"Our guest tonight has a remarkable story." "At age 22, Alice Clark journeyed to the jungles of Rwanda, where she studied the mighty silverback gorilla." "Please leave a message." "Alice, they're about to begin." "Where are you?" "When she returned to America," "Ms. Clark applied her extensive research on dominant primates to the alphas of our urban jungle, advising some of the world's most prominent leaders and their spouses, which inspired her latest nonfiction bestseller," "A Field Guide to Relationships." "Please welcome Alice Clark!" "Come on, come on, come on." "You okay?" "Yeah." "Yeah, I'm just..." "What?" "It's like he's glaring at me." " What?" "What do you mean?" "Linus?" " Mmm-hmm." "Whenever I come over here, it feels like he's watching me." "Do you ever notice how his eyes follow you when you move?" "Yeah, I love that." "It keeps you on alert." "Yeah, well, Castle, I'm a cop." "I'm always on alert." "When I come home, I just wanna relax." "Not fall asleep staring into the eyes of a hungry lion about to pounce." "Wait a minute, you're not asking me to get rid of Linus, are you?" "No, I was just thinking that maybe you could move it to another room." "Another room?" "Yeah, like, um, maybe your office." " My office?" " Beckett." "Yes, okay." "We'll be right there." "There's been a murder." "Yeah, of Linus' feelings." "It's just, I bought Linus with my first royalty check from In a Hail of Bullets." "He's my totem." "Wild and untamed." "And my bedroom is my lair." "I know, Castle, but isn't it kind of our lair now?" "But Linus the Lion is part of my identity." "You don't wanna strip me of my identity, do you?" "No." "You know what?" "You're right." "I'm sorry." "Um..." "I can just stay at my own place." "Thanks." "Wait, no." "That's not..." "So, Ryan." "What do we got?" "Victim is Alice Amy Clark, 37." "GSW to the chest." "A parking attendant found her an hour ago." "Apparently, she's some kind of therapist, has an office here in the building." "Wait, Alice Clark?" "Not the Alice Clark?" "Relationship guru to the rich and famous?" "A Field Guide to Relationships?" "You know her?" "By reputation only." "She has the idea that we can improve our relationships by acknowledging our animal nature." "The instinct to protect and nurture, for example, by, say, offering to share one's lair." "Well, speaking of animal nature, you should see the inside of her car." "Oh, wow." "It's been completely torn apart." "And from the spatter pattern, it looks like all of this was done after she was killed." "So they killed her, then they killed her car?" "So they were looking for something." "Yeah, and it wasn't her wallet, phone or keys either." "The killer didn't bother with those or the 10 grand that we found inside her purse." "That's a lot of walking-around money, even for a best-selling author." "So if they weren't after the money, what were they looking for?" "When did this happen?" "Based on body temp and lividity, I'd say between 6:00 and 8:00 last night." "Did you get a look at security cams?" "The garage doesn't have camera coverage, but other parts of the building do." "They're pulling tape for us right now." "Somebody calling her?" "No." "It's some kind of reminder alarm." "Keeps going off every few minutes." "N-F-1-9-4-5." "Esposito's with her assistant upstairs." "He might know." "I don't know anything about it." "But I left the office around 4:30 to go help set up." "When she didn't show, I knew something was wrong." "Was she expecting anyone after you left?" "Any appointments?" "No." "In fact, she had me cancel them all for yesterday." "Any reason?" "I assumed she wanted time to prep for the lecture." "She spent most of the day in her office." "The only call she took was from her boyfriend, Matt." "Did she mention having anything of value on her?" "Something that someone might've been looking for?" "No." "Why do you ask?" "The whole place was turned inside-out." "Just like the car." " And what was taken?" " Nothing valuable." "Computers, iPads, artwork, all the obvious stuff was still there." "So what were they looking for?" "I don't know." "The assistant said that they went through her client files." "Alice counseled some serious VIPs." "CEOs, politicians, generals." "And she took very detailed notes of every session." "The most intimate details of the world's elite?" "People have been killed for a lot less." "Are there any files missing?" "Well, the assistant is combing through them now, but it's gonna take some time." "All right, so I scrubbed her building's security video and check this out." "This guy went up to Alice's office floor near the tail end of our time-of-death