Shared Obsession Chapter 59
"She's still a Jane Doe," Lanie announces at Kate and Castle's early morning visit to the morgue. "Except for being dead, she's in good health. She's wearing a wedding ring, but there's no inscription."
"Cause of death?" Kate inquires.
"Drowning, and there's a nasty contusion at the back of her head."
"So somebody hit her hard enough to knock her out then gave her a motor oil bath," Kate figures.
Lanie holds up an evidence bag containing an oily piece of cardboard. "I found this in one of her pockets. It's a ticket stub for Metro-North. Jane took a train in from Westchester yesterday morning."
"Westchester to lower Manhattan? That's a long way to come for an oil change. And in a dump like that, with the two wine glasses we saw, it had to be about sex," Castle asserts. "The married lady didn't want to chance running into anyone from the Westchester crowd who could spill the beans to the husband."
"Bill was pretty clear that he wanted no knowledge of anything that went on in those rooms. It could have been about drugs," Kate offers.
"CSU tested the wine glasses. They found traces of Remian in one of them," Lanie offers.
"That's a sleeping pill, isn't it?" Kate asks.
"Mm-hmm," the ME confirms.
"This was not a crime of passion," Castle declares. "Someone rented that room for five days and stocked it with motor oil. That takes planning."
"And nice suburban wives don't just take the train into the city and not return without somebody noticing," Kate adds.
Castle drops into his usual seat next to Beckett's desk and hands her one of two mugs of coffee. Esposito strides over holding out a sheet of paper. "Irvington PD logged a call last night from a Michael Goldman, wanting to report his wife, Allison, missing. Clothing and description match our Jane Doe. Goldman said she went into the city to work and never came home. He claimed he 'knew' something was wrong."
"Poor guy – unless he's the one who made it wrong. If I recall," Castle muses, "the latest statistics say that 38% of the time, a female victim's killer is her partner or spouse. Goldman might have called in the report to make himself look innocent."
"It's possible," Kate acknowledges. "But that leaves a 62% chance he didn't do it."
Castle wets his finger and makes a mark on an invisible scoreboard. "Math point for Beckett."
Kate nearly suppresses a smile. "Either way, we need to question Goldman before drawing any conclusions. I'll call him and get him in here."
Castle's chair creaks as he gets to his feet. "While you're waiting for him, I'm going to pop up to the loft and work on our other project." Kate just nods as Castle heads for the elevator.
Castle thanks his lucky stars that Fred Quistel isn't a common name. The combination of that with Manna's need to keep up a do-gooder reputation makes it easier for the writer to dive into online archives for the data that he needs. Little articles on Quistel go back to the time he was a teenager. Back then he was cited as a promising young entrepreneur, but he wasn't selling Bibles. He was hawking the jelly shoes and plastic jewelry popular with his contemporaries. The articles noted that Quistel had a real talent for garnering profits from fads. A few years later Quistel was also cited as one of the businessmen who best exploited business-friendly legislation. "What better way to do that than to develop ties with DC?" Castle murmurs to himself. A jazz saxophone solo fills the air, his new ringtone for Kate. "Hey, Beckett."
"Castle, Goldman is on his way in. He should be arriving in about 15 minutes."
"I'll be there."
Michael Goldman runs his fingertips over photos of Jane Doe as if trying to absorb the images. "That's Allison, but I don't get it. A bathtub full of oil? Where did you say you found her?"
"She was in a hotel that caters to transients," Kate replies.
Goldman strokes his unshaven jawline. "What would she be doing in a place like that? She loves – loved – nice things, not …."
"Can you think of anyone she might have been meeting?" Castle asks.
"I'm not sure what you're implying, Mr. Castle, but my wife and I were happily married. We had no secrets," Goldman insists.
"You told the Irvington Police that your wife went into the city for her job," Kate recounts. "What was her job?"
"She worked part-time in a boutique. I told you she liked nice things, pretty things. And she loved the city. We'd had some financial setbacks the last few years and had to give up our apartment here."
"How did your wife handle the move to the suburbs?" Castle queries.
"Um, not too well. As I said, she loved the city. So about three months ago she found a position in Manhattan."
"Where was she working?" Kate asks.
"A little place called Lehane's on 72nd Street. She said that being there reminded her of the good old days. And the $400 a week she earned helped too."
Esposito grasps a marker while Beckett, Castle, and Ryan join him at the murder board. "I've been trying to fill in Beckett's timeline for Allison Goldman's death. But either what her husband said was bull or she was lying to him. I called Lehane's. Allison Goldman didn't work there. They never heard of her."
"If she wasn't coming into the city three times a week for a job, what was she doing here?" Kate wonders.
"And where did she get the $400 a week she claimed she was earning selling pretty dresses?" Castle adds.
"Maybe Castle was right. Maybe this was about sex," Ryan suggests.
Esposito snorts. "The lady was a soccer mom."
"Come by my daughter's school around 3:30 in the afternoon." Castle winces. "The place is like happy hour. I won't let Alexis ride with her friends' parents unless I check them out first."
Kate covers the grin bursting forth on her lips. "You'd do that if they were drinking bottled water. Maybe Allison had a boyfriend."
Castle closes his eyes. "Yes, a boyfriend, someone she met in line at Zabars or one afternoon at the museum when she ducked in to avoid a rainstorm."
"Yeah," Esposito agrees.
"Or maybe it was someone she already knew from the city," Castle continues, "someone who reminded her of when things were good before she had to give up that cute little apartment with the partial river view. But what about the money?"
"Easy," Esposito asserts. "Someone was slipping her the cash while he was slipping her something else."
"Yes," Castle considers. "But Allison Goldman wouldn't have wanted some cheap affair. This person would have had to mean something to her. He would have listened to her, valued her. But he wanted more – more than she could give."
"Like leaving her husband," Ryan suggests. "And when she wouldn't, he got violent."
"Yep," Esposito concurs.
"Except," Castle points out, "that we established that the killer rented the room and bought the oil ahead of time. And that hotel isn't exactly the place a woman the way Michael Goldman described Allison would pick if she wanted a reminder of the good times. Or there was a side of Allison her husband never saw. We already know she lied about the boutique. Maybe it was to cover up an affair, but we're still missing something."
"We need to know more about the real Allison Goldman," Kate declares.
Castle sighs. "More than her husband does."
