there should be stars (25/X)
Title: there should be stars (25/X)
Characters/Pairings: Castle/Beckett
Summary: Four years can make a world of difference. AU.
Rating: NC-17
Spoilers: Up to Season Four finale.
She changes in the locker room, dropping the white sweater into the trash once she has the dark blue shirt buttoned up over the pale pink bra that also has been ruined by blood that seeped through the threads of her sweater. Castle has coffee waiting for her when she gets to her desk, nudging the mug toward her as she sits as he takes in her change of clothing.
“Thanks,” she says, wrapping her fingers around the warm porcelain. The liquid is cool enough so that it doesn’t burn her tongue as she takes a sip, holding the mug against her chest.
“Hey, Beckett,” calls Esposito. “I checked out the fourth floor where the shooter was. No prints, no casings, no witnesses.” She groans but he holds up a finger. “But it’s a secure building. The only way in or out is through the lobby and nobody gets through the lobby turnstiles without a key card.”
“So our shooter had a key card,” she mutters, glancing over at Castle.
Esposito nods. “Yeah. They’re sending over a list of all of their employees. We’re also downloading surveillance video from the lobby.”
“I talked to the neighbors,” says Ryan, placing a banker’s box of things from Raglan’s apartment on the corner of the desk. “Raglan was a widower. No next of kin that I could find. The super said he didn’t really even have visitors.” He rummages through the box, pulling out a framed photo showing two men on a boat, a huge fish suspended between them. “Every once in a while, though, his buddy would come over to watch a Yankees game. Gary McAllister. He was one of Raglan’s old Academy classmates.”
“Let’s get a hold of McAllister,” she says. “See if he’ll come in and talk.”
“You got it,” Ryan responds, Esposito following him.
Beckett sighs heavily. “What happened nineteen years ago?”
“What?”
“Raglan started telling us about something that happened nineteen years ago but my mom’s murder was twelve years ago,” she clarifies. “It doesn’t make any sense.”
He sits in the visitor’s chair, taking her hand. “We’ll figure it out,” he whispers. “Okay?”
“It’s just…” she starts, collapsing back into her chair. “Every time I do this, I find a lead. And then it dies and I don’t know if I can keep doing this same cycle over and over and over.”
“We can drop it. Right now.”
“But what if Raglan was it? What if everything died with him and we’ve got nothing left?”
He squeezes her hand, his thumb smoothing over the back of her knuckles. “Then we learn how to live with it, Kate. One day at a time. Together.”
She smiles, a tiny thing that barely flits across her face. “Can we start with putting the murder board together?” she asks, picking up one of the white board markers from her desk and holding it out to him.
By the time they have all of the facts up on the white board, gathered from case files and their own knowledge of the case, Ryan and Esposito have Gary McAllister in the lounge.
Just outside of the door, Castle taps her elbow. “You’ve got this,” he says quietly.
“Mr. McAllister?” she asks, opening the door to the small room. The man sitting on one of the rickety chairs is balding, wearing clothes she would have expected to see on her own father: flannel shirt under a jacket, dark pants, nice shoes. He’s stirring brandy into the cup of coffee on the table. “I’m Detective Beckett and this is Richard Castle,” she says, sitting on the couch across from the man. “We’re investigating the shooting of your friend, John Raglan.”
“You know,” McAllister starts, looking up. “I sacrificed my best years to this damn city. You think that it would be enough but it never is. It had to gobble up my best friend, too.”
Beckett crosses her legs, resting the file on her thigh, pen between her fingers. “When was the last time you saw Raglan?”
McAllister takes a sip of his coffee, shrugging. “’Bout a week ago. He told me he was dying.”
“And?”
“Isn’t that enough? But I don’t get it,” he continues, ignoring the quick glare that Beckett couldn’t quite stop. “Raglan was retired by the time you would have come on the job. What’d he want with you?”
“He was helping me with a cold case that I was working on,” she half-lies smoothly. “I believe that someone had him killed to keep him quiet. Raglan seemed to think that the case had something to do with something he did nineteen years ago. What was he into back then?”
McAllister nods, tracing his finger over the lip of the mug. “What was he into?” he asks, incredulity leaking into his voice. He shakes his head, sitting forward. “John Raglan was no angel, Detective. New York was a different city back then and I’m here to tell you that kid gloves didn’t get it done out there. Compared to then, you police a damn theme park.” He sets the mug on the table, starting to get up. “Now, if you’re looking to start some half-assed truth commission, you can count me out.”
“I’m not trying to tarnish Raglan’s memory,” she insists. “I’m trying to find his murderer. So help me.”
The other cop drops back into the seat. “I told him not to get involved with Vulcan Simmons.”
“Who’s Vulcan Simmons?” Castle pipes up, glancing at Beckett.
