Although Jack no longer remembered much about the plot of Beckett's mother's case, he at least remembered that it seemed to implicate a prominent figure.
Therefore, out of caution, he persuaded the other friends to stay in Margrave and chose to return to New York alone.
While the possibility was unlikely, if anything went wrong on his side, both Jiejie and Hannah had access to the right people to help.
While the Calabash Brothers saving their grandfather wasn't advisable, there's a saying that goes, "You can attack when you advance and you can defend when you retreat." Jack, aside from his connections with the low-life underworld, now had some connections in the military and intelligence circles.
Furthermore, Zoe, the newly elected senator, though still a shaky foundation, had connections in the political world.
So, generally speaking, as long as Jack didn't get caught assassinating the president, he wouldn't have much power in North America, let alone the people willing to provoke him.
The one who came to the airport to pick him up was Danny Reagan. Although this tough detective's hairline had moved up a bit more obviously, he looked quite good.
His previous foot injury indirectly allowed him to take a long vacation. Now his back and legs no longer hurt, he no longer walked with a limp, and even his dark eye bags had diminished a lot. It could be considered a blessing in disguise.
"So what happened?" Jack was still traveling light. Since he was going back to New York, he simply threw a change of clothes to Hannah before boarding the plane and walked out of the airport with one hand in his pocket.
Danny's car had been changed to a square-headed Jeep Wrangler, which was quite consistent with his usual tough guy image. After fastening his seat belt, he sighed and started the car.
"Honestly, I still don't understand what happened. Your friends at the 12th Precinct and that writer have all remained silent about the cause of Chief Roy Montgomery's death. They've been vague about what exactly happened that night, insisting only that he died in the line of duty.
My father is furious and wants you to personally investigate this case."
"Thank Frank for me. I'll give him an explanation later," Jack said, pulling out his phone and texting Cassel, arranging a meeting with him and Beckett.
Although Danny said his father was furious, Commissioner Reagan had clearly been instrumental in this matter, at least helping to keep Internal Affairs in check.
The report stated that Chief Roy Montgomery was shot and killed the night before while pursuing a fugitive named Hal Lockwood. He died in a helicopter hangar in suburban Long Island.
Besides the chief, the bodies of four other shooters, including Hal Lockwood, were found at the scene.
An NYPD forensic investigation confirmed that all four gunmen were killed by Commissioner Montgomery's sidearm and an old-style police revolver hidden in his left ankle holster.
No one knows exactly what happened at the scene, although the report claims that a shootout ensued while Montgomery was pursuing the fugitive Hal Lockwood, ultimately resulting in both deaths.
However, anyone with a discerning eye could see something was amiss. It made no sense for a commissioner to personally pursue a fugitive, even in such a critical situation without even a bulletproof vest, and then appear alone in the hangar in the dead of night.
Beckett and Castle were the first to arrive at the scene. Before contacting Castle, Beckett had submitted relevant case information to Frank, as requested by Jack. The NYPD Commissioner immediately recognized something was amiss.
Fortunately, Frank, out of respect for Jack, helped suppress the case, or at least keep it under wraps for the time being. Otherwise, Beckett wouldn't be sitting in Jack's kitchen, weeping over noodles, but instead be invited for coffee by the NYPD Internal Affairs Department.
After frying two soft-boiled eggs for the lively duo next to him, Kevin and Esposito were clearly also involved. Jack knocked on the table and glared at the four people before him.
"Who would like to speak first and tell me what happened?"
The four looked at each other, and finally the remaining three fixed their gazes on Castle.
"Why me?" the writer asked in surprise.
"Of course it's because of your profession." Jack waved him off and told him to get on with it.
It was clear that Castle's tongue was as eloquent as his pen. In just an hour, he had laid out the whole story in detail.
The story began with a gang-related murder case they handled last year.
An Irish gang member named Jack Coonan was assassinated. He belonged to a declining, old-school Irish gang active in the Hell's Kitchen area.
This gang, known as the West Gang Alliance, banned any drugs other than "American Herbs" from their territory, but recently, someone had been selling heroin there.
Jack Cunanan, the most powerful thug in the West Alliance, was ordered by his boss to eliminate the offending drug traffickers. After finding evidence, he contacted the FBI, only to be silenced by the drug traffickers.
Dramatically, the man behind the drug traffickers was Jack Cunanan's brother, Dick Cunanan.
This ruthless man, ostensibly a businessman and philanthropist, had been exploiting his former military connections since his retirement to process opium poppies grown in Afghanistan into heroin, shipping it to an East Asian international port, where it was packaged as advertising videos and shipped to New York.
To conceal the truth, Dick Cunanan murdered his own brother.
While examining the victim's wounds, medical examiner Lanny discovered distinctive stab marks identical to those found in the murder of Beckett's mother.
This led Castle and Beckett to discover Dick Cunanan's third secret identity: he was once a professional killer using the alias Rathbone, and the true murderer of Beckett's mother 19 years prior.
Of course, he was just following orders, and the real mastermind behind the scenes was someone else. However, because Dick Coonan tried to kidnap Castle and escape from the police station, he was accidentally shot dead by Beckett, which interrupted this clue.
Beckett's mother was murdered in an alley more than ten years ago. Her death was the driving force behind Beckett's determination to become a police officer.
So many years have passed, and Beckett had almost given up hope of finding out the truth. Unexpectedly, Dick Coonan, the murderer, unexpectedly appeared after many years.
However, it seemed as if God had deliberately played a bad joke. He had clearly sent the murderer to Beckett, but at the last moment, he forced her to shoot Dick Coonan and personally close the door to the truth.
(End of this chapter)