Mr. Monk is a Mess (12 page)

“Whatever is wrong is entirely her fault.”

“Because you’re perfect in every way.”

“Because, unlike Natalie, I behave in a consistent, predictable manner. I have routines that I follow and I conduct myself according to rules of behavior that I have defined, codified, and shared with those with whom I interact on a regular basis.”

“We call them friends, Monk. Surely they have a name for them on your planet, too.”

“When you familiarize yourself with another person’s consistent routines, behaviors, and personal rules of conduct, and they learn and acknowledge yours, you establish an understanding, shared expectations, and clearly defined roles. That is how you maintain a balanced life and build lasting relationships.”

“Really? My approach has always been to try to be an honest, dependable guy, to treat people the way that I’d like to be treated, and to accept others for who they are and not who I want them to be. I figure if I can manage that, then I won’t be disappointed in myself or others as much.”

Monk shook his head in disbelief. “No wonder you are on your second marriage.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Your way of living is irrational and inconsistent. You’re constantly altering your behavior and redefining expectations to adapt to whoever or whatever is around you.”

“Yeah, that sounds about right.”

“That’s insanity,” Monk said. “How can you have any kind of stability in your life if you and everyone around you are always changing your attitudes and behavior? It’s anarchy.”

“I’m always going to be who I am, that’s a given, and I’ve got some principles that I won’t compromise, but otherwise I try not to be rigid in my thinking.”

“Aha! Now we’re getting to the root of your problem.”

“I don’t have a problem,” Stottlemeyer said.

“You need to be rigid. A building without a solid foundation will collapse. Your foundation is composed of the rules and routines. Your foundation is consistency.”

“People aren’t buildings, Monk.”

“They’d be better off if they were,” he said. “Solid, dependable, unchanging. Look at Natalie. All of a sudden she’s an entirely different person.”

“It’s not sudden. If you’d paid even the slightest bit of attention to her, you’d have noticed that it has been happening for a long time now.”

Monk shook his head. “She’s totally changed. I don’t recognize her anymore.”

“Everybody changes, Monk.”

“I don’t.”

They came to a stoplight, which gave the captain a chance to look Monk in the eye.

“Ten years ago, you were nearly put in a mental institution. You were afraid to step out of your house and when you finally did, you needed a nurse at your side,” Stottlemeyer said. “Now look at yourself and tell me again that you haven’t changed.”

The light turned green and Stottlemeyer shifted his attention back to the street as he drove on.

“That’s different,” Monk said. “My wife was murdered and it took me some time to . . . to stabilize myself.”

“Natalie’s husband was killed. Maybe it’s taken her some time to stabilize herself, too.”

“It’s more than that.”

“It sure as hell is,” Stottlemeyer said. “She met you. No one could come out of that experience unscathed. And she stuck with you for years.”

“I need her,” Monk said.

“Yeah, but maybe she doesn’t need you anymore.”

“Then what will I do?”

“You’ll change,” Stottlemeyer said.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Mr. Monk and the BBQ

T
he Sunset District is a sloping plain west of Mount Sutro and south of Golden Gate Park that stretches clear down to the Pacific. Calling the place Sunset had to be someone’s idea of a joke, since most of the time the whole area is blanketed with fog thick enough to make Jack the Ripper feel right at home.

Monk liked the Sunset District, and not just because the weather matched his generally gray and mopey personality.

For starters, most of the Sunset is laid out in a grid pattern and is covered with cookie-cutter, two-story, two-bedroom tract houses built by the hundreds on tiny lots from the 1920s to the 1940s.

Monk liked grids and uniformity.

On top of that, all of the north-to-south avenues were numbered and all of the west-to-east streets were given names, a pattern that Monk appreciated because it was a pattern.

The only things Monk liked as much as patterns were grids and uniformity.

The dead man’s house was on a street of nearly identical homes, packed so tightly together that they were practically wall to wall, with tiny patches of grass out front that were barely larger than a welcome mat.

The house that Stottlemeyer and Monk were heading to was easy to spot, thanks to the police cars, the morgue wagon, and the fire truck parked out front.

Otherwise, it looked like all the rest of the homes on the block, except the one that was right next door. That house, while architecturally similar to the others, covered two lots.

Monk glowered at the double-sized abode as he emerged from Stottlemeyer’s car.

