by Lee Goldberg
“I’m sure it’s not that bad,” I said.
“Hop. Hop. Hop.”
“Try earplugs,” I said. “Or cotton balls.”
“Hop. Hop. Hop.”
“Put a pillow over your head,” I said.
“Hop. Hop. Hop.”
“I get the point, Mr. Monk. I’m sure he’ll sit down soon for dinner.”
“That’s what I am afraid of,” Monk said.
“Good-bye, Mr. Monk.” I hung up and looked at Julie, who was eating her food with an overly dramatic show of joylessness.
“It could be worse,” I said. “You could be eating your toes.”
She looked at me as if I was losing my mind. I wasn’t. Yet. That was still a couple of hours away.
The first call came at about one a.m. I clawed my way out of a deep sleep and reached blindly towards my nightstand for the phone. I knocked it off the table and almost fell out of bed searching for it on the floor in the darkness.
I was dangling out of my bed, my head nearly touching the floor, when I found the phone and answered it.
“Yes?” I said.
“He’s stopped moving,” Monk said.
“Isn’t that what you wanted?” I said. “Go to sleep.”
“How can I sleep not knowing where he is?” Monk said.
“Get a grip, Mr. Monk.” I am not very sympathetic when I am rudely awakened and I’m nearly upside down, with all the blood rushing into my groggy head.
“He could be outside my door right now, licking his lips and sharpening his pickax.”
“Relax,” I said. “He’s never eaten anyone’s flesh but his own.”
“Maybe he wants to broaden his palate,” Monk said. “And break the culinary monotony.”
Culinary monotony? Again? I struggled up into a sitting position in bed.
“Have you and Julie been talking?”
“No,” Monk said. “But do you think she would talk to me? I could use someone to talk to. Put her on.”
“I am going to bed,” I said. “Don’t call back.”
I left the phone off the hook, lowered the volume, and shoved it under a pillow. And then I went back to sleep.
Here’s a piece of advice. Always remember to turn off your cell phone when you’re charging it or you could get a call at 4:42 a.m. from an obsessive-compulsive detective having a mental meltdown.
I didn’t hear the call, since the charger is in the kitchen. But Julie heard it. She padded into my room and shook me awake.
“What is it?” I asked. “Are you sick?”
She held the cell phone out to me. “It’s Mr. Monk. He’s sick.”
I took the phone from her and shouted into it. “I told you not to call.”
“It’s a medical emergency,” Monk said hoarsely.
“So call 911,” I said.
“I did,” Monk said. “But they wouldn’t come.”
“What’s the emergency?”
“I can’t swallow,” he said.
“Why not?”
“I forgot,” Monk said, and began tearlessly weeping. “I’ve forgotten how to swallow. I’m going to die.”
“What did the 911 operator tell you to do?”
“She told me to swallow.”
“Good advice,” I said and removed the battery from my phone.
When I arrived at Monk’s house the next morning, I found him in his bed, fully dressed, holding a can of Lysol in each hand, aimed at the door.
“Have you been lying like that all night?” I asked.
“I’m under siege,” he said.
“There’s nobody around,” I said.
“Germs,” Monk said. “They are everywhere.”
“That’s not exactly a revelation,” I said. “You’ve known that all of your life.”
“But they weren’t coming to get me before,” Monk said.
“What makes you think they are coming now?”
“I can feel it,” Monk said and started spraying all around him until he was surrounded by a cloud of Lysol mist.
“Is it safe for you to be breathing that stuff?”
“It’s disinfectant,” Monk said. “It’s safer than air.”
I didn’t share that belief, so I stepped out of the room. I used the moment of privacy to ponder my next move. Monk was falling apart, his shrink was on his way to Europe, and I was completely alone. It could only get worse. What was I going to do?
On the bright side, Monk seemed to have remembered how to swallow.
The phone rang, so I answered it.
“Good morning, Natalie,” Captain Stottlemeyer said cheerfully. “How is Monk today?”
“A complete wreck,” I said.
“Even though Randy’s dogged investigation led to the recovery of his lost sock?”
“Dr. Kroger went on vacation,” I said.
“Oh hell,” Stottlemeyer said.
