by Lee Goldberg
“Go ahead,” he said.
I carefully extracted the photo from Griffin’s stiff fingers and uncurled the photograph.
It was a faded, yellowing snapshot of a nurse, perhaps in her late twenties or early thirties, and a young girl, perhaps four or five years old, astride a pink bicycle with training wheels, a white basket in front, and multicolored plastic tassels dangling from the ends of the handlebars.
The two of them were posed in front of a one-story tract home, seemingly freshly built on a corner lot, the dirt staked out for the sprinklers and landscaping to come, the plants in pots lined up on the front walk. There was a car parked in the driveway. I could see enough of it—the distinctive wood paneling on the side and the shape—to identify it as a Ford Country Squire station wagon, mainly because we had one when I was a kid, too.
I turned the photo over. There was no name or date on the back. I handed it to Stottlemeyer, who gave it a cursory glance.
“It’s sad,” I said.
“It’s inevitable,” he said.
“Spoken like a cynical cop.”
He shrugged. “I see a lot of death.”
“You see a lot of murder.”
“So do you,” he said.
“But we care about them,” I said. “We try to solve those deaths.”
“Because those are crimes,” he said. “We know what happened here. There’s nothing to solve.”
Maybe so, but that wasn’t how it felt to me.
I dropped Monk off at his apartment and went back home. But once I was inside, I couldn’t sit still. I couldn’t get Jack Griffin and that photo in his hand out of my mind.
So I tried to busy myself by cleaning up the house, doing some laundry, pulling weeds, washing my car, organizing my sock drawer, and emptying the pantry of expired food, which led to me eating the box of Wheat Thins that I kept around for the rare occasions when Monk visited. The Wheat Thins weren’t expired—they were just there.
But none of that busywork and busy eating distracted me. I still kept thinking about Jack Griffin, apparently an expat American in Mexico who traveled to San Francisco to die alone in a dive motel. And I couldn’t help wondering why he did. His reasons weren’t any of my business, and it wouldn’t change anything if I knew them, but that’s the thing about mysteries, isn’t it? They just keep nagging at you.
Or maybe it wasn’t the mystery. Maybe the problem was that I had nothing else to think about. With Julie off at school and no man in my life, I didn’t have much to do outside of work.
I needed a hobby.
But I wasn’t going to begin looking for one that night. So I ordered a pizza from Domino’s and an on-demand movie to watch on TV.
The movie was one of those inane, big-budget comic-book adaptations where good-looking people in colorful costumes try to work out their superficial superangst by throwing cars at each other and making as much noise as possible.
All that mayhem didn’t get their superminds off their superproblems, and it didn’t work for me, either.
On Monday morning, I dragged Monk down to the police station on the pretext of getting the latest news on the paperboy case.
Monk didn’t ask me why I didn’t simply call the captain for an update instead. That’s probably because Monk appreciated any excuse to visit the police station and he didn’t want to question his good fortune.
This was the first time we’d been to headquarters since Lieutenant Devlin had replaced Randy Disher, and as we came in, it was strange for me to see her occupying the desk outside of Stottlemeyer’s office. I imagine people felt the same way the first time they saw me with Monk after I replaced Sharona Fleming as his assistant.
Monk gasped when he saw the desk, probably more because of the stacks of bulging files and junk-food containers that were piled on top of it than because of the person who was sitting behind it.
Devlin was facing her flat screen, pounding on the keys as if she were trying to beat a report out of the computer rather than write it.
He took a deep breath and approached her desk. “Good morning, Lieutenant Devlin.”
Her shoulders sagged with weariness and she slowly turned around in her seat to face us.
“What are you doing here, Monk?”
“We came to bring you this.” Monk reached into the pocket of his coat and handed her a gift-wrapped box tied with a perfectly symmetrical ribbon. “It’s a present to welcome you to the team.”
“We aren’t a team,” she said. “You can keep it.”
