Castle didn’t remember ever being at the precinct this early after having slept a whole night at home. Surely there had been times when he didn’t leave it at all, like when he and Beckett were locked up in a refrigerator for several hours by terrorists who wanted to blow a dirty bomb in the very centre of Manehattan, but that was quite different: Back then he was forced to remain by the ongoing investigation, unlike today. In addition, he felt surprisingly refreshed, despite his mind being rather lucid most of the night. He concluded that it must have been another side effect of Luna’s magic.
The writer leaped up from the steps he was resting on as he saw Beckett approach in a cab. Even as the mare jumped off the carriage and paid the driver, he had already greeted her.
“What’s into you today, Castle,” the detective questioned, eying him sceptically.
“It’s nothing, never mind that,” he said, “we need to check on Hondo Flanks.” Beckett raised an eyebrow. "You know, Rarity’s, our victim’s father.”
“Oh, that guy. What makes you think he has anything to do with the case?”
“Writer’s instinct. I swear if we run checks on him something will pop, I know it will,” Castle insisted, as they entered the elevator and ascended to the 2nd floor.
“It’s okay, I promise pulling his financials will be the first thing I’ll do. Happy now?”
“What about his record?”
“Ryan and Esposito already looked into that, I’d know if there was anything interesting.” Beckett settled down in front of her table and switched on the computer. “You didn’t even get us coffee today,” she noted. “Are you sure you’re okay?”
“Never better, rest assured.” The computer’s screen lit up, the operating system welcomed the investigators. Beckett, who didn’t quite share Castle’s enthusiasm, inconspicuously shoved him away from her. Ryan and Esposito, who started their working day on time, just like their team leader, now appeared out of the elevator as well.
“So I called up my buddy Discharge from Narcotics and mailed him the report on the cocaine samples; He says they're a match with intercepted shipments, just like I suspected,” the white Pegasus spoke.
“What’s with him?” his partner asked him, nodding at the writer. Castle rolled his eyes.
“Am I really that unreliable of a pony to make it a real miracle that I’m actually here—“ He stopped due to the detectives’ nods. “Okay, I get it. But this is a legitimate lead!” He turned back to the screen to see Beckett type ‘Hondo Flanks’ into the programme the EQPD used for financial tracking. The progress bar filled painstakingly slowly, then the application’s window froze for a second, and finally displayed the results.
“HA, I told you!” Castle slapped the desk with his hoof at the ridiculously high cash deposit that the tracker indicated, dated three minutes ago. The rest of his team were still gazing at the numbers.
“The guy sold his house?” Esposito asked the obvious question. Loosening her eyes from the computer Beckett finally turned around.
“Ryan, get an APB out on Hondo, make sure FDPD gets it first. Espo, go back to the files you went through earlier and see if you missed something.” With the two Pegasi jetting off to their respective tables, Beckett sunk back into her contemplations.
“Isn’t there anything we can do?” Castle asked, carefully.
“This pony was into something, and if we don’t ask him personally, I don’t think we’ll know what it is. Our previous checks were rather thorough, after all.”
“Got him!” Ryan exclaimed. “Uniforms intercepted Flanks on the street a block away from the bank where he made his deposit.”
“Perfect. I want him here in Manehattan ASAP, in the meantime, get a hold on the rest of his family.”
“They have a car on the way to his address, but I assume they won’t be there anymore if he sold the house on the black market.”
“Then we’ll have to find out where they’re staying ourselves once he gets here,” his partner suggested, having abandoned his research.
“This better happen quickly. Ryan, make sure they fly him in or something. Whatever he needed that money for, there might be more lives on the line.”
****
The door to the interrogation room opened. The Pegasi from Fillydelphian police department flew Hondo Flanks in a record time, now he was sitting on the floor of the room, leaned against the white tiles on the wall. In his time as consultant at the EQPD Castle grew to distinguish types of people at interrogations; whereas it might not be always accurate to determine whether or not they’re guilty, but one could certainly derive the correct approach from this observation. As he and Beckett passed into the chamber, he determined Flanks as the emotional, yet sealed off kind. Medium difficulty. He sat down on one of the chairs; his partner remained standing.
