59. Tearing you apart

Beckett can barely see the road through blurred eyes, and wipes her nose at every cross-street. She’s finally smashed her last taboo in temper and hurt, because her father wants a happier family than she can ever be.  She wants, very badly, to stop at a store and buy booze, but she doesn’t.  She won’t go down like he did.  Pride keeps her driving till she gets to her alcohol free home; pride keeps her upright as she closes her door; pride moves her through her night-time routine and into bed.

Pride is all she’s got to keep her going. And if her father’s finally broken her, she who had never broken in these ten years of saving him and now having it all thrown away because he wants to be part of a family, then she’ll cling to her pride to glue herself back together.  Clearly she doesn’t count as family.  Clearly he’s never really forgiven her for walking away, and all his talk that she saved him was a lie.  A lie for a lie.  All the last five years, all a lie.  She’d sacrificed everything to make them a family for five whole years, and it had all been for nothing.  She’d done it all because she’d thought that he wanted a family again, that he needed her.  But she’s not enough family for him and he didn’t need her.  She’s wasted her life on him: spent all this time protecting him from her feelings – feelings she’d kept rammed down and hidden away so well she hadn’t realised she had them – and it’s all been utterly pointless because he never wanted or needed her anyway.  She should have known. Only he could save himself. 

She hasn’t answered her phone once. She’s stayed as resolutely uncontactable as the first time, at the same immense cost.  But she can’t do it.  She can’t pretend any more, if her father doesn’t think they’re a family.  She can only try to save herself from the wreckage.

She cries herself to sleep, no matter how much pride tries to stop the tears, and in the morning is extra-careful with her make-up. Emergency eye-drops take most of the red puffiness away, and blending covers the shadows beneath.  Work has always been her solace and salvation, and today is no exception.  It’s the one place she’s safe.  Ryan and Esposito don’t ask questions, and it’s only paperwork unless a new body drops so likely Castle won’t come in.

She’s dealing with yet another cold case file, pretending to be placid, when the next body drops. While she is desperate for the distraction: work in which she can lose herself and simply be the best, be enough, she really doesn’t want to see Castle while she’s still scraped raw on her father’s decision that Castle’s family is where he’d rather be.  It reminds her far too much of how her father has just abandoned her.  However much she appreciates the peace Castle can bring her, she’d rather have had a day to cover it all over.  She’s not going to get it, though.  She takes a deep breath, and dials.

“Beckett,” Castle says happily. “We got a new body?  Please tell me we’ve got a new body.”

“We’ve got a new body. Meet me at East River Bikeway opposite East 6th.  All I know is it’s female, so far.  See you there.”

“Be there in a few moments.” He sounds utterly enthusiastic as the call ends.

Beckett gets to the bikeway to find Ryan and Esposito standing by a corpse in the tree-spattered verge outside the fencing of the East River Park Track. Naturally, Lanie is the attending ME.  Just what she didn’t need.  At least she knows that Perlmutter wouldn’t pry.

“What do we got?” she says, and takes some pleasure in the ungrammatical construction.

“Female. Delaine Roberts, age 29, from her licence.”

“Blunt force trauma to the head and chest,” Lanie says, very professionally and very coolly. “Might have been a baseball bat, but there’s a lot of blood.  I need to get her back to the morgue to see if there’s more to it.  Time of death looks like around three, four hours ago.”

There is indeed a lot of blood. And brains, and mess.  Beckett pulls on gloves and delicately checks the inside of the woman’s purse, lying beside her body.  “No wallet, no cash.  No phone.”

“Phone was in her pocket, Beckett,” Espo says. “I got it already.”

“Good.” She extends a hand, and the bag containing the phone passes between them.  “Looks like a standard mugging, at first glance.”

 “But you think it wasn’t,” comes Castle’s voice from behind her.  Beckett jumps, and nearly plants her ass in the earth.

“I’m sure it wasn’t. Too much violence for a mugging, and why kill her?  Look at her.  She’s tiny.  If she’s 5’2” I’ll eat my hat – and they’ve left a rather pretty necklace, bracelet and rings – so she’s married – and her phone.  If they were muggers they’d have taken the lot.”  She straightens up.  “Okay.  Dr Parrish, you can take her away.  Can I have a better time of death as soon as you know it, please?”  She turns away from Lanie, whose expression indicates that she’s not impressed by Beckett’s formality and dismissal of her as just another part of the scene-of-crime team.  “Get the sweepers to see if they can pick up blood trail or footprints or anything.  Any cameras round here?”

