Mr. Monk on Patrol (9 page)

“I think I might live,” he said.

“That’s a relief,” I said. “Ready to fight some crime and balance the scales of justice?”

Monk cocked his head. “Are you mocking me?”

“Ever so slightly.”

“You do realize I am your employer.”

“Right now, you’re the guy who hid in my closet in the middle of the night and sent a woman to rob me while I slept.”

“Because I wanted to protect the guests in the hotel from further harm.”

“Because you were wide-awake with nothing to do and you wanted to get back at me for taking Sharona’s side in the argument about drugging you.”

“That would be petty,” Monk said.

“Yes, it would,” I said, and left it at that. He was my boss, after all.

We walked the rest of the way in silence, mostly because the sidewalk was cut into squares and Monk was intent on stepping precisely in the center of each one. And counting them as he went along.

He kept walking after we reached the police station, two steps forward and one step back to be exact, so he would end his trek on an even number.

We approached the counter, where a pucker-faced old woman in a police uniform sat in front of the city seal on the wall. She looked like she’d been sucking on a particularly sour lemon for eighty years.

“May I help you?” she asked.

“I am Natalie Teeger, and this is Adrian Monk. We are here to see Chief Disher.”

“Oh yes, we heard about you,” she said, pinning her gaze on Monk. “You’re afraid of germs.”

“Isn’t everyone?” he said.

“The only thing I’m afraid of is liberals,” she said.

“What for?” I asked.

“They want to take away our guns. Without our weapons, we’d all be chum for the communists.” She pushed her seat back from the counter so I could see she was wearing a holster holding a gun that was only slightly smaller than an antiaircraft cannon.

“I thought the commies were all gone,” I said. “What with the fall of the Soviet Union and everything that’s happened in the last sixty years.”

“Oh, they’re here,” she said. “There’s evidence of their dangerous, insidious activities everywhere.”

“Like what?”

“Buffet restaurants,” she said.

“I agree,” Monk said.

I looked at him in disbelief. “You
do
?”

“Buffets are very dangerous. Everyone eating out of the same dishes, handling the same serving utensils, mixing their entrées together on their plates. It’s unsanitary.”

“And un-American,” she said. “It’s dining socialism.”

I didn’t see how an all-you-can-eat buffet could be an example of socialism, but before I could pursue the matter further, Disher emerged in full uniform from the door that led into the back.

“I see you’ve met Evie,” he said. “The longest-serving employee in the department. She was the dispatcher back in the day. Now she’s our front-desk officer.”

“The first line of defense against the public,” she said.

“I thought that’s who you are supposed to serve,” I said.

“Only after Evie screens out the wackos,” Disher said.

“And liberals,” I said.

She narrowed her eyes at me. “They are easy to spot.”

I wondered what gave me away. I wasn’t wearing my
VOTE OBAMA
pin, or holding my NPR mug, or throwing myself in front of a tree to protect it from a
bulldozer, so I decided it was because I wasn’t wearing makeup. She’d pegged me as a hippie instead of just lazy.

“Evie, I want you to treat Natalie and Monk as two full-fledged members of our police force,” he said. “They get total and complete access.”

“Yes sir,” she said, but it was clear she didn’t agree. I could tell because her face puckered up again, as if she’d just started sucking on a fresh lemon.

“Lovely woman,” I said as we walked through the door into a short hallway that led to the squad room.

“She’s crusty but she doesn’t miss much,” Disher said. “More than I can say for most of my cops.”

“She’s also crazy,” I said.

“People have said the same thing about some other detectives I know,” Disher said, casting a glance over his shoulder at Monk, who responded with a quizzical expression.

“I like her,” he said. “She’s vigilant.”

“You’ve got to be with all those commies lurking around,” I said.

The squad room consisted of several filing cabinets and four unoccupied metal desks with computer terminals, which were situated in front of Disher’s glass-walled office. It was like the SFPD homicide division in miniature.

“Where is everybody?” I asked.

“Not counting me, Evie, and the dispatcher, we’re only a six-man force,” he said. “Two cops working three eight-hour shifts. Let me show you around.”

He led us down a short hallway that branched off from the main squad room. We stopped in front of an observation window, which looked in on the one interrogation room. A middle-aged couple sat at a table in the room, looking miserable.

“Those two are Harold and Brenda Dumetz, the owners of the hotel,” Disher said. “They were implicated by their daughter, Rhonda, in the burglary.”

“She ratted out her own parents?” I said.

Monk shivered. “Please don’t mention rats. It makes me want to shower again.”

“She did it because they were going to hang her out to dry,” Disher said. “They claimed not to know anything about what she was doing. But she says the ghost thing was entirely their idea and so was the surveillance.”

“Surveillance?” I said.

“She claims all the rooms are wired for sound and video,” Disher said. “They were blackmailing guests. Apparently, people in Manhattan sneak out here to the burbs to have their affairs where they won’t be recognized.”

“It’s going to create quite a scandal once the tapes come out,” I said.

“Just what we need,” Disher said. “But we don’t have the tapes yet. The Dumetzes have lawyered up and are keeping quiet. My guess is that they’re going to use them as bargaining chips to make a deal with the DA.”

“Maybe the DA is on one of those tapes,” I said.

“It wouldn’t surprise me, the way things have been going in this town since I got here.”

He showed us the locker room, the radio room, and the holding cells, where Rhonda Dumetz sat on a concrete bench and glowered at me from behind the bars. She looked scarier now than she did with the yellow contacts and plastic fangs.

We worked our way back to the squad room and over to a large map of Summit. There were about a dozen colored pins stuck in the map.