“So, Mister Flanks, you deposited 150 thousand bit this morning and stated that you have sold your house when you were asked at the bank. Surely there must have been some reason why you only demanded such a low price for it, because our experts put it at at least 250 grand.”
“Listen, I can explain.”
“We sure hope so,” Castle interrupted him. “Because the evidence clearly indicates that you are involved in your daughter’s murder.”
“It’s all my fault… I should have never agreed to this,” he began. The two investigators exchanged glances, then fixed their eyes upon Flanks’ face. After a deep sigh, he continued talking: “When my wife and I moved to the city I thought we’d live off my shop. But things didn’t go all that smoothly, apparently those ponies aren’t so much into sports after all. I suppose we’ve been living over our standards for too long, banks wouldn’t give us money, so I had to get the cash somewhere else. I started hanging around these shady places and this fellow walks up to me, asks me what I need. Says I can get any amount I need straight on the hoof, I just need to pay it back. I took the offer; there wasn’t much of another choice.” The unicorn shifted his body weight a little, his front legs now flat on the desk. “I couldn’t pay the money, so I paid in a slightly different fashion.”
“And why did you not explain this to us yesterday?”
“I know you’d try and get involved. I didn’t want that to happen to the rest of my family.”
“If you had come to the police earlier, your daughter would be still alive. We have teams that specialise in cases like that.” Hondo didn’t reply. “I need to know any contact information you have on these people.”
“I haven’t got anything; it settled the deal for them to know where I am.”
“Why did you deposit the money from the house?”
“I wasn’t going to drop it in cash. They wanted it on the bank and I should have hooved over the account information.”
‘Very clever,’ Castle noted silently. ‘If one doesn’t get caught, that is.’
“We’re done for now. But you’ll stay here in holding for some time, you can be sure of that.”
After closing the door and reuniting with the rest of the ponycide division, including Montgomery who had been quickly updated on the case, Beckett decided to discuss the following steps of their procedure.
“We should hoof him over to Organised Crime for the moment, they’ll know better what to do than us.” She noticed the others’ rather confused glances. “Don’t worry, of course we’ll still follow every step of his.”
“The fella’s probably feeling real gruesome right now,” Ryan commented, with a worried look back at Flanks, who was being led out of the chamber.
“He shouldn’t have thought he’d be smarter than both the mob and us,” Esposito replied.
“Well, the upside is that this explains quite some of our previous clues,” Castle stated. “He got loan from ‘the mob’, as he called it, right? That means we know where the cocaine on the purse came from.”
“Hang on there, Castle,” Ryan raised a hoof. “The Easties aren't particularly known for deals like that, but if we can prove a connection, that means we have a new lead on one of their ponies. Finally catching one of them would be huge.”
“Well, for now we don't have a lot other than the word of one rather desperate pony,” Montgomery summed up, to get his teammates back on the floor. “However, if we can get a sketch out of Flanks and then find this pony via APB, then we'll be talking. What about the real estate dealer and Flanks' family, do we have anything on them yet?”
“The dealer was a bust,” Esposito replied, rearranging some files. “FDPD mailed me the interrogation report, the fella had no idea about what Flanks was involved in or why he was selling the house, and he didn't ask because it was a good deal. Supposedly, Flanks gave him a first key as reassurance this morning as he got the money, but he kept the second one until a meeting that they had arranged for later today, telling him he still needed to clean out some junk. They're still holding him on fraud charges, though. As for the family, they were staying in some motel outside of town for the while. Uniforms were supposedly on their way last time I called those guys up.”
“Alright,” the captain said. “I want the exchange operation to be flawless for dropping the account information, we need to get our hooves on this pony.”
After the head of the ponycide division returned to his office, Beckett reached for the phone. A short conversation later, she addressed her team:
“Organised Crime want Flanks in another precinct for investigation purposes, Castle and I will go with him. Ryan, Javi, you follow up on the rest of the leads that we still have open.”
