A Murder Below Zero
By
UCSBdad
Disclaimer: There's zero chance that I own Castle. Rating: K Time: In an AU future.
"Vaughn? The billionaire?" Kate asked. "Why would he be giving cash to Demming?"
"That's what we intend to ask him." Ed said, grinning.
They pulled up in front of the Vaughn Building and Rick sent people to cover all the exits. They took the express elevator to the top floor. As soon as they got off, they knew there was trouble. A secretary was laying on the floor, having bled out from stab wounds. They looked like the same kind of wounds that had killed Coonan, and Kate's mother.
They found a bodyguard with his throat slit and a pistol halfway out of his holster. Ahead of them they could hear the sounds of a fight.
They pushed into Vaughn's office just as a man with blood spraying from a severed jugular slammed into Rick, Ed and Krulak. Kate, behind them, was the only one still on her feet. She saw Diane Coonan headed for Vaughn with a knife in her hand.
"Coonan!" She yelled, drawing her sidearm. "Drop it or I drop you."
Coonan glanced behind her, then headed straight for Vaughn. Kate fired three times, dropping Coonan. Kate got to Coonan just as Rick, Ed and Krulak got up and went to Vaughn. Vaughn was unhurt, but Coonan was badly injured.
Kate kicked her knife away and frisked her for more weapons, finding a scalpel. Then she examined the wounds.
"You're bleeding, but I'm putting pressure on the wound. Why did you kill your brother?"
Coonan looked up at her.
"You're Kate Beckett. Funny. I was supposed to kill you and your dad. But you killed me."
"Why?" Kate demanded.
"Just a job. They never tell me why, or who wants it done. You're wasting your time on me. I can feel I'm bleeding internally. I won't last." Coonan coughed, bring up some blood. "I didn't get you, but I got your mom."
"What? You killed my mother? Why? Who paid you?"
"Just a job." Coonan said softly.
Those were the last words she uttered before she died.
"I think we'd better take Mr. Vaughn back to MinSec, Rick."
"I demand a lawyer be present. I'm not some nobody you can bully." Vaughn said. "I have connections. Very powerful connections."
Ed nodded.
"Perhaps we could just leave him here. He'll be okay, I'm sure."
"What? You can't do that. He'll have me killed."
"You're a wealthy man. You can afford bodyguards. Better ones than the ones you had, I hope."
"Do you expect me to spend the rest of my life waiting for a bullet in the back or a knife between my ribs?" Vaughn shrieked.
"That could be a possibility. Ready to go, Rick?"
"Wait. I'll go with you, but I'll need protection."
"That we can provide."
Kate sat behind a one-way mirror and watched Ed and Rick interrogate Vaughn.
"Mr. Vaughn, tell us who this man is who'll kill you. He must be who you work for."
"He's very powerful. Extremely powerful. I need protection."
"You won't get any if we don't know who we have to protect you from." Ed said, reasonably.
"Senator William Bracken."
That brought a long, low whistle from Rick.
"Now he is powerful. He's the Minister of Finance and he's tipped to be a shoe in for First Minister after the next election. What's he trying to do?"
"He wants to be more than just a First Minister. He wants to take over the government and make himself First Minister for Life. He's selling drugs through people like Coonan to finance his operations. He uses people like Demming to gather information on people who might help or oppose him in the future. Not just for blackmail, but if someone's son wants to get into a particular university, Bracken can arrange it. Things like that."
"Just how did you get involved."
"It's no secret that I'm in favor of reducing the military's role in society. Oh, militarizing society was necessary during the wars, but the wars have been over for more than a year and if anything, the military is growing more powerful. Look at who arrested me: Soldiers."
Vaughn looked around as if he was afraid an assassin would burst through the door. "But I thought Bracken wanted a sensible civilian government. He doesn't. He wants the same dictatorship we have now but with him in charge. I told him I was…unhappy."
"Okay, Mr. Vaughn. You need to tell us everything you know about Bracken and his organization. Everything, including your participation."
The interrogation went on. Rick did ask Vaughn about the murder of Johanna Beckett, but Vaughn denied knowing anything about it. When they took a break for dinner, Rick led Kate to an empty office.
"Kate, we do know something about your mother's murder, but it won't help you much. She was doing some work for military intelligence, keeping an eye on some lawyers who had some pseudo-Loyalist ideas. They were all talk and no action, but we asked her to keep an eye on them. We're positive they had nothing to do with your mother's murder and they had no connection to Bracken. We have no idea why Bracken wanted her dead, assuming he had Coonan kill her."
"Couldn't you have told me this earlier?" She asked bitterly.
"Would it have done any good?"
She thought for a moment.
"I guess not."
Kate said no more, but Rick could feel some strain between them.
The interrogation lasted for days. Not because Vaughn had that much to say, but because Ed and MinSec checked everything he said. Other people were questioned based on things Vaughn had told them and more and more information developed.
