Now What? Chapter 33
Roy Montgomery stares at Kate's entry on the murder board. "Beckett, what's 'Dragon?'"
"It's the name associated with the guy who hired Chote to fly the copter. It's also what McCallister mentioned when he warned me not to look into my mother's murder. He said I woke the dragon. But he wouldn't tell me more – and now he can't. Chote doesn't know more, either. Wong got the account number of the transfer to Chote off his phone but hasn't been able to track it. He said it looked like it was set up to daisy chain through accounts all over the world. We handed it off to forensic accounting, but they said that if they could get it at all, it would take a while because they have to jump through hoops of foreign banking restrictions. So, I'm trying to figure out who else might be able to give the dragon a name."
"We were wondering if some of the retired cops who worked with Raglan and McCallister might know," Rick adds.
"You don't have to ask them," Montgomery says. "I was in my rookie year when they were pulling off their ransom operation. When that undercover FBI agent, Bob Armen, got killed, I knew that was their patrol area. I wanted to go to the DA but my FTO warned me off. He said the DA was dirtier than Raglan and McCallister were, and if I went to him, my next stop would be the morgue – as a client. So I kept my mouth shut but started gathering what evidence I could. As a rookie, it wasn't that much, but I do know one thing. They called him 'The Dragon.'"
"Who was it, Sir?" Kate questions.
"Bracken, William H. Bracken."
Rick's eyebrows jump. "The William H. Bracken who's running for senator?"
"Same guy. He must have used the grift he earned as DA to finance his campaign for Congress. He got himself on the Foreign Affairs Committee and Armed Services Committee. That would give him worldwide reach."
"Couldn't you take your evidence on him to someone?" Kate asks.
"While he was in power, I couldn't trust anyone in the city. Evelyn was pregnant by then, and I didn't dare make a move that would jeopardize my family. And then later, when Bracken was in congress, I took what I had to Lou Karnacki. He told me it wasn't enough to make a solid case, and if I tried to push it any further, I'd be the one ending up under the wheels of the bus. Damn! I didn't know Karnacki was crooked too. I believed him."
"Do you still have your evidence?" Rick asks.
"It's locked in a safe in my home office, but most of it is way past the statutes of limitations."
"There's no statute of limitations on murder," Kate points out. "And if he was behind my mother's death…."
"I don't have anything but suspicion on that, Beckett. If I had, I would have told you."
"We have more than suspicion that he's behind Raglan and McCallister's deaths," Rick says. "We have a direct connection through Lockwood."
Montgomery shakes his head. "But Lockwood's in the wind."
"Yes, but we know how Chote was paid. Lockwood's going to need money to stay in the wind. If we look for transfers out of the account used to pay Chote, Lockwood may be at the other end of them. And if he's running on cash, he'd have to show up somewhere to collect it. Bracken may be paying the phony cops, too. They could be more forthcoming than Lockwood. Can you put a watch on transactions from that account?"
"We can," Montgomery confirms.
"There weren't any cameras in the courtroom, but those phony cops had to run by some to get in that helicopter. Maybe we can put names to the faces and check their accounts, too," Kate proposes. "We can go at it from both directions."
"And there's a third," Rick offers. "A senatorial candidate will always have press sniffing after him looking for dirt. That goes double for one who's managed to amass as much power as Bracken would with his committee appointments. There was only one Gordon Burns, but there are a lot of other investigative reporters out there. I've used some of them as consultants in the past. I can hook up again to see what they have on Bracken. And Walt Shaw may have some contacts too. I'm sure he'd be willing to reach out in honor of Gordon's memory."
Kate throws her fists in the air. "Yes! Captain, can you retrieve your evidence on Bracken? I'll get the courtroom footage and see if we can put names to those dirty cops. And I'll see if I can find that nurse who patched up Chote. She could be on Bracken's payroll. Chote should remember where she was."
"Get Ryan and Esposito to help you with that," Montgomery advises.
"And I'll start on Shaw and the reporters," Rick says. "Bracken's never gonna know what hit him."
"Unless he hits one of you first," Montgomery points out. "By now, he has to know you're looking for him, and if he could hire Lockwood as a shooter, he could hire others. So watch yourselves."
"Yes, Sir," Kate agrees.
Montgomery starts toward his office. "Then let's stop standing around here and get to work."
Walt Shaw taps his pen against his desk. "William Bracken. Yes, I can remember Gordon bringing him up a couple of times when he was with the troops in Afghanistan. They thought the congressman was way more interested in the drug trade than he was in any progress against ISIS. He wondered if Bracken might be trying to get a little business on the side, but he was too busy reporting on the actual battle operations to get into it. And since Bracken's campaigning for senator, I have a couple of reporters on him now. They're young, but they're good. I can tell them to answer any of your questions they can."
"Great, Walt," Rick responds. "I appreciate it. So does Beckett."
"Hey, Gordon would have appreciated it. He hated dirty politicians. If that's what Bracken is, he would want him taken down."
Approaching the Beckett's desk, Esposito rocks on the balls of his feet. "We found the nurse, Beckett, real Meadowlands Mama."
"She used to work for the mob patching up their guys," Ryan adds. "But when they shifted operations, she was left out in the cold. She's known for picking up what jobs she can without asking questions. She admitted to getting a payoff from the Dragon. She doesn't know who he is and doesn't want to know who he is, but she was willing to cough up a copy of the transfer to her bank. The account matches the one that Chote was paid from."
"All right!" Kate says. "And I've been scrubbing the courthouse footage. Those phony cops were good at their jobs. They knew where the cameras were and kept their faces away from them. But I rechecked the footage we used to identify the helicopter and Chote. There was nothing else we could use on the video from ZNN, but a student from CUNY TV caught a good shot of one of the phonies' faces just before he boarded the copter. I have Wong running facial recognition now. It's the full face of a white guy. So, if there's an identified image of him out there somewhere, the algorithm should be able to find it."
