75. Chapter 75

Chapter 75

AN: Once more I need to say that this chapter and the next one belong to Castle's writers, the episode "Probable Cause". I make no claims to and deserve no credit for that plot and have even used some lines here and there from the original episode. However, as the two chapters continue there will be a some AU adjustments to the original situations. I promise, this will be the last crisis you'll need to contend with in this story. Going to hide now.

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The next few weeks ran smoothly, the case load being steady but not overwhelming. The Castle household was getting used to the idea that Alexis was living on campus and wasn't at home often. Martha's school production went well, opening night attended by the entire family in their typical show of support for one another. The performance even garnered favorable mentions in a couple of New York papers, and Martha was thrilled. She bought multiple copies of those papers and posted them on the bulletin boards at her school. Castle laughed when he saw the stack of papers, then he cut out the small articles and put them on the refrigerator door the way he did with Alexis's work when she was younger. And Mr. and Mrs. Castle were getting to work looking a bit tired more often than usual because of their frequent, enjoyable nighttime activities. For Kate, the second trimester of pregnancy was living up to all the rumors they had heard, and Mr. Castle was a tired but happy husband.

Kate had told Castle about feeling little flutters but said she wasn't sure they were the baby. One day she laughed and told him it felt like the baby tickled her with all ten fingers from the inside. As they watched a movie at the loft one night, she excitedly grabbed Rick's hand and put it near her waist where hers had been.

"Rick, he moved. I felt it!"

"Do you still feel it," he asked, disappointed that nothing was happening.

"No."

"Come on, Peanut. Say hello to Daddy," Castle told his unborn son.

They waited a little while, but nothing happened until Castle started to remove his hand. Then there was enough motion that he could feel it, too. His eyes were wide with excitement, and his smile lit the room

"I felt it. Hey, little guy. Daddy loves you." He wrapped his arm around Kate's shoulders and pulled her close without moving his hand from her middle, not wanting to miss anything. "Thank you, Kate," he said softly

"For what?"

For being excited about our baby, for doing everything you can to share it with me. Alexis was worth everything. I loved her from the second the doctor handed her to me. But I didn't have all this before she was born. Meredith was too worried about her figure to enjoy much about her pregnancy…except for the extra attention she got when people found out. Then she turned actress and played the role of sweet, excited new mom…and ate up the adoration. Sometimes I'd have to leave the room.

"I'm sorry you missed having that then, but you'll have it this time. I promise."

"Oh, there it is again," he exclaimed excitedly. He smiled at Kate. It feels like he's stretching or something."

"It feels like he's stretching me, too," she answered, smiling back as he leaned to kiss her.

When Alexis and JD came to dinner a couple of weeks later, the baby showed off for them, too. Alexis was exuberant.

"He moved, JD. I felt my little brother move."

JD watched and smiled as Alexis showed her excitement. Then he asked uncertainly, "Could… Um… Would you…"

"As soon as he starts moving again, JD. I'm okay with that," Kate answered with a smile.

He looked relieved at not having to complete the question, and as he and Alexis were putting food on the table, Kate took his hand and placed it lightly on her stomach. There was a small smile on his face along with a look of wonder. Then his smile gradually grew wider. "That's the baby?"

"That's him," Kate affirmed.

"Wow," he answered, moving his hand away. "Awesome."

"I think so, too," Castle said. "Every single time." He put his hand on his wife's middle and spoke to his son. "You behave so Mommy can enjoy her dinner, understand?" Then he kissed Kate's forehead and told everyone to sit down.

xxxxx

Castle and Beckett met the boys at a crime scene on the Monday morning before Thanksgiving. As they entered the apartment, Castle was saying that he had written a lot over the weekend, but his crime scene was boring.

"Maybe this will inspire you," Esposito told him. "The victim is Tessa Horton, age twenty-nine. Her roommate was gone over the weekend, came home this morning and found her…up there."

Castle looked up to see the hooks and wires where the body had been secured. "Oh, geez. Who puts a body on a ceiling?"

"It's like something out of one of your books, right?"