window." "And he was the only person up there last night." "Which means he's the only person who could've tossed Alice's place." "Check it out." "He's turned away from the camera in every shot." "Hiding his face from us." "This is our guy." "Detective, your victim's boyfriend is here." "No." "Never seen him before." "And you have no idea what he might've been looking for?" "This is my fault." "I was supposed to pick her up last night, but I got held up at work." "Where is it that you work, exactly?" "I'm a consultant for an international aid NGO." "All she did was help people." "Why would anyone wanna kill her?" "How did she seem to you lately?" "Was there anything to indicate she was having any troubles in her life?" "No, nothing." "She seemed happy." "And how about her clients?" "Was she having difficulty with anyone?" "Sometimes." "The people she counseled could be aggressive." "Demanding." "But she liked the challenge." "Taming the wild beast and all that." "Did anyone stand out in particular?" "Alice was discreet about her work." "Though at lunch the other day, she seemed a little rattled." "She said she'd received a call from a pissed-off client." "Do you know who?" "Like I said, she was discreet." "Okay, thanks." "Hey, listen to this." ""Males of both species define their territory," ""then honor the female by inviting them in."" "See, I'm honoring you by inviting you into my territory." "And Linus is part of that territory." "And if you wanna be invited into my territory again, you should probably rethink that." "So CSU just finished with the car and the office, and they found no prints and almost no trace evidence." "It's like both locations had been cleaned." "That, and the cameras?" "This guy's a pro." "Okay, so then why would a professional assassin murder a therapist?" "Because, as a therapist, she'd be privy to her clients' deepest, darkest secrets." "Secrets so explosive that simply hearing them ensured her demise." "All right, what kind of secrets?" "Well, nuclear launch codes." "That the moonwalk was a fake." "That Roswell wasn't." "Secret location of the cryogenically-frozen body of Walt..." "Well, boyfriend checks out." "Called his office." "They verified that he was working all last night." "But Alice definitely tumbled down the rabbit hole to Shadyland." "That alert on her phone, N-F-1-9-4-5?" "It's the tail number of a private jet that she chartered." "She chartered a private jet?" "To where?" "I contacted the pilot out of Teterboro." "He said Alice paid him 50 grand in cash to be on standby with a full tank of gas." "Destination unknown." "She knew she was in trouble." "She was gettin' ready to disappear." "Okay, she's a best-selling author with a flourishing career." "If she was in trouble, why didn't she just call the police or her boyfriend?" "Why would she charter a jet?" "Hey, guys, we got something." "Canvass turned up a news vendor who saw our suspect leave Alice's building and drive off in a blue van." "The reason he remembers our guy is because his van was parked behind a woman who was cursing out a parking officer for giving her a ticket." "Luckily, Traffic Enforcement's vehicles are mounted with cameras that snap photos of each parked car." "It's how they catch meter cheaters." "Here's the ticketed car." "And here's your murder suspect's blue van." "It's registered to a Manhattan Raptor, Inc." "We get an address?" "Hands!" "Show me your hands!" "Hey!" "Hey!" "Go around the back." "Open up!" "Go!" "Let me see those hands!" "I said show me those hands!" "Well?" "He didn't have an ID on him or in his van, but we did find an interesting match on his fingerprints." "That's Barrett Hawke?" "Barrett Hawke, as in the legendary fixer?" "He's been sweeping the dirt of New York's rich and famous under the rug for over a decade." "Not my dirt." "I just heard." "I've heard, too." "Word is, he does what it takes to get the job done." "He's Teflon." "Nothing ever sticks." "That's because he's careful." "Every memory drive in his van was wiped clean." "There's nothing to tie him back to Alice." "I don't care how careful he is." "Someone hired him to kill her." "This time, he's not walking away." "I'm sorry, Detective, but I've never seen this woman before in my life." "Even though my colleagues witnessed you in the back of your van shredding her photo?" "Your colleagues were mistaken." "But that was a micro-cut shredder, so unfortunately there's no proof either way." "We can place you in her office building on 77th Street at the time of her murder." "So if you didn't know Alice Clark, what the hell were you doing there?" "My favorite shoe shine guy's