Mr. Monk on the Couch

by Lee Goldberg

  “What are you doing?” the captain asked.

  “I’m buying us some time,” Monk said. “How long has it been since this command center was cleaned?”

  “I have no idea,” Stottlemeyer said.

  My guess was years.

  “We need some cleaning supplies delivered right away,” Monk said.

  “Cleaning the van can wait until after we’re done with our surveillance,” Stottlemeyer said. “We have bigger priorities right now, like catching a psychopath who has murdered three people.”

  “We aren’t going to be much good to Devlin if we’re dying in here of some gangrenous pestilence when she’s being butchered by Rico Ramirez.”

  “I’m with Mr. Monk on this,” I said.

  Stottlemeyer stared at me. “You’re concerned about gangrenous pestilence, too?”

  “Maybe not that specifically,” I said. “But you have to admit that it smells awful in here.”

  “What do you expect a mobile command center to smell like, Natalie?” Stottlemeyer asked. “When we’re on a case, men are in here around the clock, without a bath or fresh clothes, eating nothing but fast food and coffee, trying to stay alert while—” He stopped himself, looked at the two of us, and sighed. “Give me a list of what you need.”

  I was thankful to be cleaning the command center. It relieved the tension and, most of all, the boredom of being in that confined space for hours on end.

  And although Stottlemeyer and the two technicians would never admit it, I think they were glad we were cleaning, too.

  The place smelled better almost immediately, and maybe it was my imagination, but it seemed brighter and even more high-tech. A more commanding command center.

  Monk was meticulous about disinfecting and polishing every dial, button, and light, accidentally turning off a monitor, speaker, or recorder every now and then, but he was forgiven. Every surface gleamed.

  He even took it upon himself to clean the small bathroom, an unspeakable hellhole that no other man on earth would have tackled alone. For that, the entire department owed him a debt of gratitude.

  I scrubbed the floors and deep cleaned all of the seats, which meant that the captain and the techs had to spend some time standing, but it probably did their circulation some good.

  While all this was going on, night had fallen and Devlin went back to Corinne’s studio apartment, a second-floor room in a converted motel. The conversion was really nothing more than replacing the word “Motel” with “Apartments” on the building’s facade, adding flower boxes under the windows that were full of blooming geraniums, begonias, and alyssums, and charging tenants by the month instead of by the day or week.

  The front door of every room faced the street, where we were parked with a clear view of the building from the tinted windows of the mobile command center. We could also see the inside of Devlin’s one-room unit from several camera angles on our monitors.

  Her apartment had the basic layout of a billion other motel rooms. The front door opened into a bedroom, with the bed on one side and a desk, dresser, and TV on the other. There were two chairs and a table under the front window. The doors to the bathroom and closet were against the back wall.

  The Special Weapons and Tactical Unit officers were suited up, armed, and waiting in position in vans parked on adjacent streets.

  Devlin lay on her bed, eating ramen and watching Hong Kong action movies. At around ten p.m., she opened the bathroom door, had a glass of water, and returned to bed, turning off the lights.

  “She’s bunking early,” Stottlemeyer said.

  “Maybe it’s just an act for Rico’s benefit,” I said. Considering how many hours she’d been up without sleep, I was surprised that she’d lasted that long. Two minutes after she turned out the lights, she began to snore.

  “She didn’t brush her teeth,” Monk said.

  “It’s okay, Monk,” the captain said.

  “We’re supposed to be protecting her life.”

  “From Rico Ramirez,” he said.

  “Ramen is loaded with salt, and if she goes to bed without brushing, it’s going to erode the enamel right off,” Monk said. “Meanwhile, the bits of food between her teeth will rot, the bacteria and germs seeping into her bloodstream through her inflamed gums. She’ll welcome Rico’s blade as sweet release from her slow death.”

  “One night without brushing won’t kill her,” Stottlemeyer said.

  “You could call her,” Monk said.

