24. Everybody's looking for something

Beckett finds the relevant Duane Reade easily enough. This isn’t her patch, but she’s lived in Manhattan all her life and it’s not too difficult to work it out.  She shows her shield to a passing store worker and swiftly finds that, as she had suspected, Mr Berowitz had never entered the store.  She starts to look around for bars immediately.  They aren’t far to seek.  She’s rapid and focused: half an hour is not very long and there’s a reasonable amount of ground to cover.

She doesn’t think, as she searches for Mr Berowitz, that she’s hiding from herself, Lanie, and above all Castle by doing this: using her detective skills, in which she has total and wholly justified confidence, to help someone else where she can’t see a way – hasn’t even looked for a way – to help herself.

The first two bars – it’s just as well she hadn’t bet the jewellery – are a bust. No-one remembers the man, or recognises the picture.  The third is a little more useful.

“Sure, lady. He came in just after opening.  Started on the beer.  ‘Bout lunchtime, had a whiskey chaser with a couple more beers.  I stopped serving him after the third whiskey, told him to go home an’ sober up.  Can’t afford for there to be trouble here.  You never know when a quiet drunk like that will snap.  I don’t need the beat cops takin’ an interest every night.  Bad for business.”  He stops suddenly, remembering that he’s talking to a cop.  “Not that there’s anythin’ that wouldn’t stand bein’ looked at,” he says hurriedly.  “Just the customers don’t like it.”

Beckett thanks him and leaves, and makes a little mental note that she should suggest – in a friendly, I-heard-something-that-might-be-useful way – to the local precinct that this bar might repay a random visit.  Co-operation, that’s the game.  You never know what might be important to another precinct, so it’s always best to pass it on.

She’s running out of the half-hour she said she’d be. She retraces her steps to the Berowitz apartment, heavily, trudging through the snow and slush.  She can see the pattern of her evening already, and it doesn’t involve blinis or shashlik.  It involves memories, and pain, and the death of hope.  She wishes she could simply turn tail and run away from all these people who lean on her, or who want more of her than she’s able to give.

The hope on Julia’s face dissolves instantly. “You didn’t find him?” she says hopelessly, and in it Beckett hears a tinge of you failed me.

“No. Julia… he was in a bar.  He was there till lunchtime, then he left.”   No point telling her that he’d been thrown out.  Not yet.  “Is there anywhere he might have gone?  Any places he went often, or friends he might go and see?”

“No.” Oh, hell.  This is really not going to be pretty, is it?  “Julia, I think we should see if he’s been picked up.  Can I use this photo?”  Julia is crying now.  Beckett understands that.  She’d done it so often herself, before and after she walked away, until the tears had run dry.  She pats Julia awkwardly on the back.  “I’ll need to go back to my precinct to do it.”  The abandonment on Julia’s face stabs sharply on her conscience.  “I’ll let you know as soon as there’s anything.”

All the way back to the Twelfth she relives the guilt and shame of abandoning someone who needs her: saving herself at the expense of another’s peace of mind. She can’t do what is needed from Mrs Berowitz’s home – but she could have stayed, and asked another to do it for her.  She was drowning in her grief, and had to swim for shore.  Alone.  Carrying another would have sent them both under.   Will send them both under.

But it hurts. Seeing the raw pain of abandonment in another set of eyes hurts.

She parks up at the precinct, notes without surprise that it’s coming up for seven pm, and attains her desk without needing to do more than wave briskly at the desk sergeant on her way past. She’ll order takeout in a while, when she’s hungry.  It doesn’t occur to her that she should be hungry now.  She hadn’t eaten her lunch, after all.

She starts the process of trying to find Mr Berowitz and, once she’s called each precinct – no point expecting it to be possible to run searches against the database this early in proceedings: it won’t yet have been updated reliably for anyone picked up this afternoon– makes herself a coffee and ponders pizza. She can’t be bothered with anything more complicated.  She calls up a delivery service, accepts that she’ll have to share the pizza with the desk sergeant, and promptly forgets about it.  She starts down the darker line of making enquiries of the morgue, thankful that Lanie had left for the day.  Some helpful – her mouth twists – person would undoubtedly let Lanie know she was calling, otherwise.

Since she’s here anyway, she might as well have a look at some more cold cases while she waits for her results. She ought to call Julia, too.  Presumably Mr Berowitz – what’s his first name?  She isn’t sure, offhand – hasn’t turned up at home, or Beckett would have got a call.  She pulls a file into the small puddle of light from the lamp on her desk.  Then she recognises that as her putting off the necessary but unpleasant act of calling Julia, and forces herself to dial.

“Julia? Kate Beckett.”

