by Lee Goldberg
“That’s how a life of crime begins,” Monk said. “Today it’s a book, tomorrow it’s murdering your father-in-law.”
“Didn’t you already accuse me of doing that?”
“So now after stealing a life, you think you are free to steal anything,” Monk said. “It’s the same idea, only in reverse.”
“You’re wrong about me,” Phil said.
“If you’re not going to confess,” Monk said, “maybe you could at least answer a question for me. Where did Peschel get the tip about InTouchSpace stock?”
“It must have been from his real estate agent,” Phil said.
“Why do you say that?” I asked.
“Because his tavern was bought by Dalberg Enterprises when they purchased the building it was in,” Phil said. “That’s Steve Wurzel’s real estate investment company.”
“Who is Steve Wurzel?” Monk asked.
That was like asking who Bill Gates was, though I’m not certain that Monk knew the answer to that, either. It illustrates one of the great contradictions in Monk’s character. He knows so much about so many things and yet he knows so little about so much. He could tell you the history of dental fillings but probably couldn’t name three songs performed by the Beatles.
“He was the creator of InTouchSpace,” I said.
“Why would he want to buy Bill Peschel’s tavern? Was it a prime piece of real estate?”
Phil shook his head. “The storefront was boarded up and empty for a decade until the Jamba Juice moved in last year. It’s taken that long for the neighborhood to gentrify.”
“Based on what you’ve told me about the success of InTouchSpace,” Monk said, “I suppose Wurzel had the deep pockets to wait ten years for his investment to pay off.”
“He didn’t,” I said. “His estate did. Wurzel is dead.”
“When did he die?” Monk asked.
And in the instant before I answered his question, I felt a sensation that was both mental and physical, of things seeming to snap into place. It was a feeling I’m sure Monk would have understood. Except for me the end result wasn’t startling clarity, it was greater confusion.
“Ten years ago,” I said.
Monk cocked his head and, without saying a word, headed towards the cash registers, the paperback in his hand. He was finished with Phil.
I thanked Phil for his help, told him not to make any travel plans (since that’s what cops always tell suspects), and hurried after Monk, who was standing in the checkout line.
“Do you think it’s a coincidence that Peschel’s good fortune and Wurzel’s death both happened ten years ago?”
“I don’t know,” Monk said. “A lot of things happened ten years ago.”
His wife Trudy’s unsolved murder, for one thing. I could have kicked myself for not anticipating that my question would bring up those painful memories.
“Are you hoping for a little inspiration on the case from Jessica Fletcher?” I asked, trying to distract him from his dark thoughts.
“Who is she?”
“A mystery writer who solves murders,” I said, motioning to the Murder, She Wrote novel in his hand. “The heroine of the book you want to read.”
“I’m not going to read it,” Monk said.
“Then why are you buying it?”
“To even up the display. Now there are four books cover-out in each pocket shelf.”
“You’re buying a book you don’t want just so the stacks on the shelves are even?”
“It’s a small sacrifice to make so the world will be a better place.”
There was a file from Forensics waiting on Disher’s desk when he came in that morning. Disher waved hello to Stottlemeyer, who acknowledged him with a nod from inside his office, then sat down and opened the file, which was full of crime scene photos and lab reports.
Disher started to read through it all, starting with the autopsy report.
The medical examiner confirmed that Braddock was strangled to death. As Disher predicted, there were threads from the comforter in Braddock’s mouth and nose.
The forensic report was next.
The CSI boys were able to lift a strand of polyester from Braddock’s neck and, based on the colors and composition of the fabric, they were able to trace it back to a yellow-white-and-blue-striped tie made specifically for Wal-Mart called the Continental. The bad news was that the tie was sold by the thousands at their stores worldwide.
Disher glanced at the picture of the tie and felt a chill run right up his back.
He’d seen the tie before.
But that didn’t mean anything, he told himself. Lots of people wore that same tie. He was overreacting.
Disher shifted his attention to the fingerprint report.
There were hundreds of partial prints recovered, which was typical of hotel rooms. Most of the prints were too obscured by other prints to be readable. Even so, they were able to match up the prints to about thirty people, half of whom were hotel staff. One was Braddock himself.
But it was the prints that were recovered from the shards of the broken drinking glass that were the most telling and disturbing.
Another chill crept up Disher’s spine and raised goose bumps all over his body.
This time, he couldn’t explain away the connection.
He knew what he had to do. It made him feel nauseous and it had nothing to do with the egg-and-cheese croissant he’d scarfed down for breakfast.
Disher slid the photo of the tie from the file, wrote an address on the back, then got up slowly. Trying to appear totally at ease, he sauntered self-consciously over to Lansdale ’s desk and leaned down, his back to Stottlemeyer’s office.
“I want you to go to the address on the back of this photo with the crime scene techs and wait for me to call you with a search warrant,” Disher whispered to Lansdale. “Don’t mess the place up. Be thorough but subtle. Search inside and out.”
“What am I looking for?”
Disher tapped the photo. “This tie and anything else that you think might be related to Paul Braddock’s murder.”
