54. Chapter 54

Chapter 54

On Monday afternoon a week later, Agent Jordan Shaw breezed into the twelfth with her partner, Agent Avery, and headed straight for the captain's office just as Castle and Beckett were leaving the breakroom with coffee. She slowed down only briefly when Beckett said, "Agent Shaw? I hear we have an FBI case among us again."

"I'll talk to you as soon as I've seen your captain," she answered. "Protocol. Good to see you again." Then she continued her trip to Captain Gates's office…on script for anyone who might hear, as well as on the legitimate case she had managed to be assigned to in New York.

"So, does this mean they start rolling in the cool toys now?" Castle asked, looking forward to the gadgets.

Jordan returned, told Agent Avery to have the team set up in the conference room, and pointed out where to find it. Then she turned to Beckett and Castle. "Where's the rest of your team?"

"Interviewing a witness. They should be back in half an hour, maybe forty-five minutes. What are we working on?"

"A kidnapping. For several months we'd seen nothing but dead ends until this weekend, then we had a lead in Brooklyn."

"Brooklyn? Does that mean we're getting a case from another precinct?"

"Right. We'd worked with you before. No idea what we'd find at the sixty-eighth. Working with a competent known quantity made sense, so we cleared it through 1PP. We'll need the file from that precinct, though. Captain Gates has already requested it."

"Okay. I think I'll call and tell them that I'll pick the files up myself. I can try to sooth some ruffled feathers. Might gain us a little more cooperation if we need their help with anything later."

"Couldn't hurt, I guess."

Beckett made her phone call and then said, "Come on, Castle. Let's go mend some bridges."

When they entered the sixty-eighth precinct, they were not welcomed with open arms. They asked for the correct floor; and on reaching it they were directed to Detectives Flanagan and Dorset, who had started working the case on Saturday.

"Detective Kate Beckett from the twelfth," she said, offering her hand.

Each of the other detectives shook her hand grudgingly. "I know who you are," Flanagan answered. "You're the one who works with that Castle guy. He gets you in the news all the time. That what this is about? The FBI wanted a little more publicity?"

"Nothing like that," Beckett answered. "The captain told us our team was requested." When Flanagan looked surprised, she explained, "We worked with Agent Shaw on a case a couple of years ago, and it went pretty well. As feds go, they weren't too bad."

The other detectives looked skeptical and Dorset mumbled, "Well, good luck with that."

"After a few rough spots while we learned to get along, all of us worked together pretty well. I guess when they were coming in from out of town, they figured better the devil you know than the one you don't. Listen, I've been where you are, and it stinks. All I can do is apologize that I have to do this, but my hands are tied, too. The captain was going to have the file ponied over, but I thought I owed you the apology face to face."

The two other detectives seemed to loosen up a little at that.

"We also wanted to see if you had any insights that might not be in the file…something that didn't quite feel right…a gut feeling about something. It's hard to put those things on paper, and a good detective's gut instinct isn't something to be ignored. If the victim is still around here, we want to help her as much as you do."

It was still slightly grudging, but Dorset told them, "There was one guy, the manager at the restaurant next to the alley." He picked up the file and pointed him out. "The woman was working there, and everything he said checked out; but there was something about him that felt wrong, you know. We couldn't put a finger on it, but we were about to look into him when we got the call this morning. Might not hurt to start there." Then he looked at Castle, who had been standing in the background letting Beckett take care of the bridge mending. "This guy with you?" he asked Beckett.

"Yeah, he is," she answered with a smile. "Flanagan, Dorset, meet that Castle guy."

"Richard Castle," her husband said, stepping forward wearing his friendliest smile and reaching to shake hands. "Sorry about this. I know how the folks at the twelfth react to the same thing. We appreciate your help."

"Yeah, well there's nothing to be done for it," Flanagan answered. "You'll let us know how it turns out?"

"We'll be sure to do that."

Dorset handed her the folder, then Flanagan asked, "Kevin Ryan still at the twelfth?"

"Yeah. On my team as a matter of fact. He'll be working this, too," she answered.

"That so? Well give him my regards." He gave them a small smile. "He and my son were friends all through school. Kev's a good guy."

"He is that," Castle agreed, and Beckett gave them a smile and a nod of agreement.

"Thanks for the help," she said as they left. "I owe you one."

Once they were in the car, Castle looked at his wife and said proudly, "And you call me a silver-tongued devil. You had those guys eating out of your hand."

"Yeah, well most of it was being in total sympathy with them. I guess that came through."

