A Fly in the Garden: Chapter 16
DISCLAIMER: None of these characters are mine, but they are memorable. Thank you, Mr. Marlowe.
Monday Morning, February 20, 2012 – 3:47 a.m. – At the Castle's Complex in Sausalito
Richard Castle runs into his office, throwing the door open wide. He sees the sleeping form of Kate Beckett on the sofa, and with a familiar mischievous grin that often both heartens and – at the same time - drives Kate crazy, slams the door shut, throwing his hands high in the air, his head held back looking toward the ceiling.
"Eureeeeeka!" he screams, and then breaks into laughter as Kate jumps quickly off the sofa, eyes wide and tracking for trouble, proving that her old habits – and instincts – are still as sharp as ever.
"Geesh Castle! What the hell!" she exclaims with frustration. This was a nice dream, as well as some much-needed sleep he just interrupted. She glances at her watch, and noting the time, glances back at her partner again.
"What the hell!" she repeats, watching his laughter grow.
"Oh Beckett, Beckett, Beckett," he continues, laughing. "This is just beautiful. My God, I would never have thought of this, never have written this . . ."
He drifts off in thought, for a small moment wondering if he is slipping. He would never have thought of this. Until his well-beyond-midnight walk with Veronica Mitchell, this wasn't even a remote thought he was entertaining. Now? It seems crystal clear.
Detective Jennifer Blackard picks this time to burst into the room, her weapon drawn. She can be forgiven, as it isn't often – if ever – that a person actually hears another human being shriek the word 'Eureka!', complete with slammed doors and loud laughter in the wee hours of the morning.
She quickly takes in the scene before her and shoulders her weapon, but not before giving a harsh glare to the laughing writer in the middle of the room.
"Castle – what the hell!" she yells, twinning her old friend who stands next to Castle.
"Jennifer," Castle begins, and he is clearly very happy to see her. "Jennifer, I've got it! I've got it!"
He turns to Kate, repeating the same words.
"Kate, I've got it. Oh this is amazing! This is just . . . this is . . . Jennifer, I need a big favor," he says, looking back to the SFPD detective. In the same instant, he turns back to Kate.
"Kate . . . Kate, we need to . . . Kate we –"
She stops him in his tracks, places her hands on each side of his face. Squeezing just enough to catch his attention, she replies in a calm voice.
"Castle. Rick. Slow down," she tells him, her eyes boring into his. It has been a long time since she has seen this type of excitement, this level of enthusiasm over a case from the man she loves. She knows him when he is like this, when he is in that sugar-mode high. She knows that he is struggling to keep his thoughts straight. She chuckles to herself to remember that there were times back in New York when she would have sworn that he was permanently stricken with an attention disorder.
She watches his eyes focus back onto her, but the excitement in his face remains. Good. She doesn't want to kill the enthusiasm. She just needs to pull him back to earth.
"Rick," she repeats, still holding his face in her hands. That finally does it.
"Kate," he says more calmly, then glances over to Jennifer with a smile.
"Jennifer. The video surveillance from the buses. The bus schedule with driver assignments. How quickly can we get our hands on those?" he asks the detective.
"Which one, Castle?" she asks. "Those are two different things."
"Both. Both of them. We need to see both," he repeats, the excitement beginning to rise in his voice yet again.
"Do you remember Jimmy Blankenship?" He asks, now looking back to Kate. "About a month ago, from the Harper case. Remember –"
"I remember, Rick," Kate tells him. "It's not a case I will forget anytime soon –"
'No, babe – not the case. Not the case. Jimmy. Think about Jimmy. What did he do? What was his profession?"
"He was . . . a bus driver," Kate tells him, as Jennifer's eyebrows rise. Kate begins shaking her head from side to side. No, things just don't fall that neatly into place.
"No, Castle, that is too much of a coincidence. That is –"
"Where did his wife work, Kate?" he interrupts. "Mara. Where did she work?" he asks her, and this time, he can see the emotion flare up in her eyes. Two coincidences? How realistic can this be?
"Fisherman's Wharf," she replies. "Pier 39. Castle, you don't really think –"
"Kate . . . Jennifer," he says, now glancing back and forth between both women. "Kate, remember last month, at the end of the Harper case. You told me that when you mentioned to Jennifer where Mara and Jimmy lived, the first thing Jennifer did was wonder how they could afford that."
