Mr. Monk is Cleaned Out Read online

  Disher walked over to the watercooler and filled a paper cup with water. He sipped it. “I had no idea this was Star Trek water. It actually tastes like the future.”

  “Did the forensics report come in on Clasker’s car?” I asked.

  “Yeah,” Disher said, returning to his desk with his paper cup of water. “No hidden compartments or secret mechanisms, but we found lots of fingerprints. Most of ’em are from Clasker and his family, or from people we can’t ID, but we got two interesting hits. Some of the prints belonged to Moggridge, the man Clasker was supposed to testify against.”

  “Where was Moggridge at the time of the murder?” Monk asked.

  “Sitting in the courtroom waiting for Clasker to show up,” Disher said. “But you’ve broken better alibis than that.”

  “Moggridge could have taken a ride with Clasker in his car months ago,” Monk said.

  “Or maybe this proves that Moggridge cased Clasker’s car for the guy he hired to do the killing,” Disher said.

  “You still have to find the killer,” I said.

  “I think we have,” Disher said. “One of the prints we found belongs to Armando Alvarez, who is wanted in Mexico for carrying out dozens of executions for the Juarez drug cartel. We just arrested him.”

  “How did you find him?” Monk asked.

  “Some of the other prints in the car belong to guys at a car wash a few blocks from where Clasker was killed. I sent some officers to see if they could match some of the other unidentified prints to workers there. When the officers showed up, one of car wash guys bolted. The officers tackled him. It was Alvarez. He got sloppy and left a fingerprint behind when he murdered Clasker.”

  “Or maybe that’s where Clasker went to get his car washed,” Monk said. “And it’s a coincidence that one of the workers is a wanted fugitive.”

  “Or maybe Alvarez picked that place because it was close to Van Ness and Sutter,” Disher said. “He could slip away, murder Clasker, and be back on the line without anybody noticing. The car wash was his alibi.”

  “How did he get in and out of Clasker’s car without anybody seeing him?” I asked.

  “I don’t know. But Alvarez is the guy. We just have to figure out how he did it.” Disher studied his cup of water. “Maybe he found a way to distill himself in and out of the car.”

  Stottlemeyer opened the door to his office. He looked like he’d been up all night and it hadn’t been much fun. “Come in, I want to talk with you.”

  Disher started to get up, but Stottlemeyer held up his hand in a halting gesture. “Just Monk and Natalie. This is a private matter.”

  “Oh, I get it,” Disher said, grinning. “This is about my birthday, isn’t it?”

  “You got a birthday coming up?” Stottlemeyer asked Disher as Monk and I walked into the dark office. “When?”

  “As if you didn’t know,” Disher said. “I’ve never had a surprise party, so this will be a real surprise.”

  Stottlemeyer gave Disher a long, dead-eyed stare, then closed the door and turned to me. “Do you know when his birthday is?”

  “In two days.”

  “Oh, hell. I guess I’d better get him something. What does he like?”

  “How should I know?” I said.

  “Women always know these kinds of things,” Stottlemeyer said.

  “You’ve worked with the man for years and you don’t know what he likes?”

  “We’re coworkers. We aren’t dating.”

  I sighed. For a man who detected for a living, it was amazing to me how clueless he could be sometimes. “What did you want to talk to us about, Captain?”

  “You mean it’s not about Randy’s surprise party?” Monk said.

  “No, Monk, it’s not.” The captain sat on the edge of his desk and faced us. “I’m afraid I’ve got some very bad news.”

  “It can’t be worse than the news I got yesterday,” Monk said. Then his eyes went wide. “Oh my God. Have they stopped making Wet Ones? Or Windex? Or Lysol? Maybe I should just kill myself now and get it all over with.”

  “Relax, Mr. Monk. Whatever the news is, it’s not that bad,” I said.

  “I’m not so sure about that, Natalie.” The captain took a deep breath. “This isn’t easy for me to say and I hate that I have to do it, but these are hard times. You’re fired, Monk, effective immediately.”

