by Lee Goldberg
22
Mr. Monk Goes to Jail
Visiting a jail is a lot like going to the airport these days, only you’re not allowed to bring any personal belongings with you. You have to walk through a metal detector, but even if you don’t set off any alarms, a guard is still likely to run a wand around you and physically pat you down.
Unless you’re Adrian Monk.
The guards at the county lockup were familiar with him and knew his strong aversion to being touched. So they did an extraordinary thing: They let him pat himself down.
Yeah, that’s right. He gave himself a full body search, right there at the security checkpoint. And believe me, it was something to see.
He contorted his body this way and that, slapping himself as if he were covered with fire ants, while the guards looked on with stone faces.
But he was thorough.
“Uh-oh.” Monk patted his pocket. He reached inside slowly, as if there might be a mousetrap in there that he didn’t know about, and pulled out single, shiny quarter. “What was I thinking bringing this inside a jail?”
“What harm could a quarter cause?” I asked.
Monk shook his head and looked at the guards. “She’s a newbie.” He looked back at me. “This quarter could be carved into a tiny, but deadly, arrowhead.”
“I’ve heard of prisoners making shivs, but never arrowheads.”
“That’s because the tireless diligence of these fine guards has prevented that from happening.” Monk dropped the quarter in the basket that contained his wallet and other personal items.
One of the burly guards stepped forward to pat me down.
“Can’t I pat myself?” I said.
The guard shook his head.
“But you let Mr. Monk do it,” I said.
“He’s a special case,” the guard said.
I couldn’t argue with that. I got patted down.
We were led into a windowless meeting room with gray walls and only a metal table and four matching chairs, all screwed to the floor.
“I like what they’ve done with the place,” Monk said.
He wasn’t being sarcastic. He really liked it. The table was in the center of the room, the four chairs spaced evenly apart, creating a perfectly symmetrical ensemble.
Monk walked around the table several times, admiring it, touching the four corners lightly with the tips of his fingers as he passed.
“It’s beautiful,” Monk said. “It’s like a sculpture. I wonder if I could get one of these installed in my house.”
“You want to furnish your place like a prison?”
“Remind me to get the name of the artist before we leave,” he said.
The door opened and the guards brought in Charlie Herrin, who was in chains and wearing a bright orange jumpsuit. They led him to a chair and locked the chains at his feet into an eyebolt on the floor.
“Is that really necessary?” Monk asked.
“He murdered three women with his bare hands,” I said.
“Knock on the door if you need us,” one of the guards said. “We’ll be right outside.”
The guards left and closed the door. We sat down across from Herrin. He looked at me as if I were a Fudgsicle.
“Hi,” Monk said. “I’m the guy you held hostage the other day. You might not recognize me because you were behind my back with your gun to my head.”
“I remember you,” Herrin said, his eyes going up and down my body. “Who is she?”
“Don’t tell him my name,” I said. “I don’t want this monster knowing anything about me.”
The last thing I wanted was to get letters, e-mails, or collect calls from Herrin and his buddies in prison.
“She’s someone I know who goes places with me,” Monk said. “I’d like to ask you some questions.”
“You can ask all the questions you want,” Herrin said. “But I’m not answering them without an incentive.”
“Like what?” Monk said.”
Herrin smiled at me. “I want your left shoe.”
“In your dreams,” I said.
“That’s my problem,” Herrin said. “All I have are my dreams. They took my entire collection of souvenirs away. I have needs that aren’t being met in here.”
“That’s the idea,” I said.
Herrin shrugged. “No shoe, no answers.”
Monk looked imploringly at me. “Give him your shoe.”
“No,” I said.
“It’s an old shoe,” he said.
“I don’t care,” I said.
“It’s all scuffed up and dirty,” Monk said.
“That’s not the point,” I said. “You know why he wants this shoe. You know what this shoe means to him. Do you really want to indulge his sick, twisted desires?”
