Chapter 133: 133. Workin' 9 to 5
It’s clear that Beckett’s team is back on the rota. They’re first up for a seedy little homicide in a seedy little SRO, where it looks like it’s going to be a long, boring slog to find the perpetrator. The victim doesn’t have a lot to recommend him, either: dirt under his nails, a distinct lack of razor use, and quite nastily smelly. Not all of the unpleasant smell is due to his death, probable cause of which is the massive dent in his skull. It appears that he did have brains. Most of them are on the pillow.
There is nothing obvious to point to why Brent Selbright – astonishingly, he had a drivers’ licence – should be lying with his head smashed open in a seedy SRO, unfortunately. There is no evidence that he was a CIA spy, as theorised by Castle to general ridicule; nor that he was dealing drugs – Espo’s more sensible suggestion. Nothing for it but to leave CSU to sweep the scene and Lanie to take him back to her morgue. Just as they’re departing, Lanie squawks.
“Oh boy. Oh boy oh boy.”
Beckett spins on her heel and is back in a flash. Flash is the right word. Lanie’s pulled the covers down to bag and tag him, and – well, let’s just say he’d clearly been enjoying himself, up till he got dead. He’s quite impressive. Not compared to Castle, but still, not short measure. The boys come bouncing up and stop short, staring.
“Poor bastard,” Ryan says. “All worked up and then kaboom, dead.”
“Yeah. At least he was happy, though.”
“A little respect for the dead man?” Beckett says coolly. The boys subside. Castle says nothing. CIA spy theories or not, he’s been a tad quiet this morning and his eyes aren’t precisely bright. While Lanie bags up the corpse, muttering about tox screens all the way, Beckett leads Castle back to her cruiser to get back to the precinct and, no doubt, get the next murder that comes up as well. This one isn’t going to be quick, and nothing’s going to happen until they get prints, tox, autopsy results in general, and run a whole lot of searches. How fortunate that Ryan and Espo were invented.
“You okay, Castle?” she starts, almost as soon as he’s in the car.
“Yeah.”
“Try again. I’ve heard more convincing lies from guys we’ve caught red-handed. What’s wrong?”
“Mother,” he says bleakly. “She just keeps pushing and pushing and I lost my temper with her and now I feel guilty.”
Beckett deduces that Martha had carried on probing after Castle’s confession to her, Beckett. This is a very undesirable complication. But Castle had lost his temper with his mother? That’s – unexpected. And worrying.
“Why do you feel guilty?” she asks. What can he possibly have said?
“Um…” He colours to the roots of his hair and looks out the window. “I told her if she did anything to mess us up I’d never forgive her.”
Beckett is pretty sure that Castle isn’t being entirely accurate, but it’s no doubt close enough, and he’s clearly unhappy so it’ll do. She’s only just finished that thought when the meaning of what he’s just said lands on her unprepared head rather in the manner of a cartoon anvil landing on Wile E. Coyote. She just about manages not to swerve the car.
“Huh?” she emits. “You’d never do that. You forgive just about everything. You just couldn’t do that.”
“I – you what?”
“Remember what I said yesterday? I had a right to be upset but so did you?”
“Yeah?”
“Well, you got upset with your mother. You must have had a good reason. ‘S not like you to lose your temper.”
“She was prying into us, Beckett.”
“And you didn’t tell her anything. Just like you didn’t tell Lanie, or the boys, or anyone else. So why worry? I know you won’t spill secrets.” She puts a consoling hand on his knee, and pats. Castle has relapsed into silence again, and clearly doesn’t want to say more. “C’mon, Castle. Let’s go solve some murders to take your mind off it. We might have prints from that guy on Friday. Bullpen coffee and doughnuts.”
“Bullpen coffee? When I have provided you with the last word in exquisite coffee machines?” he declaims magniloquently. “I am appalled, Detective. Appalled.”
Beckett smiles secretly at the success of calling into question the standard of coffee which they’ll be drinking and pulls up neatly at the Twelfth. “Stop being appalled and apply your dextrous caffeinating skills instead.”
“So you admit I have skills?”
“When it comes to coffee, sure.”
“Only coffee? I was under the impression that you admired my many other skills and my dexterity.”