"Well, whatever. I was impressed. Didn't look like it hurt that Ryan is one of yours, either. Knowing Ryan seemed to raise your approval rating."

By the time they returned to the twelfth, Ryan and Esposito were back, talking to Agents Shaw and Avery while they waited for Castle and Beckett to join them.

"We thought we might as well talk to all of you at once," Jordan explained.

"Detective Flanagan sends his regards, Ryan. He asked if you were still here. It's his case we're taking." Beckett told him.

"Ouch. I guess he and Dorset weren't happy about that," Ryan answered.

"No, but he seemed a little less grouchy when he heard you were on this team," Castle reported. "You should have seen Beckett. She apologized, and sympathized, and actually got a little smile out of Flanagan before we left…and a piece of information from Dorset."

"Well, you know, we've been there a couple of times with people less willing to work with competent city cops than Shaw and Avery are." Getting to the case, she told them, "Dorset said something about a restaurant next to the alley the victim was taken from. He said she worked there and that something didn't feel right about the manager…suggested we start there."

"Well, Beckett, I guess you're designated chief diplomatic liaison," Jordan Shaw teased. Then she began talking about her case. "As I said, the original kidnapping took place in Iowa, went cold in Cleveland and had gone nowhere until late Saturday afternoon. A witness in a car across from that alley you mentioned saw a woman taken at gunpoint from the alley and shoved into a waiting car. She had a water bottle with her when she was taken, but she dropped it when the gunman yanked her across the sidewalk. Lucky for us, the witness wasn't your typical New Yorker. He called it in and gave a description of the car and the colors on the out-of-state plates. The police found the bottle exactly where the witness described. Their search for the prints on the bottle alerted us that someone was trying to identify our kidnapping victim, Vera Sullivan, by the way; and here we are. She's a secretary for a construction company, no problems with family and friends, no known enemies, and nobody seems to have a reason to want her to disappear. There was a jealous ex-boyfriend, but he left town with no forwarding address not long after they broke up. A neighbor saw two men in hoodies dragging her to a car, but it was dark, so she couldn't describe the car, let alone the kidnappers. Vera was abducted from her house the night before her engagement party, but the new boyfriend has an iron clad alibi."

"Any sign of the ex-boyfriend?"

"No. No credit or debit card use, no bank account activity, no use of his driver's license as ID, nothing showing as income. His social is as inactive as anything else. Poof. He's gone."

Shaw handed them copies of all the information they had from their initial investigation as well as the brief time they could account for in Cleveland. The rest of the afternoon was spent getting Beckett's team up to speed on the information, fielding possibilities, and deciding where to go from there.

"Is Avery included in everything?" Beckett asked pointedly as she and Shaw had a moment in an open area alone.

"All of it," Shaw answered. "We're working on it together with a couple of others in different locations."

Beckett nodded as they returned to the conference room. "Would you and Avery want to have dinner with our family tonight? We're not too far from the precinct if we need to get back quickly for any reason."

"That sounds good. I'm in. I'll check with him."

"We're going to go home and probably order in, but we'll at least set a decent table," Beckett promised with a smile.

"I don't have to cook or sit in a restaurant in a crowd of strangers. I'll be easy to please," Shaw assured her.

After speaking to Avery, she let Beckett know they would both be there, then she went and assigned half of her work force to stay until early morning and the other half to come in early to relieve them. They were left with instructions as to what to look for and told to call her if there was any progress.

xxxxx

When the agents arrived at the loft, Martha answered the door in full Martha mode, surprising them.

"Come in, come in," she said effusively. "I'm Martha Rodgers, Richard's mother, and the other redhead over there is his daughter, Alexis." Alexis smiled and waved from the kitchen where she was helping put the serving dishes on the table.

"I'm Shawn Avery. It's good to meet you," Avery said, offering his hand.

Martha took his hand firmly in both of her own. "We're so glad you came. Good to meet you, too." She then reached for Jordan. "And you must be Jordan Shaw. I missed meeting you last summer. Would you like something to drink?" As she spoke, she placed a hand at Shaw's elbow and guided her toward the dining table, and Shawn Avery was stifling a laugh behind them.

"My mother takes a little getting used to," Castle explained. "She's never been accused of being a shrinking violet."

"Don't pick on your mother," Kate scolded.

"If I didn't pick on my mother, she'd think I was ill," he retorted.

"Thank you for trying, Darling, but we both know he's incorrigible," Martha answered

Jordan and Avery were watching the back and forth like a tennis match and looking as if they were wondering what they got themselves into.