“Gotcha,” the deep red Pegasus replied, already typing something into his computer.
“You know,” Castle said, simply sitting next to Beckett's desk, “this story still doesn't cover up everything. If all they wanted was to pressure Hondo Flanks, why drug Rarity before they kill her?”
“I guess we'll have to ask that personally, once we have those freaks safe with their hooves in the air,” was her rather anticlimactic response.
“No, if I wrote it, I'd have...”
“No time for that, Castle,” his partner replied, pointing at her bleeping mobile. “Uniforms are already waiting for us downstairs with Fla-” Before Beckett could finish the sentence, she was interrupted by a deafening clap. She looked into the void in front of her for a minute moment, then her and Castle simultaneously murmured:
“That was a shot.”
They both dashed to the window, looking down at a street.
“Oh sweet Celestia.”
“Tell me that wasn’t Flanks.”
Uniformed ponies were scurrying all over the road, a car alarm had gone off, traffic stalled. An ominous red fluid was splattered on the ground. Montgomery came crashing through his office's door and joined Ryan and Esposito, who took a second to get out from behind their desks.
“What the hay was that?!” the captain inquired.
“I'm… I’m afraid that was our witness being shot, Sir,” Beckett answered.
His face instantly darkened even more, if that was at all possible, as his fears were confirmed. “Get Special Ops to seal off the area. I want Flanks at a hospital right away if there's any hope for the pony at all and witness protection on the rest of his family. NOW.” He turned around to leave, as a barrage of phone calls was sure to come in any second. Hesitating, he added: “Detectives, I know I can count on you. We should keep our folks in our own custody.”
With Montgomery gone, Beckett found herself in command once again.
“You heard what the captain said, Ryan, Espo, get out there and find that bucker.”
Without a word, the two Pegasi jetted off through an open window. An incoming call from Ryan a couple of minutes later interrupted Beckett in her work.
“Flanks is dead; he took the shot straight to the back of his head, but we have the direction it must have been fired from on witness reports. Esposito is already onto that with a Spec Ops team.”
“Let's hope we'll get there quickly enough. The shooter had way too much time to escape already.” She ended the call.
“You know, this has to be about so much more than just a lower middle class unicorn's loan. How much could he have owed them, a hundred grand? Maybe two? No, that's not something you snipe a guy for, especially on the street like that.”
“You're right, except we've got nothing to prove that so far.”
“What if...” Castle started, hesitating a little bit as he formulated the rest of his hypothetical story, “Flanks didn't have a loan at all. I don't recall him having any traces of it in his financials, suspicious phone calls etc.” Some hasty research later, Beckett could officially agree with this statement.
“But that doesn't make any sense,” she contemplated. “Why would Flanks feed us a decoy story? Aside from wanting to hide the fact he was probably deeper into this than he wanted us to know.”
“I know, it's just... he didn't seem like the type. I thought him to be the family guy,” the writer commented.
“He could have been acting, Castle.”
“No, I think we need to look at the clues from a different angle, I'm... just not sure what this angle could be yet.”
“Well, maybe his family knows what he was up to; he couldn't have convinced them that he needs to sell the house without naming a reason.” Castle's face brightened up.
“The house! Look, there are two reasons why ponies sell houses: Either they need money quickly or move somewhere else.”
“You're implying?”
“Hondo Flanks might have wanted to disappear instead of paying back a supposed loan,” Castle concluded.
“You know, we could actually go and have a look ourselves. I'm sure he'd have some more evidence at home directing us towards that if this was indeed the case. Maybe he didn’t keep the key to remove some of his beloved furniture.” Castle's muzzle broadened into a smile.
“Does that mean road trip time?”
“Sure,” Beckett replied with a smirk.
