"OK, got your coffee for you right here, sir," Disher handed Stottlemeyer, who was reclined in the lieutenant's armchair in his apartment's den, a cup of decaffeinated brew. "Your roast chicken salad sandwich should be out of the oven soon."
Stottlemeyer gave him a strange look. "I don't want a roast chicken salad sandwich, Lieutenant," he told him, "I don't even remember asking you."
"Well, just figured you'd be hungry by now, sir," Disher told him. He fluffed the pillows he'd pushed under his boss's feet. "You want me to get you another blanket?" he asked.
"Randy," Stottlemeyer told him very slowly, "I may be depressed that things aren't going my way in court, but I am NOT a cripple! So if you'll please stop coddling me…"
Right, of course," Disher nodded quickly. "Ah, eight o'clock," he said, noticing the clock, "Show time." He turned on the TV and set it on Channel 7. "So, you'll think we'll see Monk?" he asked his superior as he plopped down on the sofa.
"My money says absolutely," Stottlemeyer told him, "You know Monk; there's never a dull moment."
Disney ran up to Adrian by a tree near the entrance to Tomorrowland. "I got you message; you've solved the case?" he asked.
"Mr. Disney, so I know for sure, have you noticed anything out of the ordinary with the oxygen tanks I'm told you use while cleaning the bottom of the sub lagoon?" Adrian asked him.
Disney snapped his fingers. "Now that you mention it, just the other day we noticed several tanks were abnormally low," he exclaimed, "Was that Roger?"
"He used compressed air," Adrian explained, "1,787 refers to pounds per square inch. He built a pair of crude oxygen tanks and filled them up with enough compressed air as he could, including those from your tanks. After he killed Faulk, he attached the tanks to his back. He aimed deliberately for the hole in the roof over the part of the Treasure Planet ride under construction. His goal was to get Faulk high enough in the air so the impact would shatter the tanks—he must have made them out of something breakable like cheap fiberglass. Something that people wouldn't get terribly suspicious about in a construction zone when his body was extracted from the pit his was hoping to drop him in."
"But how did he launch him from the ground?" the old man inquired.
"He must have had some sort of remote control launcher," Adrian told him, "If we can find that and the oxygen tanks, we've got Chalmers."
"But where would he put a remote detonator?" Disney pressed, "I hope he's not still holding onto it, because we certainly can't search without…"
"Hang on a minute, wasn't there a trash can right next to the stage?" Natalie realized, "If everyone was watching Faulk's body flying through the air, he could have easily just thrown it in without being noticed."
"Of course," Adrian realized this was a very logical idea, "That's it. He threw it out—with the trash," his face fell as he realized this meant he'd probably have to go rooting through mountains of trash.
"One problem," Kight glanced at his watch, "We would have started emptying all the trash cans for the night ten minutes ago."
"Where does it get unloaded?" Adrian pressed him.
"Garbage truck stays around back behind Toontown," the amusement park division manager said.
"That's not our only problem," Natalie said, pointing at the stage, "We've got an eminent explosion at hand here."
"Chalmers's rigged explosives to the front of the building; he hopes to ascend to the head of the company," Adrian told a horrified Disney, "When Iger opens the ride, the bombs'll go off."
"The plunger," Disney pointed to a large dynamite detonator set up next to the podium on the stage in front of the ride building, behind which Iger was now taking his place for the opening remarks before several TV cameras, "he must have rigged it…dozens of people could get hurt if…"
"You stall the ceremony as best you can," Adrian told him, "Natalie, help him if things go south. I'm going to find that remote control."
"Truck's this way," Kight waved him toward the back of the park, "I should tell you though, there's probably at least a ton of trash we'd have to root through."
"Exactly," Adrian grimaced heavily, "We may not come out alive."
They went through a pair of card-activated gates to emerge in a rear parking lot—out of which the garbage truck, fully loaded, was now pulling away. "Wait!" Adrian ran after the truck at full pitch, "Wait up! You've got evidence in there!"
"Here we go," Disher remarked, noticing the ceremonies were now airing on his TV after an inordinate amount of commercials had been aired, "Boy, it looks like they did another great job with this ride, don't you agree, sir?"
"Yeah, sure," Stottlemeyer sounded disinterested. He took a long sip of coffee. "I hope this speech doesn't go on all night. I hate it when they talk for hours on end."
"Well, I was wondering when you'd show up again," Sandy told Natalie as she rejoined them near the front of the stage, "Did you find him?"
