“Sure,” Joe said. “It’s only about forty pounds nowadays. We call the package the ‘Jaws of Life.’ ”
Monk rolled his shoulders and tilted his head from side to side. A new clue was rolling around in his brain. It was almost as if he was using his body motion to make the clue hit different synapses like a pinball. I hoped he was scoring lots of points.
“How much pressure would one of these jaws exert on an object?” Monk asked, standing up.
“Depends on the size of the tool,” Mantooth said. “I’d say the one that was stolen probably had a maximum cutting force of about eighteen thousand pounds per square inch.”
Monk glanced at me. I looked back at him. And in that moment, I knew why Monk had smelled gasoline in Webster’s loft. I knew what had made those marks on Webster’s bathroom floor. I knew how the killer had solved the problem of mimicking an alligator’s bite. And I knew that my date with Joe wasn’t going to happen tonight. One way or another, I would still be working on the case.
Joe studied Monk. “You know why someone stole our stuff.”
“Yes, I do,” he said.
So did I. It was nice to be in the know for a change.
“Do you think you can get it back for us?” Mantooth asked.
“Probably not,” Monk said. “My guess is that it’s probably at the bottom of the bay by now.”
“How about whoever did it?” Joe said. “Can you at least get him?”
“Definitely,” Monk said.
“Well,” Mantooth said, “at least that’s something.”
The captain thanked us for our help and asked Monk if he wanted to check the fire truck for spots and smudges. Monk almost skipped away.
That left Joe and me alone for the moment.
“We aren’t having an intimate interlude tonight, are we?” Joe said.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“Another time, I hope.”
I gave him a polite kiss. Maybe too polite.
“There’s always hope,” I said and walked away.
I found Monk shining the grille on the fire truck. If it shined any brighter, it would have qualified as a star.
“Let me see if I understand things right,” I said. “On Wednesday night, someone firebombed a car down in Washington Park to draw the firefighters out of the station long enough so he could steal the Jaws of Life, which he needed to replicate the biting force of an alligator.”
“He glued a set of alligator jaws onto the blades,” Monk said.
“Somehow the killer got into Ronald Webster’s loft, knocked him out, stripped off his clothes and tossed him in the bathtub, which he filled with water and sprinkled with table sea salt,” I said. “Then the killer brought in the Jaws of Life and chomped on Webster with them. Webster must have regained consciousness and struggled, causing the power unit to drag across the floor, leaving the streaks on the tiles.”
“Obviously,” Monk said. “Too obviously, if you ask me.”
He got up and dropped his rag in a laundry basket. Together we started walking out to my car. He took his junior firefighter pin off and put it in his pocket.
“The killer then lugged the body and the Jaws of Life down to his car, drove to Baker Beach and dumped Webster there,” I said, “along with his neatly folded clothes.”
“You left out a few things,” Monk said.
“Like why the killer bothered with the whole alligator thing at all,” I said.
“Like who the killer is,” Monk said.
I stopped walking and stared at him. “You know who the killer is?”
“You don’t?”
“No, of course I don’t,” I said. “Because if I did, I would have said, ‘Hot damn, the killer is Mr. X and here’s what he did.’ That’s what a normal person would do.”
“Are you saying I’m not normal?”
He looked genuinely hurt. I took a deep breath and tried to fight the urge to strangle him to death right there on the street. He was my employer, after all.
“What I’m saying, Mr. Monk, is that most people would start by sharing the most important news first. The identity of the killer is probably the most important thing we don’t know right now.”
“I know it,” Monk said.
Hot damn, I thought.
“Then perhaps you would be kind enough to share it with me,” I said. “Who killed Ronald Webster?”
“The same person who killed Ellen Cole.”
I blinked hard and probably even did a double take. It seemed like an enormous leap of logic to make, even for Adrian Monk.
“But these two murders have absolutely nothing in common,” I said.
“They are practically identical,” Monk said.
“The victims weren’t the same sex, they weren’t even in the same city and they were killed in entirely different ways,” I said. “Ellen Cole was clobbered with a lamp by an intruder. Ronald Webster was murdered in a ridiculously elaborate way to make it seem like he was attacked by an alligator on a nude beach.”
