The Coming Future (A Castle Fanfiction)

Part Fourteen: Never Go Out Alone

"Welcome, agents. Please, come in. There are two mugs of coffee waiting for you on the kitchen counter along with two lap tops and two assignments. Beckett gave me instructions to right on sticky notes, so just find yours and go crazy," Castle said, ushering Murphy and Harris in to his apartment.

The second Kaylin stepped in, she looked at the place and commented, "This is where you live?"

"It's very- childishly sophisticated," Harris replied. "I mean, it has a playful elegance to it."

Murphy looked at her lover strangely, taken off guard by his comment. "Since when are you into interior design?" He smiled and whispered something into her ear which made her whisper something back. Castle was so very pleased that the pair were moving away from him, because otherwise he would have been sick. Melissa and Ryan sat together on the couch in the front while Esposito sat at the kitchen table with Valgora. Harris and Murphy took their seats on the bar stools and now all that was left was for Carpenter to get in and Beckett to return.

Maddie was sitting up in Alexis' room studying her brains out to catch up on the upper level classes she'd missed three days of. Castle trusted that was what she was doing up there, but he was rather curious every so often and would go up and check on her. Of course, that was exactly what she was doing every time he went in to check on her. Last time she was working on an Honor's Algebra II assignment and the time before that she was finishing some quick little assignment from her foreign language class. Her backpack was massive and filled, but all the foreign language assignment consisted of was a three page worksheet packet which had forced him to leap to the conclusion that that department was lacking.

Castle returned to his seat in the chair closest to the door, digging into Gerick's life and searching for something that indicated he had computer skills. For now he was just looking for a class he might have taken or a job where he might have listed computer skills as an asset. When it got to eight-thirty or later, he'd start calling people's offices and asking those who knew him.

Ryan had been instructed to check the twelfth's surveillance videos, which he was doing now. He was searching for anything that gave him proof that the video had been tampered with or something out front that might have shown the man's car, but nothing was coming up. The streets around the precinct were fairly empty as well, so he decided he would search street cams next and then the street cams around both school exits. Addie had been really specific on the type of car, which was great for the detectives, but Ryan wanted to see if he couldn't get a license plate as well.

Sito had taken over checking the phone records since he got back, looking for a possible accomplice. Even if he didn't find one, he hoped he could give Castle the name of someone to call first just by how linked to Tanner the person was. His texts and calls were all very simple and short and none seemed to be to the same number more often than the others.

Melissa hadn't found anything suspicious in his financial records. The one and only lead she'd gotten was a trip to a home improvement store and all he bought there were rolls of painter's tape, cherry finish stain, a few screws and a drill bit. It sounded like he was working on a new piece of furniture to her and it would sound the same way to a jury. Even if he'd bought duct tape though, it wouldn't have been definitive evidence that he did anything with it.

Harris and Valgora had split the task of searching for a link between Tanner and the Judge and Tanner and the D.A. They somewhat worked together, but about all they did was share excluded cases. So far, that had not only come up empty, but it had been the most boring thing Lucas had been assigned to do.

Murphy was looking into the incident report for his missing leg. According to the paperwork, the surgery had caused a blood clot which lodged itself into his blood stream and cut off the circulation to his leg. He was passed out and they caught it too late to fix it, so that had to go in an amputate above the knee. The surgeons and nurses were all still practicing and the main surgeon she talked to believed he handled it very well. The department gladly paid the medical fees, but agreed he was too unpredictable to be let back. At the time, however, there was a different D.A and the Judge wasn't linked to the case in any way.