Mr. Monk Goes to Germany (17 page)

“We expose people in positions of authority who have abused their power for money or sex, preferably both,” she said. “A possibly fake psychiatrist who may be tricking people with webbed feet into telling him their troubles isn’t a story for our audience.”

“So why wouldn’t Leupolz let it go?” I asked. “Why did he go down to Lohr and keep investigating Dr. Rahner?”

“Bruno’s girlfriend was one of Dr. Rahner’s patients,” Ernestine said. “She dumped Bruno and invested every penny she had in the doctor’s resort, and then moved in there.”

I knew of only two people who lived at the resort full-time, and only one of them was a woman. Well, mostly a woman. I cringed at the thought at the same moment that Monk did, too.

Ernestine eyed us both. “So you heard about Katie’s problem.”

“You knew?” Monk said.

“I’m a reporter and I wanted to know why Bruno was so obsessed with this psychiatrist to the point that he would turn down paying assignments to pursue the man,” she said. “There was no story. It was entirely personal. He desperately wanted Dr. Rahner to be guilty of something so he could get Katie back, which was why I was so skeptical about Bruno’s latest angle.”

“Leupolz discovered something else about Dr. Rahner?” Monk asked.

“Bruno claimed that the doctor’s time-share resort was actually a huge financial scam, that the money Dr. Rahner convinced his patients and their families to invest in his real estate development business, presumably to build similar resorts elsewhere, was actually going into his own pocket. Bruno said that he’d discovered the doctor had gambled that money on higher-risk investments and lost, so he was now using the cash he’d connived from new investors to pay back the old ones.”

“A classic Ponzi scheme, using the money from the new suckers to mollify the old ones,” I said. “Would a shrink abusing the trust of his patients to get them to invest in a real estate scam be a story for you?”

“Only if there was a huge amount of money involved, so Bruno naturally said that there was, tens of millions of euros, including his ex-girlfriend’s meager life savings. But he’d say anything to get me to run a story on the psychiatrist. That’s why I insisted that Bruno show me lots of hard evidence to support his charges. He said he would.”

“But you didn’t see it,” Monk said.

“That’s because it probably didn’t exist,” she said.

“It doesn’t now,” Monk said. “His notes were burned and his laptop is missing.”

She shrugged. “I was pretty hard on him when we spoke. I told him that he was losing what little journalistic credibility he still had left, and that if he didn’t wise up soon, nobody would ever hire him as a reporter again. Maybe burning the notes and tossing the laptop was his way of finally coming to his senses and giving up on a lost cause.”

“Or maybe Dr. Rahner murdered him,” Monk suggested.

“That would be a story,” she said. “What evidence do you have to back it up?”

I was afraid she’d ask that. I was even more afraid that Monk would answer it.

“I’ve seen the way Dr. Rahner ties his shoes,” Monk said.

She raised an eyebrow. “
That’s
your evidence?”

“There’s more, much more. There’s the suicide of Axel Vigg, which wasn’t a suicide at all. The hole in his wall wasn’t for looking at stewardesses and he didn’t shoot his couch. Who would do that? There’s also the pillow feathers on the carpet and the clean shoes that should have been dirty but weren’t.”

It sounded like the rambling of a lunatic to me and I actually knew what he was talking about. I could only imagine what it sounded like to her.

“I don’t understand any of that,” Ernestine said, “or how it proves that Bruno’s heart attack was a murder, or that Dr. Rahner was responsible.”

“Oh, he was,” Monk said. “I’ve seen lots of murderers and he’s definitely one. I knew it the instant I saw those six fingers.”

“You’re going after him because of his extra finger?”

“I know he killed Bruno Leupolz and he could also be the man who hired a bomber to blow up my wife’s car. She was a reporter, too.”

“I see.” She escorted us to her door and held it open. “I thought Bruno was blinded by obsession, Mr. Monk, but you’re much worse.”

“It’s not going to get any better,” he said and we left the office.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

Mr. Monk Hits a Wall

Iled us towards Checkpoint Charlie. I figured I could find a souvenir there for Julie and a taxi to take us back to the airport.

