Title: Shiver Me Typewriter
Setting: Sometime before the end of season two. Meant as a standalone.

Summary: When a college student is found murdered by the unlikeliest of weapons, Beckett and Castle must find out what he was working on that was worth killing for as the body count threatens to rise.

Note: This was written after a discussion on the Red Vs Blue forum where one of the members mentioned that he would really like to see the 'musketoon' as the murder weapon. This is originally written in tv script format so a bit dialogue heavy, but I like dialogue, banter is so much fun!

Teaser

Why did he read the reviews? He knew that the moment he opened the newspaper he was simply asking for it. On one page he's a New York Times Bestseller, and on the next he's being harangued for his lack of… what? Seriously? He wrote books to entertain his fans, not bucking for the next great American novel.

Though, that was a thought…

"Dad!" his daughter pulled the paper down, shining her brightest smile at him, "did you sign the permission slip for the school trip yet?"

"Hhmmm," sometimes it was too easy to tease Alexis, "permission slip… permission slip?"

"I have to turn it today or I can't go on Friday," she pouted and he knew he couldn't win.

"You mean this permission slip," Castle pulled the crumpled piece of paper out from under his breakfast plate. "The one that wants to take you to that tawdry place of excess, depravity and overindulgence?"

"Found a time machine back to your teenage years, have we?" his mother glided into the kitchen, sniffing at what was left of the scrambled eggs he had made and, deciding better of them, went to the fridge.

"Depravity?" the writer really tried to sound shocked, "Okay, maybe a little."

Alexis snatched the slip from his hand, "I'm looking forward to this trip, going to a place where shouting at each other actually influences world politics and money."

"A Castle interested in finance," he gave her a little pinch on her cheek to tease her, "how boring but incredibly normal of you."

"Well," she grinned sheepishly, "one of us might get to ring the bell."

"Hah," he threw the paper down dramatically, "I knew there was an attention seeking megalomaniac in there somewhere trying to get out!"

"Funny," Martha deadpanned as she poured herself some orange juice, "I thought the same thing when you were born."

Castle narrowed his eyes at her, knowing he never could show any true malice towards anyone, especially his mother. He was saved from coming up with a witty retort by his cellphone going off, the word ESPOSITO emblazoned on it.

"Castle," he answered cheerfully, "half price sale, solve two murders for the price of one."

"Hey," the detective replied back quickly, "sent you an address, Beckett wants you to meet her there."

"Ooo, what's special about this one?" he was already on his feet, looking for his wallet and keys, but he had to pause as he wasn't sure if he heard his friend right. "Chunky salsa?"

""""

As Richard Castle entered the small apartment, it was a crime scene like most others. A policeman guarded the door, a few CSI techs where busy about doing whatever. The room itself was typical of a student, piles of papers and books stacked around. There was a tattered couch, dishes in the sink, lots of maps on the wall which was different.

"Woah," he stopped as he finally saw the focus of the investigation, "chunky salsa indeed."

"Told you he'd like that one," Lanie, the medical examiner, was squatted down next to the body, collecting evidence.

Though could he really call it a body? The head was there, mostly, and so was the legs, mostly, but the torso was nothing but a mash of flesh and organs, like a butchers shop had exploded in front of the sofa.

"Victim is Joshua Peritti," Beckett walked in from what he guessed was the bedroom of the apartment, "twenty eight years old, lives alone. Super found him when he came to fix a leaky faucet."

"That would explain the puke I had to step over in the hallway," now over the initial 'what the?' reaction, he ventured closer, trying to memorize every snapped sinew for future reference in a book. "What is that? Shotgun blast?"

"I've seen shotgun victims before, but this?" Lanie held up a bloody nail, old and bent with a piece of liver stuck to it. "Who loads a shotgun with nails, and the load doesn't look like standard buck or bird shot."

Castle was absolutely mesmerized by the concept… he could see the title now: Nails to You… no… You've got Nail… nah…

"Send it to ballistics," Beckett pulled him from his revere, "maybe they can figure it out."

Lanie slipped the nail into one of her evidence baggies, "His hands are just as shredded as his torso, I'm thinking he had them up in a defensive gesture."

Now that was interesting to Castle, "So he saw his attacker, knew it was coming."

"But no signs of forced entry," the detective added as her cell phone went off, "he let his killer in."

Since the brunette moved away to answer her phone, Castle turned back to the medical examiner, "Shotgun or no, that kind of damage would make a very loud bang."

"This building has a lot of student tenants," she informed him, "they were probably gone for the weekend, or passed out hung over. Preliminary TOD I put at sometime this morning, between two and seven."

"Can't be more exact?"

She tilted her head slightly and raised one eyebrow in annoyance, "You try taking a liver temp when the liver has been sliced and diced like yesterday's mystery meat."

Had to give her that one.

"That was Esposito," Beckett gestured with her phone as she walked back over, "victim has a sister, she's been notified on her way in."

""""

No matter how many times he had wrote this kind of scene, and actually sat in on one, it never got any easier.

"I can't believe he's gone," Linda Johnson, Joshua's sister, sat across from them in the lounge with tear stained cheeks, her husband's arms wrapped tightly around her, "I just talked to him on Tuesday."

"The…" Dominic Johnson choked slightly on his words, "the policeman said his body was severely damaged. Are you sure it was Josh?"