  “No,” Stottlemeyer said.

  “At least alert the SWAT team,” Monk said.

  Stottlemeyer swiveled around in his seat to look at Monk. “And tell them what?”

  “That they should be ready to swarm in with guns and Listerine,” Monk said.

  “I’ll take that under advisement,” Stottlemeyer said and turned back around to watch the monitors.

  A few minutes later, Monk sprayed the command center down with Lysol air freshener and sat in his seat with a weary sigh. It was his finishing stroke. All that was missing was taking a bow.

  “My job is done,” he said.

  Stottlemeyer and the two techs applauded.

  “I have to hand it to you, Monk, the unit has never looked better,” Stottlemeyer said. “When this is over, I’m calling the editors of Mobile Command Center Beautiful to do a photo spread.”

  But the night ticked on and we soon missed Monk’s cleaning. It had been a welcome distraction. Now there wasn’t anything to do except watch Devlin sleeping on her back on top of the bed, her body illuminated by the streetlight seeping through the thin drapes. The rest of the room was dark and still.

  It was almost as exciting as watching paint dry, though that was an activity that Monk actually enjoyed. He also liked to sit and watch Fantastik’s scrubbing bubbles work on his bathroom tiles.

  One of the techs slapped his computer monitor.

  “What is it?” Stottlemeyer asked.

  “A heat signature fluctuation,” the tech said. “Some bonehead set the sensors too high.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Because it’s reading two people in the room instead of one.”

  “There’s only one person,” Stottlemeyer said. “We can all see that.”

  “I know, sir,” the tech said. “It’s just a glitch.”

  We were all looking at the screen when the glitch, big and dark and shaped like a man, rose from under the bed, a butcher knife in his hands.

  I screamed, though not nearly as loud as Monk did.

  “Move in!” Stottlemeyer yelled into his microphone. “Go! Go! Go!”

  But it was too late.

  Rico Ramirez plunged his knife down toward Devlin’s chest. At the last instant, she rolled away, the knife sinking into the mattress where she’d been.

  He was a huge man, with a bald head and pockmarked cheeks that looked like they’d been clawed by a bear. He yanked the knife out of the mattress and raised it for the kill once more, snarling with rage.

  Devlin rolled back at him with a spin kick in the face that flattened him against the closet, his eyes wide with shock and rage.

  Before he could recover, she jumped to her feet and drove her fist deep into his gut, doubling him over, and then rammed her elbow down on the back of his neck.

  Rico dropped to the floor as the SWAT team broke open the door and spilled into the room, their guns out.

  It was all over in less than a minute. I was suddenly aware of myself again, and then of all of us in the command center, and then of the shocked silence.

  It had happened so fast it was hard to believe, much less absorb.

  But Devlin was completely relaxed. She sat down on the edge of the bed and calmly watched the SWAT officers drag Rico away.

  Stottlemeyer sighed with relief. Monk tapped him on the shoulder.

  “Yes, Monk?”

  “Now would be a good time to remind her to brush her teeth.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  Mr. Monk and the F
lower

  “How the hell did he get in the room?” Stottlemeyer asked.

  We were standing on the long landing outside the open door to Corinne’s apartment while a forensics unit processed the scene, taking pictures and gathering evidence.

  “He climbed in through the bathroom window in the back of the building,” Devlin said.

  “Who left the window open?”

  “I did,” Devlin said.

  “Why did you do that?” the captain asked. “It was like inviting him to come kill you.”

  “I was,” Devlin said. “He wasn’t going to walk up and knock on the front door, was he?”

  Monk rolled his shoulders and shifted his weight between his feet. “The bathroom door was closed throughout the early evening as you watched TV and ate dinner. You went into the bathroom to take a drink of water, and then you went to bed, leaving the door open.”

  “This isn’t about her teeth again, is it?” Stottlemeyer said. “Because she’s brushed them. Twice.”

