C8: Motive
A few hours later, the morgue doors swung open again and Kate walked in with Castle right behind her. She carried the small white vitamin bottle in an evidence bag and set it down on the steel table next to the bagged blue flower.
Lanie looked up from her notes and gave a quick nod. "Perfect timing. I was about to call you."
Kate tapped the bag with the pills. "We need a full tox run on these. Husband says she took one right before they left for the park. Brand is Fertilife, a fertility blend with extra iron. The bottle came via delivery this morning."
"Well, I don't find anything related to the pills during the examination," Lanie said as she pulled on fresh gloves and slid the bag closer. "But I'll double-check it. Give me a couple of hours for preliminary results and I can tell you if aconitine or anything else is hiding inside those capsules."
Kate crossed her arms and glanced at the flower evidence bag. "What about the poison on the petals? Anything new?"
Lanie straightened and picked up a tablet from the counter. She tapped the screen a few times and turned it so Kate and Castle could see the enlarged photo of the flower petals next to a side-by-side comparison image from a research database. The colors matched perfectly and the vein patterns lined up in a way that made the hybrid obvious even to a non-botanist.
"This is not your average monkshood from a garden center," Lanie said. "The aconitine concentration is unusually high and stable, which points to lab cultivation rather than wild harvest. I cross-referenced the morphology with every known Aconitum variant in public and restricted databases. The match came from a closed research project at Columbia University. Small team working on hybridizing Aconitum for pharmaceutical applications, mostly pain management derivatives. The program ran for eighteen months until an accident in the greenhouse three months ago. An explosion caused by a faulty pressure regulator. Three researchers died on the scene. The official report called it equipment failure. After that, the university shut everything down fast. Remaining samples and notes were supposedly destroyed or moved to secure disposal. No public records after the incident."
Kate studied the screen for a long moment. "So if someone kept plant material or extracted aconitine from that batch, we have a very narrow pool of people who could have done it. Researchers, lab techs, and anyone with access before the shutdown. That narrows your suspect list to a handful at most."
Castle had been quiet the whole time, which was never a good sign. Now he stood there with that wide stupid grin spreading across his face like he had just solved the entire mystery in his head.
Lanie noticed it immediately and pointed one gloved finger at him. "Wipe that grin off your face, Castle, before I wipe it off for you."
Kate looked back and forth between them. "Okay, what did I miss?"
Castle raised both hands in mock innocence but the grin refused to fade. "Oh, you do not know? Our good doctor here has a dinner date tonight. With the new guy. Travis Wilson. At Q3, no less. He is picking her up and everything. Do you have any idea how hard it is to get a reservation from that restaurant? I've been trying to get one for months."
Lanie shot Castle a look that could have frozen the entire Hudson. "It is dinner, Castle. Not a marriage proposal. And it is none of your business."
Kate turned to Lanie. "Really? You and Travis?"
Lanie shrugged one shoulder and busied herself adjusting the evidence bag. "It happened in the spur of the moment. He asked. I said yes. The man has good taste in restaurants and even better instincts on cases. Figured it could not hurt to see what else he is good at."
Castle leaned against the counter, still grinning. "This is fantastic. The stoic ex-undercover detective and the brilliant medical examiner. I can already see the chapter headings. Sparks in the morgue. Dinner with Death. Poison and Passion. I need to take notes." He quickly took out his notepad and pen and began to scribble.
Kate shook her head, but a small smile tugged at the corner of her mouth. "Focus Castle. We have a killer who used a lab-grade poison flower and possibly tampered with vitamins. Romance can wait until we lock someone up."
Lanie pointed at the door. "Both of you get out of my morgue so I can work. I will text you the tox results on the pills as soon as I have them."
...
[1 hour later]
[Castle's penthouse]
Castle pushed open the door and stepped inside, the faint scent of vanilla and chocolate hitting him before he even closed it behind him.
Alexis sat at the kitchen counter on one of the tall stools, spoon in hand, while Martha sat beside her with an expression of pure contentment. Six open tubs of ice cream formed a colorful semicircle in front of them.
Castle paused in the doorway for a second, taking in the scene, then let out a theatrical sigh. "Ooh, ice cream tasting without me? You two are breaking my heart here."
