by Lee Goldberg
Once again, Monk insisted on wearing a crime scene jumpsuit, gloves, and booties before entering Bob Sebes’ house. He also brought along his stack of newspapers, but only after he’d carefully picked off the bits of shattered glass from the car crash.
Stottlemeyer drove me and Monk to the house while Disher drove Anna, who refused to be in the same car with us, which was fine with me. I didn’t want to be near her, either. The fact that she’d trashed my car, and what that was going to cost me, was just beginning to sink in.
We all walked up to the front door of the Sebes house together, causing a flurry of interest from the press photographers.
Bob met us at the door in a polo shirt, shorts, and leather flip-flops, his Triax XG7 8210 ankle bracelet prominently displayed for the media. He and his wife dramatically embraced, as if they’d both survived a harrowing experience and a long separation. It was a wonderful performance.
We went into the house and Sebes slammed the front door shut, immediately confronting Stottlemeyer.
“How can you bring Monk into my house after he brutally assaulted my wife? She barely escaped with her life. Why isn’t he behind bars where he belongs?”
“Why aren’t you?” I asked.
“I demand an explanation,” Bob said, ignoring my remark.
Stottlemeyer glanced at Monk. “That’s your cue.”
“You killed Russell Haxby, Lincoln Clovis, and Duncan Dern,” Monk said. “And I can prove it.”
“Oh God, not this insanity again. I am under house arrest. I’ve got a GPS tracking unit bolted to my leg, and my house is surrounded day and night by a pack of reporters. Why are you still listening to this madman’s rantings?”
Bob turned his back to us and stomped into the living room with its spectacular view of the bay. I was sure the drapes on the window were open for the benefit of the photographers outside. He was going to do everything he could to use the incident at the car wash to his advantage in the media, to portray himself and his wife as victims.
“You’re right, except for the ranting-madman part,” Monk said as we followed Bob into the living room. “The tracking unit is absolutely tamperproof and you couldn’t walk outside that door without being seen.”
“So you’re saying that his wife is the killer and she did it for him,” Disher said.
Monk shook his head. “No, I’m not. The way they were killed rules her out. Anna couldn’t have killed them, not with her arthritic hands. Bob is the murderer.”
“So how did I do it, Monk?” Bob said. “Teleportation? Astral projection? Or maybe I simply willed them to die and they did.”
“For me, the key to figuring out how you did it was to accept two facts—the tracking device on your ankle is tamperproof and your wife is physically incapable of being the killer. And that explains everything.”
“It does?” Disher said.
“Why do you think Bob is always wearing shorts and modeling his tracking unit in front of this picture window?”
Disher shrugged.
“To remind everybody that he’s wearing a tamperproof tracking unit,” Monk said. “Why do you think Lincoln Clovis was hung and Duncan Dern strangled when there were so many other, more efficient ways to kill them?”
Disher shrugged again.
“To clear his wife as a suspect in the murders,” Monk said. “But that arrogance is his undoing.”
“You’re babbling incoherently,” Bob said, “but I suppose that’s to be expected from a lunatic.”
Anna went to her husband’s side and put her arm around him. “Do we really have to be subjected to any more of this senseless drivel?”
“There’s no harm in hearing him out,” the captain said. “But it would be nice if you’d just get to the point, Monk.”
“Here’s what happened . . .”
As soon as Monk said those magic words, my heart raced and I couldn’t help smiling. He said it with such confidence and contentment that I had no doubt that everything was going to fit, that balance would be restored, and that our troubles would be over.
Monk explained that Sebes knew his Ponzi scheme was on the verge of collapse and inevitable discovery days, perhaps weeks, before it happened because so many people were withdrawing money and he didn’t have the cash to cover it all. Sebes also knew that he would be doomed if Haxby, Clovis, and Dern ever became government witnesses. His only hope for freedom, or lesser charges, was to keep them from talking, and he couldn’t do that from a jail cell.
“So you had your lawyer fight for house arrest instead of imprisonment before trial. He persuaded the judge that you weren’t a flight risk and that with the Triax XG7 8210, the most secure tracking device on Earth, strapped to your ankle, you couldn’t go anywhere,” Monk said. “The judge agreed, and was so convinced by your lawyer’s argument that she specifically ordered that the police use the Triax XG7 8210 on you. What she didn’t know was that the reason your lawyer argued so passionately for that particular model was because you’d already purchased one for yourself weeks earlier.”
“What good would that do him?” Stottlemeyer asked. “We supplied the unit and placed it on his ankle. There was no way he could have swapped it out with his own tampered unit without being detected.”
“The extra unit wasn’t for him,” Monk said. “It was for his wife. He calibrated her device so it was emitting the same unique signal as the one around his ankle.”
Now I knew why everything fell into place for Monk during his session with Dr. Bell.
“They were on the same wavelength,” I said.
“Exactly. Whenever he wanted to slip out of the house, she would strap the device to her ankle and activate it. That way, he could block the signal on his device without the breach being detected by the police.”
“So it was Anna who was home drinking while her husband was out murdering Lincoln Clovis,” I said. “They didn’t realize the Triax XG7 8210 also measured alcohol consumption. That mistake almost torpedoed everything.”
“It did,” Monk said. “It just took me longer than I would have liked to figure it all out.”