  “What I’m saying is that Rico was already in the apartment when Lieutenant Devlin got that drink of water,” Monk said. “She knew he’d snuck in while the bathroom door was closed and that he was hiding in the shower. But instead of apprehending him at that moment, or alerting us that he was there, she turned out the lights and went to bed, and left the door open for him. She gave him the opportunity to crawl out and try to kill her as she slept.”

  That was why we didn’t see him on the monitors. It was pitch-dark in the room and he was on the floor until the last moment, when he rose into the light from the streetlamps.

  Stottlemeyer looked angrily at Devlin. “What possessed you to do that?”

  “I didn’t want there to be a question in anyone’s mind about what he came there to do,” she said. “And I wanted to kick his ass.”

  “You could have been killed,” Stottlemeyer said.

  “So could’ve he,” she said. “It was lucky for him the SWAT team came in when they did.”

  The captain stepped up close to her. “You ever pull a stunt like that again and I will have your badge. Do we understand each other, Lieutenant?”

  “No,” she said, “but I understand you, sir.”

  She walked off, brushing past Monk on her way to the stairs. He gestured to me for a wipe. I reached into my purse and gave him one, banging my elbow on the flower box outside Corinne’s window in the process.

  “She scares me,” he said, wiping his sleeve.

  “Me, too,” Stottlemeyer said.

  “But the good news is that we’ve apprehended Rico Ramirez, recovered the diamonds, and closed the book on four murders,” I said.

  “And disinfected the mobile command center,” Stottlemeyer said.

  “And Natalie’s bathroom, too,” Monk said.

  “Well, we can’t do much better than that, can we?” Stottlemeyer said. “We can go to bed tonight knowing that, for the moment, all is right.”

  “Not quite,” Monk said. “Ambrose is still shacked up with an ex-con motorcycle chick.”

  “You can’t have it all, Monk,” Stottlemeyer said.

  That reminded me that there was still the O’Quinn mystery left for me to solve, and with these cases behind us, there was no reason I couldn’t devote the next few days to the task.

  Stottlemeyer started to leave and we followed. It was a tight fit on the landing, and I banged my arm on the flower box beneath Corinne’s window once again as I walked past it.

  I glared at the box, as if it had intentionally misbehaved, and was distracted by the pleasant flower arrangement, a colorful assortment of blooming geraniums and begonias ringed with bunches of white alyssums. I leaned down to smell them.

  “You shouldn’t do that,” Monk said.

  “Why not?” I asked. “They say you’ll see the world in a whole new way if you stop and smell the roses.”

  “It’s suicidal,” Monk said.

  “Flowers won’t kill you, Mr. Monk.”

  “You could inhale an excessive amount of pollen, have a severe sinus reaction, and drown in your own mucus. Or a bee could fly up your nose, sting you, and cause your esophagus to swell shut, ensuring your death from anaphylactic shock.”

  “I don’t have sinus problems and I’m not allergic to bees,” I said.

  “As far as you know,” Monk said. “This would be a horrible way to find out that you’re wrong. Is the sniff really worth it?”

  “Yes,” I said, closing my eyes and smelling the flowers again. And when I opened them, I saw more than just the flowers.

  “What they say is true,” I said.

  “Your sinuses are filling up?”

  “I see things in a whole new light,” I said. “I’ve just solved the mystery of Walter O’Quinn.”

  “Tell me,” he said.

  But I didn’t.

  Monk didn’t handle the frustration well. He called me twice during the night asking me to tell him what I’d figured out, but I refused.

  “I thought you said the case was too boring to be interesting to you,” I said.

  “It is,” Monk said. “But if there’s a solution, I need to hear it.”

  “You will,” I said. “Tomorrow.”

  “I need to know now,” he said.

  “Then solve it yourself,” I said. “You have the rest of the night.”

  “What’s left to solve?”

  “You can find his family,” I said. “Like I have.”

  “How did you do that?”

  “You’re the detective,” I said. “Detect.”

