"You have to understand, I always have nine unsolved cases on my desk, all dead-ends. Crimes of passion, no leads, no clues. Every week, I make a few calls about them, check the records, just to see if there's been any progress."
Mike Taylor rambled on, consoling a dejected Stella while simultaneously offering reassurance to Jack and Hannah.
"I go back to the scenes from time to time, look for new connections, check the boxes where the evidence is kept, remind myself of what's in them, to see if any new leads come to mind—things I might have overlooked back then."
"Have you ever made any progress?" Stella asked.
A slight, self-deprecating smile appeared on Mike Taylor's face, but there was a hint of pride there too. "Honestly, not much, but come next week, I'll still be doing the same thing. After all, at one point, I had twelve cases sitting on my desk with no headway. So, things can always turn around."
His words made Jack think of Rossi and the 20-year-old unsolved case he still hadn't let go of. Perhaps their motivations were different—Rossi driven by responsibility, and Jack by a mix of responsibility and lingering empathy and guilt for the three children involved.
But their approach was the same. Perhaps it was this quality in both of them that made them leaders in their fields.
There's a saying about Zhuang Zhou dreaming of being a butterfly: Is it a dream, or is it reality? Past life or present—what's real? Anyone who's traveled across worlds probably has wrestled with this question.
Jack was no different. Even though he was mentally more mature compared to those young idealists who achieved their dreams of crossing worlds before even turning twenty—whether it was to save or destroy another world—he, too, found it hard to truly feel at home in this world.
Since he first crossed over, Jack had thrown himself into his new life with enthusiasm, appearing well-adjusted. But underneath, his true mindset was more like the laid-back attitude of many middle-aged people—content to go with the flow and let things happen as they would.
At first, he viewed this world as some kind of illusion. He even fantasized that if one day, while patrolling the streets, he were hit by a stray bullet, maybe he'd just wake up back in his original world.
But it quickly became clear that living recklessly couldn't last forever. As he interacted more and more with these people he once thought of as "NPCs," he found himself increasingly drawn in, investing more and more of his emotions.
Jack remembered a theory he'd once heard, that different worlds create "projections" of each other. As he experienced more of this world's darkness and beauty, he began to subconsciously accept this world as real.
Perhaps those American TV shows he used to watch in his past life were just projections of this world, captured by screenwriters who used scripts to bring certain truths to light.
David Rossi had his demons, and Mike Taylor had the unresolved cases sitting on his desk. Every person in this world was real, flesh and blood, especially those women caught up in emotional entanglements.
Even though Jack had come to accept the reality of this world, and knew he'd eventually face cases he'd never solve, he wasn't ready to give up yet. Though the System couldn't help him solve cases, he still had another card up his sleeve.
---
"I don't get it. Why'd you call that guy over, too?" Beckett didn't find it surprising that Jack had summoned her to Central Park, but seeing a certain famous writer with him made her expression turn complicated.
"Aren't you one of his fans? Why do you dislike him so much?" Hannah's eyes gleamed with curiosity. She'd noticed the tension between the two.
"Maybe it's because of a disillusioned fantasy? Or maybe it's like how someone who loves eggs doesn't necessarily have to love chickens?" Jack joked. The two of them hadn't sparked anything yet, so he was content to sit back and enjoy the show.
Rick Castle wasn't his trump card, but adding Beckett to the mix was. Today, he'd gathered these two, along with Mike Taylor and Stella. If the combined effect of their "main character auras" couldn't uncover some new clue, then he was willing to accept this case becoming another unsolved one.
The six of them walked along the park's path, discussing the case as they went. Eventually, they arrived at "Strawberry Fields," a circular plaza named after the Beatles' classic song, "Strawberry Fields Forever."
Every year, countless tourists visited this plaza to take photos, leave flowers, or play a rendition of "Strawberry Fields Forever" on their guitars, in tribute to one of the greatest geniuses in rock history—John Lennon.
At that moment, several maintenance workers were cleaning the iconic memorial—a circular mosaic with the word "IMAGINE" in its center.
Rick Castle was in high spirits. From initially tagging along shamelessly and enduring Beckett's eye rolls, he'd now been formally invited by Jack to help analyze the case, and this shift had clearly given him a sense of accomplishment.
After getting an impromptu crash course on the uses of walnut powder, he even pulled out his notebook and made a serious note of it, as though intending to use it in his future writing.
"Azoospermia, trace evidence transfers—this is eye-opening. Looks like besides elementary deduction, I might need to study forensic science, too."
Despite their different fields, Rick Castle and Mike Taylor surprisingly hit it off.
"So, based on the walnut powder traces on the victim and the work boot footprints, you suspected the maintenance workers. But have you considered other possibilities?
"You know, six plus one equals seven, but so does four plus three. There are always other explanations."
Everyone paused and looked at him, expecting some profound insight.
"Uh… don't look at me like that. I was just…" Rick Castle was taken aback, having spoken without thinking, a writer's habit of spouting off without really filtering.
But then he noticed a sculpture nearby being cleaned, and he froze, glancing back and forth between it and another, already cleaned sculpture on the other side. His head moved back and forth like a pendulum.
"Do you see any difference between these two statues?"
Beckett followed his gaze, scrutinizing the two statues for a while. The two of them seemed to have a moment of shared understanding, and they spoke in unison:
"Flowers."
"The gardener."
------------------
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