"I probably won't sleep for weeks," Lanie told them as she worked.

"Cause of death, Lanie?" Becket asked.

"Signs say strangulation. Anything beyond that will have to wait until later."

The group speculated about a symbol carved on the victim's forehead, and the time and effort required to get the body on the ceiling. Since the killer had time for the elaborate display of the body, they assumed he knew that the roommate would be out of town. And the fact that there was no sign of a struggle led them to believe Tessa probably knew the killer, who had cleaned up well after himself. The apartment was spotless, but oddly, there were fingerprints in the hall on the doorknob and around the door. Security amounted to only a buzzer at the front door…so there was no help from security cameras.

Before interviewing the roommate, Beckett sent the boys to canvass the neighbors and mentioned the need to identify the symbol on the victim's forehead. Then she and Castle took Tessa's roommate back to the precinct with them to interview her away from the trauma of the crime scene at apartment.

The roommate said Tessa was an insurance broker for commercial real estate, and described her as sweet, shy, and a workaholic…without much of a social life. When asked if there was a boyfriend, she said Tessa had been seeing someone new for about six weeks, but it was a big secret, like he was married or something, He bought her jewelry, fancy dinners. She said Tessa described him as every woman's fairy tale…rich handsome, and generous. She never talked about him, though…not how they met, what kind of work he did, or anything.

After the victim's roommate left, Beckett told the boys to check Tessa's phone records and emails.

Looking at the crime scene photo on the white board, Castle observed, "Whoever did this…he liked it."

Beckett's phone rang immediately after that observation, and Lanie said she had information for them; so Beckett and Castle went to the morgue.

"There was no sign of sexual assault or activity," Lanie told them. "And the body was hung postmortem."

"Time of death?" Beckett asked.

"Between two and three AM," Lanie answered. You were right earlier. There was no struggle. She was drugged…chloroform." Holding up her hand, and wiggling her fingers, she added, "Talc residue, indicates the killer wore gloves like mine, so no prints. He knew exactly what he was doing."

After asking a few more questions and thanking Lanie, the couple returned to the precinct.

"Ritualistic, takes pleasure in it, significant effort to cover his tracks," Beckett reeled off as they walked to her desk.

"All the hallmarks of a serial killer," Castle answered.

"But I've never seen this MO," Beckett said as she sat down.

Ryan reported that the symbol had similarities to some others but didn't match anything in the federal database. "Also," he continued, "Tessa was spending a lot of time on the phone to someone with a blocked number and a stolen SIM card. There were no emails. Part of her hard drive was surgically wiped.

"Beckett, a word?" Esposito asked, indicating another room. When Beckett followed, he closed the door and told her that CSU matched those prints in the hall to Castle's.

"He probably forgot and touched things outside before he put his gloves on," Beckett answered.

"Beckett, they collected the prints before the two of you got there."

Castle vehemently denied having ever been there before that morning, or ever having had any contact with the victim, insisting CSU got their time frame wrong. They left it at that, warned Castle to be more careful, and Esposito said he'd check back with CSU.

Then Beckett remembered the mention of gifts of jewelry. She sent Ryan back to the apartment, hoping he would find some of the jewelry, possibly with the boyfriend's prints…anything that might lead them to the mystery man.

"Good thinking, Beckett," Castle praised. "Jewelry. I wouldn't have thought of that."

"Then I guess I'll have to remind you that my birthday's coming up."

"Why, Mrs. Castle, was that a hint you just dropped?" Castle asked with the smile that crinkled the corners of his eyes, delighted that she would now even playfully hint at such a thing.

"Why, Mr. Castle, I do believe it was."

"Shameless," he answered with feigned shock.

After taking a team back to Tessa's apartment looking for anything they could find to make some kind of connection, Ryan reported, "It looked like pieces might be missing from her jewelry box. We did find an earring in the couch, though. No prints, but it's designer jewelry. The store manager identified the picture I texted as one of theirs, said it was purchased with a cashier's check upward of twelve grand. The store is sending over their digital surveillance recording. We also found a neighbor who saw a man outside the apartment at seven forty-five that night. He's working with a sketch artist now."

