I, of course, now take a break to tell you the tragic story of a certain red Mercedes S-Class sedan parked downtown on the north side of Fell Street where it intersected Market Street, right outside a 25 story apartment building. It had had its roof flattened, and its windows were shattered, which is exactly what you'd expect to have happen to it when a 150-200 pound weight is dropped on it from 20 floors up. And when that same weight happens to be a dead body, well, it creates a pretty bloody and pretty gory mess that attracts crowds of shocked onlookers, a swarm of police officers and crime scene investigators, and, this being San Francisco, the three of us.
That's what we were called to examine on that Wednesday night, after a long day that had included ten homicide victims (I refused to count the henchmen we'd shot during the McClellan ambush as homicide victims).
We were examining the body, and the crushed car. After all those shootings, I was a little queasy.
"You okay, Kendra?" Adrian asked me.
I took a breath. "Yeah, I'm fine."
"Horrible, isn't it?" Natalie said.
"Well at least something was here to provide a cushion for his fall," Adrian said, "Not that it did any good."
"What do you mean by a 'cushion'?" Natalie asked.
"If he hit the asphalt, his remains would have splattered everywhere. This is way too perfect," he said, "Too perfect to be a coincidence that this car was parked here to catch the body."
I wasn't uncomfortable around crime scenes or dead bodies, and neither was Natalie. We'd grown used to seeing such graphic scenes over our years fighting crime besides Adrian. And this didn't look half as bad as the corpses of the armored car guards or the hitmen who'd been executed by Douglas O'Donnell or members of his robbery crew. There is a big difference between pushed to your death and being shot at point-blank range.
Adrian walked slowly around the car, holding up his hands in front of him, framing the scene the way a movie director picks and frames his shots. Natalie and I followed him.
He stopped by the driver's side of the car. Then he took out a pair of tweezers and picked up something from the asphalt.
"What is it?" Natalie asked.
"These look like they are ordinary reading glasses," he said. He had found a pair of glasses. One arm had been broken, and both lenses were cracked.
Natalie grabbed an evidence bag from her purse for Adrian to drop his discovery into.
"Maybe he was wearing them when he fell," I said.
"You know, Kendra, I'm not so sure about that," Adrian replied, twiddling his tweezers in his hand, "These were too far from the body for that to have happened."
"Should this be significant?" I asked.
"Maybe," Adrian shrugged. He took a look at the body's feet, sticking out from under a tarp. They looked like the Wicked Witch of the East's feet peeking out from under a house that had landed on her.
"Size 11 shoes," Adrian said, "Nikes."
"Dad's upstairs," I said.
I pointed up to the apartments on the building right next to the street.
Adrian looked up. "Huh, what a nice way to die. Did your dad say anything more about how this guy died?"
"Other than that he was an Intertect employee? He said that whether he fell, jumped, or pushed was not clear, but he had reason to believe that the death was suspicious," Natalie said.
"I'm thinking 'pushed' is the most likely answer, don't you think?" I asked.
Adrian nodded his head. "I have to agree with Kendra. Let's go upstairs and take a look."
We made our way upstairs, where we found an officer guarding the door to the apartment that presumably belonged to the victim.
"Monk, thanks for coming," my dad said when we entered the apartment. "I hope I didn't interrupt your evening plans here."
"So who's the victim?" Adrian asked.
"His name's David Ellison," my dad said, "49 years old. He was an ex-cop, worked at Intertect Investigations."
"He worked at Intertect?" Adrian asked.
"Yeah," my dad said, "Worked there for the past three years after taking early retirement."
"I assume that's why we're down here," Adrian said, "An Intertect investigator has died."
"Yeah," my dad said, "You work for Intertect, and you think Douglas O'Donnell might be involved in Denise Hossack's and Luke Reordan's deaths, and possibly also the armored car job, so I figured there had to be a connection."
