Mr. Monk on the Couch (19 page)

CHAPTER THIRTY

C
aptain Stottlemeyer didn’t like being called into the station hours before dawn on a Sunday morning. He came in surly and irritable in wrinkled clothes, his hair a mess. But when he saw Corinne Witt in the interrogation room and was given her signed statement, he didn’t seem to mind so much that his good night’s sleep had been rudely interrupted.

Devlin, Monk, and I were in the observation room, directly adjacent to the interrogation room, keeping the captain company as he went over Corinne’s statement. While he read, we looked at Corinne through the one-way glass. She sat alone, her eyes bloodshot from crying, staring vacantly at the metal tabletop.

By confessing and agreeing to testify against the other crime scene cleaners, she’d get the lightest sentence. She’d confirmed that Yermo was the ringleader, that finding the diamonds and killing Hewson had been his idea. But that didn’t make her and the others that much less complicit in Hewson’s murder. They’d all fired a shot into him. That was Yermo’s clever idea, too, to spread the guilt evenly among them. Even so, Corinne might actually see the outside of prison before she was fifty. It probably didn’t offer her much solace, not that she deserved any.

When the captain was done reading, he narrowed his eyes at Devlin and then looked skeptically at Monk and me.

“The Hewson case was blown wide open just because a couple of patrolmen spotted a bloody car in an alley,” the captain said. “And you happened to be the homicide detective on call.”

“Yes, sir,” Devlin said. What she didn’t say was that she’d made the anonymous call that sent the officers there in the first place. “When I ran the plates and realized the car belonged to William Tong, one of the crime scene cleaners, I called in Monk.”

“You can’t stand Monk,” Stottlemeyer said, then turned to Monk. “No offense.”

“None taken,” Monk said.

“I have a hard time believing that your first instinct was to call him in on this,” the captain continued.

“It was an apparent homicide without a body, and I thought it was damn strange,” Devlin said. “We call Monk on the strange ones. Besides, he’s responsible for every major development in this case.”

“And they have been summarily dismissed with prejudice by Deputy Chief Fellows,” Stottlemeyer said.

“Now we know how wrong the DC was, don’t we?” Devlin said. “You have the proof right there in your hand, sir.”

“Yeah, and it’s all nice and tidy.”

“That’s the goal,” Monk said.

“Yes, it is, Monk,” the captain said. “But it bothers me when it comes so easily.”

“You’re the one who told us that we’d have to wait for one of our suspects in this case to make a mistake,” I said. “Well, that’s exactly what happened. You should be patting yourself on the back and feeling smugly superior instead of complaining that it all worked out.”

Nobody likes having their face rubbed in their own words, especially not when they’ve been yanked out of bed in the middle of the night on a weekend.

Stottlemeyer glowered at me for a moment, then shifted his gaze to Devlin. “Did you hear any word on the street today about anybody trying to hock some impressive stones?”

“No, sir, but I wasn’t out there asking. You took me off the case, remember?”

That was twice in less than two minutes that he’d had his own words thrown back at him. Now he was glowering at her, too. “What have we got on Tong’s disappearance?”

“The forensic team is going over his car for clues right now,” Devlin said. “We have officers canvassing the area for his body, and we’re checking area hospitals for anyone who might have come in matching his description.”

She didn’t look at me, and I didn’t look at her out of fear that my face might betray something. If Stottlemeyer noticed that we were making a point of avoiding each other, he probably chalked it up to our established animosity.

“So you saw the bloody car as an opportunity to put a scare into Corinne and get her to confess,” Stottlemeyer said.

“Absolutely,” Devlin said. “Wouldn’t you?”

Stottlemeyer sighed and tossed the report on a table. Something was hinky about all of this and he knew it—he just couldn’t put his finger on exactly what was wrong. He turned to Monk.

“What do you make of all this, Monk?”

“You could say it’s the natural order of the universe,” Monk said. “Greed made the crime scene cleaners into killers and greed now appears to have been their undoing.”

“What goes around comes around,” Stottlemeyer said.

“I like to think of it as the natural balance,” Monk said. “Everything eventually becomes level, symmetrical, and even.”

Stottlemeyer turned back to Devlin. “Go arrest Jerry Yermo and Gene Tiflin for murder. I’ll wake up a judge while you’re on the way and get you search warrants for those diamonds.”

 

I found a place in the station hallway for Monk and me to sit so that Jerry Yermo had to be led past us in handcuffs on his way to be booked.

