The Woman in the Yellow Dress
By
UCSBdad
Disclaimer: I own neither Castle nor a yellow dress. Rating: K Time: Early season five. Others know Kate and Rick are a couple, but not Gates.
"Curtis, Rog and I were shooting hoops with a guy named Paco Tiberon, his cousin Guillermo and a guy named Rogelio Moreno. Um, there was no school that day. We played several games, first team to twenty-one and then we left. The three of us were walking down the alley that comes out by the subway station by the Cold One ice cream store. There were these two guys walking ahead of us, We were halfway down the alley and they were almost at the end. All of a sudden, we heard two loud pops and this one guy fell face down."
"Did you get a good look at the shooter?" Kate asked.
"No. He had his back to us the whole time."
"What can you tell me about him?"
"He was wearing a light gray hoodie with the hood up and khaki slacks. I could see his hands, though. He was a white guy."
"Are you sure he was white and not just wearing gloves?" Kate asked.
"Positive."
"What else can you tell me? Height, weight. A limp maybe? Anything?"
Jaquille thought for a moment.
"He was maybe six feet, but kind of stocky. And his hoodie was really baggy. That's about it."
"So, why did the three of you run away?"
"Really? Some dude gets murdered right in front of us? All we wanted to do was get as far away as we could."
"Why come in now?"
Jaquille looked embarrassed.
"My dad told me to. He said Roger and Curt should come in too."
"You told your dad what had happened?"
Jaquille looked away.
"Not exactly."
"Then what, exactly?"
"Three guys stopped my dad after he got off work. They said they knew I'd seen the killing and told my dad I should man up and talk to the cops."
"How did they know you'd seen the killing?"
Jaquille shrugged.
"They didn't say."
"Did they threaten your dad?"
"No. The opposite."
"What do you mean by the opposite?"
"They asked if I had a college fund, 'cause they knew I wanted to go to college. Dad said we had a few hundred put back, but that was all. They gave him a thousand dollars. Ten one-hundred dollar bills. Told him it was for college."
"Pictures of Benjamin Franklin." Kate said softly. "Could your dad describe the men?"
Jaquille shook his head.
"He said there were three of them, white and well dressed. But it was kind of dark and he couldn't see their faces very well."
Kate thought for a moment and decided that Jaquille's dad would never remember the wise guys who'd talked to him.
"Okay, Mr. Johnstone, I'd like you to write out a statement covering everything you've said today and if you remember anything else, put it in and tell me. I'm going to talk to your other friends."
She did talk to the other two young men, but got nothing more.
When she was done, she gathered her team, plus Tory Ellis.
"We have a not very good description of the shooter, stocky white guy, six feet, in a gray hoodie, and khaki slacks. Let's see if we can find anything on traffic cams or security cams on this guy.
Tory found every camera in the area but they got nothing useful.
"The first problem," Tory said, "is that all the footage is in black and white. Light colors look a lot alike in black and white. We did find three guys who roughly fit our guy. One went into the subway when the cameras were down. One got on a bus with no security cameras and one went into a store and just disappeared. I think that our killer probably had a shirt, or something, under his hoodie and probably a cap of some kind and sun glasses. Those are standard for avoiding facial recognition."
She showed the team three screen grabs.
"These are the best shots we got of the three men, but we get nothing on any facial recognition databases."
Kate examined the photos.
"Tory, make copies and send this out to all the precincts. Maybe we'll get lucky and someone will see something we don't."
Kate was leaning over her desk trying to find something when someone spoke to her.
"You have a magnificent ass, Beckett."
She stood up and turned around.
"And you're just an ass, Slaughter."
"Oh, still feisty, I see."
"What are you doing here?" Kate demanded.
"I need to see a CI not too far from here. I don't want to hang around the meeting site and get recognized, so I thought I'd come here and enjoy the view."
"That's all you'll be enjoying."
"I like the ones that play hard to get. That makes it more fun for when they're begging for me. Word is you haven't been getting any for a year now, and since it's obvious that Shakespeare over there is a dud since he's never tried anything, how'd you like to spend some time in a supply closet with a real man."
"I'd love to. Do you have a real man on you?" Kate said with false sweetness.
"What are you doing in my precinct, Detective Slaughter?" Gates said, coming out of her office.
"I need to hang around here for a while until it's time to see a CI of mine. I'll be here for an hour or two."
"You can sit in my office, then, and not bother the detectives who are working."
"That's not going to happen."
"My precinct, my rules."
"And how do you plan on enforcing those rules, ma'am?"
Gates smiled and pointed to half a dozen officers standing by and smiling at Slaughter. Kate noticed Espo had a blackjack in his hand.
"Beckett, have you ever seen a real man get tasered and Maced, then handcuffed and tossed in a holding cell with a bunch of outlaw bikers?"
