Fic: SPN/Castle Bounty
Chapter 2
When Castle and Beckett got back to the precinct, Esposito had his chair pulled up at Ryan’s desk. They were both bent over a book lying open in front of them.
“…such a Dean-girl,” Ryan was saying.
Castle would have loved to hear the beginning of that conversation. “What’s a Dean-girl?” he asked.
Ryan shoved the book under a pile of papers. “Nothing. We ran down the sketch. It’s definitely Dean Winchester. According to his file, he’s legally dead, but according to the internet there’ve been numerous sightings of him and his brother since his supposed death. There are whole sites devoted to tracking him. It’s like he’s some kind of underground folk hero. Most of the people on them don’t even believe he committed the crimes he was wanted for. Although some of them are just sickos who follow serial killers.”
“And none of these people who supposedly saw him went to the FBI?” Beckett asked.
“They got a couple of calls, but no proof. They thought he was dead, so didn’t follow it up. There have been sightings of his brother, too, but again, no proof. “
“And nothing to indicate why, if Dean is alive, someone would be looking for him? And willing to kill to get to him?”
“Nothing.”
Castle’s brain whirred. “So Dean Winchester, with a keen sense of right and wrong, and a harsh military upbringing, becomes a vigilante. He has a strong, unique set of morals, and because of that believes himself to be above the law, capable of punishing the wicked when the law can’t reach them. He fakes his own death to escape the FBI, and now finds himself in a worse position. The very monsters he was waging a war against - killers, rapists, child molesters, Satanists, every evil person imaginable - are fighting back. There’s a bounty on his head, and everyone he’s ever crossed is after him. He has to run, always looking over his shoulder, never able to relax…”
Beckett broke in. “Nice story, Castle. Too bad that’s all it is. Now if you don’t mind, some of us are going to solve this case using the facts.”
“But there aren’t any facts,” Castle pouted, “And that’s how I would write it.”
Beckett turned to Esposito. “Any luck running down the wife?”
Esposito shook his head. “Nada. Her sketch doesn’t match any recent missing persons or murder victims, and we still don’t have a name or prints, so we can’t find an arrest history or employment checks. I showed the sketch to the neighbours, and a few people said they’d stopped seeing her around about four months ago, but no-one could confirm that she was our vic’s wife or that she entered the apartment before his death. No-one had ever spoken to her or knew her name.”
“When I go home tonight, I’m going to talk to my neighbours,” Castle said. “It seems unbelievable that someone can get killed in their apartment and no one can even tell you his name, but it’s really not.”
“Even if the neighbours had spoken to them, judging by the false I.D.s, they wouldn’t give their real name anyway,” Beckett reminded him.
Esposito continued: “The apartment was rented by Bruce Springsteen. We’re calling his guys to check, but we’re pretty sure it’s a false name.”
“Wouldn’t that be cool, though? If Bruce Springsteen was involved?” Castle couldn’t help saying.
The others ignored him. Beckett filled Ryan and Esposito in on the interview with Locke, and Lainey’s report. “The cause of death was blood loss at the result of an attack with a weapon that had five sharp, curved blades that were stabbed into the chest around the heart and squeezed with enormous strength. Lainey hasn’t found a match yet, but her best guess is a… er… robotic hand.”
“A robotic hand?” Ryan asked incredulously.
“Or something similar. Possibly part of a piece of machinery used in the manufacture of heavy machinery. He also suffered severe internal bleeding due to ruptured organs, and was mutilated post-mortem, probably in an attempt to disguise the weapon used. He also had several broken ribs, and a large number of healed fractures and scars from everything ranging from knife wounds to bullets.”
“So he probably had a dangerous job,” Esposito suggested.
“Like being a vigilante,” Castle expanded.
“A vigilante who shoots things with rock salt?”
Beckett called them back to attention, instructing Ryan and Esposito to follow up the weapon, and beckoning Castle over to go with her to show pictures of the victim, his wife, and Dean Winchester around businesses in the area he had lived. He followed her. God, she was hot when she was masterful.
