The Haunting Past (A Castle Fanfiction)

Part Five: Faint Calls

Sirens buzzed in the distilled air as Ryan stumbled out of his car. He was the latest of the crew members to arrive and was dragged into a world he desperately wished he wasn't a part of. The sight of their most recent challenge pained him worse than the long night of comforting his wife had. Today's case seemed like one they would not soon overcome.

When he approached his superior, Beckett was facing away from him with a purposeful look fixated exactly where it needed to be: on the corpse. Splayed out in the shape of a crucified convict, the body presented itself in a cruel form that couldn't yet be covered as the complexity of the case on this one stalled the photography aspect. Lanie crouched over the source of the day's troubles, writing oddities about the body on a line that was not long enough to cover the list that was building. It was strange how such a small body could hold such a massive weight and amass so many aching hearts.

Claire's small body wore the colorless look of the afterlife on her innocent face. It was incredible how her tiny figure could hold the infinite number of sigils painted over every inch of her. Some markings were left by Sharpie while others had been carved into her skin with a razor of some kind. Her eyes still open, she lost all traces of humanity and a ghostly color had wiped over them, staining them with a ghostly reflection of death.

Her blood was streaked along the sides of her body, creating the outline of wings. On the outside wall of the building in the alleyway written in black paint was the message: Mommy's Little Angel. It sickened everyone and all coped with the scene in different ways. The experienced homicide crew sent the others to attend to the tasks away from the body and stayed behind to face death's most recent claim with heavy disdain for the man they should have caught before this.

While Esposito tended to speaking with the despondent woman who'd had the unfortunate experience of finding the child, his girlfriend filled out the paperwork. Claire needed no introduction to the sullen Irishman. All he ask was, "What happened?"

"She was strangled. Before that she was shaken. It's hard to tell which cuts were made perimortem and which were made postmortem but she was tormented by at least a few beforehand slits in her arms. She was then staged in the form of a cross. Her eyelids were left open. Someone painted angel wings around her. And after all of this, she was left alone in an alleyway where a stranger found her. Her mother is MIA." The M.E was bitter, unmistakably, irrefutably, one hundred and ten percent bitter, and understandably so.

Beckett stared down at the corpse and told them, "That dress isn't hers."

"How do you know?" Kevin asked politely.

She shifted, her hands resting on her stomach while her face portrayed despair, "I've been over there five times and babysat once. Claire doesn't own anything that isn't pink or somehow sparkly. She didn't own anything with blue and white stripes. That dress isn't hers."

"Is the bow?" Lanie questioned. Beckett nodded.

"So, old bow, new dress and they just happen to match perfectly?" Ryan deducted.

Beckett caught on. "You think this dress was at Gerick's?" The man nodded. "So why kill his daughter?" Beckett questioned the pair with her. Neither answered. Neither had an answer. She didn't expect one. Instead, she told her inferior officer, "Ryan, you and Espo go talk to the managers around here. They should be getting ready to open which means they should be here. I'm sure if you tell them a little girl was murdered, they'll give up their security footage without any kind of reluctance. Castle and I will go talk to Tiara."

"You sure, Beckett?" Ryan questioned, knowing how upsetting all of this was to her.

She breathed out, "Yeah, I'm sure." Ryan nodded and simply let his boss do what she thought was right as she always did. After she turned and took her husband toward the car, the Irish man looked by down at the young girl. The sight of her was making him sick. Whoever did this, whoever tormented this kid needed to be imprisoned for the rest of their miserable, God forsaken life. To him, this person was the closest thing to Satan he'd seen.