I looked at the Sebeses. Bob and Anna were clutching each other even tighter now and they both looked a little pale. I would, too, if I was facing the death penalty. It probably made a possible hundred-year prison sentence for financial crimes look attractive by comparison.
“That doesn’t explain how Bob was able to get in and out of the house without being seen,” Disher said. “Have you found the secret tunnel?”
“Bob didn’t need a tunnel,” Monk said. “He just walked right out the front door.”
“He would have been seen,” Stottlemeyer said.
“He was,” Monk said, and held up one of his newspapers, which showed a picture of Anna Sebes leaving the house wearing an enormous hat, big sunglasses, and gloves. “Bob walked out dressed as his wife.”
The reason Anna left the house every single day, Monk explained, was so it would become routine and mundane, the press would get used to it, and nobody would question her coming and going anymore or bother to follow her.
“Those blisters on his pestilent feet aren’t from his raging case of tinea pedis but from wearing women’s shoes,” Monk said. “Either he was wearing his wife’s or she bought an identical, slightly larger pair for him.”
“You can’t prove any of that,” Bob said.
“You are slightly taller than Anna, but when you wear heels, that difference in height is substantially greater.” Monk laid several newspapers down on the coffee table. “Each of these pictures appears to show Anna Sebes leaving the house at different times. In all three of these pictures, she is wearing the same shoes, but only in two of them is she the same height relative to windows she is passing.” Monk pointed to one of the photos. “In this one, she’s markedly higher. How is that possible if she’s wearing the same shoes?”
“It’s obviously an optical illusion created by the camera angle,” Anna said.
“That may be
an illusion, but the search warrant I’m going to get certainly won’t be,” Stottlemeyer said. “And I’m sure the additional Triax XG7 8210 and the extra pair of women’s shoes that we’re going to find won’t be illusions, either.”
Monk took a step toward Sebes and looked him right in the eye. “You’re finished, Bob. The only upside to your tragic downfall is the warning it will send to others for generations to come: This is what can happen if you don’t practice good foot hygiene.”
While Disher placed Bob and Anna Sebes under arrest and read them their rights, Stottlemeyer called a judge for a search warrant, explained the situation, and immediately got the authorization he needed to proceed.
Hearing that, Bob and Anna demanded to see their lawyer. They knew they were finished. I’m sure Bob was already considering the pros and cons of the fungal-foot brain defense. There wasn’t much else he could try.
The captain called in a forensics unit to handle the search, took another call, then waved the two of us over to him.
“We’ve got Sebes on those three murders and he knows it,” Stottlemeyer said. “I think it’ll go down just like Natalie predicted it would. He’ll plead guilty to the Ponzi scheme and trade us all the money that he’s hidden away in exchange for taking the death penalty off the table for him and showing some mercy to his wife.”
“I certainly hope so,” Monk said. “I desperately need whatever I can get back from my life savings.”
“I think I can ease some of your financial worries.” Stottlemeyer took a folded sheet of paper from his coat pocket and handed it to him. “There’s your agreement, Monk, signed by the mayor and the chief of police.”
“You’re going to honor it after all?” I said.
“Monk held up his end of the bargain and we’re going to hold up ours. That’s a three-year pay-or-play consulting agreement, effective immediately and retroactive to the day we let him go. In addition, the city attorney will harass and intimidate Monk’s landlord into revoking his eviction. And I’m even gonna throw in a police report on the car wash incident that you can give your insurance company so you won’t be liable for the damage to your car.”
“Wow. That’s wonderful,” I said. “Thank you, Captain.”
“It’s the least I can do.” Stottlemeyer offered Monk his hand. “I’m sorry about everything. I hope you can forgive me.”
They shook hands.
“You have nothing to apologize for, Captain. You were doing your job.”
“I could have shown a lot more faith in you,” he said. “The way Natalie did.”
“She has to,” Monk said. “She works for me.”
“I’m your friend, Monk. And friends stick up for one another, through thick or thin, no matter what.”
“You have.”
Stottlemeyer shook his head. “I jerked you around and didn’t give you the support you needed. I put the job in front of our friendship and that wasn’t right.”
“After Trudy was killed, I had a total meltdown. I was thrown off the force. Nobody wanted to have anything to do with me. But you didn’t walk away. You never gave up on me. You cashed in every IOU you had and fought to get me hired as a police consultant. You saved me, Leland.”
“I didn’t this time.”
Monk shrugged. “You will next time.”
“That’s a promise,” Stottlemeyer said and started to walk away, when something seemed to occur to him. “By the way, that call I got was from the DA. The jury came back with their verdict in the Moggridge trial.”
“Already?” I said.
“They only deliberated for thirty minutes, not counting the hour they took to eat one last lunch on the city’s dime. The jury found the greedy SOB guilty on every count. So it’s a winning day for the Good Guys all around.”
“Yes, it is,” I said.
“It bodes well for the future,” he said.
“The future never bodes well,” Monk said. “You can always be certain that you’re facing disappointment and misery.”
“I’m glad to see you’re back to your old cheerful self again.” The captain clapped Monk on the back and went to confer with Disher.
“I’m proud of you, Mr. Monk.”
“For what?” he asked.
“For being so kind and forgiving to Captain Stottlemeyer. That couldn’t have been easy after everything you’ve been through this week.”
“He’s my boss. It’s called kissing up,” Monk said. “You ought to try it sometime.”
I smiled at him. “What do you think I’m doing right now?”
