Mr. Monk Goes to the Firehouse (25 page)

Maybe it’s the same way when you’re a detective in the middle of an investigation. You’re under so much pressure to solve the case, and you’re bombarded with so many facts, that it’s almost impossible to see everything clearly. You see static instead of a picture.

I imagine that it was often like that for Stottlemeyer or Disher. I saw how much they invested themselves in their investigations, how hard they had to work at it.

For Monk, it’s all inside out. The investigation looks easy and everything else is hard.

We’re so distracted by how difficult it is for him to accomplish even the simplest things in life that we don’t notice the effort that he puts into solving crimes and how much of himself he puts on the line.

Figuring out the solutions to puzzling mysteries seems to come so fast and so naturally for him, we just shake our heads in wonder and chalk it up as miraculous. We don’t stop to consider the mental and emotional resources he has to marshal to pull that “miracle” off.

After all, we’re talking about a man who finds it virtually impossible to choose a seat in a movie theater and yet somehow manages to sort through thousands of possible clues in a case to arrive at a solution. That can’t be as easy as it looks. There’s got to be some heavy lifting involved. And I’m sure even he has times when he can’t see what’s obvious to everybody else or, in his case, what would ordinarily be obvious to him.

Who can he possibly turn to who can understand his anguish at times like that? Nobody. Because there’s no one else like Adrian Monk, at least not that I know of.

Even so, I resolved to give it my best shot. I went to his room and knocked on the door.

“Come in,” he said.

I opened the door and found him sitting on the edge of his bed, a book open on his lap. He grinned and tapped a finger on the page.

“This is priceless,” he said.

I sat down beside him and looked at what he was reading. It was a collection of single-panel comic strips about Marmaduke, a Great Dane the size of a horse.

In the comic Monk was looking at, Marmaduke was returning to his doghouse with a car tire in his mouth. The caption read:
Marmaduke loves chasing cars.

“That Marmaduke,” Monk said. “He’s so big.”

“It’s a joke that never gets tired,” I said.

It was a lie, of course. I couldn’t imagine what Monk, or anybody else, found amusing about that comic strip. But at least now I knew the secret to recovering from a night spent binge-drinking purified water.

“He is so mischievous.” Monk turned the page and pointed to a comic where Marmaduke takes his owner for a brisk walk, lifting the poor man right off his feet. The caption read:
There’s always a windchill factor when I walk Marmaduke!

“How are you feeling?”

“Dandy,” Monk said without conviction. He turned another page.

“You’ll get Lucas Breen, Mr. Monk. I know you will.”

“What if I don’t?” Monk said. “Captain Stottlemeyer could be demoted and Julie’s heart will be broken.”

“They’ll survive,” I said.

“I won’t,” Monk said, and turned another page in the book. Marmaduke jumps into a swimming pool, creating a splash that empties out all the water.
Who invited Marmaduke to our pool party?

Monk shook his head and smiled. “He’s enormous.”

“You can’t solve every case, Mr. Monk. You’re asking too much of yourself.”

“If I can find the person who killed my wife, I won’t need to solve another murder ever again,” Monk said. “So until that day comes, I have to solve them all.”

“I don’t understand.”

“There’s an order to everything, Natalie. If I can’t get justice for Esther Stoval, Sparky the fire dog, and that homeless man, how can I ever hope to get it for Trudy?”

That didn’t make a damn bit of sense to me. It was also one of the saddest things I’d ever heard.

“How can you put that burden on yourself, Mr. Monk? Those killings have nothing to do with what happened to Trudy.”

“Everything in life is linked. That’s how you can spot the things that don’t fit.”

I shook my head. “No, I don’t believe that. You really think that if you solve some magic number of cases, you will have done your penance and God will tell you who killed your wife?”

Monk shook his head. “There’s nothing magic or spiritual about it. I’m not skilled enough yet to figure out who murdered my wife. If I solve enough cases, maybe someday I will be.”

“Mr. Monk,” I said softly, “you’re the best detective there is.”

“That’s not good enough,” Monk said. “Because whoever killed Trudy is still free, and so is Lucas Breen.”

Monk turned another page in the book.

