Chapter Six - Progress

While Benjy recuperated, slept, and generally began to come back to his normal self, Adrian's investigation continued. The two notes had been entered into evidence, but so far nothing unusual came to light. The paper was generic bond in a light yellow color. It could be had at about a thousand stores in the Bay Area and was readily available in most offices, schools, and government facilities. The SFPD had no match to the fingerprints from the notes. The fingerprints weren't in the VICAP database nor were they in any other FBI database. It was useless information for which Adrian had called in an old favor in order to gain access to the FBI labs and their information. He was angry and frustrated. He had no leads, no suspects, but certain things bothered him about the investigation so far. He was going to hound Randy about returning to the auto body shops, without me, to see if a car matching the eyewitness description had been brought in for repair in the weeks since the accident. They'd been as vigilant in following up as they could have been, but Adrian still felt that although the answer might lie with the repair places, it was going to be difficult to find the truth from the assorted miscreants who owned or operated those… establishments.

The one thing he felt certain of was that the car that hit Benjy was out there somewhere, it wasn't being driven or someone would have noticed the type of damage that would have been caused by hitting him, and that one of those repair shops on the list was the key. He couldn't even say why he felt this way, it was pure instinct, no real clues had presented themselves… but he'd solved cases on less in the past, and he was going to redouble his efforts now that he had the burden of Benjy's fate off of his mind. He strode into Benjy's room and saw that three of Benjy's friends were perched on chairs by his bed. Each boy was munching a chocolate snack, including Benjy, and they were making a mess and laughing. Adrian waved and smiled briefly in Benjy's direction. Aside from his feelings about teenagers, he was glad that Benjy had such good friends to help him get better. What would my life have been like with friends like these, he wondered? Benjy smiled a chocolaty smile and Sharona looked to see what had caught his attention. When she caught his eye, Adrian motioned to Sharona and she followed him out the door.

"Hi, Adrian…" he looked distinctly uncomfortable. "You okay?"

"Yeah. Yeah…fine."

She knew better. "Are you sure?"

"No. Not really."

"Why not?"

"Sharona, I've…I've been meaning to – well… ask you something. Something that may be uncomfortable for both of us, but you've been so focused on Benjy, and I've been focused on him and you and the case that I didn't have the time or the inclination to disturb you with this… but I have no choice now. Disher and Stottlemeyer are on my back. I wanted to be the one to talk to you about this… I didn't want them to speak to you. I thought, no, hoped, it would be less humiliating or embarrassing for you if it were me doing the asking… just in case. Just in case."

"In case of what?" she asked, with a puzzled frown.

He took a deep breath and said, "In case there is something you haven't told me."

"Adrian, I tell you everything," she replied with an ironic look. Well, not everything, she thought, she couldn't tell him about how her heart broke when she thought about a future that didn't seem to lead anywhere for them together as more than they already were. "What's this about Adrian?"

"It's about you. This is hard for me to ask you, Sharona. I'd never ask you unless there was another way for me to find out, I hope you believe that." He paused and gathered his will to speak. He didn't want to wound her. "Is there anything in your past that someone could use against you? To hurt you? To hurt Benjy? To embarrass you or him?"

"Adrian…" blood rushed to stain her cheeks and caused her to turn an unflattering shade of crimson.

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to…"

She waved her hands dismissively, "No, no… it's okay… I know what you must think of me… especially after the comments that Randy and Dale Biederbeck have made in the past and those… photos when you tried to protect me from Dexter Larsen… I only did that so that I could feed Benjy and pay for nursing school… I would never have…"

"Sharona, I'm not judging you."

"Yes you are, but I understand. You're standing there with those huge, kind eyes and feeling sorry for me and trying not to imagine what else I might have done that might embarrass you… or make you hate me…" She looked away, mortified.

Adrian had to suppress a grimace… she thought I felt sorry for her? She's the gutsiest person I know, and she thinks I feel sorry for her? That she could be an embarrassment to me? "Honestly, Sharona, being embarrassed by you…well, that would be the pot calling the kettle black, wouldn't it? And feeling sorry for you rarely comes to mind when I think about you."

