CBs

Chapter 22

"How's Castle?" Ryan asked as Kate made her way to her office.

"He's doing better," Kate replied, her relief obvious. "The hospital should cut him loose today or tomorrow. He's been spending his time in bed researching the CBs' case, searching old news reports for other unexplained failures of city maintenance and building collapses, especially anything connected in any way to Trimp. He's got Balazs, that's his forensic accountant, on it too, looking at Trimp's financial dealings. Of course those are huge. Trimp Corporation has a finger in everything. What have you got?"

"The building inspector Espo and I were looking for, Ridley Mason, when he wasn't at the address I had for him, we started checking. He moved out. Didn't even collect his deposit, just pulled up a truck, loaded up his stuff, and moved out. None of his neighbors knew where he went. He didn't give notice to the city; he just stopped showing up for work. We checked with the post office. He gave them a forwarding address, but it's just one of those boxes people use for a business mail drop. There's a unit sitting on it now to see if he shows up, and Espo and I will be relieving them in an hour. Javi really wants to get his hands on this guy."

"Yeah, well just so he doesn't do it in way that will make us have to cut Mason loose or have to explain to Internal Affairs. Keep him cool Kevin," Kate advised.

"I'll take care of it, Captain," Ryan agreed.

"Yo Ryan," Esposito yelled across the bullpen. "We got a body, right near the stakeout at the mailbox place. Our unit there says it's that dirt bag Ridley Mason."

"Go!" Kate urged. "I'll be right behind you."

Lanie knelt by the body that lay in an alley that led from a parking lot to the street. "Got a COD?" Kate queried.

Lanie stood to face her friend. "The ever popular blunt force trauma. Blow came from the back. Guy probably never knew what hit him."

"Probably on his way from his car to his box," Ryan added. "We're trying to figure out which car now, so we can backtrack his route with the traffic cams, maybe see if anyone was following him."

"Seems like he might have been expecting trouble," Esposito offered. "Scumbag had a thirty-eight on him. Never got a chance to use it."

"He hasn't been here long," Lanie reported. "From liver temp I'd say he's been dead less than an hour."

Ryan nodded. "That fits. Lady coming from the parking lot found the body and called 911. The unit we had on stakeout was closest and responded. They recognized him from his photo right away."

Kate looked around. "I suppose it would be too much to expect that there would be a camera in this alley."

"No cameras here," Esposito confirmed. "None in the lot either. They have a security cam at the mailbox store, but shithead never got there."

"Anything on him besides the gun?" Kate inquired.

Ryan nodded. "Wallet and keys, but no phone. Whoever it was didn't want us to know who Mason was talking to."

"Well if our perp searched him for his phone, he might have left some DNA behind, maybe even prints," Kate mused "Lanie?"

"We'll be checking, Kate. It will be a while before CSU runs the clothes and we fume the body. I'll let you know."

Castle lay propped up by pillows while Kate recounted the day's events. "It is sort of poetic that the guy who let Mary Brodsky get killed on that staircase dies by having his head bashed in," Castle commented. "I was just wondering, if Ridley Mason was nervous enough to be packing heat, wouldn't he have heard someone coming up behind him?"

"I was wondering about that too," Kate acknowledged. "But Lanie checked his medical records. He was hearing impaired. He had aids, but he didn't have them in. Lanie said that's common when people are just walking around in the city, because the aids also amplify background noise and it can be uncomfortable. Actually his problem helped to track down which car was his. None of the ones in the lot were registered to him, but one had a sticker warning the driver was hearing impaired, and his fingerprints were on the handle. His aids were sitting in the console between the front seats. Ryan is scrubbing the traffic footage for blocks around to see if a car was following his and what cars left the lot during and right after our kill window. What have you come up with?"

"Besides noticing that the wi fi here sucks? They're supposed to free me of my shackles tomorrow. I can't wait to get a decent signal again, not to mention having a source of warmth in my bed more exciting than blankets."

Kate smiled and took his hand. "I'm looking forward to having some heat back in bed too, Babe. Were you able to get anything at all?"

"Mmm, with some help from Balazs. Our boy Trimp has been very busy, but his business acumen has not been nearly what his bluster on his reality show claims. He's been on the edge of bankruptcy four times and each time he's been bailed out by getting some sweet deal the taxpayers of New York shelled out for. He has contracts everywhere in the city. And there have been problems with a lot of them."

"Like what?" Kate questioned.

"He has a cement company. A number of his projects haven't stood up over time. There are a couple of suspicious competing contractors who have taken samples and had them analyzed. Trimp was shaving pennies by making the sand ratio too high. Trimp filed lawsuits to shut the firms publicizing those results up, but nothing really disappears completely from the web. There are still commentaries, tweets, Facebook postings.

There have been other accusations about using grades of steel that are cheaper than the ones called for in building plans, and pipes with substandard welds."

Beckett's eyes narrowed in anger. "That could be what caused the flood that put you in here."

"I haven't tracked that contract down yet, but it's very likely," Castle agreed.

"How about the staircase that killed Mary Brodsky?" Kate wondered. "That was from his Rampart subsidiary."

"I haven't found anything else on that yet either. They probably paid Ridley Mason to look the other way about something. Maybe he felt guilty about Mary Brodsky's death and tried to blow the whistle. Someone in the city government could have gotten wind of it and tipped off Trimp, who sent someone to take Mason out," Castle theorized.

"Castle, from you that's an amazingly down to earth theory. Are you still running a fever?" Kate teased.

"I hope not. They won't let me out of here if I am. Maybe I just need a couple of days to get my wild conspiracy mojo back. But seriously Kate, now two people are dead and we don't know how many related killings there were with no one making the connection. Trimp's been doing business with the city for decades. We don't know how many more people may have died just because he cut corners."

Kate squeezed his fingers. "I know Castle, but we are going to find out. And when we do, there won't be enough lawyers on the planet to let him get away with what he's done."