by Lee Goldberg
“Of course,” the clerk said. He was so youthful, clean-cut, and gleamingly straight-toothed that he could have worked at Disneyland. “How long will you be staying?”
I glanced over my shoulder at Monk, who was busy arranging the suitcases at the porter’s stand by size, then returned my gaze to the clerk.
“One night,” I said. “I’d like room seven thirteen.”
The clerk cleared his throat with discomfort. “Perhaps you’d like a different room.”
“Is it occupied?”
“No,” he said, clearing his throat again.
“Then what’s the problem?”
“It’s just that the gentleman who was staying there most recently suffered a tragedy.”
“That’s a shame for him but what does that have to do with me?”
“I wouldn’t want to sleep in a room where someone died,” the clerk said.
“No one’s asking you to,” I said. “I’ve got a companion already.”
I tipped my head towards Monk, who was still busy lining up the suitcases.
The man flushed with embarrassment. “I wasn’t suggesting-I mean, I was just trying to be helpful.”
“By offering yourself to me?”
“No, no, you’ve got it all wrong-” he stammered.
“We’re in a hurry,” I interrupted, handing him my Intertect credit card with a smile. “Could you make it snappy, Romeo?”
He quickly checked us in and handed me an electronic key card.
“Have a pleasant stay,” he said.
“I will.” I winked and took the card from him. It was fun flustering him. It was nice to know I could still fluster somebody.
I went over to Monk, who was admiring the row of suitcases, perfectly staggered from the smallest to the largest like the signal-strength icon on a cell phone.
“We’re in,” I said. “The room is on the seventh floor.”
I figured the uneven floor number was enough bad news for the moment-there was no reason to tell Monk yet that we were going to an odd room, too.
“You didn’t say anything about going to the seventh floor,” Monk said.
“That’s where his room is,” I said.
“He should have been on the fourth or sixth,” Monk said. “Or some other even-numbered floor.”
“But he wasn’t,” I said.
“No wonder he’s dead,” Monk said. “They shouldn’t even put rooms on those floors. It’s irresponsible, dangerous, immoral, and unnatural.”
“What should they do, just leave the odd-numbered floors empty?”
“Yes, for the sake of humanity,” Monk said. “It must have been unbearable for Braddock. Maybe he killed himself.”
“You think Braddock strangled himself with a tie because he couldn’t endure another night on an odd-numbered floor?”
“It’s the most logical alternative,” Monk said. “The captain should use that argument as the cornerstone of his defense strategy.”
I couldn’t take any more of his insanity and marched to the elevator. “I’ll meet you up there.”
I knew that he’d be taking the stairs. He was too claustrophobic to ride an elevator. But if I wasn’t there to meet him on the seventh floor, to physically drag him out of the stairwell if necessary, he might not make it to the room at all.
I got in the elevator, rode it to the seventh floor, and went to room 713. A maid was cleaning the room across the hall, the door propped open with her cart of cleaning supplies, linens, toiletries, and clean glasses.
I opened the door to room 713 and went inside.
There was nothing in the room to indicate that a murder had taken place there a few nights ago. The table was upright, the glasses were replaced, and the bed was made. It was all crisp and clean and smelled of disinfectant.
But I knew better.
A few months ago at a crime scene in another hotel room, Disher demonstrated to me how to use a device that shines a special light to illuminate all the bodily fluid stains that are otherwise invisible to the naked eye. He swept the light over the scene and revealed that everything in the room had been, at one time or another, splattered with bodily fluids-the bedspread, the headboard, the walls, the ceilings, the tabletops, the countertops, the lamps, even the TV remote control.
I couldn’t figure out how some of the stains got where they were. The remote control alone had looked as if it had been dipped in blood or drool or God knows what. It was disgusting to see, even for someone without Monk’s germopho bia. Now I couldn’t enter a hotel room without imagining all the bodily fluids that I knew were all over the place but that I couldn’t actually see.
That was probably how Monk saw everything in this world. His eyes were like that special light.
So were mine as I walked into Braddock’s hotel room. I looked at the bedspread and in my mind I saw the drool that must have spilled out of Braddock’s gaping mouth as he struggled for air that would never come.
I wasn’t sure what bringing Monk to Braddock’s room would accomplish, but it seemed to me that visiting the crime scene, even after it had been cleaned up, was still the logical first step in a homicide investigation.
I left the room and went to the stairwell, getting to the door just as Monk huffed and puffed his way up the final few steps.
“You ought to try the elevator sometime,” I said. “It’s not that bad.”
“If you enjoy the experience of being buried alive in a coffin that moves,” Monk said, catching his breath.
“It’s not like being buried alive.”
“I’ve been buried alive. Twice. Once in a coffin and once in a car. Have you?”
“No,” I said. I vividly remembered those harrowing experiences. On both occasions, he’d come very close to suffocating to death.
“Then I think I know a little bit more about what being buried alive feels like than you do.”
He had me there.
I led him down the hall to the room. He stopped to inspect the maid’s cart and I used the opportunity to open the door, hoping he wouldn’t notice the room number.
