589. Chapter 589

After The Nose,

Or

How Season Eight Will Not End

Part One

By

UCSBdad

Disclaimer: Still don't own Castle. Rating: K Time: Sometime in season eight. Maybe. Or maybe not.

Author's note: This started out as a stand alone, but I decided it would also work as part of the After….series.

Richard Castle was deep in thought. His plans to win Kate back weren't working. When he managed to weasel his way onto another case in her precinct, she accepted his help but was no more than polite to him. Then she had gotten the rest of her things from the loft. She definitely was not falling in love with him again.

He sat in a small coffee shop a few blocks from the 12th Precinct. He hated to go to Remy's as it was full of cops. Everyone there knew his story. For some reason their gorgeous Captain had dumped her husband of less than a year. Some thought it was funny and some felt sorry for him. The pity was the worst, he had decided.

He sat looking out the window and almost missed the familiar face that walked past. Vikram Singh? He thought. What the hell is a Fed doing here?

Castle got to his feet and headed for the door. He reached the street just in time to see Vikram ducking into a subway. Castle ran to the subway, but when he got to the platform, it was empty. The Fed was gone.

Castle walked back to the coffee shop and had another cup. What the hell is that Fed doing in New York? And coming from the direction of the 12th Precinct? That couldn't be a coincidence. But what does it mean? Suddenly he stopped in mid-sip. He had an NYPD ID badge on. He works for the NYPD? Since when?

The next afternoon Castle stationed himself on the subway platform wearing an old pair of khakis and a hoodie. He waited for hours until finally he saw Singh walking towards a subway car. Castle ran and managed to get into the car behind Singh's. At every stop he stood by the door, ready to follow the man. At last he saw him get off and Castle got off, only to find himself stuck behind four elderly ladies who moved at a snail's pace. By the time he got past them, he'd lost track of Singh.

The next day Castle positioned himself at the subway station where he had lost Singh. This time he wore a suit and tie, but had used some of the makeup tricks he had learned from Martha to add a phony mustache and long shaggy hair. He waited for hours, but his quarry never showed. Cursing, he headed for the subway car and home, determined to show up the next day.

And so he did. This time he saw Singh and tailed him easily. Singh seemed to have no concerns about being followed. Castle saw him enter a run-down building when they were about a block apart. He smiled to himself as he headed for the building. Then something caught his eye and he kept walking. Surveillance cameras? Why would that dump need surveillance cameras? He kept walking until he got to the alley behind the building. There were surveillance cameras there, too. Okay, I need to be careful about this. Something very odd is going on here.

The next afternoon a panel truck marked "Sam's Plumbing" pulled up a block away from the building that Castle had tailed Vikram to. He had parked so that the back of the truck was towards the building. He was certain that the surveillance cameras couldn't see him through the small back windows of the truck. Castle crawled into the back past all the plumbing gear and set himself up with a pair of binoculars and a camera. He waited.

After several hours Vikram showed up and went inside. He had to wait several more hours for someone else to arrive. When he saw whose car it was, his heart sank. Beckett? What's she doing here? What's she doing with Vikram? One horrible thought went through his head, but was quickly discarded. She is not cheating on me. Not in a dump like that, not with a guy she hardly knows and…she isn't. But I have to find out what's going on.

There was no doubt that Jimmy Whelan was the best in the business, even if he had lost a step or two when he had reached seventy. But, as he sat nursing a Guinness stout in a faux Irish pub in midtown, he needed some encouragement.

"It ain't the money, Rick. I just hate to get involved in divorce cases. "What God has joined together, let no man put asunder." That's the way it is with Annie and me and that's the way it ought to be."

Castle smiled at the man. "That's not it, Jimmy. I will never, ever divorce Kate. I love her more than anything or anyone. But, you know she's a cop, right?"

Whelan shrugged. "Doesn't everyone?"

"And when she took Bracken down she had to go kind of rogue. In fact we've both had to go kind of rogue to get things done. Now, I think she's going rogue again, and I'm terrified she'll get hurt. But she won't talk to me about it. I need the best surveillance man in the business. I've got to find out what she's doing in there. It's not going to be easy, she's good. She has surveillance cameras and…And I don't know what. Can you do it?"

A bit miffed at having his credentials as the best surveillance guy around questioned by some writer, who was talking about some cop, Jimmy frowned. "Am I not the best there is? Of course I can do it." He looked at Castle closely. "You swear that it's not about a divorce?"

Castle crossed his heart. "I swear."