Once again, Rick took Kate to an empty office to talk to her.
"We did some more digging into Diane Coonan's life. It took some doing, but we found her old bank records. The originals were destroyed in an "accidental" fire, but it turns out there were copies. She received a payment of 100,000 credit units the day after your mother's murder. It's not conclusive, but…"
"Thanks, Rick, but I weas already convinced she killed my mom. She admitted it."
"People lie sometimes. Even when they're dying."
One thing they wanted to know from Vaughn was why all the murders of people connected with Bracken's plot were occurring.
"I'm not sure." Vaughn said. "I think he's trying to silence anyone who might possibly know anything about his operation." Vaughn shuddered. "He's ruthless. He'd rather kill a thousand people he doesn't have to than leave one person alive who might, just might, be a danger to him."
Eventually, they had drained Vaughn of all the information he had.
"What do we do now?" Kate asked.
"Nothing." Ed replied.
"Nothing! What the hell do you mean nothing."
"We can establish that Vaughn and other people talked to Bracken on certain days, but Bracken was smart. There were no witnesses to corroborate what Vaughn or anyone says happened. It's Vaughn's and their word against Bracken's."
"No. He did commit crimes. We have evidence of that."
"We could charge him with a series of misdemeanors, except for one thing. Ever since the attempted purge of the Houses of Parliament thirty years ago on a bunch of trumped up charges, members have had absolute immunity against arrest. We can't touch him."
"Then release the information we have on him. Do it anonymously, God knows you've done that enough times. The media will pick it up and have a field day with it. His career will be over."
"We can't do that either." Ed said, uncomfortably.
"Why not?" Kate demanded, not caring that she was yelling.
"We have information on many, many politicians. They know we have it and that we won't use it unless they go way overboard, which Bracken hasn't, that we can prove, anyway. If we try to destroy Bracken like that, they'll all turn against us."
Kate glared at the two of them.
"Maybe you two can't do anything, but I sure as hell can."
"No, you can't, Detective Beckett. Not without getting yourself in a lot of trouble," Ed said coldly.
"My mother was murdered. If I get in trouble, I get in trouble."
"And you get your father in trouble. And your aunt Teresa and your cousin Sophia. And your best friend, Dr. Parish, and your whole team, Esposito, Ryan, Karpowski and the rest. I understand Detective Ryan's wife is pregnant. Can you imagine what it would be like to give birth in an Arctic Penal Camp?"
"You wouldn't dare!" Kate screamed.
"Do you want to bet their lives on that? You'd be amazed at what the Tenth Directorate will dare."
Kate stared at the two men.
"You're afraid. If Bracken ends up First Minister for Life, you, the military, stay in charge. Under Bracken of course. If Bracken goes down, eventually you end up as just another bunch of civil servants. You're afraid of losing your power and all the power gives you."
She turned to Rick.
"Are you going to just accept this?"
"I'm a soldier. I do as I'm ordered."
"You gutless coward." She said and slapped him as hard as she could. It hurt her hand, but she slapped him again.
Kate walked out of the room without looking back. She caught a bus to her apartment and locked herself inside and cried.
The next day she went to work. She took the two unopened bags of coffee she'd had from Rick and the one opened one with her. She gave the opened bag to a shabbily dressed man she saw on the street and gave the other bags to the precinct. Her team noticed that she never drank any of the coffee. When they asked about it, she said she'd lost her taste for coffee.
As she had done before when she was unhappy, Kate buried herself in her work. She took no days off and was the first one in in the morning and the last one to leave at night. Captain Gates, who was known for caring for her people, tried to get Kate to not push herself so hard. Kate refused.
Lanie tried to get Kate to talk about what had happened between her and Rick. Kate slipped her a note that read: "MinSec probably has me under surveillance. I can never talk about what happened." Lanie eventually gave up and just tried to get Kate to go out and enjoy herself. Kate said she had work to do.
Her father tried to talk to her and got the same note. He knew he could do nothing.
And so, the months went on with Kate working until she staggered home to gobble down a tasteless meal and fall exhausted into bed only to do the same thing the next day.
Winter had turned to Spring and then Summer and Fall was fast approaching when Kate walked into the bullpen. Someone had left a newspaper out and she glanced at the headline. Then she grabbed the paper and read the whole front-page article.
There was no one there to tell that she'd be gone for the day, so she went back to her car and drove to Fort Foster. She used her lights and siren the whole way, and pulled up to the gate guard at the fort.
"I need to see Colonel Castle." She said.
"Yes, ma'am. Please remember to wear your visitors' badge where it can be seen." The sentry handed her a badge.
If Kate hadn't been so angry, she might have stopped to wonder why the sentry hadn't asked her why she wanted to see Colonel Castle.
She pulled up in front of his headquarters and ran inside. Krulak smiled at her.
"He's in his office, Kate."
She strode in and threw the newspaper down on his desk.
"You lied to me." She screamed.
TBC