Mr. Monk and the Two Assistants

by Goldberg, Lee

  “I’m only straightening their teeth,” Dr. Dalmas said.

  Monk shook his head and looked at me. “Can you believe this woman’s modesty?”

  She rose with difficulty from her stool and walked awkwardly to the counter where the hazardous waste container was kept and she stuffed her gloves inside.

  I glanced at Monk and saw him watching her as she moved. I knew her uneven gait probably disturbed him. Balance and symmetry meant a lot to him. But the look on his face perplexed me. There was tenderness in his eyes but his cheeks were taut with anger.

  The doctor washed her hands and turned to us and the expression on Monk’s face vanished, but I saw the effort that went into accomplishing it. He didn’t want her to see whatever it was that he was feeling.

  “So you have a child that needs orthodontics?” she said.

  “I do,” I said, “but that’s not why we’re here.”

  Dr. Dalmas looked confused. “Then what can I do for you?”

  “We’d like to talk with you about Ronald Webster,” Monk said.

  “Who is he?” she asked.

  "The man who has been sending you envelopes full of cash,” he said.

  She looked Monk in the eye. He didn’t flinch. “Let’s go in my office,” she said.

  She hobbled past us, leading the way. Monk got that strange look on his face again as we followed her.

  Her office was bright and airy. The pillows on her couch were made from a floral fabric. She had fresh flowers in vases and pictures of her husband and young son. Her degrees were framed on the wall, along with more pictures of her family. It was a very welcoming, female space. She sat down at her desk, and we took the two matching guest chairs in front of her.

  “You don’t look like IRS agents,” she said. “Are you detectives?”

  “He is,” I said. “He’s Adrian Monk. I’m his assistant, Natalie Teeger.”

  “Who are you working for?” she asked.

  “I’m a consultant with the San Francisco police department, ” Monk said. “I’m helping them investigate Ronald Webster’s murder.”

  She thought about that for a moment. “He was the hit-and-run driver.”

  Monk nodded. “How did you know?”

  “I always figured it was guilt money,” she said. “I could only think of one person in my life who might have that much guilt.”

  “When did the money start coming?” I asked.

  “I can’t remember exactly, maybe a year or two after he hit me,” she said. “I was in and out of the hospital a lot during that time. I’ve lost track of all the surgeries it took to put me back together. They did an okay job.”

  “You look great,” Monk said.

  I glanced at him. I couldn’t remember ever hearing him compliment a woman on her appearance. He’d certainly never complimented me.

  “You can’t see my scars,” she said. “I hide them.”

  “Everybody has scars and everybody hides them,” he said. “You do it better than most.”

  “I’m not being metaphorical,” she said. “These scars are real.”

  “So are the other ones,” he said.

  “One day, when I was still living in Oakland, a fat envelope with my name handwritten on it arrived in the mail,” she said. “There was no return address, just a San Rafael postmark.”

  “How much money was in it?” I asked.

  “A couple hundred dollars,” she said. “Envelopes came every month or so after that, always with a different post-mark from somewhere in the Bay Area.”

  “He didn’t want to be traced,” Monk said.

  “A few years after I was hurt, I left Oakland to go to school in San Diego. Not a single envelope showed up at my old address after I left,” she said. “But there was one waiting for me in San Diego when I arrived. And the envelopes have continued to arrive everywhere that I’ve lived since then.”

  “So he was watching you,” I said. “That must have creeped you out.”

  “It did,” she said.

  “But you never went to the police,” Monk said.

  “I couldn’t be sure the money was from him,” she said.

  “Besides,” I said, “you were spending it.”

  Her eyes flashed with anger. “There’s no amount of money that could compensate me for what I lost. My face had to be reconstructed. My hips were shattered and he robbed me of my ability to have children. We had to adopt. So tell me, how could I spend a dime of his money? The thought of doing it made me sick.”

  “Then what did you do with all the cash?” I asked.

  “After a while, I didn’t even bother opening the envelopes anymore. I just tossed them all in a box as they came in,” she said. “I still have every single one of them.”

  “What are you saving them for?” Monk asked.

  She shrugged. “Today.”