“It would mean a lot to me if you’d accept it,” Monk said. “It’s a two-part gift.”
“What’s a two-part gift?” she asked warily.
“The first part is you open the box,” Monk said. “The second part is I clean your desk.”
“You touch this desk,” she said, “and I will break your arms.”
Devlin unwrapped the box and opened it, revealing the toothbrush, toothpaste, and dental floss that were inside. She looked up at him, her expression stony.
“You got me a toothbrush?” she said.
“Not just any toothbrush,” he said proudly. “It’s the Gertler 4000 with the extrasoft polyurethane bristles and the blue rubber handle. It’s handmade, the very best there is.”
“Are you trying to tell me I have bad breath?”
“No,” Monk said. “I’m telling you that you have hideously swollen gums.”
“I have a two-part gift for you,” she said.
“You’re going to let me clean your desk and empty your trash?”
She stood up and shoved the box back into Monk’s pocket. “If you leave right now, I won’t knock you on your ass and stomp on your testicles.”
Monk shuddered and took a deep breath. “Okay, but after the beating could I clean your desk and empty your trash?”
“Mr. Monk!” I said. “Don’t you have any self-respect?”
“None at all,” he said. “I thought that was common knowledge.”
“She insulted you,” I said. “You should be outraged.”
“He should be?” Devlin said. “What about me? The guy walks in here, tells me my mouth is a sewer and that my workplace is a dump, and I’m supposed to just take it?”
“See?” Monk said to me. “We’re getting through to her.”
I don’t know what Devlin might have done if Stottlemeyer hadn’t stepped out of his office at that moment and defused the situation.
“Monk, what a nice surprise,” Stottlemeyer said. “Did Lieutenant Devlin brief you on the latest developments in the Dach case?”
“No,” I said. “She didn’t.”
Stottlemeyer turned to Devlin. “Go ahead, tell him. I’m sure you can’t wait.”
Devlin’s face tightened, but she did as she was told. “We arrested the newspaper delivery guy yesterday at an Arby’s downtown. He still had the bloody newspaper in his car. He started sobbing the moment he saw my badge and confessed to killing Dach.”
Monk nodded. “Will the paperboy be tried as a juvenile or an adult?”
“He’s forty-seven,” Devlin said.
“Isn’t that a little old to be a paperboy?” Monk asked.
“This isn’t Mayberry,” Devlin said. “Kids don’t ride around on bikes delivering papers anymore.”
“This paperboy used to market subprime home loans at Big Country Mortgage before they went under,” Stottlemeyer said. “Now he’s working two jobs, delivering newspapers in the morning and manning the fry station at Arby’s the rest of the day.”
“I almost feel sorry for the guy,” I said.
Stottlemeyer waved Monk and me into his office and closed the door behind us after we’d stepped inside. “What did I tell you, Monk, about giving Amy dental floss?”
“She didn’t try to strangle me,” Monk said.
“What she wanted to do to you was worse,” I said.
“I can’t say that I blame her,” Stottlemeyer said. “Monk has that affect on people.”
“I
was trying to help her,” Monk said. “You can, too, by ordering her to clean her desk.”
“It’s her personal space. I don’t care how she keeps it. Whatever works for her works for me.”
“Aren’t you concerned about the spread of disease?”
“Nope,” Stottlemeyer said.
“You will be when the office is overrun with flesh-eating bacteria,” Monk said.
“That’s true,” Stottlemeyer said.
“But by then it will be too late,” Monk said. “You’ll be on your hands and knees, looking for your nose or a finger, and I’ll be there to say ‘I told you so.’ ”
“I’m sure you will,” Stottlemeyer said. “Speaking of diseases, you were right. It was skin cancer that killed the guy in the hotel. And there were trace amounts of cyanide in his system from his laetrile treatments, but it wasn’t enough to poison him.”
“Have you had any luck locating his next of kin?” I asked.
