37. Chapter 37

Chapter 37

AN: This chapter is another where there is generous use of dialogue and situations from an episode – "Rise". Those things belong entirely to the writers and those who created and produced the show and who graciously allow us to play with their work.

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"Ma'am?" Beckett called from the door of the captain's office.

"If my mother stops by, you can call her 'Ma'am'. Call me 'Sir' or 'Captain'," Gates replied, barely glancing up from the papers in her hand.

"Detective Beckett. I'm back on duty as of today."

"Detective Beckett. Your reputation precedes you." After a rather one-sided exchange about their relative positions in the history of female detectives in the NYPD, the captain got down to business. Picking up Beckett's file, Gates double checked her information. Your psych eval has you cleared for desk duty, which coincides with your medical clearance. It's speculated that you could be back on full duty in another month. That will happen only if your psych eval falls in line with other medical clearance." She took Beckett's badge from her desk drawer and reached across her desk to hand it to her, watching Beckett accept it as if one of her limbs were being returned after a long absence. "From what I've learned about you, I would imagine that desk duty will rankle you; but I assume you will make every effort to handle it without incident."

"Yes, sir." Beckett hesitated a moment before stating, "I understand you've closed my case."

"I did. A couple of days ago."

"What about the shooter? He's still out there."

"Three months and no leads, and every day more homicides coming through that door. How long did you expect me to let those folks tread water?"

Beckett simply nodded and returned to her desk.

Not knowing the Smith circumstances, the boys met Beckett in the break room and quietly mentioned trying to find a money trail that might tie the three dirty cops to whoever hired her mother's murderer. To avoid their implicating Montgomery, the new captain had been left out of that information loop, and that part of their investigating had been done under the radar.

"What we have is on the stick drive we promised Castle," Ryan told her. Esposito back-handed his arm, and Ryan winced and asked, "Castle did tell you about that, right?"

After Beckett assured him that she knew, Ryan breathed a heavy sigh of relief. "Good. 'Cause I wouldn't want to accidentally spill the beans and end up in the middle of that. It isn't here, though. If any of us get caught working on it, we could all lose our badges." His phone rang then, and he walked away to answer it.

"He's paranoid, but right," Esposito agreed. "It isn't like it was before. We can't do this here."

"That might be for the best…" Beckett started, but was cut off.

"Got a fresh one at Lex and Eighteenth," Ryan reported. "You coming, Beckett?"

"Desk duty this month, remember?"

"Oh, yeah. Bummer," he answered.

"We'll let you take your frustrations out on the unfortunates in the box," Esposito answered with a grin as they left. "They won't stand a chance."

Beckett gave them a smile as the elevator door closed. Then she returned to the captain's office.

"Excuse me, Sir. Are the files for the last few cases Ryan and Esposito worked on still here? I thought it would be a good idea to bring myself up to speed on them. If questions come up, I should be able to help."

"The last two are right here. Bring them back to me when you're finished," Gates answered, all business when she handed Beckett two files from the corner of her desk. She then watched speculatively from behind her paperwork as Beckett returned to her desk, opened them, and took occasional notes as she read.

Castle came in about eleven and handed Beckett her coffee. "Ready for the explosion?" he asked.

"Will it really be that bad?"

"Mr. Castle. Detective Beckett. My office, now!" Gate's voice ordered at a volume that caught the attention of every person on the homicide floor, and possibly one or two sharp-eared souls a couple of floors down in robbery.

"Ready?" he asked.

"Does it matter now?" Beckett muttered. "Captain?" Beckett asked as they entered the door.

"Mr. Castle, I thought I had made myself clear last time you were here. My detectives are quite capable of doing their jobs without…." Her phone rang, and she answered with an impatient edge, "Captain Gates." Both her voice and her expression changed immediately. "Yes sir." She listened briefly. "Yes, Mr. Mayor." Another miniscule pause. "Yes Sir. I understand." When she hung up the phone, her facial expression strongly reflected the rumblings of a volcano on the verge of erupting. With a laser-like glare, she said, "You think you're clever, Mr. Castle? Going around my back like that. Well, let me tell you the score. I don't care how powerful your friends are. You screw up at all on my watch, and I'll prosecute you to the fullest extent of the law. You understand me?"

"Yes, ma'am," he answered.

"Sir," she corrected.

"Sir."

"Now get out of my office." Once Castle had left, she turned her wrath to Beckett. "Detective."