Sharona looked back at him with hopeful disbelief. "Well I'm sure there are some descriptions that do come to mind…and none of them as unflattering as the ones I've already assigned myself, I can tell you that." She nodded her head in acceptance of the things she'd done in the past. She knew deep in her heart if she had it to do again, it wouldn't change a thing.

"Please don't say that. I never think about Biederbeck's disgusting innuendos, Disher's childish and petty idiocy, or of those pictures, Sharona. And even if I did, I know you better than to think you'd have done anything that wasn't legal or appropriate if it didn't involve preserving Benjy's well-being. Desperation is never pretty, and I admire the way you've made your way out of the hell Trevor left you in. Please, Sharona, don't think I can't understand… I do."

At his plea, she looked at him, eyes shining with emotion. Her fear of losing his respect or his admiration was rapidly replaced by the assurances and understanding in his soft, lucid eyes. "You do?" she asked with awe. Amazed at his capacity for ignoring things about her he really would have hated had he actually witnessed them, or if he'd observed them in anyone else; she was also amazed at his ability to look past his understandable distaste and excuse her for the things he did know about first hand. He was definitely making progress with needing perfection in everyone and everything around him. Which is good, because perfect I am not, Sharona thought.

"I do. When you love someone the way that you love Benjy, nothing is out-of-bounds when you have to take care of them. Circumstance is a cruel thing sometimes… and you did things… because you were forced to do them, not because it was fun or easy or what you wanted." I know personally, Sharona, he thought. You do that for me every single day. Things you don't want to do, things you don't always understand. You may not love me in the way you love Benjy, but you certainly stretch the limits when trying to take care of me.

She expelled a breath she hadn't even realized she'd been holding and said, "Well, to answer your question, there is nothing else. Nothing I can think of that would make someone try to take my child from me. Aside from which, what could someone want from me…? I'm not exactly Bill Gates. And how would killing a child, my child, accomplish anything but some sort of vengeance?"

Adrian's brow furrowed in frustration. He was relieved that Sharona couldn't think of anything else off-hand, but she also opened up wider the possibility that this was somehow related to him, in the same way, he had always suspected Trudy's death was about him. No matter what Dale the Whale had said about Trudy being the target… yes, she could have been the target… in order to hurt him.

Not wanting to create another situation where Sharona could blame him for the accident, Adrian replied, "Well, then, I'm at a loss."
Sharona looked at him with astonishment… he was so rarely confused or confounded by his investigations. Things that were as clear as a swamp to others usually looked like crystal pools to him. It worried her in many ways that he might not be able to solve this case.

She was worried that someone would continue to try and hurt Benjy… despite the fact that she'd finally "made" the guards about a week earlier. When she'd relaxed enough about Benjy's prognosis, she realized these men would come and go at regular intervals… basically, on the same shifts that the nurses had… and although she suspected Adrian was behind the guards, she didn't want to bring it up and put her worry out there and confirm his own fears. Because in order for him to hire guards secretly he must have harbored some fears he wasn't sharing. She was just grateful that he cared and wanted them safe – especially because she noticed that the guards melted away when he visited. It was in those moments she knew he was protecting them, guarding them. She was going to owe him a lot more than money could repay sometime very, very soon. This concerned her as well; what could she do to repay him not only financially, but for the emotional support he'd given her which had most likely cost him more than she had assumed he could psychologically afford. On the other hand, she was more concerned about what another unsolved case would do to Adrian's already insecure psyche.

"Then this is about Benjy…as I originally suspected. But what could a thirteen-year-old kid have or know that someone would want to kill him for?" His voiceless thought was that it could also be about Sharona, but he didn't want to scare her. What did Sharona know or have that someone would kill her child over? It was better to focus her on Benjy – it would keep her here, off the street, under the guards' watchful eyes. It would keep her from deciding to do a "Lois Lane" and investigate or snoop on her own. He couldn't afford to lose her – especially in an unnecessary and senseless way like he'd lost Trudy.