“What’s wrong?” Stottlemeyer asked. “You’re looking at that house like it just spit on you.”

“It breaks the pattern,” Monk said. “That should never have been allowed.”

“These are tiny lots, Monk, and families grow. Maybe they liked the neighborhood and didn’t want to move.”

Monk shook his head. “They should have respected the pattern.”

“Some things are more important than sticking to a pattern.”

“Like what?”

Stottlemeyer gestured to the other house, the one surrounded by yellow crime scene tape.

“Like closing this case and getting you home. If you want that to happen, you’re going to have to break your pattern of standing outside and obsessing over something that has nothing to do with why we’re here.”

Monk couldn’t argue with that logic. They went into the house and were met at the door by Lieutenant Devlin, who grimaced when she saw that Stottlemeyer had arrived with Monk in tow.

“You didn’t say you were bringing Monk with you,” she said.

“I didn’t know,” Stottlemeyer said. “What have you got?”

“A closed case. All that’s left is writing up the report. So you can wait outside, Monk.”

But Monk was already peeking into the living room, which was being used as an office. It was dominated by a desk that was covered with spreadsheets, calculators, and boxes of Kleenex.

The walls were adorned with dozens of photos of a rotund, gregarious fellow at various barbecue cookouts, picnics, and festivals. He was almost always in an apron and chef’s hat, standing beside a grill or a platter of barbecued meat, a big smile on his rosy-cheeked face. There were also some trophies and ribbons from barbecue competitions prominently displayed on the shelves.

But it wasn’t the photos or trophies that drew Monk’s immediate attention—it was the pile of wadded-up tissues spilling out of the trash can.

“What does the CDC say?” Monk asked.

“CDC?” Devlin said.

“Centers for Disease Control.” Monk put a handkerchief over his nose and mouth and tipped his head toward the desk. “That desk is soaked in virulent plague.”

Devlin sighed. “Terry Goodman, the dead guy who lived here, had terrible seasonal allergies. It’s nothing contagious. But they killed him.”

“That doesn’t make sense,” Monk said.

“It will,” Devlin said.

“But I thought Goodman either burned to death or drowned.”

“He did,” she said.

Monk grimaced and rolled his shoulders, and that made Stottlemeyer smile. I would have smiled, too, if I’d been there, and for the same reason.

“Now you finally know how it feels, Monk,” the captain said.

“How what feels?” he asked.

“Being told that something that doesn’t make sense does make sense and is the solution to the mystery that you haven’t been bright enough to solve.”

“I wasn’t implying that, sir,” Devlin said.

“Go ahead, indulge yourself. Get all the drama and self-satisfaction out of this that you can,” Stottlemeyer said. “I mean it. Because if you’ve really solved this one, you deserve to have some fun.”

“Okay.” She led them down the hall into the kitchen as she spoke. “Goodman was single, lived alone, and worked out of his house as an accountant. He’d been suffering from sinus problems for weeks and none of the medicines that he’d been taking managed to clear his congestion.”

“How do you know that?” Stottlemeyer asked.

“His pharmacist is his next-door neighbor.”

“Which one?” Monk asked.

“What do you mean?”

“Which house does he live in? The big house or the little one?”

She gestured to her right, to the big house that was visible outside the window that was above the kitchen sink.

“I’d like to talk to that man,” Monk said.

“There’s no reason to,” she said. “I already have.”

“Did he tell you why he broke the pattern?”

“What pattern?” she asked.

Monk stepped up to the sink and pointed out the window. “The house is huge. Way too big for the neighborhood.”

“Focus, Monk,” the captain said. “We’ve got a violent unattended death here.”

Monk noticed the row of prescription bottles lined up on the windowsill. He picked one up and read it. “Bartlett Drugs. Is Bartlett the neighbor?”

“Yes, Andy Bartlett. Why?” Devlin asked.

“Never mind,” Stottlemeyer said. “Do you want to get home, Monk, or don’t you?”

Monk put the bottle down. Stottlemeyer turned back to Devlin.

“Please continue.”

“Goodman is a barbecue nut. He doesn’t eat anything that hasn’t been on a grill,” she said. “So at lunchtime, he went outside to make himself a slab of baby-backs that he’d been marinating in a dry rub.”

She gestured to a platter of uncooked ribs on the counter. Stottlemeyer leaned down and sniffed them.

