There might not have been any evidence, but there were plenty of suspects. The main one, of course, was Dr. Clark, the surgeon who saved Stella Picaro on the operating table and was being treated as a hero. He also happened to be Dr. Douglas’s major rival.
Dr. Douglas had a lot of other enemies. He was a manipulative egomaniac who’d hurt a lot of people, including just about everybody on his surgical team, many of the doctors observing the operation, and even the patient he was cutting open when he died.
But neither Stottlemeyer nor his assistant, Lt. Randy Disher, could figure out how Dr. Douglas was poisoned in front of so many witnesses without anybody seeing a thing. They were stumped. So they called Monk.
They briefed Monk at the station and afterward he wanted to visit the scene of the crime. I could have told him about my trip on the way to the hospital, but I knew if I did that, he wouldn’t be able to concentrate on anything else all day.
When we got there, he insisted on wearing surgical scrubs over his clothes, a cap on his head, a mask and goggles on his face, plastic gloves on his hands, and even paper booties over his shoes before going inside the OR.
“Are you trying to get into the mind of the surgeon?” I teased him as the two of us stood outside the operating room doors.
“I’m trying to avoid infection,” Monk said.
“Heart disease isn’t contagious.”
“This building is filled with sick people. The air is thick with deadly germs. The only thing more dangerous than visiting a hospital is drinking out of a water fountain,” Monk said. “It’s a good thing there are a lot of doctors around.”
“There’s nothing dangerous about drinking from a water fountain, Mr. Monk. I’ve been drinking from them all my life.”
“You probably enjoy playing Russian roulette, too.”
Monk stepped into the OR, and I watched as he carefully surveyed every corner of the room and each piece of equipment. His investigation of the crime scene resembled an improvised dance with an invisible partner. He repeatedly circled the room, making sudden pirouettes, gliding back and forth, and dipping every so often to peer under something. He stopped at the stainless-steel table where the surgery was performed and gazed down at it as if imagining the patient in front of him.
He rolled his shoulders and tilted his head as if he were working a kink out in his neck. But I knew that wasn’t it. What was irritating him was a detail, some fact that didn’t fit where it was supposed to. Nothing bothered Monk more than disorder. And what’s a mystery, after all, but a situation in disarray, crying out for organization—an imbalance that needs to be set right?
“Where’s the patient Dr. Douglas was operating on?” Monk asked.
“She’s upstairs,” I said. “In the ICU.”
Monk nodded. “Call the captain and ask him to meet us there.”
There’s something really creepy about intensive care units to me. I’ve been in only a couple of them and, while I know they exist to save lives, they scare me. The patients connected to all those machines don’t look like people to me anymore, but like corpses some mad scientist is trying to reanimate.
That was the way Stella Picaro looked, even though she was wide-awake. There were all kinds of tubes and wires connecting her to an EKG, a respirator, and a toaster oven, for all I knew. Machines beeped and lights blinked and she was alive, so I guess it was all for the best. Still, I tried not to look at her. It made me too uncomfortable.
Monk and I were standing next to the nurses’ station. He was still in his surgical garb and he was breathing funny, almost gasping.
“Are you feeling all right, Mr. Monk?” I asked.
“Fine.”
“Then why are you gasping?”
“I’m trying to limit my breathing,” Monk said.
I thought about it for a second. “The fewer breaths, the fewer chances you have of inhaling some virus.”
“You should try it,” he said. “It could save your life.”
It was scary how good I was getting at understanding his peculiar way of thinking, his Monkology. That in itself was a pretty strong argument for me to get away from him for a while.
I was about to tell him about the Hawaii trip right then and there, when Stottlemeyer sauntered in, holding a latte from Starbucks in his hand. There was a little bit of foam in his bushy mustache and a fresh stain on his wide, striped tie. I found his disheveled appearance endearing, but I knew it drove Monk insane. Sometimes I wondered if the captain did it on purpose.
Lieutenant Disher was, as usual, right at Captain Stottlemeyer’s side. He reminded me of a golden retriever, always bounding around happily, blissfully unaware of all the things he was destroying with his wagging tail.
Stottlemeyer grinned at Monk. “You know it’s against the law to impersonate a doctor.”
“I’m not,” Monk said. “I’m wearing this for my own protection.”
“You ought to wear it all the time.”
“I’m seriously considering it.”
“I bet you are,” Stottlemeyer said.
“You have foam in your mustache,” Monk said, pointing.
“Do I?” Stottlemeyer casually dabbed at his mustache with a napkin. “Is that better?”
Monk nodded. “Your tie is stained.”
Stottlemeyer lifted it up and looked down at it. “So it is.”
“You should change it,” Monk said.
“I don’t have another tie with me, Monk. It will have to wait.”
“You could buy one,” Monk said.
“I’m not going to buy one.”
“You could borrow one from a doctor,” Monk said.
“You can borrow mine,” Disher said.
“I don’t want your tie, Randy,” Stottlemeyer said, then turned to Monk. “What if I just take mine off and put it in my pocket?”
“I’d know it’s there,” Monk said.
“Pretend it isn’t,” Stottlemeyer