“You can’t do this to yourself, Mr. Monk. You’re holding yourself to a standard of perfection no person could ever meet.”

“That wacky dog gets into one mishap after another.” Monk smiled and pointed at the page.

Marmaduke chases a cat up a tree and manages to uproot the tall pine, much to the dismay of several children who are lugging planks of wood, hammers, and nails.
I guess we won’t be building our treehouse today.

“He sure does.” I patted Monk on the back and left the room.

Adrian Monk was, without a doubt, the most complex man I’d ever met, and perhaps the most tragic. I wished he could let go of some of that guilt he carried around.

Of course, I was a fine one to talk. How many nights did I stare at the ceiling and wonder if Mitch died because of me? If I had loved him more, he wouldn’t have been able to leave us. He wouldn’t have been half a world away. He wouldn’t have been shot out of the sky. If I loved him more, Mitch wouldn’t have needed to fly; he wouldn’t have needed anything but me. But I obviously didn’t love him enough, because he had to go. And now he was dead.

I knew it was foolish and irrational to blame myself for his death, but even so, I can’t deny that the guilt was there and still is.

Were Monk and I really so different?

But he was luckier than I. He knew what he had to do to set his world right again. I didn’t have a clue. What penance could I pay to restore order in my world?

I went into the kitchen, looked out the window, and saw Mrs. Throphamner in her backyard, tending her roses, the strong scent of those flowers filling my house. I hoped what happened last night wouldn’t scare her away from watching Julie for me. I’d come to depend on Mrs. Throphamner. The first step toward keeping her happy was probably paying her what I owed her.

I was heading back into the living room in search of my purse, and the cash to pay Mrs. Throphamner, when Monk came charging out of his room, holding open his book, a big smile on his face.

“He’s done it,” Monk said jubilantly.

“Who’s done what?”

“Marmaduke,” Monk said, tapping the open page and the strip about the uprooted tree. “He’s figured out how to get Lucas Breen!”

 

Stottlemeyer was in his office looking glum. Monk’s Marmaduke book was open on the desk in front of him. Disher stood behind the captain and looked over his shoulder.

“This is the solution to the case,” Monk said.

We sat in chairs facing Stottlemeyer’s desk and waited for his reaction. Stottlemeyer glanced at the comic, then back at Monk.

“You’ve got to be kidding,” Stottlemeyer said.

That probably wasn’t the reaction Monk was expecting. But he shouldn’t have been surprised. It was the same reaction I had.

“I agree with the captain on this. I don’t think a dog could really uproot a tree like that,” Disher said. “Even one Marmaduke’s size.”

“Sure he could,” Monk said.

“That’s not my problem with it,” Stottlemeyer said.

“But trees that size have very deep roots,” Disher said. “A car could crash into a tree like that one and it wouldn’t move.”

“Marmaduke is full of rambunctious energy,” Monk said. “Cars aren’t.”

“Would you both stop it?” Stottlemeyer snapped. “I’m not sure you grasp the gravity of this situation, Monk. This morning I was officially reprimanded by the chief over what happened last night. I have to go in front of an administrative review board next week and explain my actions. They could demote me.”

“They won’t once you arrest Lucas Breen,” Monk said.

“You mean after I confront him with this Marmaduke comic and he confesses?”

“Basically, yes,” Monk said, tapping the book. “This ties Breen irrefutably to all three murders.”

“Frankly, Monk, I don’t see how,” Stottlemeyer said.

So Monk explained it, sharing with us the realization he had had while reading the comic and his simple plan for acting on it. I could only smile to myself and marvel, once again, at the mysterious way Monk’s mind worked. But I knew he was right. It was our only hope of bringing down Lucas Breen.

Stottlemeyer was quiet for a moment, mulling over what Monk had told him.

“If I go up against Breen again and I lose, they will take my badge,” Stottlemeyer said. “I need to know you’re right about this.”

“I am,” Monk said.

Stottlemeyer pursed his lips and nodded. “Okay, then, let’s do it.”

He rose from his seat and put on his coat.

“What about me?” Disher asked. “What would you like me to do?”

