Mr. Monk on the Couch (2 page)

CHAPTER TWO

T
he homes in the Marina District looked like birthday cakes. The bright colors and the smooth texture of their stucco looked so much like frosting that I almost wanted to lick them. The effect was only heightened by the yellow crime scene tape that closed off both ends of the street and fluttered in the brisk bay breeze like party streamers.

The block was cluttered with the usual array of official vehicles, parked every which way in the center of the street, resembling a freeway pileup, only without the collisions.

“I don’t understand why Captain Stottlemeyer lets them do that,” Monk said. “How can he concentrate on anything with that going on?”

“I don’t know,” I said.

I parked in a red zone, parallel to the curb, and put my police parking permit on the dash. We got out of the car and had to weave our way around all the official vehicles to get to the police line, which only increased Monk’s irritation.

“It’s impossible to walk from point A to point B in a straight line with the cars parked this way,” Monk said. “It’s taking us twice as long as it should to cover the distance between our car and our destination.”

“We can use the exercise,” I said.

“Speak for yourself,” Monk said. “I’m not the one who has gained two pounds and four point eight ounces in the last eight weeks.”

I stopped. “I’ve gained two pounds?”

Monk turned around. “And four point eight ounces. Don’t worry, no one will notice.”

“You did,” I said.

“I notice lots of things that other people don’t.”

“Where is it?”

“Where is what?”

“The two pounds and four point eight ounces, Mr. Monk.”

“On your body, of course,” Monk said, turning his back on me and continuing toward the yellow tape that demarked the police line. “It’s insignificant, except for that extra ounce. You really must lose that.”

Captain Stottlemeyer, bundled up in a wrinkled coat over a sweatshirt and jeans, met us at the corner of Avila Street and Capra Way and lifted the tape for us.

“Good morning, Monk, Natalie,” he said. “Thanks for coming down.”

His hair, which he kept a bit too long, to compensate for his receding hairline, was askew and his bushy mustache was in need of a trim.

“Did you get dragged out of bed for this?” I asked.

He nodded. “The one day I get to sleep in. I look forward to it all week. You’d think even murderers could use a day off.”

I stepped under the tape, but Monk didn’t move from the other side. Stottlemeyer looked at him.

“Aren’t you joining us?”

“Not until you have someone take care of this mess,” Monk said, pointing at the parked cars.

“They were in a hurry, Monk. They were responding to a homicide.”

“It doesn’t take any extra time to park straight and in rows that are parallel with the sidewalks. The police are supposed to establish and maintain order, not create disorder. It sets a very bad example and creates a huge distraction.”

Stottlemeyer sighed. He knew as well as I did that it was an argument he couldn’t win. “I’ll send some uniforms over to repark the vehicles, okay? Will you come with us now, please?”

“I could direct the operation,” Monk said.

“I would prefer you investigated the murder,” Stottlemeyer said.

“It won’t be easy to do with all of that going on,” Monk said, waving his hand toward the cars.

“You’ll just draw on your vast reserve of inner strength and deal with it,” Stottlemeyer said, holding up the tape and waving Monk over. “Come on already, we got a body on the street here and the medical examiner is anxious to take it to the morgue.”

“How about if we compromise?” Monk said. “I’ll oversee the parking of the cars and then investigate the murder.”

“How about this,” Stottlemeyer said. “You get over here right now or I’ll spit on the sidewalk.”

“You wouldn’t dare,” Monk said.

“Try me,” Stottlemeyer said and looked him right in the eye.

Monk squared his shoulders, took a deep breath, and stepped under the police tape.

“I’m only doing this to save you from doing something you’d regret for the rest of your life,” Monk said.

“Thanks,” Stottlemeyer said, and motioned over a young uniformed officer. “See to it that those vehicles over there are parked in an orderly manner.”

“Right away, sir,” the officer said with a grin.

“He means it,” Monk said.

The officer looked at Stottlemeyer, who nodded in agreement. “I do. Make sure they are parked in nice rows.”

“And by size,” Monk said. “And model.”