“Monk didn’t call you?”
“Thankfully, no.”
“He called me twice last night before I disconnected my phones,” I said. “Why didn’t he call you?”
“He knows I would have shot him to put him out of his misery,” Stottlemeyer said. “And mine.”
“It was a serious question,” I said.
“He used to call me all the time, day and night, to complain about dust bunnies and potholes and God knows what else. My wife was furious. She wanted me to get a restraining order against him. So I finally had to tell Monk that he was ruining my marriage and that if he called me at home again, I’d fire him. I guess it hasn’t sunk in yet that I’m divorced. Please don’t remind him.”
“You’ll have to give me something in return,” I said.
“How about a murder?” he said.
“You’re going to kill Monk for me?”
“I am standing beside a dead guy and I have no idea who killed him,” Stottlemeyer said. “I’m thinking that a murder case might be exactly what Monk needs right now.”
I never thought that I’d ever welcome the news that a person had been murdered, but I’m ashamed to say that, in this situation, I did.
CHAPTER SIX
Mr. Monk Loses Count
Ever since I started working for Monk, a lot of my morn-ings have begun with a corpse. I used to find that strange and unsettling. Now it’s typical. I don’t want to say I have become blasé about it, but it just goes to prove that over time you can get used to just about anything.
Nine out of the ten cases Monk takes on begin in the morning. The sun rises and somebody stumbles on a corpse left behind the night before. I really have no statistics to back this up, but it seems to me that most murders happen at night.
I can see why. If I was going to commit a crime, I’d do it in the dark so nobody could see me doing my nasty deed. There is also something about doing wrong in the bright light of day that makes it feel even more wrong. When you’re giving in to your dark side, you instinctively want to do it in the dark.
It just feels right—not that I’ve given in to my dark side all that often. But when I have, with the possible exception of indulging in something decadently fattening, it has been at night.
This may seem like pointless musing to you, but I do a lot of pointless musing while looking down at a dead body. It helps distract me from things like Clarke Trotter’s caved-in skull.
Captain Stottlemeyer, Lieutenant Disher, and Monk don’t have that luxury. They have to pay attention to all the details of the crime, no matter how gory or sad. And Monk picks up even more details than anybody else.
Well, usually he does. The investigation into Clarke Trotter’s murder was starting out a little differently.
We were in Trotter’s one-bedroom apartment in North Beach, which is nowhere near a beach, but don’t get me started on that. Even without a stretch of sand, the rent on seven hundred square feet in this neighborhood will set you back twice as much as my mortgage payment.
The apartment was furnished in what I like to call Contemporary Single Guy. All the
furniture was big, black, and upholstered in leather (men love their animal hides). The living room was dominated by an altar to the god of electronics—a massive flat-screen television surrounded by stacks of devices. I could pick out a Play/Station, an Xbox, a DVD player, a TiVo, a Wii, a satellite receiver, a cable box, and an amplifier. There was a lot more stuff, too. I just didn’t know what it all was.
The coffee table was covered with more electronics—a laptop, an iPod, an iPhone, a BlackBerry, a dozen remotes— and a smattering of men’s “lifestyle” magazines, like FHM, Stuff, and Maxim, and empty cans of Red Bull. It was a mess.
The owner of this mess, the aforementioned and very dead Clarke Trotter, was in his bathrobe and lying sideways on the couch. He was a bit pudgy, although I wouldn’t call him fat. But it was clear the only exercise he got was on his Wii. There was congealed grease in his hair and splattered over the couch, carpet, and coffee table.
Stottlemeyer, Disher, and I stood behind the couch. A bunch of forensics guys were dusting and photographing and putting things in Baggies. The CSI crew reminded me of Willy Wonka’s Oompa-Loompas, only not as adorable or musical.
Monk stood absolutely still in the doorway to the apartment, his hands gripping the wall on either side of him as if the room was listing under his feet.
Stottlemeyer glanced at Monk, then back to us. “What’s traumatized him this morning?”
“I think it’s the spot on your tie,” Disher said.
“Thanks for pointing that out to him. I’ve only worn this once and now he’s going to make me incinerate it.”
