by Lee Goldberg
“Neither can I,” I said.
Stottlemeyer glanced at me. “It’s nice to know that we can still agree about something.”
The door flew open and Disher practically leapt into the room.
“Judge Clarence Stanton was just gunned down in Golden Gate Park,” Disher said. “He’s dead.”
“And the shooter?” Stottlemeyer asked.
“In the wind,” Disher said.
“Damn,” Stottlemeyer said. “Get every available man down there now. I need statements from anybody who might have seen anything.”
“We’ll follow you down,” Monk said.
“No, you won’t,” Stottlemeyer said. “Didn’t you hear anything that I just told you?”
“You said you need every available man,” Monk said. “I’m available.”
“Not to us,” Stottlemeyer said. “I’m sorry.”
He hurried out with Disher and nearly every detective in the room.
Monk looked at me.
“I feel like a walk in the park,” he said. “How about you?”
“You’ve been fired, Mr. Monk. You’re not welcome at the crime scene.”
“It’s still a public park,” Monk said. “And I’m a member of the public.”
“You don’t want to do this,” I said.
But I knew there was no stopping him.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Mr. Monk Takes a Walk in the Park
The crime scene was a jogging path located between a small lake and a densely wooded section of Golden Gate Park, which was once a thousand acres of sandy, windswept wasteland before it was transformed in the late 1800s into a lushly landscaped oasis.
With dense groves of pine and eucalyptus trees, several lakes, thousands of flowers, and wide, grassy fields, it’s a terrific place to get away from the pressures of urban life, to take long walks, play games, ride bikes, make love, enjoy picnics, and kill people.
I will confess to doing all but one of those activities in Golden Gate Park myself at one time or another.
A strong wind rolled off the ocean and carried the smell of blood and cordite to our noses before we got to the body. There must have been a lot of blood and a lot of bullets.
The officers who secured the crime scene were used to seeing Monk and me, so they lifted the yellow crime scene tape for us to pass through without asking for ID or any explanations. They apparently hadn’t gotten the word that we were no longer on the payroll.
The victim was wearing a T-shirt and jogging shorts. He was on his back on the jogging path in a huge pool of blood, his body riddled with bullet wounds. He looked to me to be in his fifties, judging by the few lines in his face and strands of gray in his hair, though he had the well-toned body of a much younger man. His eyes were open and as dull as stone.
“Two witnesses saw a slender person wearing dark glasses and an oversize hoodie come out of those trees and empty his gun into the judge at point-blank range,” Disher said, referring to his notebook. “The shooter then ran back into the trees.”
“There’s a road that runs along the other side of the grove and out of the park,” Stottlemeyer said. “He could have had a car parked there or someone waiting in one for him.”
Stottlemeyer and Disher had their backs to us as we approached, so they didn’t see Monk until he started circling the body, his hands out in front of him, framing his view.
“Why didn’t the shooter throw his gun in the lake?” Monk asked.
“Because there were witnesses and he wanted to dispose of the weapon where no one would find it,” Disher said.
“What are you talking to him for?” Stottlemeyer scolded Disher. “He’s not supposed to be here.”
“But isn’t there a bigger risk of being caught with the murder weapon on him?” Monk asked as if the captain hadn’t spoken at all.
“We’ll ask him when we catch him,” Stottlemeyer said. “Get out of here, Monk.”
“The judge has been shot in the shoulder, chest, thigh, neck, and arm,” Monk said, crouching beside the body. “It’s as if the shooter was firing wildly or was not very familiar with a gun.”
“Or he was just angry and in a hurry,” Disher said. “Judge Stanton tries a lot of criminal cases and he’s made plenty of enemies. Maybe one of them just got released from prison.”
“I told you to stop talking to him,” Stottlemeyer said, then turned to Monk again. “You can either leave or I can have you dragged out of here by two officers. It’s your decision.”
Monk looked from the body to the grove of trees and then back again.
“It’s a public park,” he said. “You can’t throw me out.”
“You are welcome to visit the park, but you are to remain outside the police line, just like everybody else,” Stottlemeyer said. “Now go. I don’t want to see you at another crime scene unless I call you, but I wouldn’t sit by the phone waiting if I were you. This budget crisis is going to last a while.”
“He doesn’t need to wait,” I said. “Once word gets out that he’s a free agent, police departments all over the country will be clamoring for his services.”
“I hope so,” Stottlemeyer said. “I really do.”
“Let’s go, Mr. Monk.” I tugged him gently by the sleeve and led him to the police line.
I lifted up the tape to let him through. Monk looked back at the body, then at the grove of trees again and pointed to a spot.
“He must have come from right about there to intersect with the judge here,” Monk said.
“It’s not your case, Mr. Monk. You aren’t being paid. There’s no reason for you to get involved.”
“The captain needs me,” Monk said.
“He doesn’t want you,” I said.
“He can’t afford me,” Monk said. “There’s a difference.”
“It’s not just about the money.”
Monk moved across the field towards the grove. The lupine flowers were in bloom, ringing the base of the tall pines with vibrant color.