I looked Jerry right in the eye as he went by, escorted by two uniformed officers, shortly after sunrise on Sunday.

“I told you we’d see each other again,” I said.

“Yeah, you’re always going to be alone, you miserable bitch.”

“At least it won’t be in a cell on death row,” I said.

“She won’t be alone,” Monk said. “She’ll always have me.”

“Then she’s going to wish she was on death row,” Jerry said as he was taken through the door into the booking area.

Monk looked at me. “What did he mean by that?”

“He thinks you’re insufferable.”

“Do you?”

“Of course not, Mr. Monk,” I said. “Do you want to stay for Gene Tiflin’s booking?”

He shook his head. “It was satisfying enough just to see Jerry arrested. Balance has been restored. I was in despair that it might not happen this time. Or ever again.”

“You can thank Lieutenant Devlin,” I said. “This was all her doing.”

“She must have started flossing,” Monk said.

We got up and went back into the squad room. Devlin was at her desk, writing up her reports. Stottlemeyer saw us and waved us into his office.

“William Tong is still missing, but I just got a bizarre preliminary report from the lab,” Stottlemeyer said. “The blood in Tong’s car wasn’t human. It was from a pig.”

“That is odd,” I said and tried very hard to keep my face expressionless, which, I suppose, was a form of expression itself. The truth was that I knew that Devlin had gotten the blood from a butcher in Chinatown.

“That’s an understatement,” the captain said. “What do you make of it, Monk?”

“It’s obviously some kind of prank,” Monk said.

“One that worked out conveniently well for us.” The captain looked out his open door at Devlin, who was concentrating too hard on her typing but was obviously listening to every word. “I wonder who pulled it off and why.”

“Whoever it was and whatever the reason, it wasn’t illegal,” Monk said. “Unless William Tong registers a vandalism complaint.”

“He would have to be alive for that, and since we’re dealing with pig blood and not his, I’m hopeful he’s gonna turn up breathing,” Stottlemeyer said. “Maybe he’ll have an explanation for all of this.”

“Have you searched his house?” Monk asked.

Stottlemeyer nodded. “His mother’s house. And we found the diamonds, the same number of stones that were hidden in the homes of the three other crime scene cleaners. They divvied up the loot evenly.”

“My faith in humanity is renewed,” Monk said.

“Because the killers divided their stolen diamonds into equal shares?” I said.

“It proves that even in man’s darkest moments, the duty to protect the natural order of the universe prevails. It was what ultimately led to Hewson’s doom.”

“How do you figure that?” Stottlemeyer asked.

“They knew it was impossible to divide the diamonds evenly by five.”

“Or they were just too greedy to share,” Stottlemeyer said.

“That’s the cynical view,” Monk said.

Devlin rose from her desk and joined us, handing Stottlemeyer her report. “I’m done with all the paperwork. I’m ready to be Corinne Witt.”

Stottlemeyer went to his desk, opened a drawer, and tossed her a leather pouch.

“Don’t lose these,” he said.

She opened it up and spilled four diamonds into the palm of her hand. They were beautiful. She put them back in the pouch and put it in her pocket.

“What are you going to do with those?” Monk asked her.

“I’m going to hit the street as Corinne and try to fence them.”

“Rico will come after you,” Monk said.

“That’s the idea,” she said.

That was stage two of her original plan, the fatally dangerous part that she wanted to handle on her own. At least now the captain and, presumably, the rest of the force were in on it, too.

“He’ll kill you,” Monk said.

“He can try,” Devlin said with smile.

She’d be disappointed if he didn’t. In fact, I was willing to bet that the bigger the knife, and the closer it got to her throat, the happier she’d be. She was practically giddy at the prospect of facing a violent death at the hands of a multiple murderer.

“Don’t worry, Monk, we’ll have her under constant surveillance,” Stottlemeyer said.

“You don’t have to,” she said. “I can handle myself. I’m used to being undercover without backup.”

“Then you’ll appreciate the extra support this time,” the captain said.

For the first time in months, she was back in her comfort zone. And Monk, Stottlemeyer, and I were about to be as far from ours as we could get.

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

I
hadn’t slept in more than twenty-four hours, so I dropped Monk off at home around noon, had something to eat, and went to bed, intending to take a nap. I set the alarm for three p.m.

Big mistake.

