by Hy Conrad
I managed to stay civil and calm—one might say unnaturally calm. I let Monk settle in behind his desk, then said good-bye and left him in charge for the rest of the day.
I was barely behind the wheel of my old Subaru when I pulled out Sue O’Brien’s card and dialed the number.
CHAPTER FIVE
Mr. Monk and the Fingernails
The next time I got a chance to talk to Captain Stottlemeyer was at a funeral in a side chapel of a small Episcopal church in my neighborhood of Noe Valley.
Judge Nathaniel Oberlin served for decades on the California State Superior Court. Monk and I had both testified in front of him, and from what I’d seen, he’d been a by-the-book jurist, but a fair one, with a slightly wicked sense of humor. He and Captain Stottlemeyer had been friends from way back, which was the main reason Monk and I had been invited to the viewing and the ceremony directly following, to lend the captain some moral support.
According to what I could piece together, the judge, a widower, had recently been in Thailand visiting his daughter, Bethany. She worked as a teacher at an American-sponsored school in some jungle province, an adventurous girl barely out of college.
The judge had been careful to get all the appropriate vaccinations before leaving, but that didn’t stop him from returning to San Francisco two weeks later with what looked like a classic bout of gastroenteritis, otherwise known as travelers’ diarrhea.
Like most returning travelers, Oberlin didn’t seek medical attention. His symptoms seemed to be responding to a few days of self-imposed rest. But then, on a blustery, rainy morning, after too much time alone in an empty house, the judge felt well enough to join the living and walk his usual fifteen minutes into work. He collapsed on the courthouse steps, his umbrella tumbling down the street in a gust of wind.
The doctors at San Francisco General immediately tested him for every tropical disease known to man. A blood test determined that Oberlin had contracted dengue fever, a viral disease that can be painful but is usually not fatal. In this case, it had been. His Honor Judge Nathaniel Oberlin’s condition had continued to worsen and he’d died two weeks later in the hospital from cardiac arrest.
Young Bethany, an only child, flew in for the funeral. She was now in a straight-backed chair in a corner of the viewing room, looking thin and frail, staying about as far from the open coffin as a person could get. Captain Stottlemeyer had been hovering by her side, like a bodyguard in black. When a fresh batch of mourners walked through the door, he slipped away and joined me by the table of cheese and crackers.
“Where’s Monk?” he asked. I nodded toward the coffin, where my partner stood gazing down at the judge’s body. The sight bore an uncomfortable resemblance to a hundred-plus crime scenes where he’d been staring down at a corpse, except this time the body was unmutilated, embalmed, and dead from natural causes.
“Captain, we need to talk at some point. I know this isn’t the best time.”
“This is about A.J., right?”
“Yes,” I said. “And the fact that you know it’s about A.J. tells me you know he’s a problem.”
The captain scowled. “You’re going to have to get used to him, Natalie. I handpicked him to be Devlin’s replacement. He’s a good man.”
“He doesn’t seem like a good man. He’s rude and disruptive. And he pretty much hates us. He’s trying to pay us by the hour. Did you know that? The Burns case. Adrian wrapped that up in record time, and now the lieutenant is trying to pay us one-quarter of our day rate.”
I expected Stottlemeyer to be surprised by this tidbit. But he wasn’t. “You’ll have to tell Monk to slow down his crime solving. Stretch the next one out for a day or two.”
“You knew about this?” I asked, raising my voice. “You’re okay with this?”
“I’m not okay.” The captain kept his voice low. “But the lieutenant’s in charge of the case-by-case allocation of resources. I can’t undermine him. Maybe in a few weeks I can have a talk with him.”
“What do you mean, in a few weeks? That’s not like you.”
“Natalie, this isn’t about A.J. It’s about his dad.”
“His dad? Captain Thurman?” I was instantly outraged. “Are you saying you took on A.J. Thurman because Arnold Thurman asked you to? That’s wrong.”
