A Murder Below Zero
By
UCSBdad
Disclaimer: There's zero chance that I own Castle. Rating: K Time: In an AU future.
Both suns were above the horizon, but it was still below zero outside. It was below zero inside Detective Kate Beckett's car as well. She cursed and once again tried to get her car's heater to work. No matter what she did, nothing worked. She pulled her winter coat tighter around her and kept driving.
She turned onto Haymarket Street and stopped suddenly. Ahead of her were three large potholes. She could see there was ice in them but couldn't tell if the ice was thick enough to support her car. Kate Beckett had a car because she was the best homicide detective in all of New Eboracum, but if her car was too damaged to repair, she'd be stuck in a clapped-out ex-military four-wheel drive piece of junk with no heater, no radio and little else that worked properly.
She looked at the potholes. If the ice wasn't thick enough to support her car, she'd probably wreck an axle. If it was thick enough, she might slide and who knows what might happen. She cursed again and hit her siren and light bar. The siren growled and about half the lights came on. The steady stream of bicyclists to her right yelled at her and gave her the one finger salute, but eventually gave way. She dodged around the potholes and raised her middle finger in return.
"Why the hell can't they fix the damned roads?" She said to no one. "The wars have been over for more than a year."
She sighed. She was being unfair to the government. She had an apartment in a building reserved for mid-level government employees with heat in the winter and air conditioning in the summer. Well, heating to 68 degrees and cooling to 78 degrees. Even the poorest citizens food rations were sufficient, if not tasty. Kate's own rations were more than sufficient as she got to eat breakfast and lunch in the police cafeteria for free. That meant she could take her father out for a nice dinner once or twice a month.
Kate stopped at a stop light. She could have used her lights and siren to go through, but why bother? The dead body wasn't going to go anyplace.
The crosswalk was jammed with pedestrians. Most had their heads buried in scarves or hoods, but a few looked at her. An attractive young woman driving a car was unusual. She was sure that they thought she was some bigshot's girlfriend. One did. Kate saw a young woman mouth the word "whore" at her. She laughed and thought about hitting the lights and siren, but the light turned green.
The first thing Kate saw as she turned onto the street where the murder had occurred was her teams' three vehicles pulled up across the street. Her team was standing around a fire in an old oil drum, trying to keep warm. She was about ready to go ballistic on her team when she looked across the street and saw the reason they weren't at the murder scene. Three eight-wheeled armored vehicles were pulled up in front of the address she'd been given. There were half a dozen men in camouflaged fatigues standing around, making sure no one got near the crime scene.
"What the hell is the damned Constabulary doing here?" She muttered.
Even if the bastards hadn't made a mess out of her mother's murder investigation, Kate would have felt nothing but disdain for the Constabulary anyway. They took their job as internal security troops very seriously. Too seriously, Kate thought. No matter what the evidence showed, the Constabulary always wanted to find that a murder was the result of a conspiracy by the old Loyalists, or by the Levelers. In Kate's mind the old Loyalists were just that: Old. They no longer had any interest in bringing back a long gone system of government. As far as the Levelers went, the only ones Kate had ever run into were pimply teenaged boys who thought that a society where everyone was absolutely equal would give them a chance with hot girls. They specialized in writing pornographic limericks praising the Levelers and nothing the Constabulary could do made them seem like any kind of threat to society.
She got out of her car and headed to her team.
"What the hell is the Constabulary doing here?" She demanded.
"It's not the Constabulary, Beckett." Esposito said. "Take a closer look."
Kate turned around and looked. It took her a second or two, but then she saw it. The Constabulary wore scarlet shoulder boards with their ranks on them, and had scarlet backing for their unit and rank patches. Their name tapes were in scarlet as were the Constabulary patch by the name tape. None of the men across from her had any rank insignia, unit patches, or any other means of identification. That meant only one thing.
"What the hell are Special Operations troops doing at a murder scene?" She demanded.
Ryan shrugged.
"They got here before we did and told us to stay away, and stay away we did."
She turned to Esposito who had been in Special Operations before a land mine had rearranged his knee. Given the choice between a military desk job and becoming a cop, he'd become a cop.
"Any ideas, Espo?"
He smiled.
"None, but those are Major General Roy Montgomery's fair-haired boys. If he wants them here, they'll be here and there's nothing we can do about it."
Over a half a century of wars, both foreign and civil, had left the military in charge of society in the Union of Aeneas. Although the wars were over, the military showed no signs of giving up any of their power. The three First Ministers of the provinces covered by Montgomery's corps were the duly elected leaders of their provinces, but they knew that if they butted heads with General Montgomery, they'd lose. Just as the Union's First Minister knew better than to buck the Combined Chiefs of Staff Committee.
"What do you know about them?"
"They're the 10th Special Operations Regiment from Montgomery's Tenth Corps. Every corps and field army has a Special Ops Regiment, plus there are a few extras. They'll have between two and four Parachute Assault Battalions, and I think the 10th has three, plus they'll have a specialist PA battalion composed of snipers, scouts and sappers. Sappers are assault troops for breaking into heavily fortified…"
"I was in the military, too, you know." Kate broke in.