We walked into the apartment. The entry was a narrow hallway that led to a living space, with an open kitchen on the left, another hallway branching off to the right, and the dining and living room straight ahead. Forensics people were taking photographs of everything, and all the lights had been turned up.
Adrian sniffed the air.
"I smell cologne," he said.
I instinctively sniffed to check.
"Yeah, I smell that too," I said, "Smells very familiar."
"Does it smell familiar to either of you?" Adrian asked.
Natalie nodded.
"Smells like cologne that we smelt at the warehouse," she said. "One of the robbers was here."
I turned to my dad.
"So dad, what happened?" I asked.
"The M.E.'s saying 'accidental fall,'" my dad said, "Says he was standing on a chair on his balcony, apparently trying to change a broken lightbulb. The chair he was on was too heavy for his weight. His foot goes through the chair, he slips, and goes over the railing."
"And you doubt that that was the case?" Adrian asked.
"Well, I'm skeptical," my dad said, "And rule of thumb is, it's not an accident until we find proof of it."
Adrian held up his hands in front of him. He turned and faced the kitchen, examining it at several angles. Then he did a close-up scrutinizing of the floor, the ceiling and the artwork on the walls, and the hall closet, where several coats were hung and shoes were stored. My dad begun to converse with a few forensics techs, while Natalie and I stood behind our friend, watching him analyze.
He then walked into the living room, and noticed a revolver sitting on the edge of the coffee table.
Adrian picked up the revolver.
"Look what we've got here," he said.
"What is it?" Natalie asked.
"There's blood on the tip of the barrel," Adrian said.
"What does it mean?" I asked.
"It means that this revolver was probably used to pistol-whip him," Adrian replied.
Adrian turned his attention to the couch. I saw two pillows on our left-hand side, one by the armrest, the other atop the back of the couch, like Ellison had rested his head against it while reading. Besides the revolver, there were some other items on the coffee table of interest, including two used coffee mugs, emptied of coffee, and an overturned copy of Cooking Bad: My Life as a Crystal Meth Cook's Partner.
"Looks like he also enjoyed lying down here to read," Adrian said.
I pointed to the coffee cups.
"Must've been drinking, too," I said.
"With whoever probably stopped by to kill him," Adrian said, "I don't think he'd take two coffees in one go."
Adrian, Natalie and I walked over to a sliding glass door that opened onto an unlit narrow balcony with a wrought-iron railing, two wicker chairs, and a very small table with a box of lightbulbs on it. It was dark out, so Adrian used his pen light to provide additional illumination.
"Hmm, this chair's got a hole in it," I said. I pointed to one of the wicker chairs. There was a giant hole in the seat, like a heavy person tried to stand on the chair.
"Maybe his foot fell through it," Natalie suggested.
"Nah, this hole's too large to have come to his foot," Adrian said.
He then looked up at the light fixtures.
"He was changing this lightbulb, right?" he asked, pointing to an unlit, recessed light socket in what was basically the bottom of the next floor's balcony. I squinted to take a look.
"Looks like it," I said.
Adrian looked at the lightbulb box on the table and picked it up. It was an ordinary 100 watt bulb, still in its protective cardboard box.
"100 watts," Natalie said. Adrian then leaned down.
"Whoa, ladies, look at this," he said.
Natalie and I squatted to be at the same facial height as Adrian.
"What is it, Adrian?" I asked.
"Here are the parts from the original lightbulb," he said, "The one Ellison was supposedly removing."
He gestured. There were shards of broken glass on the ground, as was the stem for the filament, which still had some jagged parts around its rim.
"And I think I know what happened here," Adrian commented. "This wasn't an accident. David Ellison was not really changing a lightbulb when his foot went through the seat of this wicker chair and he fell 200 feet to a parked car below."
"He wasn't?" Natalie asked.
"Nope," Adrian nodded, "He was thrown over the railing, probably while unconscious."
