Life Goes On
Chapter 10
It was all hands on deck for the N.Y.P.D.. One of their own had fallen. To be sure, Captain Nicholson was found in the hallway outside an apartment of a woman not his wife, but so far, that little detail had been kept out of the press. What mattered was that a police officer had been shot down, apparently in cold blood.
Kate was not sure whether to be upset or pleased the shooting had taken place in her jurisdiction. Esposito was in no hurry to solve it, except for pinning a medal on the perpetrator. Kate imagined that a successful closing of the case would raise her profile, but she wasn't sure it would help much with public perception to solve the murder of a dirty cop. Of course the public didn't know he was dirty, and neither did she for sure, but he certainly was no blue saint. She charged Ryan with keeping Esposito in line, then arranged another conversation with Deputy Chief Gates. This time she invited Castle, hoping his quirky point of view would be helpful.
Gates' eyes narrowed at Castle's presence, but she didn't request that he leave, as she and Kate met at Casa Loco. "So what can you tell me about Nicholson?" Kate asked, immediately getting to the point.
"Almost no one at 1PP cared for his style," Gates began, "but there is one..." She stopped abruptly when the waiter put chips and salsa on the table and asked for their drink orders. After a quick request for iced teas all around, Gates continued. "There is one of the Chief's aides, Corlin Dickinsen, who goes back a long time with Nicholson. They were kids together at P.S. 117. The interesting thing is Dickinsen went to Hudson University with Burgess Estes."
Castle paused midway through dipping a chip into the salsa. "That is interesting."
"So are you saying that Corlin Dickinsen had something going with Estes and used Nicholson to protect him while he menaced tenants?" Kate questioned.
"I'm not saying it yet, Kate," Gates cautioned. "We have no evidence of it and at the moment it doesn't get us any closer to solving Nicholson's murder, which should be our first priority."
"Not if you ask Esposito," Castle commented. Gates glared at him and he stuffed another chip in his mouth.
"So where are you with the murder?" Gates prompted.
"We had CSU sweep the hallway and the apartment near where Nicholson was killed. Nicholson's DNA was all over the apartment. He apparently spent a lot of time there. The woman who lives there, Kiki Harkness, is in the wind. She's a barmaid at the Rubicon, but she hasn't shown up for work. We checked her address book, but none of her friends know where she is. Nothing has shown up on her financials and she doesn't own a car, so we can't track it," Kate explained.
"Lot of cash tips at the Rubicon," Castle commented. "She could've had a stash. That would make for good getaway money"
"CSU did find something," Kate continued. "There was fabric softener on the floor in the hallway and there was a trail to the elevator leading to the laundry room. We think the killer might have been hiding down there, possibly until he got a signal of some sort from Kiki, that Nicholson would be leaving. So far, we haven't found any way she might have sent it. She doesn't have a land line and if she has a cell phone, it's a burner."
Did they sweep the apartment for bugs?" Castle asked. "Maybe Kiki didn't have to send a signal. Maybe she had nothing to do with it. The killer was listening, took Nicholson out and she took off because she was scared."
"I'll have CSU check for listening devices, Castle," Kate responded, pulling out her cell phone.
Gates shook her head. "Mr. Castle, following your reasoning, if you actually have any, assuming Kiki knew nothing about the hit on Nicholson, why would she keep all that cash around?"
Castle rolled his lips, raspberry-like, blowing a blast of salsa tinged air in Gates' face. "Taxes, obviously. The IRS would assume she earned tips anyway, but not necessarily at the level she did. If her endowments were generous enough and her outfit creative enough, which I recall the ones at the Rubicon are, she could have stuffed a lot in her cleavage before her shifts were over. But putting the money in the bank creates a record. So she would keep the cash around and use it whenever she could. She could have just grabbed it and taken off."
"Vikram is going over subway footage, and Ryan is checking cabs," Kate put in. "She had to get away somehow." Kate displayed a picture on her phone of a woman who would have been memorable, especially to the male population. "Someone will remember seeing her."
"How about Hytch?" Castle suggested.
"No one signed up with them has admitted to picking her up so far," Kate replied, "but if it was a cash transaction, they could be lying. I'll have our people go over the local list again."
The server arrived with the iced teas and took their orders. Gates' eyes followed him away from the table, making sure he was out of earshot. "Kate, you continue to keep a lid on this as much as you can. However it comes out, the N.Y.P.D. isn't going to look good. Let's try to keep the stain as small as possible."
"I will sir," Kate agreed. "But all my people will follow the evidence wherever it leads, no matter who is dirty."
"I would never expect anything else," Gates declared.
Dragging in from the precinct, Kate found Castle hunched over his computer. "Writing, Babe?"
"I was. But listen. I'm sure your people are looking into him, but something about Corlin Dickinsen kept nagging at me," Castle confided, "so I looked him up and I recognized him instantly. He used to work for Donovan, the IAD cop who took over when Gates came to the Twelfth. He was one of the cops who grilled me when you were on the run after you were framed for Vulcan Simmons' murder. Remember we thought Donovan was dirty, but we could never prove it and you were too busy nailing Bracken to care. So maybe Donovan wasn't dirty. Gates never found anything on him. Maybe it was Dickensen. Maybe he just likes collecting scratch from whomever he can and when Bracken went down, he looked for someone else to grease his palm, like his old school chum Burgess Estes. They pegged Nicholson as an easy puppet, but when he was in danger of exposure, they decided to get rid of him."
Kate put her arms around her husband's neck. "It's a great story, Castle, but I have yet to hear one iota of proof."
"Yeah, well take a look at this."
Kate regarded the screen. "A beach house. That things's almost as big as yours! Where would a cop get that kind of money and why wouldn't anyone know about it?"
"Because it's not in his name," Castle explained. "It's actually in the name of Corlin's Aunt Sadie. But Aunt Sadie is ninety-six and lives in a one bedroom supported living condo in Florida. She probably has no idea she owns a manse. And look at the Google satellite photo. If you zoom in you can see the car parked on the very lovely circular drive in front of the house. That's an Audi A4. And guess who owns an Audi A4?"
"Corlin Dickensen?" Kate guessed.
Castle pulled her down into his lap. "Give the lady a cigar."
Kate felt a familiar hardness growing beneath her. She smoothed Castle's hair off his forehead and framed his face in her hands. "Castle, I think you're just about to."
Castle ran his fingers up the soft skin inside her thigh. "Then Detective Beckett, let's make the smoke rise."