Under and Over Chapter 58
"Checking out Nilk Brothers Disposal?" Kate asks as Rick scrolls through text on his phone while she drives back to Manhattan.
"Yeah. The brothers Nilk run quite an operation. They have a cement kiln to dispose of any hazardous materials like solvents and plastics that will burn with enough BTUs to be worthwhile. They have lined and sealed landfills, too. That's probably where a water sample in glass would go. Or it might be shipped overseas. For some Third World countries, accepting other countries' crap is a sizable income stream. I researched that once when I wanted to write about misdirected old satellite phones full of classified information."
"I don't remember that in a book, Castle."
"I said I wanted to write about it, not that I did. The plot didn't pan out. But I remember the research."
"What about the bag holding the ampule?" Kate queries.
"Good question. Maybe the kiln. I don't know. Hmm. Nilk Brothers has a lot of satellite locations, probably where they house their trucks. But the headquarters is in New Jersey. Why is waste management always in New Jersey?" Rick wonders.
"Maybe a holdover from when mobsters used the Meadowlands as a dumping ground for bodies. The state was already in the disposal business."
"That's good, Kate. I may use that as a line for Nikki Heat. The Nilk Brothers are in Secaucus, in the heart of the Meadowlands area. With that town's history as the former stench capital of the New York Metropolitan Area, it's a fitting location. Change of plans? Secaucus is less than an hour from here."
"Maybe a change of plans," Kate responds. "Dr. Marsden's assistant said that the Nilk Bros rep servicing Armisen is Joseph Maroni. Can you see if he works out of Secaucus?"
"On it. Joseph Maroni, LinkedIn. Bingo! Joseph Maroni bills himself as the senior member of the team servicing the five boroughs, New Jersey, and parts of Pennsylvania. According to this, Secaucus is his home base."
"Then definitely, a change of plans. We're going to New Jersey."
"With the amount of time we've been spending in the Garden State, perhaps we should consider a satellite office there," Rick muses. "I could find us a nice little suite – an office suite."
"Even if Montgomery would ever agree to something like that, which he wouldn't, the paperwork of working across state lines would bury us."
"You have a point," Rick concedes. "If I'm going to be buried in paper, I'd prefer it to be the notebooks in Oswald's apartment."
"We don't need anything else from those right now, Castle," Kate insists. "We need to follow the trail to Nilk Bros."
"I'm with you on that, but I have a nagging feeling there's a puzzle piece missing – and it's in Oswald's prodigious prose."
"You're lucky you caught me, Detective Beckett," Joseph Maroni declares. "I need to head out in a few minutes to service a client in Staten Island. But what can I do for you in the meantime?"
"Tell me what happens to the hazardous waste from Armisen Labs." Kate shows Maroni an image on her phone. "I'm specifically interested in glass ampules that would be in bags like this."
"Then you're talking about two different waste streams, Detective," Maroni explains. "The bag and the ampule would be routed in opposite directions. The bag would go to our kiln in Upstate New York and the ampule to our site in Alabama."
"And how would the bag get to the kiln, Mr. Maroni?" Kate inquires.
"The waste would be sorted first. Then it would be loaded into drums meeting all the DOT standards. We have drivers with the requisite hours of training to deliver it to the site."
"Who sorts it?" Rick asks.
"We have a subcontractor who handles that, Tortelli Enterprises. It's half a mile down the road. Yellow building. You can't miss it." Maroni makes a show of consulting a watch Rick spots as a knockoff of an expensive timepiece. "I really need to take off now. If you go to Tortelli, ask for Larry Bevis. He can tell you all about the sorting process." Maroni grabs a monogrammed briefcase. "I'll see you back to reception."
Larry Bevis wears a blue twill coverall with his name embroidered on the pocket. He eyes Kate with a mixture of appreciation and suspicion and the well-dressed Castle with disdain. "Joseph Maroni told you to talk to me?"
"He did," Kate confirms. She shows Bevis the image she showed Maroni. "I want to know how an item like this would be sorted from a canister and sent to the kiln."
Bevis shrugs. "It's not complicated. Our people go through everything and put it in one bin or another. Then the bins are dumped into drums for Nilk Bros. to ship."
"Can you show me the process?" Kate requests.
"The sorting room is no trip to the park, Detective. To go in there, you'll need steel-tipped shoe covers, safety glasses, gloves, and respirators. We keep extras on hand for when the big shots come through to check up on things, but they're not very comfortable."
"Neither is forty pounds of tactical gear, Mr. Bevis," Kate responds. "But I can handle that fine." She turns to Rick. "You can stay back if you want."
"Are you kidding? This is the kind of messy detail stuff I love to put in Storms. It might even work in a Heat. I'm all in."
"This way," Bevis instructs.
Kate surveys the workers sorting through the canisters of waste. Mr. Bevis was right about the protective gear being uncomfortable, and they're wearing more of it than she is. They are also wearing heavier versions of Bevis' coveralls, minus the embroidery but with utility pockets. She checks the room for surveillance cameras and doesn't see any. It wouldn't be hard to slip a small bag into a pocket at all. But why would they take it to Oswald Poindexter? And the workers don't look the type to use fancy electronics to kill someone. The scenario makes no sense. Castle may have a point about a missing puzzle piece. And it's right out of the center of the picture."
"OK, let's review," Rick suggests as Kate makes the 20-minute drive from Secaucus to Manhattan. "The bag could have been easily taken in two places, Armisen Labs and Tortelli Enterprises. Oswald could have figured that out and paid someone to get it for him. My money would be on Tortelli Enterprises. Did you see the cars in the lot? Half of them looked like they were hazardous waste. It wouldn't be hard to find an employee who could use a few extra bucks. Someone met Oswald in the park with the bag. But why didn't he take it? And why would that someone choose stopping his heart to murder him? A plain old shooting or stabbing could have been attributed to a random mugging. Kate, maybe the bag and the heart-stopping weren't related, at least not directly ."
"Castle what are you talking about?"
"I spent enough time with my nose in Oswald's notebooks to know that he investigated some very nasty dealings. Perhaps someone involved with one of them thought he was on their trail instead of investigating pesticides in groundwater. So the murderer follows Oswald to the park to make a nice quiet killing that will look like a heart problem. But Oswald meets with whoever brought him the bag. The killer hangs back until Oswald is alone. He turns on whatever electronic weapon he uses. Oswald goes down, and the bag is taken by the wind until caught at the edge of the path where we found it. What we thought was motive was actually a huge distraction from the real killer."
Kate groans. "Which would put us back to square one."
"No," Rick insists, "it would put us back in Oswald's apartment. The answer has to be somewhere in his notebooks."