"Oh yeah, we found him all right," Natalie kept her eyes glued on the stage, on which Iger seemed to be going through his speech faster than anticipated, "Listen, why don't we go a little further back from the stage?"
"But we can't see in the back!" Julie protested to her mother, "This is perfect here!"
"Trust me honey, you'll be safer as far away from the stage as possible right now," Natalie quickly pulled her far back into the crowd. Her eyes darted between Iger at the podium to Disney talking with Walter the guard near the side of the building—the latter nodded at what Disney was telling him and rushed in through the nearest access door—to Chalmers standing near the stairs at the side of the stage, looking quite nervous himself. How much longer was it going to take Monk to find the evidence?
"You'll have to work faster!" Kight shouted out the garbage truck's window to Adrian (he had commandeered it and was now driving it in circles around the parking lot).
"This is dangerous work!" Adrian shouted back from his perch on the lip of the back of the truck, "I'm going as fast as I can!"
He grabbed hold of another garbage bag with his claw, tore off the top, then picked it up and dumped its contents out on the parking lot. No sign of the remote control was visible from the overhead lights. He groaned and grabbed another one with the claw. He hoped it was in a bag up front; despite the urgency of the situation, he wasn't in the mood to climb into the back and root through the garbage. "Come on, come on!" he pleaded mentally, tearing through another one.
"And so we have chosen to continue the tradition started long ago when Walt Disney decided to open this park to the public," Iger announced grandiosely to his audience, "This ride marks the culmination of five years of intense planning by our Imagineers and designers, and two years of hard construction work. When you go through these gray portals and experience what we've concocted, I'm sure you'll agree that this ride is worth the waiting. And now, are you ready!"
The crowd cheered enthusiastically. "Well then, without further ado, let's get this open for you!" Iger started walking over to the giant plunger.
Disney quickly ran to the microphone. "Before we do, Bob," he said quickly, "I'd also like to add that when my uncle founded Disneyland, he had a great vision that families everywhere could enjoy an amusement experience like no other, and if he were to be standing here today, I think he would be quite proud of all of us."
"Thank you, Roy," Iger looked puzzled. He reached for the detonator again. "And now, I declare this ride…"
"You know Bob," Disney cut him off again, "People think that we only aim for the younger crowds, but no, we actually like to draw in the older people, and this ride has the thrills that the elusive target demographics will find quite appealing. I recall once when…"
"That's good Roy, that's good," Iger interrupt him in turn, "And now, I declare this ride…"
"Before you do," the old man interrupted him back, "Why don't we tell the people about the ride? It has over two thousand feet of track, features a maximum drop of a hundred and eighty-five feet, which I'm told is an indoor record, uses linear induction to get from zero to seventy in four seconds…."
"Has he gone nuts?" Josh stared at the stage in wonder.
"No," Natalie told him, "He's trying to keep all of us from getting killed. We'd better step back a little further."
Back in San Francisco, Stottlemeyer and Disher stared at Disney's soliloquy on the screen with equal confusion. "Is this supposed to be playing out like this?" the captain frowned.
"Maybe they're trying to cover till the end of the show, you know, to fill up the hour?" Disher suggested.
"Would they really do this for a whole hour, Randy?" Stottlemeyer pointed out.
"Well, it's Disney, anything can happen," the lieutenant suggested. Stottlemeyer decided not to say anything.
Back on the stage, Iger snatched the microphone away from Disney as he was relating the finer and basically irrelevant details of the ride's construction. "What the hell are the you doing?" he hissed once he'd covered the microphone.
"Don't push that plunger!" Disney warned him.
"Or what? The sky'll start falling?" Iger half-taunted him. Forcing a smile to the crowd, he stormed over to the plunger, grabbed hold of it with both hands, and announced through gritted teeth, "I now declare this ride open for you, the public!" He started to push the plunger….
"Don't!" in a flash Natalie had jumped on stage and tackled him to the floor. "Get off of me!" Iger shouted at her, trying to squirm out from under her grip. As he kicked away, one of his flailing legs hit the man in the Mickey costume, who had also been standing on the podium off to the side. Groaning in pain, the "mouse" stumbled and fell backwards onto the plunger. Immediately, the entire front of the ride building burst into flames and started falling forward toward the stage. Everyone on it just managed to dive off it in time before it crashed down with tremendous force. The crowd screamed and retreated backwards away from the debris. It was among this chaos that Walter the guard came out of the side entrance—which was away from the blast site—clutching several large porcelain fragments in his hands. "Found it in the pit like you said, Mr. Disney," he had to shout at the old man to be heard of the crowd and flames.