Some of the flowers had been flattened where someone crushed them underfoot. This was where the killer was hiding before the shooting.
Monk peered into the trees and examined the ground. “There are bicycle tracks from the street into this grove and back out again.”
He circled the area, careful not to disturb the secondary crime scene. I followed him. He cocked his head from side to side, crouched and stood and crouched again, doubled back the way he came, and then retraced the way he had gone forward. It was enough to give me motion sickness.
“The killer wasn’t a man,” he said. “It was a woman.”
“How can you tell from looking at the ground?” I said. “Don’t tell me you recognize the footprint left by her shoes.”
He shook his head. “All I can tell is that they were running shoes. I can’t determine whether they belonged to a man or a woman just from looking at the tread. But I’m sure the forensics unit can by comparing the pattern to those in their footwear database.”
“So how do you know the shooter was a she?”
“Her bike fell down,” Monk said, and pointed to some impressions in the dirt. “There’s a fleck of pink paint on the rock over there. It’s considered a feminine color. A man wouldn’t want to be seen on a bike of that color.”
“We’re in San Francisco, Mr. Monk. This may come as a shock to you, but there are a lot of men here with feminine tendencies who aren’t shy about showing it.”
Monk shivered from head to toe. I don’t think he’s ho mophobic, per se. He’s just phobic in general. His sense of order demands that if something is designed for a woman, or directly associated with femininity, then only a woman should use it.
He would be just as unsettled by a woman wearing a man’s tie or using his aftershave instead of perfume.
Come to think of it, a woman doused with aftershave would unsettle me, too.
“There’s more,” Monk said. There always is with him. “The bike left an impression in the dirt. You c
an see the shape of the seat and where it was relative to the handlebars. Women are anatomically different from men.”
“Are they really? I thought you didn’t notice.”
“I try not to,” Monk said. “But those differences are reflected in how they design women’s bicycles. Women have wider hips than men, so their bike seats are different. They also have shorter torsos and longer legs than men, and that’s reflected in the distance between the seat and the handlebars. It’s also why the top tube of the frame is at an angle.”
“I always thought it was to accommodate women who wore dresses and skirts when they rode bikes,” I said.
“That too,” Monk said. “Can you take a picture of that?”
I had a built-in camera in my cell phone. I took some shots of the ground for him.
“How do you know it wasn’t a man riding a woman’s bike?”
“The killer wouldn’t risk drawing that much attention to himself.”
“Let me remind you again that we are in San Francisco,” I said. “A man riding a woman’s bike wouldn’t be that unusual, even if he was wearing a dress.”
Monk shivered again. “I should tell the captain what I know.”
“He’ll figure it out himself from the shoe impressions and an analysis of the paint chip,” I said. I looked back and saw the captain and the officers heading our way.
“Do you think so?”
“I’m positive,” I said, though I wasn’t. But what the captain did or didn’t discover about this killing really wasn’t our problem. We weren’t being paid to worry about it.
“I’m not so sure,” Monk said.
Clearly, drastic action was necessary.
“You have some nature on your shoes,” I said. “I think it’s pine sap.”
Monk let out a little yelp and hurried towards the road. I took my time. I wondered whether we’d have to burn his shoes when we got back to his apartment or if it would be enough to just dump them in his Diaper Genie.
Perhaps we’d have to do both.
I won’t hold you in suspense any longer. We did both. After that, he spent the rest of the day in his apartment, frantically looking for excuses to put something, anything, into his Diaper Genie and seal it for eternity.
He created messes just so he could clean them up and dump the remains in the Genie. He “accidentally” dropped a bag of coffee, a box of cereal, and two cups on the floor.
I went outside to empty the Diaper Genie and when I came back I found Monk talking furtively on the phone in the kitchen.
“My name is Anonymous, and I have no relation whatsoever to Adrian Monk,” he said in a deep voice. “Here’s my tip. The person who shot Judge Stanton in Golden Gate Park was a woman. You can tell from the impression made by her bicycle in the-”
I yanked the phone plug from the wall.
“What are you doing?” I said.
“Calling the police hotline and leaving an anonymous tip. Don’t worry, they’ll never know it was me.”
“It doesn’t matter whether they do or not. They fired you, Mr. Monk, and now you’re giving them the benefit of your knowledge for free.”
“Not everything has a price,” he said.
“Your consulting services do and the police aren’t paying it,” I said. “You’re only hurting yourself by doing this.”
“But I’m helping to catch a murderer,” he said.
“How does that help you?”
“Because I can’t just let it go,” Monk said. “It’s who I am; it’s what I do. I would do it for free.”
“That’s exactly what you’re doing,” I said.
“But they don’t know that,” he said. “That gives us the edge in negotiations.”
“There won’t be any if you keep this up.”
“I don’t want the captain’s case-closure statistics to fall.”
“If they don’t, Mr. Monk, they have no incentive to rehire you.”
“He’s a very good detective and people need to know that,” Monk said.