At that moment, Benjy's friend, Stephen, stepped out of Benjy's room on some errand for his invalid friend. He looked sheepishly at Monk and Sharona as he passed them, but there was no reason for him to be embarrassed by his eavesdropping. They barely noticed him; they were too busy earnestly discussing some adult thing he didn't quite get. What he did get was that Adrian and Sharona were a little lost and Stephen was surprised that Benjy's hero, the person Benjy told them was the best, most brilliant detective in the world, hadn't understood the three clues he'd gotten so far. Stephen decided to go a step further to help them. He watched them walk to the waiting area.

Sharona and Adrian got comfortable in the lounge; allowing Benjy to visit with his friends privately and allowing themselves time to go back over the few clues that were all they had. He presented two-sided Xeroxes of the three notes that had creases in the same places as the originals. The note to Benjy sat side-by-side with the two addressed to him. She looked at them… HOR… she rearranged them OHR…and again… RHO… nothing stood out.

"Rho is a Greek letter, right?" she asked, thinking back to the fraternity boys she'd dated.

"Yeah," Adrian nodded, "but I think the order of the letters is what's important here."

Just then a nurse walked over to the couches where Adrian and Sharona were puzzling over the clues. When Adrian looked up, his heart skipped a beat. With latex gloves, the nurse was gingerly carrying a folded piece of yellow paper.

"Ms. Fleming?" she said.

"Yes," Sharona looked up from the table that held the copies of the notes. I found this on my desk when I came back from seeing a patient."
On the front fold of the note, it said, "Ms. Fleming. " On the inside of the fold, it said simply, "S." Adrian recognized the paper, the handwriting, but was even further mystified by this new "clue." Now the notes on the table looked like four flattened tents that still made no sense. The nurse handed the note to Adrian after he donned a pair of latex gloves that he'd had in his pocket. Sharona looked at him with surprise. Not only was he carrying something in his pocket, it was as if he'd expected another clue to drop in his lap. Maybe he had.

H O R S

"Horse? Horses? Horsier? Hors d'oeuvre?" Adrian whispered, mostly to himself.

"Are you serious?" Sharona asked.

"N-no. No. I just was trying out some words."

"I don't get it."

"Me either. If someone is going through the trouble of trying to tell us something, why not just tell us?"

"How long have you known about these notes?"

"A while."

"Adrian."

"Since the day before Benjy became conscious again. The first one was addressed to him and left at the nurses' desk. The next two were to me, also left with the nurses. Now this one to you. The police and the FBI have checked the prints – no record exists."

"Why didn't you tell me?"

"I think you had more important things on your mind. Solving the case is my problem."

"Isn't it usually our problem," she asked with hurt in her voice.

"Of- of course, but right now it can't be… I have to do this alone."

She frowned at him. Suddenly he doesn't need me? "Fine."

He guessed that she was irritated with him as much as wounded. "Sharona…"

"I said fine. If you don't need me, you don't need me."

"It's not that…" how could he express that he needed her, but he needed to resolve this on his own… without hurting her more? "Okay, here's the thing. The thing is…"

"The thing is…" she echoed as he paused.

"The thing is I want to do this for you… not with you…okay? Benjy is your first priority right now – rightly so. I will get along for a while longer without you… maybe I won't be doing as well as I would if you were with me… but I will be okay."

She was mollified for the moment, almost pleased with his self-sufficient and take-charge attitude – it was important progress for him. The fact that it might come at her expense was something she'd have to learn to accept. He really might not need me anymore. "Okay, I'll accept that, as long as you don't give my job away to someone else."

He scowled uncomfortably and stuttered "Why- why would I do that?"

She shrugged, "I don't know. Just don't go getting any ideas about finding a new assistant or going it alone forever… okay?"

He smiled and said, "Okay."