22 Case 22 - Boom.

LA: <Events before The Rookie S1E12, Modern Family S9E13, SWAT S1E10>

NY: <Events 99 before Brooklyn S5E11, sometime Suits S7E12, 1.5 years after Castle S8 finale>

Instead of going up the stairs, Ben exited the building toward the back in search of the fire escape.

"*Captain Holt called the bomb squad discreetly. What's your position?*" Hicks asked as he got back on the phone with Ben.

"I'm at the back of the building looking at the fire escape. Nobody here, no cameras, no track marks from a car, nothing. The suspect had gloves on, so I doubt we'll get any prints. So all we'll know is that they were around 5'8 based on the video. The mask and coat even concealed figure, gender, skin and hair color..."

"*You caught it before something happened to you or the others in the building. No need to beat yourself up about what happens after just yet,*" Hicks argued back.

Cortez rejoined the call and spoke, "*Beckett is informing the FBI on account of it being a possible act of terror. I told her about your reservations that Martin Kraft's organization has someone working for the bureau, but she assured me that she trusts the acting special agent in charge with her life.*"

"She better. It's my life on the line, after all," Ben countered with a self-depreciating grin.

Eventually, a tank car pulled up where Ben was waiting, and three men from the NYPD SWAT bomb squad introduced themselves to Ben. He showed them the video from inside his apartment, and they quickly confirmed that calling them was the right idea. Two of them got up on the fire escape, and they were handed their bomb suits as they made their way up.

Fifteen minutes later, Ben heard about how they successfully defused the booby trapped door. The charge was placed in a safe container and they were moving back down via the fire escape when suddenly.

*BOOM*

The bomb went off, a loud bang was heard and shattered glass started raining down on Ben and the waiting bomb squad member.

Ben moved toward the building to shield himself by standing close to the wall, but from the corner of his eyes, he saw the third bomb squad guy getting shot.

The detective quickly pulled out his gun and turned toward the direction from where the shots came from, but nobody was there. He quickly moved to the bomb squad member and did his best to make sure the man wouldn't bleed out, but things looked grim.

Mere minutes later, Ben was surrounded by police officers, fire men, and shortly after Castle, Captain Beckett, and Captain Holt who were already on their way.

"What happened?" Castle asked as the EMT loaded the shot bomb squad member on a gurney. Another police officer handed Ben a towel to get rid of the blood on his hands, though he'd likely need a long shower for that.

"I had surveillance running in my apartment and caught someone planting explosives in my temporary home. I called my commander back in LA, and he called you guys. Captain Holt from the 99th precinct where I'm working currently called the bomb squad on a silent call, and when two of them successfully defused the bomb, it went off anyway. I took cover from the falling shards, but then the third guy from the bomb squad was shot. I immediately looked from where the shots came from while I was taking cover at the wall," Ben explained as he pointed toward one end of the alley, "But came up empty. Nobody was there."

Castle asked for the video recordings up to and including the explosion as Beckett watched over his shoulder but still helped out coordinating the scene with Captain Holt, who was on the phone getting yelled at by the police commissioner who was close to retirement.

"Do you have any suspects in mind?" Beckett eventually asked after she finished watching the video.

"Well, Hector Fisher told me I'd regret shooting him several hours ago, but I don't think it's him. It happened too soon. Christoph Kraft is in town, and we met late last week after a deposition in Manhattan, but I don't think it's him either. Despite the evidence I provided, he will remain a free man and he knows there's no more incriminating evidence I could produce now that my statement against him - one that was never incriminating enough to begin with - was thrown out. If I was the target, the most likely culprit is someone trying to frame Christoph Kraft. Remnants of the White Front who want to stay off radar if he's innocent or rivals if he's the new shadow leader. If it was the White Front, this was pretty amateurish, though. The shots on me and the bomb guy, I mean. Whoever it was emptied the clip from a machine pistol and bounced without engaging further."

Castle added with a small frown as he addressed the detectives present, "Or, you know, it was a random act of violence that had nothing to do with Benjamin as a person. Maybe the bomb squad was the target all along. Were your cameras visible to the naked eye?"