“You’re right, and it’s great that you want to help him, but if you continue investigating crimes for the police for no salary, what are you going to do for a living? How are you going to pay me?”
“It’s who you are; it’s what you do,” he said. “You would do it for free.”
“No, I wouldn’t,” I said.
“Yes, you would.”
“Assisting you is my job, and I enjoy it, but it is not who I am; it is not a burning need that I am compelled to satisfy.”
“You’re just saying that,” Monk said. “You’re burning.”
“I mean it, Mr. Monk,” I said. “If you can’t pay me, then I will have to get another job. And what about Dr. Bell? How will you pay him?”
“He’ll take me on pro bono.”
“Why would he do that?”
“Because I’m fascinating,” he said. “You should take me on pro bono, too.”
“I won’t and neither will Dr. Bell. So if I were you, I would stop detecting for free and find someone else who will pay you for it.”
“Like who?”
“Like other police departments,” I said. “Tomorrow we’ll go back to that conference and do some schmoozing.”
“What’s that?”
“Chatting people up, getting to know them,” I said. “But more important, it’s getting them to know you.”
Now he looked worried. “Do they have to?”
“To know you is to love you,” I said.
“Bring plenty of wipes,” he said.
CHAPTER NINE
Mr. Monk Gets an Offer
The murder of Judge Stanton was front-page news in the San Francisco Chronicle the next morning. The article described some of the more notorious criminal cases he judged and that he’d been about to preside over the trial of reputed mobster Salvatore Lucarelli, the West Coast Godfather.
There were other newsworthy crimes in the city, including a hit-and-run death in the marina the previous night and a robbery in Union Square that left a storekeeper dead.
Stottlemeyer would certainly have his hands full. But if he’d kept Monk on, most of those cases would probably have been solved before lunch.
If I sound a little bitter, that’s because I was. Not only did I think he’d treated Monk unfairly, but he’d betrayed me as well. He’d sat across from me at Starbucks and claimed he didn’t resent Monk at all. He was either lying to himself, or to me, or both.
I had no doubt that Stottlemeyer would come crawling back to Monk eventually; it was just a question of what would break first, the captain or my checking account.
But there was another option. Monk could get a better-paying job with another police department, perhaps as close by as Oakland, Berkeley, or San Mateo.
I knew I’d have to do most of the networking at the conference, so I dressed up a little more than usual and, I’m a bit ashamed to admit this, I chose clothes that accented my curves (such as they were) and showed a bit more skin.
I would be dealing primarily with men, after all, and I needed whatever edge I could get. I couldn’t really count on much support from Monk. Luckily for us both, Braddock had done most of the work for me already by touting Monk’s amazing case-closure stats during their panel discussion.
I headed over to Monk’s place and heard him talking on the phone in the kitchen as I walked in.
“I am a completely anonymous person who knows that the witness to the hit-and-run killing last night is lying,” Monk said. “He told the police that the driver nearly ran over him, too, but he jumped out of the way. The witness gave them a detailed description of the driver and a partial plate, which he said he saw because the driver was bearing right down on him.”
I walked in and saw the Chronicle on the counter in front of Monk. It was open to the article about the hit-and-run. I leaned against the wall, folded my arms under my chest, and glowered at Monk, who turned his back to me.
“But he couldn’t have seen any of it. If
what he said was true, then the driver’s headlights would have been shining right in his face, blinding him. I believe that the witness himself was the hit-and-run driver and that he’s trying to mislead the police with false information.”
Monk turned back to me, only so he could refer to the newspaper again.
“I also have some anonymous information about the robbery of the electronics store in Union Square -”
That was more than I could take. I unplugged the phone.
“If you’re not going to make an effort on your own behalf, then why should I bother?” I said. “Forget going to the police conference today. You can call back the tip hotline and I’ll use the time to get a head start looking for my new job.”
I plugged the phone back in and reached for the classified section of the newspaper, which I took back with me to the dining room table in a huff. I opened it to the Want Ads.
“It’s unfair and un-American for you to penalize me for being a good citizen,” he said. “It’s my duty to society to tell the police what I know.”
“Hey, this sounds good. There’s an opening for a personal shopper at Macy’s,” I said, circling a listing. “I’ve got lots of experience shopping and I enjoy it. Would you write me a letter of recommendation?”
“No,” he said.
“Don’t you think that’s being petty?”
“You’re overqualified for that job,” he said.
“Why? I do a lot of your shopping for you.”
“And no shopper will ever be as rigorous in his standards as I am,” Monk said. “You’d be wasting your talents. It would be like a brain surgeon working as a nurse.”
I thought that was a pretty audacious comparison for him to make. Being Monk’s assistant wasn’t brain surgery, though at times it felt as if someone were drilling a hole through my skull without anesthesia.
I didn’t tell him that, of course. I still might need that letter of recommendation.
Monk picked up the phone and started to dial.
“Oh look, a taxi company is looking for drivers,” I said. “I could do that. I can drive, I have a bubbly personality, and I know my way around the city.”