Shattered Lies
Chapter 25
Relieved that Kate wants to return to the loft with him after picking up her collection of Johanna Beckett's papers from her apartment, Castle helps her lay everything she retrieved out on the table. With a nod from her, he picks up what looks like a combination day runner and address book and begins to leaf through the pages. "Your mother wrote some of this in code."
"She wrote a lot of things that way. She was fascinated by codes, ciphers, how all of that worked. Mom did an honors project in cryptography when she was in college. She was even more into it after she went to law school. She hoped that if prosecutors ever succeeded in subpoenaing anything in which she wrote her private thoughts, they wouldn't be able to read it. She even told me that she wished you would put more crypto in your stories."
"Yet another one of my failings with the Beckett family. I imagine she would have loved Dan Brown if she'd lived to read his books."
Kate shrugs. "Maybe. She would have liked the symbology, but once I read a couple of them, I could figure out who the killer was. Mom probably could have too. At least your books aren't that predictable."
"Well, thanks for that. But it looks like she used a couple of different methods here. There are hooky things that look like an outdated type of shorthand I've seen in some old references. But she also has a simplified form in her calendar - shortened words and slashes."
"I know about the hooks. She made them look something like Pitman shorthand, but the symbols are her own. I never knew what any of them meant, and I haven't been able to figure them out."
"Oh, I read about Pitman. His symbols are phonetic but native to British English. Your mother's could be based on American English. At the very least, that would change the vowel pronunciation. We could look at that, maybe search for the most common sounds like from the letter 'E.'"
"You're into cryptography, too?"
"Not that much, but I'm a whiz at Scrabble® and hangman. I could probably win a bundle on Wheel of Fortune. In those games, more words are built around 'Es' than any other letter. There's a sequence that typesetting machines have, containing the most common letters; etaoin shrdlu."
"That sounds like a Lovecraft monster or an ancient shrine."
"One we could worship at if it helps us figure out what your mother was writing, but I think what she did in her calendar would make for an easier start. Is there a specific event you can remember that we could use to puzzle out her notations?"
Kate pales. "The day she died. She was supposed to meet Dad and me for dinner." She takes the leather-covered book from Castle's hands. "Here. It looks like a shortened version of meet Jim and Katie at Patroni's. That's a steakhouse both she and my father liked. It was semi-famous for having its own cattle herd - grass fed. It's out of business now, a victim of the recession."
"I remember that place. I celebrated there when Black Pawn accepted In A Hail of Bullets. It was the best meal I'd had since I started college. We could start with that entry. Will you be OK if I look at it?" Kate takes a deep breath before handing the book back. "Right. The 'J' and the 'K' are obvious. Did your parents really call you Katie?"
"My father, mostly. He still does. I think my mom picked it up from him. When I was little, she called me 'Cat' which was short for Catalina. She also said I stretched like a cat."
Castle hides his smile behind his hand as he continues. "So, Petroni's Steak House. She used a 'PTR' and then an 'EZ,' that must be a possessive. And it looks like she used military time."
"She did. She thought it was less ambiguous."
"Smart lady. So we have a couple of the basics. We could work backward and look at her meetings. You can see if anything rings a bell as to why someone would want to go after her and the others." He starts flipping back through the pages. "Looks like she spent a lot of time at Rikers."
"She did. She felt that many of the inmates were convicted unjustly because they were pressured into pleas by overloaded public defenders."
"There's one guy she visited several times before she died. She has a note about 'PGTez Cs.' "Cs is probably 'case,' but any idea who "PGT' would be?"
Kate shakes her head. "No, but Dad put her old files in storage. They're still there. I went through them, but I had no idea what I was looking for. Maybe I do now."
"Are they in one of those places with 24-hour access?"
"Yeah, they are."
As soon as Kate enters the code that gets her into Jim Beckett's storage unit she goes straight for a banker's box containing "O" through "R" files, repeating "PGT," to herself. Castle hears her gasp as she pulls out a folder. "This has to be it: Joseph Pulgatti. There are letters he wrote to her in here and some paperwork on his case. He claims he was framed but was pressured to plead guilty to avoid the death penalty. He said the D.A. then, Bracken, was crooked and covering up for a drug operation in Washington Heights. Pulgatti admits he was associated with the Cardanos. He said that the family hated Bracken because that operation was trying to spread into their territory and they believed he was helping them do it. Pulgatti thinks Bracken put a murder on him to weaken the Cardanos and protect his pals.
"Doesn't every con claim he was framed?"
"Yeah. Some of this is in her code, but I can read enough to tell why she might have believed him. She has copies of the official documents. The case against Pulgatti had a hole in it. There was no actual witness to the murder he was charged with - just the report of a Detective Raglan. Castle - that's the same detective who told Dad and me that my mother was dead and chalked it up to random gang violence. And the murder Raglan arrested Pulgatti for took place in the same alley where Coonan murdered my mother."
"That can't be a coincidence."
"No, it can't be. We need to talk to Pulgatti."
"Sing-Sing first thing in the morning?"
"As soon as we can get there."
Kate is tossing and turning beside Castle, but at least she's in his bed. After her revelation at Remy's, he wasn't entirely sure she'd want to be. Whatever their relationship is, she doesn't appear to be ready to abandon it - thank God. Maybe with their visit to Pulgatti tomorrow, they can begin to knock a few more bricks out of her wall, or at least loosen the mortar.
When he reaches out to hold her, he can feel the tension in her muscles release under his touch. As she relaxes, she snuggles into the curve of his body. He wraps his arms around her, listening to her breathe, needing that sound as much as he needs air in his own lungs. If she ever decides to leave, he has no idea how he'd survive. He'll just have to make sure that never happens. The key may lie in Johanna Beckett's Pitmanesque symbols. His slumber comes with pothooks and ciphers whirling through his brain.