“Have you found him?”

“Not yet. All the enquiries are out, and I’m waiting for the results.  I’ll let you know as soon as I’ve heard anything.”

“Thank you,” Julia says faintly. It’s fairly clear that she isn’t holding out much hope.  She wouldn’t find any in the databases, either.  They’ve returned nothing, as yet.  Beckett’ll try again in a few hours.

When her phone buzzes, Beckett suddenly remembers about her pizza, and expects it’s the desk sergeant. She doesn’t look at the screen as she answers.  “Sergeant Baker?  Is that the pizza?  Wanna take what you want, and I’ll be down in a moment for the rest.”

“Beckett? Are you in the precinct?”  Oh, fuck.  What the hell is Castle calling her for?

“Yes.” No point denying it.  She’s given it away. Compartmentalise.  Again.

“Good. I’m coming over.”

“I’m busy.”

“New body? Can’t be.  You’d have called Ryan or Espo.”  No point denying that either, and from the smug, self-satisfied tone of Castle’s voice he’s been with them for the last couple of hours.

“Listen very carefully.”

“I vill say this only vonce?”

“What?”

“Bad UK TV show I saw once, on a book tour.”

“Castle, listen to me. Do not come to the precinct.  I am busy.  I do not have time to talk to you.”  There’s a click as the call is cut.  By Castle.  Good.  Maybe he has finally got the point. 

When her phone rings again it’s the desk sergeant. This time, she checks the screen before she answers, though.  With the way her luck’s running, it would be Lanie if she didn’t do that.

“Pizza here, Detective. Thanks for sharing.”  She goes down, retrieves the third that’s left – enough for her: Tony Baker knows how much he can take for dinner from every detective in the precinct – and wanders back up to her desk, starting on the first slice in the elevator.  It might not be blinis, or shashlik, but it’s fine.  If there were only some results on the search for Mr Berowitz, everything would be perfectly fine.  She disappears into the break room for some water and to start another coffee brewing, and returns to her comfort-food pizza.

She’s wiping her fingers on a handy Kleenex and finishing the coffee when there’s the first ping on her search. It’s come from the Tenth, over in Chelsea.  She takes the call.  White forty-something male found dead drunk outside a cheap bar.  Half frozen.  He’s in the cells, sobering up.  No wallet, no ID.   Looks like he’s been rolled.

“If I send you a photo, could you tell me if that’s your guy?”

“Sure. Would be good to get rid of him if it is.  He’s a mess.  Cell’s a mess.  We’ll need to hose it out.”  It’s worse when it’s your kitchen, Officer. Trust me, that’s worse.  She snaps the photo into being a photo on her phone and e-mails it off.  A few minutes later she gets the reply.  No. Sorry. 

Dammit. Of course it couldn’t be that easy or quick.  But it’s still snowing, and now she’s really beginning to worry.  If he hadn’t really been dressed for the weather, and he’d been thrown out one bar for being too wasted to be served, then he might well have wandered.  Might have fallen asleep, on a bench.  Might have frozen, and so died.  Every year, some do.  It’s only luck her father hadn’t.  Her next calls come from Midtown North, and South.  Nothing there, either. 

“What are you doing?”

Beckett’s head whips round. For one swift moment Castle sees absolute horror in her face, before she locks it all away.  Ah.  She still thinks she’d got rid of him.

“Working a case. Good night.”

“Uh-uh. I shadow you.  So I am shadowing you.”  He smiles sunnily.  “I’m staying till you leave.”

“You’ll be very bored. Go home.”

“Nope. If I’m bored, I’ll find a distraction.”  The smile is even sunnier.   Beckett looks as if she’s about to launch into a tirade of incandescent and – she would think – hurtful fury.   It won’t hurt him at all, because she’s trying to push him away, so he doesn’t believe a word she’s about to say.  Her mouth opens – and her phone rings.

“Beckett.”

“Yes?”

“Okay. I’ll be there as fast as I can.  Thanks.  I owe you, O’Leary.  I’m sure you’ll collect pretty soon.”

“Bye.”

She starts to pack up her desk and then put on her coat. No explanation is offered.

“What’s going on? Where are we going?”

“Nothing you need to know about.   Favour for a friend.  I thought I’d made it perfectly clear where I stood, and you certainly made it clear where you stand.  This is not your business.  Go home.”

“No.” Beckett freezes.  “I’m coming with you and then we are going to have a talk about what you said on Saturday.”

“Nothing more to say.”

“You might not have anything more to say, but you are damn well going to listen to me. You’re not going to stop me shadowing you, either.”  He’s not – yet – angry.  He is, though, determined.  He follows a silent Beckett to the elevator and out to her car, and gets in without a further word from her.