  “What did I do?” Monk asked.

  “You didn’t do anything. You’re great. It’s got nothing to do with you and everything to do with the economy. The department can’t afford consultants. They can’t even afford me.”

  I was suffering a bad case of déjà vu. We’d played this same scene before, only a few months ago. Monk was fired by Stottlemeyer, ostensibly by the department to save money and score political points with the surly rank and file. But I thought it had more to do with the captain’s feelings of inadequacy following a public flaying at a police convention over his heavy reliance on Monk to help solve crimes. I didn’t know what the firing was really about this time but I wasn’t going to accept it.

  “Captain, have you already forgotten what happened the last time you fired Monk? It was a disaster. You know you’ll regret this.”

  “I already do, but this came down from upstairs, not me. The city has no money, so the department has to make brutal cuts. I’ll give you an example. We’re reducing the number of patrol cars on the streets by twenty percent because we don’t have the money for the gasoline, the automotive maintenance, or the officers.”

  “But the streets are going to be a lot less safe and more crooks are going to get away with their crimes,” Monk said.

  “I know that, but there’s no way around it, Monk. We just don’t have the money to do the job we’re supposed to do.”

  This was a bad rerun of an episode I didn’t like the first time I saw it.

  “You said that before, Captain, and then you came crawling back to him.”

  “This time it’s different, Natalie. You know it is. All you have to do is look out the window. Have you seen all the stores going out of business? All the people losing their homes? The tax dollars have dried up. Every city, county, and state agency is being gutted. Education, social services, you name it. We’re all going to feel the pain in one way or another.”

  I knew he was right but it didn’t make it any easier to accept. If Monk was out of a job, so was I. I couldn’t just give up without a fight.

  “Mr. Monk can solve more crimes single-handedly than all the detectives in that squad room combined,” I said. “You know that, Captain.”

  “So what do you want me to do? Fire them to save Monk? I’ll tell you what, Natalie, you can go out there and pick the guys who should lose their jobs so an outside consultant can keep his. How about Randy? Or me?”

  “All I’m saying is that Mr. Monk is cost- effective. Isn’t that what this is all about, saving money? Or are you saying it’s something else?”

  “The captain is right,” Monk said. “No police officer should lose his job because of me.”

  “You are the best detective in this city, Mr. Monk. If they have to make cuts, shouldn’t they keep the best?”

  “They’re cops,” Monk said. “I’m not.”

  “This isn’t fair,” I said.

  “Welcome to my life,” Monk said and then turned to the captain. “You know you can call on me for help with a case anytime, whether I get paid or not. I’ll be there.”

  “I know,” he said.

  “Can I be there even if you don’t call?”

  “No,” Stottlemeyer said. “Are you going to be all right?”

  “I’m never all right,” Monk said and went to the door, pausing for a moment before he opened it. “Q-tips.”

  “Excuse me?” Stottlemeyer said.

  “Get Randy a box of Q-tips,” Monk said. “It’s always the perfect gift.”

  Disher grinned at us from his desk as we came out of Stottlemeyer’s office. He didn’t seem to pick up on my sudden depr
ession or Monk’s sadness. But I gave Disher the benefit of the doubt on Monk, who always wore a sad expression. Only someone who spent as much time as I did with Monk could notice the subtle changes in the intensity of his sadness.

  “If you’re wondering what to get me, your troubles are over,” Disher said. “I’ve opened a wedding registry at Nordstrom.”

  “But you aren’t getting married,” I said.

  “Nordstrom doesn’t have to know that,” he said.

  As Monk and I headed out of the squad room, I pulled the Baggies containing the toothpick and the parking ticket out of my purse and dropped them into a garbage can.

  “We won’t need these now,” I said.

  Monk stopped midstride. He rolled his shoulders, tipped his head from side to side, and then held out his hand to me, snapping his fingers.

  “Wipe, wipe,” he said.

