Ephemeris, Ch. 9-A post-For Better or Worse (6 x 23) Caskett multi-chap WIP
Title: Ephemeris, Ch. 9
WC: ~2500 this chapter, ~18,750 total so far
Summary: "She's grateful to have the two of them with her. That they'd dropped everything without a word and driven halfway from the city to pick her up, engine running at the back door of a no-name restaurant, and no one's acting like this is crazy, even though it might be. It might completely crazy, hoping to find something here. Somewhere to start this long after the fact."
It's not that she didn't know about it. Them. The shrines.
Weeks on, it still catches her unawares. A news item flashing across the television and sudden silence in the headshot staring up from a folded paper on the subway, side-by-side with a frame crowded with flowers and stuffed animals. Hardbacks and paperbacks. An array of strange offerings. A tearful woman standing by, as often as not, slightly out of focus and clutching a book to her chest so his name shows just right.
She knows about them. She knows the staff at the loft have been diligent in dealing with the things that show up in the dead of night. That clearing the sidewalk is still a daily chore at the precinct, though things have tapered off now. There, at least.
It comes in waves. When there's a pulse of publicity for the books. Wild Storm came out on schedule, and the next Nikki book is around the corner. It's not a story without the accident, though. Author Richard Castle's last works.
They had a nicely worded note from Gina about all that. About the shrine outside Black Pawn's offices. It's the biggest, of course. The most elaborate and well maintained. Gina had said they "curate," but they think it's appropriate to let it stand.
Appropriate.
Kate had gotten stuck on the word. Repeating it flatly with the note in her hand and the syllables strange in her mouth.
"Curate," darling. Martha had managed a laugh. Wrapped an arm around her and plucked the note in deft fingers to hold it high. What do you suppose that means? Keeping the lingerie to a minimum?
The thought had even Kate smiling. Eventually, anyway. Lingerieand God knows what else. He'd love that.
She should have expected one here, too. A roadside shrine.
The accident was news on its own, after all. She has hazy memories of maps from the first few days. An arrow pointing to the general vicinity of the house and a pointer tracing the last leg of the journey. The route he never traveled.
It wasn't just the entertainment shows, either. It had all been enough of a spectacle to go national for a while at least. Three hundred people bussed in from the city and her in her wedding dress.
She should have known, but she's grateful for Esposito's tight, disbelieving What the hell? For the way he stalks away from it and the fact that Lanie offers nothing more than a squeeze on her shoulder before she draws her further away from the roadside. She's grateful there's not really time to look.
"Come on, honey. We're losing light."
She's grateful to have the two of them with her. That they'd dropped everything without a word and driven halfway from the city to pick her up, engine running at the back door of a no-name restaurant, and no one's acting like this is crazy, even though it might be. It might completely crazy, hoping to find something here. Somewhere to start this long after the fact.
But he would have had a partner. The man in the car who isn't Castle. And that means a second murder.
Cross wouldn't have left him alive. He couldn't have. She knows the kind of plan it must have been. She knows its moving parts now, and the irony is she learned it from him. How it must have worked.
FC means final communication. All links have been severed.
Whoever was calling the shots would have simply waited for the news, and there was plenty of that. Tragic Wedding-Day Crash: Best-Selling Author Dead.
No one would be looking for them. Not the kind of people who'd take on a job like this. Cross must have counted on that.
Perception is everything.
But Cross was improvising, and she's looking now. There's a second murder and this is what she does. What they do.
She follows Lanie's careful steps. She doesn't like this. It feels . . . vulnerable. She wishes Ryan were here. She's grateful to him for seeing Martha and Alexis safe home to the loft, and it's not like one more body would make the difference. But she'd feel better with them all her back. Their team.
The sharp descent from the shoulder hides them from the road. It's something, at least. It's early yet, but Sundays see a regular stream of traffic at the height of the summer season.
She's drawn immediately to the site of the fire. It's a massive swath. Black earth rich from the burning and a collar of trampled down vegetation still obvious after an unusually cool few weeks. Rain came heavy in short bursts, then disappeared. It's lousy for preserving evidence, but they have to try, and she doesn't want to let the sun set on it again now that the picture is starting to come together.