Tessa's roommate identified the sketch as Tessa's boss, and they found that he told his wife he was working late; but he wasn't. After confronting him with the evidence that he had been at Tessa's apartment the night she was killed, he asked for his lawyer, calling the interview to a halt.

Thinking the evidence trail was temporarily slowing, Castle left to run some errands and go home to do some major editing to his fictional crime scene. "Call if anything comes up," he told his wife.

When the boys returned from watching the surveillance video, things began to spiral out of control. Esposito again asked to see Beckett again, and Ryan played her the video, which showed Castle at the jeweler's counter. Before telling Beckett that, they had checked Castle's financials and found a record of the well over twelve thousand dollar cashier's check they knew had been used to pay for the purchase.

"It was from his pocket account, Beckett. Doesn't he give you access to those records?"

"I have access. He allows me access to everything. I just don't use it. It's his money, I didn't earn it, and I don't question it." There was a pause as she ran both hands through her hair. "I've never had reason to question him, either. And both of you have to know he isn't a killer."

"But if it were anybody else, we'd have to follow it up. You have to know that," Esposito pointed out.

Beckett nodded, so they went to Captain Gates, and were then sent to search Castle's home. Since it was Beckett's home, too, she and Castle were both confined in the kitchen; and Beckett took the time to explain to him the evidence they had found. She impatiently asked him what was going on, and he again denied knowledge of any of it.

While the search was carried out, they watched in horror as Ryan and Esposito obviously found something else incriminating. They arrested Castle, took him to the twelfth, and he was taken to holding while the three detectives spread the bagged and tagged evidence on Captain Gates's desk for her inspection.

"Sir, he isn't a killer," Becket insisted.

"Then how do you explain all this?" Gates asked, her hand indicating the display on her desk. They had found a bag that Beckett agreed was Castle's, containing the same wire and hooks used to strap the body to the ceiling, as well as a shirt with blood spatter…Tessa's blood. "

"The evidence isn't the whole story. Castle taught me that. And those things weren't there when we left the loft this morning."

"I haven't always been Mr. Castle's biggest fan; but even at the peak of my annoyance that he was here, I would have had trouble believing he could do something so heinous." She didn't discourage them from continuing to look into the possibility of his innocence, and Beckett thanked her. "Don't thank me yet. We're going to follow the evidence wherever it leads us." After a deep sigh, she added, "And Lieutenant, considering your relationship to Mr. Castle, I have to take you off the case." When Beckett opened her mouth to protest, Gates held up a hand to stop her. "I have no choice. These things were found at your address, too. You're lucky I'm leaving the rest of your team to work on it, but Detectives Ryan and Esposito are the best chance your husband has of being proven innocent."

"I understand, Sir. But I can still be here as long as I'm not working on this case, can't I? I can visit him in holding?"

"Yes. You can still be here, but stay away from his case." Turning to Ryan and Esposito, she added, "And, under the circumstances, I think it's best if I handle the interrogation myself. Bring Mr. Castle up here, gentlemen."

Kate asked, "May I observe, as long as I don't try to participate?" The captain nodded and they went to their respective places to wait.

During the interrogation, Castle still insisted that he neither bought those earrings nor knew anything about the cashier's check; and he identified the bag as his but denied ever having seen the things in it. He maintained his claim that someone was setting him up. After asking about Tessa's boss, he was told that he came clean about being with a hooker that evening and alibied out. Then, when Castle was asked where he was on the night of the murder, he had to admit he was at home writing…alone."

"So you're saying you have no alibi?" Gates asked.

Castle looked defeated at that point. "I think I want my lawyer now." Beckett emerged from observation in time to make eye contact with him and smooth her hand over his arm as he passed her. He was returned to holding and spoke to his lawyer soon afterward.

When he was gone, the captain asked, as if testing the waters, "Mr. Castle said he was at home alone writing on Friday night. You understand that I have to ask…were the two of you having any problems in your relationship?"