XXX
The owners of the first business they visited, a cheap, dirty Chinese takeaway, spoke no English but shook their heads blankly at all three pictures. They had no luck at the Laundromat next door either, but at the third place they got a hit. It was a rundown liquor store, the kind where the cracks in the windows are repaired with duct tape, and the owner keeps a gun under the counter. The owner was in his late fifties and solidly built, with big shoulders and a square jaw. He didn’t recognise the wife, but at the picture of the victim, he nodded immediately.
“Comes in a lot,” he said, “Drinks Jack. Buys a bottle maybe once a week, sometimes a couple at a time. Sometimes he doesn’t show up for a couple of weeks. Been coming in for maybe 10 months.”
“When was the last time you saw him?” Beckett asked.
“Maybe two days ago.”
“Did he seem upset at all? Worried? Was anything unusual?”
“He was never that friendly, especially in the last few months, but he did seem tenser than usual. He was definitely packing, and he gave me a message for someone.”
“What was the message?’
The liquor store owner thought for a moment, tapping his fingers on the counter. “Can I see your ID again? He was pretty clear I shouldn’t tell the wrong people.”
Beckett held out her badge again. The guy took it and examined it closely, then looked at Castle expectantly.
Castle shrugged apologetically. “I’m just a writer, I don’t have a badge.” Maybe he should have one made to match his bullet proof vest. He did his best not to look dangerous. It wasn’t hard.
The man handed Beckett’s badge back to her, saying, “He said a guy would probably come asking questions about him. He’d be a big guy, with an even bigger guy, and would be using a classic rock alias. I had to say: Frank Walter has paid his debt. Hell has a bounty on you, get out now.”
Castle stared at him. “Did he say what he meant by hell?”
The man shook his head. “Nope. That was it. But he kept looking over his shoulder, and he told me to run if I saw anyone with black eyes.”
Beckett was writing it down. “Did you give the message to anyone?”
“Yeah,” he said, “That guy.” He pointed to the sketch of Dean Winchester.
XXX
After the interview with the liquor store owner, Castle went directly home to make sure Alexis’ bedroom window was securely locked. It was looking more and more like Dean Winchester wasn’t dead and was in New York, and if that was the case, Castle was taking no chances. Even if Alexis wasn’t what Dean usually went after, he’d changed his tactics to escape law enforcement before. If he felt them closing in, there was no telling what he might do.
He invited Beckett over for dinner, but she declined in favour of heading back to the murder board. He didn’t read too much into it. He’d wear her down eventually.
When he arrived home, dinner was already on the table, freshly made by his mother. It was extremely salty and slightly burnt, but there was lots of it. The three of them ate together, discussing Martha’s new play and the fencing competition Alexis was participating in the following weekend. Castle allowed himself to be dragged into a slight re-enactment of the swordfight between Inigo Montoya and Count Rugen for a little while before starting to write his next chapter. Or, if he was honest, was not so much dragged into it as suggested it.
He was just thrusting his foil up the stairs at Count Rugen, shouting, “My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die!” when it struck him. Maybe the connection between the victim and Dean Winchester was through Dean’s father. Justin Locke had said the victim had carried himself like a soldier. John Winchester had been a marine. The victim had a wall full of weapons, and silver bullets. Silver bullets killed werewolves and vampires. John Winchester had thought of himself as a monster hunter. Maybe the victim had been another of John Winchester’s students. Maybe, just like with his sons, John Winchester had convinced this man that monsters existed, and that was why he had all the weapons.
While he was distracted, Alexis took the opportunity to gravely wound him. He spent five minutes dying painfully at the base of the stairs, then resurrected himself, reminded Alexis to lock her windows, and went to have a shower and think before sitting down to write.
The problem was, he thought as he washed off the sweat from the swordfight, that he couldn’t go to Beckett with his theory yet. He really didn’t have anything to back it up, which was all very well when he was talking about zombies, but not so good when he actually wanted Beckett to take him seriously. He didn’t actually believe in monsters himself, which put a damper on the multiple monster hunters theory. What he needed was something other than silver bullets to connect John Winchester to the victim.
He was still thinking about it when he got his laptop out to write. He was still thinking about it half an hour later when his mother sailed out on her way to a night at the theatre with friends. The cursor blinked rudely at him from a blank page. He shut his laptop. There was nothing for it. He was going to have to go back to the apartment.
