What He Saw
by Cathy German
cathgerm@aol.com
Chapter One
Sharona rang the bell again and considered using her key.
"Come on, Adrian," she muttered. She knew he was in there. He'd called her less than an hour ago. She was used to peculiar calls from him, but this one had given her chills.
Most of them just gave her headaches.
He'd sounded shaken. Not freaked out or goofy or distracted or anal or any of the other things she'd heard in his voice before. He'd sounded afraid; and not snake afraid or germ afraid or milk or dust bunny afraid. Afraid like she might sound afraid. SANE afraid.
With no warning, the door opened. When she stepped in, Adrian Monk had already turned away and was headed back into the house.
"Adrian," she called, trotting after him. "Adrian, what is it? What's the matter?" In deference to his state, she kept herself from reaching out to stop him. She followed him into the kitchen and he headed for the silverware drawer. Not a good sign. This meant polishing over and over until he got it right, and he never got it right. He opened the drawer.
"Adrian?"
He didn't answer, but stared into the drawer as if there were a vision there, or an answer to an important question.
"I saw something," he said in a low voice.
"In the drawer?" She came to stand next to him.
"I've seen things before." He didn't raise his head. His hand was still on the drawer pull, his eyes riveted to the tidy stacks of forks, knives, and spoons.
"I saw Trudy die ahead of time. Did I ever tell you that?"
She drew in a startled breath and brought a hand to her mouth. She reached tentatively for his arm with the other.
"Oh, Adrian. No. No. You never told me that."
He didn't move. "I didn't see it precisely. I couldn't tell when. I couldn't tell where. But I saw her ... in pain. In a car. I thought it meant a car accident, and I told her to drive carefully, and she said ..." He drew his eyes from the drawer and looked at Sharona. "She said, 'Always.'"
Sharona was crushed by the weight of it, by the intense sorrow in Monk's dark eyes, and she felt hot tears ride in her own. She swallowed. She wanted to say something soothing, but she couldn't get her anything past the lump in her throat.
"We have to go," Monk said, and he closed the door with great care and pushed past her.
"Where?" she said, hurrying to follow.
"Where you go when you see someone being killed." He put on his coat and spent a few seconds shifting it until it fell just right on his shoulders. It calmed her to see it. She needed to see him act ... well ... NORMAL. He pushed her gently to the front door.
"To the police."
"Randy," Stottlemeyer called through his office door. "Are you taking running shoes? Or a tennis racket?"
Lieutenant Disher stood up from his desk. He'd been bending over it, checking the contents of the suitcase that was sitting on top of it.
"Uh ... a tennis racket, Sir? Will we have that kind of time?"
Stottlemeyer's smiling face appeared at the door.
"It's a SEMINAR, Lieutenant. Not prison. We're not going to be chained to a desk all day long. They'll let us out to howl at the moon once in a while."
Still not sure of the captain's intentions, Disher stood with a pair of underwear in each hand. "And a tennis racket will be needed for howling at the moon? Sir?"
Stottlemeyer shook his head and dismissed Disher's concerns with a wave. "All work and no play, Randy. Not a good idea. I know what I'm talking about. We'll work hard, but there will be time for play."
Disher considered this and considered the fact that he was standing there with a pair of underwear in each hand. Lieutenant Nancy Bremmer walked by and gave him a toothy grin and he shoved his hands down into the depths of his suitcase and hid the underwear under a polo shirt. When he looked up, the captain was no longer at the door.
"All work and no play." Interesting that a workaholic would say that to him. If anyone could stand to take a little of his own advice, it was his boss. He glanced down at the itinerary on his desk. Didn't look like much time for play, tennis or otherwise. Three-and-one-half days of criminal justice procedures, profiling, victim rights, recent court rulings that might impact how they did their jobs. He knew what this meant: box lunches and sheets of paper with study topics taped to the walls, a bad night's sleep, and a choice of chicken or salmon for dinner on the last night there. That's what it looked like to him.
But it WAS in Napa Valley, and he could handle that just fine.
Then he felt that tingle on the back of his neck that could only mean one thing. He turned.
Adrian Monk. With Sharona. And he was headed for the captain's office as fast as the Lieutenant had ever seen him move. Randy shut the suitcase and sped towards them. He had appointed himself Official Monk Interceptor in deference to his overly-busy boss. And right now, his boss was in a good mood. And in less than four hours, he'd been headed with that man who was in a good mood to Napa Valley, where they would share a room for three days.
He wanted to share it with a man who was in a good mood.
He reached them and stepped in the aisle between the desks, blocking Monk from reaching his goal.
"Monk. What do you want?"
"I need to see the captain."
"What for?"
Monk shuffled to his right. Randy matched him, shuffling to his left. Monk pulled his eyes up to Disher's. The look on Monk's face made his breath catch. Whatever this was, it was not good. Disher looked over Monk's shoulder at Sharona. She shrugged, looking worried.
"Look, Monk," he said, figuring he'd try the reasonable route. "The captain's busy. We're leaving tomorrow for a three-day seminar, and he doesn't-"
Some noise came from Adrian Monk's throat that he'd never heard before, and at the same time, Monk – a good four inches shorter than him - unceremoniously shoved Disher aside and strode for the door, Sharona behind him. Disher had no choice but to follow.
