Mr Monk and the Elevator

by Blynneda

Monk investigates an impossible crime (what's new), while Sharona deals with her ex-husband.

Well, I started this story long before watching "Sleeping Suspect," and damned if I'm not going to finish this now, continuity/canon be damned.  Dammit.  For the purposes of this story, Sharona's ex-husband will be named "Steve," because I swear that's what she called him once, anyway.

Aside:  I'll continue "Stress" eventually.  But I just felt like writing this story instead right now.

MR. MONK AND THE ELEVATOR

Chapter One

            Sharona had been agonizing over something the entire morning.  Monk noticed this, eventually, but decided not to comment.  He didn't think he'd done anything to upset her lately--if he had, she would've let him hear about it--so it must be personal.  Whenever he probed into Sharona's personal life, she got angry at him.  She insisted on maintaining some semblance of privacy, such as it was.

            It was such a beautiful day, and Monk didn't want to stir up trouble.  They had walked along the pier overlooking the bay after deciding to leave Monk's stuffy apartment.  Finding an unoccupied bench, they sat, and had been quietly watching the water.  The sun glinted off the white fiberglass of a pleasure boat below them.  Even Monk hadn't found fault with their surroundings for at least several minutes.

            "This is nice," Sharona murmured, almost as if to herself.

            "Yeah," Monk replied.

            Sharona turned her head slightly in Monk's direction, hesitated.

            Monk looked to his assistant with expectation.

            She swallowed hard.  "Adrian," she began in a weak voice.  "I need your help."

            Monk blinked.  "Did the world end without me noticing?"

            "I need to ask you a really big favor," Sharona pressed.

            Monk tilted his head back to the water and shrugged.  "Okay."

            Sharona held up a hand.  "No, wait.  I mean, really big.  If you say no, I'll understand."

            Monk stared at her curiously.  "Are you trying to ask for a raise?"

            That stopped Sharona.  She scowled at Monk in confusion.  "No.  I wasn't planning on that.  But while we're on the subject..."

            "What's the favor?" Monk interrupted abruptly.

            Sharona paused before continuing.  "My ex-husband is coming to town.  He told me he wanted to talk to me, face-to-face."

            Monk turned back to the view.  "You want a day off," he said, sounding disappointed.

            Sharona blinked a few times.  Realizing they weren't on the same page, she said, "No, Adrian, it's not that.  I want...I want you to come with me.  To meet him."

            Monk snapped his head back around.  "What?"

            "I don't want to face him alone!" Sharona cried, her voice breaking.  "I can't!"

            "Did he...hurt you?" Monk immediately asked with concern.

            Sharona took in a short gasp.  "No, he didn't hurt me.  Not, you know, physically.  But I can't see him without some support."

            Monk considered.  "Why me?" he asked finally.

            Sharona was wiping tears from her eyes.  "I don't know!" she sobbed.  "I need someone I can depend on, someone I can trust.   I couldn't think of anyone else, so I settled on you."

            Monk ignored the comment.  "Well, why don't you take your sister?"

            Sharona buried her face in her hands.  "You don't understand," she mumbled through her fingers.  "I have to take a man."

            Monk tried to reason it out.  "Okay...so you could take Disher."

            Sharona lifted her head to glare at Monk.

            He gulped.  "Or...I could go with you."

            "Thanks, Adrian," Sharona said, quirking a smile.  "Here's the other thing..."

            "Wait.  There's another thing?" Monk said, worried.

            "Yeah.  See, we have to pretend..."  Sharona's chin rested on her chest, her eyes straining upward to catch his reaction.  "We have to pretend that we're together."

            After a few seconds, Monk blinked.  "What do you mean?"

            Sharona got frustrated and snapped, "I want you to pretend you're my boyfriend, okay?!"

            "Why?"

            Sharona threw up her hands in disgust.  "My God, you're impossible!  Have I ever asked you for anything before?"

            "Yes," Monk said immediately.

            Sharona continued as if he hadn't spoken.  "Can't you just do this one thing for me, no questions asked?"

            Monk opened his mouth to answer, but was cut off by the ring of Sharona's cell phone.

            Sharona answered.  "Hello?  Yeah.  Where?  Thirty-first?  All right.  We'll be right over."

