Mr. Monk and the Two Assistants

by Goldberg, Lee

  “I haven’t had a chance to read it,” I said.

  “I didn’t get past the first two pages,” Monk said, “since it was blatantly obvious at that point who the killer was.”

  “I was totally taken by surprise,” Disher said, almost reverently, to Ludlow. “In fact, I thought it was brilliantly done.”

  “The murderer in all his books is always the least-likely suspect who is undone by a personality quirk,” Monk said.

  “It is?” Disher said.

  “I thought you’d studied his work,” Monk said.

  “So you’ve read all my books?” Ludlow asked. “I’m flattered.”

  “Don’t be. If you’ve read one,” Monk said, “you’ve read them all.”

  “This isn’t a reading group,” Stottlemeyer said impatiently. “We aren’t here to discuss Mr. Ludlow’s books. We’re here to learn about what happened to Ronald Webster. Can we please get to it? What have you got for us, Dr. Hetzer?”

  The medical examiner cleared his throat and took out a tiny, telescoping pointer, which he waved over the body like a magic wand. I don’t know if he thought he was making the body appear or disappear.

  “It’s not as easy as you might think to determine whether a person has drowned or not,” Dr. Hetzer said. “It’s a best-guess situation. But I believe that is the cause of death. That said, did he drown in the ocean or somewhere else?”

  As Dr. Hetzer spoke, he kept waving that pointer over Webster’s naked body, drawing our attention to it. The corpse wasn’t any nicer to look at than it had been before. In fact, it was worse, since in addition to the alligator bite, he’d also been vivisected and sewn back together.

  And yet somehow I didn’t find it so hard to look at him this time. Perhaps it was the clinical nature of the surroundings and the proceedings. Or perhaps I was just getting used to it.

  “The salinity of ocean water is usually about thirty-three to thirty-seven parts per thousand,” Dr. Hetzer said. “However, the salinity of the water found in the lungs may not reflect the actual salinity of the water in which the victim drowned. It has to do with the physics of osmosis, which you probably don’t want me to get into.”

  “You’re right,” Stottlemeyer said. “In fact, I’d really appreciate it if you just got to the point.”

  But Dr. Hetzer wasn’t going to do that any more than Monk would during one of his summations. This was Dr. Hetzer’s chance to show off his smarts and he wasn’t going to rob himself of that pleasure.

  “There are microorganisms that live in freshwater and salt water, but you find very few of them in tap water,” Dr. Hetzer said. “You certainly don’t find measurable traces of bath oil in an ocean tide pool.”

  “You’re saying that Ronald Webster drowned in a bathtub and was dumped at the beach,” Stottlemeyer said.

  “It would appear so,” Dr. Hetzer said.

  “You could have saved us a lot of time by saying that to start with,” Stottlemeyer groused.

  “What were his stomach contents?” Ludlow asked.

  “Who cares?” Monk said.

  “Every fact is significant,” Ludlow said.

  “Two or three slices of pepperoni pizza,” Dr. Hetzer said.

  “See?” Monk asked. “Pointless.”

  “The details of what Webster ate can help us determine where he was before he died, who he might have been with and when they were together. The rate of digestion can also help us pinpoint the time of death,” Ludlow said, turning to Dr. Hetzer. “And what do his stomach contents tell you, Doctor?”

  “He was killed within a half hour of consuming his last meal,” Dr. Hetzer said.

  “Interesting,” Ludlow said.

  “Meaningless,” Monk said.

  “Were there any drugs in his bloodstream?” Ludlow asked the medical examiner.

  “Nope,” Dr. Hetzer said.

  “So we know he wasn’t drugged,” Ludlow said.

  “Brilliant deduction,” Monk said, theatrically rolling his eyes. “Next you’re going to tell us that he’s dead.”

  “What about signs of a struggle?” Stottlemeyer said. “He looks pretty beaten up to me.”

  “There are bruises and abrasions on his head, arms and shoulders, but I can’t determine whether he sustained them fighting an assailant before he drowned or while struggling with the alligator.”

  “Wait a minute,” Stottlemeyer said. “You’re telling me that you still think he was attacked by an alligator?”

  Dr. Hetzer nodded. “I asked a zoologist to examine the wounds and a tooth that I found imbedded in one of his ribs. She concurred with Monk’s observations.”

  “She concurred with me,” Monk said, clearly for Ludlow’s benefit, “because I saw it first.”

