"Let's pay for this stuff!" Max urged.

"Sharona could you lend me a few dollars?" Adrian asked. He was a cheap man.

"No!" The nurse gave him an angry look.

"If you had brought enough wipes…….." he began

"Is that even possible?" Leland cut in.

"I'll take care of it!" Jordan grabbed the packages of wipes from Sharona and paid for them with a credit card. She really wanted to leave the store and get on with the investigation.

"Let's stop screwing around!" Max gave Monk a warning look as they exited the store.

"Could someone pick that up?" the sleuth noticed a piece of chewed gum on the ground.

"You pick it up!" Sharona made a disgusted face.

"How about I shove it in ya mouth?" the bar owner growled. He wryly felt being a cop and single parent had not been as stressful as working with Monk on this case.

"That would not be such a good idea…." Adrian said lamely and with some tentativeness.

Just then, a homeless person, with a shopping cart full of blankets, empty cans, and such, walked by them.

"Would you like some wipes?" the sleuth offered with a face.

"No!" the man refused.

"You don't smell like homeless person usually does" Monk remarked.

"I got washed up at the Y a few days ago"

"It's too soon for the dirt on your face to be so thick and your cart looks too new."

"What?" the man said, as he started to leave.

Max stopped the man, and after some questioning they found out that he was wanted by the police. Leland took out his gun, as the ex-detective handcuffed him(the captain had been able to take his gun and handcuffs on the plane because he was a police officer). This put Monk in the good graces of the Pasadena Police department as the man had been a suspect in several rapes and murders. Thusly, the gang got local help in finding James Hawet.

"Where were you on September 18, 1979?" Leland asked the suspect in an interrogation room.

"That was such a long time ago, officer" Hawet said.

On and on the interrogation went, without much luck. Unfortunately, the police had to let James Hawet go.

"Couldn't you have done something?" Jordan asked Leland angrily.

"No."

The next day, while James Hawet was at work, Jordan and Max broke into his apartment.

"Find anything?" Max asked.

"A gun, but it wasn't what he used to kill mom or Cribner, but I'm taking it anyway." Using a cloth, she put it in a ziplock bag. She figured that Hawet might have killed others.

Angry and disappointed, they left the apartment, spent time in a bar, and returned to the hotel, where, at the lobby the police waited. Neighbors of Hawet had seen them. Both spent time in jail, until Monk reluctantly agreed to help on a case in exchange for having charges dropped. He understood perfectly what Max was going through.

"What are you doing working on another case?" Jordan asked the sleuth the evening after she and Max were freed. Monk had his own room, Jordan shared one with Sharona, and Max roomed with Leland. The medical examiner was paying for the expenses.

"He had to agree to do it so you two could get out of jail." Leland said. They were all at Monk's room.

"What about my mom's case?" Jordan argued, as she paced around. "We need to prove that he killed her!"

"The case has a phantom print." Adrian commented.

"You're kidding!" Jordan took out the phantom print from her mother's murder. "Let me see it!"

She put the two transparencies together, but they were nothing alike, to her eyes at least. Adrian examined them carefully.

"This fingerprint is fake as well." He told them. "The lines are a little wider apart and higher than in the other one."

So, everyone started to pore over the case.

TBC