Disney hauled himself to his feet and held up the microphone. "Tell everyone about it, Walter," he said into it, handing it to the guard.
"I found the remnants of an oxygen tank in the pit like Detective Monk said," Walter told the crowd, which had started calming down, "Looks like it shattered on the board they put over it. I did a preliminary fingerprint scan. Mr. Chalmers's prints are the only ones on them. There's some blood on it too."
The crowd was mostly quite in confusion. "You see?" Natalie shouted to Iger as she hauled him rather roughly to his feet from the spot where she'd flung him off the stage following the accident, "He's set you up!"
She pointed an accusing finger at Chalmers, who in a flash drew a gun. "Hands up, all of you!" he shouted at everyone with fifteen feet. There were screams as people complied with his wish.
"Roger, what the hell are you doing?" Iger gasped in shock, "Don't tell me it's actually true!"
"You senile idiot!" Chalmers derided him, "This is my company now! Good night, Bob."
He put his finger on the trigger. Without warning Natalie grabbed his arm from behind before he could fire and yanked it backwards. Howling in pain, he delivered a sharp elbow to her ribs and pushed her to the ground. "Big mistake, lady!" he snarled, pointing the barrel right at her head…
When without warning there was a loud crash as the garbage truck smashed through the building façade in reverse and swerved toward him. Chalmers froze up white with fear as it screeched to a stop inches from him. He breathed a brief sigh of relief…that quickly turned back to terror as the back end tilted upward, burying him under an avalanche of garbage. Adrian stuck his head out the passenger window. "Sorry," he called, "My mistake The switch wasn't clean."
"Did you find it?" Disney ran up to the cab.
"We found it!" Adrian thrust a black remote control into his hands, "It was a nightmare getting it; you wouldn't happen to have a shower near here? Too much trash in…"
"Walter, do a trace on it for prints," Disney handed the remote to the guard. He walked around to the back of the truck again as Chalmers fought his way out of the garbage, sputtering loudly. "Well, having fun, Roger?" he told his now ex-employee half-mockingly.
"I hate garbage!" Chalmers swiped away frantically at his now ruined suit, "Somebody get it off me, quick!"
"Like I always say," Natalie laughed to Disney as they watched the villain's predicament, "You should always put trash in its place."
"Did that just happen?" Stottlemeyer stared in wonder at the screen, "Did we just see Adrian Monk driving a garbage truck?"
"I think so," Disher was equally shocked to have seen it, "He says all the time he has his moments. This'll be interesting when he gets back to hear how it came to this."
Fifteen minutes later, and with the television cameras still rolling live, Chalmers's fingerprints had been confirmed on the remote control. Adrian smiled in satisfaction as he watched the Anaheim police officers that had been dispatched to the park leading a disgruntled Chalmers away. Another case had been brought to a successful conclusion.
"Detective Monk," Iger tapped him abruptly on the shoulder. After the detective had gotten over the shock, he told him while holding the microphone, "I believe I owe you a sincere apology for not believing you earlier."
He extended his arm. Adrian reached forward, flicked some fuzz off the top of the microphone, then shook Iger's hand. "Apology accepted," he said, snapping his hand frantically at Natalie nearby for a wipe.
"If there's anything I can do to repay you," the company president told him, "just name it and I'll do it."
"Absolutely anything?"
"Absolutely anything."
"Adrian thought long and hard. Another smile crossed his lips. "Actually, Mr. Iger," he said into the microphone, "There are two things you can do for me."
"Certainly, name them."
"First, as I was telling Mr. Kight earlier," Adrian nodded in Kight's direction, "I'd like it if you profiled my wife's murder on your new crime stopping show this fall. And if you could, his son's death, too. Maybe somebody out there knows something they could share that could ultimately lead to closure for the both of us. Because waiting without closure is one of the worst plagues imaginable, am I right?"
He glanced at Kight, who was nodding, looking very touched that Adrian would have done this for him. Apparently so was the crowd, as they were now giving him a very large ovation. Adrian grimaced; this made him notice how many people there were again.
"Consider it done," Iger snapped his fingers at an aide, who wrote down something on a notepad, "And your second request?"