Natalie and I knew better than to question Adrian's conclusions because he was always right about homicide investigations. It was a fact of life. He'd seen something amiss that threw away the entire "accident story". We'd both made peace with Adrian's genius a long time ago.
"So, Ellison was murdered," Natalie said, "Nice."
"You're right, Natalie, no other explanation can explain why Ellison here was killed," Adrian said.
"Well, what really happened?" I asked.
"This whole apartment was trashed," he said.
"It didn't look ransacked to me," Natalie said, "Nor did it look like there was a fight. Nothing looked disturbed in there."
"No, there was no burglary," Adrian said.
Natalie took a sigh of relief. "Thank god."
"Here's what really happened in this apartment," Adrian said, "Ellison was on the couch, reading, when someone rang the doorbell in the lobby. It was probably O'Donnell or someone working for him. Whoever it was, it was someone that Ellison trusted. He buzzed him up here, and set his book down on the coffee table as he got up to answer the door. He greeted the killer, and led him in. They sat down on the couch, and they probably talked for a few minutes."
"What about?" I asked.
"I'm convinced that our good friend Danielle convinced him to do surveillance on O'Donnell," Adrian said, "Remember that we asked Danielle to put O'Donnell under surveillance?"
"Yeah, Adrian, we still remember," Natalie said, "She said she'd get surveillance set up when we told her we thought O'Donnell robbed the armored car."
"So the killer is O'Donnell or possibly one of his accomplices, and whoever it was, they must have found out that they were under surveillance," Natalie said.
"At some point, the killer saw the revolver and decided to use it. So he picked up the revolver, and struck Ellison over the head, knocking him out."
"Sorry, sir, but can I interrupt?" Natalie asked.
"Yeah, go ahead," Adrian said.
"Maybe that was where Ellison's reading glasses were broken," she said. Adrian looked over the railing, down at the body.
"You could be right," he replied, "A hit to the head with a book or the barrel of a revolver would have been adequate enough. Besides, I noticed some bits of glass from his lenses lodged in the couch cushions."
"The killer had to throw the guy's reading glasses over the railing after he tossed the body over to cover up the fact that the hit with the revolver was done to cause it," I said.
"Exactly, Kendra," Adrian said.
"So what happens after knocking Ellison out?" Natalie asked.
"Now that he has knocked his victim out," Adrian said, "The killer then grabbed a fresh lightbulb from the closet. On the way back in, he bumped his shin against the coffee table."
"Hmm," I said.
"Then O'Donnell put down this lightbulb box," Adrian pointed to the box with the new light bulb, "and tried climbing on this wicker chair here…." He grabbed the wicker chair with the hole through it, "….to try reaching for the light fixture."
"So was the chair not strong enough?" I asked.
"I'd say yes," Natalie said.
"That's what it looks like," Adrian said, "So the killer had to grab a dining room chair, and stand on that to remove the original light bulb from its fixture. Then he broke the deck chair by stomping on it with his foot."
"This isn't a dining room chair," I smirked, "It's not even the right style."
"He took the dining room back inside," Adrian continued, "Planted the weaker deck chair in its place, then he tossed the body and the reading glasses over the railing."
I held up my finger.
"But the wicker chair was the wrong size," I said.
Adrian looked at it.
"And yes, you can tell from looking at this chair that Ellison could not have been standing on it, changing a light bulb," he said.
"And how can you tell that?" Natalie asked.
"One, this hole was made by a man who has size twelve shoes. Two, if you looked at the coats in his closet, he's 5'7". He's a tad bit too short to reach this fixture without using a stepladder, and he has size 9 feet. Our guy was at least 6'1"."
"Besides that?" Natalie asked.
He then pointed to the lightbulb box, and then to the fixture.
"This bulb is a 100 watt bulb, which would match the lamp by the couch, and would overload a 75 watt light fixture."
"What about the part where he bumped his shin against the coffee table?" I asked.