Beckett times her answer very carefully to avoid flapping ears. “We could compare skills,” she says in a low, husky voice that promises seduction. Castle nearly trips on the step. “I’ll make your coffee and you make mine and we’ll see whose is better,” she adds, briskly. It’s rather spoilt by her snicker.
Castle smiles suavely. “Okay.” Suavity alters to predatory. “And later on we can talk about dexterity.”
“Talk?” says Beckett, innocently. “Really? Okay then. You can bring the coffee.” She whisks into the elevator before he can retaliate. The elevator, regrettably – from Castle’s point of view – also contains a number of other cops, which prevents him retaliating at once. Revenge, he consoles himself, is a dish best served cold.
Cold it will have to be. Mr Selbright may need to wait, but Montgomery’s put the team back on the rota and it seems like this week is not starting at all in the spirit of forgiveness and redemption that, he feels, should accompany the run-up to Easter. There’s another mundane mugging gone wrong before lunchtime on Tuesday, which again requires them to request camera footage, wait for CSU, wait for the morgue – Perlmutter, so that’s another frustration – wait for searches… Castle hates waiting, and that’s all there is to do once Beckett’s taken him with her to inspect the next corpse. They did get Friday’s prints, but that’s just too damn easy and the perp was picked up and booked without the slightest difficulty. If only they were all like that. They’re still waiting for yesterday’s runs. Meanwhile Selbright languishes in the morgue.
On the other hand, she’s clearly happy to be back at full throttle. Right up till she realises it’s time to go to Dr Burke’s.
“End of shift, guys. I’m out of here. We’re not going to get anything more tonight.” It almost sounds normal. It would be normal, except that it’s Beckett saying it and both Ryan and Esposito respond as if they’d been slapped with a live shark, jaws open.
“Who are you?” Ryan asks the air at large.
“Gotta be a clone.”
“Can’t be a clone. A clone would be exactly like Beckett. Must be her twin – you know, the one who got the stop working at shift end gene.”
“Must be,” says Espo, examining Beckett for signs of being not-Beckett. “Looks like Beckett, though.”
“Maybe she’s been kidnapped by aliens and this is the infected version,” Ryan says happily, but that’s a step too far for Espo.
“You been listening to Castle again, bro? That’s just dumb.”
Castle, who had previously been snickering happily, comes to a hard stop. “What’s dumb about that?” he asks aggrievedly. “Alien abduction’s been written about lots.”
“Yeah, in cheap magazines with dumb titles. UFO Truth? You gotta be kidding me.”
“It’s really interesting,” Castle says, “but Espo, how do you know about UFO Truth? Is there something you wanna share?”
“Ooohh,” sniggers Ryan. “You’ve been out UFO-gazing. Wait till that gets around.” Castle guffaws at the horrified, reddened, furious look on Espo’s face.
“Not cool, bro.” Espo tries to recover himself.
“UFO-gazing ain’t cool, no.”
Esposito growls impartially at the three – not three. Two. “Where’d Beckett go?”
“Uh?”
“What?”
Beckett is gone. Vanished. The three men look blankly at each other.
“How’d she do that?”
“Dunno.”
Castle knows why, but not how. She’d sneaked off when they were arguing, so as not to be late for Dr Burke. He’s marginally unimpressed, and wanders off somewhat disgruntled, right up until his phone buzzes with a text at about the point, so he calculates, that Beckett would be parking in front of Dr Burke’s office. Had to go. Didn’t want the boys to notice. See you after? B. That’s certainly better than nothing. He can’t decide if it’s good or bad that she doesn’t need him to be there. Good, because it means that she’s taking control of the sessions again. Bad, because he wants to be there to support her. But that should be good, because she can support herself.
It’s all too complicated. He’ll go and look for UFOs for a while, preferably with some liquid sustenance and something to eat. And then he’ll arrive at Beckett’s apartment at the usual time. He won’t be using his key, though. Not today. He’s just a little nervous that it might be overstepping, to use it so casually on an evening when she’ll be stressed.
