Guardian Angel
Chapter 38
"I'm going back out to my car to get Wong's case of Red Hots," Castle decides. "The delivery truck pulled up just as I was leaving, so I just threw the box in the trunk. At least the rain's let up, for a while anyway. No hot and sticky messes." His brows dance above his eyes. "Not from the candy, anyway."
Kate swallows as her cheeks warm. "Just go get your bribe, Castle."
"Yes, Ma'am!"
"A little bossy, don't you think, Kate?" Johanna asks.
"I just can't afford to think about um, that, right now," Kate explains.
Wong's eyes light at his junk-food bonanza. "Thank you, Mr. Castle. These are great. And Detective Beckett, I was about to come to get you. Maddox encrypted his drive, but he didn't do a very good job of it. He used an older system. I ran an established algorithm to break it. It took time, but I let the program run all night. We have readable files now. I scanned for malware and viruses and made you a copy. If you want, I can make one for Mr. Castle, too."
Castle nods enthusiastically at Kate. "That would be great, Wong," she responds.
Rick bounces behind Kate as they return to the bullpen. "Now we're getting somewhere!"
"I hope so, Babe. We haven't seen what's in those files yet."
"It will be good," Castle declares. "I can feel it.
Rick barely keeps his breakfast in his stomach. "Recording the screams of his victims like that. Ew! Disgusting doesn't even begin to cover it. The man was sick, Kate."
Or just plain evil," Johanna interjects.
"But he was organized," Kate points out, "which will work to our advantage. Each file has the name of the victim, the date, the price, and who ordered the kill. More than half of these contracts came from Bracken. Maddox even started a file for Bracken's hit on Coonan."
"If we can put that together with whatever we can independently gather on Bracken's involvement in Coonan's Marist hit, and maybe some of the others, won't Coonan's information be less important to Karnacki?" Castle wonders.
"That's a good question," Johanna muses.
"It could," Kate answers. "You can use Ryan's computer. He and Esposito are off today. Let's get everything we can from Maddox's twisted records. Maybe by then, Montgomery will be back, and we can ask him about the Marist case."
"Fine, but I'm muting the sound," Castle declares.
"Yeah," Kate agrees, "me too."
Chief of Detectives Rodney McCabe taps on a file on his desk. "You've been using a lot of resources, Roy."
"And catching big fish," Montgomery points out. "My detectives just collared a serial killer. And our precinct has the best closure rate in the city. You know that, Rod."
"I do, but there is a recession, which means less tax money and fewer funds. The City Council is yelling bloody murder at the commissioner to keep a lid on costs, and sh*t rolls downhill. I know you and all the other precinct captains have been trying to cut things to the bone, but you're going to have to tighten your belts even more. If not, the commissioner is talking about layoffs, and you know what happens when we have fewer cops on the street. We'll have more crime and even less personnel to deal with it. That could become a vicious circle."
"So, what now?" Montgomery demands. "Do I tell my people to bring their own toilet paper?"
"Considering the cheap stuff procurement wants to order, that might not be a bad idea," McCabe quips. "But honestly, Roy, we're going to have to institute some harsh measures. No more overtime unless a cop is coping with an imminent threat, as in the middle of hostage negotiations. Other than that, they come in at the beginning of their shifts and clock out the minute they're over. We'll have strict limits on supplies — sticky notes, paper clips, everything. If you run out before your next resupply is due, you tough it out. And sick leave of more than two days will require a doctor's note."
"Maybe my people should sell cop candy and hold car washes," Montgomery returns.
McCabe leans back in his chair and sighs. "Roy, this isn't personal. The new measures are department-wide. The situation is temporary and hopefully only until the beginning of the next fiscal year."
"That's six months!"
McCabe shrugs. "I'm sorry."
Kate knocks on the doorframe of Montgomery's office. "Sir, can we have a word?"
Roy throws his pen down on a stack of expense vouchers he can no longer approve. "What is it, Beckett? I thought you'd be working with the information I forwarded to you from CSU."
"We are, Sir. I mean Castle and I were. That's what I need to talk to you about. Do you remember the murder of a woman named Liliana Marist?"
"Was she one of Coonan's victims?" Roy queries.
"No, but we think her son, Devin, was," Castle explains.
"You were the detective on Liliana's case," Kate picks up. "Do you remember talking to Devin about it?"
Montgomery scrubs his hand over his face. "Right, kid in his early twenties. His mother's death had the hallmarks of a mugging. It appeared to have happened when she was on her way back to her car from an ATM—nothing on camera, no suspects. But Devin said that his mother had uncovered some irregularities at work. Liliana Marist was a bookkeeper for Granville-Atlantic.
"Granville-Atlantic is owned by the Toch Brothers," Castle notes.
"I wouldn't know," Montgomery admits. "I don't keep up with that sort of thing. That's Evelyn's domain. But according to Devin, Lilliana started getting notes on her desk, and on the windshield of her car, to shut up and mind her own business. Nothing overtly threatening, but she was scared. Devin told me he spotted a man hanging around Liliana's building before she was killed. He said the guy got into a car with a Granville-Atlantic parking sticker. I had him work with a sketch artist, but the kid had some kind of perceptual thing, he had a hard time with faces."
"Prosopagnosia, or face blindness," Castle guesses.
"Right," Montgomery acknowledges. "That's what he called it. That's why he was fine with the sticker but couldn't identify the man. The sketch could have been anyone, and I didn't have anything else to go on. Granville-Atlantic has 3,000 employees in New York City and more in New Jersey and Connecticut.
"Also, I was getting some pressure from above to call Liliana's case a mugging. Finally, with that little to go on, I had to, but Devin swore he wouldn't give up. I moved on to another case and didn't hear anything more from him until he turned up dead. Someone must have sent Coonan after him. I still had no suspects and the same pressure to abandon the case the way I had with Liliana. Then my captain piled five more cases on me. Eventually, I had to let both Marist investigations go cold."
"It all fits together," Castle proposes as he and Kate leave Montgomery's office. "We know Bracken is tied up with the Toch Brothers. Liliana uncovers some financial misdoings at Granville-Atlantic, and when she raises a fuss, she gets taken out. Bracken twisted arms to close Liliana's case to protect the Toch Brothers' Granville-Atlantic holdings. And when Devin wouldn't let his mother's death go as a mugging, Bracken sent Coonan to take him out."
Kate chews on the tip of her finger. "If that's true, Castle, Coonan and/or Coonan's records, should back it up. Karnacki has both, but with the D.N.A. evidence, he won't need them as much. The Bracken references in the horror show that Maddox recorded, are a load of evidence in a form that will give a jury nightmares. We need to pass all of that up the line."
"Are you going to ask Montgomery to call Karnacki again?"
"No, he looked up to his ears in whatever the Chief of Detectives dumped on him. I think we ought to make a visit to the D.A.'s office."