“Do you want a murderer to go free?” Monk said.
He had to put it that way, didn’t he? I reached down, pulled off my shoe, and dropped it on the table.
“Happy now?” I said.
Herrin picked it up delicately, as if it were a glass slipper, and brought it up to his nose. He inhaled deeply and closed his eyes in rapture.
Monk grimaced in disgust and so did I.
“My God,” Monk said. “You’re so, so, so sick.”
“It may be a long time before I get this close to another shoe,” Herrin said. “I want to savor it.”
“Hurry up and ask your questions,” I said to Monk. “I want to get out of here.”
“Me, too,” Monk said. “Give him your other shoe.”
“What?” I said.
“Give him your other shoe,” Monk said.
“I don’t want her other shoe,” Herrin said.
“Give it to him anyway,” Monk said.
“I’m not giving him another shoe.”
“She can keep it,” Herrin said.
“You’re only wearing one shoe,” Monk said to me. “Be reasonable. You can’t walk out of here with just one shoe.”
“Yes, I can,” I said.
“No, you can’t,” he said.
“I’m not giving him my other shoe,” I said.
“What are you going to do with just one shoe?” Monk said.
“I’ll have it and he won’t,” I said.
“I don’t want it,” Herrin said.
“All that shoe will do is remind you of the shoe you gave to him,” Monk said. “Do you really want to be reminded of that?”
I looked at Herrin, who was lovingly sniffing and stroking my shoe. No, I didn’t want to be reminded of that.
“Fine.” I took off my right shoe and smacked it down on the table. “Enjoy it, you creep.”
“Why would I want a right shoe?” Herrin slid it toward me. “It’s incomparable to a left shoe.”
“Take it.” Monk slid the shoe back to him using the very tip of his index finger.
“No.” Herrin pushed it away.
“Yes.” Monk slid it back again.
“No.” Herrin pushed it away.
“Either you take the right shoe or I’m taking back the left one,” Monk said.
“No, you won’t,” Herrin said.
“Yes, I will,” Monk said.
“Then I won’t answer your questions,” Herrin said.
“Shoes come in pairs!” Monk slammed his fist on the table, bolted up from his seat, and glared at Herrin with a righteous fury I’d never seen in him before. “It is the natural order of the universe. It’s bad enough that you’ve murdered three women, but you will not mess with the natural order of the universe. Do I make myself clear?”
Herrin swallowed hard, cradled my left shoe to his bosom with one hand, and reluctantly took my right shoe with the other.
“That’s better.” Monk settled back into his seat and took a deep breath. He rolled his head, adjusted his collar, then reached into his jacket pocket and took out a photo. “Have you ever seen this man before?”
It was a picture of Officer Milner.
Charlie Herrin glanced at the picture an
d nodded. “Yeah, I’ve seen him.”
Monk was right: There was a connection between Milner, Gruber, and Herrin.
“Do you know who he is?” Monk asked.
“The cop who pulled me over,” Herrin said. “It was the second time I thought I was going to get caught, but I was on a winning streak.”
“What do you mean?”
“I was driving home on Saturday. It was all foggy; I should have been paying attention to my driving, but I was totally distracted by the shoe. I had to keep touching it, looking at it, smelling it,” Herrin said, doing all of that now to what had once been my shoe. “Who could blame me? I’m only human.”
“I’m not so sure,” I said, disgusted.
“I looked away from the road for one second and accidentally blew through a red light,” Herrin said. “I got clipped by this Hispanic guy going through the intersection. It was only a busted taillight, but that could’ve been the end, right there, if he called the cops. But he was an illegal alien. Barely spoke English. He didn’t want trouble any more than I did. We both walked away from it like it never happened.”
“So where does Officer Milner fit into this?” Monk said.
