Shared Obsession Chapter 91
Kate frowns at her computer screen. "The owner of Deluxe Dealers of Queens is Putney Renier. He recorded the sale of four Lincolns, but not to Vulcan Simmons."
"Let me guess," Castle says, leaning his elbows on her desk. "They went to a shell company."
"Uh-huh, Lazarus Enterprises, privately held. So we'll have to dig through layers to find who's behind the company."
"Maybe there's an easier way," Castle suggests. "Wouldn't Putney Renier know who he was dealing with?"
"He might," Kate considers. "We can talk to him."
"You have an address?"
"He has a house in Queens – Fresh Meadows."
Castle whistles. "To live in that neighborhood, he'd have to sell a lot of cars."
"Or something," Kate adds.
Putney Renier extends his hand with a welcoming grin unreflected in his eyes. "Richard Castle! My mother loves your books! I get her one with her flowers every Mother's Day."
"That's very flattering," Castle replies. "Perhaps the next go-round I can sign one to her."
"That's very kind. But I can't understand what you and Detective Beckett are doing here. I don't know anyone who's been murdered."
"Or perhaps you don't know that you know someone," Kate responds, holding up a picture of Vulcan Simmons. "How about him?"
Renier's pupils momentarily widen as he stares at the image, before he snaps a more passive expression in place. "I don't believe I've ever met him. Who is he?"
"How about Lazarus Enterprises?" Kate presses, ignoring the question.
Renier nods slowly. "Yes, I sell fleet vehicles to Lazarus," he admits. "The company is an excellent customer."
"And I bet they pay in cash," Castle says.
"Nothing wrong with that," Renier replies, his shoulders stiffening under his designer golf shirt. "It eliminates the mounds of paperwork involved with credit and I don't have to worry about collections. But I don't understand. What's selling cars to Lazarus Enterprises got to do with the man in the photo or a murder?"
"Do you know how Lazarus uses the cars?" Kate asks.
"Once they leave my lot, that's really none of my business," Renier claims.
"And I'm betting you don't want to know," Castle interjects. "But writers are curious. And as your mom's favorite writer, Mr. Renier, I'm wondering if there is anything special about those cars that might be adaptable to, um, subtle transportation of certain items."
"I'm afraid I don't get your drift, Mr. Castle," Renier replies.
"Could someone use the undercarriage of a Lincoln Town car as a hiding place for contraband?" Kate clarifies.
Renier shrugs. "I suppose it's possible. Some of the more deluxe trim levels have a higher ground clearance."
"And did the cars Lazarus Enterprises purchased have those trim levels?" Kate questions.
"Yes," Renier answers, "they did."
"Very convenient," Castle comments as Kate drives back to Manhattan. "Renier sells the cars for cash. That means he can put anything he wants on the paperwork with no one the wiser. From the look of things, he's been stuffing his pockets for years, and probably not just on sales to Lazarus."
Kate drums her fingers against the steering wheel. "That's a problem for the IRS and the New York Dept. of the Treasury. I'm more concerned with what Vulcan Simmons was hiding in the cars. If Simmons built smuggling compartments into them, CSU should be able to find them. Maybe there's a trace of whatever was transported."
"Whatever it is might be in Simmons's safe," Castle reminds her. "I wonder if it's open yet?"
"CSU would have to sweep the area around it first. And they'd have to clear the whole place before ESU could blow it. But hopefully, Wong was able to hook it up to his laptop or something and tell it to unlock itself. I'm going to head back to Washington Heights. Maybe we'll get lucky."
As Kate and Castle enter the body shop, Wong looks up triumphantly from the safe with as close as he ever gets to a smile. "Just hacked the lock."
"What's in there?" Castle asks. "Drugs? Diamonds?"
"As far as I can see, neither one," the tech replies. "It's full of hard drives."
CSU tech Ruthie Zatella climbs out from the pit beneath a Lincoln town car. "I found a compartment welded underneath the vehicle, and it's something. It's heat, electrically, and magnetically shielded, but wouldn't hold much."
"How about a hard drive?" Kate asks.
Ruthie's perky features crinkle in a wide grin. "It's the perfect size for a hard drive."
"Can you tell what's on it?" Kate queries as Wong attaches a hard drive to an air-gapped computer.
The tech starts typing. "No dice. Not this one. Looks like they use a double encryption. One key is relatively public, but then another would have to be transmitted to the recipient. Without that second key, it could take days, weeks, or years to decrypt."
"Then we're screwed?" Castle questions.
"Maybe not," Wong replies. "There was a thumb drive in the safe in an envelope with one of the hard drives. It might have an encryption key on it."
"Maybe Simmons was going to send it separately or hand it over in person," Castle speculates as Wong connects another hard drive and at a prompt inserts the thumb drive.
"We're in!" the Tech announces.
Castle peers over Wong's shoulder. "Wow! Kate, look at this. Not what I was expecting. Nothing about drug shipments or money laundering just…."
"What the Russians would call kompromat," Kate picks up, "information that can be used to pressure or blackmail someone."
"The drugs are a sideline," Castle hypothesizes. "Information has always been the real currency of power. And the puppet master is using it to pull the strings he needs to get more of it. That explains why our friend would be so interested. His people deal in the same currency. But that still doesn't give us the connection we need."
"CSU swept everything from the body shop," Kate says. "Maybe something else they find will."
"So when do you get a report?" Castle asks.
"Fingerprints should be any minute. DNA and trace, probably not at least until tomorrow morning. Maybe longer."
"Want a coffee while we wait?" Castle offers.
"Better make it decaf."
"The preliminary lab report's coming in now, Castle," Kate announces, staring impatiently at her computer screen.
"What did they find?"
"They've got prints. They belong to a Richard Coonan. It took a while for the ID to come through because he was in the military database. "
"Wait a minute! Isn't Dick Coonan the philanthropist who built all those schools in Afghanistan?"
"It could be the same one," Kate considers. "The Afghanistan connection would make sense. While I run a check on him from here, can you use your resources at your loft to see what you can find out?"
"Consider me already out the door."
Castle is tempted to pour a scotch but doesn't want to lose focus as he perches on the edge of his desk chair in front of his laptop. Finding information on Dick Coonan isn't difficult. If anything, there's too much of it. The man has a slick website with pictures of a school built in a war-torn village and of Coonan posing with the village elders. Castle notices that despite declarations of building ten schools, there's only a picture of one. That's interesting. The site also lists awards Coonan received for his good works, including a photo of him getting one from Senator Brinkman. And there, in the background of the photo, is William Bracken.
It makes sense for Bracken to be with Brinkman. The Senator can't function long without him. But the photo shows that Bracken and Coonan are at least acquainted – perhaps a lot more than that. Castle notes Coonan's proudly described background highlighting his time in special ops. The man would know how to use a knife, particularly one favored by the military.
Switching to his database of newspaper articles, Castle searches for something less skewed by PR. He finds an old blurb about a St. Patrick's Day celebration for the youth in Hell's Kitchen. There are two Coonans, Dick and Jack. The fest was sponsored by Finn Rourke, a local businessman rumored to head the Westies gang. So the Coonan boys were drawn into the criminal class at an early age. And what better place for Dick to sharpen his skills as an assassin than the army? The story's all starting to come together.