917. Chapter 917

After PhDead

Episode 8.03

By

UCSBdad

Disclaimer: Me? Own season eight of Castle? Surely, you jest. Rating: K Time: See above.

"We have ways of making you talk, Mr. Rook?" The male guard said.

"That's an awful Richard Loo impersonation." Rook said.

"Perhaps you have relatives in the old country?" Said the female guard.

"Did I walk into a remake of Casablanca?" Rook said, shaking his head. "If so, remember that Major Strasser of the Third Reich gets killed at the end. Now what's this all about?

Rook looked around him at the small prison, the haggard prisoners in canary yellow jump suits and the surly, thuggish guards.

"Why did you come here, Mr. Rook?"

"For the waters." Rook said, trying for the Bogart lisp.

The male guard looked confused. "This is an abandoned building. It's not connected to the city water mains. There's no water here."

Rook loved a good straight man. "I was misinformed." He thought the lisp was better this time.

The female guard took over. "You're on private property. You broke in here. That's against the law."

That was a mistake and Rook thought that the guard recognized it just a second too late. "You're absolutely right! We need to call the police. I'm sure that there's a felony being committed here. We're in luck, I just happen to have my wife, Captain Nikki Heat, on speed dial. Why, she can have a whole SWAT team here in minutes."

The two guards looked at each other, then got up, and left Rook sitting in a cell. He turned to the prisoner in the next cell, a rather depressed looking young woman. "So, what's going on here?"

The woman looked at him and glared. "They get angry if we talk." She turned away from Rook.

Rook looked at the prisoner on the other side of him, male and probably an athlete. He was doing sit ups on the cell floor. Rook's stomach was starting to hurt from just watching him. "You're pretty buff. What are you in for, Rocky?"

The kid stopped, looked at Rook with no interest, and then moved so he could do his sit ups looking away from Rook.

Having nothing better to do, Rook started to go through lines from old gangster movies from the thirties and forties. "You dirty rat! Top of the world, Ma! You can dish it out, but you can't take it! I'm busting out of here tonight. Who's with me?" He was working on Samuel L. Jackson's Bible quote from Pulp Fiction. " The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides by the inequities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men. Blessed is he ….."

That's when the lights went out and someone sprayed pepper spray in his eyes. Then a needle was jammed into his arm and he blacked out.

"Rook?"

He knew the voice, but he couldn't quite figure out where he was or what was happening. He managed to pry one eye open. "Nikki?"

She smiled at him. "You okay?"

He nodded and that made his stomach queasy and his head hurt.

"You really partied hard last night, didn't you?"

He shook his head. He somehow survived the experience. "Partied?" He managed.

"Officer Colenso found you passed out in an alley about six blocks from home. You had what was left of a bottle of absinthe with you. The stuff you were drinking is 140 proof."

With Nikki's help he managed to sit up. "Let's get you home, Rookie. You'll feel better after a hot shower and some breakfast." She checked her watch. "Or lunch."

"I wasn't partying and I didn't drink any absinthe. I was attacked."

"Rook, if you're trying…."

"I'm not." He insisted. "I was talking to your niece, Alexandra. She was telling me all about what she was doing at Hudson U. She mentioned that something odd was going on at an abandoned building not far from campus."

"What sort of odd thing?" Nikki asked.

Rook shrugged. "I don't know. She said that a couple of students had been seen coming out of the building, but ran away when they were seen by other students. Apparently when their friends saw them later, they denied ever being there. Alexandra said that a guy she knows went to the building. He said the front door lock was broken, but most of the doors to the offices inside were intact and locked. He ran into some crazy homeless guy who started yelling at him and ran. He decided that the students had been buying drugs. I had nothing better to do, so I went to take a look."

"So, what did you find?"

Rook described being accosted by two guards, then being put in a cell and interrogated, then being pepper sprayed and knocked out.

"Okay, let me grab Roach and we'll check this place out."

Twenty minutes later they pulled up in front of the building. A patrol officer from the neighborhood was waiting for them. He told Nikki what he knew.

"There are maybe a dozen homeless guys who live there. They're not bothering anyone, so I leave them alone. I did catch one college kid from Hudson coming out about a week ago. He said he thought that a friend of his lived there, but must have gotten the address wrong. I didn't have any probably cause to search him or take him in, so I just let him go."

"What floor were you on, Rook?" Nikki asked.

"The eighth. The elevator is broken, so we'll have to walk."

The stairways smelled of urine, alcohol and neglect, and contained one homeless man who ran as soon as he saw them. He disappeared into a maze of offices.

They reached the eighth floor and found two open doors. One led to what might have been a storage area and the other was suspiciously clean.

"These floors are spotless." Raley said.

"There are holes drilled in the floors and ceilings." Ochoa added. "There could have been bars here."

"This looks like where they interrogated me."

Nikki found an unlocked door at the end of the hallway. Opening it she found a small office. It was clean and completely empty. "These are new electric lines and outlets. Someone had some kind if electrical equipment here. We need to call CSU."

CSU, a canvas of the neighborhood and interviewing neighbors found nothing. They did find a functioning freight elevator in the back of the building, but that was all.

"Why would someone set up a prison in New York?" Rook asked rhetorically. "You couldn't be kidnapping that many people. That would make news. And why put them in yellow jump suits. And why uniformed guards. Obsessive compulsive kidnappers?"

It was Alexandra that finally solved the mystery. She arrived at Nikki and Rook's loft after her last class on a Friday.

"There's something you two have got to see at the University Art Center tonight. I got us all tickets. My treat."

When they got to the art center, Rook stopped, absolutely stunned. There before him were a dozen cells holding a dozen prisoners in canary yellow jump suits and surly, burly guards.

"What the hell is this?"

"Performance art, Uncle Rook. The artist says that it represent the imprisonment of our once free souls by an uncaring society."

Nikki pulled out her badge. "I think it's time uncaring society talked to the artist."

Twenty four hours later, Rook was unhappy. "We can't do anything? After what they did?"

Nikki kissed her husband. "I'm afraid not. Ms. Allen, the artist, was ready for us. She had her lawyers right there. Every one of the performers in that performance art had a lawyer by their side telling them not to say anything and they didn't. There's no physical evidence tying you or them to that building or you to them. It's your word against theirs."

Rook managed a glare. "Well, I'm not done with them."

"Rook, what are you going to do?" Nikki said worriedly.

"I'm going to write the most scathing review in the entire history of art reviews."