“But you didn’t see it,” Monk said.
“That’s because it probably didn’t exist,” she said.
“It doesn’t now,” Monk said. “His notes were burned and his laptop is missing.”
She shrugged. “I was pretty hard on him when we spoke. I told him that he was losing what little journalistic credibility he still had left, and that if he didn’t wise up soon, nobody would ever hire him as a reporter again. Maybe burning the notes and tossing the laptop was his way of finally coming to his senses and giving up on a lost cause.”
“Or maybe Dr. Rahner murdered him,” Monk suggested.
“That would be a story,” she said. “What evidence do you have to back it up?”
I was afraid she’d ask that. I was even more afraid that Monk would answer it.
“I’ve seen the way Dr. Rahner ties his shoes,” Monk said.
She raised an eyebrow. “That’s your evidence?”
“There’s more, much more. There’s the suicide of Axel Vigg, which wasn’t a suicide at all. The hole in his wall wasn’t for looking at stewardesses and he didn’t shoot his couch. Who would do that? There’s also the pillow feathers on the carpet and the clean shoes that should have been dirty but weren’t.”
It sounded like the rambling of a lunatic to me and I actually knew what he was talking about. I could only imagine what it sounded like to her.
“I don’t understand any of that,” Ernestine said, “or how it proves that Bruno’s heart attack was a murder, or that Dr. Rahner was responsible.”
“Oh, he was,” Monk said. “I’ve seen lots of murderers and he’s definitely one. I knew it the instant I saw those six fingers.”
“You’re going after him because of his extra finger?”
“I know he killed Bruno Leupolz and he could also be the man who hired a bomber to blow up my wife’s car. She was a reporter, too.”
“I see.” She escorted us to her door and held it open. “I thought Bruno was blinded by obsession, Mr. Monk, but you’re much worse.”
“It’s not going to get any better,” he said and we left the office.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Mr. Monk Hits a Wall
Iled us towards Checkpoint Charlie. I figured I could find a souvenir there for Julie and a taxi to take us back to the airport.
Monk frowned with frustration, his hands balled into fists, like a petulant child.
“I know how Dr. Rahner killed Bruno Leupolz and Axel Vigg, I know how he covered up his crimes, and I even know what his motives were,” Monk said. “The only thing I don’t know is how to prove any of it.”
“Do you really think Dr. Rahner is the man who arranged Trudy’s murder?”
“I’d like him to be,” Monk said.
“But do you believe that he is?”
“He’s got six fingers on his right hand, he was in San Francisco around the time she was killed, and he’s a murderer,” Monk said. “It’s more likely than not that he is.”
“But he might not be,” I said.
He looked at me. “You don’t think it’s him.”
“It’s possible that Dale the Whale could have found out that Dr. Rahner fudged his credentials long before Bruno did and blackmailed him into arranging Trudy’s murder,” I said. “But I don’t think Dr. Kroger was involved.”
“You think it’s just a coincidence that Dr. Kroger and Dr. Rahner know each other.”
“Yes, I do,” I said. Up until that moment, I hadn’t realized that I felt that way. “And if that part is a coincidence, then I have to wonder if maybe the rest of it is, too.”
“The killing Trudy part,” Monk said.
I nodded. “So what do we do now?”
“We go back to Lohr and see this through to the bitter end,” Monk said. “But this time I’m taking one of my pills.”
“For a one-hour flight?”
It seemed like overkill. The effects of the medication lasted about twelve hours.
“I also need it for what we’re doing when we get back to Lohr,” Monk said. “I want to go back into the woods and see if we can find where Dr. Rahner hid Leupolz’s body.”
Monk would definitely have an easier time dealing with all that nature if he was drugged up.
I wasn’t sure that I would, though.
At the corner, the turbulent and violent history of the Berlin Wall was displayed in photographs on a wooden wall that had been erected around a vacant lot where a portion of the GDR’s border-crossing complex had once stood.
I paused to look at the pictures and read some of the captions. They didn’t tell me much that I hadn’t learned in high school, but standing in that spot, I could feel the history. It was still recent enough that people like Ernestine, who didn’t seem any older than I was, had been witnesses to it.
The pictorial felt cheap and perfunctory. I thought it would have been much better to have a few Berlin residents who’d lived with the wall in their lives standing around on the corner. They could have talked to us informally about how the wall had affected their lives and shaped who they were today.
That’s not to say there weren’t some people there for the tourists. There were a couple of guys wearing old U.S. and Russian military uniforms and posing with tourists in front of the guard shack in return for some spare change. It was the Berlin version of having your picture taken with Mickey Mouse and Dopey and just as meaningful.
There
