Mr. Monk Goes to the Firehouse (19 page)

“Lemkin was shot once in the heart,” Monk said. “Why not the face or the head? He was shot in the heart because of the heart he broke. You can’t ignore the symbolic implications.”

“This isn’t a high school English class,” Disher said. “This symbolism stuff is a stretch even for you.”

“Not when you notice the killer also took Lemkin’s wedding ring,” Monk said, pointing to the band of pale flesh around the victim’s ring finger. “It was obviously for the sentimental value.”

“Or the cash value,” Disher said.

“Then why didn’t the killer take the Rolex, too?” Monk said, motioning to the big gold watch on the victim’s wrist. “There’s more. The killer used a small-caliber gun, traditionally a ‘woman’s weapon.’ And look at what the killer used for a silencer—a crocheted pillow. Something she knitted during all those hours he left her alone to be with other women. The unintended symbolism is practically a confession.”

I was suddenly aware that I was crouching, too. All the awkwardness and discomfort I felt before was gone. In trying to understand Monk’s reasoning, I’d begun to see Lemkin’s corpse the same way that they did: not as a human being, but as a book to be read, a puzzle to be reassembled, a problem to be solved.

“My freshman English teacher was right: The C I got in his class did come back to haunt me.” Stottlemeyer stood up and looked at Disher. “Find Lemkin’s wife, Randy. Charge her with murder one and bring her in.”

“Yes, sir,” Disher said, and hurried out.

Stottlemeyer turned back to Monk and smiled. “So, Monk, what was it you wanted?”

We stepped outside, and Monk spent the next ten minutes explaining to Stottlemeyer how he figured out that we needed to find Lucas Breen’s overcoat and where he thought it might be now.

“You want to search thirty tons of trash for an overcoat that
may
have been tossed in one of the Excelsior garbage bins,” Stottlemeyer said.

“I’m sure that it was,” Monk said. “If we don’t recover it now, before more trash is added to the pile and it’s all hauled to the landfill, we never will.”

“A search like that is going to require a lot of people and a lot of man-hours. I don’t have the authority to approve that kind of expense. I’ve got to take the request directly to the deputy chief and make a case for it.”

“Can you do that now?” Monk said.

“Sure, it’s not like I’ve got anything on my plate at the moment,” Stottlemeyer said. “You took care of that in the apartment.”

“It was nothing,” Monk said.

“I know,” Stottlemeyer said. “I can’t tell you how inadequate that makes me feel. Sometimes I’m not sure whether to thank you or shoot you.”

“Did you know they don’t have a zone nine?” Stottlemeyer shot a quick glance at me, then looked at Monk and tried to appear genuinely surprised. “You’ve got to be kidding.”

“I was shocked, too. All the trash just gets mixed together; can you believe it?”

“That’s difficult to imagine,” Stottlemeyer said.

“It’s a breach of the public trust,” Monk said. “There should be an investigation.”

“I’ll be sure to bring that up in my discussion with the deputy chief,” Stottlemeyer said. “Wait for me at the station. I’ll meet you there as soon as I’m done with him.”

 

 

 

 

We waited in Stottlemeyer’s office. I browsed through a well-thumbed old copy of the
Sports Illustrated
swimsuit issue that came with 3-D glasses. It was either that or last month’s
Guns and Ammo
. Monk busied himself reading the open case files on the captain’s desk.

I put on the 3-D glasses and opened the magazine. Dozens of supermodel breasts burst out of the pages at me like cannonballs. It was startling. I tried to imagine what my breasts would look like in 3-D instead of 1-D. I doubt anybody could tell the difference. There’s nothing remotely D about my bosom.

Disher came into the squad room escorting a handcuffed woman I assumed was Mrs. Lemkin, even though she didn’t look anything like I imagined she would. Since her husband was stepping out on her, and she was spending her time crocheting, I pictured her as a homely, pale woman in a plain dress with her hair pulled back tightly in a bun. But Mrs. Lemkin wasn’t like that at all. She must get out a lot for jogging and aerobics, and she knew how to wear makeup (a skill I’d never mastered). She was clearly proud of her trim body and showed it off in a sleeveless T-shirt and tight jeans, her long black hair tied back in a pony-tail that she looped through the back of a pink Von Dutch baseball cap.

