- Title: Castle – Habeas Corpse
- wiki: link
When a personal injury lawyer is found tortured and beaten to death in an alley Beckett (Stana Katic) and Castle (Nathan Fillion) search for a motive in a bizarre murder mystery that includes an old debt needing to be repaid and the victim burying a crash test dummy in the woods the afternoon before his death. With the help of Lanie (Tamala Jones) and Tory (Maya Stojan), Castle and Beckett are able to retrace the victim’s movements the day of his death and eventually discover how the true motive for the crime was tied to the case of recently-hospitalized young woman who wasn’t even one of the dead lawyer’s clients.
While the episode’s mystery is one of the season’s best the B-story is pretty by-the-numbers as Beckett spends most of the episode fretting over Castle challenging Ryan (Seamus Dever) and Esposito (Jon Huertas) to a bet concerning a police talent show the detectives have won two years running. As unconventional as the murder-of-the-week turns out to be the B-story plays out in predictable fashion with bets, more fretting, and finally a sweet moment between husband and wife to close out the episode.