This isn't where they'll find it, though. If there's even anything to find, it won't be right here. The car-the site itself-is a radius of calculated nothing. Once upon a time, there was the car, the body, and enough breadcrumbs to lead to the obvious conclusion. Now there's nothing but scorched earth.
Esposito has already moved on. Lanie follows, casting uncertain looks over her shoulder when Kate stops. She's rooted to the spot, though, her toes just touching the blackened edge for a moment. She beats it back. The urge to drop to her knees and scour the ground.
Esposito and Ryan did what they could right after. Everything they could, and she remembers whispers about ruined tuxes. About Gates looking the other way in the days immediately after that. The days when she was busy falling apart.
She takes one moment and a long breath. It's time wasted to second guess them. An impossible amount of ground to cover as it is.
She lets it go. The breath and the urge. She turns and jogs the hundred yards or so to catch up with Esposito and Lanie. They're stopped now, too. Esposito looks up the road then turns back. Considering.
"Anything?" Kate catches Lanie's eye. She gives her friend a nod to show she's ok, and she is. It's a crime scene. There's work to do, and she's ok as she's going to be until they get some movement on this.
Esposito shakes his head. "Not sure where to start."
"The site bugs me," Kate says suddenly.
It does. The embankment is steep and the dry creek bed is reasonably shielded from the road. But it's right off a park-like stretch flanking the two-lane highway. The three of them are standing in the last decently isolated spot before the landscape gives way to manicured lawn and low concrete walls that clearly require upkeep. And upkeep means people.
Esposito sees it, too. "Private estates and pastureland back that way." He gestures back the way they came. The other side of the shrine. "Sharp curve and a narrow shoulder. That's the spot I would have picked."
"So Cross . . . interferes." Kate squints up at the road. "And the car goes off the road further along than originally planned."
"Gives him less cover and less time." Esposito hauls himself a few steps up slope. "Don't like the other side of the road for much of anything. Tall grass. Better lit most of the day. Not as many trees."
"Slopes down toward the road, too." Kate joins him, skidding on the gravel. She follows his line of sight to the highway's vanishing point. It feels impossible. Dense underbrush giving way to forest. Neat, low fences breaking the monotony. But one side of the road is half as impossible. "We stick to this side. And focus back that way first. Cuts down our area. Lanie?"
"Back this way." She nods as the two of them skid back down the slope and fall in step beside her. "It's where I'd go if I had a body to dump."
"Good to know." Esposito grins and bumps her shoulder.
Lanie pushes him off, but she's grinning, too. They've gotten closer, Kate realizes. There's warmth between them and sharp edges softened by this. By loss and grief and the kind of grim reality Lanie had lectured her about once upon a time.
They thought they had all the time in the world. But nobody does.
Kate falls back a step or two as the creek bed narrows. She lets them go on ahead, side by side with the backs of their hands brushing.
Told you so.
She can practically feel his breath on the back of her neck. He'd had grand plans for match-making at the wedding. Bouquets and garters and plenty of alcohol.
The garter thing is not happening, Castle.
Kate. They're our best friends. Don't you want them to be happy?
Why do I get the feeling this has a lot less to do with Lanie and Esposito's eternal happiness and more to do with the adolescent thrill of getting your hands up my skirt in public?
That sounds like a yes to the garter thing, Beckett.
He'd made it into a game. He must have bought a dozen, each fluffier and lacier than the last. He'd left them in her desk and under her pillow. Around her coffee mug one morning with a badly photoshopped picture of Lanie and Esposito kissing tucked under the band.
It's a wedding, Castle. Esposito may bolt. Then what?
Not a chance, Beckett. He's seen the dress. I saw to that. Lanie in that dress? My plan is foolproof.
He'd gone on long enough about that particular subject to get himself hit. A solid back of the hand to his midsection that he'd grinned all the way through. And it's like he's here. Like he's still grinning.
Told you.
It quickens her steps. Longing for him. Missing him fiercely, but it brings solidity, too. More family at her back. Shelter in this terrible place, and the light feels like it might last long enough for them to find something.