"No, I haven't, Castle."
"Watch."
"I can tell when I'm not appreciated." Slaughter said and headed for the elevator.
Ryan got a phone call and then went to talk to Rick and Kate.
"We have another possible suspect. A guy by the name of Walt Keith. He's what they call an activist investor. He'll buy a few shares of a company, just enough so that they have to let him into the annual shareholders' meetings and then they raise hell about something they don't like. He owns a hundred shares of SynTeq Computers. He went to their last stockholders meeting a month ago and raised a stink about something."
"Anything else on him?" Kate asked.
"No record. That's about it. We have his address. He lives in the Bronx."
Kate looked at her watch.
"We'll set up an appointment tomorrow. It's late. We're going home."
When they called Mr. Keith the next day, he said he'd be happy to see them that afternoon. He lived in an apartment in a nice section of the Bronx. The door was opened by a younger woman.
"Detectives Beckett and Castle? I'm Nora Fries. Walt is my granddad."
"She's also a lawyer." Came a male voice from another room. "Her task in life is to help the rich get away with screwing the poor."
"Grandpa, the law applies to everyone equally."
"The law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets and to steal their bread."
"Anatole France." Kate quickly said. Then, glancing at Rick, added. "A French novelist. Won the Nobel prize for literature in 1921."
"I knew that." Rick said, pouting.
"The young lady is educated." Keith said, rolling into the room in his wheelchair.
"You're confined to a wheelchair?" Kate asked.
"Ever since a damned cabbie hit me eleven years ago, But I can still get around."
Ms. Fries handed Kate a business card.
"This is grandpa's doctor. She's taken care of him since before the accident. I've told her she can provide you with all the information you need concerning your condition."
"This is about some murder?" Keith said.
Kate explained what had happened.
"Given the physical requirements of the murder, you couldn't have gotten up the steps to the house and you couldn't have chased down Mrs. Brown and killed her. But we would like to know a little about your problems with Mr. Hobbes' company and if anyone else had any problems."
"My problem is with their damned personal computers, or more specifically, the operating system. Here, I have something on my laptop that'll explain it. I'm an engineer myself, you know."
Rick and Kate were then subjected to a half hour long explanation of the problems with the operating system of the SynTeq computers that was given in undecipherable computerese. They were both close to being catatonic when Keith finally concluded.
"As you can see, IOM Four is just 89% cosmetic enhancements that change the way things look, but now how they work. The other 11% is in no way worth the price of the new system. Any questions?" He concluded with a happy smile.
Kate managed to reply.
"Mr. Keith, were there any other people at the stockholders meeting that also attacked the new operating system, or any of SynTeq's products or operations. Was there anyone not there who agreed with you?"
"Not a one. Every one of the greedy bastards there was bitching about how SynTeq wasn't making them as much money as they had in the past. As far as I know, I'm the only stockholder looking out for the consumer."
Kate rose quickly and pulled Castle to his feet.
"Thank you for your help, Mr. Keith."
"What next?" Castle said as they got into Beckett's cruiser.
"We'll check with his doctor. He wouldn't be the first person to fake being crippled and to hide criminal activities behind fine words."
However, they had to explain that that was not the case to Captain Gates.
"His injuries are real and he is confined to a wheelchair. I have a contact at the Security and Exchange Commission that confirms that he has a long history of being a so-called activist investor, going back to before he was injured." The contact was actually Castle's, but Kate thought it best not to mention that,
"Does he have an alibi?" Gates snapped.
"He says he was asleep and given the time of the killings, most of our suspects are going to have the same alibi."
Gates, who apparently felt sleeping was just an excuse to evade punishment for crimes, growled at Rick and Kate to get out.
"Beckett?" Ryan said. "Lanie called. She wants to see you both."
As soon as the two got to the morgue, Lanie rushed over and hugged Kate.
"Oh, sweetie. You look so happy now that you two are finally together. But, you have to tell me, how is he in bed."
"Lanie!" Kate cried. "Isn't that a little personal?"
"You can tell me. Please?"
"Well, okay. On a scale of one to ten, he occasionally reaches a six."
"What?" Castle screeched. "A six? Occasionally?" Then he saw that Kate was laughing.
"And he's so much fun to tease."
"I have the feeling I won't be up to even a four tonight." Rick grumped.
Kate leaned over and kissed him.
"No problem. A four from you is like a fourteen from anyone else."
That made Rick preen.
"I hope you didn't call us down here just to ask about Rick."
"No. I've narrowed the time of death down. Between five and six AM."
Kate frowned.
"Which is a good time for any good murder suspect to be sound asleep. Thanks, Lanie, we appreciate it."
"You're welcome, sweetie and you too, Mr. Four."
When they got back to the bullpen, Esposito had some information for them.
TBC