“No,” Ryan says, with some annoyance. “Nearest are on 8th and 9th, other side of FDR Drive.”

“Get them anyway. Maybe there’ll be something on them.  Let’s get back and start running her – Espo!”

“Yo?”

“Get uniforms to start canvassing, see if anyone saw anything, even if it’s street people. ‘Kay?”

“On it.” He disappears to start handing out orders.

“Ryan, see you back at the precinct with any footage, okay?”

“On it,” he also says, and disappears.

“Castle, c’mon. We’ll start finding out who she is.”

“Okay.” He pauses, and looks closely at her.  She thinks he’s about to say something, when he obviously decides against it.  “Let’s go.”

Castle could tell from the moment he arrived at the scene that something is very wrong with Beckett, and it’s not only Lanie’s presence. The stress fractures are back in her voice, lurking under her normal on-the-job command tones, and her shoulders are tight.  When she stands up, packs off the rest of the gang to an assortment of necessary actions and finally turns so he can see her face, it’s clear to him that her make-up is hiding a distressed night about which she didn’t call him.  He almost says so, but shuts his mouth in time.  Saying did you have a row with your dad isn’t a conversation to be had over a new corpse.  Nor is why didn’t you call me.  Anyway, he knows exactly why she didn’t call: it’s the same reason she wouldn’t let him in after last Sunday’s fiasco.  She feels that she’s let herself down, or she can’t bear the contrast with her own father, and she can’t stand anyone else seeing either matter.

Still, in her cruiser, before she moves off, he skates fingers softly over her hand and then grips it, just once. I’m here, I’m here for you.  He doesn’t expect a response, and is therefore not surprised when she doesn’t press in return.

“Not now. Please,” she says, and the rest of the journey proceeds in silence, during which time Castle worries more and more.  He is already plotting how to call Jim, and when – as soon as he can plead a need for a break, he thinks. 

Back at her murder board Beckett is absolutely her normal precinct self, terrifyingly focused on Delaine Roberts. She hands the phone off to a tech to extract the number and contacts, and starts to draw her timeline.

“Okay,” she says, “she’s married, and she was beaten to death – probably – between seven and noon this morning.”

“That’s a bit wider than Lanie thought?”

“When Dr Parrish” – Castle winces at the evidence of the damage to Beckett and Lanie’s friendship, though fortunately she can’t see it – “firms up, we’ll narrow it down. Weather’s been so variable, we need to be careful.  Let’s start running her.”

Mrs Roberts turns out to live in Stuyvesant Town. Shortly after that, they’re knocking on her door.  It’s opened by a dishevelled-looking man, yawning widely.  He looks as if he’s hurriedly got out of bed and thrown on jeans and a t-shirt, run his hands through his light brown hair.  He’s wearing a wedding ring which matches the one on Mrs Roberts’ finger.

“Mr Roberts?”

“That’s me.” His expression is confused.  “Dr Trey Roberts.  What d’you want?”

“Detective Kate Beckett, NYPD. I’m sorry to tell you that your wife has been killed.”

“No!”

He falls apart in front of them. Beckett walks in, followed by Castle, who shuts the door.  Beckett’s hands are fully occupied steering Dr Roberts to a chair and sitting him down in it.  Fat, ugly tears are on his chiselled cheeks.  Castle looks around and spots a box of Kleenex, passes it to Beckett, who hands it to Mr Roberts. 

“Dr Roberts, I know this is hard for you. Could you tell me about your wife?”

Through tears and sniffing, he does. “Della was a physiotherapist.  Had a good practice.  Doing really well.”

“What do you do?”

“I’m a doctor. A resident at Bellevue.  Trauma – I was on nights this week, so I only got in early afternoon, maybe at two, when I got done with my surgery list.  Della usually went out around seven, so I didn’t see her.”

“Did you see her last night?”

“Yeah. We had dinner, chicken and salad, nothing fussy, then I had to go to work.”

“Why would Della be down at the East River Park this morning?”

His mouth drops open. “What?  Della?  She wouldn’t.”

“I’m afraid she did. She was found on the East River Bikeway.”  Beckett spares him the details.  It’s going to be bad enough later, and his whereabouts will be easy to check.  She needn’t say that now. 

“Dr Roberts, is there someone who can come and be with you?”

He starts to well up again.   “No.  My family’s in Wisconsin.  Della was from Indiana.  We met at NYU.  I just wanna be on my own.”

