Confession Chapter 39
"So, Tish," Mary Waters inquires of Letisha Chappers, "do you really believe it's worth it to work with Cole Maddox? From what I've seen concerning him so far, he's basically an assassin. He's been one in New York and from what I can make out from his redacted record, he served as one in Afghanistan. The country would be safer with him in maximum security for the rest of his life."
"You're right about where he belongs," Tish agrees. "But his boss is worse. We're only scratching the surface about how many deaths he's behind. That doesn't even take into account the drug-related ones. And he could be headed for the White House. It's hard to imagine a much worse scenario."
"What about Carmack?" Waters asks. "Bracken's been funneling a lot of his orders through him, including the ones to Maddox. That's going to make it harder to make a direct connection between Reince Prince's murder and the boss man."
"Unless we flip Carmack," Tish points out. "With what Maddox can give us, Carmack will either have to cooperate or end up in ADX."
"The Alcatraz of the Rockies," Waters muses. "As an ex-cop, he wouldn't last very long. And he might not want to. I think it's time to take what we have to Liz. We'll need her to sign off on allocating the resources to follow up on what Maddox is offering and bust Simmons' Westchester operation. Besides, she'll get a kick out of a frontal assault on a piece of Bracken's fiefdom."
"Yeah," Tish considers, "me too."
"Some of the DNA on the couch left in Nedra Voles' old apartment is a match to Machad O'Leary," Kate announces to Castle as she reads the report that was waiting at the start of her shift. We can use that to get a court order to access her financials and phone records. That should help us track her down."
"Great!" Castle responds, handing Kate a freshly made vanilla latte. "So what do we do until it comes through?"
"Perlmutter should have his autopsy report on O'Leary. You two haven't had one of your talks in a while. Feel like a trip to the morgue?"
"To visit our crusty, crotchety, but always endearing M.E.? It would be my pleasure."
Kate rolls her eyes. "You really have been away too long, Babe."
Castle can feel Perlmutter's glare even before he sees it. "Mr. Castle, I thought you'd been exorcised from the NYPD."
Castle flutters his eyelashes. "Only a temporary banishment until the new regime could be made aware of my true worth."
Perlmutter snorts. "True worth? Like a penny. You can only use it for one cent's worth but it costs two cents to put it out there. Sooner or later they will be out of circulation – permanently – as will you."
"Like your customers, we'll all be out of circulation someday, Perlmutter," Castle points out. "So what can you tell us about the one in question, Machad O'Leary?"
Perlmutter pointedly turns toward Kate. "Detective Beckett, as I opined, correctly, at the scene, Mr. O'Leary was shot at close range with a .22 caliber pistol."
"Yes, I got the ballistics report," Kate says. "The weapon was a Stinger – small, light, easy to conceal. What else?"
"Mr. O'Leary had sex not long before he died. There were still remnants of semen on his genitals and undergarments."
"That's one way for a killer to get close," Castle observes.
"Any DNA from his partner?" Kate asks.
"Yes. No match in CODIS, but female. Initial phenotype says redhead, green eyes, between 5'3" and 5'6""
"How about ethnicity?" Castle inquires.
"Like most of us, Mr. Castle, a mix, but primarily Celtic and Mediterranean."
Kate and Castle exchange looks. "Could the Mediterranean give her a darker skin tone than most redheads?" Kate asks.
"It could," Perlmutter allows.
"Beckett, it all fits," Castle says. "Nedra Voles had to be O'Leary's killer. She got tired of the sonofabitch beating on her, lured him in with sex, and then pulled out her tiny but effective gun. She put an end to his sorry-ass life before he put an end to hers. But wouldn't any halfway decent defense attorney claim it was justifiable homicide?"
"It's possible," Kate says. "But if O'Leary did beat Nedra, she might have denied it the way Willa Metry did. And we're not lawyers, we're cops. Well, I'm a cop. It's my job to bring in the suspect, not pass judgment. Which means we have to find Nedra."
"How long will it be until the paperwork comes in?" Castle queries.
"If we're lucky, we should have something in a few hours. If not, it might not show up until tomorrow."
"I don't suppose Gates would allow you to take a long lunch while we wait?"
"I'm not about to push my luck," Kate decides. "But there's nothing to stop you from doing whatever you want."
"What I want is to build theory with you. We have our suspect. There must be a way to figure out where she'd go. How about if I fetch some leftover lasagna from the loft and we can mull the case over together?"
"Sounds like a plan."
"Nedra went somewhere she couldn't take her couch," Castle offers after dabbing tomato sauce from his upper lip. "So she must have been heading for a smaller space than her previous apartment."
"Castle, that would apply to millions of apartments, just in the city. And she could have gone anywhere."
"That's true, but enough people I've known have moved for me to know it's a lot harder and more expensive if you're going to cross state lines. And if she was leaving the city, she could probably get a bigger place, not a smaller one. So there's a good chance she might still be here somewhere."
"It's a big city."
Castle takes a drink of bottled water. He would have preferred wine with the pasta, but at Gates' 12th Precinct, he wouldn't dare to try. "Maybe we can eliminate sections of it. For the most part, Manhattan has more expensive housing than the other boroughs. That would fit with a smaller place. So we may not be talking bridge or tunnel. But if she's trying to fly below the radar, she'd want somewhere people wouldn't know or recognize her, possibly a totally different neighborhood. So where in Manhattan is far enough away and has even smaller apartments than where she was living before?"
"Either the East Village or above 96th Street," Kate figures. "I did a fair amount of looking before I settled on my place."
"And which location would be more likely if she wanted to completely disappear?" Castle wonders.
"Redheads stand out wherever they are. She'd probably dye her hair," Kate guesses. "She already has darker skin. Given the demographics of lower vs. upper Manhattan, she'd blend in better above 96th Street."
"Then that's where we should concentrate our search," Castle declares. "Theory built and we haven't even had dessert yet."
Kate shakes her head. "Castle, the cookies and stuff in the vending machines are about a million years old."
"Who said anything about the vending machines?" He reaches down into the canvas bag he used to bring the lasagna and extracts a small bakery box. "I made a quick stop at Fratelli's."
"Ooh, Castle, cannoli?"
"They'd just made a new batch. Gates can't put the kibosh on all the pleasurable pursuits around here."
Kate reaches for a pastry. "No, she sure can't."