            Monk glanced at Sharona.  "Captain Stottlemeyer?" he said, already pushing himself up from the bench.

            Sharona tucked her phone back into her handbag and announced, "We have a job."

                        *   *   *

            Monk and Sharona had been standing in the lobby of the Wakeman Tower, a forty-story office building in the financial district for several minutes.  By reading the bulletin boards on the wall opposite the elevators, they discovered that the upper floors were leased out to law offices, an insurance company, and a publishing house.

            The lobby bustled with pre-lunch activity.  The pair of main elevators had already come and gone, full of passengers, several times while Sharona waited for Monk to build up the nerve to ascend.

            "Did you say the thirty-first floor?" Monk asked, looking up to the ceiling as if he could actually see the floor in question.

            "Yes.  It'll be fine, Adrian.  You're inside a building."

            Monk nodded.  "Do they have windows?"

            "What?"

            "Windows.  Up-up there."  He pointed upward.

            Sharona paused.  "Of course they have windows," she answered with impatience.

            Monk rubbed two fingers against his temple.  "I don't know."  He shook his head.  "I-I can't do this if there are windows."

            "They're not open windows!" Sharona exclaimed, grabbing Monk's arm to keep him from walking away.  "Let's go.  We've been staring at these elevators for ten minutes."  Before he could protest, Sharona yanked Monk after her into an open elevator.

            He stiffened as people crowded in behind them, pushing them against the wall.  "Maybe we should have taken the stairs."

            Sharona glared at him.  "I'm not climbing thirty-one flights of stairs just so you can feel comfortable."

            "I never feel comfortable," Monk protested.

            Sharona rolled her eyes.  "Yeah, I know.  You'd probably have to count the stairs on the way up."

            Monk squinted his eyes, trying to concentrate on the digital floor indicator above the doors.  He pressed into Sharona's shoulder, edging away from a woman with the stench of smoke in her clothes.  Sharona could feel him shaking.  "Sharona," he whimpered.

            "What?"  Sharona's eyes blinked back into focus as she looked up at his face.

            At times like these, Monk reminded Sharona of a trapped, frightened animal; the whites of his eyes flickered wildly, observing the other passengers with subdued panic.

            "Maybe we should have waited for one less crowded," Monk said quietly with a nod to the passengers.

            "Adrian, if we waited until it wasn't busy, we'd be standing down there all night!"

            "But this elevator is so-o small!" he whined, trying to gesture with his arms pressed against his sides.

            Sharona's mouth dropped open.  "You've gotta be kidding me!  This had to be the biggest elevator I've ever seen!"

            Monk half-shrugged, unconvinced.  "Well, maybe we should just go back and you can call the Captain and tell him we can't help him."  As the doors opened to release a passenger on the fifteenth floor, Monk said loudly, "Can someone push '1'?  We're going back down!"

            "Adrian!"  Sharona grabbed his arm firmly as the other passengers groaned in annoyance.  "We can't go back down until we get to the top floor," she said through her teeth.  "We might as well just go up there and do this."

            "Are you sure?" Monk asked in his pleading, child-like voice.  Sharona could remember the same words coming from Benjy's lips in the past.  He was so trusting then, so easily comforted by his mother's reassurance.  It was odd for a grown man to share that innocent appeal for consolation.

            She gave it to him.  "Of course I'm sure.  We're going to go up there and solve this case, and then leave everyone with their jaws hanging open.  Okay?"

            Monk exhaled lightly in relief.  "Okay."

            "And then tomorrow," she continued, looking away, "you can go with me to meet Steve."

            Sharona could sense her boss' stare, but before he could respond, the elevator doors opened on their floor.  "Let's get out of here," she said, brushing past the remaining passengers, with Monk in tow.

            The corridor on the thirty-first floor was swarming with uniformed police officers.  A young, military-looking cop stood at attention across the pair of elevators, his firmly firmly in place, his badge glinting on his broad chest.  Sharona let her eyes pass over him a few extra seconds.  The cop nodded them past him, his eyes lingering on Sharona's smile.  She strutted past him, confident that the officer was still watching her.