Monk frowned with frustration, his hands balled into fists, like a petulant child.

“I know how Dr. Rahner killed Bruno Leupolz and Axel Vigg, I know how he covered up his crimes, and I even know what his motives were,” Monk said. “The only thing I don’t know is how to prove any of it.”

“Do you really think Dr. Rahner is the man who arranged Trudy’s murder?”

“I’d like him to be,” Monk said.

“But do you
believe
that he is?”

“He’s got six fingers on his right hand, he was in San Francisco around the time she was killed, and he’s a murderer,” Monk said. “It’s more likely than not that he is.”

“But he might not be,” I said.

He looked at me. “You don’t think it’s him.”

“It’s possible that Dale the Whale could have found out that Dr. Rahner fudged his credentials long before Bruno did and blackmailed him into arranging Trudy’s murder,” I said. “But I don’t think Dr. Kroger was involved.”

“You think it’s just a coincidence that Dr. Kroger and Dr. Rahner know each other.”

“Yes, I do,” I said. Up until that moment, I hadn’t realized that I felt that way. “And if that part is a coincidence, then I have to wonder if maybe the rest of it is, too.”

“The killing Trudy part,” Monk said.

I nodded. “So what do we do now?”

“We go back to Lohr and see this through to the bitter end,” Monk said. “But this time I’m taking one of my pills.”

“For a one-hour flight?”

It seemed like overkill. The effects of the medication lasted about twelve hours.

“I also need it for what we’re doing when we get back to Lohr,” Monk said. “I want to go back into the woods and see if we can find where Dr. Rahner hid Leupolz’s body.”

Monk would definitely have an easier time dealing with all that nature if he was drugged up.

I wasn’t sure that I would, though.

At the corner, the turbulent and violent history of the Berlin Wall was displayed in photographs on a wooden wall that had been erected around a vacant lot where a portion of the GDR’s border-crossing complex had once stood.

I paused to look at the pictures and read some of the captions. They didn’t tell me much that I hadn’t learned in high school, but standing in that spot, I could feel the history. It was still recent enough that people like Ernestine, who didn’t seem any older than I was, had been witnesses to it.

The pictorial felt cheap and perfunctory. I thought it would have been much better to have a few Berlin residents who’d lived with the wall in their lives standing around on the corner. They could have talked to us informally about how the wall had affected their lives and shaped who they were today.

That’s not to say there weren’t some people there for the tourists. There were a couple of guys wearing old U.S. and Russian military uniforms and posing with tourists in front of the guard shack in return for some spare change. It was the Berlin version of having your picture taken with Mickey Mouse and Dopey and just as meaningful.

There was a souvenir shop a few doors down from the guard shack. I went inside, hoping to find something more authentic and interesting than a T-shirt, key chain, refrigerator magnet, or mug with a picture of the Brandenburg Gate on it.

On the back wall of the store, the shelves were covered with chunks of painted concrete glued to plastic stands. As I got closer, I realized they were pieces of the Berlin Wall, sold by size, from a pebble to a huge slab with rebar poking out of it.

Monk examined a chunk and then started rearranging the pieces that were on the shelf in front of him.

I picked up a blue-green painted bit of rubble about the size of a Ping Pong ball. It cost nine euros, which was cheaper than a mug and something I couldn’t buy anywhere else but Berlin—assuming it was genuine, of course. Even if it wasn’t, it was still the perfect souvenir.

“Put that back,” Monk said, still moving the pieces around.

“It’s okay. They’re for sale,” I said.

“They shouldn’t be,” Monk said. “What if someone wants to put it back together?”

“They won’t,” I said.

“But what if they change their minds? They’ll never be able to do it if the pieces are scattered all over the globe.”

“Good,” I said.

Monk sorted the pieces by size and tried to match them up. It was futile.

“None of these pieces fit,” he said with irritation.

“The wall was broken into millions of little pieces, Mr. Monk. You can’t honestly expect the bits of rubble on these shelves to snap together like puzzle pieces.”

“They could,” Monk said. “All we have to do is find all the pieces that are missing.”