“Exactly,” Monk said. “Now do you see the similarities?”
I rubbed my temples. I was getting a Monk-ache.
“No,” I said, “I don’t.”
“It’s me.”
“You’re the killer?” I said.
“I’m what they have in common,” Monk said.
I opened my purse and began searching madly for some Advil to relieve my misery. Or a gun. Unfortunately, I didn’t have either.
“I am very confused and my head feels like it’s being split open by the Jaws of Life,” I said. “I think you could really clear things up and relieve some of my blinding pain by telling me straight out who the killer is.”
“I will be glad to,” Monk said.
“Great,” I said.
“Tomorrow morning,” Monk said. “Sharona will be back by then.”
“You talked to Sharona?”
“That’s who I called on your cell phone,” Monk said. “She’s going to check out something for me and then take the first flight to San Francisco that she can get.”
“Did you tell her who killed Ellen Cole and framed her husband for the murder?” I said.
“I told her she’d find out tomorrow,” Monk said.
“How did she take it?” I asked.
Monk cleared his throat. “If you come to my house tomorrow morning and discover that I’ve been strangled with some part of my own anatomy, she’s the first person you should suspect.”
“Only if I don’t get to you first,” I said.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Mr. Monk Tells All
Monk was always doing that, dangling the solution to a mystery in front of my face and then not revealing it to me.
I used to think he did it just to torture me, creating suspense the way a writer might to hold a reader between chapters.
But I don’t really think that was why he did it. I think he only held back like that when he wasn’t entirely convinced that he was right. He needed more time to ponder the clues and double-check his own reasoning. He also wanted to hone his presentation. Telling us what he knew, and how he figured it out, was ninety percent of the fun for him and he didn’t want to blow it.
Perhaps more important, he didn’t want to waste his performance on me and have to tell the same story twice. Tomorrow he’d have an audience of at least two.
So Monk’s delay wasn’t cruelty. It was a combination of insecurity, a flair for drama and sheer laziness.
Understanding that, however, didn’t make the wait any easier to endure and completely ruined my free night.
After I dropped Monk off at his place, I went home, heated up a Lean Cuisine meal, paid some bills and browsed eBay for cheap clothes. But I couldn’t stop thinking about the murders of Ellen Cole and Ronald Webster.
I’m what they have in common.
That was what Monk had said. What did he mean by that?
It was easy to see Monk’s connection to Ellen Cole. She was supposedly mur
dered by the husband of Monk’s ex-assistant. But Monk didn’t know Ronald Webster and neither did I, though it was kind of strange that the shoe salesman worked in my neighborhood and ate at the same pizza place I did, and that the Jaws of Life used to kill him was stolen from Joe’s firehouse.
Was I the connection to Monk?
I went to bed trying to follow that line of reasoning and the only place it took me was to a dream about an alligator sitting in a hot tub like a person and eating a slice of pizza, bits of cheese and pepperoni getting stuck in the wires of the braces on his pointy teeth.
Rick Springfield climbed into the hot tub at some point, too, and sang a rousing rendition of “Jessie’s Girl” but I was pretty sure that he had nothing to do with the murders.
I arrived at Monk’s door at nine a.m. sharp—at the same time as Sharona. She looked tired and angry. It seemed like it had been months since I’d last seen her.
“How did it go in Los Angeles?” I asked her as we walked in without knocking, like it was our home. In a way, I guess it was.
“The only thing I discovered was that I don’t have what it takes to be a detective,” she said.
“Not everyone can be Adrian Monk,” I said.
“And humanity is worse off for it,” Monk said as he came in from the kitchen. “Imagine how clean and orderly the world would be.”
“You’re not going to be part of this world much longer, Adrian, if you don’t spit out the name of the killer right now,” Sharona said.
But before he could, Captain Stottlemeyer came in behind us, looking a bit disheveled. He was wearing the same clothes that he’d worn the day before.
Either he’d worked all night, which I doubted, or Monk had called him on his cell at his girlfriend’s place, catching the captain before he had a chance to go home, shower and change.
Stottlemeyer probably would have given Monk hell the moment he walked in but he was caught off guard by the surprise of seeing Sharona.
