548. Chapter 548

After Disciple

Episode 6.09

By

UCSBdad

Disclaimer: I don't even own a copy of Castle. Rating: K Time: See above

She woke up with her head pounding and feeling sick to her stomach. Crap. What kind of shit was I doing last night? Must have been something good. Or bad. She managed to get her eyes opened and looked around her. She had no idea where she was. Cheap hotel. Not like I never woke up in one of those before.

She stood up and sat back down on the bed at once, feeling dizzy. Oh, girl. Did you party last night or what? I just wish I could remember it. She leaned against the night stand and made it to her feet. She walked to the window, opened the blinds and looked out. She could see the New York skyline. Damn! I'm in Brooklyn. How the hell did I get here?

She noticed that she was naked. Not the first time I've woken up naked in a strange place before. I used to wake up in nicer places, though. That got her thinking about her purse. She wanted to know how much she'd gotten paid for last night. She looked around. Nothing. She checked the closet. Still nothing. "Shit!" She said, making her head hurt. "The bastard stole my purse. And my damned clothes. What kind of freak…." She stopped. She knew very well what kind of freaks were out there.

She felt like she needed to throw up and ran to the bathroom. Kneeling by the toilet she vomited only bile. After she was done with the dry heaves, she stood up shakily. This is the worst thing that has ever happened to me. It was only a few seconds before she realized she was wrong.

She turned on the hot water in the sink and glanced in the bathroom mirror. "What the fuck! What…What happened to my face?"

Her screams brought the manager and he called the police. All he needed was some deranged hooker screaming that someone had changed her face.

Detective Kate Beckett and Richard Castle walked into the unfamiliar 74th Precinct in Brooklyn and went to the shift sergeant. "Detective Kate Beckett and Mr. Castle. 12th Precinct Homicide. Is she here?"

The sergeant nodded. "She is. We'd have sent her to Bellvue with such a crazy story, but Detective Rosetti knows you from the Academy. Said she looked just like you. The face anyway."

"Where is she?" Castle asked.

"Interrogation Two."

"Can we observe her for a few minutes?" Beckett asked.

"Knock yourselves out. Interrogation is down the hallway to your left. Can't miss it."

Castle and Beckett observed the woman as Kate read through her file. "Carolyn Schuster, AKA Carol Cox. Ex-porn actress, multiple arrests for soliciting and a year upstate for breaking a bottle over the head of another working girl."

"And from the neck up, she looks exactly like you."

"But she's five feet, one, and hardly a hundred pounds. According to her records, she had a boob job and it shows."

"I hadn't noticed." Castle said innocently.

Kate smiled. "Let's go talk to her."

As soon as she saw Beckett, Carol Cox shot to her feet. "That's this face! Did you do this to me? I'll sue you! I'll sue the NYPD! You can't get away with this!"

They calmed her down and convinced her that they had nothing to do with her new face.

"What can you tell us about what happened, Ms. Cox?" Beckett asked.

"I was at Mickey's on Lexington, having a Coke, when this guy starts talking to me. Nice looking, mid- thirties, suit and tie. He bought me a drink and paid with a hundred. I could see he had plenty more where that came from."

"And then?"

Cox looked back at them and said nothing.

"We're not Vice cops. We know you're a hooker, but you talk to us, tell us everything you know and you're out of here. Okay?"

Cox shrugged. "He asked me how much for all night. I quoted him five hundred dollars, which is more than I usually make in a night, but he's got a lot of money, so why not. He agrees. Doesn't try to argue me down or nothing. We leave and get in his car…"

"What kind of car?" Castle asked.

"Cadillac. Four door. I don't know the year or the model. I'm not a car girl."

"And then?"

"He took me to his apartment."

"Where was the apartment?"

Cox shrugged. "No idea."

"You have no idea?" Castle asked, clearly disbelieving her.

"I was already on the clock, so to speak. I had my head on his lap, if you catch me, pretty boy."

"How long did it take you to get there? And what time did you leave Mickey's?" Beckett asked.

"We left at about eleven, maybe eleven thirty. The ride was twenty minutes, maybe a half an hour. Hey, I was busy."

"So you could have been just about anywhere in the Manhattan, maybe Brooklyn, Queens or the Bronx?"

Cox shrugged.

"Was the man who picked you up one of these men?" Beckett handed her a sheaf of photos, one of whom was Jerry Tyson. Cox said it was none of them.

"Will you sit with a sketch artist to describe the man?"

She nodded.

"You had a boob job." Castle spoke. "Where?"

"Florida. About five years ago."

"Did this woman do the procedure?" Beckett handed her a phot of Kelly Nieman.

Cox shook her head. "It was a guy. Dr. Zimmerman. He was in his sixties, talking about retiring. Never saw the chick."

"What happened once you got to his apartment?"

"He offered me a drink and the next thing I know I wake up in some dump in Brooklyn. With your face. Was I really out for two weeks?"

They interrogated her for another hour, but got nothing useful out of her.

The next day Ryan and Esposito reported to Beckett. "The people at Mickey's and at the SRO in Brooklyn are deaf and blind. They don't see or hear anything, ever. We got nothing on the guy who picked up Carol Cox or who dumped her in the SRO later. Zip. Nada."

Two days after that, Castle and Beckett found themselves standing in an observation room in Queens, listening to a detective. "Carl Sherman, thirty one, no record. Works as a fitness instructor at Body Sculpt, an upscale gym. A week ago he's walking home, a chick trips and turns her ankle. She asks him for help in getting to her apartment. She's cute, so he helps her out. They get to her place, and she offers him a drink. He wakes up two weeks later in a parking garage here in Queens with a new face. Go figure."

Castle shook his head. "Just like yours, this one makes no sense. He's five, ten and weighs two fifty. Solid muscle and bone. Just his face looks like me. No one who knew us would believe that's me. No one."

"And they're both alive." Kate added. "That's not Tyson's MO."

"He did say he changed his MO, but a serial killer changing his MO to not killing? No way."

"He's up to something."

"Let's go see if we can figure it out."

But Sherman was no help. And the apartment was unrented. CSU found the old door lock inside the apartment. It had been picked. A new lock was on the door so that the woman could use a key to get in. No one could identify the girl and the apartment had been scrubbed clean.

The four sat around Kate's desk after Gates had left. "Can anyone make any sense out of this?" She asked.

No one could. Even Castle had no strange, bizarre theories to offer.

"Keep at it." Kate said.

Mr. and Mrs. King were a quiet couple, living in Evanston, just outside of Chicago. Not unfriendly, people said. Just quiet. Didn't socialize at all.

"That was particularly unsatisfying." She said.

"It served its purpose. It got them thinking about something that's basically meaningless. We won't use that again, at least not with them. And it'll make them think and worry about things that are unimportant. After all, I kill blonde women, not brunettes or men."

She smiled. "That's what I do."