“Who lives there?” Lansdale asked.
“Captain Stottlemeyer,” Disher said.
Lansdale involuntarily glanced towards the captain’s office but Disher had intentionally used his body to block his view.
“Just act natural,” Disher said. “I don’t want the captain to know about this until the deed is done.”
“You think the captain murdered Braddock? Are you out of your mind?”
“God, I hope so,” Disher said.
He didn’t see the need to tell Lansdale yet about how Braddock had thoroughly humiliated Stottlemeyer in front of his peers.
Or that Stottlemeyer had beaten the crap out of Braddock at somebody’s wake.
Or that Stottlemeyer was at the hotel at the time of the murder and was wearing a tie exactly like the one that was used to strangle Paul Braddock.
Or that Stottlemeyer’s fingerprints were on the broken glass in Braddock’s room.
Instead, Disher sent Lansdale off to search Captain Stottlemeyer’s apartment and then went to the men’s room to throw up before he called the deputy chief.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Mr. Monk and the Betrayal
The mysterious fate of Silicon Valley entrepreneur and visionary Steve Wurzel was widely known in San Francisco and probably across the nation. But I couldn’t blame Monk for not knowing about it, since it happened around the time of Trudy’s murder and his own complete mental breakdown.
So on our way back over the Golden Gate Bridge, I told Monk the story.
Wurzel set off early one foggy morning on his motorcycle to travel the winding coastal highway from his home in San Francisco to his weekend getaway in Mendocino, a picturesque village on the cliffs above the pounding waves of the Pacific.
He never arrived.
Much of the coastal route is a dangerous, twisting, two-lane highway running along the edge of jagged cliffs with nothing but
a few planks of rotted wood between you and a spiraling plunge to the rocky surf below.
And where the road deviates away from the cliff’s edge, it snakes into dense forests and across bridges over deep gorges.
It’s an exhilarating and very scary drive, a road that offers spectacular views and the potential for spectacular deaths.
The Highway Patrol, the Mendocino County Sheriff, and the U.S. Coast Guard mounted a massive search along the coast, on land and at sea, but no sign of Wurzel or his motorcycle was found. After a few days, the official search was suspended.
Wurzel’s wife, Linda, and their Silicon Valley friends weren’t ready to give up. They mounted an ambitious, expensive, and exhaustive search effort of their own, but also failed to find him.
All of this happened only a few weeks before InTouchSpace received a massive infusion of venture capital funds and exploded on the Internet, becoming a global social phenomenon and making all of the early investors, including many who helped finance the search for Wurzel, unbelievably rich.
After Wurzel was declared dead, several women came forward claiming a share of his billion-dollar estate on the grounds that they were his lovers and that he’d fathered children with them. But without DNA to confirm paternity, the cases were thrown out.
What, if anything, any of that had to do with the murder of a senile old bartender was beyond my powers of reasoning and deduction. And, apparently, it was beyond Monk’s as well. Because after I was finished telling him the story, he didn’t make any teasing statements hinting that he’d solved the murder. Instead, he asked me to take him home so he could get back to work on the remaining cases that Slade had given him.
“What about the Peschel case?” I asked.
“We’ll have to wait and see what the captain has turned up,” Monk said. “Perhaps someone was released from prison who had a grudge. But I wouldn’t rule out Carol or her husband yet.”
“Don’t you wonder why Wurzel bought Peschel’s tavern?”
“I suppose Wurzel was betting on the neighborhood becoming more desirable in the future and the property increasing significantly in value.”
“It just seems odd,” I said.
“The only connection between the two of them is that Wurzel bought Peschel’s business and Peschel invested in InTouchSpace at about the same time. What is odd about that?”
It was as if we’d switched roles.
Usually, he was the one saying that something was odd and I was the one questioning it. The frustrating thing was that I couldn’t even say exactly what was odd about this, except that thinking about it gave me a tickle in my chest.
“They’re both dead,” I said. “Wurzel disappeared under mysterious circumstances and Peschel was murdered.”
“Ten years apart,” Monk said. “There’s nothing odd about that.”
“Both of their last names end with the letters ‘e-l,’” I said.
Monk gave me a look.
“Okay, that was stupid. But if there’s nothing odd, why did you cock your head when I told you at the bookstore that Wurzel died ten years ago?”
“What are you talking about?”
“You cocked your head, like a chicken,” I said, demonstrating by cocking my own. “You do that whenever you hear something that doesn’t fit or that makes something fit that didn’t fit before.”
“You mentioned death, and whenever I hear about a death in the context of a murder investigation, my interest is piqued.”
“There you go,” I said. “You admit it: You’re piqued.”
“The pique passed,” Monk said. “My head is swimming with murders and deaths over the last few days. I am having trouble keeping them all straight.”
“I’m telling you, Mr. Monk, there’s something ticklish about this.”
“Ticklish?”
“I feel a tickle, right in the middle of my chest.”
“Maybe you are having a heart attack,” Monk said.
“I am not having a heart attack.”
“Do you feel any shooting pains in your left arm?”
“No, but I’m beginning to feel one in my head,” I said.
