Shared Obsession Chapter 85

"Ms. Allen?" Kate asks as a woman opens an apartment door.

"Yes," the woman confirms, her eyes fixing on Kate's badge.

"It's about your husband," Kate says gently.

"What about him? He was just here a couple of hours ago. Was – was there an accident?"

Kate draws in a deep breath, bracing herself. "I'm very sorry to tell you, Ms. Allen, that your husband passed away."

"So there was an accident?" Sandy Allen presses.

"No, Ma'am," Kate responds. "He was murdered."

Covering her face with her hands, Sandy backs away from the open door and half-falls to a seat on a couch. With Castle at her elbow, Kate follows Sandy inside and pulls up a chair near her. "I'm very sorry for your loss. But we have to move as quickly as possible if we're going to catch whoever did this. Your husband was found on Ninth Street. Do you know of any reason why he'd be in that part of town?"

Sandy looks up. "No. His office is in Midtown. It's nowhere near ninth."

"What time did he leave your apartment?" Kate asks.

"Around six. He'd just gotten back from his trip and he said he needed to catch up on some paperwork. He said he'd only be gone for a couple of hours," Sandy adds.

"You said a trip?" Castle queries.

"He was in Albuquerque at a training seminar," Sandy explains. "It was only two nights."

"Did you notice anything unusual lately, any strange behavior?" Kate inquires.

"He had to work a little harder than usual. But, uh, in this economy who doesn't? He had to lay off half his department last year."

"And you're sure he was working late?" Castle questions.

Sandy stiffens. "What are you saying? That he was cheating? Every night he'd walk through that door and the kids would just race into his arms. OK? And now he's gone. Don't ask me if he was really working late. Tell me why he was killed."

"Mr. Castle didn't mean to imply…." Kate soothes.

"How about phone calls, maybe late at night?" Castle interjects.

As Kate sends Castle a chastising look, Sandy leans forward in recollection. "Maybe Max Haverstock. He would call John up late at night and yell at him – all sorts of things. I guess he was hurting. He needed money. I told John he should just hang up on him, but John said no, he couldn't do that."

"Did your husband give him any money?" Kate asks.

"My husband didn't believe in handouts," Sandy declares. "He said a man should make his own way. Where is John? I'd like to say goodbye."

Kate reflexively pokes her fingers at her bottom lip before pulling her hand away. "About that. Ms. Allen, the Medical Examiner's Department had an incident. The van transporting your husband's body to the lab was highjacked and his body was stolen. The NYPD is doing its best to locate it now."

Color rises in Sandy's face. "How the hell are you going to figure out who killed him if you can't even keep track of a body?"

"Ms. Allen, I assure you, we're using every resource we have," Kate returns, trying to keep her voice as even as possible.

"Then you'd better get out of here and do your job," Sandy retorts. "Leave, now!"

"Yes, Ma'am," Kate agrees.


"Well, that was awkward," Castle observes as he and Kate return to her unit.

"You could have been a little more diplomatic, Castle," Kate points out.

"Come on, Kate. Working late is the oldest excuse in the world when a guy is fooling around. If he was philandering, wifey scorned could have had someone take him out. It wouldn't be the first case like that we've worked on together. Remember Councilman Horny?"

"Castle, step back a little. Maybe it's your concussion or whatever was in that pill Cross gave you, but you're not thinking straight. I can buy the wife hiring someone to kill a cheating husband. She couldn't have strangled him and thrown him off the building herself. But why have armed men attack the van to steal his body? That makes no sense."

"Unless she was trying to get rid of some evidence," Castle argues. "Maybe she'd been administering a slow poison and got impatient. She could have had the body stolen to cover up what she was doing. It was stolen to cover up what someone was doing. And Kate, right now, the clock is ticking. I was trying to move things along as fast as possible."

Kate frowns. "You usually have more subtle ways of doing that. I'm betting there was something besides a pain reliever in that pill. Maybe it's what the agency feeds to its wet boys."

"Are you saying Cross is a wet boy?"

"I don't know what Cross is. And I sure as hell don't like the idea of waiting around for someone, even a scumbag like Simmons, to be murdered. I wish I could put a unit on him."

"Why can't you?"

"He's never officially been charged with a crime. And I can't tell Captain Montgomery that some secret agent said Simmons is about to be murdered. The agency isn't even supposed to deal with domestic matters. You know that."

"I also know that particular restriction is honored more in the breach than the observance."

"Even if that's true, I don't know where Vulcan Simmons is. The rumor is that he works out of multiple venues in Washington Heights, but since he's never been convicted of anything, he's not required to update law enforcement on his location. I'm stuck. And I have a feeling your Anderson Cross knows that."

"He's not my Anderson Cross, Beckett. Before today, I'd never heard of him and I don't remember ever meeting him. Although…."

"There was something familiar about him," Kate suggests.

"Uh-huh. But for the life of me, I have no idea what it was. Still, we have no time to worry about it. If you're going to be ready for whatever goes down with Simmons, we need an answer to this case."

Kate unlocks her vehicle. "I'll have Haverstock brought in."


Kate gazes through the glass at a thin, balding man nervously glancing around the box. "He looks more like a guy you'd hire to do your taxes than a killer," she observes.

"Those are the ones you have to watch," Castle asserts. "Soft voice, soft hands, deadly aim. There was a story going around the agency about a guy like that. He terminated 60 targets with extreme prejudice but always looked like he could never hurt a fly."

"Don't tell me! He looked like John Malkovich?" Kate guesses.

"No, more like Lou Costello, totally non-threatening – until his assignments breathed their last breaths. He might just have been a story, but you can never be sure."

"That's true," Kate agrees. "In my experience, a killer can look like anyone, even Haverstock. So let's get in there."

Kate walks into Interrogation to an immediate look of appreciation from Haverstock. She takes the seat opposite the suspect, with Castle next to her. "Mr. Haverstock, do you know why you're here?"

"No, the cops who came to my office just told me I had to come in."

"Your office?" Kate queries. "I understood that you were out of work, laid off by John Allen."

Haverstock stares at Kate in confusion. "I don't know who told you that, but they got the story mixed up. John and I were laid off at the same time, about eight months ago, because of the AIG mess. I was fortunate enough to find another position, but John wasn't that lucky. We were buddies. We'd had adjoining cubicles. So he asked me to try to find him a slot, but there just hasn't been anything open. Wait, did something happen to John?"

"He was murdered last night," Kate replies.

"That's terrible," Haverstock declares. "And just when he thought things were turning around for him."

"Turning around for him how?" Kate asks. "Did he find another job?"

"I don't know. But the last time I talked to him he said he'd found a way to make enough money to recover what he and his family lost after his firing. And he was going to be able to do it pretty fast. I was wondering if someone slipped him a tip about a new Apple or Google or something. But no one would have killed him over that, would they?"

"We don't know," Kate replies. "But we'll find out."