“Runs half the drug trade in the city,” she tells him as she writes the name on her legal pad.
“Raglan liked to play the ponies,” McAllister says. “Nineteen, twenty years ago would be about the time he had a string of bad luck. He was hard up for money.”
“And then he wasn’t,” says Castle.
McAllister nods. “And then he wasn’t. Word was he got well working as a dope courier for Simmons, moving product across town in his patrol car. Listen, Raglan worked Homicide for four years and I know Simmons put people in the ground. If it were my case, I’d take a hard look at Vulcan Simmons.”
Beckett stands, tucking the legal pad and file under her arm as she holds a hand out. “Thank you for coming in, Mr. McAllister.”
“You’ll let me know when you find the bastard?” he asks on the way out the door.
“Of course.”
She waits by her desk until he’s on the elevator before she drops into her chair. She has the criminal database open, typing in Simmons’s name before Castle can follow her. “He’s down for assault, attempted murder, extortion, possession with intent, witness intimidation.” She right-clicks his latest mugshot and prints it off. Castle gets up again and grabs it, pinning it up in an empty space on the board. “Then it just dries up. Nobody’s booked him in years.”
“He find religion?” asks Castle, leaning over to read off of her screen.
“More likely that he got smart and is swimming in deeper waters,” adds Esposito.
Ryan has one of the markers in his hand as he writes Simmons’s name on the board under his photo. “Guess he’s come a long way since Washington Heights.”
“Wait.” Her finger pauses as she scrolls down Simmons’s record. “You said Washington Heights, Ryan?”
He nods. “Back in the day, Simmons ran the drug trade in Washington Heights. Everyone wanted that collar when I was in Narcotics.”
She drags her hand through her hair, looking away from the man’s photo staring at her from the murder board. “My mom and a group of her colleagues put together this campaign, Take Back the Neighborhood. They were trying to get drug dealers off the streets in Washington Heights.”
“Well, with Simmons running all the dope in that neighborhood, that campaign would have cost him,” says Ryan. “We know that hit man, Coonan. He was into dope. Maybe that’s how Simmons got in contact with him.”
“So,” says Castle, sitting forward in the old brown chair, his fingers unconsciously brushing her knee, “Simmons hires Coonan to kill them all, including your mother and her colleagues. Then he just pays his old friend Raglan to write off their homicides as random gang violence. There would have been no way to trace it back to him.”
“Until Raglan threatens to reveal his role in the conspiracy,” adds Beckett. “Then Simmons has him silenced.”
Esposito smiles briefly. “We’ll go pick him up.”
“Thanks, guys,” she says. She leans her forehead on her palm, looking at Castle. “I want wine and bed after this, got it?”
He braces his hand on the arm of her chair, touching his lips lightly to her temple. “You got it. But what can I do for you now?”
She puts her hand over the one still on her knee, wrapping her fingers around it until her nails tickle his palm. “Just sit with me. It helps.”
“Want to go sit on the break room couch?”
“Yeah,” she murmurs. “Yeah, that’d be good.”
He keeps their hands twined together as he tugs her down onto the couch after closing the doors behind them. Her legs are over his lap, her head on his shoulder as his free hand coasts up and down her arm.
She sighs heavily, practically melting into his side. “Whatever happens with this,” she speaks into the warm skin of his neck, “know that I do love you, Castle. I love you more than this case. I love you.”
“I know.”
“You won’t let me drown, right?”
He tips her head up, his thumb smoothing over the swell of her lower lip before he replaces the pad of his finger with his lips. “Never, Kate,” he says. “You jump, I jump, remember?”
She scowls, nose wrinkling as she purses her lips at him. “Titanic? Really?”
“Thought all women liked Leo.”
“Mm,” she hums against his chest. “I prefer Cal.”
“The rich asshole?” he gasps until he sees her sly grin. “Funny. I do like to think that I’m a little more charming than Hockley.”
“You gonna get me a diamond?”
She realizes what it sounds like when it comes out of her mouth. She knows that he can feel her stop breathing. Her eyes close and she fights the urge to hide her face in his flannel shirt.
“Castle, I… I didn’t mean -”
He smiles as he presses his lips to her forehead before he lifts their hands up, touching his mouth to the base of her ring finger; a mirror to her action a month ago. “I’ll buy you a diamond or a sapphire or a plastic ring from the arcade just as soon as you will let me.”
Her heart stutters, the yes yes yes running through her veins. She has to swallow it when it pushes up to her throat, turning to muffle the tiny whimper that escapes.
“I’m not pushing you,” he babbles quickly.
“I know,” she says, putting her hand over his mouth. But she doesn’t know how to tell him that he could ask right now, sitting on the break room couch in the middle of the case that has defined her entire life, and she would say yes.
