Mr. Monk Goes to the Firehouse (24 page)

“Like someone sitting in a car.”

“This isn’t just a car, Monk. It’s a Bentley.”

“It looks like a car to me,” Monk said. “What else does it do?”

Monk was dead serious.

“Never mind,” Stottlemeyer said, and marched up to the front door. He leaned on the doorbell and held his badge up to the tiny security camera mounted over the door, though Breen probably knew we were there from the moment we drove through the gate.

After a minute or two Lucas Breen opened the door. His eyes were red, his nose was runny, and he was wearing a bathrobe over a warm-up suit. He looked miserable.
Good
, I thought,
the more miserable the better.

“What the hell are you doing here? I was just getting ready for bed,” Breen said. “Haven’t you heard of a telephone?”

“I’m not in the habit of calling murderers for an appointment,” Stottlemeyer said.

“Captain, I’ve got a terrible cold, my wife is away, and all I want to do is go to sleep,” Breen said. “We’ll do this another time.”

Breen began to close the door, but Stottlemeyer shoved it open and pushed his way inside. “We’ll do it now.”

“You’re going to regret this,” Breen said, his stuffy nose and watery eyes making him look—and sound—like a petulant child.

“Fine with me,” Stottlemeyer said. “Without regrets I wouldn’t have anything to think about and no excuse to drink.”

We followed the captain past Breen and into the two-story rotunda, which was topped with a stained-glass dome. Monk covered his nose and gave Breen a wide berth, even though Monk was sniffling, too.

The rotunda overlooked a living room dominated by a set of French doors and large windows that framed a spectacular view of the San Francisco skyline, the city lights twinkling in the fog. To our left, just next to a grand staircase, was a book-lined study, where a fire roared in a massive stone hearth.

“I believe you were told to stop harassing me,” Breen said, wiping his nose with a handkerchief.

“I go where the evidence takes me,” Stottlemeyer said.

“You’ll be going on job interviews pretty soon,” Breen said. “What’s so important that it’s worth throwing away your badge?”

“A homeless man was murdered tonight,” Stottlemeyer said.

“That’s a shame. What do you expect me to do about it?”

“Confess,” Monk said.

“Tell me, Mr. Monk, are you going to accuse me of every murder that occurs in San Francisco?”

“He was wearing your overcoat.” Monk sneezed and held his hand out to me for a tissue. I gave him several.

“I told you before, my wife donates my old clothes to Goodwill.” Breen strolled into the study and sat down in a leather armchair facing the fire. There was a brandy snifter on the coffee table. It didn’t take much detecting skill to figure out that he must have been sitting there when we showed up at his door.

“Gee, it seems like everybody we meet is buying your clothes at Goodwill these days,” Stottlemeyer said.

“A fortunate few,” he said.

“That homeless guy didn’t look very fortunate to me,” I said. “Someone caved his face in with a brick.”

“The overcoat we’re talking about wasn’t a Goodwill donation.” Monk blew his nose and then tossed the tissue into the fire. “This was the custom-tailored overcoat you wore to the ‘Save the Bay’ fund-raiser but weren’t wearing when you left.”

Monk crouched in front of the fire and watched his tissue burn.

“It’s also the one you wore when you went to smother Esther Stoval and set fire to her house,” Stottlemeyer said. “The one you left behind. The one you had to disguise yourself as a fireman to get back. The one you later ditched in a Dumpster outside of the Excelsior hotel, which is where the man you killed found it.”

“You’re delusional,” Breen said to Stottlemeyer, and motioned to Monk, who was still staring into the flames. “You’re even crazier than he is.”

“You burned it,” Monk said.

“Burned what?” Breen said.

“The overcoat.” Monk gestured into the fireplace. “I can see one of the buttons.”

Stottlemeyer and I crouched beside him and looked into the fire. Sure enough, there was a brass button with Breen’s initials on it glowing in the embers.

The captain stood up and looked down at Breen. “Do you often use your clothes for kindling?”

“Of course not.” Breen took a sip of his brandy and then held the glass up to the fire, examining the amber liquid in the light. “The button must have come off the sleeve of my jacket when I put the wood in the fireplace.”

“I’d like to see that jacket,” Stottlemeyer said.

“I’d like to see your search warrant,” Breen said.