"Yes, This happens a lot," Alexis said as she put the last bowl on the table. "The two of you can sit here," she added, pointing out two chairs.

They both thanked her and sat down, and the others followed.

"Welcome to the Castles at home," Kate told them playfully. "Help yourselves. You must be hungry by now. We can talk later. Everything is set up in the study to show you efficiently."

"This looks good," Avery said. "I think I'm hungrier than I thought."

An easy interchange flowed between everyone at the table, though they were steering clear of the conversational elephant in the room. Jordan started to ask a question, then looked at Alexis and stopped.

"You can ask, Jordan," Castle assured her. "The family knows most of what you will when you leave tonight. Despite the picture you got when you walked in the door, our family, Kate's father included, can be trusted. Kate and I talked about it. All three of them are too perceptive to miss that something was going on. We haven't mentioned all the names yet, but they know the circumstances we're dealing with. If we have to gather them up and get them to a safe place, they should know how important it is to move when they need to."

"I can't speak to that until I know more of what you need me to know."

"We've finished dinner," Martha said, looking quite sensible and understanding by this point in the evening. "Let me serve dessert, and all of you can take it to the study and tackle this unwieldy mass of information. Alexis and I will take care of the kitchen."

"I'll get the plates, Grams," Alexis offered. "You get the cake."

Once they were ensconced in the study, Castle turned the lights down and picked up the remote for his smartboard.

He smiled at the two agents and said, "I had to have one of these after getting the chance to play with the one you brought last time you were here. This one is an offline connection, though. I use this setup for my books, and I don't want spoilers escaping until I'm ready. And I certainly don't want this hacked."

Kate closed the blinds, then Castle clicked the smartboard into action and brought up his murder board. They started explaining from the beginning, answering questions and showing Shaw and Avery the questions that didn't yet have answers.

"When you came to see me last summer, you said something about a possible lead on the man who shot me," Kate mentioned cautiously. "The case you were working on…was it Cole Maddox...Cedric Marks?"

Shaw and Avery gave each other a questioning look, and Avery nodded.

"By now, I'm sure you don't want this to get out any more than we do," Jordan said, "so we're going to tell you some of what we know. I do ask that you don't tell your family. I'm not sure it's a good idea that they know as much as they do."

"As the evening progressed, I think you could see that my mother is a much more stable and level-headed person than you probably thought when you first came in. My daughter is eighteen going on forty, and she understands how to handle this information. She's interning with the medical examiner. She saw Kate get shot and go through recovery. She's been exposed to enough to know how important it is. And neither of them will do anything that could compromise another member of the family."

"We talked about it before we told them, but they needed answers. I'm confident about them, too," Kate agreed.

"I'd love to meet your father, Kate," Jordan told her. "This is quite a family. Is he just as strong?"

"He is," Castle answered proudly. "A lawyer…a lot less flamboyant than my mother, though."

"I'm not sure I'd want to see the profile you'd come up with for us," Kate said with a little chuckle.

"It would be impressive," Shawn chimed in as he stood. Then he told Jordan, "I'm going back to the precinct. Three of our team went to dinner at the restaurant where Vera worked, just to get a general feel for the place, as well as getting a read on the manager. The others are looking into his background. After they left the restaurant, they canvassed places close by to see if anybody recognized Vera." Turning to his partner, he said, "Stay here and tell them what they deserve to know, Jordan. Unless something major comes up, I'll see you at six."

Kate and Castle stood to walk him to the door, but he stopped them.

"I'll find my way out. You'll want to stay and hear what we're working on. And in answer to your question, Kate, we've been looking into the man who hired Maddox. Sorry to steal your thunder, Jordan, but Kate has been through too much because of Bracken. I wanted to be here when she realized how much help she has now." With that, he reached out, gently squeezed her upper arm briefly and empathically, and left, closing the study door behind him.

Kate looked at her husband with tears gathering in her eyes and all but whispered, "Castle, they were already working on this. They know things we don't. There's already more than what we have."

She was trembling a little when she melted into his arms, and he held her gently. "I know, Sweetheart. I know." He walked with her to the sofa near Jordan's chair, never losing contact with her; and they sat down to hear what Jordan could tell them.

