Castle

Mr. Hixton, is everything all right?

Mr. Hixton?

Kill me now.

You got the cell phone bill?

No. Uh, books from my publisher for back cover quotes.

Wait. What about the cell phone bill?

Nothing.

Ah, more books to endorse.

You couldn't possibly read them all.

Don't have to. "A Tour de Force in Terror. Richard Castle."

"Does for hot tubs what 'Jaws' did for the ocean."

Gram, there's a letter for you. Looks official.

"Bachman & Sabasto"? Oh. Chet's estate lawyer.

They probably resolved the probate.

You okay?

This memory of him caught me by surprise.

Do you think he left you anything in his will?

Well, he certainly didn't need to, but if...

Oh, my.

Mother, what's wrong?

I...

$1 million?

Your mom must be in shock.

Any idea what she's gonna do with it?

If I'm lucky, get a place of her own. Yeah, that would be lucky.

You can't buy much in Manhattan for 1 million bucks.

Wow.

Foosball, basketball, a motorcycle...

I'll bet the owner of this place

clearly had ten times that.

Try a hundred.

Victim's name is Jay Hixton. He won a cool $117 mil

in the Florida lottery last year.

And then he went on a serious shopping spree.

Rookie mistake. Sounds like the voice of experience.

Mm-hmm. Writing a best seller in college is a lot like

winning the lottery.

I spent every penny of it in six months.

Good thing I'm not a one-hit wonder. Single gunshot to the chest.

From the stippling and bruising, I'd say there was a struggle,

the gun went off, vaporized his heart,

somewhere between 11:00 and 2:00 last night.

That's a big gun. It's too big for that entry wound.

This isn't the murder weapon.

Told you she'd spot it first off.

Our victim was shot with a 9-millimeter automatic.

The bullet went straight through him.

We pulled the slug out of the poker table.

Okay, so maybe our killer forces Hixton to open the safe,

the .357 is hidden inside.

Hixton pulls it out, they struggle,

and he gets shot. That's the winning ticket.

Hard to believe a little slip of paper is worth over $100 mil.

What would you do if you won that kind of money?

Easy. Buy a Ferrari. I have one. Not as great as you would think.

Yeah, but they're hella fast.

Fast as every other car in rush-hour traffic.

Any idea how much money was in here?

$100,000, secured in a bank bag.

Uh, this is Reginald Easley. He's Mr. Hixton's servant.

Servant? Young man, I am a traditional English butler.

I apprenticed at Buckingham Palace.

Did he always keep that much hard cash in the safe?

Mr. Hixton came from an impoverished background.

He found having hard currency around reassuring.

How many people knew that it was there? Dozens, no doubt.

He had a habit of buying everything in sight,

no thought to how much money he was flashing around

or how dangerous it was to tell people

that there was plenty more of it at home.

In New York, that's like

inviting someone back to your house to kill you.

Did he keep that gun in the safe? That's the odd thing, miss.

I know every item in this apartment.

I have never seen a gun. Oh, but I do know

he kept a dye pack in the

bag that was stolen. And how is it triggered?

It was on a 3-minute timer that began

when the bag left the apartment.

All right, grab some uniforms, canvass the area.

The killer couldn't have gotten very far

before that pack exploded.

When was the last time you saw Hixton? Yesterday evening.

He left about 5:00.

I believe he had made plans with his wife.

He was married?

Oh, yes, with a teenage daughter.

They'd been separated for some months

before I began to work for him.

Apparently, the money caused some kind of a rift.

We were so happy then.

Trips to Paris and trips to Rome and...

Cars with heated seats and...

Then everyone started looking at us different.

Like we were freaks.

You could see them thinking, why you? Why not me?

And nothing we did was good enough.

So we moved here. It was supposed to be a fresh start.

Why were the two of you separated?

That money, it was... just like poison.

Jay couldn't stop spending it,

and... and Nicole...

It's okay, mom.

Nicole got hooked on drugs.

And it was the wake-up call we needed, really.

Jay and I went from not talking to getting Nicole clean.

And then he started using his money for good.

He found this soup kitchen on the Bowery

that was in dire straits.

He said that looking at all those people in need

just reminded him, if... if it wasn't for that lottery,

we'd be right there ourselves.

He started going there almost every day.

And it just reminded me of how much...

How much I love him.

Where was it the two of you ended up going last night?

Last night?

His butler said that the two of you had a date.

No. Jay called to cancel at the last minute.

He told me something had happened,

something that we had to deal with together.

And I tried to get him to tell me what it was,

but he wouldn't. And where did he call from?

The Bowery soup kitchen, I-I think.

It's where we were supposed to meet.

And did he have problems with anyone there that you know of?

No one in particular. It was a pretty rough crowd.

All my years as a mystery writer

point to one unequivocal killer.

The butler did it. Oh.

Oh, come on. How many cases have we actually had

where there's a-a butler as a potential suspect?

It would be a crime if he didn't do it.

And then he shows up the next

morning and calls the cops? Pretty clever, right?

Change? Speaking of clever, I noticed at the crime scene,

you never mentioned what you

would do if you won the lottery. No, I didn't.

Is that because it's embarrassing? Ooh, scandalous?

I actually haven't really thought about it, Castle.

So not embarrassing or scandalous, just secretive.

Bad news travels fast.

The man was generous to a fault.

When he first started coming here,

he'd hand out $100 bills like... like they were nothing.

Got so bad, I had to ask him to stop.

Why? Well, we were attracting a bad element.

Still, I'd see Mr. Hixton sneak money

to a pregnant woman or homeless kid.

It was a compulsion for him, like he had to give it away

'cause he didn't deserve it somehow.

Winner's guilt.

It's actually quite common with lottery recipients.

Did anything suspicious happen with Mr. Hixton

when he was here last night?

Now that you mention it, yeah.

A man was hanging around a good part of the afternoon.

Someone you didn't know? I'd never seen him before,

but he went right up to Mr. Hixton

when he arrived at 6:00, like he knew him, you know?

A few minutes later, he left and never came back.

Do you think you could describe him to a sketch artist?

So our mystery man

goes to the soup kitchen, waits for Hixton,

and then takes him where?

He wasn't killed for another six hours.

And why wait? I mean, if the guy wanted to rob Hixton,

why not just take him home and empty his safe?

And then there's Hixton's gun.

Why did he need it and where did he get it?

Well, according to C.S.U., nowhere legal.

The serial numbers were filed off the gun,

and Hixton's prints were on the bullets in the chamber,

which means he loaded it himself.

Found our lottery winner's money bag.

Where'd you find it? Alley behind Hixton's building.

It was empty, but as you can see,

the dye pack in the bag went off.

And it must have gotten on our killer's hands,

because we got prints belonging to one Todd Shipley,

a maintenance worker in Hixton's building.

He got off right around the time that Hixton was killed.

Yeah, but if he's a maintenance worker,

he could've picked up the bag

after the dye pack went off. I don't think so.

Either that guy really likes "Avatar"...

Or he's our killer.

I swear. I found the bag on the ground,

and when I opened it, it went off in my face.

That bag was on a 3-minute timer.

Are you telling us that you

accidentally picked it up at exactly

the the wrong time? Man, I'm telling the truth.

I-I had just gotten off work, stopped to get a soda,

when I saw someone running out of the alley.

This, uh, someone that ran away, what did they look like?

I-I don't know. It... it was dark. So's your future, Todd,

if you don't start telling us the truth.

Man, I am. Yo, ask Mr. Lee at the Korean grocery.

He... he... he's the one that sold me the soda.