Shared Obsession Chapter 174
Spike Ridenhauer and Juan Costa are in a jovial mood as they enter the kitchen for an early shift. As bosses go, Madison Queller has been among the best, keeping both the front of the house and the kitchen running at high efficiency without heaping the abuse on them so many restaurant workers endure. Balthazar Wolf is a bit quirky but that's hardly unusual for top-level chefs, and Wolf is abnormally considerate of the workers under his supervision.
Juan Costa wears a grin easily identifiable by most members of the human species. "Ah, you meet up with that baby last night?" Spike inquires.
The grin widens. "Yeah."
Spike nods appreciatively. "Yeah, no sleep again?"
"Never. No sleep, baby. That's how we do it."
They stop short, gazing at the chaotic mess that replaced the usual perfect order of Wolf's domain. Slowly, they round the corner of the counter before coming to an even more sudden halt, spying Wolf sprawled on the floor. "Chef! Chef!" Spike calls.
"Check his pulse," Juan urges.
"Ah!" Spike almost falls backward as Wolf's hand shatters under his touch.
Juan's jaw drops. "Whoa!"
The sound of shattering glass slices through the air of the loft. "Are you all right Alexis?" Castle calls, quickly striding toward the kitchen.
"Yeah, fine," she replies, the sharpness of her tone belying her words.
"What broke?" Castle asks.
Alexis is already using a dustpan and brush to sweep up the shards. "A stupid glass."
"Remind me to get smarter glasses," the writer responds, grabbing a broom to help. "But somehow I feel the glass is not the problem."
"I got invited to the Hamptons with Lacy's family and a couple of other friends."
"The Hamptons are nice this time of year. It sounds like fun. So why do you look like someone who just got voted off the island?"
"AP tests are next week, so I really need to study all weekend," the teen explains. "But I really want to go to the Hamptons."
"Assuming Beckett and I aren't in DC saying our pieces to bury the bad guy, our usual holiday trip to our Hamptons house is only a couple of weeks away. We'll have our perfectly heated pool, and barbecue, and you can beach comb to your heart's content."
Alexis sighs as she dumps the remains of the glass in the trash. "I know. But it's not the same as being with friends."
Castle puts an arm around his daughter. "Yeah, I get it. You are enmeshed in the eternal struggle between work and play. The trick is, when you grow up, find work that feels like play."
"Speaking of work, where's Beckett?"
"She went in early to meet with Montgomery. They're going over the write-up I did for him on the Racine case to make sure there aren't any holes he can slither through. I told her I'd meet her there. I want to stop along the way to pick up more of my special blend for the machine in the break room." He checks his watch. "And I'd better get going."
As he arrives to replenish the coffee supplies, Castle spots Demming coming out of the break room with a traveling cup and heading for the back stairs.
"What was Demming doing in our break room?" he asks Kate as he hands her a darkly fragrant mug.
"He got spoiled by the cappuccino machine while we were working the Racine case. It is kind of your fault," she points out. "You bought it."
"Yeah, I bought it for homicide, so we wouldn't be drinking any more monkey pee. I didn't get it for that asshole to have an excuse to come up here and leer at you."
"Well if that's what he had in mind, he didn't get to do it anyway. Until just now, I was in Montgomery's office. He's sending a final copy of the Racine report off to the feds."
"Did he change much of my purposeful prose?"
"Not much. He just made it sound a little more like cop-speak."
"Boring."
"Concise. But anyway, it's done and…." Kate's landline jangles. "OK. Be right there."
When Kate and Castle arrive at a restaurant, Esposito has his cell phone to his ear. "Right. Right."
Castle gazes around. "Wow! Q3! This place has only been open for three months. I've been dying to take you and I can't even get a reservation."
"Well, obviously you're not the only one who's been dying," Kate notes, as Esposito finishes his call. "What have we got?"
"The victim's name is Balthazar Wolf. He's the head chef here," Esposito reports.
Castle's eyes widen. "The Big Bad Wolf, winner of Kitchen Wars Season Six?"
