Chapter 4: The Calm After The Storm
The silence in the visitors’ lounge was profound, broken only by the distant, muffled sounds of the precinct. Castle leaned against the doorframe, watching Jane’s unnervingly still form on the couch. He’d been there for nearly twenty minutes, and the consultant hadn’t so much as twitched. It was less like sleep and more like a temporary absence, the man’s consciousness having departed for some other, more interesting plane.
A burst of laughter from the bullpen—Esposito’s, loud and sharp—jolted Castle from his thoughts. His curiosity, a perpetual, nagging force, pulled at him. What had Ryan found? Had they pulled the bank footage? He glanced back at Jane. The man was a statue. What harm could there be in stepping away for just a moment?
He pushed off the doorframe and drifted back toward a the energy of the bullpen. “What did I miss?” he asked, sliding next to Ryan’s desk.
Ryan looked up, his eyes bright. “The bank footage is gold. Puts Vancamp at the ATM at 10:04 PM. He’s in and out in ninety seconds, just like he said. No way he had time to stage that scene.”
“Told you Jane was right,” Esposito said, leaning back in his chair with a satisfied grin. “Guy’s spooky, but he’s good.”
The three of them fell into a comfortable debrief, the puzzle pieces of the case clicking into place now that the forger was cleared. They were so engrossed they didn’t see Beckett approaching, her footsteps silent on the worn linoleum.
“Castle,” she said, her voice low and tight. “I thought I told you to watch the door.”
He straightened up, a boy caught with his hand in the cookie jar. “I was. He’s out cold. I just came to get an update.”
Her eyes narrowed, a familiar storm brewing in their depths. “Go. Back. Now.”
He offered a placating smile and hurried back down the corridor. The lounge door was still ajar, just as he’d left it. He pushed it open, expecting to see the same scene of profound repose.
The couch was empty.
The indentation on the vinyl cushion was already slowly reinflating. Patrick Jane was gone.
“Beckett!” Castle’s shout echoed down the hall.
She was at his side in seconds, her face a mask of controlled fury as she took in the vacant room. “I leave you with one job. One.” She spun on her heel, barking orders into the bullpen. “Esposito, Ryan, sweep the building. Cafeteria, bathrooms, every closet. He can’t have just vanished.”
The search was swift and thorough. It yielded nothing. There was no sign of the blond consultant anywhere in the precinct.
Beckett pulled out her phone, jabbing at the screen for Cho’s number. It rang twice before his calm, baritone voice answered. “Cho.”
“Jane is missing,” Beckett said, bypassing any greeting.
There was a brief pause on the line. “Missing?”
“He was supposed to be napping. He’s not. Do you have any idea where he would go?”
“No,” Cho replied, his tone utterly flat. “He doesn’t report his movements to me. Have you checked the crime scene? The Finch gallery? He likes to walk through things when no one’s around.”
It was a logical suggestion. A professional one. Beckett dispatched Esposito and Ryan to the gallery immediately, her frustration mounting with every passing second. This was exactly the kind of chaotic, unpredictable behavior she couldn’t stand. Before she could call Cho back to update him, her phone buzzed in her hand. The screen read CAPTAIN GATES.
She took a deep breath, steeling herself. “Beckett.”
“Detective,” Gates’s voice was clipped, each syllable sharp enough to frost the air. “I have the director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art on the line. He is hysterical. Your consultant, Mr. Jane, is there, and he has—quote—‘desecrated millions of dollars of priceless art.’ Get down there. Now. Handle this.”
Beckett closed her eyes for a second, the headache that had been threatening all day finally blooming into a full-throated roar. “Yes, Captain.”
She ended the call and immediately dialed Cho again. “He’s at the Metropolitan Museum. Gates just called. Meet me there.” She then called Esposito. “Forget the gallery. He’s at the Met. Get Ryan and meet us there.”
“I’m coming with you,” Castle said, already grabbing his jacket, his writer’s fascination now completely overriding any sense of self-preservation.
The drive was a tense, silent affair. Beckett wove through traffic with aggressive precision, her knuckles white on the steering wheel.