Beckett arrives at Dr Burke’s having thought not at all about what she should – not wants to – discuss. In the elevator she thinks that maybe point one is Castle’s suggestion about Sorry games, if only to have the infinite pleasure of disconcerting Dr Burke; but more seriously she should talk about assessing her father’s honesty and possibly that she got upset with Castle – and he with her – but they got through it. By the time she’s thought all that she’s walking into the calm office and being taken straight through to Dr Burke. She wonders how he manages such timeliness, and then considers his fussily pedantic personality and concludes that no-one would run late for fear that they might be analysed some more. He might be brilliant, but it sure doesn’t make him likeable.
“Good evening, Detective Beckett.”
“Hey.”
“Will Mr Castle be attending?”
“No.”
Dr Burke raises his eyebrows, and considers Detective Beckett’s relative calm. “Then shall we begin? With what would you like to start?”
“I went to Castle’s for the weekend.”
Dr Burke is surprised, and allows it to show. That is to say, he allows his eyebrows to lift a fraction more rapidly than usual.
“His family was away.”
“That is still a significant step, Detective Beckett. Please tell me more about how this decision arose.”
“Castle said that his mother and daughter were going on a spa break” – Dr Burke is intrigued by the way in which Detective Beckett’s nose wrinkles in distaste at the thought of a spa break – “this weekend, and invited me.” She stops.
“I see,” Dr Burke says calmly. He is quite astonished. Of course, he does not display his surprise further. “At what point did Mr Castle advise you of this thought?”
“He invited me on Tuesday. After I finished up here.”
“Mmm?”
“But I didn’t accept then. I needed to think about it.”
“Very sensible. It was a major decision.”
“Yeah, well. Anyway. I agreed to try to go.”
“As I said, a major step forward.” Dr Burke steeples his fingers. “Please describe how you felt on arriving at Mr Castle’s apartment.”
Detective Beckett winces, and does not immediately respond. “I… nearly didn’t go in. I wanted to go home. Castle would have come to mine for the weekend.”
“Why were you so nervous? His family were not there.”
“It’s still a family home. Full of their life.”
“But you went in.”
“Yes.”
Dr Burke detects a slight colouration in her face, and concludes that Mr Castle had taken steps to reassure Detective Beckett.
“Mmm. And you stayed for the weekend.”
“Yes. But I left before his family got home.”
“A wise move,” Dr Burke says. “Incremental steps are more likely to provide a firm foundation.”
“Castle got upset that I had to go but I couldn’t stay. I was upset at the thought of staying.”
“How did you feel about that?”
“I was allowed to be upset,” Detective Beckett says unexpectedly. “You said I was.”
“Explain?”
“I was telling myself it was silly to be upset, and then I thought that was what the first therapist told me, and they were wrong about everything. So I was upset. And then Castle called and he was upset too but we’re good.”
“Mm-hm. Another sound step, Detective Beckett.” Dr Burke is impressed. Not that he shows it, of course, but he is very pleased that Detective Beckett has tried to act on one of her long ingrained issues. He is sure that she will have setbacks, but she has recognised the need to allow herself to act on her own feelings of discomfort and upset even if that caused upset to Mr Castle. She has, in fact, let her own feelings have equal weight to those of Mr Castle, rather than subordinating them. A major step forward.
“I still don’t know about Dad, though.”
Ah, thinks Dr Burke, the next issue has arrived just at the point he would have predicted. Detective Beckett is trying to deal with her father too quickly, again.
“What do you not know?”
“I can’t tell if he’s telling the truth or not, but I think it’s because I can’t be dispassionate. It’s not work. If it was work it would be easy: I could be objective. But I can’t be. He… it still all hurts too much.”
“It would, in my view, be unwise to try to decide on the truth before you have started to consider ways in which you might heal your hurt; or indeed vice versa. The two matters run in parallel. Haste to solve one will be unhelpful without also dealing with the other.”
“Oh.”
Dr Burke steeples his fingers again, places them under his chin, and regards Detective Beckett straightly.
“Detective Beckett, you have tried to solve this issue once before, hastily. You have come here in order to avoid the same mistake. I have said before that resolving your relationship with your father will take time. You are making steady progress with Mr Castle’s family, wisely taking small increments which will produce a sound foundation. The same will be true of your other concerns.”
“So what do I do?”
“What do you think you should do?”
Detective Beckett makes a very annoyed noise and produces a glare which would reduce a lesser psychiatrist to rubble. Naturally, Dr Burke is unaffected. Detective Beckett must do her own thinking as to the next steps to take.