in that building." "Right." "On the ninth floor?" "Right down the hall from her ransacked office?" "Well, can't really make out his face." "Hard to say who that guy is." "Come on, Detective." "What do you really have on me, huh?" "Do you have a single piece of evidence that I was in her office?" "Or that I was involved in her death?" "Prints?" "DNA?" "Anything?" "That's what I thought." "Just like she said." "Teflon." "The only way to nail this man is to figure out who hired him." "And for that, we need to know what Barrett Hawke was sent to find." "I've been through just about everything." "Her research notes, her book files, everything's intact." "I've rechecked it a couple of times against our index files, and there's only one thing missing." "What's that?" "A client file." "Which client?" "Andrew and Monica Spenser." "Andrew Spenser?" "The hotel and real estate tycoon?" "Who would want his file?" "Actually, I think Andrew Spenser wanted it." "Why would he want his own file?" "Because it's not public knowledge yet, but the Spensers are getting a divorce." "And last week, Mrs. Spenser's attorney subpoenaed Alice to turn all of her session notes over to the court." "Andrew Spenser's worth billions." "If there was any compromising information in those notes, it would cost him boatloads in a settlement." "Wait, doesn't state law protect therapist-client privacy?" "Except Alice wasn't a licensed therapist." "She was more of a relationship coach." "When Mr. Spenser found out the sessions weren't privileged, he hit the roof." "He threatened to sue." "Well, it looks like he did more than just sue." "Do you know where we can find him?" "Mr. Spenser will be right with you." "Okay." "I gotta hand it to this Alice chick, bro." "Whatever her monkey theory is has her in with the movers and the shakers." "What she learned from the real gorillas seems to be working with the 800-pound ones in the human world." "She was like the dog whisperer for CEOs." "You really buy that?" "Oh, you know, skimmed through her book." "I think there might be something to her theory." "For instance, she said that in every relationship, there needs to be a masculine energy and a feminine energy." "Even in ours." "Oh." "Well, we know which one you are." "I don't know about you, but I am very comfortable in my masculinity." "You do realize you're wearing a sweater vest, right?" "It better be important." "I just hung up on my investment group in Singapore." "Andrew Spenser, Detective Esposito..." "I don't give a rat's ass who you are." "What do you want?" "Alice Clark, you know her?" "Yeah, I know her." "Why?" "Well, she had a client file of you and your soon-to-be-ex-wife, Monica." " A file that's currently missing." " Oh, I get it." "Did my wife's attorney put you up to this?" "You know what this is?" "This is harassment." "No, Mr. Spenser." "This is a murder investigation." "A murder investigation?" "Who's dead?" "Alice." "Alice is dead?" "Come on, Spenser, drop the act." "We know you hired Barrett Hawke to kill her and take the files." "We've already linked him to her murder." "No." "Wait." "Wait." "That had nothing to do with me." "Look, I've heard of Hawke, but I've never used his services." "Hell, I wouldn't even know how to find the guy." "And, yes." "I wanted my file, but Alice gave it to me." "She brought it to me herself." "I have witnesses." "Why would Alice give it to you?" "I reminded my wife that those sessions contained plenty of statements that she wouldn't want on the public record either." "She agreed, and we both called Alice." "Alice understood our need for privacy, so she offered to turn it over in exchange for a favor." "Yeah?" "What kind of favor?" "It's actually strange." "She said she needed a room in one of my hotels for a couple days." "And I had to promise that there'd be no record that she was ever there." "Alice dropped 50 grand to charter a plane, yet she needed Spenser to comp a hotel room for her?" "That's because it wasn't about the money." "It was about the anonymity." "She even told the front desk that she didn't want housekeeping in her room." "And she didn't tell her boyfriend where she was." "Not that she would need housekeeping." "There's no luggage here." "Nothing in the bathroom." "It's like she was never even here." "Yeah, but she checked in yesterday morning." "Castle, what if this was a safe house?" "What if she knew that Hawke was coming after her, and she decided to hide out here until she could flee the country?" "With a plane standing by?" "What was she waiting for?" "No, no, no." "Something is going on here." "The reason why she got this room and she didn't want