721. Chapter 721

After Smells Like Teen Spirit

Episode 6.15

By

UCSBdad

Disclaimer: If I had magical powers, I might own Castle, but I don't. Rating: K Time: See above.

"Do we have an ID on the vic?" Kate asked.

Lanie looked up. "I just got here, girlfriend. But his passport says he's Chris Sunderland."

"Known professionally as Chris South." A man standing in the doorway of the dressing room said.

"And you are?" Kate asked.

"Mike Brewer, US agent for the Tartans, who are big in the UK. They're a group that's into the whole 80's retro scene. You know, the grunge bands, Pearl Jam, Stone Temple Pilots, Nirvana. Actually, they do a pretty good cover of a lot of Kurt Cobain's stuff. Chris was the keyboardist. Damned good, too. Damned shame he ended up like this."

Kate and Rick took Brewer out into the hall so they could talk to him more privately.

"Did he have any enemies?"

Brewer looked around. "Not in the US Detective Beckett. This is their first time in the US."

"But he did have enemies." Castle said. "Perhaps an enemy that could get on a plane and some to the US?"

Brewer nodded. "About five years ago, Chris cut a single in the UK called Dark of the Night. It was all about lost love and loneliness, depression and…suicide."

"Is it possible he killed himself?"

"No it isn't." Lanie called out. "He was stabbed in the back and unless he was good enough to do that and then hide the knife so I can't find it, he was murdered."

"So, what about his enemies. Can you give me their names?"

"No, I can't."

Kate stared very hard at Brewer. "Mr. Brewer, I'd suggest that you cooperate…"

"What I'm saying is I don't know their names. And there are thousands of them, maybe tens of thousands."

Kate sighed. "Would you like to explain that?"

"Like I said, he had this song, Dark of the Night. It got some play in Europe, but not much. But a year or so ago, some guy in Italy who was in one of the neo-fascist parties over there used the tune, but wrote different words to it. All about getting rid of refugees, sinking people smuggler's boats full of Africans, raping and killing women of color, "cleansing" Europe, as they called it. The whole neo-Nazi thing. Well, Chris was a real caring, concerned kind of guy. He hated having his song used like that. He started taking people to court in Italy for copyright violations."

"He would have won, wouldn't he?" Castle asked.

"You have to understand, these were basically garage bands doing these songs, and they'd have some guy who made pirated CDs and DVDs run up a few hundred to sell in some two-bit bar where they'd play. By the time Chris found them, the bands had broken up, the video pirates had left town and no one knew anything. And a month later, a new band would start the whole thing over again. Or, sometimes a bunch of fascists would go to a soccer match and sing the songs. Some of the fans of European soccer clubs can be pretty racist. They didn't like the fact that Chris was suing other fascists, so he got death threats, and worse. They also made a point of telling everyone that Chris had composed the music. Like he believed in the crap they believed in."

"Do you have any names? Anything that would identify them?"

Brewer shook his head. "Chris's Italian lawyer might. I don't."

They talked to the other band members and everyone who'd been at the club where Tartan was playing at the time of the murder, and while all of them knew about Chris's problems, no one could give even a single name of anyone who might have wanted Chris dead.

Back at the precinct, Castle was listening to Dark of the Night while Kate had the boys calling people in the UK and Italy.

"Anything interesting on the recording, Castle?"

He grimaced. "I think if I actually listened to it one more time, I'd commit suicide. It's gruesomely depressing. He talks about putting a shotgun in his mouth like he's having oral sex with it."

"And the orgasm is…?" Kate asked.

"Exactly what you'd expect." Castle took his earbuds out. "That's it. Don't you listen to it."

She smiled. "Protecting me?"

"Always."

They talked to the Italian lawyer Chris had hired. He was able to give them a half a dozen names, but did confirm that there were thousands of neo-fascists who might have wanted to hill him. Kate ran the names they had past immigration. None had entered the country.

The next day, Chris's financials came in. Ryan found something interesting. "It seems that Roger Burnham, the bass guitarist, and Charles Woods, a roadie, were each paying Chris five hundred pounds a month, going back over a year. But there's no record of what the payments were for."

Kate smiled. "Funny neither of the two mentioned that little fact to us. We should pay them a call."

Rick and Kate took Roger Burnham while Espo and Ryan took Woods.

"So I was paying my mate five hundred quid. So what?"

"That's a lot of money." Kate said. "And now you don't have to pay it. Sounds like motive to me."

Burnham looked at his feet. "It was for his little sister. I got her pregnant, the little slut."

"Yeah, it's always the girl's fault." Castle said sarcastically.

"Look, I've got a wife and I love her. But if she found out, we'd be over. So, I agreed to pay him so he could provide support for her and no one needed to know."

"You did what?" Ryan asked Woods.

"I got Chris's little sister Lisa pregnant. But she didn't want an abortion and she didn't want to marry me, 'cause I'm just a lowly roadie. So I agreed to pay Chris five hundred a month for him to give to her and we'd be cool. He even said he'd make sure they kept me as a roadie so's I'd have the money to pay what I owed."

"That sounds like motive to me." Espo said, smiling.

The two teams rushed to tell each other that they had a suspect with a motive.

"Woods got the girl pregnant?" Kate said." But Burnham said he got her pregnant. One of them is lying!"

"I think we need to have someone talk to young Lisa. Lisa's got a lot o' 'splaining to do." Castle added.

They got the British police to talk to Lisa and two days later, they had some answers.

"Lisa confirmed that she was screwing both men and one of them got her pregnant, but she doesn't know which one. She said her brother, Chris, was mad at both guys and wanted to make both of them pay. Lisa went along with it because a thousand pounds is better than five hundred." Kate summarized. "So, if one of them found out…" She smiled coldly. "We'll need a search warrant."

"It was Woods, sir. We found traces of Mr. Sunderland's blood on his clothes. He's confessed." Kate explained to Captain Gates. "He never found out that Burnham had also slept with Lisa and was also paying support for her, but as a roadie the five hundred pounds was taking a large chunk of his salary away. Burnham, on the other hand, could afford it easily. Woods claimed he just wanted to talk, but Chris got angry and threatened him. He said he grabbed a knife to defend himself and it somehow got into the vic's back."

"Do you think a jury will buy that?" Gates asked.

Kate shrugged. "That's not our job, sir."

"Okay. You can write it all up tomorrow, Detective."

As they walked into the loft, Rick spoke. "I learned one thing on this case."

"Don't cheat people?"

"I already knew that. What I learned is there's one song that will never be played at our wedding"

Author's note: Feeling better, but not 100% yet.