Ben pondered for a moment before shrugging, "I think if you knew what you're looking for. That hallway camera is plenty obvious. From outside, the only other camera I think you'd be able to see is the one looking at the fire escape window. You'd have to be on the fire escape and take a really long good look, though."

"We will look into all three possibilities. For now, please come with us to the 99th precinct," Holt ordered as the two bomb squad members came outside with some firemen and EMTs.

They had survived thanks to the bomb suit and the fact that the explosive was in a locked box that did a lot to dampen the explosion. But they were still badly hurt and in urgent need of attention.

In the precinct, Captain Holt and Captain Beckett discussed the matter at hand in Holt's office as Ben cleaned himself up in the 99th precinct's locker room.

When he came back to the detective's floor, a whole host of people that was called in was discussing the explosion.

Among them, the 99th precinct detectives Peralta, Santiago, Diaz, and Sergeant Jeffords, as well as 12th precinct homicide detectives Esposito and Ryan.

"Hey, Esposito, right?" Ben greeted the detective.

"Right, my man. This is my partner from the 12th, Kevin Ryan," Esposito introduced, and the two shook hands.

"Did Captain Beckett call you guys over? Sorry about that."

"Nonsense. Someone tried to bomb a family friend of our captain. If that isn't a reason to get back out of bed again, what is?"

"Yeah," Ryan agreed with a friendly smile. "Have you guys checked who lived in that apartment before Weiss moved in? Any possible angle that it was directed at whoever owns the apartment, for example?"

Amy Santiago perked up from her desk and explained, "I'm looking into it right now!"

"Wow, nerd alert," Jake quipped with a grin as he looked at his wife wearing massive glasses. Seeing nobody laughing, Jake once more looked at his computer and got back to work.

As Ryan and Esposito were looking over Amy's shoulder, Jake suddenly exclaimed, "Yo! Check this out! The last four people to rent that apartment all used aliases!"

Ben walked over with furrowed brows and confirmed Jake's find. Noticing a discrepancy, he moved to Boyle's desk since he wasn't here and began a search of his own.

"The building owner changed three times in the last decade. That's not normal, even for Brooklyn. Especially since it went from shell corporation to shell corporation..."

"Yeah, but even if it was used as a front to launder money or something, why shoot at the bomb squad guy and Ben? All it did was confirm that something was wrong and tell us that they had the bomber or an accomplice wait on scene for manual detonation."

"What if this shell game between money launderers is a war declaration? If they thought the bomb squad was there because of something they overlooked and not because Benjamin wired up his apartment and they wanted to bomb another building... they couldn't let the bomb squad continue to do its job," Castle interjected after he walked out of the captain's office.

Holt got out of his office with a frown and put his phone down.

"Another explosion in Williamsburg. This is not an isolated incident. I will forward you the address, so get to working on a connection between both locations," Holt revealed with a heavy voice.

As Jake was cursing Boyle for being out of town because one of his cousins was sick, he started fantasizing about terrorist plots that all involved him having to fight of the terrorists on his own in vents.

Castle, a fan of the Die Hard movies himself, quickly latched onto Jake and they started spinning more and more dire spy movie tropes that ended in massive blackouts, the end of Wall Street, or the death of the mayor who turned out to be an impostor all along. At least they managed to relieve some of the tension the group was experiencing until Ben found what he was looking for.

"The fake names that rented the apartments. I looked up baseball legends because of the baseball card larceny case last week. All of these aliases are baseball hall of famers. And I found five buildings in Brooklyn with similar nonexistent renters," Ben offered as he turned his monitor.

"That's the building in Williamsburg that had just been hit," Esposito pointed out as he looked at the list Ben created.

"How'd you get those so quickly?" Ryan curiously inquired as he noted down all five addresses in a small notepad.

"Uh, the residential database allows for search parameters to be more than plaintext so I tried out different syntaxes until it allowed me to search for a bunch of names at the same time and only included results with two or more hits. From there, I looked up the results and ruled out the few where the rest of the variables don't match, including an actual Derek Jeter that is a 83 year old navy veteran and not the baseball legend or an alias."

