by Lee Goldberg
“No,” Monk said. “It proves that he did.”
Disher rubbed his brow. “One of us here is losing his mind and I don’t think it’s me.”
I knew the feeling. But I also knew—from long, painful, and repeated experience—that I had to surrender and roll with it, that everything would become clear once Monk got around to giving us all the details. I also knew that he would take his sweet time. He enjoyed our confusion.
“Look at this and tell me what you see.” Monk tapped the screen, brought up the controls, and hit PAUSE on the playback.
We all gathered around him and looked at the screen and the still image. Goldman was behind his desk, pointing into the camera to underscore some point he was making. Behind him were the bookcase and the paisley wallpaper.
“I see Joel Goldman in his office doing a live webinar and interacting with people from all over the world,” Disher said. “What do you see?”
“I see Joel Goldman in his office doing a live webinar and interacting with people from all over the world,” Monk said. “But I also see something else.”
“What?”
“The wallpaper,” Monk said. “It’s green with a paisley pattern that’s repeated every twenty-one inches on a twenty-and-a-half-inch-wide roll.”
“I see it, too, only without the exact measurements. So what?”
“There are inevitably going to be seams when the wallpaper is applied and it’s imperative that the installer makes sure the patterns line up whenever possible.”
“Okay, if you say so, but what does any of that have to with the murder?”
“The seams and the patterns on his wallpaper line up in the other videos shot in his New York office,” Monk said, “but not in this one.”
“But you just agreed with me that this was shot in his office,” Disher said.
“It was,” Monk said. “In the office he re-created in his backyard in Summit.”
There was a long moment of stunned silence as all the pieces of the puzzle fell into place for me, Sharona, and Disher.
“I’ll be damned,” Disher said. “He built a movie set.”
“It was staged, just like the open house in San Francisco,” Monk said to me.
“And just like the photo of the killer’s office on the wall of Five Star Realty,” I said.
“We were fools not to see it again,” Monk said.
I hadn’t seen it the first time, so I didn’t think I had to be too hard on myself for missing it this time, too.
Disher shook his head in confusion. “What are you two talking about?”
“Here’s what happened,” Monk said. “Joel went into New York by train that morning and walked to his office on Park Avenue merely to establish his alibi.”
“Goldman knew he was on camera the whole time,” I said.
“He certainly hoped that he was,” Monk said. “That’s really why he went into the city so early, to give himself plenty of time to drive back home disguised as a day laborer and sneak into his backyard office, where he broadcast his show from ten to eleven a.m. without his wife being aware of it.”
“But his secretary, Trina Fishbeck, had to be,” I said. “She lied about him being in Manhattan.”
“I wouldn’t be surprised if Goldman and his secretary were having an extramarital sex affair,” Monk said, glancing at me. “Like that couple we met here the other day.”
“It’s hardly unusual for people in Summit to be having affairs,” Sharona said. “There’s a reason they call this a bedroom community.”
“So Goldman’s secretary must have been the other day laborer that the neighbor saw,” I said.
“And probably the one who called and canceled Pamela Goldman’s hairdresser appointment,” Disher said, “setting the stage for the theory that she surprised some burglars in her home and they killed her.”
I picked it up again from there. “That means when Pamela left for her hairdresser appointment, it was Joel who went into the house immediately afterward and turned off the alarm.”
“That’s right,” Disher said. “He did that so it would look like she forgot something, came back in, then neglected to reset her alarm again when she left.”
Monk nodded. “You are both correct. Goldman then waited for her to come back and struck her with the rolling pin. After the murder, Goldman and his mistress drove back to Manhattan. He stayed in his office until five and then took the train home to complete his carefully constructed alibi.”
“And the next morning the arrogant bastard was back in the garage, dismantling the set, right in front of us,” I said. “How are we going to prove any of this?”
“We’ll get a search warrant for his home office and the Dumpster,” Monk said. “We’re bound to find remnants of the wallpaper and the matching furniture.”
Disher shook his head. “It’ll never happen. No judge is going to give us search warrants on the basis of mismatched wallpaper in a video.”
“There’s more than that,” Monk said. “There’s also the siren.”
“What siren?” Disher asked.
“The one you can hear in the video. It’s not from an NYPD police car. What you’re hearing is Natalie’s siren as we responded to the McAfee burglary,” Monk said. “The sirens are distinctly different in the rapidity of the wails and the pitch. And if you compare the time code on the webinar with the Summit police dispatcher’s log, you’ll see that they match up exactly.”
“That’s still not going to be enough,” Disher said.
“What kind of judges do you have here?” Monk said.
“Ones that require solid evidence before issuing warrants,” Disher said. “That doesn’t mean I won’t try, but I’m telling you wallpaper and siren aren’t going to cut it.”
“So Goldman gets away with murder?” Sharona said.
“I didn’t say that,” Disher said. “There’s another way we can get him.”
“What’s that?” Sharona asked.