Stottlemeyer looked like I had just slapped him in the face, which saved me the trouble. Not that I would have. “Arny would never ask me that, and I would never agree. But Arny is sick. Heart disease. No one knows how long he has.”
“Oh,” I said. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”
“Arny and I were fraternity brothers. A whole group of us got very close during those four years. Struggling through classes, and girls and pranks and parties. Guys can bond a lot at that age. Arny and I wound up in the academy together. I’m A.J.’s godfather, for Pete’s sake. The boy was always a disappointment to his dad, from the start.”
“I don’t like to say this about another human being.” I said it anyway. “Lieutenant Thurman is a bumbler and a bully. No one likes him.”
The captain couldn’t argue with that. “I think it’s mainly insecurity,” he said. “A.J. never really had a chance, you know, following in his old man’s footsteps. I wanted to do it for Arny, take the kid under my wing and help him along while his dad is still with us.”
Okay, I felt bad. You would have, too. “Isn’t there another way to help? Making him your number two can be dangerous if he’s not up to it. There are convictions at stake and evidence that can get screwed up. Not to mention the health and welfare of Monk and Teeger.”
“I’ll have a talk with A.J.,” the captain promised. “And you have a talk with Monk. On the next case, make him take his time. He can hold up his hands and twirl for four hours instead of one.”
“Four hours? How do you think A.J. would react to four hours of Monk twirling?”
“I can only imagine.”
“Exactly.”
In the midst of all of our deep discussion, with dozens of people milling around, I hadn’t even noticed A.J. Perhaps he had just arrived. Like most of the men, he was in a black suit. Monk was the exception, of course. His wardrobe for a funeral was the same as for lounging in front of the TV, a light checkered shirt under a dark brown jacket.
Speaking of Adrian Monk, he had now managed to remove Judge Oberlin’s memorial photo from a tripod by the podium and had propped up the awkwardly sized frame on the lower, closed section of the black coffin. I could see his eyes darting from the photo to the judge’s remains and back again. His expression was serious and focused. People were starting to notice. A few were pointing curiously at the man in the brown jacket and the propped-up photo.
My first reaction, based on many years of experience, was, Oh, no. Please don’t let him announce to the gathering of loved ones that the judge had been murdered. Please don’t let him say this man in the coffin isn’t the real judge at all but an impostor. Please don’t let him say the judge was a transgendered woman who had lived her whole life as a man. Please don’t let him say the body in the coffin is really a dummy… .
“Monk! What the hell are you doing?” This was A.J. speaking. He had marched directly up to my partner, their noses separated by mere inches, as confrontational as you could get. “Don’t you know how to behave in public? Put that picture back. This is a funeral.”
“The funeral of a murdered man,” Monk muttered. Believe it or not, I was relieved. It could have been so much worse.
A.J. shook his head in disgust. “Typical. Trying to steal the spotlight from a dead man. You’re an embarrassment of a human being, you know that?”
“You’re right,” Monk agreed, with a pitiful nod. “I am an embarrassment. I wish I was less embarrassing, believe me. But that doesn’t change the fact that Judge Oberlin was murdered.”
“He wasn’t murdered, you self-important little freak.”
Captain Stottlemeyer was on this in a second. I was right on his heels. Between the two
of us, we managed to get them away from each other’s throats and into a corner. People were looking, but I hoped we still had it under control.
“My hearing may be going, Monk,” the captain whispered, “but I can still hear you say murder across a crowded room. Are you sure, old friend?”
“He was poisoned. A heavy metal. Arsenic. Maybe thallium.”
“He died of dengue fever,” I said, making the obvious objection.
“No,” countered Monk. “The judge had contracted dengue fever, which is often asymptomatic, sometimes painful, and only rarely develops into a deadly hemorrhagic fever.”
A.J. laughed. “Hemorrhagic? What are you, some sort of expert of everything that causes death?”
“I am,” said Monk. “I have a list if you want to see. I’ve been compiling it since I was six. Fifty-two pages long, single-spaced, and I’m adding to it all the time. But that’s not my point. What the judge died from was cardiac arrest. Quite a few things can make the heart stop. In this particular case it was poison.”
