Mr. Monk and the Two Assistants (30 page)

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Authors: Lee Goldberg

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“It looks like motor oil,” Disher said.

“Or maybe brake fluid,” Ludlow said.

Monk frowned to himself and stood up. “The killer was surprisingly sloppy. It seems like the only clues that he didn’t leave were his name and phone number.”

“Good for us,” Stottlemeyer said. “Maybe we’ll get some prints we can use, too.”

“Do alligators leave prints?” Disher said.

I figured that was our cue to go. Besides, I wanted to get home and start enjoying my free night. I headed for the door and everyone but Disher followed.

As soon as we got outside, Monk motioned to me. I thought he wanted a wipe, but when I reached to take one from my purse, he shook his head.

“Can I borrow your phone?” he said. “I need to make a call.”

I gave him the cell and stepped away to allow him some privacy. Ludlow caught up with me at my car.

“What is Monk’s problem with me?” he asked.

“This is his turf,” I said. “He feels threatened by another expert.”

“But I’m not an expert,” Ludlow said, “as he keeps reminding me.”

I smiled. “You’re a rich, famous author of crime novels. He can’t help but feel a little overshadowed.”

Ludlow nodded and glanced at my Jeep. “These cars are real warhorses. How does she run?”

“Not bad for a car with 177,000 miles on the odometer,” I said.

“That’s how I feel about myself sometimes,” Ludlow said.

Monk joined us and gave me the phone. “Have you solved the case yet?” he asked Ludlow.

“I’m working on it,” Ludlow said. “But I have no illusions that I can make sense out of it all before you do, not that it’s any kind of competition.”

“Of course not,” Monk said.

“The last thing I want to do is invade your turf or rob you of any glory,” Ludlow said. “I’m not a detective and I’m certainly not as gifted as you are. I’m just a writer looking for a good story to tell. When this is over, I’ll go away and write another book.”

“I understand,” Monk said. “I apologize if I was rude.”

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Monk was actually acknowledging he was at fault and apologizing for it. This was a first.

I might have pressed him on that point, but my cell phone rang. I glanced at the display and recognized the number. It was Firefighter Joe. If his impeccable timing kept up, I’d have to start calling him Mind Reader Joe.

“Excuse me,” I said to Monk. “It’s Firefighter Joe.”

I stepped away so I’d have some privacy when I took the call.

“I hope I’m not calling you too soon,” Joe said.

“I was just thinking about you,” I said.

“You have no idea how good that makes me feel,” he said.

“As it turns out,” I said, “I have a free night.”

“As it turns out,” he said, “so do I.”

“Would you like to be free together?”

“I had the same thought, but I don’t think I could have expressed it any better than you did.”

“I’ll call you after I’ve dropped off Mr. Monk,” I said, told him good-bye and returned to my car, where Monk now stood alone. Ludlow was farther down the street, making a call on his cell phone.

“I thought you and Joe weren’t seeing each other anymore, ” Monk said.

“So did I,” I said. “But then he came by my house on Thursday looking for you, or so he claimed, and—”

“On Thursday?” Monk interrupted.

“He wanted you to investigate a burglary that happened at the fire station on Wednesday night,” I said. “But it was really just an excuse to—”

“Call him back,” Monk interrupted me again. “Tell him we’ll meet him there.”

“
We
will?” I said sadly, feeling my wonderful night slipping away. “But he’s got the night off.”

“I want to investigate,” Monk said.

“Can’t you investigate tomorrow?”

“I’m two days late already,” he said and got into my car.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Mr. Monk Goes to the Firehouse

It was like déjà vu. Once again Monk and I were at the firehouse atop a hill in North Beach, investigating a crime that occurred there while the company was out fighting a blaze. Only this time neither man nor beast had been hurt.

The firehouse had a multimillion-dollar view of Coit Tower and the Transamerica Pyramid, but only if you were standing out front. Inside the firehouse, the few windows looked directly into the building next door. It was almost as if the architect intentionally wanted to deprive the firefighters of the view.

Fog was rolling in off the bay and lapping up against the tall buildings like waves in the encroaching darkness.

Firefighter Joe didn’t seem any happier about being at the station that evening than I was, but our shared frustration created a nice tension between us that was going to be fun to burn off.