The maid looked up at him from inside the other room, where she was stripping a bed.
“You are doing God’s work,” Monk said to her. “I salute you for your bravery, courage, and sacrifice.”
She looked baffled. He turned to face me and stopped cold.
“That’s room seven thirteen,” Monk said, defeating my pathetic attempt at misdirection.
“Yes, it is. It’s where the murder occurred.”
“I’m not surprised,” Monk said. “The room is cursed.”
“You have to come inside,” I said.
“I can see just fine from here,” he said, standing at the threshold.
“Braddock was on the floor, between the bed and the window,” I said. “You can’t see the floor from where you are standing.”
“I don’t need to.” He leaned inside once, angling himself so he could see into the bathroom to his left.
Monk turned and looked back through the open door of the room across the hall. He cocked his head and rolled his shoulders.
Something was bugging him. Well, lots of things were bugging him, like being on an odd-numbered floor in front of an odd-numbered room with patterned, floral wallpaper that probably didn’t match up correctly. What I meant was that something was bugging him even more than all the other things that bug him at any given moment.
He examined the glasses on the maid’s cart. They each had tiny paper lids on top to indicate that they were clean.
Monk picked one of the glasses up and held it to the light.
“What is it?” I asked, still holding the door open.
“Water spots.” He took the lid off and put the glass with the dirty dishes that were in a tub on a lower shelf of the cart. He deposited the lid in the cart’s trash bag.
“That’s it? Water spots?”
Monk went into the room across the hall and quickly peered into the bathroom and then came ba
ck to me. The maid watched us warily as she finished making the bed.
“I’m a horrible person,” Monk said. “Despicable, lower than low.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because I didn’t believe Captain Stottlemeyer,” Monk said.
“And you do now?”
Monk nodded. “He’s innocent. The evidence is clear.”
“You found evidence without even stepping into the room where the murder occurred?”
“Each hotel room has four glasses,” Monk said. “Two in the bathroom and two on the desk on either side of the ice bucket. All four glasses are identical. But according to the crime scene photos, there were five glasses in Braddock’s room when he was killed. The fifth one was broken on the floor and had the captain’s fingerprints on it.”
“The glass was planted,” I said.
“I think it was the water glass the captain was drinking from when we spoke here at the conference,” Monk said. “But I can’t prove it. So the captain is no better off now than he was before.”
“Yes, he is,” I said.
“I don’t see how.”
“You’re on the case now, Mr. Monk.”
“But I don’t know where to go or what to do next to prove that the captain is innocent.”
“You’ll think of something,” I said. “I have faith. So does Captain Stottlemeyer.”
I was so thankful that Monk had accepted the captain’s innocence that I walked down the stairwell with him instead of taking the elevator.
When we emerged in the lobby, the first thing I saw was Nicholas Slade striding in and, from the look on his face, I didn’t think it was a coincidence that he was there.
He marched straight towards us.
“We need to talk,” he said.
Whenever someone says, “We need to talk,” what they really mean is that they want to tear your head off about something. So you have two choices: You can either brace yourself for a verbal beating or run for the nearest exit.
My instinct, no doubt tied to childhood, when my dad used those same words (though he’d add “young lady” at the end) when he caught me doing something bad, was to run. But I fought back the urge.
“How did you know we were here?” I asked.
“I’m a great detective,” he said.
“Mr. Monk is a great detective,” I said. “You are a very good one.”
It’s probably not too smart to insult your boss with a backhanded compliment when he’s already mad at you, but when I’m forced into a corner, cockiness is how I deal with my worry or fear. I was afraid I was about to see my wonderful health plan and my company car evaporate before I really got a chance to use them.
“I heard what happened to Leland and that you were down there to see him. If I were trying to prove him innocent, the crime scene is the first place I’d go,” Slade said. Score one for me and my detecting instincts. “And you used our corporate card to rent the room.”
“You track our credit card usage in real time?” I said. “That seems a little Orwellian to me.”
“Technically, it’s not your privacy I’d be intruding on, since it’s my credit card you were using. But I didn’t have to go to the trouble. Intertect handles the security for the hotel. I got a call that you were here.”
“Oh,” I said.
“Oh,” he repeated. “If you’d called me before you came down here, you could have saved the company two hundred and fifty dollars.”
“Is that what you’re mad about?” I asked. “The money?”
“I’m not mad,” Slade said. “I’m confused and I’m disappointed. First you tell me that Mr. Monk needs a rest-”
“I don’t need a rest,” Monk interrupted.
“-which I gave him, then I find out that you used that free time to investigate Bill Peschel’s death.”
“Murder,” Monk said.
“Nobody has hired us on that case,” Slade said. “Your fee is three hundred dollars an hour and until someone signs a contract with me and hands us a check for a retainer, you are not to spend a single moment of your time, or anybody else’s in my employ, on that case.”
“I make three hundred dollars an hour?” Monk said.