“They smell terrific,” he said. “Do you think they’ve gone bad?”

“You want to take raw meat from a crime scene?” Monk said.

“It just seems like such a waste,” Stottlemeyer said. “Did you see the guy’s office? He’s won awards for this. They’re probably incredible.”

“I also saw the thousands of tissues soaked in his mucus. Do you really think it was possible that he could lean over this meat without dripping bodily fluids on it?”

Stottlemeyer grimaced and took a step back. “You were saying, Lieutenant?”

“Goodman took the meat out of the refrigerator so that it could warm up to room temperature, then went outside to light his grill,” she said and headed for the sliding glass door that opened to the backyard.

The windowpanes in the French doors had been blown out, spraying the kitchen table with shattered glass. Outside, the patio was covered with the rubble that remained from the counter that had contained the built-in barbecue, which now resembled an enormous crumpled beer can.

“Goodman opened the grill, pressed the igniter button, and the entire grill exploded, setting him aflame,” Devlin said as she stepped carefully around the bits of metal, chunks of cinder block, and shards of ceramic tile on her way to the hot tub a few feet away. “He either threw himself into the Jacuzzi to put out the fire or he was blown into it. The ME hasn’t determined yet whether it was the blast that killed him or if he drowned—not that it matters.”

The body was gone, but the water was still discolored from the charred clothing and flesh.

Stottlemeyer frowned. “So it was a gas leak.”

She nodded. “Yes, sir.”

“And the poor guy didn’t smell the gas because of his stuffy nose.”

“A freak accident,” she said.

“So his allergies did kill him. That was some mighty clever detective work, Lieutenant. Don’t you think so, Monk?” The captain turned, but Monk was gone. He looked around and saw that Monk had gone back into the kitchen. “What is he up to in there?”

Devlin followed Stottlemeyer’s gaze. “Being an ass. He couldn’t stand that I solved a case without him, so he walked away.”

She went into the house and Stottlemeyer trailed after her. They found Monk standing at the sink, picking up and examining each of the pill bottles that were lined up on the windowsill.

“What’s wrong, Monk?” Devlin asked. “Feeling threatened?”

“I have ever since I walked into this house.”

“Really?” she said, sharing a look with Stottlemeyer. “I have to say, I’m surprised you’re man enough to admit it.”

“That house next door is way too close,” Monk said. “I don’t know how Goodman could stand being crowded like that in his own home.”

“Oh, come on,” Devlin said. “We both know what this is about. And it’s not that house.”

“Forget it, Amy,” Stottlemeyer said and turned to Monk. “Okay, let’s go. We’re done here. I’ll take you home now.”

“Isn’t that Natalie’s job?” Devlin asked.

“She’s gone,” Monk said, holding one of the pill bottles up to the light. “She abandoned me.”

“You mean by becoming a cop in Summit and proving she can do more than hand you wipes,” Devlin said.

“By driving off and leaving me bereft and alone in the middle of a strange city.”

“You’ve lived in San Francisco most of your adult life,” Stottlemeyer said.

“Everywhere I look, things are changing, patterns are being broken, the underpinnings of civilization are dissolving. How can I stop it?”

“You can’t,” Devlin said.

Monk nodded, twisted open the bottle of pills, and abruptly emptied them all into his mouth.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Mr. Monk and the Milestone

F
or an instant, Stottlemeyer was too stunned to move, but Devlin reacted quickly. She pushed past the captain and charged Monk, who grabbed a frying pan from the drainer to defend himself as he chewed and swallowed the pills.

“Call 911,” she said to Stottlemeyer.

“What were you thinking, saying that to Monk?” the captain said. “Couldn’t you see how vulnerable he is?”

“I’ll handle Monk,” she said.

Monk swallowed some more of the pills that were in his mouth and then said, “What do you mean by that?”

“I’m going to jam my fingers down your throat and make you vomit,” she said.

“Are you insane?” Monk said, taking another swing at her. “I’d rather kill myself.”

“That’s not going to happen,” Devlin said.

“Listen to me, Adrian.” Stottlemeyer took a step toward him, hands out at his sides in a gesture of openness. “It’s going to be okay, I promise you. Natalie may be gone, but I’m still here. You’re not alone. You’re valued. Taking your life isn’t the answer.”

“What makes you think I want to commit suicide?”

