Mr. Monk Goes to Germany by Lee Goldberg (general ebook reader .TXT) 📕

“Looking at you, Mildred, how could we have anything less on our faces?” Dr. Kroger said.

“You charmer,” she replied.

The man put his arm around Dr. Kroger’s shoulder and the two of them smiled for her camera. The man had a rugged, earthy handsomeness, like the Marlboro Man, only without the cigarette dangling from parched lips.

Mildred snapped the picture and her camera flashed just as we reached the patio.

Monk staggered back, letting out a pained cry.

“Blinded by the flash?” I asked.

“I wish,” he said, staring at Dr. Kroger, who was just noticing us.

“Adrian?” Dr. Kroger said. “You’re not supposed to be here.”

Monk kept moving backward, stumbling on the steps and losing his balance. I had to grab him to keep him from falling over.

“Mr. Monk,” I said, “what’s wrong?”

“It was all a lie,” Monk said. He was still staring at Dr. Kroger. “He never wanted to help me.”

“What are you talking about?” I asked.

“He kept me from the truth. Nothing was real. My life has been an illusion.”

Monk wasn’t making any sense, but I was used to that. Whenever he solved a mystery, he saw how the bits and pieces of evidence fit together in a revelatory moment of startling clarity. It took him a minute to process the information so we could see it as clearly as he did.

But those realizations were usually moments of joy and contentment for him. What I heard in his voice and saw in his face now was horror. And what mystery was he solving?

I turned to Dr. Kroger, hoping for some guidance in this situation.

And that’s when I realized that it wasn’t Dr. Kroger whom Monk was looking at. He was looking at the man who was standing beside Dr. Kroger and had his right arm around the psychiatrist’s shoulder.

The man had six fingers on his right hand.

A shiver ran through my whole body like an electric shock. I felt dizzy and sick. And I’m sure my reaction wasn’t one tenth of what Monk was feeling.

“Adrian.” Dr. Kroger took a step forward, an expression of concern on his face. “I think you need help.”

Monk shook his head, turned around, and ran down the steps. He kept on running until he disappeared from sight below the hotel. I watched him go. There were tears stinging my eyes.

I couldn’t imagine the horror and betrayal that Monk was feeling. His whole world had just been turned inside out— and mine along with it.

Dr. Kroger came up behind me. “What has gotten into him, Natalie?”

I read a story once about a man who couldn’t get his desktop computer to work properly. After spending three fruitless hours on the phone with customer support, he threw his computer out the window of his tenth-floor apartment. Unfortunately, the computer, the monitor, and the keyboard all landed on the roof of a police car.

When the police officers asked him why he did it, he shrugged and said, “I just snapped.”

He threw away thousands of dollars. He could have killed someone on the street. Didn’t he consider for one second what he was about to do? I didn’t understand it, at least not until that moment in Lohr when I snapped.

I whirled around and punched Dr. Kroger in the face. And as he staggered back, his eyes wide with shock and his nose bloody, I threw myself at him. We landed on the ground with my hands around his throat. I saw stars, but I think it was just the flash of Mildred taking more pictures.

Several men grabbed me by the arms, pulled me off of Dr. Kroger, and dragged me away.

Now, with the benefit of hindsight, I know what happened. I made the same connections that Monk did and lost control. Monk ran. I attacked. We’d both realized that the man Monk had trusted to gain control of his anxieties and phobias may actually have been doing everything he could to exacerbate them.

The man he’d trusted to help him become psychologically stable enough to return to the police force may actually have been working to keep that from ever happening.

The man he’d trusted with his most intimate feelings and fears may have been helping the man who murdered Monk’s wife avoid ever being caught.

Thinking about it again made me want to hit Dr. Kroger some more. I lunged for him, but the men held me back.

Dr. Kroger looked at me like I was some kind of wild animal, which, at the moment, I guess I was.

The man with eleven fingers helped Dr. Kroger to his feet and handed him a napkin to hold under his bloody nose.

“What is going on, Charles?” the man asked. He had a deep baritone voice that embodied authority and an undefined European accent. “Who are these people?”

“As if you didn’t know,” I said to him, struggling against the men who held me. I wanted to hit that guy, too.

Monk was right. The man who hired someone to put a bomb in Trudy’s car had fled to the last place on earth Monk would ever visit. But then Dr. Kroger made the mistake of going there, leading Monk directly to his wife’s murderer.

“The man is Adrian Monk, one of my patients,” Dr. Kroger said, clutching the napkin to his nose. “This is Natalie Teeger, his assistant.”

“They stalked you all the way to Germany?” the man said. Everyone turned and looked at me with disbelief. “I’m calling the police.”

“That won’t be necessary,” Dr. Kroger said.

“The hell it isn’t,” I said. “Call them. If you don’t, I will.”