anybody to know about it." "Ah!" "The safe is locked." "She got it to hide something." "Come take a look." "I bet whatever Hawke was after, it's in there!" "A place she knew would be safe and knew no one would think to look for it." "Which means it's still in there." "Is there an override code?" "Whatever's in there, it's the reason why she was killed." "Thank you." "Castle, this must be worth millions." "Tens of millions." "Looks like diamonds were our girl's best friend." "I've never seen anything like this outside of a museum." "Are you sure it's real?" "We stopped at a jeweler's on the way back, and he almost had a heart attack." "It has to be what Hawke was after." "But what was Alice doing with it?" "Given the cash, the hotel room, and the private plane," "I'd say she was making a getaway." "Are you saying she stole it?" "A trusted therapist to A-list clientele." "She was in the perfect position to work her way inside." "She's Ocean's 11." "Minus 10." "She's Ocean's one." "Or maybe it's Ocean's none." "I mean, Alice was successful, she was respected, she was at the top of her game." "Why would she risk it all by stealing a diamond?" "Which brings up another problem." "I spoke to the boys in Robbery and at the FBI." "No one has reported a diamond like this stolen." "Not just recently." "Ever." "Then where did it come from?" "And if it was stolen, why haven't the owners reported it?" "What if it's because they couldn't afford to?" "Because the diamond has some kind of sordid past." "Perhaps it's like the Hope Diamond, it's cursed." "Or maybe it's an occult gem of great power smuggled out of Nazi Germany shoved up someone's..." "Thank you, Mr. Castle." "Someone knows where it came from." "Someone sent Barrett Hawke after Alice to get it." "Maybe the diamond could tell us." "What do you mean?" "Well, you said it yourself." "You've never seen anything like this outside of a museum." "Diamonds this big are famous." "They have names." "The Akbar Shah, the Angola Star, the Excelsior." "Now, this diamond has a story." "If we can figure out what that story is, it might just give us a path to our killer." "Yeah, Castle's right." "This city is the hub of the nation's diamond trade." "There has to be an expert out there that can tell us where it came from." "Such beauty." "It's absolutely stunning." "Can you tell where it came from?" "Diamonds are not people, Detective." "A diamond mined in Asia looks the same as a diamond mined in Africa." "However, there are no mines in America, so it is not from here." "What my partner means is have you come across this stone before?" "Never." "And as head of the American Gemological Foundation," "I know every extraordinary stone on the planet." "So you don't know who owns it?" "No, and I should." "I mean, the discovery of an incredible gem like this is headline-making." "They'd become famous." "Could it be a recent import?" "No." "I am copied on gem reports that pass through Customs, and nothing remotely this size has come through in my entire tenure at the AGF." "No." "The origins of this stone are a complete mystery." "Can you tell me how you came to possess it?" "It's evidence in an ongoing investigation, so..." "What can you tell us about this diamond?" "I should like to run additional spectrometer and imaging tests on it, but, for the meantime, let me start with the four C's." "Color, cut, clarity, carat." "You'd know this if you ever bought an engagement ring." "The diamond is colorless." "No blemishes, so a pristine cut." "No internal clouding and nearly 100 carats." "Whew!" "Man!" "Hey, how deep would my pockets have to be to afford a rock like that?" "Detective, you are not tall enough to have pockets deep enough." "But I would say it's worth $60 million." "Conservatively." "Yeah, I ain't that tall." "6-0?" "Like, with another six zeros after that?" "That would be 60 million, yes." "Is it possible it's an heirloom passed down through generations and that's why there's no record of it?" "Nah, Peters said that old-school cutters fashioned diamonds with sharp edges." "This one has smooth edges, which means it had to be cut within the last few decades." "And no Customs declaration means it was smuggled in, probably from the country where it was mined." "Were we able to connect any of Alice's clients to the diamond?" "We're still going through them, but no, not yet." "Peters said he also found some glue residue on the stone, which suggests that it was set in a piece of jewelry." "For engaged men everywhere, I can only hope it wasn't a ring." "Get that rock back to the precinct." "I want it under lock, key, and armed guard." "We're on our