How long, Monk wondered, could Fleet go without seeming to breathe? 'The whole problem,' Monk continued, 'comes down to transportation. How do you get little Thuy Sen where she won't take herself? You drive her.' Monk softened his voice. 'Unless you don't own a car.
'Don't own a car, Eddie, then you've got to borrow one.'
With this, Monk fell silent. Moments passed before Fleet slowly raised his eyes. With a touch of melancholy, Monk said, 'You got anything to tell me, son?'
Fleet stared back at him. This time the frozen look of his eyes struck Monk as more than attitude.
In the silence, Monk reached into his wallet and pulled out a card, laying it beneath Thuy Sen's picture. 'Time may come you need to talk. If it does, I can do more for you than any lawyer can. But it's way better to seek me out before somebody else does.'
For another long moment, Fleet gazed down at the card. Then he reached out and slipped it into the front pocket of his sweatshirt, the reluctant, surreptitious movement of a man whose head doesn't know what his hand is doing.
Abruptly, Monk informed him, 'That's it, Eddie. Inspector Ainsworth will call a car to take you home.'
The last thing Fleet wanted, Monk knew, was to be dropped off in the Bayview by a squad car. But he seemed to have lost the gift of speech.
Ainsworth left. Glancing at his watch, Monk gave himself five minutes with a man who would no longer look at him at all. Then he stood and said comfortably, 'Let's see if your ride's here.'
Ainsworth was waiting outside. Together, they walked Fleet out the door and down the dim, tiled hallway to the elevator.
As they approached, one of the elevator doors rumbled open. Breslin and Minnehan stepped out. Between them were the Price brothers.
For an instant, Payton looked startled, then managed a subdued 'Hey, man.'
Fleet nodded as they passed, his brief glance meeting Payton's. But when Payton looked away, Rennell still stared at Eddie Fleet, eyes wide with surprise in his sullen face.
EIGHT
'LIKE PULLING THE WINGS OFF FLIES,' TERRI OBSERVED IN A clinical tone. But beneath this she felt a chill: at this point in Monk's narrative, Rennell Price's fate had already begun to feel inexorable. 'You were pretty sure the brothers killed her, then.'
Though Monk eyed the Italian delicatessen across the street with seeming idleness, his voice turned cool. 'You mean, did I commit myself to their being guilty, then look for the evidence to match?'
'Something like that.'
' 'Fraid not. All I was convinced of then was that they were scared of Eddie Fleet.'
'Both of them?' Terri asked quietly. 'Or just Rennell?'
Monk pondered this. 'I didn't see the difference,' he answered with a shrug. 'Turns out they both had reason.'
* * *
Monk and Ainsworth put the brothers in separate rooms, then worked on each in turn.
The questioning was taut now. Payton had nothing more to say; clearly fearful, Rennell kept repeating, 'I didn't do that little girl.' But each pause between denials seemed longer.
None of this mattered. All that mattered at the moment was happening before the nearest convenient judge. So when Monk offered the brothers a ride home, it was with an incongruous amiability.
* * *
They sat in the backseat, silent. 'By the way,' Monk said over his shoulder, 'we just got a warrant to search your grandma's house. Hope she doesn't mind—it's the best way of checking out your story.'
In the rearview mirror, he could see Rennell turn to glance at Payton, who kept staring at the back of Monk's head. As they stopped at a traffic light on Third Street in the borrowed squad car, some gangbangers on the corner gazed at Monk and the two brothers. By the time they reached Eula Price's house, the forensics team was already there—the neighborhood, Monk figured, would soon be humming with tension.
'We'll be talking with your grandmother,' he told the brothers. 'We'll get some other folks to hang around with you.'
* * *
Monk seated Eula Price on the porch between Ainsworth and himself.
Worriedly, she turned her head from one cop to the other. She was a large woman with venous legs: though judging by her face she could not be much past sixty, her body seemed a burden on her heart. Her other burden in life, Monk perceived, was the brothers. She was clearly respectful of police, and he guessed that his visit tapped into some nameless but pervasive dread about what the boys would come to.
The sight of Thuy Sen's picture seemed to convert the dread to fear. 'Ever seen this girl?' Ainsworth asked.
'Only on TV.' She paused, then added softly, 'That poor child.'
'But you never saw her here?'
Eula Price's throat worked. 'No.'
'Where do you sleep?' Monk inquired.
Slowly, she turned to face him. 'Upstairs.'
