Slaying the Beast
Chapter 11
Kate runs her tongue around her dry lips. She brushes Castle's hand as he sits next to her at the table and puts a finger to her mouth as she activates the speaker of her cell phone. "Senator Collinwood, this is Kate Beckett. I believe that you had something you needed to tell me about Senator Bracken."
As she begins to speak, the tremor in Susan's voice is more pronounced than the night before. "Detective Beckett, half the population of the Hill lives in fear of William Bracken and the other half are too oblivious or inexperienced to. Most of us here enjoy power or we would be doing something else, but Bracken lives and breathes for it. He has been that way for every moment since I met him in college. He had to lead every political organization or run it from behind the scenes. Other students who crossed him suddenly found themselves accused of cheating or plagiarism. He ruined them, and I don't believe he even thought twice about it.
"He led the pack in law school too. No one could win against him in a moot court or even a debate. But he also had a talent for digging up dirt on anyone and everyone - students, professors; it didn't matter. He used his leverage to be recommended for the clerkship he wanted. He must have had an easy road to becoming D.A. and moving up from there.
"I'm sure I only know about a fraction of what he has his fingers into in this country and around the world. Being on the Intelligence Committee gives him access to an incredible amount of information. And now that he's beginning to push for a nomination for the presidency, anything could happen. But I can tell you this. I'm 100 percent sure he was behind the death of George Mercer. George told me that he knew things about Bracken, about where he was getting his funding. He wanted me to go to the Ethics Committee, to blow the whistle. I told him no; that he didn't know what he could be letting himself in for. I urged him not to say anything to anyone else. The next thing I knew, you were investigating George's murder. You may have that drug dealer for it, but Bracken is just as, if not even guiltier. And Detective, be careful. Just by even mentioning Bracken, you have a target on your back, and so does Mr. Castle. I may have put one on mine, just by talking to you."
Kate clasps Castle's hand. "Senator Collinwood, please do whatever you can to keep yourself safe - and I will be watching my back and Mr. Castle's as well."
Collinwood sounds even shakier. "Good luck, Detective. You'll need it."
Castle stares across the table as the screen of Beckett's phone goes dark. "Kate, what have we gotten ourselves into?"
"Rick, I was always in, from the moment my mother was murdered, but maybe you'd be better off if you pulled away - put some distance between us."
Castle springs out of his chair shaking his head. "No way, Beckett, I don't abandon my partners just because the going gets rough."
"Partners? What are you talking about, Castle? What did Collinwood mean when she said she knew about you because she was on the Intelligence Committee?"
Castle drops back into his chair and covers his face with his hand. "Kate, when P.I. Derrick Storm became spy Derrick Storm; I didn't just pull what I wrote about the CIA out of thin air, any more than I make up police procedure when I write about Nikki Heat. My source was a real CIA agent."
"Agent Gray?"
"No. I know him. He was a liaison on some of the cases I followed, but I did have a partner."
"There was a real Clara Strike?"
"No. She wasn't Clara Strike any more than you're Nikki Heat - a lot less actually. We worked together for about a year while I was learning how the CIA operated. They tolerated my presence - encouraged it actually because as a best-selling author I could travel around the world without anyone thinking much about it. I could ask all sorts of questions and chalk it up to research for my books. Sometimes it was, but I was also gathering intel. The model for Clara wasn't so much my partner as my handler, so we had to spend a lot of time together and be able to trust each other. We were close."
"How close, Castle?"
"Probably as close as you imagine - for a while anyway. But honestly, I think she got bored with me. And the CIA enlisted other sources. They always do, to gain fresh insights and contacts. After that, I settled back into just being a writer, and having access to Gray is the one perk I retained from my tenure with the company."
"So I'm your second muse. Or have there been others?"
"Kate, you are my only muse, the only one I've ever had or needed. Back then, I had no trouble writing. If anything, I couldn't have stopped. I had multiple best-sellers before I came up with Derrick Storm. To be honest, the way that relationship ended, slowed me down. I suppose you could call it a crisis of confidence. After I wrote Storm Fall and divorced Gina, I wasn't sure I had any more books in me. When you dragged me into the precinct from my book party, I hadn't written a word in nine months, and Black Pawn was threatening to drop me. You brought me back to the keyboard, gave me something - and someone - new to write about. You pulled me from the abyss. It's only right that I do the same for you. I need to do the same for you. And if Bracken sends someone after us, we'll deal with it - together.
"All right, Castle. I think Senator Collinwood gave us a lot to work with. It sounds to me like Bracken has left a very long trail of people who would like nothing more than to see him hanging by his private parts."
Castle nods. "Given his history, there may have been a lot of his victims or potential victims, politicians, lawyers, political operatives, who've managed to build power bases of their own. If we start looking at who came out of his alma maters while he was there, we may find some very willing brothers and sisters in arms. We just have to follow the slime he left behind. We could start by pulling his yearbooks. I've used all manner of tidbits from those to develop characters for my books. We can probably start with the debate club. That could have been the source of some of the more able challengers to Bracken's status as top dog. And if he had a fraternity, we need to check out the members of that too. No one is more likely to have dirt on him than his compatriots in hoisting and hurling a few."
"Personal experience, Castle?"
"No. I wasn't a member of a fraternity. I spent my spare hours writing, not partying. But I've also spent enough time in college bars, even if I was nursing one beer to keep possession of a table to write on, to know who had the stories. It was usually the Greeks. Many of the houses keep chronicles too. You can dig them up if you know where to look."
Kate looks down at her watch. "Castle, I need to be back at the precinct in fifteen minutes. But maybe we can start turning over those rocks tonight."
"I'll go back with you. We can take care of what's left of that paperwork together. I'll even buy you, both of us, hotdogs on the way."
"Castle, you have a deal."