"Anything at all?" Natalie asked Adrian as he ever so carefully looked through the newspaper Ambrose had given him back at the precinct.
"Nothing we don't already know," Adrian shook his head, "I've looked through about four…"
He abruptly trailed off as he turned the page and stared at a photograph in the upper left corner. "Wait a minute," he said as he stared intently at it, "This is Arthur Schmidt's car here that got wrecked."
"It is?" Natalie leaned over his shoulder and stared at it herself, "How are you sure?"
"I recognized his license plate when the tow truck drove it by the apartment the night he was killed," Adrian pointed at it, "And that's Schmidt on the ground here," he pointed next at a barely discernable shape near the large dented section of the car that had apparently just been hit, "He must have leaped out of the way before the accident. And look at this car," he gestured at a dark blob pulling around the corner at the top of the photograph, "This is his wife's car."
"Where?" Disher had approached.
"Right here," Adrian pointed it out for him. The detective made some obtuse gestures. "Here's what happened," he breathed, "Schmidt's wife tried to kill him here and failed. She tried to run him down in the street."
"So it was her who killed him in the end as well, then?" Disher asked him. Before Adrian could say anything else, however, an old woman came striding up. "Excuse me!" she snapped at the lieutenant after whacking him on the shoulder, "I've been waiting for someone to talk to me for six hours!"
"Oh, um, right," Disher quickly produced a notepad and pencil, "Um, what seems to be the problem, Miss…?"
"Esther Hollway," she barked at him, "I filed a complaint for stolen property two days ago, and no one's bothered to follow up on it!"
"OK, um, so what was stolen?" the lieutenant inquired.
"I came home from bowling night Saturday night and found my house had been broken into," Hollway told him, "Two oxygen tanks and my vacuum cleaned right out! I don't know how much they pay you people to patrol the streets, but it's clearly not enough to make you try…!"
"One, one moment,," Adrian held up his hand, "Mrs. Hollway, do you by any chance live on front Street by that old refrigerator warehouse?"
"Yeah, about five blocks away," she told him, "What does that have to do with anything?"
"Um, we have a feeling these thefts might be connected with a murder," Natalie told her. She glanced at Adrian, "Right?"
"It could be," her employer made some more gestures, "We know that whatever killed Schmidt was fired at high speed. Compressed oxygen could provide that speed."
"But what could they use that vacuum tube for?" Disher pondered.
"Probably to connect to the rifles, I guess," the detective said, "What concerns me more is what exactly was used to kill Schmidt. And who else was in that warehouse with Schmidt and the murderer?"
"And what why would the murderer stoop to petty theft to get what he needed?" Disher asked, "He'd be taking a risk trying to break into someone's house."
"Why don't you do some actual police work and try and find out!" Hollway whacked Disher in the shoulder again.
"Right, uh, of course, uh, why don't you come with me and we'll file out a report?" rubbing his shoulder, Disher led her off. No sooner had he left than Stottlemeyer approached. "Good news, Monk," he told his go-to guy, "We're bringing in that James Marshall guy you said might be suspicious for questioning. If he's guilty we'll get something out of him here and now. You got anything else?"
"Maybe," Adrian related to him what he'd learned in the last few minutes. Stottlemeyer nodded once he was done. "Well, since we still have an excess of suspects here, we'd better start narrowing things down a bit," the captain remarked, "Later tonight let's go check out the Hong Yong Kitchen and see if Schmidt Junior and Hallett could have gone from…"
"Sir, here's Marshall," called an officer from the door to the bullpen. He was leading in an impeccably dressed man who immediately made swiping motions at the nearest desk. That's not clean at all!" he told the officer seated behind it, "I demand you clean it up."
"Hello Jimmy," Stottlemeyer strolled over to him, "So nice of you to drop by. I hear you're one of a load of people who hated Arthur Schmidt."
"You haven't bathed today, have you?" Marshall stared right at the captain, "I can tell when someone hasn't bathed. I don't like being in the same room with people who don't wash regularly."
Stottlemeyer looked slowly back and forth between the suspect and Adrian. "Don't you worry Jimmy, this'll be over very quickly if you'll just cooperate with us," he told him.
"Oh I think it's going to be over quicker than that," Marshall gave the captain a strange look as he was led toward the interrogation room. Adrian flinched as he took in this look. "What?" Natalie had noticed this reaction.