“Sunday I’m driving to work and he pulls me over. I had that incredible shoe in my lap. I tossed it in the backseat, but I knew I’d been caught. I knew that was the end. He walked up to the car, leaned into the window, and asked if I knew how fast I was driving. I didn’t. He told me I was speeding, going thirty-five in a twenty-five-mile-per-hour zone, and that he was going to give me a ticket,” Herrin said. “He took my license, went back to his car, and sat there for the longest time staring at me.”
I could imagine what was going through Milner’s mind as he sat in his car, pondering what fate had mischeviously dropped in his lap.
The instant he saw that left shoe in the backseat of the car, he knew he’d pulled over the Golden Gate Strangler in a random traffic stop.
What were the odds of that?
But more important, what the hell was he going to do about it?
Milner knew his duty was to arrest the murderer. It would be a career-making, headline-grabbing arrest that would make him a national hero.
For the rest of his life, Officer Milner would be known as the brave young cop who singlehandedly caught the Golden Gate Strangler.
So what was stopping him?
The $250,000 reward. By all rights it should be his, too, along with the glory.
But it wouldn’t be.
All he’d get from the mayor was a firm handshake and a photo op. The check would stay in the mayor’s pocket.
The mayor was willing to give the check to any schlub off the street but not to a cop, not to someone who risked his life every day and worked overtime just to scrape up enough to pay for groceries.
How unfair was that?
I could certainly sympathize with Milner’s moral quandary.
He was torn between going for the glory and going for the cash. Both options had a powerful allure.
So while Charlie Herrin sweated it out, Officer Milner sat there in his police car, silently struggling with a choice that, either way, would irrevocably change his life.
Ultimately, greed won out over duty.
Or, to put it more charitably, Officer Milner couldn’t resist the immediate opportunity to provide a better life for his family over the less tangible, potential long-term rewards of making the arrest.
“I was sure he was just waiting for backup to arrive,” Herrin said. “But no, he got out of the car, handed me my license, and let me off with a warning. Can you believe that? What a break. He didn’t see the shoe. He didn’t know who I was.”
“Actually,” Monk said, “he did.”
“Then why didn’t he arrest me?”
“There are two hundred and fifty thousand reasons why he didn’t,” Monk said.
23
Mr. Monk Feels Queasy
The guards didn’t let Herrin leave the room with my shoes, but there was no way I was taking them back. I wasn’t going to touch them, either. I told the guards to toss them in the trash. I walked out of the jail and all the way to my car in my stocking feet.
Monk and I both thoroughly disinfected our hands in the car with his wipes, but it would take a lot more than that to make either one of us feel clean again.
We stopped on the way back to headquarters at a Shoes for Less store, where I bought a pair of twenty-dollar running shoes just to have something to wear for the rest of the day, though considering how poorly they were made, I had my doubts they’d last that long.
From there, we went straight to Stottlemeyer’s office and filled him and Disher in on what we’d learned from Charlie Herrin.
Stottlemeyer listened without interruption until Monk was finished, then asked Disher to bring in Officer Milner’s personal effects.
Disher stepped out of Stottlemeyer’s office to get them from the evidence room.
“You want to know what I don’t get?” Stottlemeyer said.
“What?” Monk said.
“Everything,” Stottlemeyer said. “How is it that I can look at the same evidence you do and see nothing at all, and you see who the killer is and what he had for breakfast?”
“It’s a gift and a curse,” Monk said.
“Thanks,” Stottlemeyer said.
“I was talking about me,” Monk said. “I see too much. You can walk outside and just appreciate the day. I see everything that doesn’t fit and I can’t let it go.”
“It makes you a hell of a detective, Monk.”
“But I miss a lot of nice days.”
Disher returned with a box filled with plastic bags containing all the items Officer Milner had on his person at the time of his death.
Stottlemeyer searched around in the box and removed a bag containing Officer Milner’s ticket book. He opened the bag up and started flipping through the citations. It didn’t take him long to find the one he wanted.