"Okay, I'll do it."

Castle worried for three straight days until he got a call to meet Jimmy at a neighborhood bar in Brooklyn. He found Jimmy at a table in the back, with a bottle of Guinness in front of him. He smiled at Rick. "Jeez, you gave me a fun one, Rick. When I checked the place out, I thought that maybe they'd moved Fort Knox and all that gold here to New York. It wasn't just surveillance cameras. She had the place rigged with motion sensors, pressure sensors, electronic jammers, all the latest stuff, too. She is good."

"Did you get anything?" Castle blurted out.

Jimmy looked insulted. "Did you, or did you not, hire the best in the business?"

"You got something?"

"Of course. I had to get me a little, tiny drone helicopter with a recorder and hire my nephew, Mike, to fly it, but he flew it through a busted window. Them motion sensors ain't programmed to go off on anything that small on account of any bird or rat would set 'em off. We parked the drone on top of a heating duct and sat back." He handed a small tape recorder to Castle. "I got the whole thing on there, but if you start listening where I stopped it, and go for a half an hour, you'll get everything you need."

Castle took out a set of ear buds and listened. It was what he had feared. And worse. "Did you listen to this?"

Jimmy nodded.

"Destroy any copies of this and forget all about it. Tell your nephew to forget he was ever there or ever heard of the place." Castle pulled out his wallet and emptied it of several thousand dollars. "In fact, you and your family should go up to visit the relatives in Boston for a while."

Jimmy nodded. "I'm way ahead of you, Rick. Way ahead of you. So, what you gonna do now?"

He shook his head. "I'm not sure."

He headed back to his PI office and sat in the dark, thinking. His first thought was to confront Beckett with what he'd found out. But she doesn't want me involved in this for whatever reason. If I push her, I'll just push her farther away. I need to do this myself, but how? He opened his desk drawer and took a memory stick out that was taped to the back of the outside of the drawer and put it in his laptop. I know a lot of guys. There's gotta be someone out there that'll help me.

Two hours later he'd made a decision. He took a cab to an all-night internet café and logged onto a number of sites he had no interest in, then sent a single e-mail, then spent another half an hour logging on to different sites.

Two days later, Ryan and Esposito were trying to find a place to eat lunch. "Chinese?" Ryan suggested.

"We've had Chinese twice this week and it's only Thursday. Something different?"

"DelI?" Ryan pointed to a corner deli.

Espo shook his head. "They're a chain and their food is so bland I can hardly eat it."

"Hey! Look! It's Castle."

Sure enough, Castle was sitting at a table at an outdoor café.

"The place looks expensive." Ryan said, always mindful of costs.

"We'll get Castle to pay. He hasn't been to the precinct for at least a week. He'll be happy to buy us lunch for anything about Beckett."

Ryan decided it would be a very bad idea to mention his deal with Castle and quietly agreed.

By the time they had parked and walked back to the café, they saw that Castle was sitting with three men.

"He's got company."

Espo shrugged. "The place is busy, maybe they just asked to share his table. Besides, they look more like they're Alexis' age. Friends of hers maybe? And I'm hungry."

Castle saw them as they walked up. "Detectives Ryan and Esposito. What are you doing here?"

The two detectives noticed the three young men quickly look at them and then just as quickly look away, guiltily. They gave the men the once over. They were young, but a few years older than Alexis, maybe mid-twenties. A Caucasian, a Hispanic and an African-American, stockily built and fairly well dressed in slacks, jackets and open necked shirts. The white guy smiled at them, but the other two looked away.

"Care to join us?" Castle said.

They grabbed two more chairs and sat down. "Who are your friends, Castle?' Espo asked. He noticed all three men look at Castle questioningly.

"They're not really friends. I had some trouble with the car and they helped me fix it."

Espo looked over at the three men. "What kind of trouble?"

"Just some crap in the carburetor. Bad gas, I imagine. Happens all the time with Mexican gas." That was the white guy.

"Mexico?" Ryan asked. "You from there?"

The white guy shook his head. "Across the border. Texas."

The African-American just nodded, but the Hispanic spoke. "I was born in El Norte, but I lived most of my life in Nuevo Leon, Mexico. Juarez, just across the border."

At that point the waitress arrived and Castle insisted on paying for everyone.

Ryan and Esposito did the best they could interrogating the men without being obvious about it, but got little more than their first names, James, Hernan and LoDon and that they worked as kind of glorified handymen back in Texas and were on vacation in New York.