“Now Leland has asked for your help and you agreed to give it without consulting me first,” Slade said. “Have you forgotten who you are working for, Mr. Monk?”
“I have to help my friend,” Monk said.
“He is my friend, too,” Slade said.
“The captain is innocent, he needs Mr. Monk’s help, and he can’t possibly afford to pay your rates,” I said.
“Leland doesn’t have to,” Slade said. “We’ll help him for nothing. It will be our pro bono case for the year. Consider yourselves assigned to the case. All the resources of Intertect are at your disposal. But you have to promise me that you will stop investigating Peschel’s death.”
“Murder,” Monk said.
“It’s not our problem,” Slade said.
“Wasn’t he your friend, too?” I asked.
“Not like Leland, not even close,” Slade said. “Unless the Atwaters hire us, or the Mill Valley police do, or anybody else who’d like to pay our regular fees, we are not getting involved in that investigation.”
“I wasn’t doing much on it,” Monk said. “Nothing at all, really.”
“You went out to question Phil Atwater,” Slade said. “That’s investigation.”
Slade may have discovered we were working on the Peschel case because of the surveillance Danielle had ordered and maybe because she checked the Atwaters’ credit card activity. But the only way Slade could have known we met with Phil was if Danielle had told him. She’d betrayed us.
“By working on the case for free,” Slade continued, “you are actually working against Intertect. You are removing the incentive for anyone to hire us to do the work. It’s self-destructive. It’s like phoning in anonymous tips to the police after they fired you.”
“You knew about that?” Monk said.
“I’m a great detective.” Slade glanced at me. “Correction, a good detective.”
“I don’t know why they bother telling people it’s an anonymous tip line when it’s not anonymous at all,” Monk said. “I’m going to write a very stern letter to the chief of police about this.”
“They aren’t going to be too happy with you when they get it,” I said.
“Don’t worry,” Monk said. “I’ll send it anonymously.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Mr. Monk Feels the Pressure
Captain Stottlemeyer sat across from us in the interview room at the jail as Monk told him his theory about the glass. He looked as jaundiced as Lucarelli did when he sat in that same chair.
Perhaps it was the yellow glow of those energy-efficient lightbulbs combined with the yellow jumpsuit that created that effect. Or perhaps it was a physical symptom of incarceration in a windowless cell and hours of contemplating your impending lifelong imprisonment.
“My ex-wife won’t let my kids come see me, so the only information they are getting about all this is what they read online or see on the news,” Stottlemeyer said. “But you know what the worst part of this is?”
“The three Velcro strips on your jumpsuit,” Monk said. “It’s a blatant violation of the Geneva convention.”
“Velcro strips didn’t exist when they convened the Geneva convention,” I said.
“Giving a man only three Velcro strips is cruel and inhuman punishment,” Monk said. “Where the hell is that fourth strip? It’s pure, unrelenting psychological torture. I don’t know how you can stand it, Captain.”
“What’s worse is that Salvatore Lucarelli is in the cell across from mine,” Stottlemeyer said. “I have to look at that smug smile on his face.”
“Do you think he’s behind this?” I asked.
“It could be anybody. You make a lot of enemies in my job. Lucarelli is just one of them.”
“I’m sorry,” Monk said.
“What are you sorry about?” Stottlemeyer asked.
“This,” he said. “It’s all my fault.”
You can always count on Monk to make any situation about himself. It’s not that Monk is selfish, it’s just that he needs to believe that the whole world revolves around him. It’s the only way he can reasonably exert complete control over it.
“How is it your fault?” Stottlemeyer said.
“If I’d been more vigilant, I might have seen this coming,” Monk said.
“How? Are you psychic?”
“No,” Monk said.
“Then how could you have seen it coming?”
“A frame is built,” Monk said. “The construction was happening all around us.”
“It doesn’t mean that it happened in front of our eyes,” Stottlemeyer said.
“It had to,” Monk said. “Someone saw the opportunity to frame you and took it. Whoever it was knew you had a motive to kill Braddock.”
“That was obvious to anyone who was at the conference, which is why they swiped the glass afterwards and held on to it,” Stottlemeyer said. “But I have a hard time imagining that another cop did this.”
“Who else could it be?” I asked.
“There’s a large service staff at the hotel,” Stottlemeyer said. “One of them could have been an ex-con or related to someone Braddock put away.”
“Braddock isn’t the one sitting in jail,” I said.
“I’m thinking that maybe this isn’t about me,” Stottlemeyer said. “I’m just the fall guy. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Peschel and Braddock were murdered within forty-eight hours of each other. Braddock got tips from Peschel, too.”
“You think the killer was someone Braddock put away based on a tip from Peschel,” I said.
Stottlemeyer nodded. “And knowing Braddock, he probably gave the guy a good beating first.”
“Where do we even begin to look?” I asked.
“You’d have to go over Braddock’s arrests in the last year or two that he was with the San Francisco police,” Stottlemeyer said. “You won’t find Bill’s name anywhere, since he never testified, but there might be a reference in the files saying that Braddock acted on a tip from a confidential informant.”