            Just ahead, a glass wall with a labeled door partitioned the offices of Insider Publishing from the main corridor.  Lt. Disher glanced out through the glass, then pushed the door open for them to enter.  He handled the door with unnecessarily extreme caution, wearing latex gloves and using a white cloth to hold the door handle.  With a private smile, Sharona pictured Disher as Monk.  Both shared an obsession with clean evidence.

            "It's a tough nut to crack, Monk," Disher said as they entered the internal lobby and stopped in front of the secretary's desk.  "I don't know if even you can get this one."

            "You're a tough nut!" Sharona jeered at the Lieutenant, who blinked back in confusion.

             Monk looked around.  "Where's the victim?"

            "Back in his office," Disher jerked a thumb behind him vaguely.  "The Captain's back there now."

            "What is this, a maze?" Monk asked with exasperation.

            Disher paused.  "It's just down the hall."

            Sharona and Monk walked down the hall and entered the first office on their left.  The room was empty and dark, despite the blinds having been pulled up.  The sun cast a glaze over streaks on the window, causing Monk to twitch with anxiety.  He swallowed back the fixation in favor of his fear of heights.

            Sharona didn't notice any of this.  After a quick glance around the room, noticing only a fairly neat desk, she stepped back.  "Come on, it's the wrong room."  She tugged on Monk's arm, dragging him back into the hallway.

            "Monk!  There you are!"  Captain Stottlemeyer's voice boomed from the next doorway.  "Welcome to the party."

            Monk looked around nervously.  "Party?  There's a party?"  He started to turn around.

            Sharona caught his elbow.  "Adrian, it's a figure of speech."

            Monk blinked at her.  "I knew that."

            Stottlemeyer stared at the pair, his arms crossed over his chest.  "Would you like to take a look at the scene here, or would you prefer to solve the case from the hallway?"

            Monk swallowed.  "Are you really giving me a choice?"

            Stottlemeyer rolled his eyes and walked back into the office.  Sharona and Monk followed.

            The room looked as neat as the one next door had been.  Nothing seemed to be out of place:  no file cabinets overturned, or even drawers opened; no papers littering the floor.  In fact, only the dark brown stain on the desk's surface indicated that anything was amiss.  The desk faced the door, framed by the wide window on the back wall.  Soft light filled the office.  There were no blinds or curtains to shield the office from an outside view, which consisted primarily of other nearby tall buildings.  Monk kept an uncomfortable eye on the window.

            "So, here's what we've got.  Logan Modest, former chief editor of Insider Publishing..."  Stottlemeyer spread his arms to indicate the entirety of the publishing offices.  "Shot once in the back of the head, execution-style.  We found him in this chair, slumped over his desk.  Looked like a complete surprise."

            Sharona cringed, lifting a hand to cover her eyes.

            "There was no exit wound, so it had to be a low-caliber handgun.  Even still, it was pretty messy.  We already cleaned it up.  We have pictures, if you need it," Stottlemeyer offered.

            Monk nodded.  "I don't think so.  Time of death?"

            Disher popped into the room behind them, startling Sharona.  "Yesterday afternoon at the earliest.  Still running the tests on that one.  The M.E.'ll give us a more exact T.O.D."

            Monk cocked his head.  "T.O.D.?" he asked.

            Disher shrugged.  "Time of death," he replied, with an air of explaining the obvious.

            "Any witnesses?"

            "Nope," Stottlemeyer said.  "His secretary was out front, last one to talk to him.  She sent a phone call back to him at about two in the afternoon.  She left early for a doctor's appointment, didn't see him come out.  He was still alive at two, she said."

            "Can we talk to her?" Sharona asked.

            Stottlemeyer shrugged.  "Be my guest."

            Monk tilted his head to one side.  With sudden urgency, he asked, "Did you say Logan Modest?"

            Everyone turned their heads toward Monk.

            "Yeah," Stottlemeyer said.

            "Of Insider Publishing?" Monk urged.

            "Yeah," Stottlemeyer confirmed with some irritation.  "Do you know him?"

            Monk narrowed his eyes until they were slits, looking thoughtful.

            "What is it, Adrian?" Sharona asked gently.

