A Murder Below Zero
By
UCSBdad
Disclaimer: There's zero chance that I own Castle. Rating: K Time: In an AU future.
"Well, shit." Castle said. "I hope Cowell has as good a memory as she says."
"I wonder how many men she's given emotional therapy to in the past year?" Kate asked.
"The mind boggles." Rick said with a grin. "We should go see Ed at MinSec. Maybe he has something."
Kate had never been in any MinSec building and was somewhat surprised at what she found inside. She had half expected dim lighting, water dripping from the walls and burly men in leather, all to the sound of distant screams. It looked like any other office she'd ever been in. There were cubicles, some offices, carpets on the floor, modern furniture and busy people.
"Ed's office is down the hall." Rick said, leading her down the hall.
"Ed, how are you?"
"Rick! Kate! Come in and have a seat. Coffee? I just happen to have some grande skim latte with two pumps of sugar free vanilla handy."
Kate blushed.
"I'm going to be so spoiled by the time this is over. But, yes, I'll have coffee."
Ed rushed around getting the coffees ready for them and let Rick and Kate have a few sips before getting down to business.
"First the Coonan case. Nothing so far, but we've been keeping an eye on Finn Rourke. He hasn't made any moves, so he either has no idea who killed Coonan, or he's afraid of whoever did."
"Afraid?" Kate said. "That doesn't sound like Finn Rourke."
"We're deep into an investigation of at least one Constabulary member who was corrupt. There may be more. Finn Rourke doesn't want the Constabulary after him."
"How's Molly Dearing?" Kate asked.
'We thought it best to get her out of town. She has a job with a contractor of ours on the South Hambleton Peninsula."
"A contractor?" Kate was imagining shadowy men who did shadowy deeds in the shadows.
Ed laughed.
"Not that kind of contractor. They provide us with computer support."
"What about Demming?"
"We're not getting any place, Rick. We've talked to everyone in the Constabulary that he worked with, for, or over, and they all say he was a loner. Didn't socialize with anyone. We've checked his credit card purchases against theirs and found nothing in common. They don't show up on security tapes of the places he frequented nor at his apartment."
"He must have gotten some visitors."
"He did. Lots and lots of good time girls. They were collecting information for him in exchange for food, alcohol, clothing and drugs. They all thought it was part of an official Constabulary investigation."
"What happened to the information?"
"We have no idea. It didn't show up in his apartment or in his work office, not at his bank. We're betting he sent it on to whoever he was working for."
"Any idea who that might be?"
"None. We're still talking to everyone who ever dealt with him, but he seemed to have his life well compartmentalized. People who knew about one part didn't know about the other. We'll keep at it until we run out of leads, or we find something."
"What about Dr. Davidson?" Kate asked.
"We found a couple of women that had mysterious losses of memory who knew Davidson. We assume he drugged and raped them. If he let any of his friends use them afterwards, we haven't found any evidence of it. As we said before, he didn't change, he just got more careful."
"What about surveillance tapes from his building?"
"The building is owned by the hospital he worked at for their employees. They had another, larger building that they let the lease lapse on because they were leasing someplace else, but that fell through. Rather than pay the higher going rate elsewhere, a lot of hospital people doubled up in that one building. There were people in and out all the time. We're running facial recognition, but with people all wrapped up for winter, it's not easy."
"It never is." Rick said.
"We talked to his girlfriend, the tall…Um…" Ed looked at Kate.
Kate laughed.
"It's okay, Ed. You can say the hot blonde with the great big boobs."
"The girlfriend, Dorothy Gale, said he was a lot of fun, took her places, but never talked about his work. She thought that he was pretty normal. She never had any mysterious memory lapses, so we're assuming he liked conscious women some of the time. She has no idea who'd want him dead."
"Funny he'd have a girlfriend if he liked his women unconscious." Rick said.
Kate shrugged,
"Hard to take an unconscious girl to a party or out clubbing. Maybe the ones he liked unconscious were women who wouldn't go out with him."
"We had our doctors check the women out." Ed said. "By the time we got to them the drug was out of their bloodstream. If he was using the date rape drug we found in his apartment, the women would never have connected him with their amnesia. And they had alibis. None of them killed him."
"Could have been an earlier victim." Kate said.
"Could be a vic we know nothing about. But he's dead and good riddance, if he wasn't a part of a larger investigation."
"Cowell?" Rick asked.
"She does have a good memory. None of her clients are being blackmailed, so we're thinking whoever was behind Demming is saving the information up for later. Which means this is quite a large operation."
"And the shooter, Frankie Parlier, comes off as a dumb kid with delusions of adequacy. We can't connect him to anyone. Since it's unlikely he decided to shoot up the club and Cowell was in just for giggles, that means whoever sent him after her is good. Too damned good."
"His weapon was a KZ 19 submachine gun. Absolutely cold." Ed added.