“You want us to reassemble the Berlin Wall,” I said.

“They’ll thank us later,” Monk said.

“No, they won’t,” I said. “Besides, it would take us years.”

“You should have thought of that before you brought us in here,” Monk said miserably. “We’re committed now.”

I left Monk at the shelves, went up to the counter, and whispered a question to the female cashier. “Do they sell pieces of the Berlin Wall at the airport?”

“Yes,” the cashier said, “but they are much more expensive there and they don’t have nearly as wide a selection of colors and sizes as we do.”

“Thanks,” I said.

It might be pricier buying the piece at the airport, but it was the only way I was leaving Berlin with the souvenir. By then, Monk would be under the influence of his wonder drug and wouldn’t care about devoting his life and mine to recovering every piece of the Berlin Wall.

I went back to Monk, who was becoming increasingly frustrated at his inability to fit any of the pieces of the wall together.

“This is a living hell,” Monk said.

“You’d better take your pill now if we’re going to make our flight.”

“But what about this?” Monk said. “We can’t just walk away and leave chaos behind.”

“We’ll come back later,” I said.

“When?”

“When we have more pieces,” I said.

“Good idea,” he said and I gave him his pill.

Thirty minutes later, we were at Berlin-Tegel and all was forgotten.

I bought my piece of the wall at the airport gift shop and stowed it deep inside my purse where I hoped Monk would never see it.

Monk, meanwhile, settled in at an airport café, where he was sampling as many different German pastries as he possibly could, including at least four different kinds of streusel.

He wore many of those pastries on his shirt by the time we got on the plane, where he helped himself to a copy of each of the free magazines.

“You can’t read German,” I said.

“They’re free,” Monk said. Even on drugs, he was a cheapskate.

The plane wasn’t as crowded as our earlier flight. I took a window seat and Monk took the aisle, leaving the seat between us empty.

Before we took off, a stewardess came down the aisle, checking to see if our seat belts were fastened. It was the same stewardess who’d been on our last flight. She seemed shocked by the change in Monk, who was studying the
Playboy
centerfold.

“What do you think?” Monk tipped his head to the naked woman in the magazine. “Real or fake?”

“I’m not an expert,” she said.

“If you’re not,” Monk said, “who is?”

She ignored him and moved on. Monk showed the centerfold to me.

“You’re familiar with these,” he said. “What do you think?”

I yanked the magazine from his hands and shoved it into the seat pocket in front of me.

“Behave yourself,” I said.

The man sitting across the aisle from Monk leaned towards him.

“They’re real,” he said, nodding to underscore his certainty.

“If those are real,” the woman next to him said, “then I’m a man.”

“Are you?” Monk asked.

“That’s my wife you’re talking to!” the man said, his face reddening fast.

Monk shrugged. “This is Germany.”

The passenger in front of Monk peered over the top of his seat at him. “What is that supposed to mean?”

Before Monk could reply and things could escalate into a fistfight, the woman in the seat behind Monk tapped his arm.

“They’re fake,” she said.

“Real,” said someone else.

“Fake,” said someone else.

“One is real,” someone else said. “The other is fake.”

And so it went, up and down the plane. By the time we landed in Frankfurt, Monk had managed to poll all the passengers and the crew on this vital question, but they were evenly split on the issue. Most of the men, though, believed the centerfold’s breasts were real. Or wanted to.

What a shock.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

Mr. Monk Takes a Walk in the Woods

It was dark when we got out of our car in the Franziskus-hohe parking lot. Monk turned on one of the two flashlights that we’d bought on our way back to Lohr and aimed it into the woods, letting the beam play on the trees.

“Ready to go?” he asked me.

“It’s dark,” I said.

“That’s why we’ve got flashlights,” he said. “But the moon is so bright we hardly need them.”

“Maybe we should do this in the morning,” I said.

“This is the perfect time to do it.”

“You’re not going to be able to see anything.”

“But this is probably what it was like when Dr. Rahner was out there, looking for a place to hide the body until morning. We’ll see things the way he did.”

“You’re on drugs,” I said.