way." "So, we thinking the same thing?" "That it's a bummer we can't stop for lunch, because there's a $60 million diamond sitting between us?" "No." "That because of the $60 million diamond sitting between us that we are not-really-but-kinda-sorta thinking about making a run for the border." "Hadn't even crossed my mind." "Of course it didn't." "Nope, you wouldn't have the stones." "All I'm saying." " You breathing?" " Yeah." "For now." "Gun!" "Get down!" "There's three of them!" "The diamond!" "Subway entrance, seven o'clock." "I'll cover." "Go!" "Go!" " You all right?" " Yeah." "I'm good." "The SUV took off right after you hit the subway." "We're pulling traffic footage, and we've got every cop in the city looking for it." "And you said they were wearing masks?" "Yeah, clown masks." "As if clowns weren't creepy enough." "What about their voices?" "Did they say anything?" "Did they have accents?" "They let their bullets do the talking." "Captain, they attacked us in broad daylight." "They knew we had the rock." "Now, either Barrett Hawke has gone commando all of a sudden, or something else is going on here." "He's right." "This is starting to sound like it's about a whole lot more than just a diamond." "Okay, get cleaned up." "I need you two to go hunting for that SUV." "Whatever's going on, Alice was in it up to her eyeballs." "If any of her clients have even the remotest connection to a country that produces diamonds, I wanna know about it." " Yes, sir." " All right." "So I was thinking..." "When we work a case together, this desk of yours is sort of, kind of our space." "And these elephants-on-parade have creeped me out since day one, so what do you say we just get rid of these?" "Oh, I'm sorry." "Do you have a problem with that, if I try to get rid of something that obviously has deep meaning to you?" "If you don't like the elephants, I don't like the elephants." "Fine." "I actually like those elephants." "They obviously have family values, and this one's good with money." "Anyway, any luck on Alice's clients?" "Yeah." "A couple of possibilities." "A hedge fund manager with investments in South Africa." "A UN diplomat with ties to Russia." "And a CEO with a manufacturing plant 80 miles from a Chinese mine." "What if we're looking at this wrong?" "What if it's not about Alice's clients but it's actually about Alice?" "What do you mean?" "When she was living with the gorillas in Africa, that was in Rwanda, right along the border of the Congo." "A region known for conflict diamonds." "So you think she was involved in the blood diamond trade?" "I think it's a story that writes itself." "A young primatologist in an unstable region falls for a different kind of guerilla, a warlord who is funding his bloody agenda with diamonds." "He gives her one as a gift..." "No, no, go back." "She's not that into him, and she steals the diamond, having no idea its real value." "She smuggles it back to the United States, but finds she can't sell it without attracting too much attention." "So she hides it." "Until one day, a jilted and well-read warlord finds a book, and sees her photo on the back." "Knowing what she stole, he comes after her." "That is surprisingly plausible." "I know, right?" "It's actually..." "It would actually explain a lot." "Why she was planning to disappear, why Esposito and Ryan were shot at in broad daylight." "That's actually a perfect theory." "Maybe, Castle." "But you know what?" "I might have a better one." "What do you know about Steve Warner?" "Uh..." "Tech entrepreneur?" "Yeah." "Apparently, he and his wife were Alice's clients." "And what?" "They had business contacts in diamond-producing countries?" "No." "But their charitable foundation does." "Primarily in Africa, delivering immunizations to developing and war-torn countries." "Okay, but what makes your heroic philanthropist story better than my crazed warlord story?" "This." "That's Steve and Janet Warner at the Amnesty Global benefit two nights ago." "Janet's on their board." "You recognize anything?" "Hello, gorgeous." "Mr. And Mrs. Warner, thank you so much for coming." "Of course." "We can't tell you how shocked we were to hear about Alice." "How long had the two of you been her clients?" "A couple of years." "She saved our marriage." "Being a power couple isn't easy." "Alice understood that." "Just curious." "When the two of you would meet with Alice, would you go to her office, or would she come to your home?" "Both." "Why?" "Did she ever have access to your place?" "Did you ever give her keys or security codes?" "No, why would we?" "What's this all about?" "We believe her murder is connected to a