Moving On
Chapter 24
It is now 3 months later
Kate had been working on cold cases after being moved to the night shift. Granted the sun wasn't really down yet to start the night shift but it was close enough to call it the night shift.
She was now officially past her probation period and she had received glowing grades from everyone. Her white board had been implemented during the day shift as well. By putting what they had on the board meant what they had couldn't somehow accidentally end up in the trash or get picked up by the cleaning crew.
Right now she was basically all alone in her new bullpen when her desk phone rang. Olga and her friends never used her desk phone if they wanted her so that meant this was official. "Beckett." Kate listened for a moment. "Got it, 15 minutes," Kate told dispatch. She had her first real dead body. Though in this case it was two dead bodies at the same location.
She gathered up everything from her desk drawer and once again saw the card that had gotten her there. Just for a moment she picked it up and reread it. I told you so.
Kate had her unmarked car. She chose a spot to park and headed for what was clearly the first body since there was already yellow police tape sectioning it off.
"Hi, Lanie. What have we got?" Kate walked up to her.
"Hey, Kate. Our first. No ID on the body. Female, I'm guessing somewhere between early 60s to maybe early 70s at most. Based on injuries she took a dive." Lanie pointed up and Kate followed her finger.
It was a high rise condo so that meant a lot of rooms to check. "Who found her and who was first on the scene?" Kate called out and watched a uniform officer come up to her.
"I did, ma'am. I was responding to a domestic disturbance call that was on the 26th floor. When I got here she was already down here. However, we do have a number of witnesses to what happened." Kate watches him point across the street.
He turned to look at the Red Lobster that was across the street. "We have six witnesses that said they watched a scuffle taking place out on the lanai. Apparently they were both doing a lot of yelling."
Kate immediately thought it had to be really loud to come from the 26th floor and get people's attention who were trying to eat. "Make sure you get their names, addresses, and numbers."
"Right here, ma'am." He handed her a tiny piece of paper from his little notebook.
"Nice work, Officer…Xiang." She looked at his name and memorized it for later.
"Dispatch said we had two," Kate reminded him.
"This way, ma'am." The same officer led her to the back of the building where there was another body on the pavement.
"Lanie?" Kate knew she had just seen him but wanted what little she knew.
"Male… Looks like his neck is broken." Lanie looked up as did Kate.
"Officer Xiang, get the other officers here to start taking pictures of everyone in the crowd. If we have a double homicide our guy may have only just left the building. Then see if this condo has security cameras. I'm going to want to see them," Kate told him.
"Yes, ma'am." He quickly walked away to issue orders.
"Tell me what you can, when you can, Lanie." Kate left her to her work and went to the restaurant. She had patrons to interrogate to see what they think they saw.
[)(] o [)(] o [)(] o [)(] o [)(]
Kate was sitting in the security room watching tapes. Real tapes! Based on her witnesses she knew which room and watched a man that looked like the dead man out back run out of the room and started checking for unlocked doors until he gave up and began kicking one in.
"Officer Xiang, take some tape and close off both of these rooms. Wear gloves, I don't want you contaminating my crime scene." Kate watched him walk away. She was beginning to like this kid.
Kate went back to watching him go into the room and that's where she lost him until she saw him again. Only this time it was from a camera in the loading dock area. His body showed up for a split second before hitting the concrete.
It looked like she was going up to the 26th floor next. "I want copies of these two tapes or the tapes themselves if you don't have copying capability," she told the condo staff and went to the bank of elevators to go up.
Then her cell phone rang. She looked at it first and her mood went from looking for a killer to being happy. "Javi! How are things going?"
"You're not going to believe this, Beckett. Gates was sent back to Internal Affairs. She was effectively demoted," Javi said.
"Really!?" Kate stopped at the elevators but didn't call for one.
"Our new captain arrived today. His name is William LaMontagne, Jr. He's from New Orleans and man, does he have an accent."
"What's he like?" It was only one day but Espo should know by now.