“You’re scared,” Monk said, grinning.

“I am not,” I lied.

Monk shined the light under his chin, giving him a ghostly look. “You think the boogeyman is going to get you?”

“I’m being cautious. What if you trip over something?”

“Uh-huh.” Monk reached into his pocket and came out with his prescription bottle. “Maybe you’d like one of my pills.”

I didn’t like being the crazy person in our relationship. So what if I got mauled by a bear or fell off a cliff? I decided that would be better than him getting to be smug and superior.

“The trail is over here.” I turned on my flashlight and marched past him. “Follow me.”

It didn’t take us long to get to the spot beside the muddy pond where I’d found Leupolz’s body. Remembering the corpse while standing there in the dark made me very nervous.

Monk aimed his flashlight into the bushes, then out over the pond. Something in the trees at the far edge of the pond reflected the light.

I’d seen a dog’s eyes reflect light at night. What if Monk’s beam had just passed over a wolf?

“What’s that?” Monk asked.

“A beer can, maybe?” I said. “Or a pack of slavering wolves.”

“Slavering?” He swept the trees again with his light and caught another glimmer.

“Wolves slaver,” I said. “Especially when they are rabid and hungry.”

“Let’s go see,” he said and started walking, not waiting for my reply.

We followed the perimeter of the pond. I shifted my gaze and the beam of my light back and forth, between the woods and the brown water.

Was the pond full of leeches lusting for a taste of my blood? Which was a worse way to go? Feasted on by slavering wolves or bloodthirsty leeches?

Beyond the trees, a few yards from the pond, we found a weedy clearing where a rotting wooden shack stood. It blended so well with the trees that we hadn’t seen it yesterday. On one side of the shack there was a pile of firewood where seemingly a thousand spiders lived. They, too, probably hungered for my sweet flesh.

Monk aimed his flashlight at the shack, the beam slicing through the gaps between the boards to illuminate a pile of rusty paint cans inside, creating the reflection that had drawn him here like a fish to a lure.

And I knew what happened to fishes lured by lures. They ended up scaled, gutted, and grilled.

“This looks like a good place to hide a corpse to me,” Monk said, which is exactly what you don’t want someone to say in the middle of the woods at night, not when you’re already so scared that you find the thought of grilled fish frightening.

“Great,” I said. “We can come back in the morning and check it out.”

But Monk was already opening the door and going inside.

“I’ll wait here,” I said.

That was when I heard a twig snap in the woods behind me.

I whirled around, letting my beam play out over the trees and the murky water. I didn’t see anything.

It was a relief. It was also terrifying. I went inside the shack and slammed the door shut behind me, just as I thought I heard another twig snap.

Monk was crouched in the far corner, examining something.

“Look at this,” he said.

I walked up behind him. There were some white feathers on the ground at his feet.

“Pillow feathers,” he said. “Bruno Leupolz was here.”

“But we can’t prove that Dr. Rahner was,” I said.

“Those paint cans are rusted through and leaking,” Monk said, motioning to the cans behind me. “You’re standing in a puddle of dry paint on the ground. I bet we can find some of it on Dr. Rahner’s shoes, maybe even his socks or pant legs.”

“Don’t you think he would have washed them or thrown them out by now?”

“Oh,” Monk said. “I hadn’t thought of that. Maybe there’s something else in here that will be his undoing.”

“We’ll have better luck seeing it in daylight,” I said.

“But we’re here now,” he said. He sniffed. “Do you smell gasoline?”

I sniffed. “It could be the turpentine.”

“Is there turpentine?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “But if there’s paint around, there’s probably some turpentine, too.”

“Maybe we can find that on his shoes,” Monk said, going over to examine a rotting bag on the ground, its contents of white granules spilled on the floor. “What’s this?”

“Looks like fertilizer to me,” I said. “Not that I am any kind of expert.”

“Maybe we can find some of these granules in the treads of his shoes.”

We were crouching to examine the bag when the wall beside us burst into flames in a loud, crackling
whoosh
.

The heat, the sound, and the sudden light made us scramble back in shock and terror. Instinctively, we both went for the door.

