arrests or outstanding warrants, but he does have three unpaid parking tickets. He’s never been married, at least not in this country, but he lived with a woman three years ago. Her name was—”
I interrupted him. “You ran a background check on Joe?”
Disher nodded proudly. “I figured as long as I was checking his health, I’d check out everything else.”
“I don’t want to know about everything else.”
“But everything else is who he is.”
“Which is why he should be the one to tell me about it,” I said. “Or I should discover it for myself.”
“That’s taking a big risk, Natalie. I’ve been burned too many times,” Disher said. “I never go out on a date anymore without knowing everything about a woman.”
“That’s why you don’t go out on dates anymore,” I said. “Every relationship needs a little mystery. Discovery is half of romance.”
“That’s the half I don’t like,” Disher said.
I made him rip out the pages that contained the details of Joe’s past from his notebook and tear them up. Disher wasn’t pleased but I didn’t care. Even though I wasn’t the one who snooped into Joe’s past, I felt guilty for violating his privacy.
Disher looked past me and noticed, for the first time, what Monk was reading. He rushed in and snatched the case files from Monk.
“What do you think you’re doing?” Disher said.
“Passing the time,” Monk said.
“By reading confidential case files of open homicide investigations?”
“You didn’t have the latest issue of
“We never had one,” Disher said.
“I love to spot the hidden objects in the drawings,” Monk said to me. “It keeps me sharp.”
Disher started to put the files back on the desk one by one.
“Wait,” Monk said and pointed at the file in Disher’s hand. “The gardener.”
“What?” Disher said.
“The gardener is the killer,” Monk said. “Trust me on this.”
“Okay, we’ll keep that in mind,” Disher said dismissively, set the file down and started to put down the next one.
“The mother-in-law,” Monk said.
“You read the file just once and you know that for a fact?”
“Definitely the mother-in-law,” Monk said. “It’s a no-brainer.”
Disher set another file on the desk.
“The twin brother,” Monk said.
And another.
“The shoe-shine man.”
And another.
“The bike messenger.”
Disher plunked down the rest of the stack on the desk all at once.
“The beekeeper, the long-lost aunt, and the podiatrist,” Monk said in a rush. “You dropped a file.”
Disher bent down and picked it up.
“The nearsighted jogger,” Monk said. “He couldn’t possibly have seen the woman in the window. He wasn’t wearing his glasses.”
“I hope you were taking notes,” Stottlemeyer said as he entered the office with a scowl on his face.
“Didn’t have to,” Disher said, tapping his forehead. “It’s all right here.”
“Write it down,” Stottlemeyer said.
Disher nodded, took out his notebook, and started writing.
“How did it go with the deputy chief?” Monk asked.
“It didn’t,” Stottlemeyer said. “He won’t let me authorize the search.”
“Why not?” Monk asked.
“Because he doesn’t think we have a case,” Stottlemeyer said. “In fact, I’ve been ordered to stop harassing Breen, a respected member of the Police Commission, with baseless and offensive accusations. I’ve been told to start looking in other directions.”
“He got to them,” Monk said.
“Big-time,” Stottlemeyer agreed, then looked up at Disher. “Randy, have the crime lab go down to the firehouse and check the firefighting gear on the off chance they might find Breen’s fingerprints or DNA remaining on whatever coat, helmet, boots, or gloves he borrowed.”
“Sir, we don’t even know which ones Breen used.”
“I’m aware of that,” Stottlemeyer said. “But we can at least eliminate the ones that the on-duty firemen were wearing the night of the fire.”
“But another shift has come on since then, so there’s a good chance that all the gear has been used and cleaned more than once since the murder.”
“I didn’t say it was going to be easy. It’s a long shot and a hell of a lot of work, but that’s how you, and me, and everybody who isn’t Adrian Monk break cases. It takes sweat and dogged determination.”
Monk stood up. “Lucas Breen killed Esther Stoval and Sparky the dog. If we don’t find that overcoat, Breen will get away with murder. Captain, we have to search that garbage.”
“I can’t,” Stottlemeyer said. “But there’s nothing stopping you from searching the trash.”
“Yes, there is,” Monk said. “There’s me.”
“My hands are tied. Of course, all of that could change if you were to stumble on, say, a scorched overcoat that belongs to Lucas Breen.”
“It could take us weeks to go through all that garbage,” I said.
“I’d really like to help; you know that. But I can’t,” Stottlemeyer said. “You’re on your own.”
Before we left Stottlemeyer’s office, I shamed the captain into calling Grimsley at the dump and asking him to hold the thirty tons of trash for a couple of days so we’d have a chance to search it. Stottlemeyer was careful, though, to say it wasn’t an official request but more along the lines of a personal favor.
Grimsley said he was he was glad to do whatever he could to help the police in their investigation.
But we weren’t ready to go out to the dump that afternoon. Monk had an appointment with his shrink, Dr. Kroger. Facing the likelihood of having to dig around in a mountain of trash, Monk really needed some help with his anxieties, so canceling the session was out of the question.
I had some anxieties of my own. I don’t have Monk’s aversion to germs, but I certainly wasn’t looking forward to spending a day wading in other people’s garbage.
I called Chad Grimsley and told him we’d be out in the morning.
While Monk was having his session, I waited outside the building and gave Joe a call at home. He answered on the first ring, his voice full of energy and good cheer.
“How can you sound so peppy after a burning warehouse collapsed on your head?”
“It’s just another day at the office,” he said.
“Is there anything I can do for you?”
“You’re doing it,” he said. “How’s your investigation going?”
I told him the broad strokes, but I left out Lucas Breen’s name and occupation. I didn’t want Joe doing something stupid like beating the crap out of Breen.
My subtle omission of key details wasn’t lost on Joe. “You’ve neglected to mention the name of the guy who killed Sparky and who belongs to that overcoat.”
“I did,” I said.
“You don’t trust me?”
“Nope,” I said. “But I mean that in the nicest possible way.”
“What happens if you don’t find that overcoat?”
“The killer gets away with killing Sparky and the old lady.”
