CASTLE

Flowers For Your Grave - Chapter 15

She sat on her desk in front of the white board with all the suspects and evidence, which had been nicknamed as the 'Murder Board' by the members of the precinct.

Esposito walked past her and saw her staring at the board. He knew exactly what she was looking for. An odd sock.

"Nah. No no no. Don't tell me that he got to you." he said.

Scoffing she replied, "Please! He didn't 'get to me', she did." as she jerked her head in the direction of the board.

"Allison?" he asked confused.

"Marvin Fisck, first murder. Kyle knew him from the diner. And then he kills Allison, his social worker. And then he kills Kendra Pitney, also from the diner." said Beckett matter-of-factly.

"So? " he asked still not following where she was going with this.

"So he starts with a murder of convenience and then escalates to a murder of somebody he knows very well and then goes back to a murder of convenience? It doesn't make any sense." She shook her head in frustration. But if there was one thing that was clear now, it was that Kyle Cabot was not the killer and she needed to prove it.

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Meanwhile Richard sat in the cab with his dear daughter and mother on his way home from the precinct. He knew he had to find a lead to prove Kyle was innocent.

"Somebody set up Kyle to take the fall. Somebody who knew enough about his fixation with me to use it to get away with murder. That means..... we're not looking for a serial killer. We're looking for a good, old-Fashioned murderer--someone with motive." he said looking at Alexis, his mind clearly on overdrive, not caring about the confidentiality of the case anymore.

"You think the victims were somehow related?" Alexis asked her father, knowing only bits and pieces about the cases.

"Police would have found it by now." he shook his head.

"Now if I were writing the story, the killer would've only wanted one of the victims dead. He would've killed the other ones just to cover up the first crime." he thought out loud. Sometimes the best way to find the killer was to think like one. He used this trick many times when he was stuck trying to figure out the plot holes of his stories.

"How do you get away with one murder by committing two more?" Alexis asked as someone who had obviously not spent her life thinking about solving murder unlike her Bestselling-Crime-Novelist-Father.

He explained, "At one death, you look for motive. At two, you look for a connection. At three, you look for someone like Kyle. At three, you don't need motive, because mentally unstable serial killers don't usually have one."

"That makes about as much sense as 'mousetrap'. I did that play eight times a week for a year.I still have no idea what it's about." said Martha finally intervening, referring to the Agatha Christie murder-mystery play which left Alexis and Richard simply staring at her.

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"Castle was right. If he was trying to follow his books, then the roses on Allison's body were wrong and Fisck should've been suffocated by a plastic bag, not strangled with a necktie. And Kendra's dress should've been blue, not yellow. For an obsessive, It would've been impossible not to get the details right." Beckett brainstormed back at her desk in the precinct in front of the board. Castle was definitely right which did bruise her ego. Just a little bit.

"Well, if it wasn't him, then who was it?" asked Javi.

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"The killer had to have known both his intended victim and Kyle fairly well. The only victim that had any real knowledge of Kyle's obsessive condition would've been Allison Tisdale." said Castle to himself in the back of the cab engrossing himself in the details of the case, trying to work his way through it.

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"Allison's the key. She's the one the killer is trying to hide" said Kate, not realizing that her thoughts were eerily similar to those of Castle.

"Well, as far as we know, she wasn't seeing anyone. And none of her other cases fit the profile" spoke Esposito trying to follow Kate's thought​ process.

Kate replied, "Well, somebody had to know something about her.", racking her brains for anything she might have missed.

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"So if the killer found out about Kyle through Allison, then Allison must've been the intended target. Somebody wanted Allison dead. We just have to figure out why." said Castle, his thoughts completely in sync with Beckett's. 

"If I have to keep bailing you out, you're going to have to raise my allowance." said Alexis who was not as invested as her father in this case. "By a lot." she added as she laid back in the cab.

"Mine too" chimed in Martha aping Alexis' action.

Castle simply stared at the two of them while wondering that the police would never believe him unless he had solid evidence. And it was time for him to do some investigating on his own. Ah! fun times he thought.