“It was her mother. Not her father.”
It’s late, and today was a long day, which is why Esposito is startled to look up and see Richard Castle standing in front of his desk. The younger man is shifting his weight from foot to foot, and his eyes occasionally dart to one side or another. It’s not like his normal nervous energy. This is different, almost furtive. He’s hiding something.
“What are you doing here?” he asks the author. “Beckett went home a while ago.”
“Yeah, I know. But we’ve been…” he trails off. “I stayed late last night, too, Espo, and she told me. About her mother’s murder, I mean.”
“So?” He leans back in his chair and crosses his arms, not even tempted to offer anything. Castle’s an author, a dilettante, and Espo has no intention of letting Beckett’s deepest pain show up in an airport bookstore.
“So there has to be more to that story. Beckett wouldn’t just let it lie.”
“Case was closed a while back.”
“But how could she stand that with all those unanswered questions?” The words come out in a rush. “How can she live with that? Why doesn’t it drive her absolutely out of her mind?
He wonders what answer would satisfy Castle, how he can give the man enough to send him on his way with very little actual new information. To cover his thinking, Esposito takes his time while shutting down his computer, watching out of the corner of his eye. Now that Castle’s gotten the issue out in the open, he’s settling down and acting more like his normal self, the one that drives Beckett crazy in a way that he hasn’t seen since…well, since Sorenson, although it was never like this.
So he decides to take a chance, giving out a fact that can’t be used for much. “She did push. It nearly did her in. Montgomery had to threaten her badge before she would get help.”
And Castle goes absolutely still.
That gets Esposito’s attention. He didn’t even know Castle could do that. Despite his resolve to say nothing, he finds himself watching closer, wondering where in his head the other man has gone.
After a long moment, Castle takes a deep breath and comes back to the moment. “Did she figure it out?”
“Some threads got pulled,” he answers carefully. “A few details fleshed out. She knows more than she did before.”
“But she didn’t get to the bottom of it.”
Esposito doesn’t answer. Castle meets his eyes for a long moment, then drops his gaze and sighs. Apparently he’d known he wouldn’t get much, if anything, yet he’d asked anyway. It almost seems like he wasn’t able to bring himself not to ask. As if he cares too much to not at least try.
That’s worth a second thought, Espo decides. Nobody’s ever read Beckett as well as this man, not even him. That’s part of what drives Kate up the wall, but it’s also good for her and he knows it.
“No,” he finally acknowledges. “She didn’t get to the bottom of it.”
There’s another long pause, but Castle’s thoughts stay in the room this time. He takes a sharp breath before his next question. “What if I could look into it without telling her? Maybe I could find something. It’s still destroying her, Espo, even if she’s learned to leave it alone.”
He can’t bring himself to disagree with that statement.
“If I look, but I don’t get anywhere, she won’t have to know. But if I do find something, if there is an answer…well, she needs it. She deserves it. Doesn’t she?”
“Bro, she deserves a hell of a lot more than that. What she doesn’t deserve is someone hanging out all those details in some book for the whole world to see, just so he can make a few more sales.”
Castle’s lips thin and his gaze becomes stony, stubborn, opaque. His obvious offense at the suggestion is what pushes Esposito over the line into changing his mind. Just as the author turns to go, he speaks up again.
“Okay,” he says. “Come on. Let’s go.”
“What?”
Esposito doesn’t bother with an answer, instead leading him down to the records room and moving past more recent files, going toward the storage area where the older ones are kept. He goes straight to the file in question. He knows exactly where it is.
“Remember,” he tells Castle as he hands it over. “This never happened. I was never here.”
“You have my word. Thanks.”
Esposito presses, wanting to make his position crystal clear. “If you’re lying to me. If you tell her I did this, if you do anything that hurts her? I’ll make you bleed.”
Castle nods. “Understood.”
“Good luck.” With that, he walks out of the records room, leaving Castle there to do his review. In the hallway, he takes a long breath to clear his lungs and his mind. That was a horrible risk. If things go sideways and she finds out, she’ll never forgive either one of them.
But if they do work out, if Castle’s surprisingly-good investigative skills help solve that mystery, it’ll be worth it. It could bring an end to the pain she’s suffered for so very long, and free her up to find the life she should have had all along. The one where she was able to feel more deeply, to love more truly, than the mere shadows and paper descriptions the two of them had shared before he transferred into the Twelfth.
And that, he decides, is what’s most important.
END