Beckett hid her dangerously close smile by clearing her throat. "Yes?"

"You or that husband of yours embarrass me like that again, I will bury you."

"Yes, Sir." Beckett left quickly and closed the door.

Joining Castle at her desk with their backs to Gates, she said, "Ooooo. Showing her up with the mayor. You might as well have beaten a beehive with a bat."

"It worked, didn't it?" he answered. "Besides, it sure was great seeing her face twitch like that."

"Well after that, I think you can definitely count on the day to day witchiness you mentioned…at least for a while." She gave him a little smirk and added, "But I think you may have misspelled it."

They both chuckled quietly. "Where are the boys?" he asked, sitting down in his ratty but beloved chair."

"Crime scene," Beckett answered. "They've been gone a while." She sent a text to check in with them and put her phone down again.

"What are you working on?" Castle asked, looking at the files.

"Just going through the last couple of cases Ryan and Espo worked on without me. Catching up. I'm supposed to take them back to the captain when I finish with them, but I don't want to go back in there until she calms down."

"That could be sometime next week," he answered with a grin, and he was rewarded with a shoulder bump.

"Want to see what's here?" she asked.

"Sure. Let's buy you a little time."

One of the cases was actually interesting, and Castle made a few notes of his own. He already had an idea of how to alter it to suit his own purposes.

By the time the boys were back with the initial case information, Beckett had run out of any legitimate, or illegitimate for that matter, reason not to brave the lion's den to return the case files. That was done as quickly as possible in favor of setting up the murder board. Ryan and Esposito relayed the basic information, and Beckett made herself look more useful by adding it to the board. They discussed the probabilities of what happened and zeroed in on the woman's boyfriend. He and the victim were both high profile; so the press was interested, and the pressure on the detectives was immediate. An APB helped track the boyfriend down, a confrontation involving a gun happening before it was over; and Ryan and Esposito brought him in for questioning.

Even with Beckett involved in questioning him, the man didn't admit guilt. And when a drug was found in both glasses at the crime scene, they began to believe him…even though it appeared he was the only one there during the window of opportunity. Beckett suggested someone else may have been there the entire time, and things were solved in short order from there.

When reporting to the captain, the boys made sure to mention that Castle had found the killer's hiding place and his prints on the bed frame. She thanked her detectives for their good work and glared at Castle as she went back into her office.

"I told you you misspelled it," Beckett grumbled quietly.

"But when you really look at it, I'm winning this game."

"And how, pray tell, did you come to that conclusion?"

"Well, Gates has to get all worked up and do something to annoy me. All I have to do is walk calmly into the room and my job is done," he answered with a grin the captain couldn't see from her office.

Beckett disguised the bark of laughter that burst from her with a cough that would have been pretty convincing to those who, like the captain, couldn't see her face. "You do realize this isn't a game, right? She's in charge…for good or…"

"Evil?" Castle finished for her.

"Not what I was going to say."

"But appropriate, you have to admit."

"Maybe," she admitted as she sat down in front of her computer. "I'm sorry she completely ignored your part in solving the case."

"Hurry up and finish your reports, then you can take me home and make me feel better."

"Who's going to be home tonight?"

"Everybody, plus Alexis's study group, but not until about seven-thirty. She sent me a text right before I got here. Paige's parents are picking the girls up from their after school thing and taking them to dinner, then Paige is coming home with Alexis to meet the others. Mother won't be back until about nine. Finish on time, and we should have about an hour and a half to ourselves."

"Switch with me," she ordered with a smile. "You can type faster. I'll dictate."

xxxxx

When Alexis and Paige arrived at the loft after dinner, a mellow and very satisfied Mr. and Mrs. Castle were freshly showered, wearing clean clothes, and in the kitchen innocently putting together some snacks for the study group. "Hey, Ladies," Castle called toward the door as they entered. We're just going to leave some snacks on the end of the counter over here and let you set up for the study group the way you want. We put some drinks in the fridge to cool.

"Thanks, Mr. Castle," Paige answered. "It looks good."

"It is," Kate assured her mischievously. "We ran tests to be sure."

"How was your first day back, Kate?" Alexis asked.

"Explosive?" she answered, looking up at Castle, who was grinning way too much at her description..

"Dad, what did you do?"

"Nothing. I walked into the room. The captain just hates me. That's all."