But it wouldn’t budge. We slammed our bodies against it to no avail. It was jammed tight.

“Were you smoking?” Monk asked me.

“I don’t smoke,” I said.

“Then how did the fire start?”

I remembered the smell of gasoline. Someone wanted to kill us.

Another wall ignited, the dry wood catching fire remarkably fast, the flames licking out for us like the tongues of ravenous monsters.

I glanced at the paint, the turpentine, and the fertilizer and knew what they would soon become.

A bomb.

In a few seconds we would be dead.

The heat was unbearable—each breath felt like a knife jammed down my throat. I looked around, and through the flames and disintegrating wood consuming one wall I could make out the muddy pond several yards away.

Without thinking, I grabbed Monk’s hand, closed my eyes, and ran screaming into the wall.

The wood seemed to shatter like glass. I felt a thousand white-hot stings and knew that my clothes were on fire. I ran blindly, tripped in the muck, and fell facefirst into the thick water of the pond, losing my grip on Monk.

It was like falling into pudding. I had to fight to get up, the weight of the mud and my clothes pushing me down into the shallow pond.

When I came up for air, I was standing in water up to my chest, sludge dripping off my scorched clothes and singed hair.

Monk emerged beside me, sputtering and coughing, draped in weeds like a swamp monster. His lapels were blackened from the flames and it looked like a dozen people had tried putting out their cigarettes on his jacket.

We both turned to look at the shack as it exploded, sending canisters shooting up into the air like fireworks, trailing embers. The explosion seemed to suck the air out of the fire. The shack collapsed on itself and became a big bonfire that lit up the pond. I could feel the hot air against my face.

“Whoo-wee!” Monk shrieked happily, wiping muck from his brow. “That was a rush.”

I stared at him. I’d never heard him say “whoo-wee” or anything remotely like it. I couldn’t believe he was happy, standing there waist-deep in sludge, his hair still smoking from the fire. I could only imagine how I must have looked, but I knew how I felt.

“Someone just tried to murder us,” I said.

“It was fun,” he said with a smile.

“Fun? We were nearly burned alive! We’re about to be attacked by bloodsucking leeches!”

“Now we know we’re on the right track,” Monk said.

I wanted to wipe that dopey smile off his face and make him as miserable and angry as I was. And I wasn’t beyond rubbing salt in his wounds to do it.

“But any evidence that might have connected Dr. Rahner to Bruno Leupolz’s murder has literally gone up in smoke.”

“Wrong,” Monk said.

“You can’t prove the body was hidden in the shack or that Dr. Rahner was ever there because”—I pointed to the fire— “
the shack is gone.
”

“Who cares?” Monk said.

“You do!” I shouted. “Dr. Rahner is going to get away with murder.”

“Bullpucky.”

“Did you just say ‘bullpucky’?”

“This is our lucky night,” he said. “If we hadn’t been on fire, we never would have found this.”

He reached into the muck with both hands and pulled up a big black trash bag that was cinched tight, the yellow plastic drawstrings tied in a neat double bow.

“I present the missing stuff from Bruno Leupolz’s apartment, ” Monk said.

“Or somebody else’s trash,” I said. “Who knows how many people have ditched their garbage in here?”

“This is a Norwegian Reef Knot, is it not?” He tipped his head towards the drawstrings and began to giggle. “Knot, not. Get it? Knot, not. Who’s there? The Monkster, that’s who!”

I was starting to regret saving his life. I might have corrected that error then and there if not for the sound of approaching sirens and the possibility of getting caught in the act.

Fire trucks roared up a logging road on the hillside above us and a few minutes later a dozen firefighters spilled down on the clearing carrying shovels and fire extinguishers.

While they doused the bonfire with foam and shoveled dirt on the embers, we slogged out of the pond and sat on a log to await the arrival of the police.

Mosquitoes drawn by the lights buzzed by my ears. I swatted at them and searched my body for leeches as best I could without stripping entirely.

Monk gazed up at the stars and sighed contentedly.

“This is nice,” he said.