“I’ll need to talk to you again, Dr Roberts, but not today.   I’m sorry for your loss.”

Castle has stayed completely quiet, unusually. He’s thought that the best thing for this morning is to let Beckett do what she does best, empathise with the grieving husband and do her job.  She needs her work.  (She needs him, too, but not now.)

“We’ll check with Bellevue, but I don’t think it’s him.” She scrunches up her nose and chews her lip thoughtfully.  “Who’d want to beat a physiotherapist to death?”

“Anyone who didn’t like the pain,” Castle says. “Physio hurts.”  

She turns to look at Castle. “Yeah, I know.  But murder is a bit extreme.  What’s the story here?”

“If I were writing it,” Castle muses, “I’d make it look like professional jealousy. She sounds quite successful, and she’s still quite young.  Bit like you, really.   But it could be a patient.”

“If it was a patient, though, how are they going to be strong enough to beat her to death? Physio is usually about people who aren’t physically fit.  That took muscle, and fury.”

The conversation has taken them back to the Twelfth. Beckett scribbles on her board until the boys show up.  There is no useful camera footage, which is annoying.  On the other hand, the phone has been persuaded to spill its guts out to the techs, and there is a list of contacts and a list of numbers which Della called, together with numbers who’d called her, already.  Beckett smiles with feral satisfaction.

“Ryan?”

“Yo?”

“Get these numbers identified. And this time if you find something good leave it on the top of the pile, not the bottom.”  Colour taints his cheeks.

Before she can set Espo off on checking out Mr Roberts, her phone rings.

“Beckett.”

“Kate, I got your lab results.”

“Thank you, Dr Parrish. I’ll send Detective Esposito to see you.”

“You what?”

“You heard. Detective Esposito will be over shortly.  Thanks.”  She cuts the call.  “Espo, you’re on morgue duty.”

“Uh? You don’t wanna hear it first hand?”

“No. I wanna try and get the patient list, and check out Dr Roberts’ alibi.  So Bellevue for me, and then her wellness centre.  You go to the morgue.”

Espo looks as if he’s about to argue, then does as he’s told. Beckett is fairly certain that he’ll be wanting a chat later, but she won’t be there.  She doesn’t need Dr Parrish’s patent brand of intrusiveness today.  She doesn’t need it any day.  She doesn’t, in fact, need Dr Parrish outside the job at all.  Not if she can’t be a friend rather than a pseudo-psychiatrist.  And since twice she’s shown that she can’t, there’s no point.  Beckett’s done trying with her too.

The thought twists her face and her gut, and she excuses herself to the restrooms, missing Espo’s piercing stare after her, missing Castle’s concerned look.

“What’s goin’ on?” Espo asks. “Beckett never hands off seein’ the corpse and the lab results.”

“I don’t know,” Castle lies. He knows perfectly well.   Beckett doesn’t want to see Lanie, but it’s not just that.  If it had only been Lanie’s fight with Beckett, she’d have done it, just like previous times.  It’s the cumulative effect of Lanie’s – as Beckett sees it – calling her out and not being her friend at all and whatever has gone down with her father.  In fact, now might be a good time to call Jim.

“Better get to the morgue,” Espo decides, which will certainly save him a world of hurt if he’s still in the bullpen when Beckett reappears.

Castle gives Espo a few minutes’ clearance and then slips out of the bullpen. He wanders around the corner into Beckett’s favourite coffee bar (he’ll bring her back one), orders, seats himself in a quiet table and stares at Jim’s number in the list on his phone.  With a sense of considerable trepidation, he taps it and listens to it ring.

“Jim Beckett.” It’s the professional voice, and it’s sober.  Even though Jim must know it’s Castle who’s calling, he’s answered as if it were work.  He probably is at work, Castle thinks, and relief descends over him.

“Jim, it’s Rick.”

“Rick? Rick, how’s Katie?”  Castle hears a door close, and the frantic note rising in Jim’s words.  “Is she okay?”  He can’t say that she is, because it’s clear Jim already knows she isn’t.

“She’s… not so good, but she’s at work and doing okay.” Castle evades, without any compunction.  He won’t be the one who breaks Jim by telling him that Beckett’s broken, though it sounds as if that may already have happened.  “She’s off her game, though, and I wondered if you knew what was wrong?”

There’s a silence, which stretches into pain. “Jim?”

“She walked out. She won’t take my calls.  She” – there’s a gulp – “she said she was done trying to be enough.  She just left.”