“You said you were bereft and alone and then you swallowed a bottle of allergy medication,” Stottlemeyer said.

“That wasn’t allergy medication,” Monk said.

Devlin picked the bottle up off the floor. “This is prescription-strength Benadryl. It says so on the label.”

“They’re placebos. All of those pills are,” Monk said, tipping his head toward the other bottles. “They’re harmless combinations of xantham gum, cellulose, sugar, whey, lactose, cornstarch, and yeast coated with shellac to keep them from dissolving and to prevent people from tasting or smelling the ingredients.”

“How do you know those pills are fakes?” Devlin asked.

“I recognized them. They are the same ones Sharona and Dr. Kroger tried to trick me with whenever they were too lazy to address my legitimate medical and psychiatric concerns.”

Devlin looked back at Stottlemeyer, who sagged with relief.

“You actually believe him?” she said incredulously. “You honestly think he can spot a placebo just by looking at it?”

“I do,” Stottlemeyer said.

“It’s impossible,” she said.

“No, it isn’t,” Monk said. “There are distinct differences in shape and density between the fakes and the real drugs.”

Devlin gave him a long, cold look. “Maybe I should make him puke just to be safe.”

Monk took a step back and held up his frying pan, ready to strike. “What you should do is arrest Andy Bartlett.”

“Who?” Stottlemeyer asked.

“The pharmacist who lives next door in the obscenely big house,” Monk said.

“Not the damn house again. We can’t arrest a man for adding on to his home and making it larger than the others on his street,” Stottlemeyer said. “At most, it’s a building code violation.”

“That’s a grave injustice,” Monk said. “But at least there are still laws in this country against murder.”

“You think Bartlett killed Goodman?” Devlin said. “Didn’t you hear one word of my rundown of the case?”

“I did, and that’s what proves it.” Monk gestured to the pills. “These medications were prescribed by three different doctors. But what they have in common is that the prescriptions were filled at Andy Bartlett’s pharmacy. Here’s what happened: Bartlett wanted to expand his grotesque home even more, but his neighbors refused to sell. When Goodman began having allergy problems, Bartlett saw his chance. He filled the prescriptions with placebos, knowing that would mean that Goodman’s nose would remain stuffy and he wouldn’t be able to smell a thing. Bartlett also knew Goodman was a barbecue enthusiast who grilled every meal. So Bartlett sabotaged the gas and simply bided his time until . . .”

“Boom,” Stottlemeyer said.

“That is the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard,” Devlin said. “It’s pure supposition without a shred of evidence.”

“No, it’s not,” Stottlemeyer said.

“What more have we got than Monk’s outrageous theory?”

The captain smiled. “We have Monk.”

She looked back at Monk. “What about him?”

“He’s alive and well, and if those pills were real, he’d be on the floor by now, wouldn’t he?” Stottlemeyer said. “That’s why he ate them, to prove his point.”

Devlin was frustrated, and she was pissed, but she couldn’t deny the obvious: Monk was perfectly healthy.

“Even if he’s right about the placebos, how do we know that Bartlett is the killer?” she said. “Anybody could have switched out the pills with fakes.”

“Goodman lived alone,” Monk said. “Bartlett was the only one who had access to all the drugs from the three different doctors and could make absolutely sure that Goodman only got placebos.”

“Where’s Bartlett now?” Stottlemeyer asked.

Devlin tipped her head toward the window. “Next door.”

“Arrest him,” Stottlemeyer said.

“And tell him that’s what happens when you start breaking patterns,” Monk said. “It leads to this.”

Devlin gave Monk a nasty look and stormed out of the kitchen without another word.

“She’s a barbarian.” Monk set the frying pan in the dish drainer, took a wipe out of his pocket, and cleaned his hands. “What kind of person would even think of putting her fingers down someone’s throat?”

“You should be flattered that she wanted to save your life. You’ve given her plenty of incentive not to.”

“Like what?”

“Well, for starters, you humiliated her here today.”

“She was wrong,” Monk said. “Are you suggesting I should have let the pharmacist get away with murder, in addition to building a grotesquely oversized home, just to spare her feelings?”

“No, but you could have pointed out her error in a more thoughtful and collaborative manner.”

“I don’t see how,” Monk said.

“You could have complimented her on everything that she got right and then shared with her the tiny detail that she missed, one you only caught because of specialized knowledge that she didn’t have,” Stottlemeyer said. “Instead, you slipped into the kitchen and swallowed a bottle of pills.”