“Where are we going?”

“Central Park Precinct.” That’s bitten off.

“Why?”

“Nothing to do with you.”

“What’s happened to Mrs Berowitz?”

Beckett nearly runs the light. “How did you know?” she emits, utterly horrified.   She stares at him in the harsh red glare of the stop light under the streetlamps.  “This is nothing to do with you.”

“It’s nothing to do with you either, but here you are, running round the city in order to help out someone you don’t even know.”

“What I do off-duty is none of your business.”

“It’s not off-duty, though. You’re doing it as an NYPD Detective.  Aren’t you?”

He’s got her there. She is.  If she weren’t, she shouldn’t be using the systems, and if Montgomery found out, she’d be the wrong end of disciplinary proceedings.  But this is going to be difficult enough without Castle there observing every twitch of her face and hitch in her gait.  She had done this so often…  

“Yes,” she growls.

“Then I’m shadowing you.” There is an extremely chilly silence.  “Are you going to tell me anything?” 

“It’s not mine to tell.”

Castle decides to wait until after they’ve got to the Central Park Precinct.  And then he’s going to go home with Beckett and shake some answers out of her.  Or stroke them out of her.  Whichever works fastest.  The journey is completed in the same chilly silence with which it began. 

It doesn’t dawn on Castle till he steps out the car to enter the unfamiliar precinct that Beckett might be locked down because finding Mr Berowitz will raise the ghouls of sharp-clawed memory. How often, he wonders, had she done this to retrieve her father?  He unobtrusively moves a little closer.  Beckett doesn’t react at all.  Beckett, in fact, hasn’t even noticed.  Mainly because she’s staring at the desk sergeant.

“Sergeant Hardon? You’re still here?”

“Officer – sorry, Detective Beckett.  Haven’t seen you in a long time.  What brings you here?  It’s not your dad again, so what is it this time?”

“No. He’s still dry.”  She smiles, chopped off short.  “Five years.”  The smile disappears.  “Detective O’Leary told me you’d picked up a Mr Berowitz in the Park?  He’s involved in one of my cases, so I’ve come to take him off your hands.”

“Well, no-one better than you to deal with him, Beckett. He’s a mess.”  Castle detects a wince.

“Thanks,” Beckett says with a sardonic edge. “Will you give O’Leary a call?  Haven’t seen him in a while, either.”  The desk sergeant gives Beckett a grin and calls.

“While you’re catching up, I’ll get the guy up. You got something to keep your unit clean?  You might want it.”

“Yeah. Sheet in the trunk.”

“Beckett!” joyfully rumbles around the room. Shortly thereafter Beckett disappears into the embrace of something that appears to be a Bigfoot without fur.  He’s huge.  At least – Castle estimates – six-ten, broad in proportion, and clearly in top condition.  And he’s hugging Beckett – he’s lifted her off her feet – and isn’t dead.  “When’re you coming to spar with me again?  You don’t call, you don’t write…”  Castle is not used to feeling undersized, but he’s feeling very small right now.  And very unreasonably jealous.  Beckett’s relaxed and is smiling and he should be the one who can make her so, not this overgrown mass of masculinity with a badge.

“I don’t send you flowers either, O’Leary, but that’s ‘cause you ate the last lot.” She smirks at him.  “You were supposed to wear them in your hair.”  O’Leary has a buzz cut. 

“Not my colour, Beckett. You sent pink.  You know I only like orange.”  She laughs.  Laughs.  She’s been ignoring him all day – all week – and she’s laughing with this genetic mutation?  “Who’s your friend?”

“That’s Richard Castle. The novelist.  He’s shadowing us.”  O’Leary looks closely at him.

“Really?” He sounds amazed.  Castle is gearing up for a round of sarcastic and unpleasant comments about annoying tag-alongs.  Bit like a lot of the Twelfth had managed in the first day or two, in fact.  “He’s nicer looking than his picture, Beckett.  How come you scored the pretty boy and I didn’t?” Hold on a moment, what? “I never get the good ones.  Can’t you send him our way for a while?”

“O’Leary, you’re taken. Stop hitting on the man.” What?

“Shhhhh, Beckett. Don’t tell everyone.”

“They all know. Ever since you brought Pete to the NYPD Christmas party.”  Castle’s jaw drops.

“Yeah, but you got a celebrity.  Think how much kudos I’d get with him on my arm.  I’d be on page six.  You don’t really need him.  You’re pretty enough without adding the pretty man.  C’mon.  Lend me him just for a day or two.”  The man is practically pleading to be allowed to play with him.  Castle contemplates how nice it is to be appreciated.  Then he contemplates the likely effects of this tectonic plate-sized cop knocking him over.  He thinks he’ll stick with Beckett.  He’s rather less likely to suffer serious injury if she falls on top of him.