theft." "A theft?" "Yeah, a rather significant one." "Either of you notice anything missing?" "Like what?" "I'm sorry." "I don't understand." "Mr. Warner, that is your diamond." "All 100 carats of it." "It was found in Alice's possession." "Any idea how she got it?" "I think there's been a mistake." "This isn't ours." "It's not?" "I've never seen that stone before in my life." "Really?" "Well, you were wearing it the other night." "Oh, I see the confusion." "The stone in my necklace, that's not a diamond." "It's a costume piece." "It's just crystal." "Crystal?" "Mrs. Warner, that is the same stone." "Detective, you're mistaken." "They only look similar." "Then I suppose you won't mind if we send one of our detectives home with you to look at it." "Just to be sure." "I think we're done here." "If you have any more questions, you can direct them to my attorneys." "Of course they're lying." "But the real question is why are they lying?" "Given their net worth, better to take a $60 million loss than be connected with a dead body." "No, Castle, it's more than that." "If they knew that Alice stole that diamond, they should've gone to the cops." "But they didn't." "Why?" "Probably because, if they did, that would mean having to reveal where the diamond came from." "There's gotta be a reason why no one's heard of it." "And it must be a nefarious one." "Which means they would do anything, outside of going to the cops, to get it back." "You may be right." "So a uniform just talked to the doorman at the Warners' building in Tribeca." "He says he buzzed Hawke up to their penthouse yesterday morning." "And Alice was killed last night." "Looks like New York's famous fixer is in a bit of a fix." "So I visited some friends in Tribeca." "Doesn't prove anything." "Why were you at the Warners'?" "I needed to use their bathroom." "Are we really gonna dance this dance again?" "'Cause I got better things to do." "Sit down!" "Now, Mr. Hawke!" "You're not walking away from this one." "I've connected you to the Warners, the Warners to the stone, the stone to the dead girl, and the dead girl back to you." "And then there is also the matter of the armed assault on two NYPD detectives." "I did not kill Alice Clark." "And I had nothing to do with any assault." "Then who did?" "Turn off the mic." "My business is discretion, so none of this is on the record." "Do you follow?" "Yes, the Warners hired me to find the diamond." "That's it." "So then it was you?" "In her office, in the car." "Yeah, looking for the stone." "But Alice was already dead when I got there." "I do things, Detective." "Questionable things." "But I don't kill." "Okay." "So then who attacked my colleagues?" "It wasn't me." "It wasn't the Warners." "Maybe somebody else was looking for the diamond." "And how did you know Alice stole it?" "Because when the Warners described the mugging," "I could tell it was an inside job." "The Warners were mugged?" "Two nights ago." "And it wasn't random." "The mugger knew exactly when and where they were going to be." "So did Alice." "Not only that, but Janet told Alice about the diamond in one of their sessions." "Apparently, hardly anyone else knew the diamond was real." "I figured Alice had to be involved." "Okay, so if the Warners were mugged, why wouldn't they just go to the police?" "They wanted to keep things quiet." "Okay." "I need you to tell me everything you know about that mugging." "Where were they when it happened?" "While they were walking home from the Amnesty benefit." "And how did Alice pull it off?" "She didn't." "The Warners said the mugger wore a ski mask, but was definitely male." "Alice had an accomplice?" "If Hawke's telling the truth, then there's another player involved." "Someone who knew that the diamond was real and used Alice to get it." "Do you think Alice was under duress?" "That someone was forcing her to help?" "Threatening to kill her?" "It would explain why she did it." "And why she was trying to disappear." "Hey, we got a hit on our clown car." "Uniforms found it abandoned by the East River." "SUV's been bleached and torched." "CSU's scouring it for clues, but it seems like it was a high-level job." "And Tory has something on the mugging." "Okay, now, according to Hawke, the mugger snatched the necklace at 11:00 on 52nd Street and bolted south on 8th." "Unfortunately, there are no street or security cams in the vicinity, but a 911 call came in two minutes later from 49th and 8th." "Three blocks away." "911, what's your emergency?" "There's been a hit and run!" "What's your location?" "I'll send an ambulance." "No, you don't understand!" "I hit someone, and he ran!" "He