"Yeah. That's all…except that while she was telling him how he had no business there, the phone rang, and we got to watch her listen to the mayor order her to let him stay. She was a seriously unhappy woman after that," Kate added. "But your dad may be right otherwise. She seems to take offense at nothing more than his presence. The mayor was just a bonus."

The two girls giggled, and Kate turned and pointed a finger in their direction. "And none of that should be heard by anybody but the four of us, understand?"

They both nodded, and Alexis asked, "Was she really that bad?"

Kate nodded. "She was today, but we should keep an open mind for a little while. I haven't been around her long enough to know what her normal is. I could tell nobody wanted to cross her, though."

"Well, I'm two for two." Castle chimed in. "I went in to see Ryan and Esposito before we left for the Hamptons, and she hated me both times. I definitely don't like her yet. The rest of the day was good, though. This was almost an open and shut case. We already have the guy behind bars."

"I told you you're the best detective in the city," Alexis answered.

"But I'm on desk duty. Your dad went out with Ryan and Esposito and he was the one who found what we needed. The boys probably would have found it, but they said Castle just zeroed right in on it."

"But what we were looking for was her idea," Castle told them, pointing at Kate.

"And the boys had already done the research," Kate reminded them. That's why we call it a team."

"Yeah, so Kate leads the best team in the city," Castle confirmed.

"You're the boss, Mrs. Castle?" Paige asked.

"I lead the team. That's all. Not in charge of anything else."

"You should see her in action, Paige. She's awesome," Castle told her proudly.

There was a knock on the door then, and Castle opened the door to welcome them, saying, "Come on in. Set things up however it works best. Just please put it all back when you're finished. Snacks are on the counter when you want them, and Mrs. Castle and I will be in my study thinking up things to do to embarrass our daughter."

The girl smiled, and the two boys grinned and bumped fists with him as they came in, all having been around him long enough to feel comfortable at the loft. Their varying forms of "Hi, Mrs. Castle," drifted behind them as they crossed to where Paige and Alexis were setting their components of the night's project out on the dining table. Paige sent the others for the snacks and drinks before she turned back to her work.

"That's new," Paige said quietly to Alexis.

"What?" Alexis asked.

"I've known you since kindergarten, and I don't think I've ever heard him call you anything but his daughter. He just left with your stepmother and called you our daughter."

"Yeah. Funny thing is that I didn't even think about it."

"So you're okay with that?"

"Yeah. I'm really good with that. I have somebody else I know I can count on, and Dad and Kate have that much confidence in each other. It's all good."

The teenagers gathered around the table and organized themselves for a couple of hours of project wrangling.

In the study, Castle finally got around to asking, "How did Gates treat you before I came in and set her teeth on edge?"

"I may have done that before she ever saw me," his wife answered. When Castle looked at her questioningly, she explained, "Guess who was the youngest female to reach detective status before me?"

"No way!" He chortled happily. "You broke her record?"

"By only six weeks, she said. If it shows you how much I paid attention to it, I've never even looked to see whose record I broke. All I wanted was to be a detective…and have full access to records. I have to hand it to her, though. She must have been good. She accomplished that probably in the late eighties…maybe early nineties. It's never been easy for women to rise fast through the ranks, and she did it at a time when it was more difficult. I have to respect that."

"Did she take it out on you?"

"Not really. She was definitely all business; but I have to admit, she was more civil before you came in."

"If I'm affecting your job, don't hesitate to tell me. I don't want to do that. But maybe she'll succumb to my charms eventually. You did."

Kate grabbed him by each side of his shirt collar and pulled him down for a thorough kiss. "Yeah, I did," she said, leaving both of them smiling.

Kate settled down on the sofa with a book, and Castle opened his laptop to do some writing.

"Hey, Castle?"

"Yeah?" he asked absent-mindedly as he opened the chapter he was working on.

"If Gates doesn't warm up to you sometime soon, are you still going to stay at the precinct? I mean, if I had to put up with too much of that, I'd think about leaving…transferring maybe."

He stopped what he was doing to look directly at her, daring her to misunderstand him. "She isn't the reason I want to be there. The reasons are: 1. You; 2. The boys and the case to be solved…the challenge; and 3. I'm doing some good for somebody who's likely to be hurting like you did when your mother was killed. It's worth putting up with Gates."

"I didn't hear book research in that list."

