Interrogation of a Vampire

By

UCSBdad

Disclaimer: No, I don't. You know that. Rating: M, in places. Time: After Season Eight, before children.

Interrogation of a Vampire. Chapter Two

"Captain Castle." She said sleepily into the phone by their bed.

Rick opened his eyes and tried to focus on the glowing numbers of the alarm clock. "It's a couple of minutes past five." He grumped.

Kate wrote something down and swung out of bed. "We have to go. This looks bad."

"Can we have breakfast?"

"No." She said, heading for the bathroom.

"Can I shower with you? It'll be quicker."

She laughed. "Yeah? When has you and me showering together ever been quicker."

"This could be the first time." She was already in the bathroom and he got no reply. "I'll start the coffee and then I'll shower and shave."

Not quite an hour later, they walked into the crime scene, a nice apartment just off Lexington. Lanie was already there, kneeling over the body. Ryan was talking to a young lady who could hardly tear her eyes away from the corpse. Espo was talking to a uniform that Castle didn't know. They get younger every year. He thought.

"Lanie, got an ID on the vic?"

Ryan answered that. He held up her purse. "Carolyn Welles, age twenty seven, recent law school grad, just started at Grace and Vollmer."

"She must have been pretty good." Castle said. "That's a really good law firm."

"Cause of death?" Kate asked.

"Freaky." Lanie replied.

"She died of freaky?" Kate asked, only a bit sarcastically.

"She bled to death."

Kate looked around. "Then she wasn't killed here, since there's no blood here."

Lanie shook her head. "No, she died right here. The roommate, Marci Sands, was gone for three hours to see a movie. The vic was here when she left. Based on that, time of death would be between nine and midnight. Esposito checked the doorman and the security cameras. She didn't leave. Both the front and the back exits and the garage is covered by security cameras. And the blood left in her has pooled under her. She hasn't been moved."

"Then what caused the death?"

Lanie pointed to two small puncture wounds on her neck. "I'd say the blood was sucked out of her."

"Cool. A real vampire killing." Rick enthused.

Kate just looked at him.

"Anything else?" She asked Lanie.

The ME looked down at the corpse. "Given the unusual nature of this, I'd like to get her back to the morgue before I make any other statements."

Kate stood up and walked over to Ryan. "Get anything from the roommate? Angry ex-boyfriends, unhappy co-workers…."

"People who only drop by at night?" Castle interrupted.

"There are no vampires." Kate said quietly.

"Maybe the CIA had…"

"No. The CIA didn't."

"A brilliant scientist could have…"

She shook her head. "No, he couldn't have."

"Someone who thinks he's a vampire?"

Kate thought for a second. "Maybe. But not until we get actual evidence she knew someone like that."

Castle smiled happily.

"The roommate said our vic had a boyfriend until about three months ago. But he left to take a job in Washington, DC. Apparently the break up was amicable. They both put their careers first. But, I'll check him out." Espo advised them.

"Castle and I will head back to the precinct and then we'll go visit her job and see what they know."

Castle was impressed with the offices of Grace and Vollmer. "Carpets that are so thick and soft you could sleep on them, beautiful furniture, first class artwork on the walls and none of the magazines in the waiting room is over a month old. Five stars all the way."

"If things had worked out differently, I'd be working in someplace like this." Kate waited a beat and added. "And we'd never have met."

"Of course we would have. I'd have come here for legal advice on how to convince the NYPD that I was kidnapped by a police horse. We would have fallen in love instantly and lived happily ever after."

Kate smiled at her husband. "Dream on."

Rick did his best to look hurt. "We were meant for each other. The Universe…"

They were interrupted by a young woman. "Captain Castle? Mr. Grace can see you now. This way, please."

Edmund Grace was in his late forties and could have passed for being in his thirties. Castle appreciated his well-cut bespoke suit and his hand tailored shirts. He was only a fraction of an inch shorter than Rick and appeared to be in excellent physical shape. He smiled at them and held out his hand as they walked into his office. Castle thought the smile was what a man who either really liked people would give, or the smile of a man who was too rich and powerful to feel intimidated by anyone.

"Captain Castle, Mr. Castle, please have a seat. Can we get you a coffee? Water?"

Kate shook her head. "We'd like to get to the point."

"Excellent." Grace said and sat on the edge of his desk.