Stottlemeyer stood there, glowering. He’d been trumped and he knew it. We all knew it. Breen smiled smugly. I imagined he even flossed his teeth smugly.

“It’s a shame we don’t always get what we want; though, to be honest, I usually do.” Breen tipped his snifter toward Stottlemeyer. “You, on the other hand, strike me as a man who rarely does. I can’t imagine what that must be like.”

“I can’t imagine what it must be like on death row,” Stottlemeyer said. “Pretty soon you’ll be able to tell me.”

Monk sneezed again. I handed him another tissue.

“And how would you presume to put me there, Captain?” Breen said. “Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that I’m guilty of everything you’ve accused me of. If that’s true, then the one piece of evidence you needed has just been incinerated, along with any hope of ever prosecuting me.”

Breen took another sip of his brandy and sniffled, which you’d think would have undercut his menace and smug superiority, but it didn’t. That’s how secure he was in the knowledge that he’d beaten us.

Stottlemeyer and I both looked at Monk. This was his cue to reveal the brilliant deduction that would destroy the bastard and prove him guilty of murder.

Monk frowned, narrowed his eyes, and sneezed.

 

Stottlemeyer drove us back to my car. Nobody said a word. Monk didn’t even sniffle. There wasn’t really anything left to say. Lucas Breen was right. He’d won. He was going to get away with three murders.

Obviously that was bothering us all, but I think what really troubled Stottlemeyer and Monk went beyond the injustice of a guilty man walking free. It was something deeper and more personal than that.

For years their relationship had been predicated on a simple truth: Monk was a brilliant detective, and Stottlemeyer was a good one. That’s not a slight against Stottlemeyer. He became a captain because of his hard work, dedication, and skill at his job. He solved most of the homicides he investigated and had a conviction rate that any cop in any other city would be proud of.

But he wasn’t any cop in any other city. He was in San Francisco, home of Adrian Monk. Any detective would have a hard time matching Monk’s genius at crime solving. It was worse for Stottlemeyer. He was also Monk’s former partner. His career was inextricably linked to Monk. It didn’t matter that Monk’s obsessive-compulsive disorder had cost him his badge. The captain and Monk would always be partners in their own eyes and the eyes of the SFPD.

As much as Stottlemeyer may have resented Monk’s astonishing observational and deductive abilities, he’d nonetheless come to depend on them, unfairly, if you ask me. So had the department as a whole. It was the reason they tolerated all of Monk’s considerable eccentricities. I think Monk, on some level, knew this.

Whenever a homicide was too tough to crack, they could always call in Monk. With the exception of one case, the murder of his own wife, he always got his man.

Until now.

What had to make losing to Breen even worse for Monk was that this wasn’t even a case where Stottlemeyer had asked for his help. This was a case that
he’d
dragged Stottlemeyer into. And now Stottlemeyer’s badge was on the line because of it.

But more than that, Monk’s future as a police consultant was also on the line. If Monk could no longer be counted on to solve every crime, what reason did the police, or Stottlemeyer, have to call on him anymore? What motivation would they have to tolerate his irritating quirks?

It was wrong for Stottlemeyer to expect Monk never to fail, to always make some miraculous deduction at the right moment. But because Monk had done it so many times before, what would have been an unrealistic expectation of anyone else had become the basis of their professional relationship.

That night, Stottlemeyer had gambled on it and lost. And if Stottlemeyer was demoted or booted because of Monk’s failure, Monk’s career as a consultant to the SFPD was effectively over as well.

And, perhaps, so was their friendship. Because if they didn’t have mysteries to solve, what did they have to draw them together? What would they share in common?

Maybe I was overanalyzing it, but as we drove through the darkness and the fog, that’s what I heard in the awkward, heavy silence, and that’s what I saw in their long faces.

When Monk and I got back to my house, we found Mrs. Throphamner asleep on the couch, snoring loudly, her dentures in a glass of water on the coffee table.
Hawaii Five-O
was on the TV, Jack Lord in his crisp, blue suit staring down Ross Martin, who looked ridiculous in face paint playing a native Hawaiian crime lord.

Monk squatted beside the glass of water and stared at Mrs. Throphamner’s dentures as if they were a specimen in formaldehyde.

