CHAPTER TEN – The Digging Begins
Gibbs, Beckett and Castle spent several hours digging through every unsolved murder case in New York over the last dozen years. They also pulled the files of each one of the cases that had been linked to Coonan, and were mostly closed with his death at Beckett's hand.
As it turned out, when he wasn't actually acting like a child, and when he had reason to focus, Castle was an excellent researcher. Beckett was a little surprised that she'd been surprised by that fact. She should have known he would be.
Gibbs was a harsh taskmaster, allowing few enough breaks, and taking few enough himself, so long as the coffee kept coming, but he did not work any harder than Beckett herself, or Castle either, for that matter, excepting only the brief period where Castle had gone out to pick up sandwiches and drinks for them from a deli down the street.
What they learned was fairly interesting. They identified two more killings that seemed like they might bear looking into, might have been Coonan's, bringing his total, if they did prove to match up, to twelve killings in just over ten years, and that was just in New York. He certainly could have killed elsewhere. A call from Gibbs to someone named Tobias, at the FBI, set that agency to looking for killings outside New York with the same markers.
They also learned that, so far as they could tell, Coonan's earliest killing had been the murder of Johanna Beckett and his last had been his own brother, Jack Coonan. One of the tools they used was to search for patterns. They still hadn't found anything to verify that Coonan had killed Mark Hatten, but it gained them nothing to assume that he hadn't. So they assumed the opposite. Hatten and Grayson were the only two killings, again assuming that Hatten was indeed dead, that had occurred within two weeks of one another, until they took into account one of the two new files. A man by the name of Theodore Warren had died the day after Johanna Beckett. It was iffy though. A single stab wound to the kidney, assuring death almost instantly certainly fit, but there was a lack of secondary wounds, the multiple vicious blows that Coonan delivered to most of his victims in order to hide the skill of the first strike.
"Maybe he heard someone coming and couldn't finish up the way he normally would," Castle said.
"The body was found in an alley off forty-fourth street, just a block from Warren's apartment," Beckett said. "That's a fairly busy area, a good amount of foot traffic."
Gibbs nodded along. "And he was a reporter for the Times?" he asked.
"Yes. Metro Section," Castle said, glancing into the file.
"He might be one of our missing connections," Gibbs said. "What was the original finding on the case?"
Beckett took the file from Castle and flipped a page. "It's Cold," she said. "The original investigating Detective, a Sam Russo from the Twenty-Third Precinct, decided it was likely related to a story he was working on."
"What story?" Castle asked.
"Russo interviewed the guy's Editor, but he didn't know," Beckett answered. "He said Russo had called him the evening before and said he was onto something big, but he didn't have any details yet. The next morning the guy was dead."
"He called the night of your Mother's murder and he was dead the next day," the tone of Gibbs' voice made it clear that he wasn't asking, but rather thinking it through. "Anything else?" he asked.
Beckett continued flipping through the file, but Castle answered from memory. "The Editor told the Detective that Russo always carried a pen and one of those small spiral notebooks with him, so he could jot down ideas, quotes and information from his research, but it wasn't with the body."
"That's what they wanted. Silence him, take the notebook, and kill the story," Gibbs said.
"So we assume that this is somehow related to my Mom's death," Beckett said.
Gibbs took a sip from his coffee, and then nodded. "Doesn't do us any good not to," he said. "We run this down, who knows what we might find."
"It's almost ten years old is the problem," Castle said. "There wasn't much for Russo to run down when it was fresh."
"He didn't have a connection like we do," Beckett answered. Gibbs nodded in approval. "So we assume that he was onto a lead, something Coonan, or those he worked for, didn't want known."
"And we assume that the lead came from Johanna Beckett," Castle said. "Did Russo run his calls?"
"Yes," Beckett said, home and office. "Nothing from my Mom, or her law firm."
"Did she know this guy?" Gibbs asked.
"Not that I remember," Beckett said, but hold on a sec. She stepped into the hall, pulling her cell phone from her pocket. After a moment, her voice drifted in from the hall. "Hey Dad, it's me."
While they waited for Beckett's return, Gibbs and Castle sized one another up from across the table. Thus far, Gibbs had been impressed. What he'd heard about Castle had made him suspect he'd be hoping for DiNozzo's childish antics in comparison, but the man had been well-behaved, and more than a little helpful. Gibbs had to admit, he had good instincts for the work.
"You ever read any of my books?" Castle asked, mainly just to fill the silence.
"Every one," Gibbs said. "Until today I was trying to figure out why you put a bullet in Storm's head."
"But now you get it?" Castle asked.
Gibbs eyes wandered to Detective Beckett, who was lounging against the wall on the far side of the door, just visible from their vantage point. "Partially, at least, I think," Gibbs answered.
"I guess you would understand," Castle said. "After all, you're sort of in the same position that she is."
Gibbs chuckled at that. "I guess I sort of am," he said.
"Your boy's not bad," Castle said. "I really enjoyed Deep Six, and now I see why the characters had such good depth, especially for a first time novelist."
Beckett interrupted their talk by walking back into the room, two sets of eyes swinging toward her, and the smile on her face told them everything they needed to know. "They weren't close or anything," she said, "but he was the friend of one of my Dad's buddies. They attended a few of the same parties."
"That seals it," Gibbs said.
"Not necessarily," Beckett said. "Not enough for a court."
"Enough for my gut," Gibbs said. "Enough for us to know that this is not a waste of our time and resources."
"He's right," Castle said. "This would make a great story. For the first time in several days, Beckett actually laughed. Leave it to Castle to think of things that way.
It was getting on to fairly late afternoon. Gibbs said, "I should meet up with my team back at the hotel. Why don't you take that file over to your M.E., see if she can confirm that the wound from the Warren case matches up with the Coonan cases."
"Looks the same to me," Castle said.
"That's very comforting," Gibbs said.
Castle looked at his watch, "Oooh, yikes. I'm supposed to make dinner for Alexis tonight. Martha's new play started this week."
"You need me to drop you by your apartment?" Beckett asked him, gathering up the files in front of her.
"Nah," he said. "I'll grab a cab. But, you can stop by for ziti a la Castle and tossed salad after you see Lanie," he paused for a second or two, "if you want."
"Sounds good," Beckett said. "You were supposed to give me that recipe last time. Seven okay?"
"Great," he said. "Your hotel is in the same direction as my building," Castle told Gibbs. "You want to share a cab?"
"Sure," the older man said.