“Stay right here, Randy, and see that those tests that Monk suggested are run on the homeless man and his possessions,” Stottlemeyer said.

“I could do that with a phone call,” Disher said. “I want to back you up on this, Captain.”

“I know you do,” Stottlemeyer said. “But if this goes wrong and my career blows up, I don’t want you to get hit with the shrapnel. I’m only willing to gamble one badge on Monk and Marmaduke, and it’s mine.”

Disher nodded. Stottlemeyer squeezed his shoulder and we walked out.

“Marmaduke,” Stottlemeyer muttered. “He’s one big dog.”

“The biggest,” Monk said.

 

 

 

 

The ride in the elevator up to Lucas Breen’s thirtieth-floor office went a lot faster without Monk. Stottlemeyer had his arms folded across his chest and tapped his foot nervously. I carried Lucas Breen’s surprise in my half-open bag and listened to a horrendous instrumental version of Kylie Minogue’s “Can’t Get You Out of My Head,” which, of course, lived up to its name. The bad elevator music was still stuck in my head when we stepped out into the waiting area.

The beautiful Asian receptionist greeted us with her best approximation of a smile. She wore a thin headset that connected her to the phone system. Several flat-screen monitors built into the desk showed security-camera views of the lobby, the garage, and other areas of the building. On one of the screens I spotted Monk sitting at a table outside of the Boudin Bakery in the lobby. He’d covered the seat bottom with napkins before sitting down.

“As our guard informed you downstairs,” she said to Stottlemeyer, “Mr. Breen is very busy and would prefer that you return at another time.”

She opened her calendar and ran a sharp, red-polished fingernail down the page. “I believe he can accommodate you in March of next year, assuming you’re still engaged in your present position on the police force.”

Stottlemeyer forced an insincere smile of his own. “Tell Mr. Breen that I appreciate how busy he is and that I need only a moment of his time to apologize.”

“You’re here to apologize?” she said, arching a perfectly tweezed eyebrow.

“I’m here to prostrate myself at his feet,” he said.

“Me, too,” I said.

“He likes that,” the receptionist said. This time her smile was real and vaguely sadistic.

“I’m sure he does,” Stottlemeyer said.

She called Breen and told him why we were there. I don’t know what he said, but after a moment she nodded at us.

“You may enter.” She tipped her head toward Breen’s office. I wondered if she was real or a vaguely lifelike robot, and if when she hummed, it sounded like the music we heard in the elevator.

The doors to Breen’s office slid open as we approached. Breen stood in the center of the room, looking nothing like the man we saw the previous night. He was completely recovered from his cold and dressed in one of his custom-made suits.

“You’re looking better this morning,” Stottlemeyer said.

“You have sixty seconds,” Breen said, checking his watch. I could see the monogram on his cuffs.

“That’s all I’ll need,” Stottlemeyer said. “I just wanted to apologize for all the trouble I’ve caused you over the last few days. You told us from day one that you’d never set foot in Esther Stoval’s house.”

“I never met the woman,” Breen said. “But you wouldn’t listen. Instead you accused me of committing every murder in this city.”

Stottlemeyer held up his hands in a show of surrender. “You’re right; I was wrong. I listened to Monk when I should have listened to you. I don’t blame you for being pissed off.”

Breen sneezed and wiped his nose with a handkerchief. “Indeed. Speaking of Monk, where is he?”

“He’s got a problem with elevators,” I said. “So he stayed down in the lobby. But I can call him on my cell phone. I know he’d like to say a few words to you.”

I took out my phone, hit speed dial, put it on the speaker setting, and held it out so we could all hear what Monk had to say.

“This is Adrian Monk,” he said over the speaker. “Can you hear me?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Testing, one, two, three,” Monk said.

Stottlemeyer took the phone from me and yelled into it, “We can hear you, Monk. Get on with it. Mr. Breen doesn’t have all day. We’ve wasted enough of this man’s time.”

Breen nodded appreciatively at Stottlemeyer, sniffled, and dabbed his nose with his handkerchief. His eyes were beginning to get teary.

“I want to say how sorry I am for intruding on you last night,” Monk said. “I hope you will accept this gift as a small token of remorse for the discomfort you’ve been through.”