“Nothing doing, O’Leary. If he wants to come and hang out here that’s his lookout.  Up to him.”

O’Leary pouts. Beckett rolls her eyes at him.  “No.  I’m not getting you dates.  Get your own dates.”  Teeth the size of tusks appear as O’Leary grins widely.

“Beckett, you are no fun at all. If you won’t lend me him, d’you think he’ll sign my book?”

“Ask him yourself. He’s right there, and as far as I know he’s not deaf or stupid.  Though if he’s not stupid he should really start running right now.”

The mountain turns to Castle, who produces a bright celebrity smile.

“If I go get my book, will you sign it? It’s Storm Fall.  Couldn’t come to the signing.”

“Sure,” Castle says, burying his bemusement at the whole situation under the exigencies of being a best-selling author. O’Leary rumbles away, and shortly rumbles back again.  Castle has never seen a mobile mountain before. The book looks tiny in O’Leary’s enormous hands.

“What’cha writing now, Mr Castle?”

“About the NYPD. That’s why I’m shadowing Beckett and her team.”  O’Leary makes a noise like an avalanche.  Eventually Castle realises he’s laughing. 

“Well, Mr Castle, if you want some stories you come by. I remember when Beckett wasn’t a hotshot Detective.”

“O’Leary…” Beckett says dangerously.

“Really?” Castle says, with a sidelong glance at Beckett.

“Oh yes. You’d never think such a tiny little thing could be so scary, would you?” Tiny little thing?  Beckett? Tiny?

“O’Leary, it’s not me who’s little, it’s you who’s a giant.”

“You’re little,” he says happily. “Bet’cha if you took your heels off Mr Castle would think you’re little too.”  Beckett growls at him.  “Aw, c’mon.  If I can’t tease you in front of your boyfriend when can I?”

“What?”

“Aw, c’mon,” O’Leary says again. “Way he was looking at me hugging you?  If he’s not your boyfriend, you really need to have a chat.”  He grins mischievously.  “But if he isn’t please can I have him?”

Beckett has lost her smile and is clearly on the verge of bursting. Possibly into flames. Very fortunately for both Castle and O’Leary, who Castle is now thinking is a really, really good guy with whom he should have a long and detailed discussion involving much beer, at that point Sergeant Hardon reappears with something that looks like a panhandler who’s found the stock room of a really good tailor.

“Here he is, Detective.” Necessary paperwork is completed.  Castle spends the couple of minutes Beckett takes to complete the papers in observing Mr Berowitz, while trying not to inhale any air that’s been too close to him.  It’s fortunate, he reflects, that it is late, and the roads will not be too busy.  The close confines of Beckett’s car are, bluntly, going to reek, even with the windows down and the air-con running on full, both of which he really hopes he can arrange.  Now he understands why the sergeant had asked about keeping her car clean. 

Beckett appears entirely unaffected by the state of Mr Berowitz. Clearly, however, both the sergeant and Detective O’Leary are expecting that she is affected by it, because they are now both regarding her as if she were a primed grenade.

“Thanks,” is all she says. “I’ll take him away now.”

It appears that Mr Berowitz is currently too drunk to care that Beckett is removing him. She guides him out with a hand on his shoulder, which gesture Castle would not have made for the entire total of his last Derrick Storm royalties, and steers him to her car. 

“Make sure he doesn’t wander, Castle,” she says. Her voice is empty, and he wonders what her memories are.  She pops the trunk and extracts a plasticised sheet, which she rapidly, efficiently and in a thoroughly practiced fashion drapes over the back seats.  “Bring him here.”  She puts Mr Berowitz into the back seat in standard cop fashion, hand pressing down on his head.  Then she brings a plastic bowl out the trunk and puts it on his lap.  “I won’t make you sit with him, Castle.  You’re not a beat cop.  Get in.”  Her voice is just as dead as a moment ago.  He doesn’t query anything.  Making Beckett’s life harder at this point is not sensible.

Mr Berowitz survives the journey without further inconvenience to anyone except the stink of stale vomit and alcohol. Castle rolls his window down before he’s even fastened his seatbelt and makes absolutely no comment or conversation at all.  Not soon enough they’re parking at the Berowitzes’ block.

Beckett extricates Mr Berowitz – she doesn’t ask Castle for help and something about the experienced way she brings him out the car lets him know that this is not her first rodeo, nor yet her thousand-and-first, but he props him up as Beckett shuts the car, and then takes quite a proportion of his weight. His coat can be cleaned.