“We wait for the Dumpster to get picked up by the garbage company. The moment the Dumpster leaves his driveway, it’s fair game for a search,” he said. “But if the Dumpster goes much farther than that, say all the way to the dump, we’ll have a hard time linking him conclusively to the trash in court.”
I got up. “Then what are we waiting for?”
We piled into Disher’s car and sped over to Goldman’s place so we could keep our eye on the Dumpster. Our plan was to call the trash company to come get it and then watch it until the truck got there.
But when we arrived, the Dumpster was gone and Joel Goldman was outside, sweeping his driveway. He smiled when he saw us.
Disher pulled over to the curb and rolled down his window.
“Good morning, Chief,” Goldman said, ambling over. “I’m glad you stopped by. I was going to call you today. I was very upset that I had to read in the paper that the murder charges were dropped against those two police officers rather than hearing about it directly from you.”
“How soon after reading the paper did you call the trash company to pick up the Dumpster?” Disher asked.
“What does my trash have to do with anything?”
Monk leaned forward and looked Goldman in the eye. “Because you wanted to dispose of the evidence that you re-created your Manhattan office in your backyard.”
Goldman shrugged. “I told you that I was moving my office from Manhattan to my home. There’s nothing unusual about me wanting to have the same familiar décor in the new one. Nor would there be anything felonious about it if I changed my mind, say a day or so ago, and decided to go for a different look.”
“It is if you’re trying to establish a fraudulent alibi for murder,” Monk said.
“Prove it.” Goldman smiled and went back to sweeping.
Disher sped off, radioed the dispatcher, asked her to find out the current location of the trash truck that had picked up the Dumpster at Goldman’s place.
The response came back two minutes later.
&nbs
p; The truck was just leaving the dump.
29
Mr. Monk and the Weak Link
We convened in Disher’s office to scream profanities, kick desks and, in Monk’s case, pace sullenly back and forth.
“He knows we know that he killed his wife and he doesn’t care,” I said. “It’s a good thing that you were driving, because I would have run him down.”
“This isn’t over yet,” Disher said. “To drive from Manhattan to Summit and back again, he had to pass through at least two tollbooths. We know roughly when he had to go through them, so we’ll get him either with the debits on his E-Zpass card or, if he didn’t use one, with video footage from the tollbooths.”
“Joel Goldman is cunning,” Monk said. “He would have been careful not to use an E-Zpass or let himself be filmed going through the tollbooths, even in disguise.”
“But would he have been as careful about his secretary?” Disher said. “Somebody had to drive that van.”
“And I bet that Homeland Security’s surveillance matrix includes the tollbooths through New Jersey and into, and out of, Manhattan,” I said and turned to Disher. “Call Agent Lisa McCracken at the Penn Station security office. Maybe she’ll do us another favor and have her supercomputers scan the tollbooth videos for Goldman and Trina.”
Disher started dialing and Monk kept pacing.
“Relax, Mr. Monk, we’re going to get him,” I said. “His secretary is the weak link.”
“You don’t think that he’s already thought of that?”
The dire implications of that simple, and obvious, statement stopped me cold, and Disher, too.
Disher had McCracken on the line, but he interrupted the call to give us an order.
“Get suited up and park your patrol car in front of Joel Goldman’s house,” he said. “Don’t let the man out of your sight.”
We got to Goldman’s house ten minutes later. He wasn’t in the driveway anymore and there was no sign of activity in the house.
“I’ve got a bad feeling about this,” Monk said. “He’s been one step ahead of us from the start.”
“He’s panicked now,” I said. “He’s going to start making mistakes on top of the ones he’s made already.”
“He didn’t seem panicked to me,” Monk said. “He seemed pretty satisfied with himself.”
“He won’t be when we put him in handcuffs.”
Monk got out of the car and by the time I caught up with him, he was already at Goldman’s front door, ringing the bell.
“What are you doing, Mr. Monk?”
“The chief said not to let Joel Goldman out of our sight. Well, I can’t see him, can you?”
“Do you think he’s just going to invite us in for tea?”
“No, I don’t.”
Monk stepped off the porch, walked over to the living room window, and peered inside.
“Don’t be so impatient,” I said. “He could be in the bathroom.”
Monk drew his gun and fired two shots into the window, shattering it and setting off car alarms up and down the street.
“Congratulations, Mr. Monk. You just gave him all the evidence he needs to question your competence in court and to undermine any case we manage to put together against him.”
Monk stood still, staring at the broken window. People came out of their houses to see what was going on.
My radio crackled. It was the distraught dispatcher, radioing us about multiple reports of shots fired at our location. I responded, letting her know that everything was under control, that no one was hurt, and that we had no need for backup. I turned to Monk.
“Have you lost your mind?”
“If you were in the bathroom, wouldn’t that ruckus have brought you out by now?”
I looked at the broken window. The gunfire had drawn out everybody in the neighborhood except the man who lived in the house Monk had just shot up.
“Damn,” I muttered to myself.
I took out my baton, cleared away the remaining shards of broken glass, and climbed into the house. I drew my gun and did a quick search inside.
Monk was right. The house was empty.