****
“This gotta be it,” Beckett declared, having finally spotted the desired number next to the door of a small bungalow. The rugged, dark grey stallion who had been pulling her and Castle's cab tipped his cap with a hoof as she slid her card through the reader and continued his journey onward to find new customers. Castle levitated the key—they had received it at a Fillydelphian precinct they had stopped by—in front of him. The two carefully made their way towards the door, trying to observe anything that was out of the ordinary. Only two metres away from it Beckett suddenly raised a hoof; Castle stopped in his tracks, dropping the key. His partner hissed at the quiet noise.
“The lock's broken,” she whispered. “Someone was here before us.”
Pulling her gun out of its front leg mounted holster, she leaned against the door, pressing her ear into it. Not a sound could be heard, except for a few birds on the front lawn. Castle put the key back into the pocket of his cotton jacket, dismayed by how his impressive feat of magic was left unappreciated, and followed Beckett as she nudged the door slightly and entered the domicile. Inside, she found a modest vestibule, furnished according to the humble financial situation of the residing family. Except, poor interior design was not the only thing wrong about it.
All the furniture seemed to have been moved around, every single drawer was opened, there were random items and papers scattered on the floor as well as every other open space.
“This place has been tossed,” Castle mumbled, looking from behind his partner. She signalled him to stay silent and put, as she advanced. The detective soon confirmed her premonition that not only the entryway had suffered this fate. Instead, the entire house was in this condition. Beckett scanned every room with her barrel, to find that whoever was responsible was no longer present.
“All clear,” she declared, giving Castle the permission to enter. After calling CSU, the two investigators agreed to look through all the rooms in a joint effort to spot at least some clue of what Hondo Flanks was up to.
“Beckett, I found something,” the novelist exclaimed, as he extracted three deep red booklets from dishes and similar unrelated gear while shoving random household property off the kitchen desk.
“Equestrian passports?” his partner asked, as she came from the bathroom she had been examining.
“I think it isn't just that,” he answered, levitating and opening one. “‘Magnum’? That is not his real name,” he pointed out, seeing as the picture clearly depicted Flanks. Putting it aside, he proceeded to check the other two. “There's also one for his wife,” he magically slapped it onto Flanks' passport, “and for their younger daughter,” he finally concluded, displaying the photograph of Sweetie Belle next to a fake name to his partner. Rather proud of his work, the writer arranged the three booklets into a neat batch.
“Looks like you've been correct about him wanting to flee after all,” Beckett admitted, “but why?”
“Well, there's quite a clear view of what Flanks' intentions were at this point. We have all the rights to assume that his daughter is killed for additional pressure, he doesn't comply nonetheless and wants to leave altogether, with new IDs and all, but what is unclear is what his connection to the mob was that caused all this. Maybe he stole something from them to sell it, but they wanted it back.”
“Seems unlikely, judging by the effort this must be taking. It's probably files rather than valuables.”
“And I'm afraid they have them now,” Castle noted. They heard the sound of a couple of carriages pulling up in front of the house.
“That's gotta be CSU,” Beckett speculated, lifting an ear. “Maybe somepony saw who broke into here, we could really use a sketch at this point.”
****
It was in the middle of a conversation with a Fillydelphian CSU pony that Beckett's phone rang. Excusing herself, she checked the cell, spotting Ryan's name on the lockscreen.
“Hey, you found something?”
“Yeah, I think you should see this,” the Pegasus replied. “So since nothing had popped in the recent data, I dug a little bit deeper into Hondo Flanks financials, and he has been making rather large cash deposits in the hundreds every week, admittedly on different days, but still consistently over almost a year until he suddenly stopped, starting from November 14th last year. Judging by the pattern, I think he might have been dealing. Would be a possible connection to the mob.”
“Good work. Do you have anything to explain that?”
“Not yet, but I'm looking into it. I'll see what I can find out about that day. Oh, and I'll route you over to Javi real quick, he's been doing some work as well.”