Kate ran through the file she had brought, not because she didn't know it completely, but to try to put Mr. Grace a little off balance. Rick used the opportunity to look at the office. It was larger than the first floor of their loft, had floor to ceiling windows with a view of the Manhattan skyline and the Hudson. Behind Grace's desk was a nice cartoon that Picasso had dashed off, allegedly just before he painted Guernica.

"I'm surprised you're seeing us yourself, Mr. Grace. I asked to see Ms. Welles' immediate supervisor." Kate began.

"That would be me. I'm working on a rather large merger and I have a team of some eleven people who work directly for me. Carolyn was one of them. In addition, I wanted to be the one to tell you so you got your information from me. Carolyn and I were sleeping together."

Kate nodded. "Was this a long term relationship?"

Grace shook his head. "We had been together for about three months. And I do realize that this makes me a suspect."

"Can you tell us where you were last night between nine and midnight?"

"I was at a party at a client's home. His name is Phillipe de Grasse. I can provide you with his address and cell phone number. There were about thirty people there. I arrived a bit after eight and didn't leave until one AM."

"You didn't take Ms. Welles?" Rick asked.

"We were trying to keep the relationship low key and…Phillipe is both boring and self-centered." Grace suddenly frowned.

"Something wrong?" Kate asked.

"I just remembered. Before I left the office I told Carolyn that she was lucky she wasn't going to the party because she'd be bored to death."

Kate nodded. That was the sort of thing that might haunt someone. "Mr. Grace, you can't blame yourself. You might think that she'd be alive today if you'd taken her to the party. But you had no way of knowing. The only person to blame is the killer. Not you."

"I suppose you're right, but I still can't help but think…"He said no more.

"If we could have the names of the people on the team with Ms. Welles?"

The other ten people on the team all knew that Welles and Grace were sleeping together. One man even ventured a guess as to which member of the team would take her place in Grace's bed. "He goes for the brainy types." He had said. "Abagail is a shoe in. Theresa's a frightened little virgin, and Mary Ellen is too….forward. She might as well have a sign on that says "Open for business. Immediate occupancy."

However, no one could think of anyone who would have a motive to murder the woman.

When Rick and Kate got back to the precinct, she checked with Sergeant Morton who had a desk right outside Kate's office. Sergeant Morton was tall, very slim and painfully shy. How she got into a profession that valued bulk and a take charge personality, no one knew, but Morton had. Kate had found the woman to be the perfect administrative aide. She had managed to keep her contact with the paperwork of the precinct to a minimum thanks to Sergeant Morton which allowed her to be a detective more of the time.

Esposito and Ryan came to her office door. "Guess who's in town from Washington, DC?"

"Welles's old boyfriend?" Kate guessed.

"Correct-o-mundo." Espo replied.

"And we got something off of her voicemail from yesterday." Ryan put her phone down on Kate's desk and went to her voicemail. "Christ, Carolyn. It's not like you didn't spread your legs for half of the damned law school. And who kept quiet when he found you on your knees in front of a certain married professor? You must have started banging your boss about an hour after I left for DC. And you don't have time for me now? Fuck you."

''So, do we have a name to go with this? And an address?"

Espo nodded. "Bob Wohl, works as an attorney for the EPA. In town for some sort of tree huggers get together. He's staying at the Fairwick. Got in two days ago."

Kate smiled. "I think we need to talk to Mr. Wohl."

Although Wohl was an attorney, he had decided to talk. So far. They played the recording for him. He shrugged. "So?"

"I imagine you were upset that your old girlfriend wouldn't put out for you." Rick said.

"It's not like I never got turned down before."

"But you got turned down by a woman who spreads her legs for everyone, or so you say." Kate added.

"She did. I called her when I got into town. She said she was still screwing her boss, but that she'd have a night away from him. The night she was killed. Then she called back and said she couldn't meet me. She had a hot one on the line."

"Who?"

Wohl shrugged. "I don't know. It was some chick, though. Apparently the woman had never made it with a woman before and Carolyn was all hot and bothered about what she was going to do to her. I offered to help, and Carolyn said she'd ask."

"That would make you doubly angry, I'd think."

"She sent me a text. Said she wanted to be alone with the chick. That's when I sent the voicemail."

"Where were you between eight and eleven?" Kate asked.

Wohl frowned. "I met a guy named Ed something. He belongs to some sort of environmental organization. He offered to take me to a bar where he said there were lots of hot chicks."