"No. Things are fine between us. Sometimes inspiration strikes, and he needs to get the ideas down; and he had been itching to write all afternoon. The case we were working on that day was closing, and we were almost down to the paperwork; so I sent him home to write. Dr. Parish, and I had planned a girl's night. Neither of us were able to leave until around ten. I called around nine to let him know I'd be pretty late. He said he was getting a lot done, and the ideas were still coming, that he'd probably still be at it when I got home. And he was. I got home about three-thirty, and he was working...looked completely in the zone…didn't even notice I was there until I put my hands on his shoulders. I didn't see any sign of a shower to wash away blood spatter, or anything in his demeanor to indicate that he was trying to hide anything. I know he didn't do this."

"Does anyone else have access to your home? Does anyone else have a key?"

"Only Alicia, the housekeeper, but she's been with Castle's family since Alexis was a toddler. She's almost like family."

Alexis and Martha were there to visit Castle by the time Gates and Beckett had walked back to the bullpen, and they had nothing helpful to add. They'd seen no one looking suspicious, no new repair or maintenance people or new employees. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary…except, Martha noted, that her son was being accused of murder.

Ryan and Esposito appeared behind Gates as she spoke to Martha and Alexis, and Esposito quietly motioned for Beckett to follow them. In the conference room, they broke the news they had to give her.

Ryan told her that tech had finished going over Castle's computer and found that part of Castle's hard drive had been wiped just like Tessa's.

Esposito explained that tech had recovered the deleted files. "One of them was a story titled "How to Commit the Perfect Murder. The story concept looked like this murder, right down to the mark on the forehead…like a dry run on paper."

Ryan continued apologetically. "They found something else, too. Emails. Dozens of them…between Castle and the victim."

"Beckett, they've been having an affair," Esposito told her as he handed her a file full of papers. "We can't keep this from Gates. But we made copies for you if you want them. We didn't want you to be blindsided later."

She nodded appreciatively, looking as if she were on the verge of tears, accepted the file, and left the room without another word. She had no other case to work on, it was end of shift for those who could go home, and she wouldn't be allowed to work on Castle's case. She was at loose ends, and company at moments of personal crisis had never been her strong point, unless it was Castle; so she went to the restroom, closed herself in a stall and scanned over the emails as she fought tears. Then she went to see Castle in holding.

After leaving him, Kate called Lanie to ask if she could stop by before she went home; and the two women met at Lanie's apartment to talk through the situation before Kate had to face the rest of the Castle family. They sat in Lanie's living room, Lanie on the sofa holding the pages Kate had given her to read, and Kate sitting on the floor at the corner of the sofa, teary eyed and sniffling now and then, a box of tissues beside her.

Waving the hand with the tissue in Lanie's direction, Kate explained, "According to those emails, this affair started about eight weeks ago. They met at one of his book signings, and he asked her out for coffee. That was after he knew about the baby and was so excited about it."

"Oh, Sweetie," Lanie answered sympathetically.

"It looks like he told her he had to keep it quiet because he was married. When he tried to break it off about a week ago, she threatened to tell his wife, so he offered to come to her apartment to talk things through. And that was the night of the murder.

Lanie looked surprised. "So he had motive?" She paused for a moment and asked without the same edge to her question, "What did Castle say when you talked to him?"

"That the emails were faked, he never wrote that story, and he was being framed." Kate stopped for another tissue and dabbed at her eyes and nose, "Lanie, he's so scared. I know he can still act like an immature, egotistical, self-centered jackass sometimes, but he's not this. He lives with my less than stellar moments, too. We put up with each other's bad points because we love each other. He wouldn't do this to me any more than I'd do it to him. And this affects the rest of the family, too. He would never do any of this to Alexis. He wouldn't be able to bear her disappointment in him."

"Honey, I know how much you love him; but are you that sure of him?"

Kate nodded. "I'm sure. But I'm so afraid whoever did this will get away with it, and I'll have to raise our baby without him." Motioning to the papers Lanie was holding, she said, "I only know about those because Ryan and Esposito took me aside and told me before they told Gates."