            They held their breath for his answer, but Monk only shook his head.  He took a step toward the desk, his hand grasping at some invisible object in front of him.  "No struggle," he murmured.  "Do you have a suspect?"

            Disher suppressed a laugh with a snort.

            Stottlemeyer glared at his lieutenant.  "I think the better question is who don't we suspect.  Apparently, Mr. Modest was not particularly well-liked by anyone.  Nasty personality."

            "Could've been some nutso writer whose manuscript got rejected," Disher said confidently.

            "So that's what you need us for," Sharona concluded, ignoring the lieutenant.

            Stottlemeyer sratched the back of his neck.  "Actually, we have a bigger problem."

            "What is it?" Monk asked.

            The captain paused to take another look around the room.  "We don't even know how whoever did it, did it.  There's only one entrance to this room.  We had to bust the door in when we came."

            "It was locked," Disher pointed out helpfully.

            "Yeah, Randy, it was locked," Stottlemeyer growled.  "Thing is, there's only one key to unlock that door.  And it was in Mr. Modest's pocket."

            "It couldn't have been a suicide, because he was shot--boom--" Disher demonstrated by pointing his index finger at the back of his head-- "back here."

            Monk almost smiled, gazing into space thoughtfully.  "That's interesting."

            "I thought you might think so."  Stottlemeyer crossed his arms.  "If you can tell me how someone got out of this room through a locked door, thirty floors up, I'd appreciate it."

            Monk stared at the window.  Then he flinched and reached an arm out for support from Sharona.  "Oh, my God.  Oh...my...God."

            Sharona patted his back.  "Adrian, what's wrong?"

            Monk was still looking at the window.  "That...that man.  What's he doing?"

            "What man?" Stottlemeyer, Disher, and Sharona asked simultaneously.

            Everyone looked out the window.  Almost directly across from the window, on the next building, a tiny-looking platform was suspended along the wall.  On it, a man in coveralls was busy cleaning the windows with a squeegee.

            "It's a window washer," Stottlemeyer said.

            "What's he doing?" Monk asked, panicked.

            Stottlemeyer waited a beat, then answered, "Washing windows."

            "Outside?" Monk cried.

            "That's his job, Adrian," Sharona insisted.  "Your job is figuring out what happened here."

            Monk continued to stare out the window a moment longer.  Then he turned away and walked out of the office.  Sharona shot a confused look at Stottlemeyer, then followed her boss.

            "I guess he's working on it!" Sharona yelled behind her.

            Stottlemeyer jogged after them.  "One more thing, Monk!"

            Monk stopped and looked back.  "Yeah?"

            "We're thinking about the next guy down the totem pole."  He nodded at the first office Monk and Sharona had entered.  "Seems he had his eye on the top.  Maybe you'd want to look into it."

            "What's his name?" Sharona asked, her pen ready on a notepad.

            "Maloney.  John Maloney."

            Sharona nodded.  "We'll call you!" she said, as Monk headed for the lobby.

            She caught up to Monk at the elevators.  "So, what do you think?  Do you know who did it yet?"

            Monk glanced over at her with a slightly perplexed expression.  "Sharona.  I barely got started here.  What do you think I am, a miracle worker?"

            Sharona pushed the 'down' button.  "Yes.  You are."

            Monk spoke softly, almost as if to himself.  "How could someone kill a man locked inside a room?"

            Sharona watched his face for the sudden dawning of enlightenment.  It didn't come.

            The elevator doors opened.  Only two other people stood inside.  Sharona pulled Monk inside and guided him to the back corner.

            "Logan...Modest," Monk murmured, completely oblivious to his surroundings.

            Sharona observed Monk from the corner of her eye.

            "Logan Modest," Monk repeated with more certainty in his tone.

            "What is it?" Sharona asked.

            "I know who that is," Monk said.

            Sharona hesitated.  "Yeah.  He's the guy who was killed."

            Monk shook his head.  "No.  He's an editor."

            Sharona waited for Monk to explain.

            "Trudy's editor," Monk said finally.  "He accepted a manuscript from Trudy.  Insider Publishing was the publisher for her book."

Sharona paused.  "Trudy wrote a book?  What what it about?" she asked cheerfully.

Monk's answer came in a faint, pathetic voice, barely a squeak.  "Me."