Moment in Time Part 3
Chapter 13
What Lies Beneath
Part 1
The stained glass adorning Saint Mark's shoots colored sparks as it showers the victim. He'd come to pray for his soul. In the instant that the bullet in his chest took his mortal life, he hoped God heard his plea.
As Ryan veers toward the lotto sign on the bodega down the block from the murder scene, Esposito shakes his head in disgust. "You're not throwing your money away on tickets again, are you?"
"I've got to do something," Ryan protests. "Jenny is pregnant again."
"Congratulations!"
"Thanks, but you know what kids cost to raise? A quarter of a million bucks, and that's not counting college. I need to make more money. I'm thinking of trying to work a second job again."
"How about making more money on this job?" Esposito suggests.
"What do you mean?"
"The sergeant's exam is coming up in a week. I was thinking about taking it. You could too."
"Without studying? We'd never pass."
"Are you kidding? That blockhead who replaced Demming in robbery passed. If he could, we can. And we've been trained by Beckett. That's better than studying."
"Yeah, maybe," Ryan considers. "I've got to do something. I'll call and get us slots."
"Good deal, Bro. Now let's get in there and solve a murder."
Ryan and Esposito cross themselves in unison as they approach the altar.
Lanie looks up from the body, still surrounded by colorful shards. "Did you guys practice that?"
"Kind of a reflex," Ryan explains. "What do you know about the vic?"
"According to the church staff, his name is Dwayne Johnson. He was a regular here. COD was one shot straight to the sternum. I can't confirm it until I get him on my table, but the bone most likely shattered into his lungs. He would have bled to death pretty fast."
"What was the TOD?" Esposito inquires.
"From his liver temperature, around midnight – give or take an hour on either side."
"Wasn't the church closed that time of night?" Ryan wonders.
"It was," a uniformed officer securing the scene answers. "But we found jimmy marks on the door. This guy must have broken in."
"He must have been pretty desperate to do that," Ryan asserts. "Do you know who his priest was?"
A cleric with a white cane taps his way down the church aisle. "I'm Father Arguello. I was his priest and confessor."
"Do you know why he was here, Father?" Ryan asks.
"I cannot break the seal of the confessional, my son. But I can tell you he was troubled."
"The kind of trouble that would make someone want to kill him?" Esposito demands.
"I cannot say. But perhaps Dwayne's wife, Wendy, could tell you. The church office should have her address. She and her husband sent in regular contributions."
"You know," Esposito tells Ryan as they return to their unit, "Beckett is going to want in on this. A killing in a church is her kind of weird."
Ryan shakes his head. "I don't know, Bro. She had a lot of paper on her desk. When I went to get her to sign off on a report, I had to knock on her door pretty hard. She was deep into something."
"Still, we need to fill her in as soon as we finish making the notification to Wendy Johnson."
"Poor woman. I hate breaking the news. It was a lot easier when Beckett did it."
"Yeah, but if we're going to be sergeants," Esposito declares, "we need to toughen up."
When a slim balding man sporting a bowtie raps on Kate's office door, she gratefully invites him in. "Carl! Thank you for coming down from CSU. I really appreciate it."
Kate's visitor smiles. "When the new captain of the 12th calls, I hop to it. What can I do for you, Captain Beckett?"
"I need some information about tracing down drugs. Do they have something like a fingerprint?"
"They have chemical signatures that we can pick up with a chromatograph, but those vary very much by the type of drug. For example, since cannabis is a plant containing over 200 natural substances, we see endless variations. For a synthesized product, we look for impurities. Which drugs did you have in mind?"
"Heroin – white, not Mexican brown – fentanyl and oxycodone."
"Heroin, as I'm sure you know, is derived from poppies, leading to many variations. We could see many signatures from the same supplier. Oxycodone can also be derived from poppies, but the synthesis was discovered in 1913. You would see less variation from a source. Fentanyl is completely synthetic and would also be relatively consistent from a single source."
"If that source was, say, a factory in China, which drug would have the most reliable signature?"
"It would depend on the quality control of the manufacturer involved, but fentanyl and oxycodone would be pretty close."
"So could I use the signature of either one to nail a supplier?" Kate asks.
"From the trials in which I've been an expert witness, I suspect you would want some supporting evidence. But the chemistry would contribute to a strong case."
"And how long do you keep samples and chromatograph data?"
"It's the same as the evidence archived for any case, Captain. We keep it as long as possible. The actual drugs will start to break down after a time, as legal medications do. But we preserve the chromatographic records pretty much forever."
Kate favors her visitor with a bright smile. "Thank you, Carl. That's what I needed to know."
"You two look depressed," Kate notes as Ryan and Esposito trudge into the break room while she's making herself an espresso.
Ryan nods. "We just made a notification."
"Never fun," Kate commiserates. "Was it for the case of the body in the church?"
"Right," Esposito confirms. "Supposedly, the victim was Dwayne Johnson. But when we talked to his widow Wendy, she said his name was P.J. Moffat."
Kate's brows rise. "The reclusive novelist? Castle gave me Moffat's 'Song of the Butcherbird' when we first started dating."
"That was him. Royalties on it will probably soar when the media gets wind of his death," Ryan assumes. "Remember how the media claimed that Castle's disappearance was a stunt to boost sales?"
Kate sighs. "Some of them still believe that, especially since we don't know everything about what really happened. Every so often, stories surface as click-bait. But getting back to the case. Why was Moffat pretending to be Dwayne Johnson?"
"According to Wendy, for research," Ryan replies. "They've spent four years in a one-room apartment in Brooklyn while he was striving for authenticity by working as a janitor."
"So why would someone want to kill a janitor?" Kate asks. The detectives synchronously shrug. "Do you two practice that? Nevermind. Janitors empty trash, which, as my last investigation proved, can be the evidence that clinches a case. So, find out where Dwayne Johnson cleaned up and see whose wastebaskets he dumped."
"Yes, Captain," the partners reply together.
"And stop doing that! You're freaking me out!"
"Babe, you know the way you call Raley and Ochoa Roach in the Heat books?" Kate inquires as she vigorously tears lettuce for a salad.
"Yeah. Were Ryan and Esposito complaining about being compared to a household pest again?"
"No. But I think I need a name like that for them."
"You mean like Ryspo?"
"Uh-huh. Something like that."
"Why?"
"Because they are synced up, saying things together."
"You mean like we do? What Lanie calls our mind-meld thing?"
"I guess. And it's driving me crazy."
"And you think giving them a nickname will stop it? You kind of liked it when I dubbed us Caskett."
"But we were sleeping together when you did that. You don't think…?"
"I hope not. If Ryan were cheating on Jenny, it would break her heart. And Espo would kick his ass for doing it. But they've been partners for a long time. Partnerships can be closer than marriages. Ours certainly was closer than my first two."
"But not this one."
Rick wraps his arms around Kate. "No, not this one. But those two will probably find something to fight over pretty soon. They always do."
"So did we."
Rick pulls her closer. "But we had the fun of making up."
Kate stretches up for a kiss. "Yes, we did. And you know, I'm not that hungry. Are you?"
"Not the way you mangled the greens. Was that enough of an insult to make up again?"
"It will do."