Somewhere a Clock is Ticking (Ch. 2 Pt. 1)
Chapter Two: 1756, 48th Avenue, the Bronx (Pt. 1)
Captain Victoria Gates set down her phone, then pursed her lips, staring out at the precinct from her office, through the closed doors that separated her from the people who were her responsibility, and her life. Detective Beckett's voice was still ringing in her ears, though it was somber now, stripped of the self-righteousness from a few hours before.
She watched her people mill around outside, huddled around files and computers, hunched over paperwork. The second she walked out, she'd be setting the place afire, approving overtime, pulling together a task force, collecting pages to make into an official information packet to distribute to everyone on the floor and beyond. Too soon, the press would be on this, and she would have to find something to tell them.
But she wasn't going to step out just yet.
She looked back at her computer screen, stared at it until the faces of those bright, young rookies had burned into her retinas. They were apart of the 5. She knew the captain personally. Jeff. Sometimes they got a beer, complained about the monster-in-law, watched the game at the bar. And now she had to call him, tell him two of his people were dead, tell him that the investigation was going to be run by her precinct. She'd have to explain that they'd been murdered by a serial killer, whose identity they knew but whose 20 could very well be Hamilton, Ontario by now.
She picked up the hefty file on Scott Dunn, flipped through the photographs again.
This guy was dangerous, and Castle's part in it worried her. While she'd more or less come to accept Beckett's pet writer, she knew how the book angle might be construed by Jeff, and by the press.
And then there was Beckett herself, heading the case despite her history. Gates wondered how soon she'd have to attempt to clip a leash on the detective, knowing even as she thought it that her efforts would be wasted. The Fantastic Four were the only people in the building who seemed to have yet to absorb her capacity as captain, and where Beckett went, the other three would invariably follow.
And after looking at the digitals of the detective's charred apartment, after reading the statements, she knew that keeping Beckett and her team safe and at heel might only be accomplished with a combination of beepers and an unmarked detail. She only hoped it wouldn't come to that.
Steeling herself, she reached for the phone and inhaled a long, slow breath before dialing. Jeff picked up at second ring, sounding as cheery as a kindergarten teacher. She liked that about him, but today it made her wince.
“Vicki,” he said. “How's life at the one-two?”
Once again, she glanced at all her people outside her office, and then she started, “It's been a shitty morning, Jeff...”
***
Castle got a ride home with one of the patrol guys who'd come up with them to David Sharp's crime scene. Officer Slocum was a rookie. Talked a lot about how being a cop wasn't anything like what he'd expected when he'd first joined up (not that he'd expected primetime drama, but he'd been hoping for less COPS and more Law & Order). He'd said that this was his first real crime scene, and he was amazed to have seen two in the same day. Castle hadn't replied much - he didn't know what really constituted a “real” crime scene, but he'd visited so many over the past half a decade that he had become convinced that they weren't anything to celebrate.
He'd left Beckett at the latest one. He hadn't wanted to, but something in her eyes told him it was time to go, at least for the moment. She needed space. He'd hated giving it to her, leaving her alone, but he had.
He remembered the look on her face when she'd busted in the door to find David Sharp dead on his own carpet, when she'd started tearing apart his place for anything she could find. He'd seen that look before, and it scared him to see it again - more than he wanted to tell her. He didn't want to have that fight again. So he left.
That was what he thought about as Officer Slocum recounted half his life story to him on the drive back to Manhattan. That and the explosion. He was still thinking about that.
When he'd arrived back at his apartment, he'd found it empty. There was a post-it note on the fridge from Alexis. She wished him luck with his day and had drawn a little doodle of crossed light sabers in two different colors of highlighter with the word “tomorrow” penned in under them. It made him smile, though he suspected (in light of...everything) that he wouldn't be able to make it. He tucked the note in his jacket.