“So the entire operation after Flanks was shot proved absolutely redundant,” Esposito begun, as soon as he was on the line. “Spec Ops didn't catch jack; we did end up finding the place where the sniper fired from, but there’s no shell casing, no DNA, nothin'. CSU hasn't got anypony who even saw our shooter, it's like he landed on top of the building. Also, the slug that we pulled out of Flanks' skull was military grade sniper rifle ammunition, and the guy aimed almost perfectly, so he's likely a pro. What about you, got something?”
“Flanks' house has been completely trashed, but we found a couple of fake passports for the three remaining members of his family.” Esposito whistled in surprise.
“It's just two now. Members. Of the family,” Beckett heard Ryan correct her in the background. Apparently, Esposito had the call on speaker.
“On the subject of family,” the ex-Wonderbolt started, “uniforms will bring in Cookie Crumbles and Sweetie Belle any second now. You might wanna have a word with them, especially now that we know they had been accounted for in Flanks' escape plan and most likely knew.”
“We'll get there as soon as possible,” the cobalt mare replied. Castle, who had been listening to the conversation, was less enthusiastic about this decision.
“That is rather daunting. I was actually looking forward to visit Creamy's Delight, as Mr Creamy himself invited me to come by any time and have an extra-large cup of his most ambrosial coffee. Surely we could order up two of those.” Then, after a short pause, he whispered: “It's the best one in all of Filly!”
“Is that Creamy character another one of your acquaintances for research purposes?”
“Yes, as a matter of fact. As an early draft for a Derrick Storm novel I had something about smuggling heroin with coffee shipments in mind, and Mr Creamy's connections would prove helpful for some rather valuable information. I scrapped the idea later, but his beverages are stellar.”
“Connections to what,” his partner inquired with a smirk. “Something makes me think you're not talking about his bean suppliers.”
“I'll repay Creamy for his help with the favour of not going into detail about this,” the writer replied.
“Well, as tempting as that sounds, we're on duty.”
“Wrong, you're on duty,” Castle grinned. “Though I should probably comply if I don't want to get mangled,” he added, noticing Beckett's death stare. “And I also should probably get in the carriage.”
****
It was getting rather late when Castle and Beckett arrived back at the 12th Precinct. They found out Cookie Crumbles and Sweetie Belle were brought there in an escorted, armoured chariot and were currently staying in holding for additional security. Upon Beckett’s request Crumbles was relocated into the interrogation room where Castle and her hoped to finally shed some light on the nature of Flanks’ connection to the Eastern cartel that eventually caused two deaths. Their two Pegasus teammates as well as Montgomery were already behind the one-way-mirror in the observation chamber.
The display of grief the two partners faced as they entered the room was beyond even Crumbles' own sorrow upon her daughter's death the day before. In fact, Castle was seriously questioning her competency in such state of condition. Beckett however was resolved to pull the interrogation through no matter what.
“Hello again, Mrs Crumbles. I assume you know why you're here?” The pale purple unicorn nodded frantically.
“It's—it's because of Hondo, isn't it?” she said wiping tears off her cheeks with a hoof.
“Your husband has been doing many yet unexplainable things in the past time, and we need you to tell us everything you know.”
“Well,” she began, though she continued sobbing, “he came to me yesterday after we returned home, a-and he said we weren’t s-safe anymore.”
“… and?” Castle raised a brow, seeing Crumbles sink back into her thoughts and forget to continue.
“H-h-he just left for most of the n-night.”
“That’s probably when he got the passports and rustled up that real estate dealer,” Beckett noted for protocol. “Do you know why exactly he thought you weren’t safe?”
Crumbles shook her head. “He w-wouldn’t tell.”
“What can you tell us about his behaviour, was there any time span when he was nervous or agitated?”
“Nothing that I c-can think of.”
Castle leaned forward. “Could you elaborate on your financial situation? Has there been any particular trouble lately?”
“The shop has never really run well,” she said. “B-but it was even tougher this year. Hondo,” she sobbed upon mentioning the name, “used t-to be out a lot while I was l-looking after the shop. He was looking for additional work u-until he gave up a couple of months ago, then everything j-just went downhill.”
