By Stefanie Smith - Have You Heard?

Castle thinks outside the box. That’s why we love him. He’s clever in a way that the other detectives aren’t. The reasons people kill can be bizarre. Castle knows this and is the only one who recognizes an otherwise uninteresting drawing as a possible treasure map. He was right.

Deon Carver, a bail bondsman, is found dead in his office. He is determined to have died at 10 PM and one hour later someone calls 911 from the office and leaves the phone off the hook. One partial bloody shoe print is found on the scene. And, interestingly enough, this office is being bugged. Later, during the autopsy, a piece of a paper with a set of small line drawings is found in Carver’s sock.

The detectives discover a man named Random Pierce used Carver as his bondsman. There was a warrant out for his arrest after he broke into an apartment and missed his court date, but when Beckett and Castle go to track him down he flees. The bounty hunter Mike Royce catches him. Royce is Beckett’s old partner and there is clearly a connection.

Later discovered at the murder scene is a lone fingerprint belonging to an older man named Clifford Stuckey. It was Clifford’s apartment that Pierce was caught breaking into. Everyone is clearly connected. But how? Clifford says he is looking for Pierce to help him turn his life around. But he is clearly interested in this piece of paper that was found on the victim’s body.

The victim was given his last rights with a cross in holy oil on his forehead. The detectives track down his priest and he walks in wearing the shoes that match the print at the scene. He admits to being there, but only after the victim was already dead. He claimed to be there to help the victim deal with his marital problems, panicked, and called 911. He says he doesn’t know anything about the piece of paper, but it is clear he is lying.

The detectives track down the person who purchased the bug that was put in the victim’s office: Brooke, his wife. She says it’s true that they were having problems so she bugged his office to find out if he was cheating on her. Instead of catching him with a woman, she says, she hears him saying that he loves her and wants to work it out.

Royce, the bounty hunter, is spending a lot of time in the precinct hanging around Beckett. He wants to take her out…

So how is everyone connected? The priest is a volunteer at the Five Points Correctional Facility where Random Pierce served his time. Pierce’s cellmate, Malcolm Lloyd, was partners in a heist with Clifford Stuckey. They were searching for ten million dollars worth of sapphires and rubys that were never found. Stuckey becomes the new prime suspect. They track him down. He flees.

The priest comes clean. Malcolm Lloyd had given the priest the map before he died and wanted to give the money to the church to right all of his wrongs. The victim agreed to bail out Pierce only if he could hold on to the map and all three of them split the findings.

Beckett goes out for a drink with Royce and it is clear their history runs deep. She opens up about her mother’s killer and they reminisce about the past. When Royce goes to the bathroom, Beckett receives a call that Royce never brought Pierce to booking earlier that day. He sees her on the phone and disappears. In the meantime, Castle and his daughter figure out part of the treasure map.

Royce had been on Malcolm and Stuckey’s case years ago and knew about the treasure map. He calls Beckett to open his heart and apologize for betraying her. He had used her to get on the inside of this case and see the map. She tells him that she was once in love with him and he will one day realize that what he did was not worth the money. She kept him on the phone long enough to get a trace of where he called from, but he was gone when they got there. Instead, they found Pierce handcuffed to a heater. He told the detectives the truth, how they had been working together and that the victim’s wife was being left out of all the money. Since she bugged the office, they knew she had not heard him saying that he loved her. She heard them talking about the ten million dollars she would not be a part of. She is tracked down to the victim’s office, but is not there by the time they get there. They find brochures to a cemetery and Castle remembers that the victim was being cremated. The final pieces of the map now make sense. It is a drawing of the cemetery.

At the cemetery, Beckett comes gun to gun with the wife as she confesses to her husband’s murder. She is determined still to get the treasure. Stuckey appears with a gun of his own. The rest of the detectives come in. Then Royce, too, appears gun in the air. Everyone is determined to be the last one to the treasure. Beckett tells Castle to dig and see if there is even a treasure there. He understands her plan, and as he starts digging he throws dirt in the faces of Stuckey, the wife, and Royce as the detectives take them down. Beckett gets the daunting task of handcuffing her old partner and friend.

In the final scenes, Castle figures out the last missing link to the map and they dig up the real jewels. The final location wasn’t on the map, it was in a tattoo taken to the grave.