Though in pieces, Peritti had finally made it to the morgue, but until Lanie could clean things up, the mess wasn't something to inflict on the grief-stricken family.

"We'll confirm with a dental match," Beckett replied softly but strongly, she was good at that subtle mix Castle often noted to himself, "but most of his face was intact, enough to match to his driver's license."

"Oh god," the sister cried out but was quickly quieted by Dominic.

"I know you don't want to think about this right now," she pushed forward, "but I have to ask, do you know of any reason someone might want to hurt your brother?"

"No, he was a college student," the woman answered as if that statement alone absolved her brother of any and all wrong-doings.

"Was he into drugs," Beckett was good at not sounding accusatory, "or had a debt?"

"He was a good kid," Linda assured them, "he wasn't into any of that."

They really couldn't take her word for it, but there was no reason to assume she was straight out lying either.

"You spoke to your brother Tuesday?" Castle spoke into the silence that had fallen over them.

"Mostly I did the talking," Dominic replied, "Josh was going to come fishing off the coast
of Maine with me next month, we were making plans."

Beckett picked up on the information before he did, "Did he sound worried at all or try to back out?"

"No," he shrugged, "he sounded happy. He said he was almost done with his thesis and the trip was going to be part celebration."

Curiosity got the better of the writer, "What was he studying, exactly?"

"Military history," Linda sighed and gained an all too familiar far-away look in her eyes, "he had wanted to go into the Navy like our father, but he got the bends when he was a kid, complications from it disqualified him from being able to join."

"He started out in engineering, building boats," the husband continued, "he's good at numbers and remembering things, but he got himself hooked on historical puzzle solving."

"What was his thesis about?" curiosity now got the better of Beckett, though Castle was sure she'd say something like any information could be useful information.

"Ah," the man paused, "the sinking of the… Edmund Fitzgerald, I think."

"The one that went down in Lake Superior without a word?" Castle rambled off before anyone else had a chance to speak. "All hands lost?"

"Yeah, that's the one."

""""

He had always wanted to write a story involving a ship wreck… but he couldn't come up with anything that wasn't Cape Fear and decided he should put that plot idea away in a drawer somewhere next to his one about the space cowboy.

"Didn't know you were a fan of the Fitzgerald," his muse asked him as they walked into the station room, unknowingly setting his mind again to the concept of a story never written.

"Bad weather, high waves, a ship holding its own against mother nature," he waved his hands with flair and pose, he hoped, "but within ten minutes, without a word it disappears into the deep. All hands lost, like it simply vanished."

He paused for dramatic effect but the brunette simply stared blankly at him.

"And to this day," he continued unperturbed, "they still argue on what drug it to the deep of a lake that has claimed thousands lives mysteriously. You can't make this stuff up."

At least that garnered a laugh, but he wasn't sure at what.

"Any word from ballistics on our murder weapon?" Beckett turned to Ryan who was seated at his desk across from his partner.

The man didn't bother putting down his bag and chips and handed her a file, "Can't be positive without the weapon to match, but the tech thinks it might have been a Musketoon."

"Musketoon?" Castle nudged his head over Beckett's shoulder to read the report, "That anything like a musketeer?"

It took the man a second to process that, "Ah, no, he said a Musketoon was like the original sawed off shotgun used by navy's and pirates in the 1800s. Some of the shot used on our vic was old and degraded, could be original. And apparently nails were used as filler in musketoons."

"He said it could be a blunderbuss though," Esposito chimed in.

"But more likely a Musketoon," Ryan shot back and Castle got the feeling that this wasn't the beginning of this discussion.

"Yeah, but "death from Musketoon"?" his partner laughed, "Sounds too much like "death from Mouseketeer"."

"Somehow," Beckett interrupted them, "I don't think that occurred to our victim when he was shot."

"So… our guy was into ships, and shipwrecks," Castle started to piece together all the information, "and was killed by a relic navel weapon. Oh!"

"No," the woman snapped warningly.

"Our murderer is a pirate and he shot our victim because he found where his buried treasure is!" he grinned, proud of himself. "Avast!"

"Castle!"

"What?" he shrunk back just a bit, "Too much Pirates of the Caribbean, not enough Robert Louis Stevenson?"

His muse stared blankly at him, again, it was a habit he found both funny and endearing, if not occasionally unnerving. Either way, she ignored him and turned to Esposito, "Didn't I see something in Peritti's phone records about a museum?"

It only took the man a moment to pull out the logs, "Yeah, twenty calls over the last month to the Maritime Industry Museum, Throggs Neck, New York." Without prompting, he opened a search engine and started to type away.

"That's local," Beckett said almost to herself, "and if it's a Maritime Museum, then I'm willing to bet they have a few relic firearms."

"A blunderbuss perhaps?" Castle added helpfully.

"Musketoon," said Ryan, but no one was listening.

"You might want to look at this," Esposito pointed to his screen, "It's their website."

As they all gathered around, a Cheshire grin started to form on the writer's face.

"Castle," she said the name slowly, "don't say a word."

The detective had brought up the website for the Museum in question, and there, on the front page, was a picture of their director: David Pendelcote. He was an older man, weathered face, very grandfatherly with his long beard and with a patch over his left eye.

"Aaarrrrrr…"