Esposito leads the way to the kitchen. "I know, right?"
"Aw Man, I wanted to taste his foie gras sandwich. But I probably never would have even if he had lived," Castle laments. "Alexis says that the way they force-feed geese to get their livers that tasty is animal abuse. She would never let me live it down."
Esposito points at the body. "He's not going to live anything down. He was found this morning by the pastry chef, Spike Ridenhauer, and one of the dishwashers, Juan Costa."
As Spike and Juan give their statements to Ryan, Castle surveys the body with horrified fascination. "Castle, stop!" Perlmutter yells as Castle gets closer to the deceased chef. "Don't you see the little orange cones around the body?"
Castle points at shards eerily reminiscent of the shattered glass he helped Alexis sweep up earlier. "Is that really his hand?"
"That's the effect of LN-2, commonly known as liquid nitrogen, a liquid refrigerant" Perlmutter explains impatiently. "It instantly freezes anything it comes in contact with – including Mr. Wolf here – made him fragile as glass."
"Hmm," Castle considers. "Wolf was an aficionado of molecular gastronomy, it's using science to…." Perlmutter scowls at him. "And you don't care. But he would have used liquid nitrogen in his work. If nothing else, it makes some pretty cool ice cream. He should have known how to handle it."
"It's usually pretty safe," Perlmutter allows, "unless you take it internally – or someone dumps it on you."
"Time of death?" Beckett inquires.
"Well, all our normal indicators are compromised by the LN-2," Perlmutter replies. "I'll see what I can do once I get him to the morgue. But I'll have to thaw him out a bit before I can move him."
Castle regards the kitchen disarray. "Looks like there was a struggle."
"Robbery?" Kate wonders.
"No signs of forced entry," Ryan informs her. "As far as anyone can tell so far, nothing missing. According to Mr. Ridenhauer and Mr. Costa, here, our victim stayed at the restaurant long after everyone else had left."
"And what time was that?" Beckett asks.
Spike thinks for a moment. "It was around 11:00." He points toward an extravagant cake still sitting on the counter. "One of our clients had ordered that and Wolf stayed behind to finish it up."
"Wolf specialized in savory dishes," Castle recalls. "Doesn't Q3 have a pastry chef?"
"That would be me. But I don't do the crazy stuff Wolf did. I um, just made the cushion. He sculpted the crown and uh the heart and the jewels. That's probably why he had the rotary evaporator out, and the liquid nitrogen."
"All right," Kate declares. "After Perlmutter gets the body out, I'm gonna want CSU to come in and sweep for fibers and prints."
"Yeah," Ryan agrees.
"Yo, Beckett, the owner's here," Esposito announces.
Kate finds an attractive blond sitting at a table with a staff member, conferring over a statement. "Madison?"
The blonde looks up in surprise. "Becks? What are you doing here?"
"I'm a homicide detective."
"Shut the front door!" Madison exclaims, standing and opening her arms.
Kate moves in for a hug. "I know, right?"
Madison finally steps back. "But what a way for us to reconnect."
Kate waves toward her curious partner. "Madison Queller, this is Richard Castle."
Madison observes the instant vibe between Kate and Castle. "Becks, you latched onto guys in some interesting ways back at Stuy, but I can't wait to hear how you two hooked up."
A/N I worked with liquid nitrogen in the lab and this episode, in canon, required quite a bit of willing suspension of disbelief on my part. For one thing, a human can stick a finger into a Dewar of liquid nitrogen and not be harmed if they pull it out fast enough. That's because our body heat instantly vaporizes the liquid and the gas forms an insulating layer. So, to produce anything close to the effects seen on the show, someone would need a lot of liquid nitrogen and probably have to immerse Wolf's hand in it for a while. I remember one job in which I was analyzing rubber poker chips. I froze them with liquid nitrogen but still had to use a diamond-pointed chisel to shatter them. I never heard anyone in a lab refer to liquid nitrogen as LN-2, either, but it is very Perlmutter. And then, TV is TV and I doubt the writers spent much time in labs.