“We should stop by a hospital.”
“I’m fine.”
“You have heart palpitations and a throbbing headache,” Monk said. “That’s not fine. It’s fatal.”
“Something’s bugging me, that’s all,” I said.
“Heart palpitations and a throbbing headache. It could be the onset of a massive stroke.”
“I think it’s my subconscious,” I said. Perhaps after all the years of working for Monk, and all the murders that he’d solved with me tagging along, I was finally developing some detective instincts of my own.
But what good would they do me if I had no idea what my instincts were trying to tell me?
“We should stop and see Dr. Bell,” Monk said. “He can help you with that. Maybe he can help me, too, as long as we’re there.”
“I have a better idea,” I said.
“What could be better than seeing Dr. Bell? It’s on the way. You’ll thank me later.”
I flipped open my cell phone and, breaking the law requiring motorists to use hands-free units while driving, I called Danielle. I asked her to give us a rundown on Dalberg Enterprises and to find out where we could bump into Linda Wurzel.
“Why would we want to meet her?” Monk asked after I finished the call.
“I don’t,” I said. “You do.”
While Lansdale and the forensics unit searched Captain Stottlemeyer’s apartment, Lieutenant Randy Disher sat at his desk, racked with guilt.
He knew he was doing what he had to do, but he couldn’t help feeling that he was betraying his commanding officer, his mentor, and his friend.
Disher tried to distract himself from his despicable behavior by going through the statements taken from the hotel guests who were on Braddock’s floor the night of the murder.
A detective from Wichita stayed in the room next to Braddock’s. He said that someone knocked on Braddock’s door around ten p.m. and, shortly thereafter, he heard a thump and the sound of a glass breaking, but nothing that alarmed him or made him think there was trouble.
The detective’s statement would go a long way towards convincing a jury that Braddock was killed in his seventh-floor hotel room between ten and ten thirty p.m., which, unfortunately, was the same time that Captain Stottlemeyer said that he was sitting by himself in a conference room on the second floor.
Supposedly.
Disher scolded himself for thinking that way, for yet another betrayal of his friend, in thought if not in deed.
But Disher had no choice. He had to follow the evidence where it led him. And as the captain said, this case could make or break his career. He couldn’t afford any mistakes.
Disher had called the deputy chief, half hoping that his boss would countermand his decision to search the captain’s apartment. But, to Disher’s dismay, the deputy chief agreed with Disher’s actions and congratulated him on not letting his loyalty cloud his judgment.
It didn’t make Disher feel any better.
His last hope was that Lansdale ’s search would come up empty. But that hope was dashed the moment Lansdale walked in and Disher saw the evidence bag in his hand.
Stottlemeyer’s tie was in it.
Disher bolted from his seat and quickly led Lansdale back into the corridor.
“What are you thinking, waving the evidence bag around the squad room?” Disher said. “Do you want everyone to know what we’re doing?”
“They will pretty soon anyway,” Lansdale said. “We found the tie buried in the captain’s trash can outside. Forensics says the tie is a positive match with the fiber recovered from Braddock and that there’s blood on it.”
Disher snatched the bag from Lansdale and looked at the tie inside.
There was no denying it. It matched the description of the tie that Braddock was strangled with. And he knew in his gut that a DNA test would match
the blood on the tie with Braddock, too.
If the suspect were anybody else but Stottlemeyer, Disher wouldn’t be hesitating over what to do next. It was a no brainer. The case was closed. They had their killer.
“I know you two are close,” Lansdale said. “If you can’t do what has to be done, I can.”
Disher glared at Lansdale, reached into his pocket, and pulled out his billfold. “Go to lunch at Sorrento ’s and take the rest of the squad with you. And the clerical staff, too. I want everybody out. It’s on me.”
He handed some cash to Lansdale. They shared a look. Lansdale gave Disher his money back.
“No, it’s on me,” Lansdale said. He walked past Disher into the squad room.
Disher hid the evidence bag behind his back and a few moments later Lansdale came out, leading a dozen other people towards the stairs.
One of the detectives called out to Disher, “Lansdale’s taking us all to Sorrento ’s to celebrate his first week in Homicide. Are you joining us?”
“I’ll catch up,” Disher said.
When they were gone, Disher took a deep breath and went back into the squad room. The only one left inside was Stottlemeyer, who was in his office. He waved Disher inside.
“What’s the special occasion?” Stottlemeyer asked as Disher entered, his hands behind his back.
“The end of Lansdale ’s first week in Homicide,” Disher said.
“There must be more to it than that for him to be taking everybody out to celebrate,” Stottlemeyer said. “Did you close the Braddock case already?”
Disher nodded. “Yes, sir.”
“That’s great news, Randy,” Stottlemeyer said, rising from his seat. “So why are you looking so glum?”
“I still have to make the arrest,” Disher said.
“That’s the best part,” Stottlemeyer said.
“Not this time,” Disher said, and showed Stottlemeyer the evidence bag that was behind his back. “This is the murder weapon.”
“That looks like my tie,” Stottlemeyer said, walking around the desk to get a closer look at it.