A.J. was about to respond, but Stottlemeyer stopped him with one of his patented looks. A second later the captain’s gaze shifted to the body in the casket and the photo propped up on top. “Are you talking about Mees’ lines?” he asked.
“See for yourself,” said Monk. And as subtly as possible, the four of us inched our way back to the open casket. It probably wasn’t that subtle.
For those of you unfamiliar with Mees’ lines, also called Aldrich-Mees’ lines, also called leukonychia striata (I confess, I had to look that one up), they’re the white bumpy ridges that run across the fingernails and are a clear indication of heavy-metal poisoning.
We all stared down at the corpse with its hands folded reverently across its chest. “That’s why I wanted to compare his nails with the ones in the photo,” said Monk. “You see the difference?”
The difference was obvious, but only when you have a genius right there pointing it out to you. In the formal portrait, the smiling judge had his hands cradled over his gavel. The nails showed no milky white ridges. In real life—or I should say real death—the lines were there in the pink portion of the nail, the same color as the white half-moons we all have at the bottom of our nails. Those half-moons are called lunules, by the way. I also had to look that up.
“From their position and intensity, I’d say he was exposed to a heavy dose a couple of weeks before his death.” Monk shrugged a shoulder. “Of course, I’m no poison expert, but I do have a list.”
“Two weeks,” Stottlemeyer mused. “That’s around the time he collapsed on the street, heading into work.”
“Exactly,” said Monk. “There may have been additional doses afterward. But the initial one is probably what caused his collapse.”
“Let me get this straight,” said Lieutenant A.J. Thurman. “You’re saying that when the judge was in the hospital being treated for dengue fever—”
“Dengue is a virus,” Monk interrupted. “There is no treatment except to relieve the pain and wait it out.”
“Whatever. So you’re saying that all this time he was being poisoned and no one in the hospital knew? Unbelievable.”
“Very believable,” said Monk. “A heavy metal won’t show up in your standard blood test. And the doctors already knew what was wrong with him: dengue fever. I assume the family didn’t request an autopsy.”
The captain glanced over to the far corner, where Bethany Oberlin was seated in her straight-backed chair. An Episcopal priest was bending close, gently preparing her for the short service that would take place in a few minutes, right before the casket would be closed and the long journey to the Colma cemetery would begin. “She’s the only immediate family,” said Stottlemeyer. “There was no reason for her or anyone to request an autopsy.”
“There is now,” said Monk.
“Wait a minute.” Lieutenant A.J. shook his head in disbelief. “You’re really going to interrupt a funeral? You’re going to tell that poor girl her father was murdered and that you have to take his body out of the coffin, put it on a cold slab, cut it open, and then have another funeral in a week? Put her through the whole thing again? All because you see a few weird ridges? For all we know, the embalmer might have done something to make it look like that.”
“It’s not the embalmer,” said Monk. “It’s the poison.”
“So, you’re going to go up to her now and tell her this?”
“No, I’m not,” said Monk. “You are. You’re a homicide officer.”
“He’s right,” agreed the captain. “Do your job, A.J.”
“Me?” A.J. recoiled. “Why me? Why not you, Captain?”
“Because the judge was an old friend and I’d rather not.”
“The judge was my friend, too. My dad and him were tight from the old days.” A.J. dug into his pocket. “Tell you what. I’ll flip you for it.”
“We are not flipping coins in the middle of a funeral,” said Stottlemeyer. “Go over to Ms. Oberlin and inform her, as sympathetically as possible, that the service is being postponed while the SFPD gets a court order and takes custody of her father’s remains in a criminal death investigation. Do it.”
The junior officer really had no choice. He stared daggers back at Monk as he slowly lumbered across to the girl in the straight-backed chair.
As I watched him go, I couldn’t help thinking that this was not a positive step forward in our relationship with the new lieutenant.