ran?" "Yeah, a man dressed all in black, wearing a ski mask." "He came out of nowhere!" "That's got to be our guy." "Get over there, get a full description." "I can still hear the sound of his body going "thunk" on my hood." "Do you remember what he looked like?" "No." "The whole thing was a blur." "Just that god-awful sound." "He hit so hard he left a dent." "But when I got out of my car, he just pushed himself off and ran down 49th." "Here, I'll show you." "His hands were up like this." "And then..." "Thank you." "Thank you very much." "I'll call CSU." "Ryan here." "Yes, Detective." "Edward Peters here." "I believe we have a new insight into your diamond." "After reviewing test results on the stone, my colleagues and I all reached the same conclusion." "Which is?" "The diamond is flawless." "Flawless beyond anything nature could create." "Are you saying it's fake?" "No, it's composed of carbon and entirely real." "But it is man-made." "What are you saying, man-made?" "There have long been industrially-produced diamonds, carbon under heat and pressure, mimicking Mother Nature in a lab." "But typically the stones are small or of inferior quality." "So it's not worth $60 million." "No." "It's actually worth infinitely more." "In fact, it's priceless." "Priceless?" "Priceless?" "Yeah." "Apparently, a stone of that size and quality, it's the Holy Grail of diamond manufacturing, considered by most to be impossible." "Until now." "So where did the Warners get it, and why are they denying its existence?" "I don't know." "I think I know who wanted it." "And who attacked you boys." "A diamond like that, made in a lab?" "That would put diamond companies out of business." "You think it's the diamond industry who sent in the clowns?" "With the future of their industry at stake, who knows how far they'd go?" "Hey, guys." "Tory got a hit." "So CSU was able to pull a usable print?" "Yeah." "Lucky for us, the lady wasn't big into washing her car." "When we ran the print, nothing popped in the federal database." "But given the international nature of the diamond industry," "I asked Tory to cast a wider net." "We contacted Interpol." "Our mugger's a foreign national?" "South African, to be exact." "His name is Leo Wyngaard." "In and out of half a dozen African prisons." "Not to mention he's on the Terror Watch List." "Just the kind of guy a diamond cartel would hire for their dirty work." "Mmm-hmm." "Now show 'em the picture." "Look familiar?" "That's Matt Lanchet." "Alice's boyfriend." "They almost missed him at JFK." "He was boarding a flight to Johannesburg." "He must've cut his losses once he knew we had secured the diamond." "I still don't get why the Warners had a man-made stone in the first place." "Whatever the reason, Leo wanted that diamond." "And he was using Alice to get it." "Maybe he leveraged her into helping him." "Forced her to pull the money out and order up the plane." "Then he killed her, made this whole thing look like it was her idea." "Sir, considering that this guy tried to kill me and Espo for that diamond, mind if we go in there and get some answers?" "Wait." "You think I'm working for the cartels?" "That I was using Alice?" "I loved Alice." "You always use fake names with women that you love?" "She knew who I really was." "We were in this together." "Yeah, sure you were." "Why did you steal that diamond?" "Alice and I met in Rwanda when I was doing aid work." "We were young and in love." "Then one day, soldiers came to the village, financed by the diamond cartel." "We watched from the jungle as they slaughtered everyone." "Casualties of a turf war for profit." "That day changed me." "I dedicated myself to stopping the cartels' bloody practices." "It was a life I knew Alice couldn't be a part of." "But I never stopped loving her." "So you're working against the cartels by stealing a man-made diamond?" "Two years ago, stones started popping up in Europe and the Middle East." "Flawless, being sold for millions." "That's when a gemologist friend of mine happened across a pair of them." "He discovered that they were exactly the same." "Nature doesn't make exact copies." "They were man-made." "I tried to trace them back to their source." "All I knew was that they were coming out of the States." "And then Alice called me out of the blue." "Said one of her clients, Steve Warner, had a secret." "Wait." "Are you telling me that Steve Warner can make diamonds?" "Yes." "Man-made diamonds are nothing new, but no one had ever produced this quality of gem before." "Big and flawless." "Soon, diamond mines would be a relic of the past." "Steve Warner's technology could change