Life Goes On
Chapter 7
"Get down here, Kate," Lanie commanded. "And if you can get Castle over here, you should do that too. This is as much for him as it is for you." Curious, Kate pulled out her cell to call Castle, who was more than enthusiastic to meet her at the morgue.
The couple was greeted not only by Lanie Parish but by Clark Murray. The remains on the table were mostly bones and appeared to have been that way for a long time. "We pulverized part of the bone and extracted DNA," Murray explained. "It was a long shot, but with some very surprising results. This body shares all the marker alleles we checked, in common with the body of the person known as Edgar McDonald."
"So they were brothers?" Kate asked.
"Not just brothers, identical twins," a grinning Castle interjected before Murray could respond. "Oh this is just getting better and better."
"So years ago, a hitman named Borman Greer faked his own death, substituting the body of the twin brother of our current victim," Kate recapitulated.
"That would appear to be the case," Murray agreed.
"It still makes no sense as to why twenty years later, Greer would take out McDonald," Kate puzzled. "His deception had gone undetected. If he'd left McDonald alone, no one would have been the wiser."
"There is more," Murray added. "This body was not killed in the car fire. We found a bullet in the remains. But even had the victim not been killed by the bullet, he would not have lived long, and the time he lived would have been extremely painful. He had extensive bone cancer, quite possibly the result of metastases from another organ. There wasn't enough tissue left to make that determination."
"So are you saying that the body in the car was actually a mercy killing?" Castle queried.
"I'm not saying that, but it is a possibility," Murray conceded. "With that degree of suffering, someone could have loved him enough to feel he had to end it."
"Someone like a twin brother," Castle proposed. "Who would feel his pain more? So we have twins, one of whom was killed and the other of whom disappeared twenty years ago. That is too good a story for someone not to have written it down somewhere. And who better to find it than a mystery writer extraordinaire?"
Lanie rolled her eyes and shook her head, but Kate put an affectionate hand on Castle's arm. "You want to go back to the loft and try? Have at it Babe. I'm going to have the boys see if they can find more killings that point to Greer's M.O.. Even if he's assumed a new identity, we may be able to track him down that way. And I have a meeting with Gates down at 1PP. See you later?"
"I'll be counting the minutes," Castle replied.
Lanie smiled in spite of herself. "You two are still so cute."
Feet on his desk, Castle balanced his laptop across his thighs. "There you are!" he triumphantly addressed the screen. The twenty-year old article in Strange Occurrences outlined the mysterious case of two twins, the Thompkins brothers. One, Sidney, had been a rocket on Wall Street, showing genius in predicting the future values of stocks. His brother, Donald, was a criminal attorney, showing an equal level of burgeoning talent at freeing criminals, against whom the police had believed they had an airtight case. It was assumed, but never proven, that Donald had been on retainer for the mob. Sidney's star crashed when he developed what was at the time intractable cancer. Donald gave up his practice to care for his brother, until one day Sidney was found shot dead and Donald disappeared. Sidney's body, which had been taken to a mortuary, disappeared as well, and nothing further was ever heard of the brothers. It was rumored that Sidney had a lover among Donald's criminal acquaintances, but gossip about that ceased when the Thompkins brothers dropped from the radar. There had also been some speculation that Donald had been taken out because of some inside information he had on the mob and that Sidney had been killed because he knew about it, but there had had been no evidence to support that theory.
Castle brought up a new search window, entering the missing Donald Thompkins. There were millions of entries, but none he saw that made sense with Castle's law or crime keywords Sighing, Castle switched to searching for Sidney Thompkins, using financial terms. Castle's quarry appeared immediately on LinkedIn as Sidney Thompkins, analyst. This Sidney's talents were nothing close to those of the original, and he was about twenty years older. On a hunch, Castle brought up a photo of Borman Greer and used a program to age it twenty years. Suddenly, he was looking at a close facsimile of the image of the current Sidney Thompkins. His laptop almost tumbled from his lap in his rush to call Kate.
Kate faced the man now known as Sidney Thompkins and his attorney, across the table in Interrogation. Castle sat on her right and Ryan and Esposito were to her left. She stared directly into her suspect's eyes."Mr. Greer, or Mr. Thompkins if you prefer, you murdered the man known as Edgar McDonald," Kate declared. "We found the clothes you wore and the gun you used, in your apartment. Ballistics matched the bullet. The only way you can possibly help yourself now is to explain why you did it, so we can can try to make the D.A. understand. Otherwise, there is absolutely no doubt that you will be going to prison for the rest of your life, with no hope of parole. Just be grateful that New York has no death penalty. Counselor, I'm sure you can confirm that for your client."
Greer whispered a short conversation with his attorney before turning back to Kate. "The man you refer to as Edgar McDonald was Donald Thompkins, twin brother of Sidney Thompkins," he began.
Castle clenched his fist to keep from exclaiming, "Yes!"
"Sidney and I were - close," Greer continued. "Sidney got sick, he was in agony. He kept saying he wanted to die, begging me to help him. He begged Donald too, every day. But I could never believe Sidney really wanted to die. There was research going on every day and his doctor was going to put him in a study for a new drug. I believed – I hoped – that Sidney could hold out just a little longer until there was a way to cure him. Then one day Sidney was shot dead and Donald was gone. I knew Donald had given in and killed him. So I took Sidney's identity and I swore to hunt his killer down. Donald killed his own brother. He took away the only person I've ever loved, and when I finally found him I put him down for it. All I did was kill a murderer."
When Greer had been taken to holding, Kate led Castle back to her office and closed the door. They sank down on the couch together and she rested her head against his shoulder. "You know Castle, I hate to admit how well I understand what Greer did. I hunted my mother's killer and every other killer as proxy, for so many years. I was a hair away from killing William Bracken. Then when I thought I was done, the obsession grabbed me again and it almost killed us both. To me, twenty years doesn't seem so long to wait for closure. I could easily see waiting a lifetime."
Castle drew her close. "But Kate, you do have closure. Bracken, Mason. Brown, all of the Loksat group, they're gone. We both have a whole life in front of us. We just have to live it."
Kate turned beneath his arm, cupping the back of his neck and bringing her lips close to his. "Castle, that's exactly what we're going to do." She gazed back at her office door. "I just hope I remembered to lock that thing."