- Castle and Beckett are baffled when a confused woman with an unshakable alibi gives a detailed and convincing confession to a murder. Then a second person walks into the precinct and makes the same confession. And then a third.
- We open in a hallway of the Best Traveler Hotel in front of room 147 where 2 maids find a dead body. Castle & Beckett wake up to the smell of coffee and discover Alexis had crashed there the previous night. Since breaking up with Pi, she doesn't really need and can't afford her own place and Castle asks her to move back in, which she says she can't do because of the lease. Esposito IDs the victim as out-of-work actor Justin Marquette who lives near the hotel. The Clerk remembers him checking in as he insisted on room 147 even though all rooms are identical. The security video shows him texting on a flip phone which is not the phone they found in the room. Castle finds Justin's website which points them to Rooster Theater Company's off-off-off-Broadway production of Chekhovs Platonov (Castle astutely observes, "That's a lot of off's.") They interview one of the actors, Justin's girlfriend Laura, who last saw him the previous morning after running together. She mentions a crazy woman yelling at him outside a coffee shop on 9th & Mercer. The crazy woman turns out to be Anita Miller, a regular customer. Within 11 seconds, she confesses to the deed, but they also find that she was with her AA sponsor during entire murder window leaving Castle theory-less. Esposito and Ryan check out her apartment and find the last 2 weeks of her calendar missing, corresponding to time she says shes been feeling foggy. Anita admits to the incident at the Café and mentions Justin was talking with a big, bald guy. Sam Carson comes in to make an identical confession, but he was with his brother at the batting cages and didn't appear on the hotel security video. He complains of a similar fog for last 2 weeks. He has anger issues and was angry at Justin but he's not sure why. CPA Dwight Carruthers, fresh from assertiveness training, is the 3rd confessor with the same exact details, except that Justin was flirty with Anita but business-like with Sam and Dwight. Also, the guys saw 5 bottles remaining in fridge while Anita saw 6. Hmm. Beckett meets with Alexis to find out the real reason she won't move back, fearing she might be the reason, but, no, Alexis feels it was her mistake to get so involved with Pi and now she should pay for it. Beckett tries to convince her otherwise, saying that Love makes fools of us all, so don't get hung up because you did something stupid. A neighbor reported seeing a red van outside Sam's building, and even took a pic of the driver. A traffic cam quickly leads them to the plate number and owner Miles Madsen who works for EHI (Eternal Horizons Inst) run by Dr. Gustavo Bauer. Beckett and Castle go to EHI HQ in a classy midtown high-rise and the receptionist is expecting them. When they are escorted to the doctor's office, they find Dr. Bauer is on screen from Stockholm and claims not to know the 3 confessors and that Mr. Madsen was fired long ago. He correctly predicts they wont get a warrant to search his files. Psych evaluation gets nothing from the confessors but blood tests show high levels of the blood pressure medicine Propranolol in all 3 confessors. In high doses, it can alter and even eliminate memories. Castle remembers that fridge in hotel room opened to left, meaning water bottles inside would not be visible to someone at the door. So, Justin was not killed in that room or the confessors memory was from a very similar, but different event. Turns out, EHI had rented out an entire floor, including room 147, of a Best Traveler in Long Island City 3 weeks previously and Dr Bauer is seen on a security video with the victim he claimed not to know. Now they get their warrant and discover Dr. Bauer shredding documents down the hall from his office. His video feed had been routed through Stockholm, but he was there the whole time. He explains that they did an image therapy pilot program to help subjects take control of their problems by projecting them onto Justin and watching the first person shooting on film to metaphorically "kill" their problems. There were different versions for women and men but the experiment didn't go well and the subjects threatened to sue. Dr Bauer wiped their memories with Propranonol and had Miles cover up any connection with EHI. Dr. Bauer is in hot water but logically asks why he would focus police attention on something he was trying to hide? Must be a frame. One of the other subjects or maybe someone on the crew. Beckett finds that Pam, the Platonov director, did the post production of the EHI film. She hated the company because her brother was killed in a sweat lodge event put on by EHI but got off with no charges. She figured Justin was part of the evil organization and hired him to recreate the murder event. Pam is taken off in cuffs, the confessors go off to hear Dwight, who never got to give his confession, and Alexis asks Castle if she can move back in, secretly mouthing Thanks to Becket while getting a big hug from Dad.
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