He turns back to Jennifer, now addressing her. "You wondered where the money came from. You told Kate that was a very affluent area. Not an area you see bus drivers and retail tour guides owning a home."
He turns to face Kate, but turns and faces Jennifer once again.
"You wondered where they got the money, Jennifer," then turns back to Kate again. "That's what you told me, that she wondered where the money came from. Think about it. Where did they get the money?"
He glances again back to Jennifer, grabbing the woman by the hand and leading her – and Kate – to the sofa. Both women sit down on the sofa as Castle quickly moves to his desk, pulling his chair around the desk and stops in front of the sofa. He sits in front of the two women, looking from face to face, addressing both of them simultaneously.
"We said – remember we were talking after we'd solved the Harper case – after we cleared Mark Harper and got Gretchen and Mark back together," he says, reminiscing with a small smile.
"We said that we'd keep digging. We still had questions. We couldn't really prove everything with Mara Blankenship that we suspected, but we thought there was more to the Blankenships than we were seeing. We knew it. We knew they were living way beyond their means. We knew that they – she in particular – she was capable of pretty nefarious thinking. We promised we'd keep digging, searching for something, anything –"
"We did, to an extent," Jennifer tells Castle. "I checked both parents, their families. There isn't that kind of money there."
"Which only further supports what I am presenting right now," Castle replies excitedly. "Mara is not a person who cares – not one iota – about people." He stops his thoughts, deciding on a different approach.
"Scratch that. Mara Blankenship is a woman who will mercilessly beat another woman, frame a man, tear down the character of a young teenager – and hell, this is what she did in the matter of a week or so as far as we know. Kidnapping? Cripes, kidnapping is the least of what we have already seen this lady capable of doing."
He can tell that that women are considering this. It's a broad coincidence, and they are trying to wrap their heads around this possibility, because one coincidence is . . . well, it's just that – a coincidence. Two coincidences? That's a bit more difficult to explain. On one hand, it appears Castle is grasping at straws, reaching for an easy answer because of someone evil he met last month. On the other hand . . .
On the other hand, there are a few elements that seem to fall very easily – too damn easily – into place.
"Where have the women disappeared from?" he asks.
"On buses, or bus routes," Kate replies.
"We have a bus driver," Castle replies, nodding his head at Kate and holding up one finger, his forefinger. "Where else have they disappeared from?"
"Down at the wharf," Jennifer answers, sitting next to Kate. "The last one – just a couple of days ago – occurred down at Pier 39."
"We have our tourist guide – an evil, evil woman – who works down at the Wharf. On Pier 39 no less," Castle adds, holding up a second finger. He can see the women struggling with this, but Kate is slowly coming around.
"Indulge me, Jennifer. Please," he asks. "This morning, this afternoon, when you get to your precinct – subpoena the bus videos if you have to, but before you do, do this. Cross reference the date and approximate times of the disappearances that we believe occurred on a bus. Then for those dates – only those dates – find out what bus Jimmy Blankenship was driving that day or that night. If I'm wrong, then we've not wasted a lot of time or energy. But if I'm right . . ."
He stands for a quick instant, ready to pace, but forces himself to sit back down in front of Kate and Jennifer.
"I'm betting that we will find a one hundred percent match, Kate," he says, looking at the woman he loves, then casting his gaze to the woman next to her. "I'm positive that here is what we will find, Jennifer. Every woman who went missing on a bus, went missing on a bus driven by Jimmy Blankenship. I'm betting that he was working every one of those nights. I'm positive that the last known areas of those women will coincide with Jimmy's bus route for that evening."
Then – in a moment he will later claim as pure inspiration from the mind of a mystery novelist – Castle smiles broadly.
"Once we have those routes, Jennifer, I am betting that we will see gaps in the video surveillance recordings from Jimmy's bus. I am betting that there will be gaps where he turned surveillance off, masking whatever was happening on his bus."
Kate and Jennifer glance at one another again, each trying to decipher what they see in the other's eyes. It's a far-out, fantastic theory – but each of them can see the practical possibility in what would otherwise seem an impossible thought.
"You have to admit, Jennifer," Kate begins, "Jimmy being a bus driver is a coincidence. But his wife working down at the Wharf. At the very pier where women have disappeared? At some point, things stop being coincidences and are simply what they are –"
"Clues that cannot be ignored," Jennifer agrees, still mulling it over in her mind. "How did you even come up with this, Rick?" Jennifer asks.