  I gave him two. He took one in each hand, reached into the garbage can, and retrieved the two Baggies, which he held up and examined for a moment.

  “You’re not thinking about lecturing the captain about littering and setting a bad example now, are you?” I said. “This is not the right time.”

  When he lowered his arms, there was a strange smile on his face.

  The smile wasn’t actually strange. What was strange was that he could find anything to smile about two minutes after getting fired.

  But it was a smile I knew well. There was no question about what it meant.

  He’d just solved a murder.

  “I need to see Clasker’s car,” Monk said.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Mr. Monk and the Magic Trick

  Captain Stottlemeyer tried to explain to Monk that he’d just been fired, and that he was no longer involved in the investigation, and that he had no business asking to go to the crime lab to examine Clasker’s car.

  But Stottlemeyer didn’t try very hard. It was a halfhearted protest at best because the captain’s pressing need to solve a seemingly impossible high-profile murder was far greater than his concern about taking advantage of his friend’s compulsions.

  I didn’t protest too much, either, because I knew Monk couldn’t stop himself from pursuing the case to the end, regardless of whether he got paid or the department appreciated his efforts.

  I also knew that anyone who has evidence that could help solve a murder has an obligation to share it with the police, regardless of whether the police have just fired you and your comely assistant.

  Stottlemeyer, Disher, Monk, and I headed downstairs to the crime lab’s garage, which was located in a building on the other side of the parking lot.

  If this was an episode of CSI, the garage would have been a neon-lit cavern of brushed stainless steel, where buxom women and buff men in Versace lab coats moved sensually around the sleek curves of the car with their high-tech equipment to the pulsating beat of hip-hop.

  The reality was a lot less cool and sexy. The walls of the garage were unpainted cinder blocks, the floors were concrete, and panels of fluorescent lights hung on chains from the exposed rafters. Clasker’s BMW sedan was parked on a white tarp in the middle of the room. The equipment was an ordinary assortment of mechanic’s tools on a rolling cart, a cordless mini-vacuum, some flashlights, lots of evidence Baggies, and a nice digital camera.

  The car doors had been removed and the hood and trunk were open.

  Pillsbury Pete was on his knees, wearing rubber gloves and a white jumpsuit, and plucking bugs and things from the front grille with tweezers and sticking them in Baggies.

  “What do you think that stuff is going to tell you, Pete?” the captain asked.

  “Where the car has been and when it was there,” Pete said. “The information might prove helpful to your investigation.”

  “It won’t.” Monk went up to the left rear passenger side of the car and peered inside.

  “I just collect the evidence,” Pete said. “It’s up to you guys how to use it. Or not.”

  “Let’s say I wanted to take a broken bicycle with filthy, disgusting wheels to the shop for repair in this car but it wouldn’t fit in the trunk,” Monk said. “Could I fold down the seats?”

  “Of course you could,” Pete said. “It’s a common sixty-forty split seat, so you could still fit in a passenger, too, if you wanted.”

  Pete reached past Monk, pressed a release button, and lowered the larger portion of the backseat.

  “What does a dirty bike have to do with anything?” the captain asked.

  “I didn’t know you could fold down the backseat of a sedan until Natalie put Julie’s broken bicycle in her car this morning.”

  Disher looked at Monk with disbelief. “How could you not know that?”

  “I don’t own a car and I’m usually not in one when people are transporting large, dirt-caked items from one place to another.”

  “But you are part of the modern world we live in,” Disher said.

  “Have you forgotten who you’re talking to?” Stottlemeyer asked Disher. “The only person who leads a more sheltered life than Monk is his brother.”

  Monk pointed to the opening into the trunk. “There’s your secret compartment.”

  Pete stepped aside and Stottlemeyer stepped forward.

  “You’re saying the killer hid in the trunk?” the captain asked.

  “He got inside the night before,” Monk said. “When the car stopped at the intersection, he dropped the backseat down, burst out, and strangled Clasker.”