"He's tall, really skinny. So far he hasn't ruffled anyone's feathers. We're supposed to call him Will. Not sir and not captain." Espo thought that was a major change.
"Sounds like a nice enough guy. Makes me wonder if all those interviews we all did had something to do with all this," Kate said.
"That's what I was thinking. Oh, there's one more thing. He told us that we would be getting a non-paid consultant. Give you one guess who's sitting at your old desk." Espo was all smiles.
"NO! Not Castle!" Kate couldn't believe it or maybe she could the more she thought about it.
"Want to talk to him?" Espo offered as he smiled wide and looked at Castle who was just sitting there since Kate's replacement was in the breakroom getting coffee.
"No, thanks. I have two dead bodies." Kate needed to get back to her job.
"Sorry, I'll let you go. Just thought you should know." Espo hadn't thought about that.
"It's fine. Call Kevin and tell him, too. Gotta go, Javi, and thanks." Kate ended the call and stabbed the button to call an elevator. She needed to get her head back in the game.
[)(] o [)(] o [)(] o [)(] o [)(]
Kate was at her white board and was putting up all that she knew so far along with a couple of pictures of her vics. She needed what Lanie could find and she needed what a search of both rooms by CSU could tell her.
Then she moved to her computer to try and look both of them up.
[)(] o [)(] o [)(] o [)(] o [)(]
Kate was still at it when the sun came up. It was time to go home and eat breakfast before spending some time with Olga. Then she could go to bed behind a set of blackout curtains they had replaced the other ones with.
"Hi, babe." Kate headed straight for Olga who was in the kitchen cooking her something for breakfast so she could kiss her soundly. "I finally caught a case. Not that that's such a good thing."
"So I heard." Olga pointed at Lanie's bedroom. Kate was working nights but Lanie worked days so no sooner than her dead bodies had shown up at her office and she decided that there was nothing that couldn't wait until tomorrow so she went home.
"Oh, yeah." Kate had forgotten about that.
"You must really be tired." Especially if she forgot Lanie was home already and had been for hours. "Breakfast. Then you can get naked on our bed and I'll work on those overworked muscles of yours," Olga offered and listened to Kate hum thinking of just what her hands could do to her body.
"You're home." Lanie showed up looking bright, clean, and awake. "I'll get right on your two dead bodies as soon as I get into work."
"Another breakfast coming right up," Olga announced.
"Oh, Javi called me…last night." Kate had to think about that. She really had to get off the night shift before she lost her mind. "He said Gates had been sent back to Internal Affairs."
"Really!" Olga stopped what she was doing to look at Kate.
"Seriously?" Lanie stared at Kate.
"Javi called it a demotion. We're both betting it had something to do with all those meetings at 1PP we all did," Kate said.
"About time. Honestly. What they saw in her escapes me. She did her best to destroy that precinct." Olga went back to cooking.
"The new captain is from New Orleans and Javi says he has a strong accent. What's more he wants everyone to call him by his first name. Will for William."
"Now that sounds like a nice change." Olga liked the sound of it.
"It also means Javi will be staying," Lanie commented.
"He let Castle come back, too," Kate added.
"You're kidding!" Lanie was shocked. "I'd say we left too soon but I for one like it here better."
"Me, too," Olga said with a smile.
"Me, three," Kate piped up.
"Today is our last chance to make any changes for the interior," Olga advised Kate.
"I'm good. I can't think of anything I want to change." Kate had seen everything.
"Including the all white kitchen?" Olga asked her yet again.
"All white reminds me too much of a hospital but the kitchen is downstairs and doesn't get any sunlight so it needs to be bright." Kate couldn't think of anything else but white.
"Have you tried glass with lights behind it?" Lanie suggested and as both Olga and Kate looked at each other.
"It would add color to the space and more light," Olga said, considering it.
"Maybe just the countertops if that's possible." Kate didn't want to use the countertop as a cutting board when in a hurry and end up ruining it.
"One way to find out." Olga put Lanie's omelet in front of her then went in search of her phone to call the boat manufacturer.