"We suspected something was going on with Bracken," Jordan began. "There were too many rumors for too long. Now and then, there was a little something to back them up, but never enough to prove anything. If there seemed to be something that might be used as evidence or someone who might be willing to talk, it would mysteriously be gone when an investigator got to it. We suspected that someone was informing him ahead of an investigation. When the request to take your case was turned down from so far up the chain of command, we were surprised; but it makes more sense now. He must have informants in the Bureau."

"We think he has informants at the precinct, too."

Bracken is a powerful man…and, from what we hear, not kind to his enemies. We didn't want to give ourselves away or to allow the wrong people know what we were doing; so a couple of years ago, we started quietly gathering information. It's been slow going; but there's a judge we work with for warrants, a good man who's in the job for all the right reasons…someone who can't be bought or coerced. And Shawn Avery is a tech genius. That's where he should be, but he'd rather work in the field; so I benefit from the best of both worlds. He bought a computer we could work from, and we've been in and out of a few accounts and records; but you need something solid to get a warrant, and things connected to Bracken are always hazy. I'm seeing why now. What you have here should give us some leverage, especially to look into any bank accounts in his name. We should also be able to get into Vulcan Simmons's accounts. Maybe we can make some connections. And having Bracken's bank account number and the money order receipts for the blackmail payments will be a big help."

"Will the affidavits the three cops signed still stand? I know the statute of limitations for blackmail has expired, but will they still help get warrants?"

"I think so," Jordan answered. "We have something similar that's more recent, but we didn't have enough solid evidence to back it up. Those could indicate the beginning of a pattern…prove he'd done it before."

"What about Bracken's ADA? We can't get the autopsy report from Rochester without making ourselves obvious, and we can't afford to do that."

"We can work that out. We can get answers to most of your unanswered questions, too.

"And Coonan's accounts? His connections to Bracken?"

"If the records still exist, we'll find them.

"Will you let us know what's happening when you can?" Kate asked.

"We'll do our best; but to avoid taking too many chances, it will probably be sporadic." She gave them a quick overview of what they suspected Bracken had done, none of it a surprise to them. Then they showed Jordan the demands they intended to make when they contacted Bracken and discussed how long to wait before calling him.

Jordan ended by saying, "What you need to do now is leave this alone and let us work on the things you shouldn't. You've done a great job of finding all this and coordinating it. It's going to make our jobs a lot easier."

"We've spent so much time on it lately, we'll probably have withdrawal," Castle commented.

"I wouldn't be surprised," Jordan said as she stood. "I should get some sleep so I can relieve Shawn in the morning."

"I have a supply of burner phones. And yes, I admit to being a little bit paranoid. The numbers for the entire team are programmed in them already. Would you like to take two of them…just in case?"

"Might as well. With Bracken, it's probably good to be a little bit paranoid. Do you really think you'll be safe long enough for us to check into things he might want to destroy if he knows we're looking?"

"Assuming Smith was able to disappear as easily as he said he could, Bracken doesn't know the files have changed hands. I think we're okay until he feels confident enough test the waters again."

Kate and Castle walked her to the door. "We should do this again sometime without the angst."

"I would enjoy that. See you tomorrow."

xxxxx

Kate leaned into her husband's embrace after he locked up behind Jordan.

"I'm exhausted," she told him. "And relieved…and excited…and worried…and…"

"Me, too," he agreed.

"So what do you think? Shall we get some sleep…or at least try? Jordan is doing so much for us, we should be there bright and early to see if we can help her."

"Set your alarm for whenever you think bright and early should be, then. Shall we see if Mother and Alexis are still awake? Say goodnight and let them know the meeting with Jordan went well?"

Kate nodded, she left Jordan's things on the coffee table. Then they went upstairs and each of them knocked gently on a bedroom door.

"Of course we're still awake, Richard," Martha said as Alexis answered Kate's knock looking just as wide awake as her grandmother. "Well? How did it go?"

"Were they looking into Cole Maddox or the guy you've been looking for?"

"They were looking for the man who hired Cole Maddox…and Hal Lockwood, and Dick Coonan. The one who had Kate's Mom killed and tried to do the same to Kate. Jordan said what we gave them should allow them to get warrants to look into a lot more," Castle told them.

He draped an arm around his wife's shoulders as she said, "We thought you might want to know."

"Oh, I'm so happy for you." Martha reached for her son and daughter-in-law.

Alexis was quick with the same sentiment, also reaching for them.

They stood in a long, calming, celebratory group hug, heads together and hope in their hearts that the nightmare of dealing with Bracken might be over sometime in the foreseeable future. Castle kissed his two redheads on their cheeks, and then they all went to their rooms and slept well.