"Karen," Adrian breathed softly, "She knows he's here." He glanced up at the clock, "The captain's got five minutes at most to get any confession."
He rushed toward the observation window to the interrogation room, his assistant hot on his heels. "Wait, so what you're saying is the two of them may be in it together?" she had to know.
"They know each other quite well," Adrian told her, but did not elaborate. Inside the interrogation room, Stottlemeyer had a stern look on his face as Marshall wiped at the table. "You haven't dusted in here in a long time, have you?" he told the captain.
"Jimmy, have a seat," Stottlemeyer pushed him down into the chair and started pacing around the table, "You'll be out of here in five minutes if you can just tell me where you were Saturday night at eight."
"I was on the ferry back from Alcatraz," Marshall protested, "My family can vouch for it. Now if you don't mind, I have a very busy schedule to…"
"Not right now you don't," Stottlemeyer gleamed triumphantly, "The ferry to Alcatraz doesn't run that late, Jimmy. Now if you don't mind, I'd like the truth this time. You can't deny you were upset with Schmidt for firing you, so you lured him to the warehouse and you killed him, am I getting warm?"
"I'm not saying another word until my attorney gets here!" Marshall folded his arms across his chest defiantly, "Which should be any minute now."
"Oh I think you're going to speak again long before…" Stottlemeyer started to say as he leaned toward his suspect menacingly. It was then that the moment Adrian had been afraid of occurred: the door to the interrogation room swung open and Maximilian J. Tepperman, attorney at law, sauntered confidently in. The captain's expression turned absolutely murderous at the sight of the newcomer. "What do you think you're doing here, Tepperman?" he growled darkly.
"Like I said, I'm not saying anything till my lawyer's here, and now he's here," Marshall rose up again, "I'm dying in here, Max; too much dust."
"No problem at all, James," Tepperman reassured him, "You won't have to stay here any longer."
"Listen to me Tepperman," Stottlemeyer shouted at him, "This man is a possible murderer! If you pull another trick of yours to let him walk…!"
"When you had no real case against him in the first place?" Tepperman told him smarmily. The lawyer dug a piece of paper from his coat pocket and slapped it into Stottlemeyer's palm, "Writ of release, read it and weep. You're not to come after Mr. Marshall again, or there'll be a very stiff penalty waiting for you. And in case you need reminding, your first payment under Judge Lawrence's recent decision is due in a week, or you'll have to pay double the payment sum the next time around. Come on James, let's get you home where you belong."
He led a smiling Marshall out of the interrogation room. For a moment Stottlemeyer just stared after the two of them. Then, as Adrian and Natalie continued watching, he absolutely snapped. He flipped the table over in a rage, smashed one chair against the floor, and hurled another toward the window. The two of them ducked as it cracked the glass with a loud crash. "Actually, maybe we'd better given him some private time," the detective told her quickly, his hand over his face, "This could take a while."
"Tell me about it," Natalie was equally upset over the captain's actions as they scurried away back to Disher's desk. It was about ten minutes later that Stottlemeyer reemerged, still looking enraged. "Did you two see what happened there?" he asked them between aggravated breaths.
"Uh, yes," Adrian shook his head, "I, I saw everything. Not good at all. Let me just say…"
"If I find out who sent that creep to bail him out," the captain interrupted him, "There's going to be hell to pay like you can't believe! He's not going to be able to handle jaywalking cases in this city when I get through with him for this!"
"But what if it's not Marshall?" Adrian had to ask him, "I'm not sure yet that…"
"You were there Monk; he was covering something up!" the captain pointed out. He held up the writ Tepperman had given him and tore it up. "And I don't give a damn what that big shot says, I'm going to get to the bottom of this whole thing and nail Marshall to the wall no matter what it takes! I'll see you at five, Monk; we'll go check out that restaurant theory then. In the meantime, I have some stuff I need to take care of!"
He stormed off, kicking hard the wastebasket next to the nearest desk and sending it flying. Adrian grimaced as garbage flew everywhere. As if things were bad enough….
