Finding home

Chapter 31 - The tape

"Wait, is that police cars?" I asked my dad once our house was visible.

He looked up following my gaze and I knew the second he saw the police cars. We shared a quick look before both of us fell into a shocked silence as we fastened our pace to find out what had happened. Maybe it was mom, what if she had been in an accident and that's why she hadn't come to the restaurant? When we got to our house a man came walking towards us.

"Are you Jim Beckett?" he asked and as soon as my dad had given a quick nod as answer he continued, "I'm detective Raglan, I'm here about your wife."

The detective gave a glance at me and I felt my heart break. This couldn't be happening. This couldn't be happening!

"I'm sorry to tell you we've found her body" the detective continued talking to my dad but I couldn't listen anymore.

I felt my blood turn into ice, my veins were thick and my heart felt as heavy as a big stone. I had my eyes widened in shock, there was no way this was true. Someone had to play a really cruel prank on us. I slowly backed away from the detective and my dad. I saw the detective catch me with his eyes but it didn't look like he was going to try and stop me, almost as if he didn't really care about just having told the daughter of the woman they had found that she would never see her mother again. I turned to our house and ran towards it, hearing my dad shout my name after me. I ran into the house, slamming open the door, not caring if I left a mark somewhere.

"Mom!" I called out and searched through the rooms on the first floor before I took the stairs in fewer steps that I'd ever done before. "MOM!" I shouted louder, going through every room as if we'd been playing hide and seek.

I came into my parents's room, the last room upstairs. It was empty. Mom wasn't there. It wasn't a nasty prank. She was nowhere to be found.

"Mom" I gasped as the tears came running down my cheeks and I fell to my knees.

"Katie?!" I heard my dad's voice from downstairs.

Not soon I could hear his footsteps in the stairs on his way up. I looked up towards the door just in time to see my dad come through it. I could see his tears and I immediately knew it was true. The detective was telling the truth. But he had said they found her body. Which meant it hadn't been an accident? Had someone killed her? How could someone just coldly take her away from this world? She had always wanted the truth to come out. She had always made her best to tell the truth. She had always been the best mother I could ever have. And now she was gone, someone had robbed her away from this world. I saw my dad stumble, as if he was, too, on the verge of falling to his knees. I tried my best to get a grip of myself and rised from the floor to walk towards him. We took each other into our arms, hugging tight while we both let our tears fall. This was the worst day in my entire life.

"You ready?" Castle asked and I looked up at him, brought back from the memory.

He stood with the tape player in front of us and waited for me to give clearance to start the tape that would finally give me the truth. The truth I had sought for so many years.

"I'm ready" I told him and he pushed play.

He had to turn up the volume for us to be able to hear anything. We heard footsteps, walking into a room and close the door.

"What are you doing here?" an unfamiliar voice asked harshly.

"I was just wondering if you think there's a possibility we'll get caught?" a voice I immediately recognized as Raglan said.

"If you would just keep your mouth shut and not come here every now and then there's no worries" the first voice said harsh.

"But what do we do about that lawyer who's been snooping around?" Raglan asked, almost as if he was fishing for the person to say something specific.