809. Chapter 809

After Nikki Heat

Episode 3.11

By

UCSBdad

Disclaimer: Castle is just how I dreamed it, but I don't own it. Rating: K Time: See above.

Detective Kate Beckett stepped out of the elevator, took one step and then stopped. Something was wrong. The homicide bull pen was not right. Not right at all. To begin with, Ryan and Esposito weren't there, but two strangers were sitting at their desks. One was tall and Hispanic and the other was a blond Irishman, but they were wrong.

Sitting at her desk was a tall brunette sitting facing away from her. Something about her was familiar. She walked quickly to her desk. "What the hell is…..?" She stopped, shocked at who was sitting at her desk. "Natalie? What the hell are you doing sitting at my desk? And who the hell are these two?" She pointed to the two men.

"Not Natalie Rhodes. I'm Detective Nikki Heat, Homicide, NYPD. And those are Detectives Raley and Ochoa."

Kate shook her head. "Look, I know you're into method acting and all, but if Captain Montgomery finds out about this…"

"It's Captain Montrose. He's in command of the precinct."

Kate forced herself to relax. "I'm going to give you three just one minute to get out or…"

"Hi, babe." Said an almost familiar voice.

Kate whirled around. The speaker was a tall, well built and well dressed man with deep blue eyes. "Who the hell are you?"

"I'm Jameson Rook, of course. Nikki is my girlfriend. You should know that."

"Are you people completely out of your minds? Nikki, Rook, Raley, Ochoa and Montrose are fictional characters. They don't exist. You don't exist!"

Nikki nodded and then pushed her hair back behind her ear. "You're half right. We are fictional characters, but we do exist. Don't ask me how we exist, we just do."

"Castle put you up to this, didn't he? Where is he?" She looked around the bullpen. "Castle, you come out this second or else."

"You want to see Richard Castle? Good. We want you to see him, too. Let's go see Dr. Lauren Parry."

Kate followed Nikki and Rook to the elevator. "And it's Dr. Lanie Parish."

When they got to the morgue, there was a corpse under a sheet and Dr. Lauren Parry, or at least that's who Kate assumed it was. She looked a bit like Lanie, but definitely wasn't her.

"She's here to ID the body?" Parry asked.

"Pull the sheet back. " When she pulled the sheet back, Beckett saw it was Castle under the sheet.

"Castle! I knew it was you! Get up right this instant." But when she grabbed him, he was stiff and cold. "Castle?" She said, fear starting to enter her voice. "Castle! This isn't funny." She checked the body and it wasn't a fake corpse. "He's….dead?" The horror beginning to sink in.

"Single GSW to the chest. Shot right in the heart with a 9mm Glock. "Parry held up the pistol. "Ballistics matched the slug to this gun. It's the murder weapon, no doubt."

"Whose is it?" Kate demanded.

"It's registered to a Detective Kate Beckett, NYPD."

"That's nonsense. My weapon is right…" She reached for her Glock which had ridden securely on her hip when she left home. Now it was gone.

Kate thought furiously. "Wait! You're fictional. Richard Castle is not. So how could he have been killed here?"

"He is the Creator, Detective Beckett. He is always with us, or always was with us. Now that he's dead, there will be no more Nikki Heat books, which should make you happy, but we'll begin to die. As the two Nikki Heat books grow old and people stop reading them, eventually we'll just disappear. So, you can see why we'd want to solve his murder." Nikki put her hand on Kate's elbow. "We're going to interrogation."

The last time Kate had been interrogated had been at the Academy, but she'd never been interrogated for real. It was intimidating.

"Why did you kill him?" Nikki demanded.

Kate nodded to herself. Put the suspect on the defensive. Good tactic. "I did not kill Richard Castle. Why would I? I have no motive."

Nikki laughed. "Of course you have a motive. You're an emotional cripple, Beckett. You've spent so many years hiding behind the walls you've erected around your heart, you can't have any kind of a meaningful relationship with anyone. You weren't happy, by any means, but you were safe. You'd never be hurt and that was all you cared about."

Rook took over the interrogation. "But then Richard Castle came along. He saw from the start how much pain you were in and wanted to help you. He wanted to help you have fun, to be alive again and not just existing. And you hated that, and him."

"And you did change a bit." Nikki continued. "But even you have to admit that while Tom Demming was sort of fun, he never even noticed your walls, let alone wanted to bring them down. And dating that detective served other purposes. You were jealous of that awful actress who slept with him to get the part of Nikki Heat."

"And she would have been dreadful in it, babe." Rook said. "She could never be you."