“No, we haven’t,” Stottlemeyer said. “His IDs were all fakes and we didn’t get any hits on his fingerprints.”
“What about DNA?”
“We got a sample, but it will be months, maybe years, before we get any results.”
“Why is it going to take so long?” I asked.
“Because we’ve got a huge backlog of DNA samples that need to be tested for open rape and homicide investigations and cold cases that have been reopened,” Stottlemeyer said. “And he died of natural causes, so it’s not just low priority, it’s no priority. But if he hasn’t been arrested, or associated with a crime, we’ll hit a wall with the DNA, too.”
“Have you contacted the authorities in Mexico?”
“Yeah,” Stottlemeyer said. “They’ve got nothing.”
“They could pass around his picture at cancer centers that offer laetrile treatments and see if any of the doctors or staff recognizes him.”
“I suppose the authorities could do that, if they cared enough to make the effort and if the clinics would even give them that information. But since law enforcement agencies down there are rife with corruption, strapped for resources, and in the midst of fighting an all-out drug war, they’d need some strong motivation to canvass every cancer clinic in the country asking about this guy. You know, like a major crime of some kind.”
“A man is dead,” I said.
“Of natural causes,” Stottlemeyer said.
“Why did he have or need fake ID, and how did he get across the border with it?” I asked. “I suppose he could have found a way to sneak over, but that just raises even more questions. Why did he want to get back here so badly?”
“None of those questions matter to me,” Stottlemeyer said.
“Why not?” I asked.
“Because he’s dead,” Stottlemeyer said. “Of natural causes.”
I turned to Monk, who hadn’t said a word. “Tell him, Mr. Monk.”
Monk took a step forward. Stottlemeyer sat on the edge of his desk, crossed his arms under his chest, and faced him, braced for the tirade.
“Have you lost your humanity?” Monk said. “Are you so cold inside that you have forgotten what it feels like to care about somebody?”
I nodded in agreement. I appreciated his support and was encouraged by the surprising passion of Monk’s argument.
“He’s right, Captain,” I said.
“If you still have a heart, if you have any feelings left at all for your fellow man, I implore you, I beseech you, to do the right thing,” Monk said. “Command Lieutenant Devlin to clean her desk.”
“Mr. Monk!” I said.
“What?” he said, turning to me.
“I’m talking about Jack Griffin.”
“Who?” Monk said.
“The man with the fake identity who came all the way here from Mexico to die in some squalid hotel room,” I said. “Don’t you want to know why?”
Monk frowned and shook his head. “Nope, not really.” He glanced at Stottlemeyer. “Do you?”
“Nope,” the captain said and shifted his gaze to me. “Are we done here?”
“I’m not,” I said.
CHAPTER FIVE
Mr. Monk Cleans Up
I don’t know when I actually decided I was going to solve the mystery of Jack Griffin’s identity and why he’d come to San Francisco to die. But at that moment in Captain Stottlemeyer’s office, I’d committed myself to it and there was no going back. So I asked the captain if I could have Jack Griffin’s personal effects. He had no problem with that and sent Amy Devlin down to the property room with me to take care of it.
The captain didn’t ask me why I wanted Griffin’s things. Nobody did. I hadn’t even asked myself, perhaps because I was busy thinking about what I intended to say to Amy Devlin once we were alone.
As soon as the two of us entered the stairwell to go down to the basement, I confronted her, blocking her path.
“What the hell is your problem?” I said.
“Wrong question,” Devlin said. “What you should be asking is who, not what.”
“I know better than anybody how difficult and infuriating Mr. Monk can be, but when it comes to homicide investigation, he’s the best there is. And you know it, too. So the least you can do is to show him some courtesy and respect.”
“Like he shows me?”
“He does, in his own way,” I said, feeling the moral high ground disintegrating beneath my feet. “He gave you a toothbrush.”
“Because he thinks I’m disgusting.”