Our eyes met for a moment, and what I saw in hers was pride, anger, and not a hint of remorse.

Disher handed her off to a uniformed officer for booking, then motioned for me to come out to talk with him.

“Was that Mrs. Lemkin?” I asked.

“Uh-huh,” Disher said. “We found her sitting at her kitchen table, in front of her laptop, going on an eBay buying binge.”

“What was she bidding on?”

“Porcelain dolls,” Disher said. “Nothing like shopping to ease the pain of gunning down your husband.”

“She didn’t look like she was in much pain to me.”

“Maybe it’s because of the glasses,” he said, motioning to my face.

I had forgotten I was still wearing them. I took them off and grinned to hide my embarrassment. “I was just reading some of the articles in
Sports Illustrated
.”

“Those glasses certainly help the words spring off the page, don’t they?”

“And a lot of other things too,” I said. “If these glasses worked on all magazines, I bet men would read a lot more.”

“I certainly would,” Disher said. “I meant to tell you back at the crime scene that I did that favor for you. Joe Cochran
was
one of the firemen who got hurt last night.”

I know this is a cliché, but it felt like my heart dropped down to the floor. I guess people use that expression a lot because that’s the only way to describe what bad news feels like. Tears started to well up in my eyes. Disher must have noticed, because he quickly spoke up again.

“He’s fine, he’s fine,” Disher said. “It was just a mild concussion and a few bruises. They sent him home this morning.”

I was relieved and wiped the unspilled tears from my eyes, but I still felt a tremor of worry. What would happen the next time he ran into a burning building? Would he be so lucky? That was his job, and if I kept seeing him, I would have to get used to it.

“Thank you,” I said. “I really appreciate it.”

“By the way,” Disher said, lowering his voice to a whisper and opening his notebook, “his record is clean, no arrests or outstanding warrants, but he does have three unpaid parking tickets. He’s never been married, at least not in this country, but he lived with a woman three years ago. Her name was—”

I interrupted him. “You ran a background check on Joe?”

Disher nodded proudly. “I figured as long as I was checking his health, I’d check out everything else.”

“I don’t want to know about everything else.”

“But everything else is who he is.”

“Which is why he should be the one to tell me about it,” I said. “Or I should discover it for myself.”

“That’s taking a big risk, Natalie. I’ve been burned too many times,” Disher said. “I never go out on a date anymore without knowing everything about a woman.”

“That’s why you don’t go out on dates anymore,” I said. “Every relationship needs a little mystery. Discovery is half of romance.”

“That’s the half I don’t like,” Disher said.

I made him rip out the pages that contained the details of Joe’s past from his notebook and tear them up. Disher wasn’t pleased but I didn’t care. Even though I wasn’t the one who snooped into Joe’s past, I felt guilty for violating his privacy.

Disher looked past me and noticed, for the first time, what Monk was reading. He rushed in and snatched the case files from Monk.

“What do you think you’re doing?” Disher said.

“Passing the time,” Monk said.

“By reading confidential case files of open homicide investigations?”

“You didn’t have the latest issue of
Highlights for Children
,” Monk said. “You really should renew your subscription.”

“We never had one,” Disher said.

“I love to spot the hidden objects in the drawings,” Monk said to me. “It keeps me sharp.”

Disher started to put the files back on the desk one by one.

“Wait,” Monk said and pointed at the file in Disher’s hand. “The gardener.”

“What?” Disher said.

“The gardener is the killer,” Monk said. “Trust me on this.”

“Okay, we’ll keep that in mind,” Disher said dismissively, set the file down and started to put down the next one.

“The mother-in-law,” Monk said.

“You read the file just once and you know that for a fact?”

“Definitely the mother-in-law,” Monk said. “It’s a no-brainer.”

Disher set another file on the desk.

“The twin brother,” Monk said.

And another.

“The shoe-shine man.”

And another.

“The bike messenger.”

Disher plunked down the rest of the stack on the desk all at once.