Captain Mantooth was pleased to see Monk again, probably because it meant that they were likely to recover what had been stolen and get the chrome on their fire trucks thoroughly shined as well.

Before we came in, Monk pinned a junior firefighter badge onto his lapel. The children’s badge was a red helmet atop an emblem of a fire truck encircled with a golden firehouse. I found the gesture both endearing and amazing. He had no idea when he got dressed that morning that we’d be visiting a fire station, so that meant he must have carried the badge around with him at all times.

I wondered what else he had in his pockets.

“Tell me exactly what happened,” Monk said to Mantooth, a man in his fifties who looked like he’d been chiseled from stone.

“We got called to a car fire at approximately eight fifty-two p.m.,” Mantooth said. “It took about two hours to contain the fire and do the necessary cleanup before we got back.”

“Tell me more about the fire,” Monk said.

“Someone stuffed a rag soaked with gasoline into the fuel tank of a painter’s van parked down by Washington Square,” Joe said. “It made quite a blast.”

“And created a lot of attention,” Monk said.

“That’s usually why arsonists do it,” Joe said.

“When we got back at approximately eleven p.m., we commenced cleaning our rig, replenishing supplies and unloading our stuff,” Mantooth said. “That’s when one of the guys discovered that we were missing one of our small hydraulic cutter/spreaders and a lightweight power unit from the firehouse.”

“Why didn’t you take it with you?” Monk asked.

“We’ve got a couple of them,” Joe said. “Different sizes for different jobs. And we keep backups here.”

“Can you show me what one of these tools looks like?” Monk said.

“Sure,” Joe said and led us over to what looked like a giant bolt cutter. “We use this mostly in car accidents to free the people who are trapped inside their crushed vehicles.”

Mantooth pointed to the blades. “The tips of those aluminum-alloy pincers are heat-treated steel and can tear through just about anything.”

“Or we can close the blades, jam this into a tight spot and, instead of cutting,” Joe said, “we can spread an object apart or lift it off of somebody.”

“Can I see what the power unit looks like?” Monk asked.

Joe motioned to something that looked sort of like an outboard motor without the propellers. It fit into a square iron frame, the bottom two bars serving as feet for the unit.

“The one that was stolen was a smaller version of this,” Joe said. “It’s basically a Honda 2.5-horsepower, four-stroke engine.”

Monk nodded as if he knew what those stats actually meant. “What does it use for fuel?”

“The same as any engine,” Joe said. “Gasoline.”

That was when I got my first shiver of realization—one Monk probably had back at Webster’s place when I told him why Joe had stopped by my place on Thursday.

Monk squatted beside the motor and examined its feet. “Could one person carry both the power unit and the rescue tool?”

“Sure,” Joe said. “It’s only about forty pounds nowadays. We call the package the ‘Jaws of Life.’ ”

Monk rolled his shoulders and tilted his head from side to side. A new clue was rolling around in his brain. It was almost as if he was using his body motion to make the clue hit different synapses like a pinball. I hoped he was scoring lots of points.

“How much pressure would one of these jaws exert on an object?” Monk asked, standing up.

“Depends on the size of the tool,” Mantooth said. “I’d say the one that was stolen probably had a maximum cutting force of about eighteen thousand pounds per square inch.”

Monk glanced at me. I looked back at him. And in that moment, I knew why Monk had smelled gasoline in Webster’s loft. I knew what had made those marks on Webster’s bathroom floor. I knew how the killer had solved the problem of mimicking an alligator’s bite. And I knew that my date with Joe wasn’t going to happen tonight. One way or another, I would still be working on the case.

Joe studied Monk. “You know why someone stole our stuff.”

“Yes, I do,” he said.

So did I. It was nice to be in the know for a change.

“Do you think you can get it back for us?” Mantooth asked.

“Probably not,” Monk said. “My guess is that it’s probably at the bottom of the bay by now.”

“How about whoever did it?” Joe said. “Can you at least get him?”

“Definitely,” Monk said.

“Well,” Mantooth said, “at least that’s something.”

The captain thanked us for our help and asked Monk if he wanted to check the fire truck for spots and smudges. Monk almost skipped away.

That left Joe and me alone for the moment.

“We aren’t having an intimate interlude tonight, are we?” Joe said.

“I’m sorry,” I said.