“Don’t push it, Monk,” Stottlemeyer said as he led us to a house midway down the street.

The victim was a Caucasian man sprawled on the driveway beside a black Audi with slashed tires and broken headlights. The man looked to me to be about forty, six feet tall, and a little pudgy, wearing a blue bathrobe and long pajama bottoms covered with the Ralph Lauren logo. His head was in a pool of blood.

I tried to focus my awesome powers of deduction, but I kept thinking about my extra tonnage. It was true that ever since my daughter Julie went off to college, I’d been hitting the Oreos pretty hard at night. Now I was paying the price.

I forced the Oreos out of my mind and tried to concentrate on the scene in front of me. Dead man in a bathrobe. Trashed car. Nice house, nice car, designer jammies. What did all of that tell me?

The guy was probably a professional of some kind, like a doctor, lawyer, or banker, and made someone angry enough to trash his car and kill him.

Lieutenant Amy Devlin squatted beside the body, arms resting on her knees, head down in thought. She was a former undercover cop who’d recently transferred into the homicide division to fill the vacancy left by Randy Disher.

Devlin was thin and wiry, her dark hair cut raggedly short, as if she’d done it herself in a fit of anger with a pair of desk scissors. With the exception of her leather jacket, we were dressed exactly the same: T-shirt, V-neck sweater, jeans.

She looked up as we approached but directed her gaze at Stottlemeyer.

“I thought you only called Monk in on the murders we can’t figure out,” she said. “We just got here, but this one strikes me as pretty routine and not particularly complex.”

“That’s because you’re looking at it as a cop,” Stottlemeyer said, “not as a politician.”

“Because that’s what I am,” Devlin said. “Aren’t you?”

“If you want to reach my lofty heights in the department, you have to be both. The dead man is Garson Dach, a deputy district attorney. So we needed to solve this case an hour ago.”

My guess was that Dach ran outside to confront whoever was trashing his car and got beat up. The only questions left to answer were who the killer was and why he did it.

“Dead is dead,” Devlin said. “What makes his murder a higher priority than any other?”

Stottlemeyer sighed. “Not knowing the answer to that question is what will keep you at the same pay grade for the rest of your career.”

“Fine by me,” she said. “I didn’t become a cop to kiss asses.”

“Then you are succeeding brilliantly,” Stottlemeyer said, then looked around. “Where’s Monk?”

I turned, expecting to find him back among the parked cars, but he was standing in front of the neighbor’s juniper hedge, staring at the Sunday edition of the
San Francisco Chronicle
that was lying on top of it.

“What are you doing?” Stottlemeyer asked.

“Securing the crime scene,” Monk said.

“The murder is over here.” The captain gestured to the body on the driveway.

“I’m talking about this,” Monk said, pointing at the newspaper.

“That’s not a crime, Monk.”

“Look at where the paperboy has tossed his newspapers,” Monk continued. “It’s on the hedge here, the sidewalk there, the lawn over there, the driveway there, on the hood of a car over there—it’s criminal.”

“He’s tossing newspapers out of a car,” Stottlemeyer said. “It’s not an exact science.”

“If he can’t toss accurately, then he should get out of the car, walk up to the house, and place the newspaper on the front porch. The fact that he doesn’t care where the paper lands suggests that he has sociopathic tendencies.”

“I’d shoot the bastard on sight,” Devlin said, but her sarcasm was completely lost on Monk.

“I know how you feel, Lieutenant,” Monk said. “But I think apprehending him and giving him a strong warning would be enough at this stage. Maybe we can scare him straight.”

“Let’s deal with the murder first, shall we?” Stottlemeyer said.

“That paperboy could still be out there, throwing newspapers willy-nilly,” Monk said. “There’s a chance we can stop him before he causes more harm.”

“There’s also a murderer out there, Monk, who could start killing willy-nilly if we don’t stop him.
That’s
the willy-nilly I’m worried about.”

“There’s too much willy-nilly going on,” Monk said. “It’s a scourge.”