everything." "So I approached Warner." "I begged him to make his technology available." "But he denied he even had it." "He was just using it to line his own pockets." "The world needed to know, and we needed proof." "The necklace." "We knew that if we could just examine that stone that we could tie it back to the others." "Then we could show everyone what he was doing, and they could all see that it was possible." "Then everyone would eventually unlock the code." "Then all of a sudden, flawless, man-made diamonds would flood the market." "No more cartels." "No more sponsored bloodshed." "We were going to change the world." "That night, Alice had a plane standing by to take us to a private lab." "But she never showed." "Did anyone else know you'd taken the diamond?" "The only people that knew that diamond was gone were me, Alice, and the Warners." "We told you, we're not answering questions about that diamond." "Yeah, that's okay." "There's nothing that you can say that we don't already know." "For instance, we know it's man-made." "And we know you are the man who made it." "We also know that you made a lot of cash secretly selling those man-made diamonds on foreign markets." "That's ridiculous." "Do you know what I'm worth?" "Why would I do that?" "You took a huge hit during the economic downturn." "You were leveraged to the hilt." "You needed that cash." "Even if what you're saying is true, that doesn't mean I murdered Alice!" "You did hire Hawke to get that diamond back." "I had to." "I was afraid VonRoenn would find out." "VonRoenn the diamond cartel?" "What do they have to do with this?" "When I was in engineering school," "I developed a process for lab-grown diamonds." "But all I could manage were small, flawed stones." "They were worthless." "At the time I had no money, so I sold the technology to the only people interested." "VonRoenn." "They wanted to stifle the competition." "You know, protect their market share." "And a few years ago, Janet and I hit a rough patch, and I wanted to give her something meaningful." "It was too easy just to buy her a diamond." "So you decided to make one of your own." "I broke out my equipment so I could make her a small diamond." "But in the process, I had a game-changing breakthrough." "My little romantic gesture became one of the biggest diamonds in history." "Suddenly, I could make flawless stones." "As many as I wanted." "With technology that now belonged to VonRoenn." "But when the downturn hit and you needed cash..." "You realized you had the means, as long as no one knew." "It violated our agreement." "If VonRoenn found out, they'd ruin me." "Which is why you hired a strike team to recover that stone from our custody." "What?" "I don't know what you're talking about." "Mr. Warner, we found the SUV they used." "It had been torched, but CSU still was able to pull the VIN number." "Turns out it was stolen from a garage in Queens." "And the garage owner, Joseph Bianchi?" "He's the brother-in-law of your head of security." "We also pulled phone records, and found that you and he had exchanged at least half a dozen phone calls in the hours before the attack." "What?" "You ordered that strike." "I didn't make these calls." "I wasn't even home." "It's..." "No..." "Janet, what did you do?" "What did I do?" "I treated her like family." "I trusted her." "When Hawke found out it was Alice, I went to her, begging for her to give the stone back." "I only meant to scare her." "But she grabbed for the gun, and..." "She would've exposed us, Steve." "We were going to lose everything." "I had to stop her." "I had to get it back." "For us." "For you." "Keep 'em closed." "Castle, I swear, if you're bringing me face-to-face with Linus," "I'm gonna pull my gun out and shoot him." " That will not be necessary." " Okay." "Okay, open 'em." "Sea shells?" "Not just sea shells, those are our sea shells." "We collected those..." "On our first walk in the Hamptons." "Castle, you kept these?" "Now, I know it doesn't really go with the space, but at least it won't be hungrily staring at you in the morning." "You didn't have to do this." "No, I did." "I did." "I finished reading Alice's book." "And there's a chapter in there that speaks to couples like us." "See, we're both alphas." "And it says that we need to define our shared territory together." "These art pieces all over?" "These are all my stories." "But the shells?" "That's ours." " I like our story." " Yeah." "Me, too." "Whoa." "That can't be good." "You have to admit, though, we brought this upon ourselves." "Seriously?" "Look, if you're scared, you can always sleep on my side of the bed tonight." "Deal."