"If you noticed, the sunlight pours into this apartment from the south and east every morning. This constant exposure has gradually bleached the tabletop over the past few years. When he banged into the table, all of the items on it were jolted, exposing darker wood."
I looked back at the coffee table, and saw that there was an outline of a bowl of seashells burned onto the tabletop, like a shadow. I wondered how I could have not noticed that. I guess my mind, like Natalie's, is wired to notice this stuff but not pay attention to it unless we are told to pay attention to it.
"You know, that wicker chair clearly splintered," Natalie said, "It's not exactly the sturdiest wood out there."
"You're right, Natalie, it would," Adrian continued, "Most likely, there are small wood fragments on the seat of the dining room chair that the killer used, as they probably were lodged in his shoes."
Adrian and I looked down on the street below, where the coroner's office had removed David Ellison's body and was just loading it into the back of their van.
"Hmm, looks like the people who specialize in circumcisions are leaving," Adrian commented, leaning with his arms on the railing.
I walked over to him.
"Nice view," I said, putting my left arm around his right. "I mean, the city lights, and the traffic going by on Market Street." Adrian looked at me. I noticed he was blushing.
"You aren't planning to kiss me now, are you?" I asked.
"The thought occurred to me," Adrian gave me a slight peck on the face.
We stepped back inside to inform my dad of what we'd found.
"Amazing," he said when Adrian was done summarizing what happened, "It's good that we have a mind like yours around, Monk, especially at times like this."
"Yeah, I know, sir," Adrian said, "But we still have armored car robbers to catch."
"For sure," my dad nodded, stroking his chin.
"What do you suppose you can do about the scene here?" I asked.
"We'll pull the security tapes from the lobby," my dad said, "Of course, whoever did this probably found a way to either bypass the cameras or turn his head to avoid showing his face."
"I kinda figured that," Adrian said. "Might as well also check cameras outside to see if any suspicious vehicles were in the area at the time of the murder."
"Speaking of which, is there anything on the armored car robbery?" I asked.
"We just got the manifest," my dad said, handing us a file folder. "They took about $15 million."
"Sweet," Natalie said.
"And you were right about Melissa Carney being an inside source," my dad said.
"I was?" Adrian asked.
"Yep," my dad said, "We don't have any phone calls, but three days ago, she received an envelope with about $500,000 in it, all in $100s."
"Did you trace it?" Adrian asked.
"It was postmarked from Pacific Heights," my dad said, "No prints, no DNA. Whoever sent it clearly knew what he was doing. And the money was also untraceable."
"It usually is," Adrian said.
"And right now, we're checking out every money launderer or fence in the city who could handle a big haul like the one just pulled off."
"That's great," Natalie said, "What about the attempted murders of the McClellan couple?"
"We're still trying to identify the bodies of the henchmen from the van that was torched in the alley," my dad said. "But it looks like they probably were shot by whoever shot the armored car guys. You were, after all, right about the M.O. being the same. And ballistics is certain that they were shot with the same gun as the guards."
"What about potential suspects?" I asked.
"They're worth a lot, Kendra," my dad said, "A list of enemies for someone like Paddy McClellan reads like a phone directory."
"All right," I said.
Once we got back to the penthouse, I turned in for the night and retired to soak for about an hour in my bathtub. As I let the hot water relax my muscles, my first thought was that this had been one busy day of murder, death and destruction. Douglas O'Donnell had murdered two journalists who must have found out that he was plotting to rob an armored car, and possibly had found out about his attempt to assassinate Paddy McClellan, the chairman of El Dorado Trust. And now he'd apparently murdered an Intertect investigator that Danielle had somehow convinced to conduct surveillance on the man. Clearly, O'Donnell was not a man to be trifled with, and he was willing to kill if that was what was necessary to keep whatever he was planning under wraps. He was the kind of criminal that in action movies usually exits the movie world in a body bag. Those thoughts were still on my mind as I went to sleep.