Lanie was gone by the time Olga came back. "He suggests glass with lights for the backsplash but not for a countertop. He doesn't like the durability issue for using it as a countertop." Olga was actually still on the phone with them.
"Better than nothing. Light green, maybe?" Kate liked that color and watched Olga talk on the phone then hung up.
"Light green with lights behind them, it is. If you're done eating you should be naked and on our bed," Olga informed her and watched a smiling Kate strip on her way to their bedroom.
[)(] o [)(] o [)(] o [)(] o [)(]
Kate got what Lanie had found on the dead bodies and the surveillance tapes suggested something. Now all she had to do was prove it. That meant chasing down how that one apartment meant something to each of them.
But what she found had her going back to the condo building to look at still more tapes. What she saw there confirmed something for her.
"Captain?" Kate was at her doorway.
"What have you got, Kate?" she asked and waited for Kate to enter her office.
"I've worked out our two victims. Meet Lisa Debarks. She was 68 years old and was looking to buy a condo in the building. Based on bad paperwork and a misunderstanding she believed that she'd been approved for that unit and had actually been given a key.
"However when she got there she found someone living in it. Joseph Crack. He actually had no right to be there," Kate began.
"Squatter." The captain was having no trouble keeping up.
"Yes, we even found that everything in that unit was all his and not hers. Based on witnesses there was an argument that spilled out onto the lanai where people from the Red Lobster could hear and see everything. He sent her over the side to her death then even watched her fall. Based on witnesses he saw them all pointing up at him. At which point he panicked and needed out fast.
"Thanks to the fast response from Officer Xiang he couldn't escape by going down the elevator. Surveillance tapes show him kicking in a door across the hall. Below that unit, 26 floors down, is an open large trash bin being used to put debris into from an ongoing renovation. He landed near it but not into it like he probably planned," Kate explained.
"He killed her in a fight over an empty condo unit then ran but couldn't. So he jumped and missed." She shook her head.
"He would have died even if he had landed in the bin. It was full of discarded metal studs and a lot of drywall though there was some carpet. He would have just as likely impaled himself on one of those metal studs instead of hitting concrete," Kate said.
The captain shook her head.
"Essentially murder suicide mostly because Officer Xiang responded so fast. He's a good kid." Kate had learned to like him.
"I'll keep that in mind at his next review. Nice, fast work, Kate. Put the paperwork on my desk. …How is Honolulu treating you?" She was hoping that Kate liked it here.
"Pretty good so far. It's cleaner, fresher, warmer, sunnier, and just better than New York. I'm happy to be here." Kate told her.
"Good. I'm still expecting that wedding invitation," she said to Kate.
"Those are going out in about two weeks. We only just got confirmation that our venue is still available. It's still almost two months out so everyone has time to make airline reservations that need to. There are actually going to be two weddings in one. A friend and his fiancée over on Maui is coming over to do their wedding at the same time. It reduces the costs this way."
"Two weddings in one. Twice the number of tears. I look forward to it." The captain was looking forward to it even more now.
"I'll get started on that paperwork." Kate left her so she could finish this case.
[)(] o [)(] o [)(] o [)(] o [)(]
Kate had two days off and it was time to find her dad an apartment to live in. She had Olga's car and watched as her dad sat in the passenger seat.
"Nice car." She wasn't sure if he meant it or was being sarcastic. However, it certainly was interesting.
"It's Olga's. It only looks like a TR6 on the outside. Everything else has been replaced and modernized. So what's first on your list?" Kate needed an address.
Kate drove off and everything looked really familiar. The ocean was on their left side. "This is the way to Lanie's work." They actually came up just short of China Town.
"Harbor Square." They met real estate agent Curtis Johnson down in the lobby who took them up to the 25th floor and unit #7.
"Two bedrooms, two full baths, 1,014 sq. Ft. Listed for $680,000." He got the door open and let Jim go first.
