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

“And you’re awake,” he said.

“Sorry to disappoint you, Captain.”

“Are you kidding? I’m relieved,” Stottlemeyer said unconvincingly. “The last thing I want to do is disturb your rest.”

“Were you able to find out anything about Dr. Martin Rahner?”

“I was,” Stottlemeyer said. “Is Monk awake?”

“How would I know?” I said. “We aren’t sharing a room.”

“Find out,” Stottlemeyer said. “If he’s asleep, you’d better wake him up.”

“Can’t whatever you have to say wait until morning?”

“He’s waited too long already,” Stottlemeyer said.

“It’s that big?”

“It’s that big,” he said.

I put on a bathrobe and, carrying my cell phone, went down the hall to Monk’s room. I knocked on the door and hoped I was loud enough to wake him but not the rest of the guests.

He answered the door in his pajamas. His eyes were closed. He might even have been sleepwalking.

“What is it?” he asked groggily.

“The captain has some information about Dr. Rahner,” I said.

Monk motioned me inside and closed the door. We sat down side by side on the edge of his bed; I put Stottlemeyer on the speaker and held the phone up between us.

“We’re both here, Captain,” I said.

“How are you holding up, Monk?” Stottlemeyer asked.

“The whole world is conspiring against me,” Monk said. “With the possible exception of you, Natalie, and Randy Disher.”

“Possible exception?” I said.

“I like to keep an open mind,” Monk said.

“That’s what you are famous for,” Stottlemeyer said, his sarcasm completely lost on Monk. “Here’s what I’ve learned. Dr. Rahner is a respected psychiatrist and author in Germany who has lectured at several colleges in the United States over the years, including UC Berkeley.”

“When was he in the Bay Area?” Monk asked.

There was a long pause. For a moment I thought we’d lost our connection.

“The two weeks before Trudy was killed,” Stottlemeyer said.

Monk took the news stoically, nodding slightly, as if Stottlemeyer was only confirming what he already knew.

“What was he doing there?” Monk asked.

“He delivered a couple of lectures,” Stottlemeyer said. “They were underwritten by a grant from Dale Biederback.”

Dale the Whale. The obscenely obese madman who tried to ruin the Monks after Trudy wrote a series of unflattering investigative reports about his business dealings.

The significance of the news nearly knocked me off the bed, but once again Monk took it all with astonishing calmness. He just nodded.

“Did you find any connections between Dr. Rahner, Dr. Kroger, and Dale?” Monk asked.

“Not so far, but we haven’t dug very deep,” Stottlemeyer said. “We’ll need lots of search warrants for that.”

“So get them,” Monk said.

“We don’t have any evidence of a crime.”

“You know where Trudy is buried,” Monk said.

It was like a slap. There was a long silence on the phone. For a moment I wondered if maybe Stottlemeyer had hung up. I wouldn’t have blamed him if he had. Monk didn’t appreciate how hard his friends worked for him. Or if he did, he rarely showed it.

“That’s not fair,” Stottlemeyer said softly.

“Neither was her murder,” Monk replied, without a trace of remorse for his cutting remark.

“I want to get the sonofabitch who killed Trudy and I’ll do whatever is within my power to do. But I can’t convince a judge to give me search warrants based on what we’ve got. It’s all circumstantial and adds up to nothing.”

“It adds up to me,” Monk said.

“Lots of things add up to you that don’t to anybody else,” Stottlemeyer said.

“But they do in the end,” Monk said.

“Okay, then maybe you can tell me what Dr. Rahner’s motive was for hiring someone to plant a bomb in Trudy’s car.”

“Maybe he doesn’t have one,” Monk said.

“If you want to commit a random murder, you don’t seek out a bomber and hire him to do it,” Stottlemeyer said. “You do it yourself, fast and simple.”

“What I meant was that maybe he did it for Dale,” Monk said. “The same way that Dale’s doctor murdered a judge for him.”

“You think that Dale blackmailed Dr. Rahner into it?” I asked. “And also blackmailed Dr. Kroger into playing with your mind to keep you off the police force?”

“That’s one possibility,” Monk said.

“You haven’t got any evidence,” Stottlemeyer said.

“That’s what we need the search warrants for,” Monk said.

“A judge is going to want a lot more than possibilities before he’ll give us warrants to rummage through everyone’s phone, travel, and bank records,” Stottlemeyer said. “All I can tell a judge now is that Dr. Rahner was in San Francisco in the weeks preceding Trudy’s death, giving a lecture that was sponsored by Dale the Whale, and that your shrink might have attended. There’s nothing even remotely criminal about that.”

“It suggests a conspiracy,” Monk said.

“To you,” Stottlemeyer said.

“And me,” I said.

“But it won’t convince a judge,” Stottlemeyer told us.

“The bomber who killed Trudy said in a deathbed confession that the man who hired him had six fingers on his right hand,” I said. “So does Dr. Rahner.”

“The last time I checked,” Stottlemeyer said, “having an extra finger isn’t a criminal offense.”

“You checked?” Monk said.

“I was being facetious, Monk. I didn’t check.”

“Maybe you should.”

“I didn’t check because I know it’s not a crime and so do you,” Stottlemeyer said. “Maybe it is in Germany. Ask the cops over there.”

“I will,” Monk said.

“Let me know how things go. I’m here if you need any