The head curator all but collided with her the moment they arrived.
“Detective Beckett? Thank God,” he gasped, his words tumbling over each other. “I’m Andrew Grady, the head curator. He’s—he’s in my office. The things he did… with a… the Matisse… the… the…” He seemed unable to finish the thought, simply gesturing wildly for them to follow.
He led them through a labyrinth of back corridors, away from the public grandeur and into the functional, sterile underbelly of the museum. He threw open a heavy oak door marked ‘Director of Curatorial Affairs.’
The office was grand, sunlit, and filled with the quiet hum of history. Patrick Jane sat calmly in a leather chair as if he’d been invited for tea.
“Detective Beckett,” he greeted warmly. “Mr. Castle. That was quicker than I expected.”
Before Beckett could unleash the barrage of questions boiling inside her, the room filled rapidly.
Grant Edgerson, the Museum Director—a tall man in a severe black suit—stormed in, followed by a flustered conservator clutching a toolkit. Cho slipped in a moment later, unreadable as ever. Esposito and Ryan followed, wide-eyed.
“That’s him!” the man with the toolkit screeched, pointing a trembling finger at Jane. “That’s the vandal!”
“He has single-handedly destroyed the integrity of our collection!” Edgerson snapped, his voice cutting through the room.
Everyone, shut up!” Beckett barked. The echo silenced the room. She drew a breath, exhaled, and leveled her gaze at Jane.
“What happened?”
Edgerson stepped forward, vibrating with fury.
“What happened, Detective, is that this man presented outdated insurance credentials to my staff and then proceeded to ‘inspect’ three of our key pieces. And—and he painted them with some kind of liquid!”
Beckett’s blood ran cold. She looked at Jane, who raised an eyebrow, the picture of infuriating innocence.
Mr. Edgerson,” Jane said politely, “I did not paint your artwork. I used a mild analytical reagent—one your conservator should recognize if he’s even passingly familiar with pigment tests.”
His calm only escalated the chaos.
The curator gasped.
The conservator let out a strangled cry.
Edgerson turned a dangerous shade of crimson.
“How dare you!” the director thundered. “Phillip has been with this institution twenty years!”
Jane regarded the man’s immaculate, expensive suit with mild curiosity.
“Your expertise is clearly in administration, not aesthetics.”
The bedlam redoubled. The conservator was yelling about solvents and irreversible damage. The curator was pleading with the director. Cho moved to stand silently by the door, a solid, observing presence, while Esposito and Ryan looked at Beckett, waiting for a signal.
Beckett held up her hands, trying to shout over them, her authority fracturing in the face of their sheer, professional horror. “Everyone, just calm down! I need to understand what he actually did!”
It was no use. The chaos was a living thing, feeding on itself.
And then, the office door opened again.
Teresa Lisbon stood there, her travel bag still slung over her shoulder, her dark hair pulled back into a knot at the back of her head. Her sharp green eyes took in the entire scene in a single, sweeping glance—the screaming director, the weeping conservator, the furious Beckett, and Jane, sitting serenely at the center of it all like the calm eye of a hurricane.
“What the hell is going on?” She said loudly but firmly.
The noise in the room cut off as if she had thrown a switch. All heads turned toward her. The museum director, Grant Edgerson, pointed a shaking finger, his voice a sharp crack in the stunned silence. “And who, exactly, are you?”
Teresa Lisbon set her travel bag down with a soft thud, the sound definitive in the hushed room. She pulled out her wallet and flipped it open to reveal her badge, holding it up for all to see. “I’m Senior Special Agent Teresa Lisbon, with the California Bureau of Investigation. I’m here at the request of the NYPD.” She calmly walked over to the director, her posture relaxed yet authoritative. “I apologize for any disruption my consultant may have caused. Now, please, tell me what’s happened here.”
Jane opened his mouth, a mischievous glint in his eyes. “Lisbon, if you’ll just allow me to—”
“Quiet,” she said, her voice slicing through his sentence with effortless precision.
Beckett watched, utterly amazed, as Jane’s mouth snapped shut. He actually looked somewhat contrite, sinking back into his chair and studying the floor.