“That’s one way to look at it. But the gift takes on an entirely different meaning if you look at it from his perspective.”
“What about my perspective? Have you or Monk ever considered that?” she said. “No, of course you haven’t. Because you think the whole world revolves around him, just like he does.”
“Okay, so what is your perspective? Tell me.”
“I’m a cop. This is who I am and what I do. I don’t appreciate some mentally ill guy and his enabler showing up at my crime scenes before I’ve even had a chance to start working them myself.”
“What pisses you off is that Mr. Monk can solve the case before you even get your notebook out.”
“Damn right,” she said. “I’d like the opportunity to actually do my job. It might take me a little longer than thirty seconds to close a case, but I will do it.”
“So you’re jealous,” I said.
“No, I’m not. There are a lot of cops who are better at this than I am. I have no problem with that. The difference is that they don’t stick their noses in my cases unless I ask them to.”
She pushed past me and went down the stairs. I followed her.
“So what do you want from him?” I said, my loud voice reverberating up and down the empty stairwell. “Do you want him to act stupid? To hold on to his deductions until you catch up? Or maybe you’d just like him to quit consulting for the police? I can tell you that none of those things are going to happen.”
Devlin stopped at the landing and looked up at me. “Here’s what else is not going to happen: I won’t change who I am, the way I work, or how I look at the world just so Monk can feel comfortable and believe that he isn’t a total nut job, which, in case you haven’t noticed, he is.”
“He’s eccentric,” I said. “And sometimes his words and deeds can be unintentionally offensive. Part of my job is to minimize that, but I can do only so much. I have to count on the fact that most people are decent and kind and will give him the benefit of the doubt. I don’t think it’s asking too much for you to do the same.” I walked down a few steps so that we were eye to eye and only inches apart. “In other words, do us all a favor and stop being a total bitch.”
She gave me a death stare that I’m sure had caused others to lose control of their sphincters and crumble. There was no question that, in terms of hand-to-hand combat, she could take me. But when it came to strength of conviction, determination, and sheer stubbornness, we were evenly matched. So my stare didn’t waver.
Go ahead, lady, bring it on.
We might have stood there glaring at each other all day if the door behind her hadn’t opened up and two cops hadn’t rushed in, barreling past us on their way to homicide upstairs. They broke our childish staring contest without either one of us having to back down.
Devlin grabbed the door before it closed, turned her back on me, and headed for the property room. I caught up to her at the clerk’s cage, which was essentially a counter and screen set into a double-wide doorway. Behind the obese clerk was row after row of iron shelving. The upper shelves were lined with identical file boxes, while tagged, oversize items, like bicycles and suitcases, occupied the lower ones.
She told the clerk what I wanted and signed the necessary papers while he went off and got the stuff. He came back with the suitcase and file box. I took the box and Devlin carried the suitcase.
We walked back upstairs in silence. When we pushed open the doors to the homicide department, the first thing we both noticed was that the stacks of file folders were no longer on her desk. Her trash was gone, her computer monitor gleamed, and her pencils had been sharpened so that they were all exactly the same length.
Monk stood beside her desk, his hands in rubber gloves, presenting the scene as if it were the showcase on The Price Is Right.
Devlin dropped the suitcase and gave Monk a death stare that made the one she gave me seem warm and affectionate by comparison.
“I told you not to touch my desk,” she said, advancing on him.
“A sensible warning, given the amount of filth,” Monk said. “Which is why I wore gloves.”
“You know what I meant,” she said, almost nose to nose with him.
Monk held his ground, though he did tip his head way back. “Of course I did. Someone less savvy than me might have misinterpreted your comment about breaking my arms as a threat, but I knew you were saying that you wouldn’t let me risk infection.”
Devlin turned around and looked at me. “Is he for real or is he dissing me?”
“That’s the real Adrian Monk,” I said.
“You’ll thank me later,” he said.
“Or I’ll shoot you,” she said.