Alexis looked up first, a smear of strawberry on the corner of her mouth, and grinned. "Dad, you were gone forever. We had to start without you or risk brain freeze from waiting too long."
Martha lifted her spoon in greeting, a generous scoop of mint chocolate chip balanced on it. "Darling, join us. We are conducting serious research. This new brand claims superior creaminess, and we are putting that claim to the test."
Castle kicked off his shoes, hung his jacket on the back of a chair, and slid onto the stool next to Alexis. He reached for the nearest tub, chocolate fudge brownie, and helped himself to a large spoonful. The cold sweetness hit his tongue and he closed his eyes for a moment, savoring it before he spoke again.
"You will not believe what I just heard in the morgue," he said around the mouthful. "The new detective, Travis Wilson, got two reservations at Q3 just like that. He asked Lanie out, she said yes, and boom, eight o'clock tonight. Meanwhile, here I am, still trying to get a single seat for months. Months. I have called, I have emailed, I have even considered bribing the maître d' with signed first editions. Nothing works."
Alexis raised an eyebrow and licked her spoon clean. "Q3? The place with the molecular gastronomy menu that costs more than my tuition for a semester? He must have connections."
"Or charm," Martha added with a knowing smile. "Some men simply have it. Others write about it in books and hope it rubs off."
Castle pointed the spoon at her. "Low blow, Mother. I have charm. I have oceans of charm. What I do not have is a reservation at Q3 on short notice. This Travis guy walks in, says two words to Lanie, and suddenly, he is dining like royalty while I sit here eating ice cream from a tub. Not that there is anything wrong with the ice cream. It is excellent ice cream."
Alexis laughed and nudged him with her elbow. "You sound jealous, Dad."
"Of course I am," Castle admitted without hesitation. "The man has been on the job for what, two weeks? Already solving cases like he was born for it, breaking every physical record in the precinct, and now stealing the best table in Manhattan. I need to know his secret. Maybe he is secretly a food critic in disguise. Or maybe he saved the chef's life once. There has to be an explanation."
Martha swirled her spoon through the caramel swirl tub and gave him a long look. "Or, maybe Travis is friends with the owner? You tend to turn everything into a performance, Richard."
Castle considered that for a second, then shook his head. "No, no. This feels bigger. There is a story here. The stoic ex-undercover cop, the brilliant medical examiner, a poisoned flower, and now fine dining. I can already see the outline forming. Chapter One: Death by Blossom. Chapter Two: Dinner with Destiny."
Alexis rolled her eyes but smiled anyway. "Just enjoy the ice cream and let them have their date in peace. Not everything needs to be a book."
Castle scooped another bite and pointed the spoon at her. "Everything needs to be a book, Alexis. That is how the world makes sense. But fine, I will behave... For now. Pass the cookies and cream. I need comfort food while I mourn my lack of reservations."
...
Meanwhile, back at the precinct.
Kate stood behind Travis with her arms folded loosely across her chest, watching the data on the monitor.
Travis scrolled through the Columbia University archives first, pulling up archived press releases and faculty listings that had survived the post-accident purge. He pulled strings from public records, grant databases, and a few cached pages that had not yet been scrubbed from the internet. Kate leaned in a fraction closer when he opened the project roster for the Aconitum hybridization program.
Names scrolled past in neat columns. Principal investigator, post-docs, graduate students, lab technicians, and even the undergrad assistants who had watered plants and logged growth data. Travis paused on each photo thumbnail long enough for Kate to read the captions, then kept going until he reached the support staff section.
There it was.
Justin Washington. Listed as a research technician with access to the greenhouse and the extraction lab. Start date lined up perfectly with the program's launch eighteen months earlier. The end date marked three months ago, right after the explosion that killed three of his colleagues and shut everything down. The photo showed a younger, cleaner-shaven version of the grieving husband they had left in the break room earlier.
Travis let out a slow breath and tapped the screen once with his index finger.
"Bingo."
Kate smiled. "So, the husband is a good actor too."
Travis then pulled out their financial information. "Wow! The husband will get 3 million dollars as insurance money and 10 million worth of assets in case of the wife's death."
"Motive for killing," Kate said.
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