Beckett and Castle exchanged glances. “Do you remember anything specific about when he stopped going out like that?”
She shook her head again, still rather vehemently. “It was sometime late last year. I thought he just didn’t to stay out in the evenings like that b-because it was getting cold.”
“Does the date November 14th last year ring a bell?” Castle inquired.
Crumbles looked up from the table she had been staring at all this time. “I-I’m not sure. I think we went to P-Ponyville on the train to visit Rarity and Sweetie that day. But… w-what does that have to d-do with anything?”
“Oh, it’s nothing,” Castle replied evasively, but internally he confessed to being quite puzzled.
“That’s it for now,” Beckett announced. “You’ll stay in holding for the moment until we find a more comfortable yet safe alternative, seeing as you might still be the target of whoever is responsible the shooting of your husband.”
****
“This is starting to be very interesting,“ Castle stated, leaning against Beckett's desk with his face to the murder board, as Esposito was finishing noting down their newly acquired information on it. The Pegasus spat out the marker he had been drawing with. Castle, undistracted by him, started pacing to and fro in front of the board. “Let me summarise: Hondo Flanks, owner of a sports gear store in Fillydelphia, has trouble paying his bills. He seeks additional work or a different way out of his misery, which is offered to him by a representative of the anonymous Manehattan drug cartel. He accepts it, and successfully sells drugs of various sorts and shapes thus managing to keep his business afloat, all that while making his wife Cookie Crumbles believe that he was gone looking for another job. Then suddenly, he ceases his illicit activities sometime around the 14th of November. Coincidentally, or maybe not so, he spends this and following days in Ponyville with his family, which also consists of his two daughters Rarity and Sweetie Belle. Then almost half a year of hiatus ensues, during which Flanks' financials are undoubtedly tumbling down as his primary income source depleted. Suddenly, for seemingly no reason, Rarity is kidnapped and killed in Manehattan while she is on a business journey. Flanks decides he is not safe anymore and tries to make a run for it by quickly selling his house and even rustling up some fake IDs for the remainder of his family. Then he is unfortunately shot on the street by a sniper.“ The novelist paused. “There are two questions we currently need to worry about. Question #1: What happened on the 14th of November, or slightly earlier?“ He levitated Esposito's marker, used it to draw a fat circle around the dot that signified November 14th on their timeline, then added “What Happened?“ in large letters. “Question #2: What was Flanks involved in that made our mob risk two deaths, one being a very indiscreet operation?“ Ryan, who had been watching Castle's presentation with a file in his teeth, came forward. He deposited on his desk.
“I think I can shed some light on that first question. I ran checks on Crumbles' story about the Ponyville trip: it's legit. They purchased tickets with her card late in the evening on the 14th, then withdrew a couple hundred bit and finally got tickets back six days later.”
“Wait, what did they withdraw the money for?” Beckett inquired.
“Told you it's a dump, if you want to buy a thing in that place, you gotta pay cash,” Esposito explained.
“Nothing suspicious about any of that, then,” she sighed.
“So while you were still on your way here I tried digging deeper into that date, and there was literally nothing. No cases, nothing. I even tried comparing his family's birthdays to it. But just a second ago, I found that.” He pointed at the file with a hoof. “It's the testimony of one of Flanks' neighbours who reported a break-in at our victim's place while he was away in Ponyville. However, Flanks never filed a case so it was discarded.”
“Yeah, but that just confirms that Flanks had something in his possession that was so valuable to the mob, it doesn’t explain what it was,” Beckett complained.
“There's more, but it really isn't helpful either. On the 13th and 14th, he has made several calls to a number that he used to call every week before. I ran it: it's a burner cell with no registered owner. He probably contacted whoever gave him those drugs he was dealing.”
“We need to expand our search radius,” Beckett proclaimed, yawning. Glancing at her watch, she hesitated. “Actually... let's make that the first thing we'll do in the morning, because my brain needs some rest.” The rest of the team nodded, finishing whatever they had been doing to wrap up the day.