"Thank you for coming," Sheriff Gregory greeted the two of them as they entered his office, "Is the girl going to be all right?"
"We, we really don't know yet," Adrian admitted worriedly, straightening out the calendar on the wall, "So you have no idea how al-Waziri escaped?"
"Come see for yourself," Gregory waved them into the back, "I'd just given him lunch, I walked into the office for all of one minute, and when I looked back in he was gone. I don't know. Maybe you can find something. And I haven't touched it since he got out, I can tell you now."
He gestured at the cell the Taliban militant had previously been confined to, still locked firmly. Adrian paced back and forth in front of it, making obtuse hand gestures. "And he had no access to the key?" he inquired.
"It was on my belt the whole time; it would have been out of his reach," Gregory shook his head, "No duplicates either."
"No signs of drilling, the walls and floor are completely intact," Adrian sighed, "No vents, either. There's no way he could have gotten out of there. No one saw anything at all?"
"No, and I asked the people next door," the sheriff told him, "Nothing. He's just vanished into thin air."
"As if this whole case didn't need to get any stranger," Don shook his head as well, "Invisible intruders, people getting in and out of locked rooms without a trace, ghost stories. If this were Halloween, I'd..."
There came a rattling sound as Adrian started seperating the cashews inside a metal box on Gregory's desk. "Don't, don't mind me," he told them, placing larger and smaller nuts into even rows, "Did you get anything out of him, Sheriff?"
"Not from him, no, but I did call the armory," Gregory told him, "We've still got a good amount of weapons out there; the stash you found in al-Waziri's hideout is only about half of what was stolen. It was too complex a robbery to have been done by one person, they think."
"Then the question is, who else is al-Waziri working with?" Don posited, "And how are they getting the weapons to him?"
"And how did they know Bill Burroughs, and by extension John Turcotte, was onto them?" Adrian added, bagging several peanuts so the rows would all have an even number of nuts, "And what do they hope to gain from abducting the Turcottes? And how were Breckinridge and the rest of the C.I.A. agents killed in a sealed room? There has to be a more rational reason than ghosts. I hope the professor can figure out the code soon enough; there's too many tangents here to work with."
"Code?" Gregory inquired with raised eyebrows.
"Phil Seiderbaum had written some kind of code, we're still trying to figure it out," Don explained to him, "My brother's working to break..."
Just then his cell phone rang; from what Adrian could see it was in fact Charlie calling. "Yeah Charlie, what've you got?" his brother asked him when he activated it.
"Uh, bad news, Don," Charlie told him grimly, "The code's gone. Someone stole it when my back was turned."
Both his brother and Adrian smacked their heads in frustration simultaneously. "All right, all right, we'll be right back," Don said wearily, "Might as well head back, Monk."
"I, I still have to clean the bathroom in here," Adrian pointed at it, "It clearly hasn't been done in a while; I told Sharona to bring the utensils when..."
"No time," his associate starting to drag him towards the door. "Ac, actually, one more thing," the detective held up his hand, lining up the nutcrackers on top of Gregory's computer so they were exactly equidistant from each other, "Sheriff, you, you wouldn't happen to know if there's a discount shop that sells worthwhile items around? I got barred from most of the stores in town."
"Try the strip malls on Route 30," Gregory suggested, "You might find whatever you're looking for there. In the meantime, let me know if you find anything else."
Adrian nodded. Gregory frowned as the two of them left and scratched his head. "Hmm..."
"Good, you made it," Adrian greeted a harried-looking Sharona back at the computer lab, "Any new news?"
"None," she shook her head, "I offered to help with anything, but they said they could handle it. Medical professionals..."
"Is Natalie OK now?"
"If you mean calmer, yes, the tranquilizers did the job. They say she'll be up and about in an hour or so, but I know she won't be fine until she knows...what the hell is so funny, Adrian!?"
The detective couldn't suppress a small chuckle. "Oh, I was just thinking, if all those online fan people knew right now that you walked out without telling me and permanently wrecked the very fabric of my existence, they'd love this moment," he admitted, "Just you and me again for the moment, like old times. Feels interesting, doesn't it?"