“Hey, Sharona,” he said and gave her a hug. “It’s real good to see you.”
“You, too, Captain,” she said.
“How’s Benji?” he asked.
“He’s doing fine,” Sharona said. “He’d be doing a lot better if his father wasn’t in prison.”
“I was sorry to hear about that,” Stottlemeyer said.
“Don’t be,” Sharona said, turning her gaze to Monk. “Adrian is going to correct that injustice right now, aren’t you? You’re going to tell us who really killed Ellen Cole.”
“Yes,” Monk said, “I am.”
“Wait a minute,” Stottlemeyer said, glaring at Monk. “You got me out of bed on my day off because you said you’d solved the Webster homicide.”
“I have,” Monk said.
“Well, which case are we talking about here?” Stottlemeyer said. “Her case or mine?”
“Both,” Monk said. “The same killer is responsible.”
“Who is he?” the three of us demanded in unison. We sounded like the Rolling Stones.
“Ian Ludlow,” Monk said.
He smiled triumphantly, but his declaration didn’t feel like a revelation. It felt like petty vindictiveness.
“Oh for God’s sake, Monk,” the captain said. “I know you hate that he’s helping us out, and you aren’t getting our complete attention, but this is over the top, even for you.”
“He’s the guy,” Monk insisted.
“How could he possibly be the guy?” Stottlemeyer said.
“Ludlow helped the police investigate the Ellen Cole murder and led them to Trevor,” Monk said. “Now he’s up here, consulting on the Webster investigation.”
“The only reason he’s here is because Randy called him,” Stottlemeyer said.
“Which Lieutenant Disher did because the murder was reminiscent of a scene from Ludlow’s new book,” Monk said.
“So what?” Stottlemeyer said.
“That’s only one of the coincidences,” Monk said. “There’s more. The shoe store where Webster worked is in Natalie’s neighborhood and so is the restaurant where he bought his pizza.”
“That’s nothing, Monk. No, it’s less than nothing,” Stottlemeyer said. “You must really feel threatened by this guy to be seeing connections where none exist. It’s not just sad—it’s pathetic.” Stottlemeyer started for the door.
“Wait, there’s more,” Monk said. “I know how he faked the alligator attack.”
“What alligator attack?” Sharona said.
“It’s a long story,” I said.
“Okay, Monk,” Stottlemeyer said, turning back, “how was it done?”
“Ludlow glued an alligator’s jaws to a hydraulic cutter and used the rescue tool to replicate the thousands of pounds of force in the creature’s grip,” Monk said. “There was no way Webster could free himself, no matter how much he struggled, which is what caused the streaks on the bathroom floor.”
“Webster was killed by somebody using the Jaws of Life,” Stottlemeyer said, mulling it over for a moment. “That explains all of it except why he was killed and who did it.”
“Ludlow did it,” Monk said.
“Your jealousy and insecurity are pathological but at least you figured out the alligator thing. I’ve got to hand that to you,” Stottlemeyer said. “So here’s the deal. I’m just going to forget all the Ludlow stuff. You get yourself some help from Dr. Kroger and we’ll pretend like the rest never happened.”
“It was Ludlow,” Monk said.
“Because Webster sells shoes and had a pizza in the same city where we all live?” Stottlemeyer fumed.
“Because on Wednesday night someone stole the Jaws of Life from the same firehouse where Natalie’s lover works,” Monk said.
I felt my face flush with embarrassment. I don’t know why. I was an adult. I was allowed to have sex.
“He’s not my lover. We aren’t involved,” I said. “Much.”
“Much?” Sharona said.
“We’re revolved,” I said.
“Revolved?” Sharona said.
“You know,” I said, “the typical involved-then-not-involved-then-involved-and-not-involved-again thing. Revolved.”
It was just getting worse. Luckily, Stottlemeyer saved me.
“It’s a weird coincidence. I’ll grant you that, Monk,” Stottlemeyer said, kindly ignoring my love life. “But there’s a reason why somebody created a word for coincidences. Because they happen. You have nothing that actually links Ian Ludlow to any of this.”
Mr. Monk and the Two Assistants Page 22