Kate Beckett, Investigator Chapter 6
Kate doesn't recognize the name of the call coming into her cell, but it is local. She thumbs her acceptance. "Kate Beckett?" a male voice asks.
"This is Kate Beckett."
"This is Chasen Marwick. I am – I was – a firefighter. Sparky Fletcher suggested that I give you a call."
"Yes, Mr. Marwick, Sparky mentioned a firefighter who had been injured in a building developed by Nesgadol. Is that you?"
"Unfortunately it is, Ms. Beckett. And please call me Chase. It's easier than Marwick."
"OK Chase, I'm Kate. I hate to ask you to relive what happened to you, but I'm gathering information to hopefully get Nesgadol to answer for the damage that its playing fast and loose has done."
"Sparky filled me in, Kate. I understand. But there isn't that much to my personal story. The building wasn't in flashover. I was checking for anyone who hadn't evacuated. As far as I could see, the beam above me wasn't on fire. It might have been smoldering, but there weren't any flames. Then it suddenly gave way and fell on top of me. It fractured four vertebrae and severed my spinal cord. I haven't been able to walk since."
"I'm so sorry, Chase. Was there an investigation?" Kate asks.
"Oh yes. Our investigator suspected substandard wiring. But the Electrical Plan Review was submitted to the DOB and they didn't see a problem with it. Under the regs, no further review of the equipment was required. It already had a label of approval from an electrical testing lab. And the inspectors accepted the certifications for the building materials."
"So if there was anything wrong with the electrical equipment or the beam, the inspectors wouldn't have known about it?" Kate queries.
"No, they wouldn't," Chase confirms.
"But someone could have fudged the paperwork for the certifications," Kate suggests.
"I've always suspected that," Chase confides, "but I never had a way of proving it. Do you?"
"I don't know," Kate admits. "Nesgadol could have destroyed the evidence or buried it too deep to dig up. But if I can show a long-standing pattern, what happened to you may figure into it. If you have any documentation of the investigation into your injury, I'd appreciate copies."
"You'll get them, Kate – everything I have. This is my cell phone. You can text me the address where you want it to go."
"I'll do that, Chase. And thank you."
"Godspeed, Kate.'
As soon as Chase terminates the call, Kate texts him all the contact information for the Beckett Law office, crossing her fingers that it will do some good.
Castle shakes his head in disgust. "So the beam that paralyzed Chase wasn't even inspected and neither was the electrical equipment? Nesgadol could have been phonying up paperwork or having Gidon push limits all over the place with nobody the wiser. They would have just needed Gambitto to accelerate their schedules and kibosh any investigations."
"That's about the size of it," Kate says. "Nesgadol's probably been paying Gambitto off for twelve years. God only knows how many people have been hurt or endangered in that time. And the people in all the buildings Nesgadol put up are still at risk."
"So you want me to put some articles out there like I did with Bracken?" Castle asks.
"No. If you do that, Nesgadol could cover its tracks before Dad can ever bring anything to civil court or the D.A. can put a case together. But maybe a book, a fictionalized version of what's going on could help."
"You mean like to raise public awareness of the dangers that might be inherent where they live?"
"Yeah, something like that, without dropping too many clues to warn Nesgadol."
"Hmm," Castle considers. "I've already got my hero, an intrepid investigator. I can put her in another city to keep from pointing too close a finger at Nesgadol. But it would take a while to get a book out there. Writing full speed, it would still take me three months to finish it. That's Stephen King's number, not mine. He says it should never take more than three months to finish a book. But then he's never been a single father – or partnered with a highly efficient yet stunning police detective. Still, now that I'm no longer at the 12th Precinct, if I do finish it that fast, the publishing process could still take months. Depending on Black Pawn's schedule, it could take a year. By then, Nesgadol could blow up more buildings – maybe kill someone."
"It will certainly keep making people sick," Kate says. "And that's just with what I know so far. I haven't even sampled a load of carpet that came in yet."
"A book may not do the trick, at least not right away. But – how about a series of short stories? Playboy is usually the best market."
"You mean men really don't just look at the pictures?"
"Oh, we look. But that's not the only thing to do in the bathroom. The articles are good. And Playboy only accepts top-drawer fiction. In the sixties, it published Bond stories – picked up a lot of female readers that way. But in this case, Playboy might not be my best target. If you were in an airport and had 30 seconds to pick a magazine at the newsstand, what would you pick?"
"I wouldn't pick a magazine, I'd pick a book," Kate declares. "I don't really care which celebrity is kissing whom this week."
Castle sighs. "Work with me, Beckett. Pretend the semi with the book shipment jackknifed on the freeway. Magazines are your only choice. What would you read?"
"Probably the New Yorker. The writing is good and it has the best cartoons."
"The New Yorker," Castle repeats, grinning. "I can get Paula to pitch a series to the editor and push for a tight publishing schedule. Castle pulls Kate in for an enthusiastic kiss. "Perfect! I'll disguise the location and the characters, but the readers will be savvy enough to figure out the where and who. We'll make people aware, Kate. And there won't be a damn thing Nesgadol can do about it without showing its hand."
After breaking the seal on the container holding Nesgadol's carpet, Kate tugs open the steel doors. She can't smell anything through her carbon-filtered mask, but a film on the surface of the walls confirms what she'd suspected. The carpet spent the trip outgassing chemicals. Her only remaining questions are, "What's left?" and "Will it be dangerous to the occupants of the dwellings where it's installed?" The discomfort in Kate's belly tells her that the answer to the second question is probably yes. Regardless, she has to go through the motions of taking samples and submitting them to Marley. Still, suspecting that Wigdor will bury any of Marley's results that Nesgadol won't like, she takes a second set of samples.
Kate wishes that she still had access to the police lab, but she lost that privilege when she resigned from the NYPD. She'll be using another lab, one her father's dealt with over the years. The lab director, Tom MacNee, Ph.D., is one of the few colleagues who stuck by Jim Beckett during his worst years. He runs a well-equipped shop. He also hires qualified analysts, and his gray hair and slight Scottish burr can impress and charm juries. Kate smiles behind her mask as she bags her additional carpet cuttings. MacNee's testimony could be a very sharp nail in Nesgadol's coffin.