He stuck his head around his daughter’s door, checked her window, and told her he was going out. Alexis kissed him on the cheek and said goodnight, promising to put herself to bed at 10:30. She was already back to concentrating on her physics homework when he glanced back at her. He smiled to himself. He really did have the best daughter in the world.
He armed himself with a flashlight, his phone with the night-vision app, and the lock picks he had bought at the spy shop the previous Thursday. Letting himself out of the apartment, he made sure the alarm beeped before he left.
XXX
The door to the victim’s (now known to Castle as ‘Probably Frank’ - interestingly, the same name as his favourite Teddy bear until the age of seven) apartment was locked, yellow plastic crime scene tape criss-crossing in front of it. He picked the lock, a difficult feat in gloves, even with special spy-shop lock picks. Ducking under the tape, he pushed the door open and entered, flashlight in hand.
The apartment looked different in the dark. Somehow more frightening, despite the fact that last time there had been a body in it and now there wasn’t. The furniture cast shadows in the light of his flashlight that seemed to move. He stepped gingerly around the blood-soaked patch of carpet, heading into the bedroom to look for clues to link Probably Frank to John Winchester. He was just running his fingers around the walls, looking for secret levers, when he heard the door creak open in the next room. He froze. Please be Beckett. Please be Beckett.
It wasn’t Beckett. He found that out when he was slammed against the wall hard enough to knock his breath out. He’d forgotten how much it hurt to be winded. His flashlight dropped from his hand and rolled across the room, making the shadows rock.
“I surrender,” he squeaked.
“What?” The guy holding him said in surprise. He was about the same size as Castle, maybe a little shorter. It was hard to tell with all the aggression. He was very strong.
“I surrender.”
“You surrender?” The guy’s deep voice rose a little incredulously. Then he seemed to recover, shoving Castle harder into the wall. “Tell your boss to stop killing people to get to me. I’m here now; he can take his best shot.”
A silhouette filled the doorway. “Nice to know, Dean. If you and your little friend will just come with us, we’ll call him immediately.”
XXX
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When Castle and Beckett got back to the precinct, Esposito had his chair pulled up at Ryan’s desk. They were both bent over a book lying open in front of them.
“…such a Dean-girl,” Ryan was saying.
Castle would have loved to hear the beginning of that conversation. “What’s a Dean-girl?” he asked.
Ryan shoved the book under a pile of papers. “Nothing. We ran down the sketch. It’s definitely Dean Winchester. According to his file, he’s legally dead, but according to the internet there’ve been numerous sightings of him and his brother since his supposed death. There are whole sites devoted to tracking him. It’s like he’s some kind of underground folk hero. Most of the people on them don’t even believe he committed the crimes he was wanted for. Although some of them are just sickos who follow serial killers.”
“And none of these people who supposedly saw him went to the FBI?” Beckett asked.
“They got a couple of calls, but no proof. They thought he was dead, so didn’t follow it up. There have been sightings of his brother, too, but again, no proof. “
“And nothing to indicate why, if Dean is alive, someone would be looking for him? And willing to kill to get to him?”
“Nothing.”
Castle’s brain whirred. “So Dean Winchester, with a keen sense of right and wrong, and a harsh military upbringing, becomes a vigilante. He has a strong, unique set of morals, and because of that believes himself to be above the law, capable of punishing the wicked when the law can’t reach them. He fakes his own death to escape the FBI, and now finds himself in a worse position. The very monsters he was waging a war against - killers, rapists, child molesters, Satanists, every evil person imaginable - are fighting back. There’s a bounty on his head, and everyone he’s ever crossed is after him. He has to run, always looking over his shoulder, never able to relax…”
Beckett broke in. “Nice story, Castle. Too bad that’s all it is. Now if you don’t mind, some of us are going to solve this case using the facts.”
“But there aren’t any facts,” Castle pouted, “And that’s how I would write it.”
Beckett turned to Esposito. “Any luck running down the wife?”