The combination living room and dining room had two walls of floor to ceiling windows with cheap vertical blinds. Speaking of windows they had track lighting above each of them. The kitchen was galley style and tiny. The lanai was equally tiny and looked out onto the city and not the ocean. It took a lot of work to see a tiny sliver of ocean. All the other rooms were nothing special.
"Next, Dad." Kate wasn't impressed.
It took them only a couple of minutes to reach the next place. "China Town is just right over there. Lanie's office is just the other side." She couldn't believe that except for Ryan and Jenny they were all in such a tight circle in Honolulu.
They met Leanne in the lobby and she took them up to the 40th floor. "I'm going to get a nose bleed," Jim joked as he watched her press the button for the 40th floor.
"Unit #7, two bedrooms, two full baths, 1,022 sq. Ft. Listed at $900,000." She opened the door and let Jim go first.
"A million dollars, Dad?" She wasn't sure he had that much.
"I got a lot for the one in New York." Jim was pretty sure he could afford it so long as he didn't lose his job.
"Real hardwood floors," Kate noticed. "More floor to ceiling windows with no blinds at all." Kate moved to the kitchen. "Sub-Zero, Dad!" Kate pointed to the manufacturer of the refrigerator. It was a massive side by side. "Nice size, light colored cabinets but tile floors." She would have preferred that the living room hardwoods made it into the kitchen.
Leanne was right behind them. "The windows have motorized solar shades. Just press a button." She did just that and suddenly these shades started coming down from the ceiling.
"Okay, now that's cool. A lot better than those cheap vertical blinds." Kate liked them.
"Dining room, just enough for four." Jim noted and kept walking.
"Master bedroom with more floor to ceiling windows." Kate was detecting a theme here. She watched as Leanne demonstrated the same solar shades.
"Closet, bathroom, second bedroom, and second bathroom." Kate was moving fast since there was nothing special here. "Hey, Dad I think I found an office for you."
"Yeah." Jim liked it.
Back in the living room they went out onto the lanai. "Lots of water this time." Kate liked the view.
"Forty floors up there better be water," Jim snorted which made Kate giggle.
Back downstairs they found an exercise room, common room and pool.
"The HOA fee is $888 monthly. It includes the amenities, exterior insurance, water, and A/C." Leanne told them.
"Ouch." Kate wasn't a fan of HOAs but at least this one paid for something. "Is it worth a million dollars?" That was the question her dad needed to answer.
"I can't afford more and the other places in Honolulu were either more or a lot less and you got a lot less," Jim responded.
"It is a corner unit so you don't just see one direction only. China Town is walking distance. Aloha tower and shopping is back the way we came. How far away is work from here?" It was perfect so long as her dad could get to work via the bus like Lanie did. He didn't have a car.
"Let's find out." Jim told Leanne he would let her know later today.
"Just need an address." Kate started the car and waited for the GPS unit to cycle and start up.
"My God, Dad, it's just up the street. Five minutes tops. We could walk it." Kate drove it instead and saw she had to turn left twice to reach it. "It's right there. But then you know that." He had been working there for almost a month now. It was time to get out of the hotel.
"Might take a month to get in. Inspection, appraisal, and mortgage paperwork," Kate thought. "It's close and nice, if not a little expensive. Maybe even a little bigger than your place back in New York," Kate noted then reconsidered. "Barely. The kitchen is certainly nicer as is the view and I like those blinds." She needed to talk with Olga about their windows if it wasn't already too late.
"I'll call her when I get back to the hotel." It was the best so far even if it did stretch him a bit. "40th floor. You sure it didn't come with oxygen tanks?" Jim joked.
"Dad!" Kate rolled her eyes at his little joke.
"Oh, I found out that Gates was sent back to Internal Affairs. The 12th has already gotten a new captain," Kate said.
"Really? She must have been really bad at her job." Based on what Katie had said he was betting she was the wicked witch of the west.
"And he's letting Castle consult again." Kate was still betting the mayor, or Alexis, or both had something to do with that.
"Your mother would be happy. Maybe he'll start writing books again," Jim said. It had been three years, after all.