“Keep talking to my dad,” she says, after a significant pause and with a snap of irritation. “And to you.” Dr Burke would have been a little less irritated by that if Detective Beckett had made it a little less clear that the prospect was unwelcome. He reminds himself that a challenging patient is merely a challenge, not an insult, and regains his calm without a pause.
“Do you have any plan for your next meeting with your father?”
Detective Beckett’s eyes suddenly spark. Dr Burke acquires an unaccustomed feeling of impending dread, and returns it firmly to his id. Such fallaciously instinctive feelings have no place in the conscious or unconscious mind of a psychiatrist. For the first time, a session with Detective Beckett had been proceeding in a manner which any competent psychiatrist would recognise. Dr Burke should have realised that this unusual state of affairs was extremely unlikely to be sustained.
“The last time we were – I thought we were – really on good terms was Christmas, and a month or so after.”
“Why was that?”
It is clear that Detective Beckett had expected that question, and equally clear that she is not particularly happy with her answer.
“I bought Dad a game for Christmas. Castle knew a tiny, old-fashioned toy store and we found a board game called Sorry.”
Dr Burke is intrigued. He has not heard of this game: board games are not a pastime to which he is generally attracted. He finds the convolutions of the human mind far more interesting than the convolutions of pieces on a board: even the complexities of chess and Go do not inspire him.
“I knew Dad would like it.”
“How did you establish this?”
“Castle and the store owner made me play it. It was a mix of skill, tactics and luck. Just the sort of thing Dad always used to like. I did, too. I got him it and I got myself one as well.”
“And did he enjoy the new game?”
“He loved it. We played it on Christmas Day and…” Detective Beckett stops. Then she begins again, in a controlled, cool tone. “We had a good time.”
“Please expand?”
“It was – he was – just like he used to be.” She stops again.
“You are saying that your father behaved in ways which you had not seen since your mother died?”
“Yes.” The word is clipped off.
“Detective Beckett, you appear to me to be avoiding saying that your father behaved as if it was a normal family occasion.”
“Fine. It was like it was before Mom died. He was happy and he teased me about Castle and he hugged me, okay? I really thought it was all going right.”
“Mmm.”
“And then he said what he did and it all went wrong and now I can’t tell if he’s lying or not.”
“You have, however, noted that to establish the truth you need to continue to communicate with your father.”
Detective Beckett appears to recall herself to her original point. “Yes.”
“So, then, what is your plan for the next meeting, and when do you wish this to take place?”
“Friday.”
“And your plan?”
Detective Beckett takes a deep breath, and steels herself, producing a nasty smile. Dr Burke is not reassured.
“We’re all going to play Sorry. You too. And Castle. And Dad.”
“How fascinating,” Dr Burke says smoothly. “I shall very much enjoy learning about your game.”
Detective Beckett looks frustrated. She had, Dr Burke deduces, expected a different reaction: surprise, or possibly negation. He is surprised, but where Detective Beckett’s treatment is concerned, he is unwilling to rule out any method, no matter how far-fetched it may initially appear. Any method to ensure that Detective Beckett remains sufficiently engaged to make progress is worthy of exploration. This strategy, however, does not appear to Dr Burke to have emanated from Detective Beckett. It has the distinctively original mark of Mr Castle’s thinking. Dr Burke detests the slang phrase left field, which connotes the disreputability of left-handedness and is therefore to be deplored. Such an implication should not be conveyed under any circumstances. His own left-handedness has nothing whatsoever to do with this, naturally.
Detective Beckett mutters something blackly under her breath, which Dr Burke perfectly accurately assesses to contain thoughts of the order of you’ll lose.
“What do you hope to achieve by playing a game?”
“I’ll see how he behaves.”
Dr Burke waits. He does not believe that to be the entirety of Detective Beckett’s reasoning.
“It might make things easier.”
That sounds far more likely.
“Very well. Would you like me to advise your father of your desire that he should attend on Friday, and of the likelihood that we will play this game?”
“Yes.”
“Do you wish to structure the conversation which might take place whilst we are playing?”
“No. It’s Dad’s turn to start.”
“In that case, I consider that we are done for tonight. Goodnight, Detective.”
“Night.”
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