[Castle] Ch: 64 [Security footage] (Patreon)

Travis sat at his desk, looking through the footage while Kate, Castle, Jane, and Lisbon went to Cassandra's office.

Ryan, Cho and Esposito were following up on Allison's neighbors and coworkers. That left Travis with several hours of archived footage from the Weyland Hotel, including the morning when the mysterious Michael Rowan had rented Room 814 twelve days before Allison's murder.

He'd already watched the lobby recordings twice at normal speed.

Now he slowed everything down.

His photographic memory made the process easier because every person he'd already seen remained perfectly clear inside his head. Hotel employees crossed the lobby, guests dragged suitcases toward elevators, couples came and went, and several delivery workers appeared throughout the morning.

At 10:17, someone entered through the front doors.

Travis immediately paused the footage.

The person appeared to be a woman, though almost everything about her had been carefully concealed. She wore a long dark coat, low boots, sunglasses, and a loose scarf covering part of her neck. Shoulder-length brown hair hung around her face while she carried a black backpack over one shoulder.

"Hello, Michael Rowan," Travis murmured as he leaned closer to the monitor.

He played the recording forward.

The woman approached the automated check-in kiosk, kept her face angled downward, then used the screen without ever giving the nearest camera a clean view. When she lifted the room card, Travis noticed something around her wrist.

He stopped the footage again and zoomed in.

A thin silver bracelet rested beside an expensive-looking watch with a narrow face and delicate band.

Travis stared at both accessories.

"Women's bracelet and women's watch."

He moved to the elevator footage.

The same woman entered alone, reached for the eighth-floor button with her left hand, then adjusted the backpack using that same hand. Twelve minutes later, another camera caught her entering Room 814.

Three hours and forty-one minutes afterward, she left. And she managed to hide her face.

Travis leaned back while tapping one finger against the desk. The left-hand usage immediately matched the forensic analysis from the bloody smile, while the jewelry made the apparent gender even more convincing.

Everything lined up almost perfectly.

That was exactly what bothered him.

"You're hiding your face from every camera, using a fake identity, paying with a prepaid card, and somehow you forget you're wearing jewelry?"

Travis rewound the lobby footage. He saw the wrist show up again. Then again. The bracelet was clear four times. The watch showed three times. He narrowed his eyes.

Nobody that careful made the same mistake repeatedly. 

"You are revealing that you are a girl by showing the watch and bracelet on purpose. You know the police will investigate and might track the owner using these items. It's not hard to enhance the image, find out the name of the watch, and see if it has a number that helps to identify stores selling such an expensive watch and bracelet in the area," He mumbled to himself.

Travis shifted toward the recordings from the morning Allison's body had been discovered. The hotel cameras had returned shortly after six, and the footage showed officers arriving, employees gathering near reception, forensic technicians carrying equipment, and guests staring at the growing police presence.

Then Travis saw himself.

Kate walked beside him, followed by Castle and Esposito as they crossed the lobby toward the elevators.

Travis paused the video.

Someone walked behind them. The person wore a long dark coat, had brown hair, and sunglasses. They had the same silver bracelet and watch.

He remembered that person.

He hadn't consciously registered anything suspicious at the time because she'd looked like another hotel guest trying to avoid the police activity. She'd walked past them carrying a coffee, briefly turned toward the officers near reception, then continued toward the entrance.

The killer had been there.

Travis replayed those five seconds several times before leaning closer.

"Son of a bitch came back to watch."

He zoomed in on the figure's wrist again before something else clicked inside his mind.

Why wear the same jewelry twice?

If the accessories were distinctive enough to identify the person later, returning in them made absolutely no sense.

Unless identification was the entire purpose.

Travis slowly smiled as the trap became obvious. "I was right. Classic misdirection. Motherfucker is a man. The owner of those two things could be someone related to this case or unrelated. The cops will dig, they find planted evidence, and an innocent person goes to jail. Who are you trying to frame? And why? Is it Cassandra?"

He watched the figure's walk again, paying closer attention to shoulder movement, stride length, hip rotation, and how the coat shifted around the body.

The disguise was good.

Very good.

Still, something about the movement felt forced.

The hips moved more than necessary, while the shoulders remained unusually rigid. The stride shortened whenever the person crossed directly beneath a camera.

Travis leaned back.

Over the next hour, Travis stopped treating the footage like a video and started treating it like a crime scene.

He pulled the clearest frames from every camera angle, enlarged the wrist whenever it appeared, and sent the best stills to the precinct's technical unit. The hotel cameras weren't exactly high-end surveillance equipment, but the killer had walked close enough to one lobby camera that the watch became surprisingly clear once the image was cleaned up.

The watch itself gave them the first break.

A tiny series of numbers was visible along the edge of the case beneath the band. Travis couldn't read the entire sequence from one frame, so he compared three separate images and mentally filled in the portions that appeared at different angles.

"Come on," he muttered while writing the sequence onto a pad. "You wanted us to see this."

He called the technical unit and gave them the number along with the manufacturer's logo visible on the watch face. Twenty minutes later, they confirmed it was a luxury model with an individually recorded serial number. The manufacturer wouldn't release customer information directly over the phone, so Travis had the request routed through the department while an assistant district attorney prepared the necessary subpoena for the retailer records.

The bracelet was harder.

There wasn't a normal serial number stamped across it, though enhancement revealed a maker's hallmark and a tiny engraved service code inside the clasp. That code belonged to a Manhattan jewelry boutique that handled custom pieces and repairs.

Travis sent that information over too.

Then he waited.

He hated waiting.

He watched the disguised figure cross the lobby another six times while his phone sat beside the keyboard. Each replay made the same conclusion stronger. Whoever wore those accessories wanted investigators to notice them eventually. The disguise hid the face while advertising everything else.

His phone finally rang.

"Wilson."

The technician on the other end spoke for nearly a minute.

Travis's expression slowly changed.

"You're sure both records match?"

Another answer came through.

"Send me the data."

He ended the call and stared at the screen.

A second later, the files arrived.

The watch had been purchased eighteen months earlier from an authorized Manhattan dealer. The customer name attached to the sale was Cassandra Wells.

The bracelet had an even cleaner trail.

Cassandra had brought it into the Chelsea boutique seven months ago to repair a damaged clasp. The service code visible in the footage matched the repair ticket exactly. The store's intake photograph showed the same silver bracelet, including a tiny scratch near one of the links.

Travis opened the photograph beside the enhanced hotel frame.

Perfect match.

He leaned back and slowly rubbed his jaw.

"So that's the game."

The evidence now pointed toward Cassandra almost too neatly. Her incense had been contaminated. She'd visited Allison repeatedly. She'd disappeared after the murder. The fake Red John symbol had been drawn left-handed, and now the person who prepared Room 814 appeared to be wearing Cassandra's watch and bracelet.

Any ordinary investigation would start tightening around her immediately.

Travis saw the opposite.

"You're building her for us," he murmured. "Every road is supposed to lead straight to Cassandra. It's fascinating to see the hard work you put into this plan. But sadly, I'm gonna catch you."

He grabbed his phone and called Kate.

She answered after the second ring. "What'd you find?"

Travis looked once more at the disguised figure walking casually behind their group on the morning of the murder.

"Our hotel woman was wearing Cassandra Wells's watch and bracelet," he said. "And before you get excited, I don't think it was Cassandra."

Travis's eyes stayed on the frozen image.

"I think somebody wants us to believe it was."