Now What? Chapter 9

Rick enters the hall outside Lanie's autopsy lab carrying a container of dark roast black coffee to counteract the muzziness of a troubled night as well as one holding a half-skim-milk latte with two pumps of sugar-free vanilla. He hands Kate the latte. "What's with the news vans out front, Beckett?"

"They're trying to sniff out information on our victim."

"Who is?"

"Joe McUsic, Juror Number Seven in the Lila Addison case."

"The Addison case! The press has been salivating over nuggets from that. So what happened to McUsic?"

"He dropped dead during the closing argument. From her preliminary examination, Lanie thinks he was poisoned. She may have more now."

"Grisham isn't the only one who can write about trial dramas. The death of a juror could make for an interesting plotline. Thanks for the call, Beckett."

"I told you I'd call, Castle. And I can use an extra pair of eyes. The DA, Lou Karnacki, and Montgomery are old friends. When Karnacki decided to prosecute this case himself, he told the captain that he wanted to make sure law enforcement wouldn't drop the ball."

"And you intend to keep it firmly in your glove, so to speak."

Kate nods. "You know it."

Lanie eyes the coffee containers. "You need to leave those outside. I can't take a chance of any coffee contamination around the body. But Castle, if you were bringing coffee, you could have brought something for me."

"You don't drink coffee." Castle points out.

"Well, it wouldn't have killed you to bring a bear claw or something," Lanie retorts.

"I'll keep that in mind for my next foray into your domain," Rick promises. "But what's so special about coffee and this victim?"

He was poisoned with cyanide."

"Unoriginal but effective," Rick observes.

"And you think it was in his coffee?" Kate queries.

"Mm-hmm," the ME confirms. "There were brownish stains in his mouth."

"How long after he consumed the cyanide did he die?' Kate inquires.

"It would have been no more than 15 minutes," Lanie offers. "According to the bailiff wrangling the jurors, Mr. McUsic arrived this morning at 8:37 and died at approximately 9:13."

"Fifteen minutes. That means he was poisoned at the courthouse," Kate calculates.

"The mathematics of murder," Rick declares. "So, who at the courthouse would have benefitted from the death of a juror?"

"Chances are the defense counsel will petition for a mistrial," Kate figures. "So, the defendant."

"Right," Castle agrees. "And his lawyer could also claim that all the publicity surrounding the murder of a juror would make it impossible to recruit an unbiased jury for a new trial."

Kate nods. "The case could be postponed indefinitely."

"Karnacki must have steam coming out of his ears," Rick assumes. "Having a trial this heavily publicized blow up on him could wreak havoc at election time."

"Which is why he wants us to solve McUsic's murder ASAP so he can minimize the damage," Kate says.

"That and because the Addison family is on his neck to put someone away and they're the biggest supporters of his campaign," Lanie adds. "Hey, I read the news. When the pressure comes down, it helps to know where it's coming from."

"Yes, it does," Kate agrees.

"If the murder did take place in the courthouse, it shouldn't be much of a trick to solve it," Castle opines. "The place has cameras almost everywhere but the courtroom itself. We scrub the video for someone handing Joe a cup of Joe and –what's that sound from Law and Order, the donk-donk? We have a killer behind bars."

Kate sighs. "Castle, I hope it's that simple."

Rick, Kate, Ryan, and Esposito squint at four monitors, searching for killer coffee. Ryan jabs a finger toward his screen. That's him, Joe the juror at the coffee machine! Timestamp has it 14 minutes before he died." The others rush to look over his shoulder. "Look, that tall black dude is handing him a cup."

"Who is that?" Kate wonders.

Rick points up at a screen displaying the feed from ZNN. "I believe that is the not-so-gentleman giving an interview to Dana Cash at this very moment. According to the name on ZNN's handy chyron, that's the defendant, Otis Williams' cousin Wardell."

"Dana Cash isn't the only one about to interview him," Kate declares.

Wardell Williams disdainfully regards the images on Interrogation One's laptop. "You're trying to accuse me of murder with that stupid-ass piece of video?"

"You and Otis were more than just cousins. Grew up in the same household, more like brothers." Kate says.

"Yeah, me and O tight. What of it?" Wardell retorts.

"So, it makes sense you'd do anything for him, including murder a juror," Rick asserts.

Wardell shakes his head. "Man, y'all are reaching."

"Are we?" Kate presses. "We found video of you talking to another juror."

"More like menacing," Rick inserts.

"That's jury tampering," Kate continues.

Wardell's fingers curl into fists. "So accusing one black man of a murder he didn't commit isn't enough for you? What? Y'all trying for a deadly double? And I talked to a gang of folks in that courthouse. How am I supposed to know one of them is a juror?"

"Well, the juror badges on their shirts might have been a hint," Castle suggests.

"Using the video, the crime lab people pulled McUsic's cup out of the trash," Kate informs the suspect. "If it has cyanide in it, that's it, Wardell."

"It won't!" Wardell declares. "I just handed a guy his coffee. I didn't give nobody no cyanide."

"That's a double negative," Rick points out. "It could be taken as a confession."

The table vibrates under the impact of Wardell's fisted hand. "Sh*t!"

Kate looks up at a knock on the mirror. "Sounds like the lab results are in now."

"Don't go anywhere," Rick tells Wardell, following Kate out of the room.

"Bad news, Beckett," Esposito says. "The cup came up clean for cyanide."

"Is the lab sure it was the right cup?" Kate questions.

"It had McUsic's fingerprints on it – and Wardell's. He's in the system. It was the right cup," Esposito insists.

"Just the wrong murder weapon," Rick notes.

"I can hold Wardell anyway on jury tampering," Kate says. "Maybe he gave Joe the poison some other way."

"Ryan and I went over the video again," Esposito says. "The only time McUsic is close to Wardell is when Wardell hands him his coffee."

Kate shakes her head. "Damn! All right. Maybe by now, Lanie's found another way McUsic got dosed."

"Cyanide in the coffee was too easy," Rick opines. "There's no twist. Stories always have a twist."

"Castle, this isn't a story. This is real life," Kate reminds him.

"Or more like real death, so, back to the morgue?"

"We don't have anything better."

"So, if it wasn't the coffee, how was McUsic poisoned?" Kate demands.

"When I checked the stomach contents, I found a time-release capsule," Lanie reports. "It still had traces of cyanide in it."

"Someone puts cyanide in time-release capsules?" Rick asks. "Did McUsic have a cyanide prescription?"

Lanie's head bobs. "No, I talked to his physician. McUsic had lupus. He had a prescription for a steroid. He was supposed to take a capsule every morning to treat it. And there were trace amounts of the steroid on the capsule along with the cyanide."

"So someone who knew Joe took a steroid capsule every morning and switched his medicine out for poison, with the slow release extending the kill zone," Rick figures. "Someone would have to know him pretty well to manage something like that. Beckett, it looks like you've got a whole new suspect pool."

"Yeah," Kate agrees, "and I'm going to have to dive in fast."