"All it feels is revolting, Adrian, that you are still so incredibly insensitive," Sharona gave him a harsh glare, "The Teegers are going through serious trauma, and your first thought is how..."
"All right, don't make me put the two of you in a corner," Jack piped up from the table where Charlie was seated. "I couldn't take it anymore, it was too horrible being there," he admitted to his son, "So I figured I'd go see how you guys were doing."
"Yeah, I guess being around people who actually can show affection was too much for your brain," the nurse retorted at him, "I didn't invite you to come along for..."
"Could you keep it down, please!?" Don raised his voice. He turned to his brother and asked exasperatedly, "So run by me again what happened?"
"I had to...take care of some stuff," Charlie admitted, shifting about uncomfortably, "When I got back, the paper wasn't here anymore," he pointed at the exact spot it had been, "I didn't hear any doors open, no windows creaking, nothing."
"No, no signs of a break in," Don admitted, noticing no tampering with the lab's windows. He kicked a chair in frustration, "As if anything else couldn't go wrong with this case."
"But I did make some progress," Charlie told him, holding up another paper, "I was able to find about five letters from the pattern. Those representing the letters in 'the' were easiest to break down, so I've got about one sixteenth of..."
The computer started buzzing again with an incoming video message. A woman was now sitting at the console in Los Angeles. "Don, we've got the contact you were looking for," she told him.
"OK, good work Megan," Don nodded, gently pushing his brother aside, "Who is it?"
"His name's Lester Harvey," Megan typed in a few keys at her console, and Harvey's image appeared in full on the screen, "Records show Duane Carter made fourteen calls to him over a two year period "
"Hang on, I've actually heard of this guy," Jack exclaimed, "His brother Vernon ran a truck stop out by Flagstaff for close to a decade; he mentioned Lester a lot when I stopped there. Vernon was fingered for the murder of a young drifter that stayed at his place, but he skipped town before charges could be filed."
"Wow, small world," Don stared at him, "It seems like every one of us knows someone involved in this case."
"TOO small a world," Adrian commented, "It's almost like there's too many coincidences here, as if this whole thing was thought up by one of those online fan writers."
He paused for a moment, as if this had somehow been a profound statement. "Well anyway, Lester Harvey was investigated as part of a terrorist plot against a federal building in upstate Michigan," Megan continued for their benefit, "His code name in the Michigan Militia was Scorpion. And the agent assigned to that case has since gone missing, records show."
"John Turcotte?" Sharona asked.
"Yes. How'd...Sharona Fleming? Hey, is Monk there?" Megan was impressed.
"Yes, I'm, I'm here," Adrian leaned forward, "This, this is my father," he gestured at Jack, "You don't know him yet, it hasn't been relevant in the series yet, but he walked away when I was eight and destroyed my life to the core."
"Well, glad to know I did make a difference after I left," the former trucker shrugged.
"I watch your show every now and then; I can see why people like it," Megan told him, "It's nice to know the same people are going to be making one about us soon. Well, if they're going to start from the point Charlie said they'd start, I won't be there from the beginning. Too bad."
"Don't feel bad, I'm not really working for Adrian anymore," Sharona informed her, "I'm just here now by some twist of cosmic fate, like a writer...now look what you've done Adrian, now you've got me doing it too!" she yelled at him.
"Doing what?" he was confused.
"Anyway, Megan, Lester Harvey, what else did you find?" Don interrupted before things could get crazier.
"He signed up for the army in 2001 under a false name," Megan said, "Apparently his mother was in the North Tower when it went down." After an uncomfortable pause, she went on, "He openly expressed his belief that the military wasn't hard enough on the Afghanis, that they all needed to be punished for what had happened. He was arrested after he was found to have participated in the torture of several Afghan civilians that were mistakenly captured as fighters. During his court martial, he yelled at the judges that they were the traitors for not being harsh enough, and they would pay if they convicted him. The court took it in stride and gave him fifteen years and a dishonorable discharge. But the convoy carrying him to the states and prison was attacked, and he escaped in the confusion. He's been under the radar since then."
"And he knew Carter before that?" her superior inquired.