She would say yes in an instant.
Characters/Pairings: Castle/Beckett
Summary: Four years can make a world of difference. AU.
Rating: NC-17
Spoilers: Up to Season Four finale.
She changes in the locker room, dropping the white sweater into the trash once she has the dark blue shirt buttoned up over the pale pink bra that also has been ruined by blood that seeped through the threads of her sweater. Castle has coffee waiting for her when she gets to her desk, nudging the mug toward her as she sits as he takes in her change of clothing.
“Thanks,” she says, wrapping her fingers around the warm porcelain. The liquid is cool enough so that it doesn’t burn her tongue as she takes a sip, holding the mug against her chest.
“Hey, Beckett,” calls Esposito. “I checked out the fourth floor where the shooter was. No prints, no casings, no witnesses.” She groans but he holds up a finger. “But it’s a secure building. The only way in or out is through the lobby and nobody gets through the lobby turnstiles without a key card.”
“So our shooter had a key card,” she mutters, glancing over at Castle.
Esposito nods. “Yeah. They’re sending over a list of all of their employees. We’re also downloading surveillance video from the lobby.”
“I talked to the neighbors,” says Ryan, placing a banker’s box of things from Raglan’s apartment on the corner of the desk. “Raglan was a widower. No next of kin that I could find. The super said he didn’t really even have visitors.” He rummages through the box, pulling out a framed photo showing two men on a boat, a huge fish suspended between them. “Every once in a while, though, his buddy would come over to watch a Yankees game. Gary McAllister. He was one of Raglan’s old Academy classmates.”
“Let’s get a hold of McAllister,” she says. “See if he’ll come in and talk.”
“You got it,” Ryan responds, Esposito following him.
Beckett sighs heavily. “What happened nineteen years ago?”
“What?”
“Raglan started telling us about something that happened nineteen years ago but my mom’s murder was twelve years ago,” she clarifies. “It doesn’t make any sense.”
He sits in the visitor’s chair, taking her hand. “We’ll figure it out,” he whispers. “Okay?”
“It’s just…” she starts, collapsing back into her chair. “Every time I do this, I find a lead. And then it dies and I don’t know if I can keep doing this same cycle over and over and over.”
“We can drop it. Right now.”
“But what if Raglan was it? What if everything died with him and we’ve got nothing left?”
He squeezes her hand, his thumb smoothing over the back of her knuckles. “Then we learn how to live with it, Kate. One day at a time. Together.”
She smiles, a tiny thing that barely flits across her face. “Can we start with putting the murder board together?” she asks, picking up one of the white board markers from her desk and holding it out to him.
By the time they have all of the facts up on the white board, gathered from case files and their own knowledge of the case, Ryan and Esposito have Gary McAllister in the lounge.
Just outside of the door, Castle taps her elbow. “You’ve got this,” he says quietly.
“Mr. McAllister?” she asks, opening the door to the small room. The man sitting on one of the rickety chairs is balding, wearing clothes she would have expected to see on her own father: flannel shirt under a jacket, dark pants, nice shoes. He’s stirring brandy into the cup of coffee on the table. “I’m Detective Beckett and this is Richard Castle,” she says, sitting on the couch across from the man. “We’re investigating the shooting of your friend, John Raglan.”
“You know,” McAllister starts, looking up. “I sacrificed my best years to this damn city. You think that it would be enough but it never is. It had to gobble up my best friend, too.”
Beckett crosses her legs, resting the file on her thigh, pen between her fingers. “When was the last time you saw Raglan?”
McAllister takes a sip of his coffee, shrugging. “’Bout a week ago. He told me he was dying.”
“And?”
“Isn’t that enough? But I don’t get it,” he continues, ignoring the quick glare that Beckett couldn’t quite stop. “Raglan was retired by the time you would have come on the job. What’d he want with you?”
“He was helping me with a cold case that I was working on,” she half-lies smoothly. “I believe that someone had him killed to keep him quiet. Raglan seemed to think that the case had something to do with something he did nineteen years ago. What was he into back then?”
McAllister nods, tracing his finger over the lip of the mug. “What was he into?” he asks, incredulity leaking into his voice. He shakes his head, sitting forward. “John Raglan was no angel, Detective. New York was a different city back then and I’m here to tell you that kid gloves didn’t get it done out there. Compared to then, you police a damn theme park.” He sets the mug on the table, starting to get up. “Now, if you’re looking to start some half-assed truth commission, you can count me out.”
“I’m not trying to tarnish Raglan’s memory,” she insists. “I’m trying to find his murderer. So help me.”
The other cop drops back into the seat. “I told him not to get involved with Vulcan Simmons.”
“Who’s Vulcan Simmons?” Castle pipes up, glancing at Beckett.
