Mr. Monk and the New Lieutenant (9 page)

CHAPTER TWELVE

Mr. Monk and the Old Lieutenant

P
olice Chief Disher dragged in his suitcase and dropped a carry-on duffel bag off his shoulder. He looked just as boyish as he had the first time I'd met him standing over a corpse in my living room all those years ago. Even though Monk had been the one to insist that Randy work with us in San Francisco, of course Randy was staying at my house.

Randy glanced around the Julie shrine and smiled. “Jonas Brothers,” he said, pointing to an old poster taped above the bed. “How did you know I was a fan?”

“Who isn't a Jonas Brothers fan?” I said, and left it at that.

“You're making me feel very welcome. But I just have to warn you, this is temporary.”

“Of course it's temporary,” I said. “I'm not about to have a roommate.”

“I mean, I'm not taking back my old job. I could tell from the way Monk was talking on the phone . . .”

“Adrian isn't the most subtle person.”

“I know I complain about being chief, but I'm going to make it work, Natalie.”

“Your life is out there now,” I agreed. “You have a house. And Sharona . . . Oh, how is her cold? I forgot to ask.”

“Her cold is doing great. But my baby girl is cranky times ten. It's good to be away.”

“Well, at least her family is nearby. And all her friends in Summit.”

“Oh, Sharona hates Summit. She's constantly talking about moving back here. And the house is a rental.”

“This is only temporary,” I reminded him.

“Absolutely. As soon as we solve the captain's case . . . Look at this.” He unzipped his duffel. “I keep a journal, ever since I started on the force. I brought the one from two thousand eight. It's got both cases fully outlined. I think it'll be a great help.” He pulled out a thick blankbook with “2008” handwritten on the cover and doodles of what looked like dinosaurs surrounding the numbers.

“Great,” I said, and handed him the armload of fresh towels I'd been holding. “I'll let you get settled.”

Randy and I had an early lunch of PB&J sandwiches in my—make that our—kitchen and we caught each other up on all the gossip. I knew many of the players in Summit politics, having worked there for a short time as a police officer. It was hard to believe they were still giving him such a hard time about arresting the mayor, although if they ever caught a glimpse at his journals, it wouldn't help his credibility.

We picked up my partner on Pine Street in front of his building. “Good to see you, Lieutenant,” said Monk as they automatically changed seats. Monk will only ride shotgun, which Randy knew, of course. It was just like old times.

“Police chief,” Randy corrected him. Okay, not quite like old times.

I was glad not to see Trudy at the captain's bedside. She
had been on duty almost nonstop and was taking the afternoon off to go home, treat herself to a shower, and take the other male in her life on a long walk to the park.

I was not glad to see A.J. The bulky lieutenant had a folder full of papers strewn over the bed and together, with the captain raised to a sitting position, they were reviewing something or other. I didn't ask.

“My God, Randy.” Stottlemeyer nearly jumped to his feet. With everything that had been happening, neither Monk nor I had thought to inform him. “What the hell are you doing here?”

“I came to help track down your killer.” Randy stammered, “No, I didn't mean that. I mean your would-be killer. Not that I wouldn't come back to track your real killer. I'd do that in a heartbeat. Next time.”

“Good old Randy.” The captain laughed and this time did get out of bed, hugging his old partner to the front of his hospital gown. There were no wires connecting Leland to a heart monitor and he no longer looked like he needed one. “Police Chief Disher, I'd like you to meet my partner, Lieutenant A.J. Thurman.”

The two men shook hands and I couldn't help noticing the difference—Randy's sweet, open expression going face-to-face with the lieutenant's pinched and suspicious one. “Good to meet you, Chief. I joined the force the year after you left. But I've certainly heard enough stories about Randy Disher.” There was a hint of ridicule in his tone that I'm not sure Randy caught.

“You're a sight for sore eyes, buddy.” Stottlemeyer eased
himself back down. “But what makes you think you can help?”

This is where Monk took over, explaining his theory that the killer must have been referring to one of the two cases that happened during our extended European jaunt. “I worked on all the other cases involving the captain and Judge Oberlin. And since no one is sending any death threats my way . . .”

“Hey, what about me?” said Randy. He looked genuinely hurt.

“What about you?” asked the captain.

“What about my death threats? I know I wasn't the officer in charge. But all the same, you'd think they'd want to kill me, too.”

“Maybe they do,” said Stottlemeyer. “They just haven't gotten around to it yet.”

“You're just saying that.”

“No. You're all the way out in New Jersey. I'm sure you'll be next on their list. Just wait your turn.”

Randy looked reassured. “Well, I hope not, honestly. Because that would mean you'd be dead. Hey, you want to look through my journal?” And he held up the volume from 2008.

“Sure,” said Stottlemeyer, and brushed aside a section of A.J.'s papers. “I've missed those journals. That was the year of the dinosaur, I see.”

For the next few minutes they huddled over the handwritten pages: Monk, Randy, and the captain sitting on his bed. Randy had already shown me the entries over our PB&J lunch. So I took advantage of the break to stand back and
focus on Lieutenant Thurman, pressed into a corner of the room, arms crossed. The man did not look happy.

“I'm not sure this guy's a suspect. He's in prison,” said Stottlemeyer. “Or should be. It was second-degree murder.”

“He's in San Quentin,” Monk acknowledged. “But he could have friends on the outside. And let's face it, being in prison's a pretty good alibi.”

“I remember him,” said Randy. “Kept going on about how a jury couldn't convict him without a murder weapon.”

“But they did,” said the captain. “And he wasn't too pleased about it.”

“It's worth checking out,” said Monk. His gaze turned serious. “What's this fingerprint in the margin?”

