from Lanie, found dead in her room at the Palm Hotel¸ by a maid, she’s not saying much, she’s still in shock, but we’ve got something, the vic was here for a wedding apparently, so we’ll have a whole crowd of people to ask from there…” she took a long sigh as she settled into the driver’s seat, turning the key in her ignition, Castle just stretching his seatbelt around him. There was something strangely familiar about the case, something she couldn’t put her finger on.
“Any idea on the method of murder… scratches that, any proof it was a murder?”
She rolled her eyes slightly, more to herself than anyone else, wondering when Castle had started saying exactly what was on her mind.
“We don’t have much idea… the maid says there were no wounds, so I guess strangling or asphyxiation… and it’s suspected murder because, according to the maid, there were bruises all down her arms…” She cocked her head to one side, glancing at him quickly, “Castle, I don’t like it any more than you do that we don’t know what the hell’s going on with this case… I haven’t had a bad case, not once like this, since before… you know…”
Silence reigned for a second, and she knew they were both thinking about it, on her behalf the sunlight shining through the trees that were suddenly above her, and those words coming out of Castle’s mouth that she’s still denying hearing. And on Castle’s behalf, the way her bullet wound had felt between his hands, the feel of her blood spilling through his fingers, shouting those words out half like a mad man at the thought of the woman he loved slipping from beside him.
“I know.” He said softly, although they both knew he didn’t have to. Neither of them said another word all the way to the Palm Hotel, dwelling on their memories of that day she was talking about, both of them wishing they could shut it from their minds. Wishing they could never see it, never think of it again, but that wasn’t the way. For either of them.
They reached the hotel and within minutes they were inside Room 46 on the third floor, and Jane Doe was laid out on the floor, eyes wide and her mouth twisted in some form of permanent scream, giving both of them the instant feel, despite not knowing anything more, that this was murder. There was something more to this than suicide; the two of them could both see that. And it would be minutes before they knew that, with Lanie already there, seconds before them, leaning over the body, already calculating everything she knew to work out exactly the manner of death for the woman laid before them.
Castle swallowed slowly, hanging back slightly as Beckett moved forward in the room. The woman who lay on the floor in front of him, somehow she was prettier than he expected. Not really looking her age, not really looking like she fit this. Somehow he found crime scenes like this harder than he used to, after the events of Montgomery’s funeral, the feeling of Kate in his arms… half-dead Kate… There’s something not so unfamiliar about murdered pretty women now, something that makes him realise how they’re not invincible, however beautiful they are, however much someone has loved them. And he doesn’t want that thought, because somehow it brings thoughts of Alexis in with it, and how she could be touched by any of the dangers the last three years have shown him. He swallowed, bracing himself against the woman laid on the floor in front of him for a moment. There were a lot of things he was, but defeated wasn’t one of them.
“Strangulation.” Lanie said, without even looking up from the corpse, “And I’ll have her PM to be sure when I get back to the lab, but I’d say her time of death was just over 24 hours ago, between six and eight yesterday morning, dependent on her state of rigor mortis…”
Beckett gave a tiny nod, unable to bring herself to give any more acknowledgement to her friend, still working on counting the breaths that were travelling through her system, still physically having to swallow the panic. She hadn’t handled a case like this yet, not since someone almost shot her life away, and she was unable to quell the slight fear that it had made her less of a cop. The things that used to be second nature to her, understanding a victim, absurd guesses that always turn out to be true, a preparation slightly before something happened, she didn’t know what she would do if those had been shot away from her as well. She wasn’t sure who she was if she wasn’t Detective Kate Beckett.
“There’s no sign of a break in,” came suddenly from across the room. A young cop was talking, she looked barely old enough to be out of high school, Kate thought, remembering for a second how she’s been when she’d just qualified, desperate to solve only one case. One case she still hadn’t got close to solving. “She must have known her killer. Or it must have been a member of the hotel staff… with a key to get in…”
Kate sighed slightly. There was something easier about a case with motive, a killer that knew the victim, being able to place some blame on something the victim had done or known, no matter how insignificant it was. However cruel it still was, however difficult, she found it far easier that not having an answer, not having a reason. There was something too familiar about that, something she wasn’t ready to face yet. She ran a hand tiredly through her hair, wondering what it meant that the crime scene she’d been in for about twenty minutes felt like it had been there all day. She sighed. She was tired already, and the sun had barely risen.
“I’ve got some ID.” One of the CSUs was saying from where they had been raiding the pockets of her coats and found a wallet in one of the pockets of her jacket, “Her name’s Natasha Humphrey, she was born in 1976…” he gave a slight sigh, “I know her face on here, Detective, something about her on the floor down there made me unable to recognise her, but she’s… she’s a judge just outside the city…”
Jesus, a judge. Beckett took deep breaths. Someone like her, someone slightly too involved in everything criminal that went on, and to top things off, she now had a practically infinite number of possible culprits. Being a judge, there were quite a few people you’d put away for however long that didn’t have that much of an ability to forgive you. You had an almost infinite number of motives.
Someone came through the door into the hotel room just behind Castle, a young member of the homicide squad. “Detective?” she said, and she sounded almost unsure that what she had to say was worth listening to. “I’ve checked all the hotel CCTV, and it’s not that helpful, the hotel only has CCTV on the elevators, nothing on the corridors… anyway, the victim came up to her room not until 2 in the morning, and there’s no one on the elevators over the night who doesn’t look like they’re either dressed for the wedding and some hotel cleaning staff… there’s about thirty people coming up from the wedding, but none of them are on their own… it doesn’t give us anything…”
Beckett gave a tiny sigh as she nodded to the young cop, hardly able to even voice her thanks. Everything about this case was getting more and more complicated by the second. Everything was getting seemingly more and more familiar, more and more bizarrely like her. She sighed. Something told her finding an answer about Natasha Humphrey wasn’t going to be the easiest thing in the world.