"Here." Esposito stops. He and Lanie turn together and Kate nods. It's the farthest outward thrust of the road over the creek bed. The shoulder narrows to practically nothing and it's almost a sheer drop. Only ten feet or so, but enough to flip a car end over end. Enough for flames to lick high enough to be visible from the road. Eventually. Not right away.
"Here," Kate echoes. "Fan out. Keep sight of each other."
She starts out at a forty-five degree angle from Lanie, working toward the crash site. Careful, even paces with her eyes fixed on the ground. It's soothing. Methodical and meditative to have work to do. Her mind clears. It narrows to this. The natural pattern stamps itself on her field of vision. The shading of silt and gravel. Smooth cobbles strewn at irregular intervals and the verdant rings of moss where they sink heavily into the earth.
There's a low rise on the far side of the bed. Her trajectory takes her across on an oblique angle, skirting the thick, dark green vegetation for a while. Everything looks alien at the boundary. One type of landscape giving way to another, and everything is different enough that it looks like it might be something. She slows. Takes a minute to let herself see the whole. A new pattern coming into play.
He chatters at the back of her mind. Glimpses of him in that ridiculous camouflage get up, thrumming with excitement. Whacking at the trees with a stick and dead certain Bigfoot would be lurking around the next tree or the next. It centers her now, though it drove her absolutely insane at the time.
She fishes a maglite from her pocket. Slows again to let her eyes adjust and find the right angle for the light. She settles it at hip level. It glints off something. Silver piercing the gloom and she doesn't believe it. Not at first. She closes her eyes. Breathes. But it's still there when she opens them again.
She stoops, afraid to touch it. Afraid she's destroying something even now, but it's alone, only loosely embedded in the dirt. She snaps a picture with her phone anyway before she fishes out gloves and digs it out. She covers her palm with the tail of her shirt and sets it carefully on the cloth. It's chrome. Good for prints if her hunch is right, though its doubtful they'd withstand weeks of weather. Doubtful that prints will get them anywhere with the kind of people they're dealing with. She's careful anyway. She knocks dirt from the top, tapping and blowing until she's cleared it.
"Yes," she hisses between her teeth as the familiar logo comes into focus.
It's a choke knob, almost identical to the one from her own bike. She sets the cylinder back into its divot and swings the light in a tight arc, back and forth. There's a scatter of possibilities. A few things she recognizes now that she has a frame of reference. Wheel bearings and a jagged piece of red glass from a turn signal lens. Something that might be a bent piece of clutch plate.
She leaves things in place, brushing the dirt aside here and there. She finds a sturdy enough branch and draws a circle in the dirt around the concentration of pieces, leaving a few generous inches of buffer. She snaps another picture and turns to pace out the distance back to the creek bed.
She's moving cobbles and planting a branch as a marker when she hears her name. A sharp report. Lanie first, then Esposito. A booming echo.
She knocks the cobbles with her foot for good measure and sets out at a jog. Esposito is already there, arms raised to draw her attention.
"She's got something," he says. It's quiet. Intense. "You?"
"Wrecked bike. Pieces of it anyway. Cross's most likely. Most likely trashed it so he could take the other vehicle." Esposito nods and flashes her a tight smile. It's one thing answered, anyway. Probably answered. "Lanie?" Kate gestures impatiently toward the trees. The days are still long, but the sun moves too swiftly across the sky and she doesn't like Lanie being out of sight.
He turns and leads her forward. There's a path of sorts. Trampled undergrowth that's just now rebounding and snapped branches from the waist up. Something that twists and doubles back.
She catches a glimpse of Lanie every once in a while. Her own light swinging low over the ground and the bright flash of her shirt through the green. She's on her knees when they push through the last stand of trees, thicker than anything they've shouldered through so far, but it opens into a kind of clearing. A thinning out anyway.
"Lanie?" Kate's throat is tight as Lanie raises a gloved hand. She holds up something that doesn't quite take up the whole of her palm. It's discolored. There's dirt clinging to it, ingrained in the porous surface, but something else. Lurid staining. Blood. Blood soaked into bone. "Human?" Her mouth comes up with the word before her mind really grasps it what she's seeing.
Lanie nods. "Calcaneus. Heel bone. Definitely human."
A/N: Thanks for reading and leaving feedback.