“He’s obviously noticed,” Disher said. “Look at him.”
“I don’t think it’s my tie,” Stottlemeyer said. “You’ve only got seven holes in your belt.”
“I do?” Disher said, looking down at himself.
“Everybody knows you need six or eight. You’ve upset the time-space continuum. You’re going to have to go punch another hole in it.” Stottlemeyer glanced back at Monk. “Isn’t that right?”
“I’ve lost count of my blinking,” Monk said.
“You count your blinks?” Stottlemeyer asked.
“I always do it in the back of my mind. It’s how I maintain my sanity.”
“Is that how you do it?” Stottlemeyer said. “If I had to count my daily blinking, it would drive me insane.”
“I don’t know how many times I’ve blinked so far today,” Monk said, his voice tinged with hysteria. “I’ve lost count.”
“So start again,” Stottlemeyer said.
“I’ve kept track of my blinks since the day I learned how to count.”
I bet if I asked, he could have given me the exact date of that fateful day.
Monk made that strange tearless weeping sound. “My mom kept track for me before that.”
“She did?” I asked.
It was a rhetorical question, of course. I’ve long since stopped being shocked by the things Monk’s mother did to completely screw him up for life. It was no wonder that his father went out for Chinese food one night and never came back. Or that Monk’s only brother, Ambrose, never leaves the house.
“Didn’t you count Julie’s blinks for her?” Monk asked.
“Nope,” I said.
“Then how did she know how much you loved her?”
“I told her,” I said. “Every day. I still do. I also give her lots of hugs and kisses.”
Monk shook his head. “There’s no substitute for the comfort and certainty of a mother’s accurate blink count.”
“What difference does it make how many times you’ve blinked?” Disher asked.
“It’s your foundation. It’s who you are,” Monk said. “Now I have no center. Who am I? What am I? Where do I go from here?”
Stottlemeyer marched impatiently up to Monk.
“You are Adrian Monk, a detective, and you’re walking into this apartment and solving a murder.”
He grabbed Monk by the lapels and dragged him into the room.
“But my count—” Monk began.
“Consider yourself reborn,” Stottlemeyer said. “You’re at blink number one. Most of the people I know would kill for a fresh start.”
“Maybe that’s what happened here,” Disher said.
I looked at the dead guy on the couch. “He was killed so someone else could start their life anew?”
Disher shrugged. “It’s one possibility.”
Stottlemeyer turned to Monk. “What do you think?”
Monk stood by the couch. He seemed lost. He blinked.
“Two,” he said.
Stottlemeyer massaged his temples. “Randy, tell Monk what we know. Maybe that will get things rolling.”
Disher referred to his notebook. “Clarke Trotter is a thirty-seven-year-old lawyer, recently single. Works as general counsel for San Francisco Memorial Hospital. He left his wife two months ago for another woman. He moved in here; his wife stayed in their house in San Rafael with their five-year-old son. She’s seven months pregnant.”
I looked at Trotter. What a lovely guy, leaving a pregnant woman and sticking her with caring for their kid. If he was still alive, I’d be tempted to murder him. Following that train of thought led me to an obvious suspect.
His wife, of course.
But it couldn’t have been easy for her. It’s nearly impossible to find a babysitter to watch the kids while you go to the movies, much less kill your scoundrel of a husband.
I noticed Stottlemeyer looking at me. “I know what you’re thinking. I’m thinking it, too.” He looked at Monk. “How about you?”
Monk was just standing there in some kind of stupor, blinking and counting.
“Twelve,” Monk said.
“Where did you get all of this dirt on Trotter?” I asked.
“From his cleaning lady,” Disher said. “They always know everything. She was also the one who found his body.”
I’d hate being a maid or custodian—and not just because of the cleaning, low pay, and lack of respect. They always seem to be the first ones to find dead bodies, whether it’s in homes, hotel rooms, or offices.
“The medical examiner thinks Trotter was walloped with a blunt object, like a frying pan,” Stottlemeyer said. “We’re basing that on the shape of the head wound and the splatter pattern of cooking grease around the body. There must have still been some grease left over in the pan from whatever Trotter made himself for dinner.”