"That falls in as a convenient side effect of the rest. But don't tell Gates that."

"Not a chance. No matter how much she ignores your contributions, I'm really proud of you. You know that, right?"

"Yeah. And it makes my day. Every day."

From there, they smiled at one another again and eased smoothly into the comfortable silence of their own activities while their daughter and her friends worked in the other room.

xxxxx

After dinner a few days later, Kate came back into the kitchen and found Alexis glaring at her phone and growling at it.

"Did the call get cut off?" she asked.

"Yes. By Ashley." Alexis answered, obviously annoyed.

"That doesn't sound like Ashley. Did you have an argument?" she asked as she got down a mug and a box of teabags. "Would you like some, too? Chamomile?"

"Couldn't hurt," Alexis answered. "We weren't arguing. I even understand why he had to go. Why couldn't he have gone to Columbia, or at least somewhere in the same time zone?"

"Because that was the dream school…for both of you. By this time next year, you might be in another time zone, too."

"I know. At least down deep I know. But up here on top, I need to be mad for another minute or two."

Kate put the teapot on the stove to heat the water, and sat down at the breakfast bar. "Sit down and talk to me. Was he impatient with you?"

"Not really. It was more like he was in a hurry. He had to meet a study group. He's been there long enough to meet some other people who are serious about good grades and they decided to study together when they have a test coming up. They have the first big one tomorrow," she answered as she slid onto the bar stool next to Kate's. Propping her elbows on the counter and drooping with her chin resting on her hands., she added, "He and I both took some classes that can transfer as college credit, and he tested into two sophomore economics classes, so I guess it's important to prove himself."

"Then he was probably just feeling a little pressure about the test. He's as conscientious as you are about grades. You've been talking and skyping a lot, so you know he still wants to stay in touch."

"I know. And he probably wants to prove he can handle those sophomore level classes. I just miss being able to talk to him every day. It worked when he first got there, but he seems busier this week."

"The workload should be picking up by now , like it is for you. You look a little busier this week, too. And he's made some friends, and probably wants to go out and do something with them, even if it's just having dinner, before they all go back to the dorm for the night. Then he needs to study. It's hard for both of you."

"Am I crazy to think this long distant thing could work?"

"Not necessarily," Kate answered as she got up to retrieve the mugs and the teapot. "It could. The time difference is tough, though. I guess it depends on how much each of you wants it to." She poured water over the teabags in the mugs and sat back down. "You may eventually have to settle for working out time two or three nights a week on the days when neither of you have anything scheduled. But right now I know you still miss him and want to talk to him as much as possible. I'd probably feel the same way if your dad were away on a book tour."

"I'm glad Dad has you. He needed you. He deserves to be loved the way you love him."

"I need him the same way."

"I want somebody who loves me the way he loves you."

"Do you think that might be Ashley?"

"Maybe. Is it normal to have doubts now and then?"

Kate huffed a little laugh. "You're not exactly asking the guru of relationships, Honey. My track record isn't good. I was attracted to your dad from the moment I met him. And I still almost missed having this family of ours because I didn't believe in either of us enough to think it would work. I was the queen of doubts for a long time, even before your dad. But based on listening to my more normal acquaintances, I think a doubt now and then is normal."

"Do you still have doubts about Dad sometimes?"

"Not a one." The answer was solid and confident.

"Is there anything you learned while you were getting over all the doubts…anything that might help me out?" Alexis asked with a sad little smile.

"Talk about things that worry you. Your dad and I caused ourselves problems by being afraid to ask questions or to say what we needed to say. When we started talking to each other, good things happened." She bumped Alexis's shoulder and smiled sympathetically. "Of course, that means you have to get Ashley on the phone long enough to talk."

Alexis nodded and leaned her head on Kate's shoulder. "I'm glad I have you, too."

"Me, too, kid," Kate answered and planted a little kiss on her step-daughter's head. "I don't know what I'd do without you anymore."

Castle stood in the doorway of his study watching the two women whose backs were toward him. He held his breath when Alexis asked about doubts, and was surprised to find he had done that when he released it in relief at Kate's confident answer. Her honest appraisal of some of her lesser relationship skills made him smile. He knew it wasn't easy for her to admit that to someone other than him…or Lanie…but he loved that Alexis was important enough to Kate that she would be honest about it. Moving quietly, he slipped back into his office with a sense of peace and left them to enjoy their tea and conversation.