606. Chapter 606

After The Double Down

Episode 2.02

By

UCSBdad

Disclaimer: Do I have to tell you twice that I don't own Castle? Rating: K Time: See above.

Strangers Are a Pain

By

Richard Castle

Captain Nikki Heat, brought her two main detectives into her office. Raley and Ochoa, known in the precinct as Roach, sat down. "We have four new murders to work on now. Feller, Rhymer and Aguinaldo are lip deep in murders and the tide's coming in. I need you two to handle these. Okay?"

The two detectives exchanged glances. "Whatever you say, Captain."

Nikki smiled. She still enjoyed the newness of being called captain. "Good. The four are Lisa Evans, who was covered in breadcrumbs and pecked to death by pigeons in Central Park. Then Raul Ybanez had a safe dropped on his head at midnight on Lexington and Twenty Fifth. Next was Oleg Pentovsky who was thrown under a subway train. Last is a John Doe, who was tossed off a skyscraper in Midtown. No witnesses, CSU found nothing useful and Lauren Parry, our ME, came up with nothing."

"Not much to go on." Raley muttered.

"Which is why you need my help." Jameson Rook said, walking into Nikki's office. He leaned across her desk and gave his wife a quick kiss.

"And your help will be what? Locating rock groupies if one turns about to be a person of interest?" Nikki waited a beat and added, "Of interest to the NYPD, not to you."

Rook looked very hurt. "I haven't thought of another woman since I met you."

Nikki knew he was lying because their relationship had had more than its share of ups and downs, but she knew that Rook loved her as much as she loved him. "And what else can an intrepid reporter do for the NYPD?"

Rook smiled proudly and held up a piece of paper. "Please allow me to introduce myself, I'm a man of wealth and taste, I'm Jameson Rook, Private Investigator." He bowed as he handed his license to Nikki.

"Are you serious?"

His smile broadened. "Of course. I was bored and I decided, what better way to help the love of my life than to become a PI?"

"Why thanks, Rook." Raley said. "I feel the same, but aren't you afraid your wife will find out about us?"

"Are you afraid of being asked to search the sewers for evidence?" Nikki asked Raley with false sweetness. She turned to her husband. "Seriously, Rook, do you really think that a brand new PI license is going to make you any help to me?"

"Of course. In fact, I'm so sure of it, that I'll make you a bet. I'll solve these murders before you do."

Nikki looked skeptical and Roach laughed openly. "You're on. What'll we bet?"

Roach leaned in and whispered in Nikki's ear. She frowned, then smiled. "Oh, I'd love to do that to you. Deal."

"Except I'll be doing it to you." Roach smiled at his wife, nodded to the two detectives and turned to leave. "Oh, one thing. Just to show you how confident I am, you do know that all of these murders are connected, right?" Then he left.

"Connected?" Ochoa said. "I don't see it."

Nikki nodded. "I agree. But when we run phones and financials on our vics, we should get a pretty good idea if they had anything in common. Get on it."

While Roach got warrants for all the victims' phone and financial records, Nikki went to see the next of kin of the victims.

Lisa Evans' boyfriend, Abbot Costello, was quite distraught. "I can't understand why anyone would kill Lisa, and certainly not that way?" He sobbed.

"That way?" Nikki asked.

"She loved birds. She worked at the Queens Zoo Aviary. To have been killed by pigeons…" Costello began crying.

Raul Ybanez's brother, Igor, was equally distraught. "It was so tragic and quite ironic, as well."

"Ironic? In what way?"

"Raul was a locksmith. He specialized in opening safes."

Nikki approached the next question delicately. "Your brother didn't ever use his skills…inappropriately, did he?"

"You mean did he crack safes for fun and profit? No, he never did. He was an honest man, Captain Heat."

Next Nikki went to the mother of Oleg Pentovsky. Mrs. Pentovsky spoke only an obscure dialect of Tuvan spoken by a small group in Russian Central Asia. Luckily, Nikki had worked in Siberia as a used yurt saleswoman between her junior and senior years, and was fluent in that language. Nikki learned that Mrs. Pentovsky had begged her son not to ride the subway due to an ancient curse that had caused the male members of the family to die in subway accidents. The Pentovsky male subway curse, the old woman had called it. Nikki laughed scornfully at the old woman for believing such absurd superstitions. The old woman replied that the Pentovsky female curse involved dying by beer can. Nikki was still laughing when the beer can flew through the window and decapitated the old woman. Nikki stopped laughing.