  “What happens today?” I asked.

  She shrugged again. “Where did he live?”

  “San Francisco,” I said. “He was a shoe salesman who went to mass every morning.”

  “In a way, it’s good to know he was doing more than sending me cash to alleviate his guilty conscience,” Dr. Dalmas said. “Did he have a family?”

  “From what we can tell, he lived an intentionally solitary and dull life,” Monk said. “He never stopped being afraid that he would be caught.”

  “Then he suffered, too,” she said.

  “I suppose he did,” Monk said. “But someone wanted him to suffer more. He was murdered in a particularly brutal way.”

  “How?” she asked.

  “He was attacked by an alligator,” Monk said.

  She stared at Monk. “Are you sure?”

  “I could tell from the bite,” Monk said.

  “Uniform dentition,” Dr. Dalmas said.

  “Uniform dentition,” Monk said. “It’s a thing of beauty.”

  She cocked her head and regarded Monk in a new light. “Yes, I suppose it is.”

  “Where were you Thursday night?” I asked.

  “Was that when he was killed?” she replied.

  “That’s the best guess,” I said.

  “You think I fed him to an alligator?” she said.

  “You have the best motive,” I said.

  “I don’t have an alligator,” she said. “And even if I did, I didn’t know who he was or where he was. But I’ve seen him.”

  “When?” Monk asked. “Where?”

  “In a department store once, then a few years later, outside a movie theater,” she said. “Another time I saw him in the bleachers at an Oakland A’s game that my husband dragged me to.”

  “And you still didn’t call the police?” I said.

  “He was just a face staring at me in a crowd,” she said. “It wasn’t actually his face that I recognized. It was his eyes. I will never forget his eyes. It always happened so fast. I’d blink or turn away or someone would walk in front of me and then he’d be gone. Afterward, I could never be sure that I hadn’t hallucinated it.”

  “But you knew that you hadn’t,” Monk said.

  She nodded. “I knew.”

  “You still haven’t told us where you were Thursday night,” I said.

  “My husband took my son down to San Diego this week to visit his grandmother,” she said. “I enjoyed a nice long bath and a Nora Roberts novel.”

  “So you don’t have an alibi,” I said.

  “I suppose I don’t,” she said. “What was the church he went to?”

  “Mission Dolores,” I said.

  “Maybe I’ll give them the money,” she said. “Will that be all? I have more patients to see.”

  “I only have one more question,” Monk said. “Where can I get a poster like the one in your waiting room?”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Mr. Monk and the Autopsy

  As we drove back to San Francisco, Monk sat with the sun visor down so he could gaze upon the framed poster depicting the transformative power of orthodontics that Dr.
Dalmas gave us and that we’d wedged into the backseat.

  “That work of art is going to turn my house into a show-place, ” Monk said.

  “You’ll certainly be the only house on your block with a dental poster in the living room.”

  “I may need to invest in a security system,” he said.

  “And a subscription to Highlights for Children,” I said.

  “I already have that,” he said.

  “You do?”

  “Finding the objects in the hidden pictures keeps my powers of observation sharp,” Monk said. “Plus the adventures of Goofus and Gallant are pretty exciting.”

  “I hope Dr. Dalmas doesn’t turn out to be the killer,” I said. “Or it’s going to look like you took a bribe.”

  “She couldn’t be the killer,” he said.

  “Ronald Webster ran her over with a car and left her crippled for life,” I said. “She’s the most likely suspect. Not to mention the only suspect. And best of all, she doesn’t have an alibi.”

  “She couldn’t have done it,” Monk said.

  “Why not?”

  “Because we’re kindred spirits,” he said.

  “You’re not at all alike.”

  “We both fight injustice and right wrongs,” Monk said.

  “She straightens teeth,” I said. “I don’t see the injustice.”

  “You would if you had those crooked teeth,” he said. “She restores order, just like I do.”

  “Maybe her idea of justice is having Ronald Webster chewed on by a creature with perfect teeth.”

  I saw the way she lit up when Monk mentioned uniform dentition. Then again, maybe they were kindred spirits after all.