And then he wandered around his empty apartment. Stared at the fridge (picked clean). Felt the pangs of empty nest syndrome (not just for lonely, post-menopausal women anymore). He wondered if Beckett had also returned to the city, but didn't call. Instead, he called his mother, who had a long, ironic story involving a taxi driver and one of her acting students. She said she'd be home by dinner. He said he wasn't sure if he would be.
After hanging up, he sat down and wrote a little story. It was about a bird who raced a storm and found shelter with a squirrel. The squirrel pushed half his nuts and seeds and old newspaper shreds out the tree to make space for the bird, and they waited it out together. It was horribly, obnoxiously cheesy.
He deleted it. Then he grabbed his keys and left. For once, the subway was more or less on time (he'd started noticing when it was after their recent Brooklyn adventure), but before going to the precinct, on an impulse he walked down the street and picked up a couple coffees. The barista got it started when she spotted him from the door. They shared a joke. They laughed. Then he took the coffees and left. He forgot the joke before he made it out.
When the elevator dinged open, it let in a rush of sound. The 12th was hectic, electrified into action by Scott Dunn and the trail of bodies he'd already left behind him, and, as usual, Kate Beckett was at the center of it. He glimpsed her through the bullpen cage, file in one hand and phone in the other. She still had that look on her face.
Not for the first time, he wondered what path they were sliding down, and what they'd find along the way. But as he approached her, he suddenly knew where it would end. He'd known it when he'd looked into her eyes back in Ossining. Maybe that was why he'd left. He wondered if he could do anything about it.
She hung up and pinched the bridge of her nose with her fingers, screwing shut her eyes. He walked up to her, and when she opened her eyes again, he made sure the first thing she saw was him.
He smiled. It was a reflex.
She managed a small one back. “Hey, Castle,” she said softly.
“Got you coffee,” he said.
She looked down at them. She was so tense he could practically hear her muscles creak. It suddenly occurred to him that caffeine probably wasn't high on the list of Things Kate Beckett Needs In Her Life Right Now At This Moment.
But she took it from him anyway. Drank. Then she walked around to the side of her desk and sat, gaze fixed on the board. It was already filled with notes and pictures.
He followed her and leaned on the desk beside her. He glanced all over the board, then around it, at the officers coming and going. “How long've you been back?” he asked.
She glanced at her watch, “Uh, half an hour?”
He nodded. After they'd found Sharp, they'd spent a good hour looking through his place, but found nothing connecting him to Dunn, and even less indicating why he hadn't also been killed in the van. The guy seemed boring in every respect. Crappy neighborhood. No pets. No family photographs on the walls. The center of his living room was an old CRT TV and his coffee table had a half empty bag of Doritos. So, you know, boring. He felt bad for the guy, and not just because he was dead.
“You find anything after I left?”
Beckett spoke without taking her eyes off the board, “Nothing popped during the canvas. Apparently, the neighbors didn't hear a door getting kicked in or the two gunshots, so...” her voice trailed off.
“TV too loud, right?”
She shrugged, “Something like that. After the interviews I went back to his apartment to look around some more, ran into Lanie. She said he died before the escape, probably by several hours. Checked around- his wallet and ID is missing.” She looked at him.
“You're thinking our accomplice impersonated him to get into the prison?” he guessed her thoughts.
Her hair was shining in the dusk. “Precisely,” she said. She had that look in her eyes again. “I was on the phone with Sharp's sister when you came in. Ryan and Esposito drove down to Riverdale to meet with Officer Reyes' parents. Falk's family should be here in a few hours.” She lifted her cup to her lips but seemed to change her mind about drinking it halfway there. “You know he was married? His wife's pregnant.”
Castle felt a little razor cut into his stomach, for Falk's pregnant wife, for the guard who hadn't been able to finish his Doritos, for the phone calls his partner had just had to make. He wanted to reach out and touch her, to sooth everything and the world away, but he knew that wasn't going to happen, so he kept his hands to himself and opened his mouth instead, “Lanie doing the autopsies now?”
She shook her head, “She's still in Ossining. Supposed to call when she gets back.”