The head curator, Andrew Grady, stepped forward, wringing his hands. “Agent Lisbon, the damage is—”
She held up a hand, cutting him off without even looking at him, her focus remaining on the director. “Mr. Edgerson?”
“This man,” he seethed, “used a chemical solvent on the corners of three paintings. He peeled away layers of paint. It is vandalism on an unprecedented scale.”
Jane looked up, expression finally earnest. Teresa looked at him expectantly. “It’s really not as bad as it looks.”
The director’s face began to flush a deeper red. “I will have his head for this! And the department that let him in here!”
“Quiet,” Lisbon said, her tone leaving no room for argument.
“I used a harmless test to check the underlying paint layers. If anyone had examined them properly before hanging them, they would have noticed a small etched image of the Scream hidden beneath the brushwork in each piece.”
Lisbon’s eyes narrowed. “What does that mean?”
“It means,” Jane said simply, “they’re forgeries.”
The room inhaled as one.
The curator and conservator paled to matching shades of chalk.
Edgerson sputtered soundlessly.
“Show me,” Lisbon commanded.
Jane rose smoothly and led them to a painting on a conservator’s table. With one gesture, he revealed the corner where the solvent had exposed the faint, ghostly face from Munch’s The Scream beneath the surface paint.
The director stared, fury dissolving into horror.
The director stared, his anger momentarily eclipsed by dawning horror.
Then he rounded on Beckett, stepping in close, voice a low, venomous hiss.
“You. Your career is finished. I’ll have you writing parking tickets by next week.”
Lisbon stepped between them before Beckett could respond, her movement sharp and decisive.
“I’m sure Detective Beckett would prefer this matter remain quiet,” Lisbon said, voice cool as steel. “Just as I’m sure you would prefer your donors—and the entire art world—not learn that your museum has been publicly displaying high-end forgeries for who knows how long.”
Edgerson froze. His jaw worked, but no words came out. He looked from the exposed forgery to Lisbon’s unyielding stare.
The fight bled out of him.
With a curt nod, he turned sharply and stormed out.
The room fell into a heavy silence. Lisbon turned back to Jane, who was trying to look innocently preoccupied with a loose thread on his sleeve.
“I told you to stay out of trouble,” she said, her voice firm but lacking its earlier sharpness.
“It was important,” Jane said, his voice soft but unyielding.
Lisbon held his gaze for a long moment, a silent conversation passing between them that no one else in the room could decipher. The tension in the grand office shifted, the outrage of the museum staff cooling into a stunned, awkward silence. She finally gave a single, almost imperceptible nod, a gesture of acceptance, not approval.
She turned back to Beckett, her posture relaxing into something more collegial. “I’m certain you can handle it from here,” Lisbon said, her voice firm and leaving no room for argument. She picked up her shoulder bag from where she’d dropped it, the movement efficient and final.
“Jane and I will meet everyone back at the precinct,” she announced to the room, her tone making it clear this was not a suggestion but a settled fact. Cho, who had been a silent statue by the door, let out a slow, quiet breath, his shoulders dropping a fraction of an inch in visible relief.
Jane opened his mouth, a charming, probably explanatory smile already forming on his lips. “Lisbon, I just thought—”
“You can tell me in the car,” she cut him off, not even looking at him as she strode toward the door. “But we are leaving. Now.”
He closed his mouth and followed without another word, falling into step behind her like a chastised but devoted shadow. As they passed through the doorway, Castle, standing closest to them, overheard Lisbon’s voice, low and taut, meant only for Jane. “Before someone tries to murder you,” she muttered, “and I give them my gun to do it.”
Then they were gone, their departure leaving a vacuum in the opulent room. The museum curator and conservator stood frozen, looking from the damaged painting to Beckett as if waiting for further instructions.
Beckett took a deep, steadying breath, the ghost of a smile touching her lips for the first time all day. She turned to the stunned museum staff, her voice reclaiming its authority. “Alright,” she said, pulling out her notebook. “Let’s start with the conservator’s full name and his employment history.”