Mr. Monk Gets Even (9 page)

While she was on the phone, Monk took the opportunity to start organizing her desk, an activity he abruptly halted when she grabbed a letter opener with her free hand and brutally stabbed the stack of files that he was about to straighten.

“I’ll be right down,” she said. She hung up and took her gun out of her drawer.

“That won’t be necessary,” Monk said, holding up his hands and taking a step back from her desk. “You made your point with the letter opener.”

“It’s not for you.” Devlin put the gun in her shoulder holster as she stood, then took her leather jacket off the back of her chair. “I’ve got to roll. I’ve got a body.”

“A murder?” Monk asked.

“Looks like a woman out in Noe Valley had too much to drink before diving into her lap pool—cracked her head on the bottom and drowned.”

“Or it was a murder,” Monk said.

“If it is, I’ll be sure to give you a call,” Devlin said, turning her back to Monk and heading for the door.

“If it is,” Monk said, “you might not notice.”

She stopped and turned around very slowly. “You know I’m armed and you still said that to me?”

Julie stepped out of Captain Stottlemeyer’s office at that point because she’d heard enough to know that Monk had created a situation in need of defusing, and she considered that a key part of her job.

“Leland sent us here because he wanted Monk around if any bodies dropped,” Julie said to Devlin. “I think those were pretty much his exact words.”

Devlin gave Julie a look. “You know it was just to get Monk out of his hair and into mine.”

Julie shrugged. “Doesn’t really make a difference though, does it?”

“I was just starting to like you, kid,” Devlin said and walked out the door.

Julie smiled at Monk. “But now she loves me because I stood up to her.”

“Then why doesn’t she love me?”

“Because you irritate her,” Julie said. “Come on, let’s go. We have to follow her and she has a siren.”

She went out the door. Monk started to go but doubled back, quickly straightened the stack of files on Devlin’s desk, and then hurried after Julie.

• • •

Noe Valley is an upscale neighborhood of renovated Victorians and well-off young families south of the Castro District, with its strong gay community, and west of the Mission District, once known for its vibrant multiethnic working-class mix and now home to the largest percentage of BMW owners in the city.

(Okay, I made that last fact up, but the Mission is where all the hip dot-com millionaires are buying their lofts and all those little mom-and-pop taco places that I loved are being replaced by coffeehouses and artisan bakeries. But I digress. . . .)

The usual cluster of official vehicles was parked outside the dead woman’s home, which was already cordoned off with yellow crime scene tape. She had a tiny garden that was beautifully maintained, with a small patch of grass and two flower beds covered with tan bark and bordered with smooth rocks that looked as if she’d scavenged them from a beach.

Monk and Julie arrived right behind Devlin, though they had to break a few traffic laws to do so. Devlin got out of her car, marched across the front yard, and went through the open wooden gate on the side yard.

Julie hurried after her, but she quickly noticed Monk lagging behind, crouching to study the flower beds.

“The body is in the backyard,” Julie said.

“And it’s not going anywhere,” Monk said.

He cocked his head from side to side, nodded to himself, then straightened up and followed Julie. She didn’t ask why he stopped or what he was looking at because she was afraid he might tell her.

The last thing she wanted was a long lecture on how beach rocks belonged on the beach and not alongside shards of bark from trees that grow nowhere near the ocean, or some such nonsense.

The backyard was tiny, and the lap pool was more of a narrow, short pond surrounded by a patio of aged bricks. There were two chaise lounges, a bottle of Scotch and a glass on the tiny table between them. One of the chaise lounges had a folded towel and the latest issue of
The New Yorker
on top of it.

The dead woman was slim. She wore a one-piece bathing suit and was lying on her back on the wet bricks. Julie figured she was in her mid-fifties, but wore her age well. The woman’s eyes were wide open and so was her mouth. That face, frozen in death, was more disturbing to Julie than any bloodied, mangled corpse.

Julie took a seat on the edge of a chaise lounge while Monk crouched beside the body, staring at the woman’s face and the bloodless gash on her forehead, before something in the water distracted him.

Meanwhile, Devlin conferred with two uniformed cops, and several forensic technicians took photos of the crime scene.

Monk squeezed past them all and walked the perimeter of the yard, peering into the bushes and planters, his hands framing the scene in front of him, bobbing and weaving, almost as if he were shadowboxing with open palms.

After a few moments, Devlin left the officers and stood over the body, giving it a once-over herself. She glanced over her shoulder at Julie sitting on the chaise lounge behind her.

“Are you okay?”

Julie nodded. “The expression on her face bothers me.”

“It’s not an expression. It’s death.”

“I guess that’s what bothers me,” Julie said.

“You’ve seen death before.”

“But not on somebody’s face.”

Devlin looked down at the body again, cocking her head to study the woman’s face. “I suppose it’s the open mouth that’s unsettling, like a frozen scream. It invites you to read all sorts of drama into it. Your mind can’t resist creating whatever it is that made her so terrified, and that conjures up all your own fears and demons.”

“Is that what you see?”

“What I see is the typical face of a drowning victim.”

Monk joined them. “What do you know about what happened here?”

“Not much more than I did at the station,” Devlin said. “Her name is Carin Branham and she’s the married mother of two kids, both off at college. Her husband is a lawyer. He’s away in D.C. this week. Her body was found by the pool man.”

“So it’s been a week since her pool was cleaned.”

“Since her pool man comes once a week, yes, I think that’s a safe guess.”

“But her pool is clean except for a couple of leaves and a tiny bit of tan bark.”

“So she cleaned it before she went swimming,” Devlin said. “I’d think you’d admire her for that.”

“I would if she’d been the one who cleaned it,” Monk said. “But she wasn’t.”