It was several hours later that Adrian sat hunched over his desk back at his apartment, clippings and photos of Trudy's murder laid out before him. He often went over the case again when he had spare time, and until the others came to pick him up to go to the restaurant, he had that time (Natalie was picking Julie up at school for the day at the moment, thus giving him more time on his own). He stared intently at several blown-up photographs of the exploded car, trying to find some subtle clue that he hadn't noticed before over the years. None appeared to be forthcoming, however. He sighed in sadness. He'd solved dozens of cases over the years at a single glance, but he couldn't get a break on the one that mattered most to him if his life depended on it…
He was so wrapped up examining the evidence, in fact, that he initially did not hear the door to his apartment open. Thus, he jumped rather high in shock when he heard the floorboards creak directly behind him. "WHO….?" he cried out in surprise.
"Will you calm down, Monk?" it was Linda. The realtor laid down the briefcase she was carrying on his desk and stared out one of the newspaper clippings. "Hard at work, I see?" she inquired.
"Very," Adrian nodded, "Tell me, Linda, do you always just walk into places you want to go without knocking?"
"Do you always leave your door unlocked at all hours of the day?" she countered. Her gaze returned to the nearest picture of Trudy. "I remember when it happened," she told the detective, "I read her columns a lot. It's shame they still haven't caught the son of a…"
There came another major blast of heavy metal from the apartment overhead. "Will you please turn it off you sons of…!" she screamed up at the ceiling, only to be further drowned out by an even louder burst of music.
"They won't, they never have since they got here!" Adrian shouted over the din, "I can't believe I'm actually wishing for Kevin Dorffman to be around again!" Once the music finally died down again, he turned to his visitor and inquired, "So, I suppose you do actually have a reason to be here?"
"I'll be going off to a conference in San Luis Obispo for the next two days," Linda leaned against the wall, "Don't really want to, but the damn state board, the sons of…"
Yet another blast of music cut her off again. Rolling her eyes, she waited until it was over yet again before continuing, "Anyway, I need a favor of you while I'm gone, Monk."
"More favors?" Adrian sighed.
"I want you to take care of Leland while I'm gone," she told him, deep concern creeping onto her face, "He's really been up in arms about his ex lately, and I'm worried he's going to do something he'll regret. Just this afternoon he was going on over the phone about how he thinks she's using her lawyer to interfere in his cases now."
"It, it could actually be a little worse than that," Adrian shook his head, "I can't tell you about it, it's sort of confidential, but I'm just as worried about him as you are, believe me."
He glanced at the largest portrait of Trudy hanging on the wall. "Rage is strange," he mused out loud, "It can get you through the hardest times by giving you thoughts of justice against the people you think have wronged you, but too much of it can turn you into someone else, someone you don't like when you look closer. Rage was all that kept me going when I lost Trudy. I wanted the heads of the people responsible. Trudy kept me from getting out of control. The captain," he sighed deeply, "He doesn't have that crutch. Not anymore."
"When my husband walked out on me, I wanted his blood more than anything, "Linda confided in him, "Then I realized that just because he was a son of a…" After yet another blast of music interrupted her again, she continued, "Just because he ran me into the ground didn't give me the right to spill his blood back. That would make me no better than him. Revenge only gets more revenge. Unfortunately, I don't think Leland's learned that all just yet. So I need you to promise to make sure he doesn't go off the edge somehow while I'm out, Monk. I don't want to lose him, not yet."
"I'm sure you don't," Adrian commented. Sometimes, he thought, it seemed Linda cared for Stottlemeyer a little TOO much, in particular since she seemed to know more about the captain after knowing him for only a few months than Adrian himself did after over fifteen years.
A loud beeper went off. "Son of a…!" Linda groaned out loud before the music upstairs started up yet again and drowned the end of her sentence out again, "I told them thirty minutes! Anyway, I'm going to miss my ride if I don't go now, Monk, but do I have your word?"
"I can't make any promises, Linda, but I'll do my best for the captain," Adrian told her.
"Then I'll see you in two days or so," the realtor retrieved her briefcase and gave the detective what probably passed as a smile for her before walking out the door. The moment she was gone, Adrian walked over to his closet, pulled out his vacuum, and started vacuuming along the rug's diagonal lines; he didn't trust leaving it go when people with alien footwear tramped around on the carpet. Once he was sure everything was clean, he trudged over to the wall and stared at the picture of Trudy he'd focuses on earlier. "What am I getting myself into?" he asked her sadly, "There's no way I can keep this promise. He's going to find out what we're keeping from him eventually, and then, like he says, there's going to be hell to pay for all of us. All of us."