"A wizard," Jake praised with stars in his eyes.

"A search algorithm on the fly? That's so cool," Amy praised with an impressed look.

"Good job, Ben. I got the FBI lead for the case on the phone since this might have been a serial bombing case. Forward him your search parameters and your results," Terry ordered as he held a hand over the mic on his phone.

Several minutes later, Ben found himself in a car with Jake, Amy, and Rosa. The group had split up to get to the four remaining addresses Ben had found out with only Holt, Beckett, and Castle remaining at the 99th precinct.

"Sucks about all your clothes," Rosa eventually said to break the silence.

"Ugh, you tell me. Thankfully, I had everything important to me on person," Ben mumbled as he looked out of the window. "And hopefully, we'll stop those guys and learn it had nothing to do with me as a person. I'd sleep a little better if that's the case."

-----

"You take Rosa to the back, Amy and I will look around in the lobby," Jake offered Ben as they got out of the car.

"Got it," Rosa and Ben both said at the same time and started moving around the building.

The alleyway was quiet as the two walked into it with guns drawn. And it was barely lit since it was in the middle of the night.

Eventually, they found a homeless man dressed in all dark colors lying in a cardboard box, and Rosa kneeled down next to the man.

"Sir, have you seen anybody suspicious around here?" Rosa quietly asked as Ben looked around into the air to see if anybody was on the fire escapes.

Seeing something that alerted him, Ben suddenly pointed the gun at the homeless man.

"NYPD! Show us your hands, nice and slow," Ben ordered, but the man didn't comply.

"Right now, you're an unwitting accessory to domestic terrorism at best if we can't place you at the other crime scenes. That's a few years without the evidence to place you at the already detonated explosions. Add attempted murder on a police officer, and you're gone forever, man. At worst you press that button and I'll be forced to shoot you in the face to make sure you can't press a second button."

The man slowly dropped what he held beneath the clothes he was wearing and held up his hands for the two detectives to see.

"Beneath the robe left side," Ben told Rosa without pointing his gun away.

Rosa started frisking the man lying on the ground and took out a pistol and a remote control eventually.

"Alright, let's take a step back," Ben ordered Rosa, who didn't know why but complied nonetheless.

"Okay, stand up and open your coat layer by layer until we see your chest," Ben ordered and pointed his flashlight at the man together with his pistol.

Rosa's eyes widened in realization. This guy might have had a suicide vest on, and they would have never known. Even him dropping what he held was already a risky gamble by Ben since it might have been a dead-man switch or any other kind of trigger that might have ended them instantly.

"Sorry about that, Rosa," Ben mumbled as they watched the guy slowly open his coat, then a jacket, and then he lifted what looked like a cashmere cardigan.

"How did you know?" Rosa curiously asked after they cuffed the man and called Jake and Amy, who in turn called the remaining members of the bomb squad over.

Ben pointed to his eyes and explained, "Have you ever seen a homeless man with contacts? I saw the shimmer near his pupil because of your flashlight."

"Are you joking?" Rosa asked and scrutinized Ben, followed by the would-be-bomber.

"Nope. Plus, he had fingerless gloves on, but his nails are clean. His shoes are too nice as well. But it was the contacts that got me to point a gun at him."

"He's different from the one we've seen in your video. Your bomber was dressed completely to show zero skin. This guy isn't," Rosa eventually pondered out loud since Ben's observations left her speechless for a moment.

"Yep. That's good and bad, mostly bad. Especially for Homeless Joe here. It means unless this guy tells us which apartment he rigged to blow up, tells our bomb squad how to disable it and have them complete the exercise without incident. He's going away forever. There's no such thing as an unwitting accessory to domestic terrorism after all. Free ticket to a supermax without a chance for parole if we can't find his employer and accomplices," Ben gloatingly explained. "Do you think as a hero who recently stopped a budding drug lord that my words will carry a certain weight in his trial? They did try to blow me up with my apartment, so I'd be well within my rights to blast him in front of the jury as a character witness, right?"

