Chapter Text
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The body of a young man has been left stuffed haphazardly into a shopping cart, his head severely disfigured and caked with blood. Medical Examiner Lanie Parish is doing a preliminary examination of the body while Detectives Ryan and Esposito along with writer and sidekick Richard Castle look about the scene. The middle of an aisle in a store is different from the usual back alley or someone’s office or apartment that they usually get called to for a murder.
“Do you think it’s kind of poetic that the stock boy was left in one of the shopping carts he pushed around everyday?” Ryan asked Castle and Esposito, making Lanie roll her eyes.
“Nah, dude, I just think it’s sad,” Esposito told his partner.
“You know what I don’t get,” Castle said as he studied the trail of blood droplets on the white tile floor of the super shopping centre, “why bother pushing him inside? Why leave him in this aisle of all places?” he gestured at the product on the shelves. They were standing in the store’s Easter candy aisle.
“Dunno, man,” Ryan said looking at the PDQ cases containing bags of multi-coloured jellybeans.
“Maybe it’s to send a message. Maybe the Easter Bunny did it because the stock boy was a non-believer,” Castle surmised in his over-dramatic voice of doom. All that earned him was a sigh and an eye roll from Beckett as she walked up after finishing her interview with the store manager. “Let me guess, you didn’t believe in the Easter Bunny either? No Santa, no Easter Bunny, what a sad childhood for you . Better watch out, you could be the next Killer Bunny victim.”
“Castle,” Beckett said in the warning tone she reserved only for him.
“Yeah?”
“Focus.” Ryan and Esposito snickered and smiled at Castle getting chastised.
“Sorry,” Castle paused a beat then, “but it has to mean something, you have to admit this is a weird place for a drop.” He was like an excited terrier.
“Not really,” Beckett pointed to the ceiling where there was a security camera with her pen then at a pole that acted as a support beam that was in the middle of the aisle, “that pole creates a blind spot in the security cameras.”
“Oh.”
“Lanie, any guess on time of death?”
“Based on body temp and lividity, I’d say somewhere between ten and midnight.”
“That fits with the guy’s work scheduling. Overnight manager said Miguel, here, worked four to one. The time clock shows he punched in on time at four p.m. and out at eight for meal break, back in again an hour later then he never punched out at the end of his shift,” Esposito told them reading off of his notepad.
“Make sure you get copies of all the security cams’ footage,” Beckett told Ryan and Esposito.
“Already on it, store’s asset protection associate is making copies of the camera vids as we speak,” Ryan told her.
“Good work,” Beckett told both of them and they smiled like students who had just won a prize from their teacher in the way they usually did when they got praise from her for anticipating what needed to be done. Beckett turned around to see Castle looking at the chocolate rabbits.
“Can you believe these things?” he pointed at the chocolate rabbits called ‘Diva’ and ‘Dude’. The ‘Dude’ rabbit was wearing a yellow chocolate medallion and baggy clothes and making a gangsta-rap hand gesture. The ‘Diva’ rabbit was wearing a candy necklace, the box printed with pink leopard print giving it a Jersey Shore feel. “Heh, it’s a pimp and his ho,” Castle said pointing at the rabbits again. Beckett tried not to smile but he kind of had a point.
“They themed this aisle wrong,” Ryan said, head-nodding at Castle’s rabbits.
“Yeah,” Esposito said picking up his partner’s thread, “the ‘Dude’ should be over there next to his Peeps,” he pointed to the marshmallow and sugar birds. Ryan and Esposito did the ’feed the bird’ gesture. Lanie smiled and shook her head. Beckett noticed another type of chocolate rabbit called the ‘Texter’ bunny holding a chocolate mobile phone.
“Hey look, Castle, it’s you,” she pointed at it smiling mischievously.
“Nah, if it was me he’d be texting ‘DRATW’,” Castle said inspecting the rabbit closely. Beckett rolled her eyes at him and went over to Lanie and the body.
“Say what now?” Esposito was confused.
“Double Rainbow All The Way,” Castle said as if it was obvious.
“What does that even mean?” Ryan was just as confused as Esposito.
“It loses something if you have to explain it, just ask my tweeps,” Castle told them.
“Right, well how about we come back to working this young man’s murder?” Beckett prompted, ever the voice of reason.
“We’ll, ah, just be going outside and see if we can pick up the blood trail again,” Esposito said chucking a thumb over his shoulder. Lanie and her crew were preparing the body for its trip to the morgue.
“The store manager said he’d have the overnight shift gather at the back of the store so we can ask them questions,” Beckett said then she led the way to the back of the large store, leaving the uniforms to keep the crime scene contained and Lanie and her team to deal with the body. As Beckett walked she talked, filling Castle in on what little info she had gleaned from the store manager. “The store closes for business at midnight and normally re-opens in the morning at six. Lanie’s estimated time of death means the killer could be a worker or a customer. It’s still March so the Easter merchandise wouldn’t be shopped too hard yet. Killer probably thought, quite accurately, that it might be a while before someone discovered the victim. Using the pole for a camera block helped too.”
“No one just looked down the aisle?”
“Shopping cart was covered with a blanket when the body was found. An early associate was taking care of returns and drops and discovered the body thinking it was an abandoned returns cart. She looked under the blanket and…,” she made a gesture that said ‘you know the rest’.