  Stottlemeyer turned to Pete. “Did you find any evidence that there was a guy in the trunk?”

  “We’ve found some strands of hair, but they could have come from suitcases, clothes, golf clubs, beach chairs, or any number of things belonging to the victim and his family. We won’t know until we run the DNA, but that will take some time.”

  Stottlemeyer sighed and faced Monk. “Even if I buy that the killer was in the trunk, it doesn’t explain how he got away. We were standing next to the car right up until the medical examiner and the crime scene techs arrived. And in all that time, I never saw anybody get out of that car.”

  “Yes, you did,” Monk said.

  “No, I didn’t,” Stottlemeyer said.

  “Yes, you did,” Monk said. “We all did.”

  “You couldn’t have,” Stottlemeyer said. “By the time you got to the scene, the body had been removed and the forensic investigators were crawling all over the car.”

  “And that’s exactly when the killer made his daring escape.”

  I’m sure Monk wasn’t aware of it, but he’d dropped all pretense of dehydration. He was too caught up in his summation to pander to his own fears and phobias, to wallow in his present, expected, or imagined misery.

  “Then he must have been wearing an invisibility cloak,” Disher said.

  Monk shook his head. “We were looking right at him.”

  “How is that possible?” I asked.

  “It’s no different than a magician performing his act in front of a live audience,” Monk said. “And like any good magician, the killer pulled off his trick using a clever, but subtle, distraction.”

  “What did he do?” Stottlemeyer asked.

  “He got out of the car,” Monk said.

  “Yes, we know that,” Stottlemeyer said wearily. “What we don’t know is how.”

  “He opened the back door, stepped out of the car, and told us all about his predicament.” Monk turned to Pete. “You said the only way out of the car was through the doors or the skylight. You forgot to mention the trunk.”

  “My mistake,” Pete said. “But I still don’t see who the killer is.”

  “Look in the mirror,” Monk said. “It was you.”

  We all stared at Pete in disbelief. Monk had made an outrageous accusation. But the outrageousness was tempered by the fact that he’d never been wrong before. He knew that he was right. I could see it in his stance and in the forceful way he spoke. All the tentativeness, worry, and misery that usually colored his actions we
re gone.

  It was during these summations, when he pulled a case together, when he corrected the imbalance created by the murder and the mystery, that he was the most in control of himself and everything around him.

  I loved those moments because it was one of the rare times that Adrian Monk was truly happy. I only wished it could last, which is why I never begrudged him the pleasure of drawing out his summations for as long as he possibly could, even if it could become unbearably irritating for everybody else.

  “That’s absurd,” Pete said. “I’m the lead forensic investigator. I didn’t arrive at the scene until after the captain’s call came in.”

  “You didn’t ride from here to the crime scene with the rest of the forensic investigation team,” Monk said. “Did you?”

  “No, I didn’t. I got the call when I was on my way into work, so I drove to the scene in my own car. There’s nothing unusual about that. It happens all the time.” Pete turned to Stottlemeyer. “You know how it is.”

  Stottlemeyer nodded. “I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve had to get out of bed in the middle of the night to go look at a corpse.”

  “There you go.” Pete looked at Monk. “You might as well accuse the captain and Lieutenant Disher of murder while you’re at it. They were behind Clasker’s car the whole way. How do you know they didn’t do it and are lying to us about the locked car?”

  “I’m not saying a word without my lawyer and union rep present,” Disher said.

  “He’s not accusing us of anything,” Stottlemeyer said. “He’s making a point.”

  “He’s not making any points with me,” Disher said. “He’s losing them.”

  “I’m illustrating that this whole line of speculation is utterly ridiculous,” Pete said. “If we follow Monk’s twisted reasoning, then you two are far more likely suspects than me or anybody else.”

  I spoke up. “But they were right behind Clasker’s car the whole time. There are other drivers who can attest to that. And if they got out of their car and strangled Clasker, there would have been dozens of witnesses. It makes no sense.”