Rosa gained a sadistic grin as she led the guy to Jake's car and replied, "Right. Didn't you also save the best friend of the mayor earlier today? Can't wait what he will have to say if you seek maximum prison time for Joe here."

"Alright! Stop it already, I'll talk!" The man disguised as a homeless nobody shouted with a fed-up expression. "The bomb is in apartment 5C, and it's on a timer for 3am. I don't know why two bombs already went off, I was told they would all explode in a span of 5 minutes."

"The one where I lived went off because I called the bomb squad," Ben explained with a polite smile.

"Ugh, great. Anyway, if that's the case, there's no way my employer will get away with it. Give me a deal for a reduced sentence, and I'll tell you where to find him," the bomber negotiated with a resigned look in his eyes.

"It will look better for you if you tell us more about this operation before you sign a confession at the precinct. You know, it's only two hours until 3am, and who knows how many innocent lives will be lost if you drag your feet. All of them will be on your head," Rosa countered and smirked in Ben's direction.

"Yeah. We found this location, but who knows how many more will be targeted? You do. And if you don't tell us, the DA might think you're the one who planned it all and not the guy you plan to give up later," Ben added with a sinister smile.

"Stop this shit already," the bomber groaned out. "All apartments should have been more or less empty. If you lived in an apartment that was targeted, that means someone skims off the top from the money laundering operation. Yeah, those buildings have real short-term tenants, but even they aren't properly reported all the time. That's clearly happened with you."

"Rent in NY is pretty high. Alright, I can accept that. So what's the other targets, and who could benefit from me not being reported? The lady I got the keys from?"

"What lady?" The bomber countered.

"When I moved in, I got the key from a neighbor in apartment 23," Ben explained.

"She's definitely pocketing your rent without the firm knowing then," the criminal confirmed with a sigh and listed five addresses that coincided with the known targets Ben found earlier.

Ben and Jake drove back to the precinct with the suspect while Amy and Rosa waited for the bomb squad to defuse apartment 5C since Rosa still held onto the remote detonator.

Back with the 99th, Ben filled in the two captains and Castle with everything he and Rosa found out from the bomber and how they got him. Moments later, Esposito, Ryan, and Jeffords brought in a second suspect and told similar stories. The two bomber were kept far from each other, so they couldn't get their stories straight or plan something else.

At a third location, the FBI managed to defuse the bomb but found no suspect. At the last known location, nothing was found. No bomb, no bomber, nothing. Which likely meant the last bomber got cold feet after two bombs went off far before the agreed upon time.

The FBI took over digging into the why and who - which turned out to be a real estate mogul trying to buy out a failing real estate firm by exposing the money laundering through bombing empty apartments that were 'rented out', and then getting the damaged buildings which would allow them to kick out all prior tenants if there were any, grant the opportunity for massive amounts of money laundering by top to bottom renovations and then rent out the spaces for four times what the previous landlords wanted in rent because of the new amenities.

Ben had simply been at the wrong place at the wrong time.

And he was now standing in front of Captain Holt's husband in their oppulent townhouse.

"Kevin, this is Detective Benjamin Weiss from Los Angeles. He will be living with us for a few days after his apartment building was... made inhabitable thanks to an incendiary device," Holt introduced stiffly as he tried and failed to make the situation sound less dire. Ignoring the incredulous look on his husband, Holt continued, "Detective Weiss, this is my husband Doctor Kevin Cozner. He works as the head of the classics department at Columbia University."

"Doctor Cozner, I apologize for the inconvenience. Thank you for inviting me into your home for the night. I will look for accommodations right away tomorrow," Ben greeted and spoke a little more formal than he was used to - but he didn't want to sound stupid in front of a literature doctorate who was married to his already plenty formal temporary boss.

"Yes, no worries," Kevin waved away and guided Ben towards the guest room but not before giving his husband an appalled look that promised a long conversation before any of them found a wink of sleep.