“These pins represent the locations of residential
burglaries over the last few months,” Disher said. “As you can see, they’re all over town. And they’re happening day and night.”

“It’s anarchy,” Monk said.

“It’s not quite that bad,” Disher said. “But it has to stop. They’re taking cash and electronics, mass-produced stuff like Rolex watches, but no paintings, rare books, or custom jewelry that needs to be fenced, which leads me to believe we’re dealing with amateurs.”

“These homes don’t have alarms?”

“They do,” Disher said. “But if the alarms go off, the burglars are gone before our cops get there.”

“How do you know there’s more than one burglar?” Monk asked.

“It’s a guess, based on how much they’re taking and how quickly they seem to be doing it. And on a couple of occasions, they’ve taken a big-screen TV, which requires more than one man to carry.”

“What about neighbors?” I asked. “Nobody saw anything or anyone unusual?”

“Nope,” Disher said. “And the burglars always seem to know when the house they’re hitting is going to be unoccupied, even if it’s only for an hour or two.”

“So they have these places under surveillance,” I said. “But nobody has spotted them watching.”

Disher nodded. “We’ve even stepped up our neighborhood patrols during each shift, but if anything, the burglaries have only increased. It’s as if the bad guys are mocking us.”

“It’s intolerable,” Monk said.

“I’m glad you feel that way,” Disher said. “Your dedication to your work is one of the big reasons I brought you out here.”

“Oh, for God’s sake, man up,” Monk said, and began removing pins from the map and setting them on
the desk in color-coordinated piles. “You’re the chief of police.”

“What are you doing?” Disher said.

“What you should have had the guts to do weeks ago as the leader of this force. You’ve got reds and blues and whites all mixed together. Pick a color and have the fortitude to stick with it, no matter what.”

“I was talking about the robberies, not the pins,” Disher said.

“What kind of example are you setting for your men?” Monk said. “You need to demonstrate clarity of thought, steadfast resolve, and total command of the situation. You can’t do that with multicolored pins unless each color represents a different kind of crime.”

Disher picked up a stack of folders from the desk and handed them to me. “Here are the case files on each of the break-ins. You can take the map on the wall with you.”

“Where are we going?” I asked.

“To buy new pins,” Monk said.

“I’ll buy new pins. You’re going to the scenes of those burglaries. Maybe you’ll spot something we missed.” Disher reached into his pocket and put a set of keys in my hands. “These keys go to the car I picked you up in last night. It’s parked out front. You’re One-Adam-Four on the radio if you need to call in.”

“You’re putting us in a squad car?” I said. “But we’re not cops.”

“It’s all I’ve got,” Disher said. “And this way you can monitor the radio calls and go to any crime scene where your detecting might be needed, though things are pretty slow around here compared to Frisco.”

“But what if someone on the street flags us down and expects us to help them?” I asked.

“We do it,” Monk said.

“No, you don’t,” Disher said. “You call in to the dispatcher and she’ll send somebody out. You’re not cops, even though I’ve given you free rein in the station and a police car.”

“And you expect us to investigate and solve crimes,” I said.

“Exactly. I’m glad that’s clear,” Disher said, then checked his watch. “I’ve got a meeting with the city accountant. Good luck.”

He hurried off. I looked at Monk over my pile of folders. “Where to first?”

“The most recent crime scene,” Monk said.

This is going to sound silly, but even though I’d hung around cops for years as Monk’s assistant, I was really excited about driving a police car. The moment I got behind the wheel, I felt a childlike sense of glee. I wanted to turn on the siren, drive fast, and arrest someone.

It was too cool.

I’d driven an unmarked police car before, when Monk was a scab during the SFPD police strike a few years back, but never a squad car. It was like trading up from a speedboat to a destroyer.

There were no gun turrets or rocket launchers on our vehicle, but it felt big and powerful anyway, like a car on steroids.

The rifle was missing from the gun rack, but otherwise the car was fully equipped, though I had no clue how to use the laptop built into the center console. That didn’t matter to me as long as the lights and siren worked.

I knew I’d find an excuse to use them before our trip was over.

I put on my seat belt and glanced over at Monk in the passenger seat. He sighed contentedly, which for him meant he was as excited as I was.

“Let’s roll,” he said.

I started the car and the engine roared with more horsepower than anything I’d ever driven before. I held on tight to the steering wheel as if that would somehow rein in the car if it got out of control. I shifted the car into drive and tapped the gas pedal.

It was like lifting off in the space shuttle. I almost rear-ended the car in front of us on the road.

I eased up on the gas and took a deep breath. This was a car that wanted to go fast, smash through walls, and fly over the tops of hills with lots of loud action music blaring in the background.

Of course, it wasn’t the car that wanted to do that, but the driver. I managed to hold my reckless desires in check and steered us slowly down Springfield Avenue, Summit’s main drag, on our way to the scene of the last home burglary.

The street was lined with buildings made of stone, brick, and concrete—buildings crafted in the Edwardian Classical style that was popularized in the 1920s and that personifies small-town America so much that Disneyland used it for its Main Street.

The newer buildings in Summit paid homage to the style without turning it into caricature, so they fit right in with the authentic stuff. The abundance of mature trees and old-style parking meters only added to the charm.

But, as Sharona had told me on the plane, the decidedly upscale nature of the restaurants, shops, and galleries, not to mention the preponderance of Range Rovers, BMWs, Lexuses, and Mercedes on the road, belied the small-town vibe.

As we cruised along, I could feel every person on the street looking at us but, in reality, nobody was.

I was simply self-conscious about being a stranger driving a cop car down the main drag of a town I’d never been in before. It was almost as if I was afraid someone would accuse me of pretending to be a cop.