I turned off the TV, and Mrs. Throphamner woke up with a snort, startling Monk, who lost his balance and fell into a sitting position on the floor.

Mrs. Throphamner, flustered and disoriented, immediately reached for her dentures and knocked over the glass, spilling everything right in Monk’s lap.

Monk squealed and scampered backward, the dentures resting on his soaked crotch.

Mrs. Throphamner reached down for her dentures and inadvertently toppled onto Monk, who squirmed and called for help underneath her, unwilling to touch her himself.

Julie charged, sleepy-eyed, out of her room in her pajamas. “What’s going on?”

“Mrs. Throphamner spilled her teeth in Mr. Monk’s lap,” I said. “Give me a hand.”

Julie and I lifted Mrs. Throphamner up. She angrily snatched her teeth from Monk’s lap, plopped them into her mouth, and marched out of the house in a huff without so much as a “good night.” I didn’t even get a chance to pay her.

Monk remained on his back on the floor, staring up at the ceiling. He didn’t move. He didn’t blink. I was afraid he was catatonic. I leaned down beside him.

“Mr. Monk? Are you okay?”

He didn’t say anything. I looked over my shoulder at Julie.

“Get me a bottle of Sierra Springs from the fridge.”

She nodded and ran off to get it.

“Please, Mr. Monk. Answer me.”

He blinked and whispered hoarsely, “This day has been a nightmare.”

“Yes, it has.”

“No, I mean really,” Monk said. “The city dump. The homeless encampment. The dentures in my lap. All of that didn’t really happen, did it?”

Julie returned with the bottle. I opened it and offered it to Monk.

“I’m afraid so, Mr. Monk.”

He sat up, took the bottle from me, and guzzled it as if it were whiskey.

Monk tossed the empty bottle over his shoulder. “Keep ’em coming.” He looked at Julie. “You’d better go to bed, honey. This is going to get ugly.”

 

 

 

 

Monk drank two more bottles of Sierra Springs and carried another four off with him to bed, slamming the door behind him.

In the morning I found him sleeping facedown and fully dressed on top of his bed, the floor littered with empty water bottles. I quietly gathered up the plastic empties and left the room without waking him.

It was my morning to carpool Julie and her friends to school, and I have to admit, I was worried about leaving Monk alone. I wasn’t concerned that he was suicidal or anything dire like that—however I
was
afraid of what he might do in my house if left unsupervised. Would I return to find my closets reorganized? My clothes rearranged by size, shape, and color?

I toyed with waking him up and dragging him along on the carpool, but the thought of him stuck in an SUV filled with rowdy adolescent girls made me reconsider. Yesterday was nightmarish enough for him and, frankly, for me, too.

I decided to take my chances and left him alone. I rushed Julie through breakfast, wrote a note to Monk telling him where I was, and hurried off to pick up the other kids and ferry them to school.

Monk was still asleep when I got back forty-five minutes later. I was relieved and worried at the same time. It wasn’t like him to sleep in, at least not during the time he’d been staying with us. I was debating whether to call Dr. Kroger when Monk finally got up around nine, looking as if he’d spent the night barhopping. His clothes were wrinkled, his hair was askew, and his face was unshaven.

I’d never seen him looking so rumpled, so human. It was kind of endearing.

“Good morning, Mr. Monk,” I said as cheerfully as I could.

Monk acknowledged my greeting with a nod and trudged barefoot into the bathroom. He didn’t emerge from his room again until noon, dressed in fresh clothes and looking his tidy best. But instead of coming to the kitchen for breakfast, he simply returned to his room and closed the door to suffer his purified-water hangover in peace.

I wasn’t sure what to do, so I busied myself with household chores like paying bills and taking care of the laundry. While I worked, I tried not to think about Lucas Breen and the murders he committed. I also tried not to think about Firefighter Joe and my lingering anxieties about our nascent relationship. So, of course, Lucas Breen and Firefighter Joe were all I could think about.

I couldn’t prove that Breen was guilty of murder, but I figured out what was bothering me about Joe. Yeah, I know, it’s obvious what it was, and I can see it clearly now, but I couldn’t then. That’s how it is when you’re in the middle of a relationship, even if it’s only been two dates. You’re too wrapped up in your own insecurities, desires, and expectations to see what’s right in front of you.