“So we've got nothing,” he said.
“Nothi-” her desk phone cut in, and she broke off abruptly, swiveled where she sat, and reached for it. “Beckett,” she said, voice bordering on brusque. After a pause, her eyebrows furrowed and she slid off the desk. “What?” she said.
Dread flowed into Castle's stomach like someone had taken dynamite to some internal dam. 'Dunn?' he mouthed, standing and walking to her.
She shook her head, once. Any relief Castle may have felt by that response was negated by the expression on her face. “You're sure?” she demanded. Pause. “No, that's...thank you for calling.” Short pause. “Yeah.”
She dropped the receiver in its cradle. “Fantastic,” she said to no one in particular.
He was almost afraid to ask, but ask he did, “Who was that?”
“Sing Sing,” she replied. Left it there.
“And?” he prompted.
She looked at him. “And apparently security was hacked this morning. The prison can't send us their footage, because it doesn't exist.”
He just stared at her, suddenly at a loss for words. He couldn't think of anything appropriate to say.
“Shit,” she said.
Except that.
Several seconds passed before she dropped into her chair, then reached for the phone. Castle watched her, brows dipping.
“Who're you calling?” he asked.
“Calling him back,” she replied.
“Why?”
She looked up at him. Her eyes betrayed that treacherous, reckless gleam that had so scared him before, and it still scared him now. “Officer Zehner,” she said. “We may not have cams, but we have his eyes. We'll get a sketch of our killer by the end of the night if I have to personally drive an artist up there and extract it myself.”
He watched her as she typed in the number and brought the phone to her ear, then sat in his chair. Dusk was piquing, and both Beckett and the precinct were awash in a gold far warmer than the weather or the mood would suggest.
He sighed and reached for his coffee. This morning seemed a long time ago, and like it belonged to somebody else.
***
The air was so frigid when it blasted her face that it felt like someone above had dumped a bucket of ice water out over her head. Of course, no one had, but Robin still felt chilled to the bone as she swore and shifted her turtleneck a little higher over her throat with gloved fingers. The Thai place had seemed almost stuffy when she'd ducked in, inspired in equal parts by a desire to eat and to get out of the cold, but as she stood there on the street, she found herself battling with the desire to go back in and order something else. Ultimately, she decided against it, and she headed down 3rd instead, just wanting to get to the grey line so she could just make it home. It'd been a long day, and her papaya salad and her soup hadn't improved it as much as she had hoped it would.
The steps to the station were wet and slippery when she reached them, and the air was no warmer underground. As she slipped through the turnstile, her thoughts came to rest somewhere between her space heater and her other space heater. She was going to turn on the one that wasn't in the bathroom by her bed, and then she was going to sit in front of it in her fuzzy, blue bathrobe, wrapped in her fuzzier, gold blanket. She would sit there until the feeling in her fingers and the tip of her nose returned, until she was sweating, until she felt like she was sitting in a furnace, because she hated the cold. And she would make a nice hot chocolate too, from one of those weird little pops she'd bought on Carmine and 6th last week.
The train screamed its entrance a second before she spotted the lights, and she half ran to the doors as they opened. The train was boiling hot inside, as hot as she'd dreamed her space heater would be, and she dropped gratefully into a seat as other people streamed on and off. Most of the ones who'd come in were already loosening their coats, but Robin kept hers tight and buttoned, letting the heat saturate through the layers.
She was just so damn sick of the cold.
She settled back. Nine stops to home. To her space heater. To her hot chocolate.
After a beat, she unpocketed her phone. Swiped it on. Pressed the Tetris button.
Zoned. Some underappreciated part of her soul kept track of the stops after the train lurched forward, since the rest of her was too focused on twisting and dropping the little, colored blocks. She was sick of thinking about work, about Jenny and her latest issue, about living in that rut between relationships. If she could afford the pet deposit this month, she'd be halfway to the pound to get a dog.
