The Coming Future (A Castle Fanfiction)

Part Two: When Coffee Answers Conjecture

Nothing definitive came from the message. Beckett, the boys, Castle, and every cop in the precinct had been over the thing as many times as they could afford and there were basically no solid answers. The best they could guess was that the young girl wasn't going to be the last victim, but they knew that already. It had been forty-five minutes since Castle had entered the conference room with the news, and as of yet the lead had led them nowhere. As it remained projected on the computer screen, the team searched the board for anything that would even hint at a decipherable message and came up completely empty handed.

They'd gotten two answers. The first pair of lines about time and the next murder were more than obvious, and that was a purposeful clarity. Second, "Lastly, this voice remains a piece to one large unsung puzzle," seemed to mean she was in some kind of choir, or at least according to Ryan's probable deduction. Other than this, the place with a lot of young traffic could have been the mall, a football field, a club or almost anywhere. The standing alone could have meant she had no friends or no parents or, unfortunately, it could mean she was a runaway. A mythical parent could mean her parents were dead or one or both of them abandoned her, she could be someone's foster kid or her parents could be really inattentive to her.

Finally Kate turned to the man of a million theories, "Castle, any ideas?"

Tapping a pen to his chin in thought, he replied, "I need coffee and so do you. And this girl went to boarding school." He said these things as though they were equally meaningful.

"What makes you think she's going to a boarding school?"

The writer answered this question as though he were expecting it with pride, "The fact that this is New York City. When applying knowledge to the rhyme, this girl is offal clever. Smart and musically gifted is a largely noticeable pair of talents in New York City. Kids literally move up here with their families just to get the possibilities this city affords them. Plus, I just don't see this girl being an athlete and yet we know she's very talented." Kate just took Rick's word for the talented part and knew he would know much more about the Fine Arts world than she did with his mother being an actress. Plus, he seemed pretty certain of this for it being just a theory he threw out there.

As Castle rose, moving toward the break room, Beckett couldn't take just sitting around anymore. She joined him, gaining speed to catch up and match his pace in order to walk side by side. "Why didn't you tell me right away the girl was in boarding school. That's usually something you'd say aloud."

"I did," he simply stated. "You were distracted by something, staring down at that ring on your finger with a look that would usually bother me if it weren't for the smile that you put on just before you refocused. What was that about, by the way?"

Kate deflected, "You noticed me spacing off and not listening to you, and you didn't get my attention?"

He smiled at her a second and shook his head knowingly, "I knew you were happy and it seemed like this case was nearly crushing you. I thought I'd give you some joy while you could keep it before the stress of the job weighed down again."

"Oh, I see," she said, being stressed not by the job, but by the tiny human now growing inside her.

"So," Castle grinned with glee, "Who do you think it is?" There was something about his ever devious manner that lured Kate into this conversation. Usually she'd pass on hearing office gossip, but this time she needed the distraction.

Allowing herself the question, "Who do I think what is," made her fiancé raise an eyebrow at her in surprise. Beckett just couldn't tell if the surprise was from her lack of understanding or the fact that she was actually engaging in non-work related topics during a case this tough. Although it happened often enough, on days like this where moment after moment seemed like an eternity of failure after failure, there were rarely discussions like this that didn't end with a sarcastic remark from the super cop herself. "What?" the detective questioned, finding the facial expression she perceived in Rick face and his lack of words irritating.