Chipping Through the Ice

Chapter 4

Castle greets Kate's coffee-flavored lips with a kiss. "Did you have a good time with your Dad?"

"Yeah. He told me that he's thinking of expanding his practice, taking on a new associate."

"Someone to train up in the Beckett quest for truth and justice or a patsy to stick with the paperwork?"

Kate smiles as she shrugs. "I think maybe a little of both. He's going to be interviewing the new crop of Columbia Law School grads, and the ones just finishing up clerkships."

"Sounds like he'll have some interesting conversations. And speaking of interesting conversations, Alexis wants to talk to you. Apparently, there is something she doesn't regard as suitable for male ears - unless she whispered to Custos. And Mother is on a retreat where she sits in a yurt and builds her inner awareness. Anyway, Alexis seemed pretty anxious about whatever it is."

Kate drops her purse on a chair. "OK, I'll go up and see her." Kate knocks lightly on the frame of Alexis' partially open door. "Your Dad said you wanted to talk to me."

"Oh, Kate, yeah, please."

Kate closes the door behind her and pulls a chair up to the bed where Alexis is sitting. "So, what's on your mind?"

"There's a boy at school, Ashley. He's very cute, and he's really smart. He asked me to go see The Blue Pill with him. You remember them?"

"A band whose former lead singer was murdered is hard to forget. And I remember that you love their music, so what's the problem?"

"Kate, I like Ashley. I mean I really like Ashley, and I don't want to screw this up. With the French Club, fencing, violin lessons, and keeping up with my advanced classes, I haven't had that much time to date. What do I do for a concert in Central Park? What do I wear? Do I bring a blanket to sit on the grass or would that make Ashley think I want to - you know."

"OK, if Ashley is someone you see every day at school, then he's probably decided that he likes the way you look, or he wouldn't have asked you. So dress the way you usually do, in whatever makes you comfortable. And hopefully, he'll get tickets for the bleachers so you won't need a blanket, but you can ask him if there's anything you should bring. That will put it on him. And Alexis, the most important thing is just to be you. It took me a lot of years to learn that. If a guy doesn't like you for who you are, he's not worth your time."

Alexis leans over the side of the bed to kiss Kate's cheek. "Thanks."

"Any time."

After a six a.m. feeding, Kate was hoping to catch more sleep, but her cell buzzes at eight. Through the speaker, Ryan's voice rises with excitement. "Beckett, we found them, the records of how long that freezer car was leeching power. That cable's been connected for ten years. Lanie said that she and Murray couldn't get a time of death off frozen bodies, but that must be when the murders started."

"Ten years," Kate repeats. "Ten years ago there had to have been someone with access to the railyard and the skills to siphon electricity without Con Ed getting wise to him. An electrical technician?"

"That's what Esposito and I thought too. Someone who worked either for the railroad or Con Ed around that time. We're going after the personnel files, but with the privacy laws, Con Ed wants a court order."

"And judges get grumpy if you ask too early in the morning," Kate adds.

Castle comes through the door of the bedroom and hands Kate a glass of orange juice. "I heard that, but I happen to know that Markway has an early tee time at the Dyker Beach course in Brooklyn this morning. The only reason he'll have to be grumpy is if he bogies."

Kate beams up at her husband. "Thanks, Babe. Ryan, did you get that?"

"Markway. We're on it."

Kate tosses her phone on the bedside table and takes a swig of her orange juice. "How long have you been up?"

"I couldn't go back to sleep after you fed Callie," Rick admits, so I took Custos for a walk and made breakfast for Alexis before she went off to school. She said she had someone she wanted to talk to before class. You wouldn't know anything about that would you?"

"Nothing she'd want me to share." Kate reaches for Rick's hand. "But Babe, she's fine, just growing up."

"I'm not sure I want her too. Life was less complicated when all she needed to be deliriously happy was a white hooded robe and a plastic lightsaber."

"Well when Callie's a little older, you can give her a lightsaber too."

"It will have to be phthalate-free plastic. Alexis teethed on her first Jedi weapon."

Kate stretches up for a kiss. "I'm not surprised."

Montgomery checks the report from Jake Lipman, an operative in California. A five-year-old, Jeremy Bursor, disappeared from a park in North Long Beach thirty-five years before. The body was later found by a recreation department employee, John Simmons, on the sand surrounding a wood joggling board in the playground. The detective on the case had considered Simmons a person of interest, but he had an alibi for the time of death, and the case went unsolved. Jeremy's parents had never given up on wanting answers to their son's death and had turned to Out of the Cold for help.

Jake is in the process of hunting down Simmons. He'd apparently moved to Orange County not long after the murder and taken a position with a recreation program run by Easter Seals. Simmons had departed under a cloud, but Jake had been unable to get any details. After that Simmons dropped off the radar. Jake suspects Simmons changed his name, moved out of state or both, and is trying to pick up his trail.

Montgomery grunts as he rereads the details. People, especially potential suspects don't usually disappear for no reason, and the Easter Seals matter is a red flag. Still, Jake doesn't have anything solid. Budgets being what they are, if Jeremy's death had been a police investigation on his watch, Roy might have eventually had to consign it to boxes in the basement too. Fortunately, OOTC has more freedom to extend its probes. Jake will have the time and the funds that he needs. Roy just hopes that he comes up with something. If it had been one of his kids, he never would have given up wondering either.

With reading glasses perched on the tip of his nose, Judge Markway pores over the warrant application Ryan and Esposito are presenting to him, before glancing up at the detectives. "So you two honestly think that you can track down a mass murderer in the files of Con Ed and the railroad?"

"We're going to try, Sir," Esposito assures the jurist. "And we do have the resources of Out of The Cold behind us."

"Oh yes, the pet project of the Beckett-Castles. I'm still amazed that Rick was OK with Kate's name being first." Markway scribbles his signature. "Good luck wading through the records of the corporate bureaucracies. You're going to need it."