He explains his walk, and the parting conversation with Veronica Mitchell, and how she placed the possibility in his mind that the answer to this current case could be found in the unanswered questions of a previous case. When put in those terms, suddenly both the detective and the ex-detective soften considerably to the theory.
"We should also check," Kate now begins, "to see whether or not Mara was working the pier on those evenings – and there are just a few of them – when our women went missing down at the pier."
"A husband and wife team handling the abductions is convenient," Jennifer admits, "but more than that, it would explain the coordination between the bus lines and the inevitable boat trip to the island – if we are right about the island. Having a wife who works down at the pier, who could make sure a boat is ready and waiting -"
"And who could make these arrangements without attracting any attention or suspicion," Kate adds.
"Yeah, this could work, Castle," Jennifer comments softly, whistling at the insidious nature of what they are now considering. It fits, it fits well. Too well. It's just so fantastic.
Castle sees them struggling, and he can't blame them. Even now, he is second-guessing himself. The last five or ten minutes have been a whirlwind of mental calisthenics.
"I know, ladies," he begins. "I know. It's just too fantastic. Too pact. Too easy. But remember," he continues, now standing and moving toward his desk before turning back to face them.
"We all felt there was more, last month, to the Blankenships. We all felt – no, we knew – that there was something else about those two. We promised we would dig deeper. Well, now we are digging deeper. Certainly not in the direction that we anticipated. How could we? But it doesn't matter. We are digging now, and we are struggling with what we are finding once we put down the shovel. Let's not do that. Let's keep it simple. It won't take long to test this out. It won't take long to cross-reference the dates that our women went missing with Jimmy's schedule, or Mara's schedule. It will take a little longer – I admit – to review surveillance video from the buses, but remember – we are only looking at one bus, and only for a few hours in the night. A far, far easier thing than what we have begun tonight with Eddie Baker's little whorehouse and all the feeds we still have to go through."
Both women nod in agreement.
"By the way, anything on that front from either of you?" Jennifer asks. "I haven't noticed any pattern, anything at all yet."
"I do have one possibility," Kate replies. "A woman, who looks to be in her late thirties, I would say. She appears fairly frequently for a few months and then disappears. It may be nothing."
"What is fairly frequently?" Jennifer asks.
"She appears once a week, sometimes twice a week, for the first few months, but that tailed off in month four," Kate replies.
"It may be nothing," Castle agrees, "but it also may be exactly what we are looking for. I have one possibility also. A man, Face 8 from my logs."
"Let me see him," Jennifer requests, now moving towards Castle's desk. Castle, now standing behind his desk, begins to pull up the image on his monitor.
"I was thinking maybe you might recognize him, just because you have –"
He stops in midsentence, as he hears Jennifer's almost inaudible gasp behind him. He can almost sense the detective tensing up behind him. It does not go unnoticed by Kate Beckett either.
"Jen?" Kate asks, as she moves and stands next to her friend, looking over her shoulder at the image on Castle's screen.
"Who is this, Jen?" Castle asks. "You know this man, don't you."
It is not a question.
"Barry Adams," Jennifer says with a whisper. "City councilman, young, ambitious. Currently the frontrunner for a U.S. congressional seat in the upcoming elections this November."
"Shit," Castle manages, shaking his head. "His . . . visits to Eddie's little house tailed off in the fourth month. That's as far as I have gotten."
"Tailed off?" Jennifer asks. "As in . . . "
"As in he was a regular for the first three months, pretty much weekly. But I made it all the way through November's viewings, and he only showed up once in November."
She group share a long look with one another, as this is a scenario they agreed to look out for. Kate breaks the silence when she walks to her laptop, now on the small side table next to the sofa, underneath the lamp atop the table. She searches for a few seconds, looking for her target. She finds her, turning the laptop to face Jennifer.
"What about her?" she asks the detective, whose immediately upraised eyebrows appear almost comical to Kate. Jennifer is momentarily stunned into silence, before releasing a soft chuckle, shaking her head.
"You know, sometimes you learn things that . . . that you'd just rather not know," the San Francisco cop mutters.
"That's the business, Jen. You know that," Kate tells her. "Who is she?"
"That's Cynthia Bartlett," Jen replies. "The Chief of Staff for Mayor Sandra Clooney."