“Placebos,” Monk said.

“You took a huge risk just to dramatically show her up,” Stottlemeyer said. “What if you had been wrong about those pills? You’d be dead now.”

“At least I wouldn’t have to change.”

“Too late for that,” Stottlemeyer said. “You’ve just made a major one. I’d even go so far as to say it’s life-altering.”

“What do you mean?”

“Don’t you realize what happened today?”

“Natalie abandoned me,” Monk said.

“And you walked to the police station by yourself, went to a crime scene, and solved a case. That’s a milestone, Monk. It’s huge.”

“I don’t see why.”

“You got to the station and did your job on your own, without an assistant. It means you’re finally self-sufficient again. You can let Natalie go and not have to hire anyone else.”

Monk rolled his shoulders. “And be all alone?”

“Of course not. I meant what I said before. I’ll be here for you.”

“Will you do my shopping?”

“I can see we’re going to have to define exactly what I mean by ‘here for you.’”

“Yes!” Monk cried out, startling Stottlemeyer. “My God, it’s finally happened.”

“What has?”

“My years of hard work and extraordinary patience have paid off. Now you know that it’s necessary to list, define, and categorize your rules of conduct. This is your long-awaited breakthrough. Others may have doubted that you’d achieve it, but I never lost faith in you, Leland.”

“Your faith was my guiding light, Monk,” the captain said, entirely for his own amusement, since he knew that his sarcasm was completely wasted on Monk.

“When we get home,” Monk said, “you can borrow some of my rules and use them as a model for your own.”

* * *

“There’s no need,” Stottlemeyer said, heading toward the front door. “I still have the eight-volume set you gave me for Christmas.”

Stottlemeyer’s mistake was walking Monk to his door and, in retrospect, even he wasn’t sure why he did it. If the captain had stayed in his car and just dropped Monk off, he might have made a clean getaway and I might have been spared a measure of discomfort.

But he didn’t. Stottlemeyer was there when Monk opened the door to his apartment and recoiled in shock at what he saw.

“My apartment has been ransacked, pillaged, and desecrated,” Monk said and ventured cautiously inside.

Stottlemeyer strode in and went right past him into the living room.

Sure, the furniture and artwork weren’t precisely positioned so that everything was centered, balanced, and symmetrical, but the place was still neat and orderly.

All that was lost was the cold, sterile feeling the apartment had before, and as far as Stottlemeyer was concerned, that was an improvement.

“You should be thankful, Monk. It looks to me like they were very careful and tried to put everything back the way they found it.”

“Are you blind? It looks like a horde of rampaging, deranged Vikings rode through here on horseback. No, wait—that’s too civilized to describe what has happened here.”

Monk was right that it felt like people had been in his home, but not in a bad way. For the first time, the apartment actually looked lived in to Stottlemeyer, as if people had sat on the furniture, opened a drawer, or read a book from one of the shelves.

“So a chair isn’t in exactly the right place, a picture isn’t perfectly straight,” Stottlemeyer said. “Big deal. It adds character.”

“It looks like a pack of rabid wolves chased a deer through here, attacked it, ripped the corpse apart, then dragged the steaming entrails through the entire house before relieving themselves in my kitchen on the way out.”

“You’re overreacting, as usual. It’s nothing a little straightening up can’t fix.” Stottlemeyer walked past Monk to the door. “And now I’ll leave you to it.”

“The hell you will,” Monk said, joining him. “This is too big a job to tackle this late in the afternoon. There’s no way that I’ll be able to make this place habitable enough to sleep here tonight. It could take weeks.”

“You’re not staying with me,” Stottlemeyer said.

Monk grimaced and came to a tough decision. “All right. Take me to Natalie’s.”

“I thought she abandoned you.”

“She did, but even she wouldn’t make me live on the street like a hobo bum.”

“Aren’t you the guy who called her house a pit with carpet stains that would drive a person to suicide?”

“It’s a risk I’ll have to take,” Monk said.

“You’re missing my point. You insulted her home. What makes you think that she’ll welcome you inside after that?”

“Because she knows I spoke up out of a deep and abiding concern for her safety and well-being,” Monk said. “Hopefully she’s come to her senses by now and will show the same concern for me.”

And that’s how they ended up at my door.