“Runs half the drug trade in the city,” she tells him as she writes the name on her legal pad.
“Raglan liked to play the ponies,” McAllister says. “Nineteen, twenty years ago would be about the time he had a string of bad luck. He was hard up for money.”
“And then he wasn’t,” says Castle.
McAllister nods. “And then he wasn’t. Word was he got well working as a dope courier for Simmons, moving product across town in his patrol car. Listen, Raglan worked Homicide for four years and I know Simmons put people in the ground. If it were my case, I’d take a hard look at Vulcan Simmons.”
Beckett stands, tucking the legal pad and file under her arm as she holds a hand out. “Thank you for coming in, Mr. McAllister.”
“You’ll let me know when you find the bastard?” he asks on the way out the door.
“Of course.”
She waits by her desk until he’s on the elevator before she drops into her chair. She has the criminal database open, typing in Simmons’s name before Castle can follow her. “He’s down for assault, attempted murder, extortion, possession with intent, witness intimidation.” She right-clicks his latest mugshot and prints it off. Castle gets up again and grabs it, pinning it up in an empty space on the board. “Then it just dries up. Nobody’s booked him in years.”
“He find religion?” asks Castle, leaning over to read off of her screen.
“More likely that he got smart and is swimming in deeper waters,” adds Esposito.
Ryan has one of the markers in his hand as he writes Simmons’s name on the board under his photo. “Guess he’s come a long way since Washington Heights.”
“Wait.” Her finger pauses as she scrolls down Simmons’s record. “You said Washington Heights, Ryan?”
He nods. “Back in the day, Simmons ran the drug trade in Washington Heights. Everyone wanted that collar when I was in Narcotics.”
She drags her hand through her hair, looking away from the man’s photo staring at her from the murder board. “My mom and a group of her colleagues put together this campaign, Take Back the Neighborhood. They were trying to get drug dealers off the streets in Washington Heights.”
“Well, with Simmons running all the dope in that neighborhood, that campaign would have cost him,” says Ryan. “We know that hit man, Coonan. He was into dope. Maybe that’s how Simmons got in contact with him.”
“So,” says Castle, sitting forward in the old brown chair, his fingers unconsciously brushing her knee, “Simmons hires Coonan to kill them all, including your mother and her colleagues. Then he just pays his old friend Raglan to write off their homicides as random gang violence. There would have been no way to trace it back to him.”
“Until Raglan threatens to reveal his role in the conspiracy,” adds Beckett. “Then Simmons has him silenced.”
Esposito smiles briefly. “We’ll go pick him up.”
“Thanks, guys,” she says. She leans her forehead on her palm, looking at Castle. “I want wine and bed after this, got it?”
He braces his hand on the arm of her chair, touching his lips lightly to her temple. “You got it. But what can I do for you now?”
She puts her hand over the one still on her knee, wrapping her fingers around it until her nails tickle his palm. “Just sit with me. It helps.”
“Want to go sit on the break room couch?”
“Yeah,” she murmurs. “Yeah, that’d be good.”
He keeps their hands twined together as he tugs her down onto the couch after closing the doors behind them. Her legs are over his lap, her head on his shoulder as his free hand coasts up and down her arm.
She sighs heavily, practically melting into his side. “Whatever happens with this,” she speaks into the warm skin of his neck, “know that I do love you, Castle. I love you more than this case. I love you.”
“I know.”
“You won’t let me drown, right?”
He tips her head up, his thumb smoothing over the swell of her lower lip before he replaces the pad of his finger with his lips. “Never, Kate,” he says. “You jump, I jump, remember?”
She scowls, nose wrinkling as she purses her lips at him. “Titanic? Really?”
“Thought all women liked Leo.”
“Mm,” she hums against his chest. “I prefer Cal.”
“The rich asshole?” he gasps until he sees her sly grin. “Funny. I do like to think that I’m a little more charming than Hockley.”
“You gonna get me a diamond?”
She realizes what it sounds like when it comes out of her mouth. She knows that he can feel her stop breathing. Her eyes close and she fights the urge to hide her face in his flannel shirt.
“Castle, I… I didn’t mean -”
He smiles as he presses his lips to her forehead before he lifts their hands up, touching his mouth to the base of her ring finger; a mirror to her action a month ago. “I’ll buy you a diamond or a sapphire or a plastic ring from the arcade just as soon as you will let me.”
Her heart stutters, the yes yes yes running through her veins. She has to swallow it when it pushes up to her throat, turning to muffle the tiny whimper that escapes.
“I’m not pushing you,” he babbles quickly.
“I know,” she says, putting her hand over his mouth. But she doesn’t know how to tell him that he could ask right now, sitting on the break room couch in the middle of the case that has defined her entire life, and she would say yes.
She would say yes in an instant.