Esposito shook his head. “Nada. Her sketch doesn’t match any recent missing persons or murder victims, and we still don’t have a name or prints, so we can’t find an arrest history or employment checks. I showed the sketch to the neighbours, and a few people said they’d stopped seeing her around about four months ago, but no-one could confirm that she was our vic’s wife or that she entered the apartment before his death. No-one had ever spoken to her or knew her name.”
“When I go home tonight, I’m going to talk to my neighbours,” Castle said. “It seems unbelievable that someone can get killed in their apartment and no one can even tell you his name, but it’s really not.”
“Even if the neighbours had spoken to them, judging by the false I.D.s, they wouldn’t give their real name anyway,” Beckett reminded him.
Esposito continued: “The apartment was rented by Bruce Springsteen. We’re calling his guys to check, but we’re pretty sure it’s a false name.”
“Wouldn’t that be cool, though? If Bruce Springsteen was involved?” Castle couldn’t help saying.
The others ignored him. Beckett filled Ryan and Esposito in on the interview with Locke, and Lainey’s report. “The cause of death was blood loss at the result of an attack with a weapon that had five sharp, curved blades that were stabbed into the chest around the heart and squeezed with enormous strength. Lainey hasn’t found a match yet, but her best guess is a… er… robotic hand.”
“A robotic hand?” Ryan asked incredulously.
“Or something similar. Possibly part of a piece of machinery used in the manufacture of heavy machinery. He also suffered severe internal bleeding due to ruptured organs, and was mutilated post-mortem, probably in an attempt to disguise the weapon used. He also had several broken ribs, and a large number of healed fractures and scars from everything ranging from knife wounds to bullets.”
“So he probably had a dangerous job,” Esposito suggested.
“Like being a vigilante,” Castle expanded.
“A vigilante who shoots things with rock salt?”
Beckett called them back to attention, instructing Ryan and Esposito to follow up the weapon, and beckoning Castle over to go with her to show pictures of the victim, his wife, and Dean Winchester around businesses in the area he had lived. He followed her. God, she was hot when she was masterful.
XXX
The owners of the first business they visited, a cheap, dirty Chinese takeaway, spoke no English but shook their heads blankly at all three pictures. They had no luck at the Laundromat next door either, but at the third place they got a hit. It was a rundown liquor store, the kind where the cracks in the windows are repaired with duct tape, and the owner keeps a gun under the counter. The owner was in his late fifties and solidly built, with big shoulders and a square jaw. He didn’t recognise the wife, but at the picture of the victim, he nodded immediately.
“Comes in a lot,” he said, “Drinks Jack. Buys a bottle maybe once a week, sometimes a couple at a time. Sometimes he doesn’t show up for a couple of weeks. Been coming in for maybe 10 months.”
“When was the last time you saw him?” Beckett asked.
“Maybe two days ago.”
“Did he seem upset at all? Worried? Was anything unusual?”
“He was never that friendly, especially in the last few months, but he did seem tenser than usual. He was definitely packing, and he gave me a message for someone.”
“What was the message?’
The liquor store owner thought for a moment, tapping his fingers on the counter. “Can I see your ID again? He was pretty clear I shouldn’t tell the wrong people.”
Beckett held out her badge again. The guy took it and examined it closely, then looked at Castle expectantly.
Castle shrugged apologetically. “I’m just a writer, I don’t have a badge.” Maybe he should have one made to match his bullet proof vest. He did his best not to look dangerous. It wasn’t hard.
The man handed Beckett’s badge back to her, saying, “He said a guy would probably come asking questions about him. He’d be a big guy, with an even bigger guy, and would be using a classic rock alias. I had to say: Frank Walter has paid his debt. Hell has a bounty on you, get out now.”
Castle stared at him. “Did he say what he meant by hell?”
The man shook his head. “Nope. That was it. But he kept looking over his shoulder, and he told me to run if I saw anyone with black eyes.”
Beckett was writing it down. “Did you give the message to anyone?”
“Yeah,” he said, “That guy.” He pointed to the sketch of Dean Winchester.
XXX
After the interview with the liquor store owner, Castle went directly home to make sure Alexis’ bedroom window was securely locked. It was looking more and more like Dean Winchester wasn’t dead and was in New York, and if that was the case, Castle was taking no chances. Even if Alexis wasn’t what Dean usually went after, he’d changed his tactics to escape law enforcement before. If he felt them closing in, there was no telling what he might do.