"Does Ed have a last name? Anything we could identify him by?"

Wohl shook his head. "He's not an attorney, but he went to school somewhere in the New York area and I think he works on the West Coast. We split up when we got to the bar. That was maybe seven thirty?"

"The name of the bar?"

"I don't know."

"Where is it?"

"Again, I don't know. We went in a cab. Ed told the guy where to go. I didn't pay any attention."

"And?" Rick asked.

"I met a chick. Name was Pat, or Pam, maybe. We went back to her place. And I have no idea where it was. I had a buzz on by then. I left her place about three or so, walked to the nearest big street and took a cab back to the hotel."

"So you really have no alibi for the time of the murder?"

"I'm done talking."

Several hours later, they gathered in Kate's office and Ryan briefed them on what had been found. "Surveillance cameras in the hotel show him leaving at 7:12 PM. He said this Ed met him out on the street. There's no coverage that shows this Ed, assuming he exists."

"Does the hotel have a record of an Ed that might fit?" Castle asked.

"No, but there are people here for the conference staying at hotels all over town. We've had no luck locating the cab Wohl said took them to the bar, but we do have surveillance footage of him coming back at 3:19 AM. We got the cab medallion and talked to the cabbie. He picked Wohl up at the corner of eighteenth and fifty first. Wohl said he walked for three or four blocks to find a cab. There are thousands of apartments in that radius. We could spend years knocking on doors and asking if the occupant slept with Wohl."

"And get slapped in the face a lot." Rick added.

Kate shook her head unhappily. "So, he has no alibi but we have nothing to tie him to the murder. We'll have to cut him loose for the time being. We just don't have anything to hold him on." She turned to Ryan and Epsosito. "Keep digging in his life. Castle and I will see if we can find this alleged mystery girlfriend of Ms. Welles'."

That night, Kate reclined on the couch while Rick massaged her feet. "You could wear flats, you know, instead of four inch heels."

Kate smiled. "The added height is more useful dealing with One PP and the bureaucrats there than they ever were putting suspects at a disadvantage. And I need every advantage I can get in dealing with One PP. I'm not their idea of a precinct captain. I delegate too much of the paperwork to Sergeant Morton and I do too much investigating as if I were a detective again."

"Do you regret the promotion?"

She had to stop and think. "No. I have a lot better understanding of police work, I think. There are parts of it, such as the crime scene people that I never gave much thought to before. Now that they work for me, I understand what goes on there a lot better. I've learned about auto theft, robbery, fraud, even traffic. A lot of things."

"So, what are we going to do about Welles' mysterious female lover? We just scratched the surface today. There are about a hundred and twenty lawyers there, mostly male to be sure. However, there are hundreds of female paralegals, legal secretaries, file clerks, computer people, some librarians, and….I don't know what."

"With that many people, there must be some gossips. Someone who knows who's sleeping with who."

"Whom." Rick corrected.

"Whatever. We'll look for our gossip tomorrow."

They asked around at Grace and Vollmer the next day and were rewarded with the names of two gossips. Diana French was a lean and lovely woman who flirted endlessly with Kate, much to Rick's surprise and enjoyment. She was convinced that Carolyn Welles had been seeing someone else, other than Mr. Grace, but she had no idea who.

David Fellowes was the other gossip. To Kate's great amusement, he flirted with Castle. Kate would have loved to have sat there and watched Rick squirm, but she had to advise Mr. Fellowes that this was a police investigation and that time was of the essence.

Fellowes sighed. "Carolyn was a truly lovely girl. Friendly, happy go lucky, but a hard worker and very smart. A bit of a slut, you'll understand, but that's better than the people who claim sex should only be for reproduction."

"Do you know if she was with anyone other than Mr. Grace?" Kate asked.

Fellowes look around him and lowered his voice. "Mr. Grace likes to think he's very much the alpha male and that any woman would love to hop into bed with him and that she would never be sexually satisfied by anyone else. As if. He'd be very angry if he found out that Carolyn was sleeping with someone else, and she was. It wasn't anyone here, I can tell you that. Carolyn was very cagey about it, but you can tell if two people are together."

"Do you have any idea who it might have been?" That was Rick.

"She told me it was a very exciting affair. Apparently the young lady in question had never had lesbian sex before and had considered it…evil." Fellowes snickered. "Apparently Carolyn was teaching her differently. The woman was apparently a very conservative person. Carolyn liked the challenge."