  “I was watching you when she got up from examining her patient,” I said. “There was a strange look on your face. What were you thinking?”

  And as I asked the question, the expression came back to his face.

  “Ronald Webster broke her. The doctors tried to fix her, but didn’t quite get it right. Now she’s devoting her life to repairing others and she excels at it,” Monk said. “What happened to her was horrible and cruel. And yet I wonder if it’s because of him, and what he did to her, that she’s so good at what she does.”

  “We’ll never know,” I said.

  “I may,” he said.

  He might at that. And if he does, I’m pretty sure it will be on the day he finds his wife’s killer.

  We were halfway across the Bay Bridge when Captain Stottlemeyer called to tell us that the medical examiner had completed his autopsy. Stottlemeyer wanted us to meet him at the morgue to hear the results.

  There are lots of things I like to do on Saturdays and visiting the morgue isn’t one of them. The morgue is cold, smells bad and is filled with corpses. Other than that, it’s a delightful place.

  It certainly was for Monk. He was completely at home there. The morgue is clean, sterile and organized, with shiny metal and linoleum surfaces that are kept sparkling. I’m sure that he’d rather eat a meal off the floor of the morgue than on a picnic table in Golden Gate Park.

  There is nothing out of place in a morgue. Nothing scattered. Nothing haphazard. The bodies are carefully tagged and lined up on autopsy tables for examination or kept in refrigerated compartments. Even the things taken out of the bodies are carefully weighed, measured, cataloged and then disposed of.

  And if a mess is ever created, it’s quickly and efficiently hosed down and the affected area sanitized, deodorized and probably simonized, too. That would account for the brilliant gleam.

  Monk had offered many times to come over in his free time and help clean up. But the medical examiner had always politely declined the offer, much to Monk’s disappointment and to my relief, since I’d probably have to be the one who drove him back and forth.

  Captain Stottlemeyer was waiting down in the morgue lobby, right outside the stairwell, when we arrived. It was unusual for him to greet us there. On those occasions when we gathered at the morgue, we’d ordinarily meet around the body at the autopsy table. It was sort of like Thanksgiving, only without the meal and the fancy dishware.

  “Why the welcoming committee?” I asked.

  Stottlemeyer frowned. “We have a special guest today and I wanted to prepare you for it.”

  He meant Monk, not me.

  “Who is he?” Monk asked.

  “He’s sort of a consultant,” Stottlemeyer said. “Randy thought he might have some special insight into this case and gave him a call yesterday after we found the body.”

  “But I’m your consultant,” Monk said.

  “Think of him as Randy’s consultant,” Stottlemeyer said.

  “I thought I was Randy’s consultant, too,” Monk said. “Why can’t I be everybody’s consultant?”

  “Frankly, Monk, I’ll take as many knowledgeable consultants as I can get, especially if they’re free,” Stottlemeyer said.

  “I’ll work for free,” Monk said.

  “No, you won’t,” I said.

  “You haven’t told us who this consultant is,” Monk said.

  “It’s Ian Ludlow,” Stottlemeyer said, leading us into the autopsy room. “The author.”

  Ludlow was standing across from Lieutenant Disher and Dr. Hetzer on the other side of the autopsy table, where Ronald Webster’s body was laid out.

  “Why did you call him?” Monk asked Disher.

  “Randy was one of my best students and is very familiar with my work,” Ludlow said, answering the question before Disher had a chance.

  “I’ve studied every word he’s ever written and it’s had a huge impact on my prose,” Disher said and turned to Stottlemeyer. “You’ve probably noticed the difference in my reports.”

  “I don’t read your reports for the prose,” Stottlemeyer said.

  “Then you’re cheating yourself out of the subtle thematic arcs and little touches of character,” Disher said, “not to mention the raw, emotional resonance.”

  “Is that what it was?” Stottlemeyer said. “I thought it was my acid reflux.”

  “I’m surprised you didn’t call me on this,” Ludlow said to Monk.

  “Why would I?” Monk said.

  “Because of the startling similarities between this murder and an incident in my latest book,” Ludlow said, shifting his gaze to me. “I signed a copy of Death Is the Last Word for you when we met in Los Angeles.”