  But to be fair, Monk was at a big disadvantage. He wasn’t privy to the same information that I was, nor had he been able to make the same observations that I had, not that I was going to concede any of that to him.

  I picked Monk up in my car at eight the next morning and we drove to the Tenderloin. It was a thrilling change for me to be the one who knew all the answers and for Monk to be the one tagging along, completely in the dark. I wanted to make the experience last, but I was also eager for the conclusion, to reveal what I knew and to satisfy my curiosity about what I didn’t.

  I parked in front of the Excelsior, got out of the car, and opened the door to the backseat, taking out the box that contained O’Quinn’s fake ID, the binoculars, the old snapshot of Stacey and Rose, the Western novels, and the photo taken of O’Quinn on his deathbed.

  Monk joined me and I carried the box across the street with me to Brewster’s, the coffee place.

  “What are we doing here?”

  “I’m getting a cup of coffee and something sweet to start off my day. Can I get you something?”

  “Do they have Fiji bottled water?”

  “They might, but coffee is their specialty. Why not try a cup?”

  “Drink hot liquid muddied with the effluent of crushed beans? No, thanks.”

  “How about a cup of hot tea?”

  “Drink boiled leaves? Oh sure. Maybe I can sample a cup of hot mud, too.”

  “You eat meat, Mr. Monk. And you eat fruits and vegetables. I don’t see how coffee or tea is any worse.”

  “Even a dog knows better than to drink something that isn’t clear,” Monk said.

  “I’ve seen dogs drink beer.”

  “That’s supposed to be a convincing argument?”

  “You’re the one who brought dogs into this,” I said, and we went into the coffeehouse.

  It was filled with the same crowd of young professionals as before, and the baristas were scrambling to keep up with the demand. The girl who’d served me on Friday, Alyssa, was there again, too.

  “What can I get for you?” she asked when I approached the counter.

  “A coffee and cinnamon roll for me and a bottle of Fiji water for my friend.”

  “Coming right up,” she said and asked for my name, which she wrote on the side of an empty paper cup.

  I found a table by the window for Monk and me, put my box on the floor, and took out the binoculars.

  �
��Is this a stakeout?” he asked.

  “No,” I said, setting the binoculars in the center of the table.

  Monk gestured to the binoculars. “Then why do you have those out?”

  “You’ll see,” I said. “Be patient.”

  Alyssa called out my name and I went up to get our order. She handed me a tray with the coffee, water, and pastry.

  “You have a beautiful name,” I said.

  “Thank you.”

  “I like names that come from flowers,” I said. “Like Rose.”

  I turned and went back to our table. I felt Alyssa’s gaze on me the whole way. When I took my seat, I looked back just in time to see her glance at the binoculars.

  “The girl was staring at you,” Monk said.

  “I know. She’ll find an excuse to come over in a minute.”

  “Why would she do that?”

  “Because she won’t be able to help herself.”

  A minute or two later, she picked up a tray and a couple of wet towels and stepped out from behind the counter to clean tables. She worked her way over to us.

  “Those are nice binoculars,” she said.

  “What? These old things?” I said.

  “My father used to have a pair just like them.”

  “These are his, Rose,” I said.

  She froze, and for a moment I thought she might faint. Monk nodded at me with approval.

  “A woman in her twenties named for a flower and working right across the street from the hotel,” Monk said. “Very observant. I’m impressed.”

  “Thank you,” I said.

  “Who are you?” Alyssa asked. “What do you want?”

  “You have nothing to be afraid of,” I said. “My name is Natalie Teeger and this is Adrian Monk. We work with the police. We’re helping them investigate your father’s death.”

  “That was over twenty years ago,” she said.

  “It was last week,” I said and pulled out a chair.

  I could see her mind working in the expression on her face. She was following the implications of my remark, which cast her past, and everything she’d been through, in a new and not very pleasant light. It was dizzying. She took a seat and looked at the binoculars.