home and pick up Monk first.
“We’ll be there in an hour,” I said, and flipped the phone shut. “I’m sorry, Joe, but we have to go. There’s been a homicide, and the police want Mr. Monk’s help.”
“It can’t wait until dessert?”
“Think of that call as my fire alarm,” I said.
“Gotcha.” He waved to the waitress for the check.
One the way home, I explained my working relationship with Monk to Joe, who didn’t understand exactly what I did for a living. I told him my job was mostly helping Monk manage the everyday demands of life and smoothing his interactions with other people so he could concentrate on solving murders. And that I also handed out a lot of wipes and kept him hydrated with Sierra Springs, the only water he’ll drink.
“I don’t know how you do it,” Joe said as he walked me to my door.
“Most days, I don’t know either.”
He kissed me. A real, deep, passionate, toe-curling kiss. And I gave it right back to him. The kiss lasted only a minute or so, but when we un-clinched my heart was racing as if I’d just run a mile. It was a kiss that promised so much more, born of the urgency of our forced parting. For me, there was also a hint of melancholy. For some reason it felt to me like a kiss good-bye, even though we’d be seeing each other at the dump the next morning.
But I didn’t have the time to sort out my feelings; I was in too big a hurry. I banged on the bathroom door to get Monk out of the shower. I told him Stottlemeyer needed him pronto at a crime scene. Then I called Mrs. Throphamner, who agreed to come over and watch Julie.
“I still expect to be paid for the hours I worked,” Julie said.
“But Mr. Monk never even left the shower,” I said. “You didn’t have to do anything.”
“Not my problem,” she said with a shrug.
I dug into my wallet and gave her a twenty because I didn’t have any tens or singles, just what the ATM spit out on my last visit. “Here. Credit my account with the balance for next time.”
Monk emerged from the bathroom perfectly coiffed and in a fresh set of clothes, as if he were starting a new day. Behind him the bathroom looked as if it had never been used. He shifted uncomfortably in his clothes.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“I still feel dirty,” he said.
“I’m sure that will pass.”
“So am I,” Monk said. “In a few years.”
“Years?”
“No more than twenty,” he said. “Or thirty. But I’m being conservative.”
I figured that worked out to roughly one year for each ton of garbage we had to sort through.
Monk spotted the flowers in the vase. “Who brought those?”
“Joe. Actually, he brought them for himself. He was afraid he might still smell from the dump,” I said. “Maybe you’d like them.”
Monk leaned down and sniffed the flowers, then stood up straight and started working that kink out of his neck, the one caused by a fact that doesn’t fit.
I was about to ask him what it was about the flowers that set him off when Mrs. Throphamner arrived and hurried to the TV.
“Forgive me,
“It’s okay,” Monk said, heading for the door. “We’re a little late for a murder ourselves.”
19
Mr. Monk and the Wet Ones
Captain Stottlemeyer was waiting for us on Harrison Street, where the 80 Freeway emptied into the city center in a tangle of off-ramps and overpasses. The wail of the cold wind and the roar of traffic overhead created a loud, bone-rattling shriek. It sounded as if the earth itself were screaming in pain.
The freeway passed over a weed-covered lot that was ringed by a corroded cyclone fence that had been peeled back in places. Stottlemeyer stood in front of one of the openings, with his hands deep in the pockets of his coat and his collar turned up against the biting wind. Behind him, forensic techs in blue windbreakers moved slowly through the lot, looking for clues.
The lot was strewn with discarded couches, soiled mattresses, and crude structures of scrap plywood, corrugated metal sheets, and cardboard boxes erected atop wooden shipping pallets. Shopping carts overflowing with bulging trash bags were parked in front of some of the makeshift shelters like cars in driveways.
“Sorry to drag you down here, Monk,” Stottlemeyer said.
“Where are all the people?” Monk asked.
“What people?” Stottlemeyer asked.
“The ones who live here.” He motioned to the neighborhood of cardboard tract homes.
“They scurried away like frightened rats after somebody discovered the corpse,” Stottlemeyer said. “A couple officers in a patrol car happened to be driving by when the mass exodus occurred. It piqued their curiosity, so they investigated. It’s a good thing the officers were around or it could’ve been weeks before we found the body, if ever.”
“Why’s that?”
“We don’t get in here much,” Stottlemeyer said. “And even if we did, the body is kind of out of the way.”
The captain beckoned us through the hole in the fence while he held open the flap. Monk hesitated a moment, then turned to me.
“I’m going to need the suit,” Monk said.
“What suit?” I said.
“The one I wore today,” Monk said. “I need it.”
“We returned the outbreak suit on the way home,” I said. “You insisted that it had to be incinerated.”
“I know,” Monk said. “I need another.”
“They’re closed,” I said.
“It’s okay,” Monk said. “We can wait.”
“They’re closed permanently, at least to you,” I said. “The owner was quite clear about that.”
“I’ll stay in the car while you go in.”
Stottlemeyer groaned. “Monk, it’s late. I’ve been working a sixteen-hour day. This is my third murder. I’m hungry, I’m cold, and I just want to go home.”
“Fine,” Monk said. “We’ll meet back here in the morning.”
He started to go, but Stottlemeyer grabbed his arm. “What I’m saying is that you can step through the fence on your own or I can throw you. It’s your choice.”
“I’d prefer a third option.”
“There is no third option.”
“How about a fourth? Because three isn’t really a very good number anyway.”
“How about I throw you in there now?”
“That’s a third option, and before you said there were only two,” Monk said. “How can we have a reasonable conversation if you’re incoherent?”
Stottlemeyer took a menacing step toward Monk.
“Okay, okay,” Monk said, waving Stottlemeyer away. “Give me a minute.”
Monk looked at the hole, looked at the lot, then looked at me. Then he looked at everything again.