"They're good friends, Kate. I know it hurt to have to tell you."

"I know. It's going to hurt to have to tell Alexis and Martha about the story and the emails, too…not because any of us will believe them, but because so much evidence is building. I need to go and do it, though." Standing and placing the tissue box back on Lanie's table, Kate stated resignedly, "They'll expect me to keep them in the loop."

"I'm so sorry this is happening to the two of you." Lanie answered, giving her friend a big hug. "I admire the faith you have in him, 'cause it does look bad."

"Thanks for letting me vent. I needed to talk it out before I could face Martha and Alexis."

"Anytime, Kate. You know that."

xxxxx

Martha and Alexis met Kate as soon as she got home, wanting details about what was happening with Castle.

After hearing the latest developments, Martha assured her daughter-in-law, "Katherine, my son is far too deeply in love with you for those emails to be anything but a set-up."

"I know that, Martha. But someone has done a convincing job of manufacturing evidence against him."

"Will he be able to get out of this, Kate?" Alexis asked through her tears.

"I don't know, Honey," she answered, taking her stepdaughter's hand in both of hers. "I've been taken off the case, so I'll only have access to whatever information Ryan and Esposito can slip to me. I'd like to give you a better answer, but I promised you from the beginning that I'd always tell you the truth."

Alexis moved closer to her on the sofa, and Kate engulfed her in a big hug. "Want to bunk with me tonight?" Kate asked. "I don't feel too much like being alone tonight, and that bed is probably big enough for all three of us if your Grams wants company, too."

Alexis nodded but didn't move from her place in Kate's arms.

"Come on. Let's make some hot cocoa and then try to get some sleep," Kate encouraged.

I think I'll be sleeping in my own bed tonight, but thank you for the offer," Martha said gently as she stood and stroked Alexis's shoulder.

Alexis went to the kitchen for cocoa supplies as Martha hugged Kate tightly. "We have to believe it's going to work out in Richard's favor, Darling," Martha insisted. "I can't allow myself to consider any other possibility."

"Martha, I'm so scared," Kate answered quietly.

"I know, Dear, but don't give up. I've never seen two people deserve a happy ending more than the two of you. Thank you for not giving up on my son."

"Never, Martha. Never."

xxxxx

The next morning, Beckett went in early so she could see Castle before reporting in, and she found him in fear for his life. He told her that Jerry Tyson came to see him during the night…dressed as a NYPD officer.

"Kate, he wants revenge for ruining his plans a couple of years ago. He said he had planned it for four years." He recounted the conversation, explaining that just killing him wouldn't be enough. Tyson liked being in their home, in their lives, and knowing he was going to take it all away." Castle paused a moment, his head down, "He said he watched me taking walks with Alexis." More quietly he told her, "He said he watched you and me…watched us making love." He knew Kate could see the tear that escaped his eye at that, and it rolled down his cheek before he could swipe it away.

"Rick, look at me."

He looked up slowly, quickly wiping away the tear, and Kate stretched her fingers through the open wire of the cell. He reached out and held her fingers with his the best he could.

"He can't cheapen what's between us unless we let him. And we don't know that he isn't lying. He likes manipulating minds, and he knows what he said would hurt you. You know that more than half of what leaves his mouth is lies…and most of the rest is some twisted, perverted version of the truth. Don't let him win."

"He may have already won. I haven't told you the rest. He said he has someone waiting to kill me when I get to Central Booking. He said I'll be dead before midnight…that I'll leave you alone…that I'll never see our son…never get to hold him or see him grow up. That's my punishment." A few tears fell again in spite of his efforts to hold them back. He said your punishment will be to know you can't save me…for it to haunt you the rest of your life."

Beckett took out her phone and called Ryan, telling him just enough of Castle's story to impress him with the urgency of checking it immediately, and she waited with Castle until he returned the call, but not with good news.

"Ryan checked with tech, and the system doesn't show Tyson or signs of being tampered with," Kate reported to her husband.

"Desperate story from a desperate man," Castle answered, looking crestfallen and frightened. "Just like he wanted."

