The audience fell silent, staring in rapt attention at Swift and Monk.
“But I have the gift. I can feel her concern for you. Trudy knows you’re in pain. She wants you to be at peace.”
Swift closed his eyes and began to tremble all over. The entire room became eerily silent, as if everyone were holding their breath, waiting for whatever powerful revelation would surely come.
His trembling stopped and his eyes opened. He met Monk’s gaze and spoke to him as if the two men were all alone.
“I’m sensing something, Adrian. It’s an object of some kind. It feels soft and it makes her warm. It’s like being cuddled. Do you know what it is?”
Monk shook his head.
“Help me here, Adrian. It’s something very important to her. It’s something she’s had all of her life and has even now in the afterlife. I’m sensing the letter N very strongly,” Swift said. “I’m sensing it so strongly, it’s almost like there are two of them. Yes, definitely two Ns. And I see the night sky. What does this image mean?”
I got a shiver down my spine. I knew the answer. And I was certain Monk knew it, too. It gave me the creeps.
“Her night-night,” Monk said. “It was what she called her security blanket.”
Stottlemeyer and Disher shared a look of true astonishment. I’m sure I had the same expression on my face, too. Until the other night in Hawaii, Monk had never shared that information with anyone else. There was only one way Swift could have known it.
“Yes, her night-night,” Swift said. “I feel it around her as a baby. I sense her sucking on the corners when she was teething. She couldn’t sleep without it, even when she was an adult. So you buried her with it, didn’t you, Adrian?”
Monk nodded. “So she would always be comforted by it.”
People in the audience were so touched by the story that several were beginning to cry. To be honest, my eyes were tearing up, too.
“It worked, Adrian,” Swift said. “It keeps her warm and safe in her eternal sleep. It cuddles her the way you used to.”
Monk broke into a smile, but not one of happiness. It was one of victory. “You’ve just helped me solve another murder.”
“Your wife’s?” Swift said.
“No, the murder of Martin Kamakele, the operations manager at the Grand Kiahuna Poipu.”
“And you’ve solved it here, on my show, thanks to that message from your wife?”
“I couldn’t have done it without you.”
“Incredible,” Swift said.
The audience applauded, and Swift basked in their admiration for a long moment before motioning them to stop.
“I don’t deserve that,” Swift said. “It’s the spirits who are doing the work. I am just their messenger and Adrian Monk their agent of justice. Tell us, Adrian, what the spirits have helped you discover.”
Monk stood up and motioned to Stottlemeyer. “I’d like you to meet Capt. Leland Stottlemeyer of the San Francisco Police Department.”
Stottlemeyer stood up and Swift shook his hand.
“It’s a pleasure, Captain,” Swift said.
“A few days ago, I sent Captain Stottlemeyer a notarized letter from Hawaii that he hasn’t opened,” Monk said. “Captain, would you please take out that letter now and show us the postmark?”
Stottlemeyer stood up, took out the letter, and held it up. On the monitor, I saw the camera zoom in on the Hawaii postmark from two days ago.
“Would you please open the letter and read it?” Monk asked.
“Gladly,” Stottlemeyer said.
Swift shifted his weight nervously, a forced smile on his face, as Stottlemeyer tore open the envelope and removed the letter.
“It’s a handwritten letter from you that’s been signed, dated, and witnessed by a notary,” Stottlemeyer said, and held up the letter. The camera cut away from Swift to a tight shot of the notary’s seal, then back to Stottlemeyer as he began to read.
“‘Last night in our bungalow at the Grand Kiahuna Poipu, in the presence of my assistant, Natalie Teeger, and no one else, I shared a story about my wife, Trudy, and her security blanket, which I called a night-night. I said that Trudy was swaddled in it as a child, teethed on the edges, and couldn’t sleep without it. I said that she carried the blanket with her all her life and that, unknown to anyone but me, I’d buried it with her.’”
Stottlemeyer paused for a moment, glanced up at Swift, and broke into a grin before he read the rest. “‘That story, which Dylan Swift has told you today, never happened. It’s a lie that I came up with last night.’”
There were gasps of shock throughout the audience. Swift looked as if he’d been slapped. He was wide-eyed, his cheeks reddening. He shook his head in denial. I remembered the emotion Monk showed when he told me that story. I believed it. Even now, hearing the content of that letter, I still did.
“The story is true; it’s that letter that is the lie,” Swift said. “I know what I am sensing. Trudy had a night-night and she is holding it now. I see it very clearly. What does this have to do with Martin Kamakele’s murder?”
“It shows why you killed him,” Monk said. “It also explains why you murdered Helen Gruber and framed her husband, Lance, for the crime.”
“Okay, that’s enough,” Swift said, turning to face the nearest camera. “We’re ending this taping now.”
“I don’t care whether you end the taping or not,” Stottlemeyer said. “But you aren’t going anywhere.”
“You’re a con man and a fake,” Monk said. “You rely on ‘cold reading,’ an old-fashioned grifter’s trick, to make people think you are communicating with spirits when, in fact, the sucker is giving you all the information. Like you did with Lieutenant Disher a few moments ago.”
“Lieutenant Disher?” Swift said.
Disher flashed his badge at Swift. “That’s right, pal, I’m a cop.”
I looked up at the monitors. The cameras were