Once back in Kate's car, they both said. "We need her phones and financials."

Kate smiled. "If she's not dating someone at her office, she's going to have to call her lover. She'll be going out with her, so her credit card bills should tell us something."

Back at the precinct they pulled her records. And they were disappointed.

"There's nothing here." Rick said after an hour of checking and cross checking her phones and financials. "All of her calls are business, or to people who can't be her mystery lover. And there's nothing in her credit card history."

"Patience, Grasshopper. Remember Mr. Holmes?"

"Benedict Cumberbatch, Jeremy Brett, or Basil Rathbone?" Castle asked.

"Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Holmes. The dog that didn't bark?"

"The dog…."Castle smiled. "She didn't have to call her lover because they lived together. The roommate, Marci Sands."

"We'll have Ryan and Espo check her out tomorrow. I have to go to One PP in the tomorrow morning. With any luck, I'll be out by noon. Care to buy your favorite police captain lunch?"

"I'd love to."

After lunch the next day, they called Ryan and Esposito into Kate's office. "Did you find anything?"

Espo smiled. "Oh, that we did. But not exactly what you thought. Welles' girlfriend is supposed to be some conservative chick who never had sex with a woman? Well, Ms. Sands likes to keep a photo album. She has photos of herself with a man, with men, with a woman, with women, with a man and a woman, with men and women, with…"

Kate stopped him. "I know you're running those photos through your mind as you speak, so she's not the one?"

Espo shook his head, still smiling. "No, but it seems Carolyn Welles was a bit of a shutterbug as well. We got this photo." He handed a photo to Kate. "It's really a nice clear shot of the other woman's head. And other parts."

"I hadn't noticed any parts." Rick said virtuously.

"I don't believe you, babe, but you get points for trying." She turned to Espo. "Did you canvas the building to see if anyone knows her?"

"Didn't need to. Ms. Sands said she lives two doors down. I thought we'd like to check out Ms. Connie Garrett before we talk to her."

Much to Espo's disgust, Rick and Kate did the interview. "She'll feel more comfortable with a woman and a married man." Kate had said.

"Thank you for coming in, Ms. Garrett." Kate said, trying to put the woman at ease. She had even put Ms. Garrett in the interview room usually used for people who weren't suspects. Connie Garrett was an attractive enough brunette, although very slender. She dressed conservatively and had little make up on.

"I don't know how I can help you, Captain. I barely knew Ms. Welles."

"I think "barely" is the operative word here." Rick said, pushing the photo of Welles and Connie Garrett across the table.

Garrett's eyes went wide. "Am I under arrest?" She squealed.

"Why would we arrest you?" Kate asked softly.

Garrett pointed at the photo. "For that." She was beginning to cry.

Kate gave Rick a look that said that she didn't think they had the killer. "Ms. Garrett, sex between consenting adults of the same sex is not illegal in New York."

"It isn't?"

Both Rick and Kate nodded.

"Well, it should be. It's a sin!" Garrett said forcefully.

"Ms. Garrett you do realize that you are…."Rick saw Kate shake her head slightly. He guessed this wasn't the time to argue with the woman about sexual mores.

"Can you tell us where you were the night Carolyn Welles died?"

The blonde nodded vigorously. "I was with my parents in Ridgewood, New Jersey. It was Mom's birthday. The whole family was there."

"We will have to check your alibi, you understand."

She looked at Kate. "Are you going to tell them about…that?" She pointed at the photo.

"Of course not."

Then Garrett really began to cry.

They got most of the phone numbers for the Garrett family from her phone. Kate had Ryan and Esposito call the relatives, all of whom confirmed that Connie Garrett had arrived about six o'clock and had stayed the night.

When Garrett's alibi had been confirmed, Kate, Rick and the two detectives went over what they had.

Kate summed up. "Our best suspect is still the ex-boyfriend, but we can't place him at the crime scene, or anyplace else, for that matter. And his motive is weak. He's a good looking, reasonably successful lawyer who appears to have no trouble finding dates. I don't really see him as our killer, although I've been wrong before."

"Hardly ever." Castle murmured.

"And our other possible suspects have good alibis." She concluded. "Let's go home and get some sleep and start up again tomorrow."

Early that morning, Kate got another call.

"Get up, lover. We have another vampire killing."