  “My official determination is that an alligator dragged Ronald Webster underwater and held him there until he drowned,” Dr. Hetzer said.

  “In his bathtub?” Stottlemeyer asked.

  “I’m only telling you what the evidence indicates,” Dr. Hetzer said. “Based on the size of the bite, we’re looking for a big sucker. A ten footer at least.”

  Stottlemeyer grimaced and looked at Monk. “I knew this was a case that cried out for you.”

  “For me,” Monk said, underscoring a self-serving point once again for Ludlow’s benefit, “because I handle the tough ones.”

  “Couldn’t the bite have been faked?” I asked.

  "It’s far more difficult to do than you might think,” Ludlow replied.

  “How would you know?” Monk asked dismissively.

  “One of the characters in Death Is the Last Word tried to make a murder look like an alligator attack,” Disher said. “That’s why I called Ian last night. I thought maybe he could offer us some insight into the criminal mind.”

  “Oh, please,” Monk said.

  “I drove up from LA first thing this morning,” Ludlow said. “I feel it’s my civic duty as a crime novelist and as a concerned citizen to help in any way I can.”

  “And you just happen to have a new book out and any publicity you can get will only help your sales,” Monk said. “The press is going to be all over this. You want to be sure that everyone draws the same connection between your book and this case that Lieutenant Disher did.”

  “I resent that, Mr. Monk. I’ve assisted the LAPD on many investigations,” Ludlow said. “And my integrity has never been called into question.”

  “And it’s not now. We’re grateful that you’re here,” Stottlemeyer said. “You should be, too, Monk.”

  “Why?” Monk said.

  “Because you’re not exactly blazing a trail of discovery on your own,” Stottlemeyer said, then turned back to Ludlow. “If you wanted to fake an alligator attack, where would you get the jaws?”

  “Alligator heads are very easy to find,” Ludlow said. “You can buy one on the Internet for as little as five dollars. That’s not the hard part. It’s creating the bite.”

  “Couldn’t you just knock the guy out, hold him under water and then clamp the jaws on him?” I asked.

  “An alligator champs down on his prey and then rolls, using his full weight to drag the victim under,” Disher said authoritatively. “If you don’t see signs of that on the body, it’s a dead giveaway.”

  We all looked at Dr. Hetzer, who nodded.

  “The wounds are consistent with the victim being pulled and rolled,” Dr. Hetzer said. “It was the first thing I looked for.”

  Disher beamed. “I learned that reading Ian’s book.”

  “Maybe the killer did, too,” Stottlemeyer said, “and then faked the bite.”

  “That would be very difficult, if not impossible, to accomplish, ” Ludlow said. “A ten-foot alligator exerts nearly two thousand pounds of force per square inch with his bite. That’s more than a ton of force. You can’t fake that with your bare hands.”

  “Or with a bear trap,” Disher said.

  “A bear trap?” Stottlemeyer asked.

  “That’s what the
character used in my book,” Ludlow said. “She attached an alligator’s jaws with epoxy to a bear trap and then clamped the contraption on her victim. She got everything right but the proper force per square inch.”

  Stottlemeyer glanced at Dr. Hetzer.

  “The force exerted in this bite was easily two thousand pounds per square inch,” Dr. Hetzer said. “Probably a lot more. The alligator mimics the feeding biomechanics of dinosaurs and bites harder than any animal on earth. The only creature that may have had a stronger bite is the Tyrannosaurus rex at three thousand pounds per square inch.”

  "Nearly as much force as the weight of my S-class Mercedes, ” Ludlow said.

  “Braggart,” Monk muttered.

  “So we’re looking for someone with a ten-foot-long alligator, ” Stottlemeyer said.

  “Or a baby T. rex,” Disher said.

  “How hard could that be to find?” Stottlemeyer said.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Mr. Monk and the Man Who Wasn’t Himself

  Everyone except Dr. Hetzer regrouped in the morgue’s windowless employee lounge to discuss the case over some cups of bad coffee instead of an eviscerated corpse. The five of us sat almost shoulder to shoulder at a tiny table, talking above the hum of vending machines and under the headache-inducing strobe of the fluorescent lights.

  I preferred the ambience of the autopsy room.

  “What do we know about Ronald Webster?” Ludlow asked.

  “We?” Monk said. “You’re just a visitor in this morgue, pal. I’m certified by the State of California in Blood and Bodily Fluid Disposal, Disinfection, Deodorization and Sterilization under the Federal Medical Waste Management Act and the Federal Health and Safety Codes.”

