Flu

Chapter 47

"If we're going to have to wait on CSU, Perlmutter, and the canvass, can we go back to working on Lisa Wernick's case?" Castle queries. "Did your pals in Jersey spot any movement from Gohmert, the younger?"

"I got a text that a car service picked him up and took him back and forth to a medical building. He also had groceries delivered." Kate reports. "Other than that, nothing."

"No trips to his gym?"

"Nada," Kate confirms.

"Uh-hmm. That would support our theory that he has a medical reason for not driving. Sounds like family Gohmert is pretty much housebound." Rick pulls out his phone. "According to my app, the drive from here to Linden is only about 40 minutes. Couldn't we pay the shut-ins a visit without losing any time on the Hanson investigation?"

Kate nibbles the tip of her index finger. "I suppose we could, but no stopping for roadside attractions of the edible kind."

Laugh lines fan from the corners of Rick's eyes. "Good one, Beckett. Even if beckoned by the Great Pumpkin, no side trips." He raises his right hand. "I promise."

For a moment, Kate isn't sure which Gohmert opens the door. Jeffy, her suspect, is tall but gaunt, with shadowed eyes and a bald head too smooth to be shaven. He regards Kate's badge. "It's been years since anyone put one of those in my face. But you might as well come in. I can't stand very long, and whatever you want to ask me about doesn't matter anymore."

The younger Gohmert leads Rick and Kate to a shabby living room. He motions them to the couch before carefully lowering himself into a cushion-topped wooden chair."

Kate inclines her head toward the senior Gohmert, sitting with a blanket across his lap near an electric heater a few feet away. "You might want to do this in private."

Jeffy shrugs. "My dad won't know what we're saying. He started losing his hearing after someone whacked him in the head years ago. Audiologists can't do anything for him anymore, and he's been too stubborn to learn to read lips. Sammy Levinson called and told me a cop asked him about Professor Wernick. Is that why you're here?"

"It is," Kate confirms. "Did you know her? As far as we've determined, you weren't one of her students, but we believe you had contact with her."

A hoarse laugh rattles from Jeffy's throat. "Yeah, I had contact with her. She wanted to take away everything that meant anything to me at the time. But the joke was on me. If she'd succeeded, I wouldn't be like," he sweeps a hand over his wasted body, "this today."

"Are you talking about steroids?" Castle questions.

"Hell, yes, I'm talking about 'roids," Jeffy responds. "Cancer, the third time, but this sonofabitch tumor," he taps his temple, "spread to my brain. Messes with my eyes sometimes, screws up a lot of things. The doc says I have a couple months if I'm lucky. So I suppose it's as good a time as any to unload my sins. I'll be joining professor Wernick. We might as well both rest in peace."

"Mr. Gohmert, are you telling me you want to confess to a crime?" Kate presses.

"Yeah, I want to confess. You might as well take me in. I'll tell you whatever you need to know about killing Lisa Wernick. You can read me my rights, but as I said, it doesn't matter anymore."

"Will your father be all right here by himself?" Castle wonders.

Jeffy cackles. "Dad? He can't see that well either, but he gets around the house OK. F**k! He's been taking care of me."

"All right, Mr. Gohmert." Kate allows, intoning her next words by rote. "You have the right to remain silent."

"Not the way I expected that to go," Rick admits after L.T. leads Jeffy from Interrogation to a holding cell. "Good move calling in a shrink to examine Gohmert before you questioned him."

"Yeah, if Gohmert changes his mind and claims he didn't understand what he was doing, the doc can testify otherwise. But I doubt if Jeffy will ever make it to prison. He'll probably be in a locked medical facility until he dies," Kate speculates.

"Not a very satisfying ending for the case, but maybe God meted out his own justice." Rick offers. "I'd consider asking your mother about that if she pops in again, but given that she only materializes when you're in deadly danger, it would be better if I don't get the chance. I guess we're back to the Terry Hanson case if…"

Kate's cellphone emits jolting organ chords. "That's Perlmutter." She quickly accepts the call and puts it on speaker.

"Detective Beckett," the gruff pathologist announces, "I've found something unusual in the body of your victim. He showed multiple recent injection sites, but his tox screen was clear. I detected signs of high levels of inflammation, so I checked various markers of immune activity. His antibody production was off the charts. He tested immune to H1N1, but there were other factors I couldn't identify. I sent his blood and tissue samples off to the CDC."

"What does that mean for his murder, Perlmutter?" Kate questions.

"Maybe nothing," the M.E. admits. "The city doesn't want food sellers spreading disease, but as far as I can determine, he received vaccines that were unrelated to his occupation. Mr. Hanson was living a secret life."

"Very dramatic, Perlmutter," Castle comments. "I like it."

"I was addressing Detective Beckett," Perlmutter retorts, "but I'm sure you have some highly-improbable explanation for my findings, Mr. Castle."

"I'm beginning to come up with one, Perlmutter."

"Let me know what the CDC says," Kate quickly inserts. "Thanks, Doctor." Kate shoves her phone back in her pocket. "All right, Babe, give me the story."

"Not here." He grasps her hand, leads her back to the deserted office, and doublechecks the lock on the door. "You've heard most of it already, Kate. I believe that Terry Hanson is a Russian agent. Maybe he's a sleeper planted when he was a child, or perhaps his handlers created the vendor identity and sent him as an adult. The food in his apartment suggests the latter. Either way, his mission was more subtle than bioterrorism. The government has put together a system for working on H1N1 and is developing a vaccine. One way or another, this country is coping with the disease, even getting used to it.

"Now, if someone comes down with symptoms, they assume it's the flu going around. But the Russians made variants, viruses that even those like you, who know they already had it, can still catch. They were trying them out on Hanson, and maybe others, to see what might make them sick again in a way that they could spread around. That's what the subway map was for. Subways are giant Petri dishes, confined spaces where one cough or sneeze can reach cars full of people who go out and infect more. Victims will assume it's still H1N1. They'd believe there's no lasting immunity which would mean that a vaccine won't work. The country, the city, will be in a panic. The conspiracy theorists will go crazy, probably claiming the bug is from outer space or something. No one will trust the CDC to control outbreaks anymore, and the Russians will sit back and laugh while they watch our public health system fall apart."

"So, where would your father come in?" Kate asks.

"The company must have picked up on the plan, so they sent him to take out Hanson before he could execute it. I'm hoping that New York was Russia's only target, and there aren't a bunch of Hansons across the country. But New York is a hub of U.S. commerce. People come in and out of the city all the time. If Hanson had succeeded, the faux flu would have spread from New York across the country, even without help from other Typhoid Terries."

"So your father's not a murderer, he's a hero?"

Rick leans against the door, closing his eyes. "Maybe in his world, there's no difference."