I paused for a moment to stare at him. “We’re breathing smoke, soot, and toxic chemicals. We’re being bled dry by mosquitoes and leeches. We’re soaking wet, covered in mud, and smell like we died yesterday. And you think this is nice?”

“I wish we had some marshmallows,” Monk said. “We could put them on sticks and roast them over the embers. Wouldn’t that be tasty?”

Stoffmacher and Geshir approached us. I didn’t even notice their arrival on the scene.

“When I heard where this fire was, I had a feeling we’d find you here,” Stoffmacher said. “Would you like to tell us what happened?”

“We went to Berlin and found out why Dr. Rahner murdered Bruno Leupolz,” Monk said. “The reporter discovered that the doctor isn’t a doctor and that he’s swindling the investors in his resort.”

“Here.” Stoffmacher thrust his finger in the direction of the firefighters. “I want to know what happened
here
.”

“We found out where Dr. Rahner hid Bruno Leupolz’s body before dumping it on the trail,” Monk said. “It’s that shack over there.”

“It was,” I said. “Now it’s ashes.”

“Dr. Rahner must have seen us park at the Franziskushohe tonight and guessed what we were after,” Monk said. “So he followed us down here with a gasoline can and a match.”

“What evidence do you have to back up your accusations?” Stoffmacher demanded.

Monk looked at me. “Why does everybody keep asking me that question?”

“They’re detectives,” I said.

“That’s no excuse for repetition,” Monk said. “It’s tiresome.”

“So are these encounters with you, Mr. Monk,” Stoffmachersaid. “If you don’t show me some proof right now, I will arrest you for arson.”

“You think that we burned down the shack and did this to ourselves?” I said. “That’s insane.”

“Stranger things have happened,” Stoffmacher said. “Mostly since you both arrived in Lohr.”

“We have this,” Monk said, motioning to the big trash bag. “You’ll notice that it’s tied in a Norwegian Reef Knot, the same knot Dr. Rahner uses to tie his shoes and the shoes of people he kills and dumps on hiking trails.”

“Oh God.” Stoffmacher groaned. “Not the knots again.”

“Knot, not,” Monk said to me with a giggle. “Get it?”

Stoffmacher glared at him. “I don’t see anything funny about this. We’re lucky the entire forest didn’t go up in flames.”

“Oh, relax,” Monk said. “Don’t get yourself all twisted in a tizzy.”

“What’s a tizzy?” Geshir asked.

“If you’ll give us a ride up to the Franziskushohe we can wrap this whole case up tonight,” Monk said.

“Can’t it wait until morning?” I said. All I wanted to do was get in a hot shower for about two hours and check my body for leeches.

“Why wait?” Monk said.

“Because if you could see yourself right now, you’d die,” I said.

“I can see myself,” Monk said.

“Tomorrow you’ll die,” I said.

“All the more reason to do it now.” Monk picked up the bag, rose to his feet, and faced Stoffmacher. “Where’s the car?”

Baffled, Stoffmacher looked at me. “Is he on drugs?”

“Yes,” I said.

The bluntness of my answer seemed to surprise him.

Stoffmacher looked back to Monk. “We’ll go to the hotel and I’ll allow you to confront Dr. Rahner if you will promise me that no matter what happens, you’re done. You won’t pursue your investigation any further or trouble Dr. Rahner ever again.”

“Deal,” Monk said.

“He can’t make a deal,” I said. “He’s on mind-altering drugs.”

“Then maybe we should arrest him,” Stoffmacher said pointedly.

We were screwed no matter what. Monk was going to have a lot to regret in the morning.

“We’ll take the deal,” I said.

“Wise decision,” Stoffmacher said.

“Great,” Monk said. “Who’s driving?”

“I am, but you’re walking,” Stoffmacher said and handed him his flashlight. “You aren’t stinking up my car.”

Stoffmacher and Geshir turned their backs to us and walked away.

“We were almost killed tonight,” I yelled after them. “Is this how you treat victims of violent crime around here?”

They ignored me. I made a very unladylike gesture with my hand in their wake. I’m sure they would have understood its meaning if they’d seen it.