Stay in Touch

Chapter 4

Dear Mr. Castle,

"You were right about my mother having an animal that was meaningful to her. She loved elephants. She said it dated back to the first time she saw Dumbo. Mom particularly related to elephant families. She had a china family of them on her desk at work. I have the set in my apartment now.

Mom had more than one or two books on elephants. She had a shelf full. My dad loaded them into a box and put them in his storage unit. I guess it just made him too sad to look at them. I retrieved the whole collection, and I'm going through it page by page to see if anything pops out that might be a key to her code.

The problem is, there are no numerics in her shorthand, just letters, so looking for page numbers or line numbers is out. If there is something else, I just can't see it yet, but it brings back a lot of memories just to read about her passion. Thank you for that.

I'm beginning to get more comfortable on the street. Mike has me chasing suspects down a lot. He's only an inch taller than I am and 18 years older, so I can run faster than he does. Not everyone I chase is even guilty of anything. Sometimes they take off just because they see cops and they're afraid we're going to try to plant something or hang someone else's crime on them. I hate it, but some of the other cops will even go after someone if they're the same color as a suspect, a non-white suspect, even if they don't have any of the other reported characteristics.

Something like that happened a couple of days ago. A black teenager ripped off some stuff from a convenience store. He didn't pull a gun or anything, just stuffed his pants with electronic accessories and ran out of the place. Another unit picked up a kid a few blocks away. Honestly, except for race, he didn't look anything like the description. The thief was dark, and this kid was, I don't even know how to describe it, like a latte with cinnamon, and he had freckles and reddish hair that stuck straight out like an old fashioned clown. I don't think he looked like anyone else I've ever seen.

The reason that I know about the incident at all is that the mother of the kid who was picked up is a cop - a white cop. She and the father are separated, and the kid was spending the week with daddy. The unit that picked him up was embarrassed as hell, but I don't think it was because they were being racist or just lazy, but because they ran up against another cop. And I think it's Rudy Giuliani's fault for letting that kind of thing go on, encouraging it, actually. From what Mike told me, once the mayor put his "Stop and frisk" policy into effect, some cops figured they could do whatever they wanted. I hope that whoever is mayor after him discourages that attitude or appoints a commissioner who does. It makes us all look bad.

I've heard that Captain Montgomery is transferring to the 12th precinct. I want to follow him there when I can. It's a lot closer to where I live now, and Montgomery is a great captain.

I never told you that I found an apartment. Creepy as it seems, Mike was right. Someone died. There was no crime involved, and her death wasn't tragic. The apartment belonged to a 98-year-old great grandmother. She lived a full life and passed away with a huge family around her. There was still a faint scent of lavender in her place when I first moved in. It reminded me of my nonna. She used lavender soap.

I have some of my mother's things besides the elephant books and figurines at my new place, and I have my nonna's old frypan. It's battered, but she used to cook the best eggs in it. I don't have much time to spend in the kitchen, but I'm trying to figure out how she did it. My mother made an incredible meat sauce. I'm working on how to make that too. I think it would make my father happy to taste it again.

I only have five minutes left before I go on shift.

Stay in touch,

Kate Beckett

Dear Kate,

About your mother's code; numbers aren't always Arabic numerals. She could have been using the Roman system. It would have been less obvious. Did her notations have a lot of "I"s, "V"s and "X"s? Just a guess on my part.

Congratulations on your new apartment. The area around the 12th Precinct is an intriguing section of New York. I live there myself, a bit uptown from you. The old buildings have fascinating histories and have sparked my imagination many times. My apartment, loft really, was once part of an industrial building. Waves of immigrants after two wars worked here building lives for their families. Sometimes I imagine that spirit remains like the scent of lavender lingered in your new place.

I know what you mean about racism in the city. I find it galling, myself. I spent a large part of my childhood backstage in the theater, where attitudes were usually a lot more open. If a person had talent, that got them into the club. I think the influence of jazz helped with that.

I have a black friend named Bob Weldon. We play poker together. He's a councilman now, but he is ambitious and very able. I can see him working his way up to mayor. I don't think he's about to beat out Giuliani. Our exalted leader has quite a machine. But he may be able to beat the next guy, and I think we'll see some things straightened out in this town. I hope so.

Can you transfer after your rookie year or will you have to wait until you've served some time off probation? Does Mike want to move downtown too, or will you be parting ways when you are no longer in training? From your letters, the two of you seem to have an excellent partnership.

As far as partnerships are concerned, Alexis talked me into - or more like tricked me into - going on a date with Gina. It wasn't as bad as I thought it might be. She only nagged me for a chapter once, and Alexis was over the moon at the thought that Gina might be spending time at the loft. I suppose she really misses having someone approximating a mother figure around. My mother is on a nine-month tour of Auntie Mame. The part suits her to a "T." Meredith is in California. She snagged a recurring role on a sitcom out there.

It's good for her to have a job she can count on, at least for a while, not that the judge has seen fit to reduce my alimony payments. Acting work is notoriously unreliable. My mother tells me stories about the years when she was trying to raise me as a single mother and earn a living at the same time. I think she made some of them up out of whole cloth, but her tale about freezing on a street corner in February dressed as Lady Liberty, trying to pull in clients for a tax preparer, rang true. I have a vague memory of her costume.

My new book is coming along pretty well. I'm not sure if that's because of Gina, or despite her. I have a place I like to work, while Alexis is in school. It's a writer's bar that has a long and colorful history. Peanut shells crunch underfoot, and ghosts of ancient bootleggers are rumored to inhabit it. That's probably why it's called the Old Haunt. I'm writing this letter from my favorite booth there, but I need to leave in a couple of minutes to pick up Alexis and take her to a playdate.

Stay in touch,

Richard Castle