"Army records show he was assigned to the same unit as Carter for five months," she told him, adding quickly, "This was after Colby was transferred to another part of the country. So what he told you's probably how it actually happened."
Don sighed out loud. "All that time Carter was right in front of us, and we never investigated this," he mumbled. "All right, tell everyone to put out an A.P.B. for Harvey. And try and find anyone else who served with him; we need any lead we can to find this guy."
"Well that's going to be a little easier said than done," Megan told him, "Harvey was disfigured in the attack that freed him. They think he might have had complete facial surgery, so there's no telling what he looks like right now. We can..."
"Sorry, sorry, it's the star on the tree behind you," Adrian interrupted, "It has seven points."
"And?"
"And, could, could you add a point or take one away?"
"Tell you what I can do," Megan walked over to the tree and removed the star completely. "Much, much better," the detective nodded, "Ac, Actually, I've got another thought, check for whether there've been other robberies at other federal armories. Maybe this has been going on for a while and we just haven't heard about it."
"Will do," she nodded, "Hope you get a white Christmas over there, Monk."
"Why? It means I'll have more snow to even out?"
"You really are one in a million, you know that Monk," she told him with a sly smile as she disconnected. "OK, let me see if I've got this all figured out," Jack proposed, "This Duane Carter guy decided to make a fast buck at our expense and started selling the Afghans our weapons. Lester Harvey finds out--he might have stumbled onto the scheme by accident and blackmailed him, I'm guessing--and gets involved as well. They leave Afghanistan and continue their operations covertly over here. Carter gets arrested and killed," he glanced at the Eppeses, who nodded to confirm this, "So Harvey takes over his end of the operations on his own. Well, likely not on his own; I'd give any amount of money to say he's got Vernon with him, since he's got nowhere else to run to himself, and if there's one person you can trust in these matters, it's your next of kin."
"As if you really know anything about that," Sharona grumbled. Jack ignored her. "The C.I.A. gets suspicious," he went on, "Turcotte recognizes his old enemy, and sends in Bill Burroughs to flush him out. Harvey figures him out, and has him killed, and takes out two innocents in the process. Wait, on second thought, maybe first he realized it was Turcotte on him, kidnapped him and his daughter, then forced him to admit who his agent was. And now that we're getting close, they're after us too."
"But something still doesn't seem to add up," his son pointed out, "How are they getting the weapons to al-Waziri? During a reenactment, you can't just walk around the battlefield in the middle of the night with modern weaponry; there'd be too many witnesses. And if they wanted to get us off his back, why aim for Julie even if it does instill us with fear? It would make more sense to take Agent Eppes or me out. I can't help thinking there's some factors here we're still not considering."
"I can take what we know and plug it into a vector theorem," Charlie proposed, "If there's any data that doesn't fit the pattern, it'll show up."
"All right, but first I want to know where you think al-Waziri's headed," his brother told him, "Which direction seems the best way for him to go."
Charlie thought this over for a minute. He wrote several equations down on scrap paper. "Maybe not in any direction," he proposed. "Imagine if you will that you're in the park and throwing a stick to your dog. He won't come back until he searches it out and finds it."
"I'm, I'm not sure I understand," Adrian frowned.
"Well, OK, it's not the best explanation," Charlie shrugged, "My point is, if al-Waziri hasn't gotten all of his weapons yet, he won't go anywhere until he does. Now since the jail was here in relation to the battlefield,..." he drew a circle on a spare piece of paper. "It's not, not a perfect circle," Adrian pointed out.
"Doesn't have to be," Sharona grumbled in his ear.
"But if he's an ace mathematician, he should know..."
"Shhh!" Don hissed at them. Charlie drew a dot representing the prison on the paper outside the circle. "They say the shortest distance between two points is a straight line," he said, being sure to draw the line carefully straight for Adrian's benefit to the middle of the circle, "My guess is he took this here to the most isolated..."
In what was becoming a repeating pattern, Don's cell phone abruptly rang again. "Yeah?" he asked, his face now going white. "They did WHAT, Sheriff? Oh God. Do a prelim search, we'll be right over. Amy Seiderbaum," he grimly told the others, "I was right that this guy's a psycho; it's not pretty at all what happened."