Later that day, she got a phone call from her friend, Lauren Parry, ME. "Sweetie, I have on ID on your John Doe. He was a high wire artist named Vaughn Ericson. He worked at the Colin and Hunt Circus which is playing at Citi Field."

Nikki drove to Citi Field, and after breaking the arm of a clown who tried to squirt her with seltzer water, she interviewed the manager of the circus, Dave Joshua. "Ericson had lost it." The man snarled. "Couldn't handle the heights anymore. He'd fallen on his head too many times. He was a loser."

"Did he have any friends or relatives?" Nikki asked.

"None. He was a loner." Joshua thought for a moment. "He did like to get drunk and fool around with the target for the Great Sore One, the knife thrower. Her name's Meredith the Target."

"Is she available?"

"She is if you have ten bucks."

Meredith was busy bandaging herself when Nikki arrived. "Be with you in a sec, honey. Just put your money in the jar by the bed."

Nikki showed her badge. "I'm a cop."

"Okay, you get the ten percent cops' discount. If you just have a ten, I can give you your change in quarters."

Once Nikki had gotten Meredith's attention with her Taser, the redhead was quite cooperative. Nikki didn't even have to bounce up and down on her boobs with her four inch spike heels.

"Sure," Meredith said, "we'd get together now and again. But I was usually too drunk to understand him. This job is easier that way."

"Did Mr. Ericson have any enemies?"

"No, everyone loved him. If they had ten dollars."

"Pardon?" Nikki said, confused.

"Well, he couldn't do the high wire act anymore." Meredith stopped and frowned. "There was this skinny dog that had this thing for him."

"How did the dog ever get ten dollars?"

"No, I mean the dog hated him. Always barking, snarling and biting." Meredith explained.

Nikki drove back to the precinct, no closer to a solution than she was at the beginning.

"Do you have anything?" She asked Roach

The two detectives shook their heads. "Nothing. We've been over their phones, financials and computer records and didn't find a thing. There's no connection between these four. None at all."

"That's because you're looking for clues in all the wrong places, looking for clues in all the wrong faces." Rook announced.

"So what is the connection?" Nikki asked.

"The manner of death." Rook said triumphantly. "Lisa Evans was killed using breadcrumbs from the Acme Bakery. Mr. Ybanez had an Acme Safe Company safe dropped on him. Mr. Pentovsky was run over by a subway on the Acme Line and Mr. Ericson fell from the top of the Acme Building. Our killer is successfully recreating crimes unsuccessfully perpetrated by Wile E. Coyote."

"That's absurd. "Nikki said.

"You think so?" Rick stuck his head out of Nikki's office. "Oh, Schlemming, can you come here?"

After only four tries, Schlemming found the door to Nikki's office. "You wanted me, Captain Heat?" Schlemming said hopefully.

"No, Mr. Rook wants you."

"Does he have ten dollars?"

Rook sighed and removed the cleverly contrived latex mask from Schlemming's head to reveal….

"Merleputter?" Nikki gasped.

Rook nodded, "I'm afraid Merleputter is a serial killer. It all began when he was left alone by his mother as a little tot. She'd put him in front of the TV while she went off to do her knife throwing act. His only companion was Wile E. Coyote and he came to identify with an imaginary creature."

"He's not imaginary!" Screamed Merleputter. "He comes to me, he talks to me."

"Where's the real Schlemming?" Nikki demanded.

"Do we really want to know?" Raley asked.

Merleputter laughed maniacally. "You're too late. I distracted him with something shiny and left him in Central Park, covered in breadcrumbs."

Nikki and Rook rushed to Central Park and found Schlemming sitting under a tree with a flock of dead pigeons around him. "He's forgotten how to tie his shoes again." Rook said. "He came here barefoot and innocent pigeons died."

"I'll call the Hazmat team." Nikki said. "Maybe tomorrow. Or better yet, after the weekend. The precinct could use an airing out."

That night Nikki and Rook lay entwined in his bed in a haze of post-coital bliss. "So you won and all you wanted to do was give me the best sex I've ever had?" Nikki said.

"All I've ever wanted to do is give you the best. And I'll never stop."

"At least we've put a dangerous serial killer away. I'm glad this case is over."

But little known to Nikki and Rook, at that very moment a skinny, quadrupedal figure was furtively slipping away from the Colin and Hunt Circus. In his furry paw was the address of the Acme Corporation.

Rick felt his wife's breath on his ear. "You're writing about that case."

"We won fair and square. They just wouldn't admit it."

"So should I give you the same prize Nikki gave Rook?"

If only they could have heard it over the sound of Rick's screams, they might have wondered about a coyote howling in Manhattan.