  “You are?” I asked.

  “Want to see my card?” Monk said.

  “You have a card?” I said.

  “It’s laminated,” he said, opening his wallet and proudly displaying a certification card with the state seal on it.

  “Of course it is,” Stottlemeyer said. “He’d laminate himself if he could.”

  “I ran Webster’s prints and came up with nothing,” Disher said. “So I did some digging. Turns out he shares the same social security number as another Ronald Webster in Butte, Montana.”

  “Our dead man was living under a false identity that he stole from somebody else,” Ludlow said. “He was hiding from something or someone.”

  “Another brilliant deduction,” Monk said. “I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m impressed.”

  Ian Ludlow hadn’t done anything to deserve Monk’s nasty attitude. I admired Monk, but he could be unbelievably petty and childish when he felt threatened. When he behaved that way, I wanted to send him to his room for quiet time.

  The only person who looked bad in these situations was Monk himself, but he was too busy being churlish to recognize it. Then again, he never noticed or cared how he looked to others.

  Stottlemeyer glared at him. “Do you have anything helpful to share?”

  Monk frowned and crossed his arms in front of his chest. “No.”

  “What about everything we’ve learned today?” I said.

  “It’s not relevant,” Monk said, sulking.

  “Of course it is,” I said.

  So I told the others about our talk with Father Bowen at Mission Dolores, where Ronald Webster, or whoever he really was, attended mass every day to ease his guilt over running down Paula Dalmas and fleeing the scene. I told them that Webster had confessed his crime to Father Bowen and had been anonymously sending cash to Dalmas for years.

  “I couldn’t make this stuff up,” Ludlow said, shaking his head with amazement.

  “I wonder if Father Bowen knows more than he told,” Disher said.

  “We’ll ask him, officially this time,” Stottlemeyer said, then nodded to me. “Go on, Natalie.”

  I told them about Dr. Dalmas’ claim that she didn’t know the identity of the hit-and-run driver and that she’d never spent any of the money that he’d sent.

  “But she admitted that she’d seen him stalking her a few times over the years,” I said. “Her husband and her son are in San Diego this week. She said she spent Thursday night at home and took a bath.”

  “Maybe she did,” Disher said, “with Ronald Webster and an alligator.”

  “Get search warrants for her home and office,” Stottlemeyer said.

  “What do you hope to find?” I asked.

  “Any evidence that she was at Baker Beach or that she might have had an alligator around.”

  “Maybe her husband and son aren’t really in San Diego,” Disher said. “Maybe they were eaten.”

  “This is exciting,” Ludlow said.

  “You’re wasting your time,” Monk said. “Dr. Dalmas didn’t kill Ronald Webster.”

  “Then who did?” Ludlow asked.

  “Someone else,” Monk said.

  “Brilliant deduction,” Ludlow said.

  Monk deserved that.

  “We’re not going to find the answers here,” Stottlemeyersaid, rising to his feet and bringing the meeting to an end. “I can think of only one place to start.”

  On the way to Ronald Webster’s place, I got a call from Julie asking if she could upgrade her playdate into a sleepover at her friend’s house. I said it was fine, and since her friend was on the Slammers, that meant Julie would also get a ride to the game on Sunday morning.

  A sleepover worked out great for me, since it meant I wouldn’t have to worry about finding someone to keep an eye on Julie if I had to work on Sunday, which was looking likely.

  It also meant that I might actually have a night to myself—something rare and to be savored, perhaps with a certain firefighter, if he wasn’t working.

  I wasn’t reconsidering my decision not to get involved with Firefighter Joe. This wouldn’t be an involvement. This would be a revolvement—temporary involvement that revolved back to the uninvolvement.

  That made perfect sense to me, or at least I was trying to convince myself that it did as we made our way across the Mission District toward the 101 Freeway and the industrial waterfront.

  There’s a booming market in warehouse-to-loft conversions in San Francisco, and if there is one thing there’s no shortage of in our city, it’s abandoned and decrepit industrial spaces. I don’t really see the appeal of living in an old factory building in a decaying neighborhood, but there are people willing to spend millions for the privilege.

  Ronald Webster lived in a very recent warehouse-to-loft conversion, the only redevelopment in this otherwise rottingcorner of the Mission District. A big billboard on the side of the building featured an artist’s rendering of the luxurious lofts that were available for sale and immediate occupancy inside.