"The 10th will have a Cadre Battalion that used to raise and train other countries' troops. Now they use them to run the Militia."
Kate didn't like the Militia much, either. They were mostly veterans, part timers, who kept order in their own neighborhoods. Too many thought they were the police and would argue with Kate. So far, Kate had always won, but they were pests.
"They'll have an engineer battalion and an intelligence battalion and no doubt a battalion or more of helicopters. And armored vehicles." Espo pointed to the vehicles across the street. "The Intelligence battalion not only has electronic warfare assets, they probably picked up our call which is how they got here before us, but they also run agents."
"Anything else?"
"They'll have a Constabulary unit under command, up to a battalion in size and a detachment from the Ministry of Security. They'll have tactical control of some Air Force and Navy units and can get more if they need to. When I was in, they had units made up of friendlies, neutrals, and even turned enemy troops, plus undercover people in civvies."
"Who did call this in?" Kate asked.
"A couple pf buzzheads." Ryan pointed to two shabbily dressed older men warming themselves at the fire. "They confessed to breaking in, but we managed to get a close look. The door wasn't busted in. But, since they were good citizens and called it in, we said we'd put them in holding until Monday."
For a pair of buzzheads, a holding cell wasn't too bad. They wouldn't have to worry about freezing to death, they'd get three meals a day, shaves and haircuts, plus a police doctor would check them over and do what he could for them. If they were cooperative, they might earn a bit of money cleaning up the precinct and if they were very lucky, the police might find some warm clothes for them.
Kate glared at the troops across the street. It had no effect on them.
"I'm going to go over and see what the hell is going on here."
She strode across the street and as she did, a soldier approached her. Kate was about to raise hell with him when he spoke.
"Good morning, Detective Beckett. Please go right in. All the way in the back. They've been waiting for you."
Kate was a little upset that he seemed to imply that the wait was her fault for being late, but let it pass.
Inside was a large room with mismatched tables and chairs and a counter. Over the counter was a sign that said Uncle Tino's Coffee. She wondered what kind of coffee a place like this could get. It had to be worse than the police coffee.
In the back was a smaller room, probably the office, although all there was in it was a chair and a table. And four men, one of whom was dead. The other three were in uniform. One was tall, well built with dark hair and blue eyes. He smiled at her.
"Good morning, Detective Beckett. "I'm Rick and this is Ed."
Ed was shorter than Rick, but bulkier. He had close cropped black hair and cold dark eyes.
"Oh, and examining our corpse is Tom, our doctor." Rick said.
"That's supposed to be my job." Said a voice from the doorway. Lanie Parish, the medical examiner had shown up.
Tom shot to his feet and faced Lanie.
"Lanie…Er, Doctor Parish. What a pleasant surprise."
Surprisingly, Lanie smiled back.
"Tom. When did you get back in town?"
"I didn't get to New Eboracum until this morning. I've been at Fort Foster for about two weeks, getting settled in. You know how it is." He turned to face Rick. "Rick, this is Doctor Lanie Parish, the best forensic pathologist in all of New Eboracum, at least. I'd love to be able to assist her in the autopsy."
Rick smiled at Lanie.
"Certainly. Would you like to take a quick look at our deceased friend?"
Lanie and Tom knelt by the vic and gave him a quick once over. Then both stood.
"We'll have to get him thawed out before we can do anything, really. COD appears to be a stabbing, but that could change. Unless you found something he has no ID or anything else at all on him."
"We didn't find anything." Rick said.
"Perhaps, Dr. Parish, we could go back to the MinDef offices. They're close and they're probably better equipped than your lab."
"That's fine with me." Lanie looked over at Rick who smiled and nodded. A pair of morgue attendants came in with a gurney and they all left.
Kate wasn't sure what Rick's rank was, but she guessed he was a captain. She decided to flatter him by upping his rank in their conversation.
"So, Major, can you tell me why the military is interested in this? A John Doe killing isn't that unusual."
"His name's Jack Coonan. He works for Finn Rourke." That was Ed.
"That could explain his death." Kate said.
"He was also a drug dealer." Ed continued.
"Finn Rourke doesn't like drug dealers. Are you sure about that?" Kate said.
"Coonan only sold pixie dust, which is a misdemeanor if you cops bother to arrest anyone with it."
"Still…" Kate began.
"Rourke doesn't like drugs in his neighborhood." Rick explained. "Coonan sold elsewhere. His clientele was uptown, around Highland College. A bunch of professors, writers, painters, you know, intellectuals."
"He was also an informer for us." Ed said.
"Us?" Kate asked.
"The Ministry of Security. MinSec."
If there were two groups Kate did not want horning in on her investigation, it was the military and MinSec. Then the third person she never wanted to see on one of her cases walked in.
TBC