"Well, Adrian Monk!" Stottlemeyer called, evidently still in a good mood. "And Sharona. What brings you here this morning?" Adrian stood stiffly in front of the captain's desk.
"You can't go."
Stottlemeyer shot Disher a look. Traitor it said.
"What?" the captain said, putting his hands on his hips. "I can't go to the Seminar?"
"No. You can't go."
"May I ask why?"
Monk nodded, and Disher thought briefly of Monk Bobble-head dolls, and wondered about their marketability. That was all that Monk seemed able to do: nod. Stottlemeyer gave Monk a small and patient smile. Randy was relieved. His boss was still in a good mood. The captain hitched a hip up on his desk and crossed his arms.
"Monk. What's up?"
"You can't go."
"We covered that. Why?"
Monk stopped nodding. Now it was the neck thing. Disher watched him pull his neck away from his collar. Two times; three, four.
"Adrian," Sharona said. "Please tell us what's wrong."
Her voice seemed to cut through his fog.
"I saw a murder," Monk said without emotion, as if he were reciting the bus schedule. "I saw someone killed."
Disher could see that this piqued the captain's interest. Monk was rarely wrong, and they all knew it. Stottlemeyer leaned over in an attempt to make eye contact with his old friend, and spoke slowly, with genuine curiosity
"Do you know who this person is?"
Monk nodded, eyes on the floor.
"Do you know when it's going to happen?"
Monk shook his head "no," eyes still on the floor. The captain frowned and looked up at Disher, then Sharona. He rose and moved to his desk drawer.
"Monk, I'm going to be gone for three days. I'm going to give you Lieutenant Mazetti's card. You've worked with him a little before, and with Randy and I both being gone-"
"You can't go."
The captain sighed and dropped his head. He moved back past Monk and handed the card to Sharona, giving her a squinty you'll-have-to-handle-this look as he did. He spoke as he walked back to his desk.
"Monk, I know that you're more comfortable working with me or with Lieutentant Disher, but-"
And then Monk did an amazing thing. He touched the captain, pulled him around by the arm and placed him where he wanted him: square in front of him, and he put his hands on Stottlemeyer's upper arms to keep him there.
"You CAN'T GO," he growled, giving the captain a shake.
Stottlemeyer was clearly astonished.
"Monk-"
"It's you, Leland. It's you I see killed."
The silence that followed that proclamation was dark and suffocating. Randy Disher found it hard to take a deep breath. He saw Sharona pale and reach for a chair back for support. And as for Monk and Stottlemeyer, they stood for a long time exactly as they were, eyes locked, Monk's hands on the captain's arms. Finally, Stottlemeyer took a step back and Monk dropped his arms.
"You don't know when," the captain said, his voice a load of gravel.
"No."
The captain considered this. "Then you don't know for sure that it will happen." It was a statement, not a question. Stottlemeyer backed up another step, as if distancing himself from the possibilities. "And you've seen things before that have never happened," he reminded Monk.
"And I've seen things that have. Trudy-"
Stottlemeyer held up a quelling hand.
"Don't, Adrian. I can understand your seeing that. I can understand because of the relationship that you two had. It was symbiotic, Monk. It was-"
"Leland, we've been through a lot together as well. And I think I've seen this so that I can stop it."
For a long moment, Disher's boss considered it, his forehead creased in frown. And then he rejected it, waving a hand at them all and distancing himself behind the bulk of his desk.
"I have work to do," he said, shuffling papers in the in-basket.
"I can't believe you're ignoring this," Monk said in a strangled voice.
Stottlemeyer gave him a hard look. "Monk, if I start amending how I live, if I stop doing my job because of something that may or may not happen, I'll be like a deer in the headlights of a car." He shook his head and snapped the briefcase that was on his desk closed. "I can't do that. I'll stop living if I do." He looked at them all. "I've got to get going." And then at Disher: "Pick me up around two." And he left.
Disher still found it difficult to pull a full breath into his lungs. He frowned at the retreating back of Stottlemeyer and then turned back to address whoever it was that was touching him, and he was startled to be gazing into the dark eyes of Mr. Monk. Shocked, Disher glanced at the hands on his shoulders, at Monk, at Sharona, and back at her boss and his unprotected hands.
Monk gave him a sharp shake.
"Listen to me, Lieutenant," Monk said in a voice neither Disher nor Sharona had ever heard before. There was bite in that voice; and steel, and repressed fear. It didn't sound like Adrian Monk at all. The fear part, maybe. The rest was new.
"Are you listening to me?"
"Unh ... yeah. Yes," Randy said, giving him a nervous nod.
"You will not let him out of your sight. Night. Day. Doesn't matter. Be at his side." Monk shook him again for effect. "Do you understand me?"
Disher shot a look at Sharona. She shook her head and shrugged back at him.
Monk growled at the lack of response. "Do you under –" he began again.
"Yes. Yes, Mr. Monk. I understand."
For an unnerving minute, the pariah of the San Francisco police department did not remove his hands or take his eyes off of the Lieutenant. Uncomfortable for a whole host of reasons, Disher cleared his throat.
"Monk," he whispered. "You're scaring me."
Monk sighed and dropped his arms to his side.
"It's all right. I'm scaring myself."