CHAPTER SIX
Mr. Monk Takes His Time
The autopsy results came back two days later.
Despite the embalming fluid and all the other postmortem indignities, the medical examiner had been able to isolate enough tissue and blood and nail samples to confirm Monk’s diagnosis. The poison turned out to be thallium, element 81 on the periodic table. In the good old days it had been commonly used in rat poisons and ant killers, despite its amazing toxicity. Thallium is still fairly available, if you know where to look.
The initial dose had been large, probably administered shortly before the judge’s collapse—shortly, as in less than an hour, perhaps mere minutes. Other doses had been administered in the following few weeks, right in the hospital, until the weakened man had succumbed to a heart attack.
The judge’s symptoms had been similar enough to those for dengue fever—nausea, seizures, severe headaches, and severe joint pain. No one was blaming the hospital staff. The killer—whoever it was—obviously knew the judge had come back with some exotic ailment and was hoping his death would be blamed on whatever it was. If it hadn’t been for Monk and the fingernails, he probably would have succeeded.
On her return to the States, Bethany Oberlin had been staying at the family home on Hyde Street. After the interrupted funeral, she was taken directly to the SF General and given blood and urine tests for heavy metals. Not a trace, thank God. Then she drove across the bay to stay with an old school friend while the house on Hyde Street was sealed on Captain Stottlemeyer’s orders.
The first people allowed in were a forensics team in hazmat suits. After a day of vacuuming, sample taking, and checking the garbage cans, they proceeded to lab analysis. Nothing. Not the faintest residue, even though the deadly poison could be as fine as dust and leave traces everywhere. On the third day, the homicide team was granted entry, including the paid-by-the-hour consultants.
“How’s he going to find anything the poison guys couldn’t find?” A.J. complained as Monk wandered his way through the two-story house, his hands raised in his usual method. I couldn’t tell if Monk was doing this any slower than usual, but I hoped so.
“You’d be surprised what Monk can find,” said the captain.
A.J. snickered and shook his head. “This is a dead end. If such a high dose of poison had been administered in the house, there should be some small trace—in the kitchen or a medicine cabinet.”
“Not necessarily,” said Monk. “It could have been in something individually wrapped, like a stick of gum or a cou
gh drop.”
“Then where’s the wrapper?”
“I’m working on it, Lieutenant,” said Monk. “It takes time. It could take days.”
It was at this unfortunate moment that I happened to glance at my watch. A.J. caught me looking. “Are you guys trying to pad the bill? Is that what this is about? If you know something, Monk, you need to tell us. Those are the rules.”
“I’m not aware of that rule,” I said. “But no, we’re not trying to pad the bill. I checked my watch because I happen to have a lunch date with my daughter. Is that all right, Lieutenant? Or are you going to dock me for leaving early?”
The lieutenant said he didn’t object, as long as Monk stayed behind and kept his hands up. The captain volunteered to get Monk back to his apartment, then followed me out to the front porch. “Say hello to Julie for me. How’s she doing?”
“She’s doing great,” I said. “She still wants to be an intern for the firm of Monk and Teeger. But I think that’s just her way of not facing the future, whatever it is.”
“Most moms would be happy to have their girl stick around a little longer.”
“True. But most moms don’t chase down bad guys or sniff out poisons.”
“You got a point,” said the captain. “I wouldn’t want my kid in law enforcement, either.” He eased himself down onto the edge of a sturdy stone umbrella stand, a body-language signal that he had something more to say.
“What is it?” I asked.
“Do you think Monk’s padding the bill? Honestly?”
“Isn’t that what you told him to do? Take four days to give you the answer?”
“I know what I said. But if he knows how the judge was poisoned, that’s pretty important. Once the judge was admitted to the hospital, it’s a different story. The killer had plenty of access. Doctors, nurses, orderlies. Visiting hours. But the initial dose, the one that made him collapse on the courthouse steps, that’s our mystery.”
“What about motive?” I asked. “Someone must have wanted Nathaniel Oberlin dead.”