Confession Chapter 54
"Wow!" Castle shakes his head at the contents of a file. "Who would have thought there were so many people who would come out on the wrong end of a bankruptcy? I can point to more than one possible suspect from this one case. There are probably hundreds of them, maybe thousands. We need something that will winnow out the truly murderous ones."
"I know that expression, Babe. What are you thinking?" Kate queries.
"We found Oscar under a pile of garbage. It could have been a metaphor for burying the killer in garbage – a pursuit at which lawyers excel. But what if it wasn't? What if the case had something to do with literal garbage?"
"That's out there, Castle. Other than what's in the can in the kitchen, how many people have anything to do with garbage? I mean sanitation is a city service."
"True enough," Castle agrees, "which is what could make garbage an excellent criterion for trimming our list. Unless you have something better."
"I've got zip," Kate admits. "But you know, if we have keywords like garbage or trash, we can use them to search the official records. They may not have all the gory details, but it would be a lot faster."
Castle grins. "Brilliant, Beckett! Then we could bring the info back here to look for the juicy bits."
"And it will give us some direction when we interview Oscar's sister," Kate adds.
"If I use my computer at the loft and you use yours at the precinct, we can cut our search time in half," Castle proposes. "Then we can rendezvous back here – although for a rendezvous I'd prefer the Four Seasons. The VIP suite has a hot tub."
"Hard to read files in a hot tub, Castle."
"Ah, but it can make you forget you'd want to."
"We can talk about hot tubs later. We have a lot of work to do first."
Castle's brows jump. "First? Does that imply there will be a second?"
"For now, let's just worry about solving the murder."
Castle sighs. "Always the dedicated detective. I will make haste to my keyboard."
The word 'garbage" appears more often in court transcripts than Castle would have expected but more as a substitute for a more pithy term than as anything helpful. He can imagine what some of the lawyers and witnesses would have said outside of a courtroom. But right now he needs his research skills more than his fertile imagination.
His 20th or is it 21st case is the bankruptcy of Springsplits Enterprises, Inc. Springsplits is, or was, a company specializing in taking the separation of wastes out of its clients' hands. After going Chapter 7, it no longer exists. But while it did, it offered an enticing service. Their business customers didn't need to have separate receptacles for recyclables or segregate hazardous wastes. Springsplits would take care of all that for them – for a fee, of course.
It was an attractive proposition but worked better on paper than in practice. Hazardous waste streams contaminated both trash and recyclables. It all became hazardous waste. The accompanying high disposal costs were way beyond Springsplits' means. They went into Chapter 7 with liabilities exceeding their assets by millions of dollars. Their customers' contracts went unfulfilled and their subcontractors and other creditors were largely left out in the cold.
Castle can understand how the losers in the Springsplits bankruptcy easily could have seen Blumenfeld as heaping garbage on their heads. He picks up his phone to call Kate.
Castle strides across the law office of Oscar Blumenfeld to a file cabinet at the far end. "I remember seeing Springsplits in here. It takes up a whole drawer. Uh-huh, here it is. With just this case a lot of people got hurt, Beckett."
"Then the sooner we start checking them all out, the better. But we also need to go see Liddy Blumenfeld. She said she'd be dealing with arrangements for when Lanie can release the body, but she'll be available around four."
Castle checks his watch. "We have a couple of hours until then."
Kate reaches for a file. "Then we should make the most of them."
Liddy sinks onto a dark wood, brocade-covered couch in her apartment in a slowly gentrifying neighborhood. Kate and Castle take seats in matching wingback chairs. "I don't know how much I can help you, Detective," Liddy says. "Oscar never shared much of his work with me. He always said that if a lawyer never discusses his cases outside the office, he never has to worry about confidentiality issues."
Kate nods. "I can understand that, Ms. Blumenfeld. But just generally speaking, did your brother seem worried about anything, as if someone would want to hurt him?"
"He never said anything specific. But a couple of weeks ago when we went out to dinner together, he had pepper spray in his hand when we walked back to the car. I never saw him with any before then. And he wasn't eating as well, either. He loved a good steak. But that night, he ate barely half of his."
"Did he ever say anything about garbage?" Castle asks.
"Garbage? Why would… oh wait! I remember I was complaining about the sound of a sanitation truck that picks up around six in the morning while I'm still trying to sleep. I'm not due at work until nine and it's only a short subway ride from here. So I usually get up around seven-thirty. But that truck was always waking me up early. Usually, Oscar was sympathetic about things like that. He liked to get his sleep too. But that time he just told me that the city does a pretty good job and people should stick with it. I thought that was a little strange, and asked him what he was talking about. But he just said, 'Never mind' and told me about an online store that sells good earplugs."
"And that was it?" Kate presses. "Nothing else?"
"I'm sorry, Detective Beckett, but that was it. I wish I could be more helpful."
"You have been helpful, Ms. Blumenfeld," Kate assures her, "and once more, I'm sorry for your loss."
"I think you might really be on to something with the Springsplits thing, Castle," Kate says, starting the ignition of her unit. Her phone lets out a text alert. She turns off the car and checks her message. "It's from Lanie, she says she has Oscar Blumenfeld's cause of death."
"So, what was it?"
"She says she'll explain it when we get there."
"So, off to the ME?"
"Off to the ME."
"He was poisoned," Lanie says. "Cyanide. Inhaled. That's why there were no marks on the body. And with the degree of decomp, I needed a thorough analysis to be sure."
"Unoriginal, but effective," Castle comments. "And it would have been pretty quick acting, wouldn't it?"
"With the dose he got, it would have," Lanie agrees. "Someone sprayed it right in his face."
"And then covered him in garbage," Castle concludes. "But it must have happened sometime during the night. In the daytime, that area is full of pedestrians that would go by that alley."
"You may be right about when he was covered, but he wasn't killed there, Castle," Lanie says. From the way the blood settled in the body, it was moved."
"Which means that someone transported it," Kate realizes. "We need to check the traffic cams."
"Any chance of pulling the boys into this?" Castle wonders. "Scrubbing traffic footage and checking out Springsplits Enterprises' customers could take a lot of time. And there is…." He mouths "hot tub."
Kate smothers a giggle. "I'll ask Gates if I can have them back for a while."