“Well, it was a drop…a body drop.”
“Yeah. Anyway, calming her down long enough to talk to her earlier wasn’t easy.”
“So we’re hoping one of the associates saw someone bring in a shopping cart with a body in it covered with a blanket?”
“Yeah, long-shot, I know. I’m hoping someone saw something, anything, suspicious,” Beckett said as they finally made it all the way to the back of the store. A restless group of store workers waited for them.
What they got out of the group wasn’t much. No one saw who brought the carriage in. Most of the late night shoppers looked suspicious or weird so singling one out of the crowd that might be the killer wasn’t going to happen.
“The blood trail was partially cleaned up, didn’t anyone notice it before that, and who did clean it?” Castle asked.
“Seeing a blood droplet trail around here, unfortunately, isn’t that uncommon. You’d be surprised how many times a package of meat leaks or a customer gets a bloody nose or an associate gets a deep cut from cardboard or their box-cutter,” the store manager explained.
“Who cleaned it?” Beckett repeated the question. After some whispers an older gentleman raised his hand.
“Did you follow the trail to clean it?” Beckett asked. The older man looked to a co-worker standing next to him and his friend translated the question to him in Russian. When the older man answered in Russian Beckett held up her hand in a staying motion before the friend took the time to translate to English what she already understood. The man had explained that he used a Zamboni type machine to clean the floors, working the aisles like the driver of a street cleaner.
“And you didn’t get up to the aisle where the body was?” Beckett asked in Russian.
“We are short handed this week. One maintenance worker is on holiday, another is out sick. I had to prioritize and clean only the high-traffic aisles,” he told her in his own language.
She thanked him and then switched back to English to thank the rest of the workers. The store manager dismissed the associates then waited for them to disperse. It didn’t take long. Beckett thanked the manager for cooperating and then got contact information. The AP associate came out and gave her the copies of the security camera footage. After that Castle and Beckett headed back to the front of the store. They checked in with the CSU guys in the Easter aisle to make sure nothing new was found.
“Ooh, I have to get some Cadbury Crème Eggs for Alexis. If she finds out I saw them and didn’t buy her some, some form of physical and/or mental torturing will be involved,” Castle pleaded with his eyes. The crème eggs weren’t inside the zone taped off by CSU so Beckett nodded an okay. She didn’t expect Castle to buy more than the Cadbury eggs but she supposed she should have given his habit of compulsive buying. While she was waiting she spied some speckled jellybeans, grabbed the bag, handed them and a dollar bill to pay for them to Castle and told him she’d be outside with Ryan and Esposito. No sense in having them both wait in line to cash out, she figured, plus she was on the clock. Beckett threw a little sashay into her hips just in case Castle was watching. Just as she was turning out of the aisle she looked back and saw he was, indeed, watching. She gave him a glare and he looked away, head down like a puppy dog in trouble. She walked on and smiled, sometimes she found the games they played fun, a little cruel to him, but fun.
Outside the store Ryan and Esposito were looking at an area of the parking lot near a carriage corral.
“What put that smile on your face?” Esposito asked when she was a yard or two away.
“Huh? Oh, uh, just one of those witty T-shirts in the store,” Beckett lied.
Even before she walked up close Beckett could see blood spatter on the asphalt and on the metal cross-beam of the corral.
“I’m gonna run in and give the CSU guys a heads-up,” Ryan told them. Beckett took up his place guarding the crime scene.
“Where’s Castle?” Esposito asked her.
“He wanted to buy a few things.”
“Why am I not surprised?” Esposito’s rhetorical came with a smile.
Almost as if on cue Castle emerged from the store, shopping bag in hand. He watched Ryan whiz by him then Castle gave Beckett and Esposito a quizzical look.
“The guys found the murder site,” Beckett said when he got close enough for her to use a non-carrying voice.
“So I have a theory,” Castle stated after looking at the blood splatter. Beckett and Esposito rolled their eyes in a ‘oh, here we go again’ expression. “The killer, in a jealous rage, comes up behind Miguel and whacks him on the back of the head and then the front of his noggin hit’s the bar right there,” he pointed at the carriage corral.
“Leave out the jealous rage part, which is strictly conjecture, and I think you’ve got a good theory,” Beckett told him.
Ryan came back out of the store with a few of the CSU guys and a couple of uniforms. One of the CSU guys gave a preliminary based on the blood spatter that supported Castle’s ‘from behind’ theory but they wouldn’t know for sure until Lanie checked the head wounds during the autopsy.
“In the meantime,” Beckett said to her guys, “we can get started on background of our vic and start reviewing the security cam footage.” She saw Ryan’s frame physically slump at the mention of the security tape reviewing; he seemed to be doing a lot of that lately. She decided to take pity on him. “Why don’t you two take the background check, Castle and I will start going over the camera footage back at the precinct.” She handed Esposito the contact info she had on Miguel Garza’s next of kin.
“Right,” Esposito said taking the paper then he and Ryan left in their car. Beckett and Castle left in hers. They stopped by his loft to drop off Alexis’ eggs and to grab Castle’s laptop. He also paid for two coffees and danishes from the usual café that they had to drive past anyway to get to the precinct. The early morning phone call had made getting them earlier impossible. They would at least have had caffeine and breakfast before burning their retinas staring at computer screens.