“It certainly is, and this guy was trying to stop it,” Stottlemeyer said, turning to the corpse. “Garson Dach put a lot of very bad people in prison, many of them engaged in the most heinous of willy-nilly behavior. It looks like one of those people got him back for it this morning. Are you going to do something about that?”

I admired Stottlemeyer’s not-very-subtle effort to manipulate Monk and get him invested in the case. And it appeared to work.

Monk turned his back on the juniper hedge and walked slowly around the car, his hands out in front of him, framing the scene like a director.

“This is an easy one,” Devlin said. “All we have to do is get a list of guys Dach put away, see which ones got out lately, and track their movements this morning. Give me a day, maybe two, and I’ll have the killer locked up.”

“So what do you think happened here?” I asked.

“It’s obvious,” she replied, sighing impatiently. “Dach saw a guy trashing his car, stupidly ran out to confront him, and got himself smacked in the head with a baseball bat or some other blunt object for his trouble.”

We had essentially the same theory about what happened, but hearing her tell it, I realized that it didn’t quite add up.

“I take it Dach was a smart guy,” I said, “so why didn’t he call the police? Or at least come outside with a weapon of some kind to defend himself with?”

“I didn’t say he was a smart guy,” Devlin said.

“You don’t become an ADA if you’re an imbecile,” I said.

“Being smart in the courtroom and smart on the street are two different things. Maybe he didn’t see the distinction and thought he was as tough out here as he was in there,” she said. “I think the bad guy only wanted to trash the car, but when Dach marched outside with a baseball bat, things got out of hand. The bad guy took the bat away from the smug bastard and beat him with it.”

“Did you know Dach?” Stottlemeyer asked Devlin.

“This is the first time I’ve met him,” she said, glancing at the corpse.

“So what makes you think he was a smug bastard?”

“He’s a man and he’s a lawyer,” she said. “Which is enough on its own, but throw in a European car and Ralph Lauren jammies, and what more do you need to know?”

She made a convincing argument, not that I’m big on generalities and stereotypes.

“Who found the body?” Monk asked.

“A woman on her morning jog,” Stottlemeyer said.

Monk leaned from side to side and began to walk slowly around the car, looking at it from various angles.

“Maybe she did it,” I said. “Maybe she’s a crazed ex-lover or the relative of someone he put away.”

“Why do you say that?” Stottlemeyer asked.

“It just seems to me that pretending to discover the body would be a good way to throw off suspicion and hide in plain sight. Who would ever suspect the jogger?”

“Good point,” Stottlemeyer said. “We’ll look into it.”

But I saw the quick look that passed between Stottlemeyer and Devlin and felt my face flush with embarrassment.

“You already were,” I said. “Weren’t you?”

“It’s routine,” Devlin said. “We always check out the person who discovered the body and corroborate their story.”

“So why didn’t you say that?” I said to Stottlemeyer.

“I wanted to hear your reasoning,” he said. “I wanted to see if you came up with the idea because of something you saw that we missed.”

“But you didn’t,” Devlin said.

“That’s right,” I said. “I didn’t.”

I was more aware than either of them that my theory was nothing more than a desperate guess. In my eagerness to prove my chops as a detective, all I’d done was underscore that, despite all of my time on crime scenes, I was still an amateur.

“It’s okay, Natalie,” Stottlemeyer said. “I welcome your perspective.”

“Don’t we all,” Devlin said.

I knew she resented two civilians intruding on her investigation, but I thought Monk had proven himself to her the last time that we’d met and that she and I had even bonded a bit. Apparently, I was wrong.

Monk joined us again, rolled his shoulders, and looked past us to the house.

“Was the front door open when the officers got here?” he asked.

“Yes,” Devlin replied. “But Dach lived alone and there’s no sign that anything inside was disturbed.”

Monk headed for the house.

“The crime scene is out here,” Devlin said, calling after him.

“He knows that,” Stottlemeyer said.

“So what’s he expect to find in the house?”

“I have no idea,” Stottlemeyer said. “But I am eager to find out.”

We followed Monk into the house. We stepped into a short entry hall with a living room to our right, the kitchen to our left, and a family room and a steep staircase in front of us.