He invited Beckett over for dinner, but she declined in favour of heading back to the murder board. He didn’t read too much into it. He’d wear her down eventually.
When he arrived home, dinner was already on the table, freshly made by his mother. It was extremely salty and slightly burnt, but there was lots of it. The three of them ate together, discussing Martha’s new play and the fencing competition Alexis was participating in the following weekend. Castle allowed himself to be dragged into a slight re-enactment of the swordfight between Inigo Montoya and Count Rugen for a little while before starting to write his next chapter. Or, if he was honest, was not so much dragged into it as suggested it.
He was just thrusting his foil up the stairs at Count Rugen, shouting, “My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die!” when it struck him. Maybe the connection between the victim and Dean Winchester was through Dean’s father. Justin Locke had said the victim had carried himself like a soldier. John Winchester had been a marine. The victim had a wall full of weapons, and silver bullets. Silver bullets killed werewolves and vampires. John Winchester had thought of himself as a monster hunter. Maybe the victim had been another of John Winchester’s students. Maybe, just like with his sons, John Winchester had convinced this man that monsters existed, and that was why he had all the weapons.
While he was distracted, Alexis took the opportunity to gravely wound him. He spent five minutes dying painfully at the base of the stairs, then resurrected himself, reminded Alexis to lock her windows, and went to have a shower and think before sitting down to write.
The problem was, he thought as he washed off the sweat from the swordfight, that he couldn’t go to Beckett with his theory yet. He really didn’t have anything to back it up, which was all very well when he was talking about zombies, but not so good when he actually wanted Beckett to take him seriously. He didn’t actually believe in monsters himself, which put a damper on the multiple monster hunters theory. What he needed was something other than silver bullets to connect John Winchester to the victim.
He was still thinking about it when he got his laptop out to write. He was still thinking about it half an hour later when his mother sailed out on her way to a night at the theatre with friends. The cursor blinked rudely at him from a blank page. He shut his laptop. There was nothing for it. He was going to have to go back to the apartment.
He stuck his head around his daughter’s door, checked her window, and told her he was going out. Alexis kissed him on the cheek and said goodnight, promising to put herself to bed at 10:30. She was already back to concentrating on her physics homework when he glanced back at her. He smiled to himself. He really did have the best daughter in the world.
He armed himself with a flashlight, his phone with the night-vision app, and the lock picks he had bought at the spy shop the previous Thursday. Letting himself out of the apartment, he made sure the alarm beeped before he left.
XXX
The door to the victim’s (now known to Castle as ‘Probably Frank’ - interestingly, the same name as his favourite Teddy bear until the age of seven) apartment was locked, yellow plastic crime scene tape criss-crossing in front of it. He picked the lock, a difficult feat in gloves, even with special spy-shop lock picks. Ducking under the tape, he pushed the door open and entered, flashlight in hand.
The apartment looked different in the dark. Somehow more frightening, despite the fact that last time there had been a body in it and now there wasn’t. The furniture cast shadows in the light of his flashlight that seemed to move. He stepped gingerly around the blood-soaked patch of carpet, heading into the bedroom to look for clues to link Probably Frank to John Winchester. He was just running his fingers around the walls, looking for secret levers, when he heard the door creak open in the next room. He froze. Please be Beckett. Please be Beckett.
It wasn’t Beckett. He found that out when he was slammed against the wall hard enough to knock his breath out. He’d forgotten how much it hurt to be winded. His flashlight dropped from his hand and rolled across the room, making the shadows rock.
“I surrender,” he squeaked.
“What?” The guy holding him said in surprise. He was about the same size as Castle, maybe a little shorter. It was hard to tell with all the aggression. He was very strong.
“I surrender.”
“You surrender?” The guy’s deep voice rose a little incredulously. Then he seemed to recover, shoving Castle harder into the wall. “Tell your boss to stop killing people to get to me. I’m here now; he can take his best shot.”
A silhouette filled the doorway. “Nice to know, Dean. If you and your little friend will just come with us, we’ll call him immediately.”
XXX
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