“Here it is,” Stottlemeyer said. “He never finished writing up the citation, and didn’t submit it when he got back from patrol. But all the information is here. The date and time of the traffic stop. The make, model, plates, and description of the car, even Herrin’s name and address.”
Stottlemeyer handed the ticket book to Monk, who glanced at the citation.
“But we still don’t have anything tying Gruber to Officer Milner’s murder,” Disher said. “All this proves is that Officer Milner met the Foot Fiend.”
“Who is the Foot Fiend?” Stottlemeyer said.
“Charles Herrin,” Disher said.
“He’s the Golden Gate Strangler,” Stottlemeyer said. “Not the Foot Fiend.”
“He is to me, sir. And I’m pretty sure that’s how he’s going to be remembered in the annals of crime.”
“What ‘annals of crime’?” Stottlemeyer said.
“The ones that everyone reads,” Disher said.
“Name one,” Stottlemeyer said.
“Um,” Disher said. “The Annal of Crime.”
“I’ve never seen it,” Stottlemeyer said.
“It’s on all the newsstands. You just have to look really, really hard to find it, like behind Dog Fancy or Rubber Stamp Journal.”
“Yeah, I’ll do that.” Stottlemeyer turned his attention back to Monk. “Randy is right about one thing: You haven’t made that final connection. You can’t prove Milner fed Gruber the information on Herrin, and without that, you’ve got no motive for murder.”
“On the contrary, Captain.” Monk held up the ticket book. “The evidence is right here.”
I called Bertrum Gruber and told him that Monk had a few more questions he needed to ask in order to wrap up the investigation. He balked, until I reminded him that one of the requirements of the reward was that he cooperate fully with the police, and if he didn’t, he risked immediate revocation of all the funds he’d received. It was a lie, but Gruber invited us to meet him at the marina, where he was looking over a sport yacht h
e was interested in buying. Stottlemeyer, Monk, and I went to see him.
I don’t get to the marina very often, which is a shame, because it’s one of the most picturesque spots in the city. Birthday-cake houses with their brightly colored stucco frosting line the wide boulevard that faces the Marina Green, a grassy park that curves around the boat slips, a forest of bobbing, white masts cast against the dramatic backdrop of the Golden Gate Bridge. Kite fliers, joggers, bike riders, and sunbathers fill the park year-round, regardless of the weather, giving it a festive feel that not even the prospect of seeing Bertrum Gruber could ruin for me.
Stottlemeyer, Monk, and I walked down the gangplank from the park to the dock. Monk clutched the wooden handrail as if caught in a violent gale. But the gangplank wasn’t moving at all. He was, bobbing in rhythm with the masts.
“Relax, Monk,” Stottlemeyer said. “We aren’t even on a boat.”
“I’m getting seasick just looking at them,” Monk whined.
“So don’t look at them,” I said.
We walked down the dock until we spotted Gruber standing underneath the spoiler of a thirty-five-foot white sport yacht. The boat had an aggressive, arched-forward design that made it look like it was speeding even while it was moored in its slip.
Gruber wore a white yacht cap with gold leaf on the black bill, a blue-and-white-striped crew shirt, a red ascot, a windbreaker, white pants, and brown leather Top-Siders with tassles over his bare feet. He looked ridiculous, as if he were dressing up for a costume party.
“Ahoy, mateys. Isn’t this baby gorgeous?” Gruber said. “You should see inside. Flat-screen satellite TV, granite countertops, handcrafted cabinets, and ultraleather upholstery. It’s sweet. Come aboard.”
“We’d really rather not.” Monk looked queasy at the thought of it. “This is Captain Stottlemeyer. He’s taking part in the investigation now.”
Gruber climbed down off the boat and joined us on the dock. “That makes all three of us guys captains.”
“It does?” Stottlemeyer said.
“I’m Captain Gruber, and this is my vessel.” He stroked the smooth hull while looking at me. “It’s my lady. I’m calling her the Lust Boat.”
“What’s a dinghy like this cost?” Stottlemeyer asked.