“The beekeeper, the long-lost aunt, and the podiatrist,” Monk said in a rush. “You dropped a file.”

Disher bent down and picked it up.

“The nearsighted jogger,” Monk said. “He couldn’t possibly have seen the woman in the window. He wasn’t wearing his glasses.”

“I hope you were taking notes,” Stottlemeyer said as he entered the office with a scowl on his face.

“Didn’t have to,” Disher said, tapping his forehead. “It’s all right here.”

“Write it down,” Stottlemeyer said.

Disher nodded, took out his notebook, and started writing.

“How did it go with the deputy chief?” Monk asked.

“It didn’t,” Stottlemeyer said. “He won’t let me authorize the search.”

“Why not?” Monk asked.

“Because he doesn’t think we have a case,” Stottlemeyer said. “In fact, I’ve been ordered to stop harassing Breen, a respected member of the Police Commission, with baseless and offensive accusations. I’ve been told to start looking in other directions.”

“He got to them,” Monk said.

“Big-time,” Stottlemeyer agreed, then looked up at Disher. “Randy, have the crime lab go down to the firehouse and check the firefighting gear on the off chance they might find Breen’s fingerprints or DNA remaining on whatever coat, helmet, boots, or gloves he borrowed.”

“Sir, we don’t even know which ones Breen used.”

“I’m aware of that,” Stottlemeyer said. “But we can at least eliminate the ones that the on-duty firemen were wearing the night of the fire.”

“But another shift has come on since then, so there’s a good chance that all the gear has been used and cleaned more than once since the murder.”

“I didn’t say it was going to be easy. It’s a long shot and a hell of a lot of work, but that’s how you, and me, and everybody who isn’t Adrian Monk break cases. It takes sweat and dogged determination.”

Monk stood up. “Lucas Breen killed Esther Stoval and Sparky the dog. If we don’t find that overcoat, Breen will get away with murder. Captain, we have to search that garbage.”

“I can’t,” Stottlemeyer said. “But there’s nothing stopping you from searching the trash.”

“Yes, there is,” Monk said. “There’s me.”

“My hands are tied. Of course, all of that could change if you were to stumble on, say, a scorched overcoat that belongs to Lucas Breen.”

“It could take us weeks to go through all that garbage,” I said.

“I’d really like to help; you know that. But I can’t,” Stottlemeyer said. “You’re on your own.”

 

Before we left Stottlemeyer’s office, I shamed the captain into calling Grimsley at the dump and asking him to hold the thirty tons of trash for a couple of days so we’d have a chance to search it. Stottlemeyer was careful, though, to say it wasn’t an official request but more along the lines of a personal favor.

Grimsley said he was he was glad to do whatever he could to help the police in their investigation.

But we weren’t ready to go out to the dump that afternoon. Monk had an appointment with his shrink, Dr. Kroger. Facing the likelihood of having to dig around in a mountain of trash, Monk really needed some help with his anxieties, so canceling the session was out of the question.

I had some anxieties of my own. I don’t have Monk’s aversion to germs, but I certainly wasn’t looking forward to spending a day wading in other people’s garbage.

I called Chad Grimsley and told him we’d be out in the morning.

While Monk was having his session, I waited outside the building and gave Joe a call at home. He answered on the first ring, his voice full of energy and good cheer.

“How can you sound so peppy after a burning warehouse collapsed on your head?”

“It’s just another day at the office,” he said.

“Is there anything I can do for you?”

“You’re doing it,” he said. “How’s your investigation going?”

I told him the broad strokes, but I left out Lucas Breen’s name and occupation. I didn’t want Joe doing something stupid like beating the crap out of Breen.

My subtle omission of key details wasn’t lost on Joe. “You’ve neglected to mention the name of the guy who killed Sparky and who belongs to that overcoat.”

“I did,” I said.

“You don’t trust me?”

“Nope,” I said. “But I mean that in the nicest possible way.”

“What happens if you don’t find that overcoat?”

“The killer gets away with killing Sparky and the old lady.”

“If that happens,” Joe said, “will you tell me his name then?”

“I don’t think so,” I said.