I was still in the house a few minutes later when Disher pulled up in his car. But even in my short time inside, I was able to convince myself that Goldman hadn’t packed up and fled the country. Everything was very neat and organized except, of course, for the shattered glass all over the living room floor.
“Are you two crazy?” Disher said as he marched toward the broken window, glancing up and down the street at all the people who were out on their lawns. “You’ve got the whole neighborhood watching. You can’t shoot up a suspect’s house just because you’re angry at him.”
“My sentiments exactly,” I said. “I told Mr. Monk the same thing.”
“If you’re so sensible, what the hell are you doing in Goldman’s house?” he said. “You don’t have a warrant to be in there.”
“That’s the least of our problems,” I said. “Joel Goldman is gone.”
“He could be out having breakfast, or shopping at the grocery store, or stopping by Starbucks for a coffee,” Disher said. “And when he comes back from wherever he is, we’ll be in deep trouble and so will our case against him.”
“Do we even have one?” I asked.
“As a matter of fact, we do,” Disher said, coming close to the window. “Your friend in Homeland Security came through for us. Trina Fishbeck tried to disguise herself with a hat and sunglasses, but the facial recognition software wasn’t fooled. Trina was positively identified on surveillance camera footage going through the cash lines at the New Jersey Turnpike and Lincoln Tunnel tollbooths in a rusted-out brown van the morning of the murder.”
“Did we get the license plates?” I asked.
“There was mud caked on them,” Disher said. “They were unreadable.”
“How convenient,” I said. “Was Joel Goldman visible in the surveillance camera footage?”
“No, he was not,” Disher said. “But we’ve got enough leverage on his mistress to make her sing like a contestant on American Idol.”
“If you can find her,” Monk said, always the optimist.
“I called the NYPD,” Disher said. “They’ve sent officers to her apartment and Goldman’s office. We’ll have her in custody any minute now.”
I glanced at the family photos laid out on the living room mantelpiece. Joel and Pamela seemed to be deeply in love. There were pictures of them in each other’s arms, with contented smiles on their faces, at their wedding and over the years at the lake, several ski resorts, some tropical beaches, against the backdrop of various European locales.
I wondered if Pamela had any idea that his passion for her had died and that he wanted her to suffer the same fate.
Was it some deep hatred that drove him to kill her or merely greed, an unwillingness to face divorce and having to divide up all the assets they’d accumulated during their marriage? What amount of money did it take to make someone seriously consider committing murder and taking the risks that go along with it, rather than facing even a messy divorce?
“Do you have Goldman’s cell phone number?” Monk asked Disher.
“Yes.”
“Call him and tell him I just shot up his front window,” Monk said.
“You really are crazy,” Disher said.
“Maybe I am. But notifying him about what I’ve done will demonstrate that you are proactive and reasonable.”
Disher sighed, took out his phone, and dialed. A cell phone rang inside the house. I followed the sound to the kitchen, where an iPhone lit up on the counter. The caller ID showed Disher’s name.
I came back out to the living room and faced Monk and Disher through the shattered window. “Goldman left his phone here, but I don’t see his wallet or keys.”
“He didn’t want you to be able to locate him using his phone,” Monk said.
“You think he’s on the run?” Disher asked.
“No,” Monk said.
“I think he’s murdering his secretary.”
30
Mr. Monk to the Rescue
Disher posted Evie at Goldman’s house to secure the scene until the window could be boarded up, and we went back to the chief’s office to wait to hear from the NYPD regarding Trina’s whereabouts.
We figured that Goldman must have been using a throwaway cell phone for his non-business-related calls to Trina so that his wife wouldn’t find out about the affair or her own impending demise.
It made sense that Goldman would use the same phone to contact Trina now. He wouldn’t want anything leading back to him from her on the day she disappeared.
But without any information from the NYPD, there wasn’t really anything more we could do except scream profanities, kick desks, and, in Monk’s case, pace sullenly back and forth.
We were well into our second round of the morning doing exactly that when Disher’s phone rang.
It was the NYPD. The news wasn’t good. Trina Fishbeck wasn’t at home and she wasn’t at Goldman’s office, either.
So Disher used DMV records to find out that Trina drove a blue 2006 Honda Accord and put out an APB for it. But I had a few ideas of my own to track her down.
“Let’s ask Lisa McCracken to see if Trina’s Honda passed through any tollbooths on the highways out of Manhattan in the last couple of hours. Maybe McCracken can also see if Trina made any calls on her cell phone during that time and pinpoint the nearest cellular tower the signal bounced off of to give us a clue where she’s headed.”
Disher gave me a look. “Someone has been watching a lot of Law & Order.”
“The real challenge is turning on your TV in the afternoon and finding a program that’s not Law & Order.”
Disher made the call and pleaded with McCracken to do two more little favors for him. When he was done, he hung up the phone, sat back in his chair, and sighed.
“I owe that woman so much now that I might as well just quit my job and become her indentured servant for life.”
“Look at the bright side, Chief,” I said. “What resources could the Summit police force possibly have to offer that Homeland Security would want?”