"You're right. It sounds desperate. But for the first time, the story makes sense."

"You believe me?" he asked hopefully.

"I never stopped."

"He's gonna kill me, Kate. I can't run. I can't hide. What am I supposed to do?"

She threaded her fingers through the wire again, and Castle kissed what he could reach before touching them with his. Kate kissed his fingers, too, and said, "I'll go talk to Gates."

As soon as Gates came in, Beckett followed her to her office trying to convince her Tyson was behind framing Castle, listing traits of his MO and explaining some of the history between the two men.

When Gates brought up the evidence in the jewelry store video, Ryan backed the possibility that it was staged, mentioning that Tyson used a double to misdirect them during the Russo case a couple of years earlier. "I know you've called for the file by now. When Tyson took us hostage, he knocked me down…hit me in the head, zip tied me, and left me on the floor like so much trash. He tied Castle to a chair and took time with him…talked to him, taunted him, argued with him, tormented him. It was personal."

Beckett pleaded for more time for the boys to follow up and make their case before sending Castle to Central Booking. They all knew Tyson was capable of arranging it and that Castle's life could very well be in danger. Gates relented and called it in to the ADA to discuss it. However, Assistant District Attorney Toni Gonzalez was nearly hostile in her refusal to even consider a delay in sending Castle to Central Booking and told them he would be moved that day as scheduled.

After another trip to the loft with a small team to scour it for any evidence that Tyson had been there, Ryan had nothing new to tell Gates; so he and Esposito went to the break room, ostensibly to feed their caffeine habit, meeting Beckett "accidentally" as she did the same.

As they all prepared their coffee, Beckett suddenly suggested, "If Tessa wasn't seeing Castle, she might have been seeing Tyson." She barely had to suggest it before the boys were ready to leave the room to go and recheck all the papers from her office…files, schedules, client lists, etc. for any connection to Tyson.

Gates stopped at the break room door with two officers behind her and said quietly, "Beckett, they're here. I've asked them to give you a couple of minutes with Mr. Castle, but then he has to go. Conference room." Then she whispered. "I asked LT to uncuff him for the moment. You'll need to correct that before you turn him over to these officers."

"Understood, Sir." Beckett answered. "Thank you." She went quickly to the conference room and closed the door behind her. Castle opened his arms, and she walked directly into his embrace. "I've missed feeling this," she admitted.

"Me, too," he answered and kissed her, firmly but gently.

They both spoke quietly, trying to preserve the short little bit of privacy they had been granted.

"I love you," she told him, resting her forehead against his.

"I love you, too," he answered.

"We don't have long, and I have to do this," she said, cuffing his hands in front of him.

"This is so much less fun than the other night at home," he teased with a half-hearted smirk as she put the cuffs in place. "Remember the first time you cuffed me? We were at the New York Public Library. What I wouldn't give to be there now."

"I can't stop this process, Castle. I want to, but I can't."

"Hey," he comforted, bringing his hands to her face and tracing a thumb over her cheek softly. "Whatever happens, it's going to be okay, understand? Kiss me again. They won't wait much longer."

He put his cuffed hands over her head so his arms were around her shoulders, then they kissed again and looked at one another longingly before they heard a knock at the door. Castle removed his arms from her shoulders, smoothed his fingers over her protruding middle, and kissed her once more before the door opened. He was then escorted away by the two officers, and Beckett followed. As he stood in the elevator between the two officers, she and Castle maintained eye contact until the doors closed.

Beckett walked back to her desk, protectively flanked by her partners, who immediately started taking another thorough look at Tessa's papers and records. About thirty minutes after the escorting officers took Castle away, another two officers left the elevator. They stopped and spoke to the first person they saw, and then walked toward Beckett and the boys.

"Detective Esposito?" the older one asked the three in general.

"That's me."

"We're here to pick up one of yours." Checking the paperwork his partner held up, he continued, "A Richard Castle."

The other officer handed him paperwork virtually identical to what they had received from the other officers, with the exception of the badge numbers.