"How about Jim Beckett, international man of mystery?"
Kate blushed.
"Rick!"
Ed laughed.
"We gave him his laptop back. Since we said he's working for MinSec, he can't do any work remotely. We did send some people around to his colleagues to tell them that Jim Beckett is on a well-earned vacation and anyone who says differently will get a free trip to Lukas Street."
"Ed! Everyone in the firm will think my dad is some kind of MinSec agent."
Ed laughed.
"Tenth Directorate humor."
"Seriously, this case could take months, or longer. My dad can't be away from work that long."
"We can send him back to work with a dozen gorgeous MinSec agents as his new secretaries." Seeing the look of shock on Kate's face, he added. "Kidding. We'll deal with that problem if and when it comes up."
"That's all we have I'm afraid. We'll keep you in the loop if we find anything."
Rick and Kate went back to Fort Foster. Kate began going over the records of all the people who were involved in any way with the case to see if anything popped out for her. She felt a little guilty looking at her father's records, but she found nothing of any interest, either to the case or to her personally.
Rick, being a soldier, had his regiment to run. He did take Kate to a briefing for General Montgomery which she found to be very boring since she knew everything about the case that was presented.
She did eat with Rick and went of various activities on the base with him. He didn't push her to have sex, and she was glad of that. She wasn't sure just what he wanted from her. She was deciding more and more that she wanted something long term with Rick. That didn't keep them from making out, however.
One day, a week after the meeting with Ed at MinSec, Rick walked into her office.
"Let's go, Captain Beckett. We have work to do."
"Captain Beckett? Since when?"
"Since about three hours ago. If we don't want to involve the NEPD in this, and we may not want to, we have to give you some kind of official status. You're a reserve captain, now on temporary active duty, assigned to the 10th Special Operations Regiment, and we have a new lead. Let's go."
The went quickly to the nearest helipad where a large transport helicopter was waiting for them. Kate saw Krulak and some other troops she recognized already in the chopper, armed, armored and ready to go. Rick handed her a military flak vest, a helmet and an assault rifle. The vest had pockets for spare magazines and other gear.
He plugged into an intercom and gave her headphones so they could talk without screaming.
"We were checking on Davidson's girlfriend, Dorothy Gale. According to her resume, she last worked at a hospital in Sutherland City. The paperwork was fine, but when someone got around to calling them, they'd never heard of her, although they had paperwork showing she'd worked there. They said that every man in the place would remember a six foot tall blonde with…"
"Big boobs." Kate added for him.
"But no one could recall her. MinSec started digging and her whole past came apart. Eventually, they found out she'd worked during the wars for the National Intelligence Department who gave her a phony background when she left for medical reasons. She worked undercover doing wet work."
"She was an assassin?"
"That she was. Probably killed Davidson and maybe the rest. Let's hope she still thinks her legend is still working."
"Legend?" Kate asked.
"A phony background for a spy."
When they arrived over Gale's apartment building, Rick pointed out that the surrounding streets had been blocked off by the NEPD and his own Special Ops troops had secured the ground floor of the building.
The helicopter hovered over the roof and two dozen soldiers and one cop dropped to the roof.
"She's three stories down from here." Rick yelled. "The elevators have been stopped and there are only two stairs going down. Are you sure I can't talk you into staying here?"
Kate just laughed.
When they got to her apartment, they found that it was empty.
Rick got a call from the ground floor.
"Boss, the doorman says Gale left three days ago. She had no luggage, but he says she hasn't been back since. We're checking the surveillance footage to be sure, but she may be gone."
"We'll still check every floor and every apartment where she could be hiding."
"Okay, boss. Oh, Ed from MinSec just showed up. He wants to know if we'll turn on the elevators so he doesn't have to walk up all those flights of stairs to see you."
"Go ahead."
Rick and Kate met Ed at the elevator.
"Dealing with the damned NID will drive you crazy. I had to get my boss's boss's boss to yell at the NID people to get Gale's records. You'll never guess what we found. Her real name is Diane Coonan. She's Jack Coonan's sister. And she's probably the one who killed him. Jesus, what a mess."
"We're checking the whole building, Ed." Rick said. "But I'm afraid she's long gone."
She was long gone, and with her training probably had several spare identities and cash stashed in various places. Ed put out a BOLO for her, but didn't expect to get much. They didn't.
Four days passed and Ed came in to Rick's office.
"Mount up, buddy boy. We finally got a lead."
Rick grabbed Kate, Krulak and the quick reaction platoon of the regiment and headed off in their armored vehicles.
"What do we have?" Rick asked.
"We're been checking Demming's financials. He spent a lot of money on everything he bought, but he ran short once of cash once. He made a phone call and got a delivery of cash right away. We couldn't trace the damned phone he called, but we did find out who sent him the money. It was Eric Vaughn."
TBC