I woke up at two a.m. to find the alarm clock on the floor in pieces. I must have swatted it off the nightstand pretty hard.

So there I was, wide-awake, in the wee hours of the morning with nothing to do, not that I felt like doing anything anyway. My twelve-hour nap left me feeling lousy and out of step with the world. I ate a bowl of cereal, watched reruns of
Maverick
,
Gunsmoke
, and
Bonanza
on TV Land, and then forced myself back to bed again, where I eventually fell into a light sleep around six.

I woke up again at about ten a.m. on Monday morning feeling jet-lagged even though the only distance I’d traveled was between my bedroom and the kitchen.

Meanwhile, Devlin spent her Sunday transforming herself into Corinne Witt, while the SFPD tech unit hid cameras in Corrine’s apartment and wired it for sound.

William Tong finally showed up at his mother’s house, dazed and disoriented, late Sunday afternoon. He was even more stunned when the two cops who were staking out the house appeared, arrested him, and brought him down to headquarters.

Stottlemeyer interrogated him for more than an hour. Thankfully for me and Devlin, Tong had no memory of what had happened to him. All he knew was that one minute he was at a bar having a drink and the next he was tied to a bed in a dive hotel, his wallet, jewelry, and car keys missing. He couldn’t even remember where the hotel was, not that he really cared. Tong was much more concerned about the diamonds, the murder, and spending his life in prison. And who could blame him for that?

As far as bad days go, Tong was having one for the record books.

On Monday morning, Devlin hit the streets as Corinne, visiting the fences that Jerry Yermo usually did business with. She showed off the diamonds, argued about the prices they gave her, and told everyone she’d think about their offers.

Devlin also visited a few pawnshops just to be certain that word got around. She was careful to make sure that everybody could see the name and address on the tag that dangled from her backpack full of textbooks.

Then she returned to the UCSF campus, had a yogurt, and settled down in the library to study, all under the watchful eyes of the plainclothes cops who were shadowing her at all times, much to her displeasure, which she conveyed to Stottlemeyer via her Bluetooth earbud.

Monk and I heard her rant over the speaker in the mobile command center, a retrofitted motor home that had been gutted and filled with banks of monitors, where we were parked with Stottlemeyer a few blocks away.

The command center was high-tech, but it was also cramped and smelled like a men’s locker room, a Chinese restaurant, and a pack of wet dogs all rolled into one.

Monk held a handkerchief over his nose and mouth and made little gagging noises.

“These are the worst undercover cops I have ever seen,” Devlin said over the speakers. “They might as well be in uniforms.”

“They are there for your safety,” Stottlemeyer said.

“Get them the hell out of here. Rico isn’t going to attack me in public, but he might be watching to learn my movements. If he sees these clowns, they’ll blow my cover.”

Stottlemeyer groaned. “Fine, I’ll pull them back. We’ll patch into the library security cameras instead.”

“Thank you,” she said.

He got on another radio frequency, ordered the plainclothes cops on campus to withdraw, then turned to one of the two technicians in the command center and told them to get the library cameras up.

Within a moment, the six monitors showed different angles of Devlin in the library. I was astonished by how thoroughly and convincingly she’d transformed herself. She wasn’t physically very similar to Corinne, and yet she perfectly mimicked the manner in which the girl carried herself, her attitude, even the way she smiled.

Monk cocked his head. “Remarkable.”

“I bet she could even do you, Monk,” Stottlemeyer said.

“She’s obviously a woman,” Monk replied.

“She could hide that,” Stottlemeyer said.

“The gums would be a dead giveaway.”

“It’s not the gums or physical features that count,” I said. “It’s all about the attitude, what you project of yourself from inside, that sells character more than makeup or hair or prosthetics ever could.”

Stottlemeyer turned in his chair to look at me. “Where did you hear that?”

“
Maverick
,” I blurted out. It was the first thing that popped into my head, which was still pretty foggy from sleeping through most of Sunday.

“The old Western?” Stottlemeyer asked.

“They were undercover cowboys.”

“What were they when they weren’t undercover?” the captain said.

“Real cowboys,” I said. “It was a complex show.”

Actually, it starred James Garner and Jack Kelly as gamblers and grifters, but once you’re stuck in a lie, you’ve got to go with it. Lucky for me, Stottlemeyer wasn’t an expert on old TV Westerns.

Monk reached into my purse, took out a wipe, and began rubbing down the command console.

“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.”