"Well," Adrian chuckled to himself, "I happen to know an aspiring young writer by the name of Benjamin Fleming. When I last saw him, he'd written an incredible script, one that I think the public might like."
"Right, we'll give it the green light," Iger nodded at his aide again.
"But I can only let you have it under several conditions," Adrian held up his hand before the aide could finish writing, "First, no matter who you bring on board, you have to stay true to his vision of the story; he witnessed a lot of the events he wrote about firsthand. Second, I want him and his mother to receive permanent royalties from the project as long as they live. Send the first checks here," he took the pencil off the aide and wrote down—perfectly along the blue lines—what he knew to be the Flemings' most recent address. "Third, please don't blind him with a showbiz lifestyle. He's a great kid, I don't want him to be changed for the worst."
"Right, we'll keep all those in mind," Iger told him, "And by what the director's telling me, we're about out of time for the show, so why don't you wave good night to America, Detective?"
Adrian turned to the camera and weakly smiled. He walked toward away from the cameras once the signal had been given to stop rolling (leaving Iger saying ecstatically to the operators, "Tell me you've got it all on tape! Our ratings are going to go through the roof!"). "Well, it looks like someone's starting to get a bit of an ego," Natalie told him jokingly once he'd joined her.
"Huh?" he was confused.
"You just sold that script about your life."
"I didn't do it for me, I did it for Benjy," he told her, "He deserves to have something published, and if it's that, so be it." He turned to Julie. "Try not to e-mail him about it," he told her, well aware of their continuing correspondence, "I want him to be surprised."
"Are we going to get residuals as well if they ask for a sequel and he writes about what's happened after we entered your life?" she had to ask him.
Before Adrian could answer, the Kopeckis materialized out of the crowd, which was now by and large starting to head for the exits. "Let me just say, Mr. Monk, that was absolutely incredible," Molly told him, "Can we take home your autograph?"
She held up her brother's autograph book. "If you say so," Adrian shrugged and started writing out his name—very slowly. "We'll be waiting for payment for the crash helmets," Josh informed the detective while he finished writing, "If you're late by more than thirty days, we're calling the IRS."
"Well, Adrian, it was pleasure meeting you," Paul shook his hand, prompting another Adrian to dig quickly through his wipe briefcase, which was now almost half empty after have been completely full in the morning, "I'm hoping things'll go well for us after we leave here tonight."
He put a warm arm around his wife and gave the detective a wink. "I'm sure they will, Paul," Adrian winked back, "I think things are going to go great for all of you."
"Well, it was great seeing you again, "Natalie gave her friend a parting hug, "We'd probably better get on the road ourselves; it's going to be a long ride up to my parents' place tonight."
"All right, you keep in touch," Sandy waved goodbye as she and her family walked off into the crowds. "Nice people, very nice," Adrian remarked once they were gone, "It sort of felt good being around normal people for…"
"Mr. Monk," Disney came running up to him. He was holding something in his palm. "Before you leave, one of the maintenance people found this lodged in a tree near the old Skyway line."
He handed the detective a yellowed paper. Adrian dared to take it with his bare hands. His eyes started to water as he read what it said. "So it looks like Trudy's knight in shining armor found what he came for, huh?" Natalie told him with a smile.
Adrian didn't say anything, but he didn't have to. "Thank you, thank you for everything," he shook Disney's hand without bothering to go for another wipe, "This, this makes my whole day."
"Well we aim to please," Disney told him, "Have a nice evening."
He walked off into the crowd. "Well, I'll put this in a safe place for you," Natalie took Trudy's note out of her boss's hands and started to fold it.
"Don't do that!" Adrian snatched it back off her and frantically smoothed it back out, "This needs to be preserved! We shouldn't even be touching it like this!"
He opened briefcase number six and gently placed Trudy's note inside. "Once we get to your parents, we're going to get a frame and put it in an airtight waterproof place," he went on as they walked toward the gate.
"Why didn't you bring a frame of your own with you?" Natalie had to know.
"Hey, I'm not perfect," he told her, "And the first clean bathroom we get to, we'll have to stop. I've been holding my bladder out for nine hours now."
"Nine hours?" she was shocked.
"You honestly think I'm going to go in one of these bathrooms?" he pointed out, "After people have been locked in here all day? That's worse than suicide! And you can call me crazy, but don't call me suicidal!"
"Same old Mr. Monk," Julie remarked with a yawn, leaning her head gently against his side, "Can't live with him, but you can never live without him."
THE END