Beckett nearly sprinted to Gates's office while her partners explained the situation to the two confused officers she left behind.

After an efficient and rather terse phone call, Gates reported, "Central Booking says he never arrived."

"And the badge numbers on the first paperwork don't exist," Beckett told her.

"The ADA is calling it prisoner escape. There's an APB, and a manhunt is starting." It wasn't long before Ms. Gonzalez was storming into Gates's office, spewing venom.

While Ryan and Esposito were talking alternately to Beckett and then each other, one of them made a comment. Behind them, Beckett had a look of revelation, and she slipped out of the room without a word. She went to her locker and put on the black hoodie that Castle had left there, which swallowed her slender frame, including her growing middle. She draped her dressier coat over her arm, pulled the hood up, and tucked her hair in it. Reaching the bottom of the stairs at the lobby, she kept her eyes down, changed her normal gait, and eased her way out the front door and down the block to the corner where she hailed a taxi to take her to the library.

Castle was waiting in the room where she had first cuffed him, a baseball cap hiding his hair and shielding his face a bit; and after a relieved, full embrace, he showed her what he'd found. Things started falling into place after Beckett called the celebrity look-alike agency. Their advertised look-alikes extended to authors, including Patterson and Richard Castle; and they found that one of the Castle impersonators had been hired recently.

They met with the impersonator, who described a job for a reality show about store security. The job required him to buy earrings, and he identified Jerry Tyson's picture as that of one of the show's producers. Beckett took Castle back to the precinct, and they took the look-alike with them to make a statement.

Now that his veracity wasn't quite so much in question, Gates didn't lock him up again, but she kept him close by and didn't contact the DA until they heard what Ryan and Esposito had found in Tessa's papers. Work had been done quickly on the money trail. Tech helped them find the bank account used to pay the check for the look-alike, as well as a check written to Tessa's insurance agency. One of her calendar entries had a notation to meet someone with the same initials as the false identity of the account owner at an address in northern Manhattan near the bridge. When Castle identified the account owner's alias as a French serial killer from the eighteen hundreds, they were sure it was Tyson. The date of the meeting was about six weeks earlier, about the same time Tessa started seeing her mystery man.

At that point, Gates called the DA and told her Castle was voluntarily back in custody and would not be out of her sight until everything had been resolved one way or another, but he would not be transferred to Central Booking. She explained what they had found, provided contact numbers for both the look-alike and the agency through which he was hired, and promised to be in touch as soon as she and her detectives had investigated the address. Ms. Gonzalez demanded the address of the building, and made no secret that didn't feel trusting of either the detectives at the twelfth or their captain. When Gates arrived with two teams from the twelfth, Ms. Gonzalez was getting out of a cab to meet them.

Ryan and Esposito went in with the tactical team to clear the building before the others entered, and Karpowski's team waited near the door with Castle and the others while the captain argued with the ADA that it wasn't safe for her to be there on the street…or for Castle. The DA argued that this was her watch, and she was going to see that the evidence wasn't compromised in any way. She insisted she was staying.

Ryan and Esposito returned saying there was no sign of Tyson so far, but they had found a room upstairs that looked like his workspace. Gates gave up and told the untrusting DA not to get in the way of her officers, to follow any order she was given, and not to touch anything because it might contaminate evidence. "Have you called CSU?" she asked the two men."

"Soon as we found it. They said you had asked to have a team on call. They're on the way." Esposito answered.

They carefully made their way up the stairs to the room and looked at what was there as they waited for CSU. "We shouldn't be in there yet," Gates told the ADA, "but I want you to see this. Stand in the doorway, and one of my detectives will shine a flashlight on each area of the room. You can see that we don't move or alter anything, and we'll wait until CSU finishes before any of us touch anything here. They'll bring work lights to make it easier."

The DA glared but followed directions. As the flashlights lit the room section by section, she looked at everything and asked questions. Explanations were given, and then they all moved to the hallway with the detectives standing guard. Gates called for backup officers outside, CSU arrived shortly, work lights were set up, and investigation of the evidence began under the intrusively watchful eye of the ADA.