Oh, fuck.   Beckett finally totally lost it with her father.  “Why?”

“I wanted to know what was wrong. I thought maybe if I invited all of you over to dinner but she said she wouldn’t have it…”  Jim stops talking.  Castle thinks that probably Jim can’t force any more words out.  But Jim has made exactly the same mistake that he, Castle, did, weeks ago; trying to force Beckett into a mould she isn’t ready to fit. 

Castle has no idea what to say to Jim. He tries to imagine how he’d feel if it were Alexis, what he’d want to do, and the thought sears his heart.  Finally he finds some inadequate words.

“Jim. Don’t give up.  You’re her only family” –

Jim makes an agonised noise. “She said I could play happy families with all of you, if she wasn’t enough.”

Oh fuck, fuck, fuck.  Jim had slipped right into their happy family.  Beckett had said it: he wanted to be a family again, so I couldn’t have what I wanted.  But if Jim’s given her the impression that Castle’s family was more of a family than he and his Katie are, however wrong that impression is… oh, fuck.

“Jim, are you okay? Are you talking to Ed?”

“Yes.”

“Okay. Keep talking to Ed.  Will you trust me to keep Beckett safe?  I can’t tell you what she tells me, but will you trust me?”

“Got no choice, have I? If she won’t take my calls.  I can’t bear her walking away again.  She’s everything.  She’s my daughter, Rick.  She’s my daughter.”  The phone goes dead.

Castle studies the table with intense focus until the unnecessary blurring of his eyes has cleared. The pain in Jim’s voice had been overwhelming – and yet the man was sober.  His strength is extraordinary – so like his daughter.  Both of them utterly broken by the other, and both of them putting it aside, burying it, ignoring it.

He buys two coffees, and some pastries each for good measure, and goes back up to the bullpen. Beckett is sitting scowling at the murder board.

“Where’ve you been?”

“Getting coffee and pastries. I thought you might need some food.”

She smiles wearily. “Guess so.  We missed lunch.  What did you get?”

“Muffins and bear claws. I thought about doughnuts, but everyone else would try and steal them and I didn’t want to be responsible for you shooting your co-workers because your blood sugar is low.”

She manages a slightly less weary smile. “Guess Bedford Hills wouldn’t suit me?”

“I’d visit you. I’d even try to break you out.”

“How? Disguise me as an alien or make up something about me being an undercover agent?”

Castle humphs. “I’d think of something.  Anyway, eat up.  I brought all these lovely pastries and I can’t eat them all myself.”

She takes a bear claw and then a bite, and discovers that she really is hungry. It’s gone, and the other following it, in no time.  The coffee washes them down, and she sighs tiredly.  “That’s better.  I needed that.”

He props himself against the desk next to where she’s swinging her feet and no longer – quite – scowling at the board, unobtrusively and briefly covering her hand with his.

“So now what?”

“The centre she worked at won’t give me names without a warrant, and I can’t get a warrant without cause, and I don’t have cause unless one of those phone numbers pops, which will be hours. I can go to Bellevue and check out Dr Roberts’ alibi next, but after that there’s not a lot more to do till the phone records or canvassing give us a lead.  Guess I’ll go home, get an early night, start again in the morning.”

“Good plan, Beckett,” Montgomery says from where he’s sneaked up behind her. She jumps.

“Sir?”

“Get an early night and then start fresh. Good plan.”  He smiles as toothily as an alligator.  “Saves me having to tell you to do it.”

“Sir,” she says. “C’mon, Castle.  Let’s go check out this alibi.”  She packs up her desk, conscious that Montgomery is watching, and powers down her computer.

The staff at Bellevue confirm Dr Roberts’ presence at all times. It must have been a pretty busy night, because he didn’t seem to be out of anyone’s sight for a moment, still less long enough to get down to East River Bikeway and beat his wife to death.  Beckett crosses him off her list as a suspect, and determines to go to see him again tomorrow afternoon to discuss who might have hated his wife.

She drives smoothly round to drop Castle off at Broome Street.

“Do you want anything, Beckett?” Castle asks, far more in his voice than the words alone say. “I’ll come back with you, if you like.”

“Not tonight, thanks. Night.”

“Till tomorrow,” he says, leans over and swiftly kisses her. He’s out the car before she can react.  When he looks through the windshield, though, she’s almost smiling as she waves.  He’d believe in the smile more if he hadn’t seen her eyes brimming when he kissed her.