When Castle and the men left, the two detectives sat at the table. "Odd group. They were nervous with us around."Espo said.

Ryan shrugged. "Maybe they had some pot or something on them. Young guys like that, could be."

"Still. They were kind of odd."

"Castle knows some odd people."

"Should we tell Beckett?"

Ryan shook his head. "Let her know we've been talking to Castle? No way."

Captain Kate Beckett knocked lightly on the office door at One PP, then stuck her head inside the office. "You wanted to see me, sir?"

Deputy Chief Victoria Gates nodded. "Come in, Captain Beckett. I've asked that we have this meeting in my office." Gates pointed to two men sitting to the side of her desk. "This is Lieutenant Probst from Internal Affairs and Special Agent Braun from DEA.'

Kate looked the two over as she took a seat. Probst was a tall, thin angular man with thinning sandy hair and a look of disapproval that seemed to be standard issue with IA personnel. He wore the blue power suit, white shirt and striped tie that IA types affected. Braun was younger, bulkier and more casually dressed: Boots, jeans, a blue tee shirt and a leather jacket, and long hair.

"Captain, you're married to the writer Richard Castle?" Probst began.

Kate nodded.

"But you're separated?"

"We not living together temporarily." Kate said, unsure what this was about and unwilling to be more cooperative until she knew.

"Do you intend to divorce your husband?"

"Absolutely not." She said quickly. "I love my husband and I intend to be married to him for the rest of my life. I just have a personal issue I need to resolve by myself." She looked at Gates whose face betrayed nothing and then back at Probst. "May I ask why my marriage is an issue?"

Probst smiled coldly. "No one said it was an issue, Captain. Your husband has been quite generous to you, hasn't he? He just gave you a diamond studded bracelet worth perhaps half of your annual salary?" He looked at a notebook. "And many other things."

"My husband is a millionaire many times over. If you're concerned that my lifestyle indicates I'm crooked, it doesn't." Kate wondered why her marriage was suddenly an issue. Had Castle said or done something?

Probst pushed a black and white photograph across Gates' desk to Kate. "Is this a photo of your husband?"

It showed Rick sitting at an outdoor café. Kate guessed it was in the East Village. She thought she even knew where it was. "Yes."

Probst put another photo in front of her. It was of Rick sitting at the same café with three men. "Do you recognize any of these three men?"

Kate looked at the three. They were unknown to her. "No."

The IA detective put three more photos in front of her. They were military ID photos of the three men. "Do you recognize them now? Their names are James "Cowboy" Coleman." He tapped the photo of a young white soldier. "Hernan "Tuco" Almagro." He was Hispanic and the last was African-American. "LoDon "Smooth" Johnstone. Has your husband or anyone else ever mentioned them to you?"

"No." Kate replied. "Why are you interested in Rick or these three?"

The DEA agent replied. "Them three was in the Army Rangers. Two combat tours in Iraq. Very well trained." He looked at Kate as if expecting a reply. Receiving none, he went on. "We've heard that they drive up to Colorado and get them a trunkful of pot and drive it on back to Texas."

"You've heard? To me that means you have no proof. And a couple of pounds of pot isn't going to get the DEA in an uproar, or IA. What's this all about? "

Probst ignored her question and put another surveillance photo in front of her. "Do you recognize these two men?"

The photo was of Ryan and Esposito sitting with Castle and the three men. "Of course. That's Detectives Kevin Ryan and Javier Esposito. They were part of my homicide team. They're eating with my husband, a man they've known and worked with for years."

Braun shrugged. "How about this man?" He put down another photo of a soldier. "William Gray, another Ranger veteran and a close friend of the other three. He's in bad shape. PTSD, residuals of traumatic brain injury, shrapnel wounds. He lives totally off the grid in the New Mexico desert. People coming up from Mexico with drugs, or people smugglers, didn't like having him on one of their routes into the US. They burned down his little shack and chased him away. His pals," He tapped the photos of the other soldiers, "came to see him. Intel says they ambushed a couple of trucks coming north loaded with drugs and killed everyone in them."

"Intel?" Kate said sarcastically. "Do you have any evidence that anyone has actually committed a crime? And is there some reason that something that may have happened in New Mexico would be connected to me or my husband?"

"Anyone?" Braun smiled and put another photo down. This one was of Rick and the three men, but was in color and at a different place. The other man in the photo caused a block of ice to form in Kate's stomach.

"Do you recognize him?" Probst asked.

"Yes."

"Who is he?"

"Cesar Vales."