Randy took a look at the red smudge at the top of the page. “Raspberry jam from lunch with Natalie. Sorry.”

By late that afternoon, the four of us had made our way over the Golden Gate Bridge into Marin County, taking the 101 to the Richmond Bridge exit. Instead of going over this second bridge, we turned onto Sir Francis Drake Boulevard, toward a scenic spit of land overlooking the San Francisco Bay, just east of the little town of San Quentin.

It had taken an hour or two to get the captain checked out. The doctor's okay was the easy part. It was Trudy Stottlemeyer's okay that was problematic. I finally was handed the phone and assured her that Monk, Randy, and I would be taking good care of him and would drop him off at home as soon as we did one little errand. I didn't mention the errand included a trip into the depths of the California state penal system.

Lieutenant Thurman had been almost as hard to placate,
but not out of concern for the captain's health. “A.J., there are four of us,” explained Stottlemeyer. “That should be enough to interview one inmate. Your resources can be better used working other angles—the note, and who could have dropped it on my desk.”

A.J. didn't totally buy that, and he was right not to. The captain did little to hide his excitement. He might not have been at one hundred percent, health-wise, but the adrenaline rush of being with his old partner was carrying him through.

“The lieutenant seems like a nice guy,” said Randy from the backseat of the Subaru.

“He's okay,” I answered from the driver's seat, and felt I was being generous.

The man we were visiting, Jasper Coleman, had been arrested a little over seven years ago, coincidentally on the very same day Monk and I were winging our way to Frankfurt, Germany, in pursuit of Dr. Kroger.

Jasper and his wife, Celia, had lived in Bernal Heights, in a ramshackle cottage lodged between two vacant lots. According to Jasper's statement, they had been in bed that night and were awakened by noises somewhere in the house. Jasper got up and told Celia to stay in the bedroom and lock the door. When he walked into the living room, he found a tall black man wearing gloves trying to pry their flat-screen TV off the wall mounts with a crowbar. According to Jasper, he and the intruder struggled until Jasper slipped and fell and was knocked unconscious with the aforementioned crowbar. A nasty bruise on the side of his head was the only physical evidence of the struggle.

When he came to, Jasper claimed that he found the door to the bedroom broken down and his wife dead on the floor, also bludgeoned with what was probably the same crowbar. Metallic traces were found in one of Celia's gaping wounds. But the weapon was never found, a fact that was the basis of much of Jasper's defense.

“Well, well, what a surprise,” said the large, fleshy man as an armed guard led him into one of the prison's interview rooms. “Captain Stottlemeyer.” I'm not sure how many convicted felons could instantly remember the officer in charge of putting them away. Jasper Coleman could and did.

“I'm here, too,” said Randy. “Lieutenant Disher. Remember?”

“Yeah,” said the inmate, looking unimpressed. “Dumb and dumber. When are you two going to find Celia's real killer?”

“We found him seven years ago,” said Stottlemeyer.

The four of us were lined up in chairs on the opposite side of the bolted-down steel table, like a small jury facing the accused—in this case, the convicted. Monk was on the far right, dividing his attention between Coleman and the pages of Randy's journal from 2008. He seemed mesmerized by the combination of hard facts and random observations, not to mention the sketches and doodles in the margins of almost every page. Monk and I introduced ourselves, but Coleman couldn't have cared less.

“What do you know about Judge Nathaniel Oberlin?” asked the captain.

“I know that the two of you were in cahoots, that you scumbags railroaded me. I know that I've been wasting away
for seven years due to you.” Coleman allowed himself a thin grin. “I also know Oberlin got poisoned and you yahoos thought it was a tropical disease.”

“We know better now,” said Monk. “It was someone with a grudge against the judge and the captain.”

“Really? I guess I'm not the only innocent guy you screwed over. Does that mean you're next, Captain? Are you coming down with a tropical disease?”

“Not yet,” said Stottlemeyer. “That's why we're here.”

The convict's laugh was low and mean. “You trying to pin this on me, too? A guy in prison?” He leaned forward. “Just between us, I hope he gets you. I'm rooting for him.”

“What friends do you have on the outside, Coleman? Anyone who might help you get revenge?”

“I'm not a killer. My wife's killer is still out there, thanks to you.”

“No, he's in here,” replied the captain. “There was no evidence of an intruder. No neighbors reported seeing anything. There was no DNA except yours and Celia's, no fingerprints.”

“It was freaking three a.m. and the guy wore gloves.”

“Wearing gloves to jack a TV off your wall? And this thing about three a.m. when the two of you were fast asleep?” The captain had the SFPD report file in front of him, which might have been slightly more reliable than Randy's journal entry. “There was food in Celia's stomach. According to the ME, she had eaten a good-sized snack somewhere after two a.m., when, according to your statement, you were both sound asleep.”

“Maybe she got up without me hearing,” said Jasper Coleman. “Or the medical examiner made a mistake.”

“Or maybe, after years of late-night fights and Celia's calls to the police about spousal abuse, you finally killed her. That's the conclusion a jury of your peers came to.”

“That was your doing.” Jasper's wrists were shackled to the steel table, but he still managed to point both index fingers at the captain. “You and the judge and Bloomquist, the assistant DA. The three of you cherry-picked the evidence. You glossed over the lack of a murder weapon, which made the jury gloss over it. From the second you showed up, you had it in for me.”

“I suppose you know,” I said. “Edgar Bloomquist died in a skiing accident five years ago.”

“In Switzerland. I celebrated with a piece of cake. I had another piece of cake when Oberlin died.”

“Leaving just me,” said the captain. “Don't start baking that cake.”

“Hey, what about me?” said Randy. “I had it in for you, too.”