The train screeched to a stop, and when the doors flung open she could feel the cold nip into the car. She shivered, happy when they shut again. For some reason she thought of her asshole of a brother, who'd had the sense to move to warm, sunny Florida. Days like this, she wished she had joined him. He had dogs too. Three of them. No deposit bull for him.
Her blocks hit the ceiling when the train hit her stop, and she reluctantly got to her feet with a few other people. She was the last to step out, regloving and shivering as she stepped back into the cold. Some guy was playing a guitar halfway down the station, and she spared a moment to wonder at how his fingers hadn't frozen off before he was drowned out by the roar of the train pulling away. Then she headed for the stairs.
The steps were wet and slippery, the station smellier than usual. She knew before exiting the turnstile what would be awaiting her above, and so it wasn't of any surprise at all to find it raining, hard and freezing, when she reached the surface. She took her umbrella from its little plastic slip in her purse, then cracked it out like a whip before she'd reached the top step. Once topside, she headed down the street at a brisk walk, feeling the heat she'd stored from the subway blow and drain away in less than a moment, leaving her colder than she'd felt back on the island.
She thought of Florida as she walked, of her brother and his shiny, new wife, out sunbathing in the warmth. Just a week there had been enough to make her forget the city's biting cold, and for the fourth time in fewer days she found herself wondering why she hadn't spared more time for a longer visit. She could almost picture herself out on their porch, in the hammock someone had given them as a wedding gift, swinging gently to the sound of crickets, beer in hand.
So distracting was the image, and so low had she let her umbrella droop, that she barely even noticed the guy walking the other way until they stumbled into each other.
“Oh,” she said, jerking backward. Rain spattered into her hair. Her shoulder pinched under a button. “I'm sorry, I wasn't-”
“It's okay,” the guy said, backing off. His hands were in his pockets, face shrouded under a hood. She could just make out a goatee.
They stood there awkwardly for a second, and then Robin started forward again. Home was the next building over, up a few flights of stairs. She was just a key turn and a power switch away from warmth.
And warmth was what she wanted. Because it was cold. And her lips felt numb.
Warmth and chocolate.
Space heater. What had Jenny said?
She stumbled in a drop in the road, umbrella bucking. Rain washed down her hair and her face. Something, her stomach...
And that guy again...
Was there a salad?
Grey.
...
Her apartment was freezing. Freezing, freezing, freezing, and she'd lost her blanket. She didn't even remember if she'd gotten to the space heater. Her legs felt cramped.
Shivering, she reached around for her blanket. Her fingers hit her wall. She felt around with her toes for it, and it was a full second before it occurred to her she was still wearing her shoes, and that her toes felt stiff and frozen.
She drew her knee up and it slammed into something.
What the frilly...
Her eyes popped open, but she saw nothing. Just perfect blackness, in all directions. It suddenly occurred to her she wasn't laying on her pillow, or on her bed.
So where the fuck was she?
Something cold and slithery and horrible bloomed in her chest, and her skin prickled. She reached around, but her fingers hit a wall. When she kicked out she hit another wall. And when she reached up to touch the ceiling, she realized it was cold, cold like ice, and she could feel something melt under her fingernail. Fear passed through her in cool sheets, like waves.
Jesus Christ...
She kicked again, hard, but nothing gave. She kicked at the ceiling then, but other than a distant, tinny sort of rattle, nothing happened. No light.
She was in a box.
Tears sprang unbidden. She remembered half a hundred scenes from half a hundred crime shows. Remembered fake detectives in a fake version of the city, fake, fake, fake, everything fake. This wasn't fake.
She kicked again. Punched. Screamed. She was drowning in fear. Her heart was pounding so hard it hurt.
Where was she? Oh God, oh Jesus...
And then she froze, hearing a voice.
“I'd like to report a murder.”
Her blood turned to ice. There was a long, extended pause, and she laid there frozen, trying to figure out what that meant, what the hell he was talking about, because he couldn't be talking about her-
“That is, unless you can find her first.”
<<< Previous Chapter | Part 2 >>>