exhilarating feeling, and for a moment I understood why detectives want to be detectives.
“Sparky got to this house by way of the tunnel and the sewer,” I said. “That’s how Sparky got past the razor-wire fence and impregnated Letitia. And that’s why Sparky always came back to the station smelling like he was covered with crap. It
Gregorio broke into a deep sweat.
“Natalie is winning this round, Mr. Dumas,” Monk said. “You’re going to have to guess the right question to this answer to stay in the game. Here it is:
“What the hell are you talking about?” Gregorio screeched.
Monk shook his head. “No, I’m sorry, the correct question is: What’s the combined jail term for filing a fraudulent lawsuit and committing an extreme act of animal cruelty?”
“I treat Letitia like royalty!” Gregorio said.
“But you murdered Sparky,” I said.
“You’ve got it all wrong,” Gregorio said. “Yeah, I’ve been digging for Turlock’s gold, and I was in the firehouse Friday night, but I didn’t kill Sparky.”
“Convince us,” I said.
“The truth is, Letitia is over-the-hill, past her prime. The only reason she won her last show two years ago was because I spent twenty-two thousand dollars on an extreme makeover.”
“She had plastic surgery?” Monk said.
“It bought us another year on the dog show circuit, but that was it,” Gregorio said. “The judges have sharp eyes, and no amount of cosmetic surgery can prevent the inevitable decline of beauty. We’ve been living on the gold coins I’ve been able to dig up under the firehouse. My plan was that once the coins ran out, we’d live off a settlement from the fire department on our lawsuit.”
“Your fraudulent lawsuit,” I said. “You were using Letitia to keep Sparky occupied while you hunted for gold.”
“Tell us what really happened on Friday night, Mr. Dumas,” Monk asked.
Gregoria sighed heavily. “It started out like usual. As soon as the fire trucks left, I took the tunnel to the firehouse basement. I could hear Sparky barking. But when I came out in the basement I didn’t hear anything. So I took two towels, wiped off my feet, and went upstairs to look around. That’s when I saw Sparky lying there and the fireman leaving.”
I snorted in disgust. “You’re sticking to your story that a fireman did it? It’s laughable. Why don’t you just go all the way and admit what you did?”
“Because I’m telling the truth,” Gregorio said, his eyes welling with tears. “I couldn’t have killed Sparky.”
“Why not?” I asked with as much sarcasm and disgust as I could put behind the two words.
“It would have broken Letitia’s heart.” He wiped a tear from his cheek. “And mine, too. I loved that damn dog.”
Monk tilted his head from side to side and shrugged his shoulders. “Yes, that makes perfect sense.”
And with that, Monk abruptly got up and walked out the door without so much as a good-bye. I had to hurry to catch up with him outside.
“You’re not going to nail him?” I said.
“I just did,” Monk said, setting off in the direction of the Excelsior.
“For stealing towels and filing a fraudulent lawsuit, but what about killing Sparky?”
“He didn’t kill Sparky,” Monk said.
“Then who did?”
“It’s obvious,” Monk said. “Lucas Breen did.”
12
Mr. Monk Makes His Move
It was dark now, and we were retracing our steps back downhill to the Excelsior, where I’d have to skip a car payment to pay the attendant for parking. That was a compelling motive for murder right there. I was surprised the parking lot attendants weren’t wearing Kevlar and sitting in bulletproof cages.
“Why would Lucas Breen want to murder a firehouse dog?” I asked.
“He didn’t want to,” Monk said. “He had to. Breen didn’t know the dog was there when he sneaked into the firehouse.”
“What was Breen doing there?” I asked. As we got closer to the Financial District, the number of people around us thinned out and the streets seemed to get darker and colder.
“He came to steal a firefighter’s coat and helmet,” Monk said. “Breen was the fireman whom Mr. Dumas saw leaving the firehouse.”
“I don’t understand this at all,” I said. “What makes you think that was Breen?”
“Means, motive, and opportunity,” Monk said, then explained to me his theory of what happened on Friday night.
Lucas Breen slipped out of the Excelsior around nine fifteen, walked to Esther’s house, and smothered the woman with a pillow. He made it look like she fell asleep smoking, and then he hid outside until he was sure the living room was consumed with flames. Breen was rushing back to the hotel when he discovered he’d left something incriminating behind.
But it was too late to run back inside the house; it was already ablaze and the firefighters were on their way. And he couldn’t take the chance that whatever belonged to him would burn in the fire. As luck would have it, the firehouse was nearby. He decided to steal a firefighter’s gear, go back to Esther’s house, retrieve whatever he’d left behind from the inferno, then return the outfit to the station on his way to the hotel.
“But he didn’t know about Sparky,” Monk concluded. “The dog charged him, so Breen grabbed the pickax to defend himself.”
That would mean it happened just as Monk described the first time we visited the firehouse.
We were so busy talking, I hadn’t paid much attention to our surroundings, but that changed as we passed between two buildings and a blast of icy wind slapped me awake.
The forest of skyscrapers blocked out what little moonlight there was. The wind whistled between the building, tossing fast-food wrappers and other loose trash, the tumbleweeds of a modern city.
I clutched my jacket tightly around myself. The chill wasn’t the only thing making me shiver. Monk and I seemed to be the only people on the street. It was amazing how fast the Financial District buildings had emptied out. With the exception of the occasional passing car or bus, it felt like we were the last two people on earth.
“What was it that made you realize Breen came to steal firefighting gear?” I asked.
“When we visited the firehouse the first time, I saw a firefighter’s coat on a hanger that was facing the wrong direction,” Monk said. “I fixed it, but it’s bothered me ever since.”
Only Monk would be bothered by something like that. I once made the mistake of accepting a baker’s dozen at Winchell’s, and Monk has been haunted by that thirteenth doughnut ever since.
“Captain Mantooth likes order,” Monk said. “The firefighters know better than to hang a coat on a hanger that’s facing the wrong way. But Breen didn’t. The coat I rehung was the one he stole the night he murdered Esther Stoval.”
“Then his fingerprints will be all over it,” I said.
Monk shook his head. “The coats and helmets are cleaned shortly after every fire to remove the toxins from the smoke.”
If the firemen weren’t so anxious to clean and shine everything, we might have had the evidence we needed to nail Lucas Breen. But now we had nothing, unless Monk had figured out something he wasn’t telling me yet.
“So how are you going to prove that Lucas Breen was in the firehouse?”