“It was the murderer who did,” Devlin said.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Mr. Monk Counts to Three

M
onk looked surprised. “You figured out that this is a murder?”

“Hell no, I just got here. The only conclusion I’ve reached is that she’s dead,” Devlin said. “But I can tell that you think it’s murder.”

“How?” Julie asked.

“I’m not sure. I suppose it’s the same way my dog used to know I was going to take her for a walk even before I went for my coat, the leash, or said anything. Maybe it’s his body language.”

“So you are comparing me to a dog,” Monk said.

“Of course not,” Devlin said. “I adored my dog. Tell me why you think that Carin Branham didn’t just have too much to drink, take a lousy dive, and crack her head on the bottom of her pool.”

“For one thing, she’s still wearing her contact lenses. Most people would take their lenses off before going in the pool or at least wear a pair of goggles to protect their eyes.”

“That’s it?” Devlin said. “It means nothing. If she had a few drinks too many, she probably forgot she was wearing them.”

“And her watch, too,” Monk said, pointing to her wrist. “It’s not waterproof.”

Julie leaned forward and looked at the watch. There was water under the crystal.

“That’s not unusual,” Julie said. “I’ve gone in the shower once or twice with my watch on and I was sober.”

“Maybe so, but then there’s this,” he said and pointed at the pool.

Julie and Devlin stepped up to the edge and peered into the water.

“I don’t see anything,” Devlin said.

“Neither do I,” Julie said.

“You don’t see that piece of bark?” Monk said.

They both leaned closer and saw a speck of red wood floating on the surface.

“It’s a sliver,” Devlin said.

“But it’s more than enough to send someone to death row.”

Devlin turned and looked at him. “How do you figure that?”

“Because there is tan bark in the flower beds in the front yard and none in the back. So how did it get in the pool?”

“Does it matter?” she asked.

“When I arrived, I noticed a depression in the bed of bark where one of the rocks had been removed,” he said. “That rock is in the dirt beneath the bush on the other side of the pool, and it is wet.”

Devlin walked around the pool to the bush, got down on her knees, and peered underneath it. She took a pair of plastic gloves from her pocket, put them on, and reached into the bush for the rock. It was one of the smooth beach rocks from out front and it was wet. She sniffed the rock.

“It smells of chlorine.” She looked over her shoulder at Monk across the pool. “I’ll be damned.”

“Here’s what happened,” Monk said. “The killer arrived at her door, picked up the rock, and slipped it into his pocket before he rang the bell. She answered the door, invited him in, and they had a few drinks. At some point, he hit her on the forehead with the rock and then held her head under the water in the pool until she drowned. Then the killer cleaned the rock off in the pool, washing away the blood but also bits of mud and tan bark, then tossed it in the bushes. The killer undressed Carin, put her in a swimming suit, and threw her body in the pool.”

By now Monk had everyone’s attention, including the two uniformed officers and the four forensic techs, who had stopped what they were doing to listen to him.

Devlin dropped the rock into an evidence bag and directed the nearest forensic tech to photograph the sliver of bark in the water and then bag it as evidence.

“Good work, Monk,” Devlin said.

Julie was stunned. She’d expected Devlin to be angry with him. But then Julie realized that this was different from any of the crime scenes they’d been at with her before. This time, Monk and Devlin arrived on the scene together. He hadn’t shown up after her to contradict her conclusions and make her feel foolish in front of her colleagues. She had nothing to feel defensive about in this situation.

“Thank you,” Monk said. And everything would have been fine if he’d just left it at that, but he had to add one more comment. “But it was nothing. It was blatantly obvious what happened here.”

Devlin’s face tightened. “In other words, any fool could have seen it.”

“Well, not any fool,” Monk said. “But any reasonably observant person.”

Julie spoke up. “I do have one question.”

She didn’t really. She just wanted to stop Monk from irritating Devlin any further. Now they were both looking at her, waiting for her question. She searched her mind for one and, after a long moment, finally came up with something.

“What makes you think the killer had drinks with her?”

“He wouldn’t have put out the bottle of booze and the glass to suggest she’d had too much to drink unless he knew we’d find alcohol in her system during the autopsy.”

“She could already have been drinking when he got here,” Julie said.

“The tabletop is dirty,” Monk said, pointing to the tiny glass-topped table between the two chaise lounges. “The second glass, which the killer removed, washed, and probably put away, left a ring. That proves she had a guest and they were sitting out here together.”

“So she was killed by someone she knew,” Julie said.

“A friend,” Monk said. “Just like David Zuzelo.”

“That’s a huge leap, even for you,” Devlin said. “There’s nothing at all linking these two cases.”

“Three,” Monk said. “There’s also Grossman.”

“We don’t know that he was killed by a friend,” Devlin said.

“But all three murders were staged to look like accidents.”

“That doesn’t mean they were committed by the same guy,” Devlin said. “Or do you have a piece of lint or a dust particle or a bread crumb that proves otherwise?”

“Nothing but a feeling,” Monk said.

“It’s probably gas,” Devlin said.

“Impossible!” Monk said.

“You never have gas?” Devlin asked.

“Of course not. I’d die first, if not immediately afterward.”

“Gas isn’t fatal,” Devlin said.

“Tell that to the countless species that were driven to extinction in the Mesozoic era due to massive and uncontrolled dinosaur flatulence.”

Devlin stared at him. “You are making that up.”

“A comprehensive report published by the journal
Current Biology
calculated that plant-eating dinosaurs produced five hundred seventy-two million tons of methane per year, almost as much as all of today’s natural and man-made producers of the greenhouse gases combined,” Monk said. “Their deadly emissions created catastrophic global warming that wiped out scores of creatures. It was a flatulence Armageddon.”