Richard Castle: Raging Heat

When all eyes in the room went from the flat screen to Gilbert, he dismissed their stares. Alicia’s especially bored into him in disgust.

“Oh come on, are you serious? I deny that.”

“It’s from the mouth of one of your human traffic victims,” said Rook.

“You print that, I’ll sue.” He turned to Heat. “You try to take that to court, you’ll get laughed out. It’s hearsay. Reality-show theater. Where’s the proof? It can’t be substantiated.”

“What if it could be?” asked Alicia. His head whipped toward her, but she was leaning the other way, sober faced, to address Heat.

“If it could be, that would be important,” said Nikki.

“Let’s talk about this then. I’m in trouble, I know it. I didn’t kill anyone. I’m so sorry I hurt that man, but I didn’t kill him, did I?”

Nikki had been in these conversations so often, she could lip-synch them. So she began. “Are you saying you want some kind of deal?”

“If I told you what Fabian was blackmailing him with, would that be worth something?”

“Do you know what it was?”

“She doesn’t. This is bullshit.”

“Would it help? What if I said I knew where the documents were?”

Heat said to Alicia, “Ms. Delamater, if you have material evidence to lead to an arrest and conviction in this case, I will offer you a deal.”

“What kind?”

“Fuck you both.”

“I will personally speak to the DA about making the most liberal deal possible. I can’t promise you what, but I can promise it will be the best they can do.”

They waited as Alicia, the cast out mistress and political liability, weighed all that. “They were shipping manifests.” She fixed an icy grin on her ex-boyfriend, who rolled his eyes. “Shipping manifests, including names of men, women, and children I realize now must have been slaves, or whatever you’d call them.” Gilbert dismissed her with a loud exhale, but she went on. “There is also accounting of how much was paid per unit. That must mean people.”

“You’re guessing.”

Unfazed by him, no longer under his thumb, Alicia continued. “There was more. Not only manifests but an accounting printout of bank transfers going back over nine years. I spent a whole weekend reading them after you shut me out, Keith.”

“What kinds of transfers were they?” asked Heat.

“They all came out of the big fund generated by moving the units. Units , God, that’s sick. But the payouts were a million here, a half mill there — millions and millions over time to accounts with weird names. Let me think. Most of the payments went to one called Framers Foremost.”

“Alicia,” snapped Gilbert.

“Framers Foremost?” said Rook. “That’s a super PAC named after the framers of the Constitution. They’re a clearinghouse that bankrolls political candidates.” He turned to Gilbert. “So that’s it. You were using your ships for human trafficking so you could generate income off the books to launder into a political war chest. Brilliant!”

And then Rook realized what he had said. “I mean, in a completely evil-genius sort of way. Ah…Heat?”

“Is that why you were doing all this, Mr. Gilbert? To skirt election laws to launder your campaign funds as soft money to PACs?”

“Enjoy yourselves. This is all talk.”

“No, I have the documents,” said Alicia. “I noticed some things had been moved in my garage and found a manila envelope hidden under my golf bag a few days after the shooting — after you told me you’d handle everything. I kept it, in case someday one of the things you decided to handle was me. Same reason I kept the gun instead of throwing it in the ocean like I told you I did.”

Gilbert scoffed. “You’re bullshitting. If you even do have any documents—”

“Oh, I do,” said Alicia to Heat. “In a friend’s safe-deposit in Sag Harbor.”

“Doesn’t matter. Doctored papers with no verification? Illegally obtained? By fucking lowlife, Third World scavengers? My lawyers would suppress without breaking a sweat. You’ve shown nothing here linking me to any of this.”

Nikki flopped back in her chair and searched the faces of her squad. “He’s right. I hate to say it, but he’s right.”

“About fucking time.” Gilbert rose to leave.

“So there’s only one thing left to do.” Heat nodded, and Detective Raley bent over the video controls.

“Can I say it?” asked Rook.

Raley said, “You got it.”

Rook stood up. “Cue the zombies.”

The harsh scraping of a creaking door filled the conference room, but it wasn’t from Keith Gilbert leaving. In fact, upon hearing it, he took his palm off the brushed aluminum handle and turned to gape at the flat screen with everyone else.

It was nighttime on the video, and the camera panned across dark forms lying on sand. This was amateur handheld stuff — uneven moves and a rocking horizon. But the audio sounded professional-grade, especially the wolf howl that had to have come from a sound effect recording. Then a familiar — even iconic — musical beat began, and the dark forms all stood up at once, revealing dozens of young people in tattered rags and hokey stage makeup.

Zombies.

When the colossal signature notes of Michael Jackson’s Thriller sounded, the splash of brass and organ raised gooseflesh on Heat. The song always had that impact, even as a little girl, but more so at that moment as she watched her prime suspect tugging at his goatee, watching the case against him become undead. “You recognize this, Keith?” she shouted over the din. On the giant LED behind her, college students threw their heads back, stomped, and rotated in choreographed unison, lit by moonlight and flaming tiki torches.

“Let me refresh your memory,” Nikki said. “That’s your backyard at Cosmo. And this is the Thriller flash mob one of my detectives found posted on YouTube.” Over at the video deck, Raley took a slight bow.

“So? It was annoying then, and it’s annoying now.”

She took a step nearer so she wouldn’t have to yell. “I know. So annoying that you called the police.”

Rook did a Vincent Price impression. “For terrorizing yawl’s neighborhood.”

The music on the video abruptly stopped and the dance lines sputtered to a halt as several Southampton cops arrived on the scene. One of the undead, through a blistered, ash-blue face with one side melting, said something like, “We’re just having a beach party” to a policeman.

“I don’t see why this is relevant,” boomed Gilbert, in a voice still pitched to be heard over the music. But just as he said it, there was a chorus of boos from the college kids. The camera operator panned to the edge of the mob and zoomed to Keith Gilbert who was in animated discussion with another cop, a uniformed sergeant.

He was far enough away that only pieces of his diatribe could be picked out. Snippets came though like “my fucking taxes,” and “private property” that were as embarrassing as they were trite. Nikki wondered how many times law enforcement in wealthy neighborhoods had to endure those words. Then Heat saw what she was waiting for and called to Raley, “OK, Sean, right there.”

The video froze on a still vignette of the patient Southampton Village police sergeant, the irate Cosmo resident, and several men who were standing behind him. They were in the dim shadows, but recognizable to those who knew Nicholas Bjorklund, Roderick Floyd, and Zarek Braun. The first two men, Heat had killed when they attacked her in Chelsea. The third man was quite alive. Nikki didn’t turn, but she heard him sniff back sharply at the other end of the table. Gilbert said nothing. His eyes pinballed in their sockets as he scrambled to access his next lie.