Nikki smiled at her lover. "You could never have a relationship like Rook and I do, you're too afraid. And so Demming served another purpose. It convinced Richard Castle to leave you, since you'd made your choice and it wasn't him."

"But I broke up with Demming and I almost asked to go to the Hamptons with Castle." Kate protested.

"Way too late. I think you intentionally sabotaged your relationship with Castle so you could be all alone again. And you did the same with Demming. A win-win situation for you."

"But I have a boyfriend now."

"The doctor?" Nikki laughed. "A man who's hardly in the country? That's more like an acquaintance with benefits than a boyfriend."

"But Castle just wouldn't go away, would he?" Rook said. "He came back to be your partner again and he kept trying to get through your walls. And all you could think of was that if the walls disappeared, you could get hurt. Hurt badly by Richard Castle. So you killed him. Shot him in the heart. He had no walls around his heart to protect himself, did he?"

"I did not kill Richard Castle!" Kate said slowly and deliberately.

"Where were you between eleven and one last night?"

"At home. In bed."

"Alone, of course." Nikki smirked. "You were smart enough to wipe your fingerprints off the murder weapon and toss it, but we'll place you at the crime scene sooner or later. In the meantime, don't leave town."

"You can't do that. There's no law that says I can't go anywhere I want until you arrest me."

"In your world, maybe. In our world, you can't leave. And we have the best people in the world working your case."

"Who?" Kate demanded.

"The world's first consulting detective, a Belgian with little grey cells, an elderly English woman, the Continental Op, and so many more. Although Commander Bond is getting a bit past it. He's a World War Two veteran, you know." Nikki shook her head. "Most men go grey when they age, not blond. But, we'll catch you, Beckett."

Kate left the precinct and saw she was being followed. She turned to face the two men. At once she noticed that they seemed to change from wearing nineteenth century clothing to twenty first century clothing. "What do you want?"

"A problem worthy of my talents, Beckett. But you're as dense as Lestrade at the Yard. The solution's right there and you won't, or can't, see it." He turned to his friend. "Come along, John. I understand Richard Hannay has a bit of a problem, perhaps it'll keep me amused."

She ran into him coming out of John's Grill. She was a little shocked as he was all in black and white, not color.

He pushed his fedora back and looked at her. "You're good, sweetheart, very good, but not that good. You need to ask yourself who else had a relationship with Castle. One that would lead to murder."

As he walked away she thought furiously. Who had a relationship with Castle? Martha and Alexis, but they loved him. Ryan and Esposito, but they'd never kill. His ex-wives? No, not them either.

Kate felt in need to coffee. She walked into a coffee shop and bellied up to the bar. A piano player played ragtime in the corner while a group of cowboys played poker at a nearby table.

"The usual." She said to the barkeep. He promptly produced a grande skim latte with two pumps of sugar free vanilla.

"Howdy, ma'am." He was a tall cowboy who carried a shortened Winchester rifle. "Hear you have a problem."

Kate nodded. "Word travels fast in these parts."

He nodded. "I got a problem myself. I'm headed to Lordsburg just as soon as the stage gets here. The Plummer gang is there. They killed my little brother. I got to get revenge for him."

She nodded again. "Revenge is the purest motive there is." Kate suddenly smiled. "I know who the killer is!" She shouted and headed for the precinct.

It took a bit to convince Nikki that she was right, but soon she was with Nikki, Rook and Roach as he approached the real killer.

Nikki confronted him. "Derrick Storm, you're under arrest for the murder of Richard Castle."

The man smiled up at her. "Why would I do that?"

"Revenge. He killed you off after all those years, and he brought in a new character. So you killed him and tried to frame Detective Beckett."

"He got what he deserved. Calling me boring. And then he takes up with some cold hearted bitch who wouldn't know an emotion if it hit her in the face? Go ahead and arrest me. Then try to keep me."

Detective Kate Beckett stepped out of the elevator, took one step and then stopped. Something was…right. Ryan and Esposito were working at their desks and Captain Montgomery was in his office. But where was Castle? If something had happened to him, certainly they'd rush to tell her.

She walked to her desk. As she did, she heard familiar footsteps heading her way. Then a cup of coffee was put on her desk. "Good morning, Detective."

She put her head down so he wouldn't see her smile at him. Then she changed her mind and looked up and smiled. "Good morning, Castle."

Author's note: When I watched this episode, I noticed that Kate, becoming exasperated with Natalie, as Kate Beckett, asks herself what's going to happen next, will Natalie steal her boyfriend and kill her in her sleep?

Kate's boyfriend is Josh, but there's no Josh like character in Heat Wave so why would Natalie be interested in him? Could Kate have been admitting unwittingly that Castle is her boyfriend?