Mr. Monk and the Two Assistants by Goldberg, Lee (books for students to read .TXT) 📕

make the clue hit different synapses like a pinball. I hoped he was scoring lots of points.

“How much pressure would one of these jaws exert on an object?” Monk asked, standing up.

“Depends on the size of the tool,” Mantooth said. “I’d say the one that was stolen probably had a maximum cutting force of about eighteen thousand pounds per square inch.”

Monk glanced at me. I looked back at him. And in that moment, I knew why Monk had smelled gasoline in Webster’s loft. I knew what had made those marks on Webster’s bathroom floor. I knew how the killer had solved the problem of mimicking an alligator’s bite. And I knew that my date with Joe wasn’t going to happen tonight. One way or another, I would still be working on the case.

Joe studied Monk. “You know why someone stole our stuff.”

“Yes, I do,” he said.

So did I. It was nice to be in the know for a change.

“Do you think you can get it back for us?” Mantooth asked.

“Probably not,” Monk said. “My guess is that it’s probably at the bottom of the bay by now.”

“How about whoever did it?” Joe said. “Can you at least get him?”

“Definitely,” Monk said.

“Well,” Mantooth said, “at least that’s something.”

The captain thanked us for our help and asked Monk if he wanted to check the fire truck for spots and smudges. Monk almost skipped away.

That left Joe and me alone for the moment.

“We aren’t having an intimate interlude tonight, are we?” Joe said.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“Another time, I hope.”

I gave him a polite kiss. Maybe too polite.

“There’s always hope,” I said and walked away.

I found Monk shining the grille on the fire truck. If it shined any brighter, it would have qualified as a star.

“Let me see if I understand things right,” I said. “On Wednesday night, someone firebombed a car down in Washington Park to draw the firefighters out of the station long enough so he could steal the Jaws of Life, which he needed to replicate the biting force of an alligator.”

“He glued a set of alligator jaws onto the blades,” Monk said.

“Somehow the killer got into Ronald Webster’s loft, knocked him out, stripped off his clothes and tossed him in the bathtub, which he filled with water and sprinkled with table sea salt,” I said. “Then the killer brought in the Jaws of Life and chomped on Webster with them. Webster must have regained consciousness and struggled, causing the power unit to drag across the floor, leaving the streaks on the tiles.”

“Obviously,” Monk said. “Too obviously, if you ask me.”

He got up and dropped his rag in a laundry basket. Together we started walking out to my car. He took his junior firefighter pin off and put it in his pocket.

“The killer then lugged the body and the Jaws of Life down to his car, drove to Baker Beach and dumped Webster there,” I said, “along with his neatly folded clothes.”

“You left out a few things,” Monk said.

“Like why the killer bothered with the whole alligator thing at all,” I said.

“Like who the killer is,” Monk said.

I stopped walking and stared at him. “You know who the killer is?”

“You don’t?”

“No, of course I don’t,” I said. “Because if I did, I would have said, ‘Hot damn, the killer is Mr. X and here’s what he did.’ That’s what a normal person would do.”

“Are you saying I’m not normal?”

He looked genuinely hurt. I took a deep breath and tried to fight the urge to strangle him to death right there on the street. He was my employer, after all.

“What I’m saying, Mr. Monk, is that most people would start by sharing the most important news first. The identity of the killer is probably the most important thing we don’t know right now.”

“I know it,” Monk said.

Hot damn, I thought.

“Then perhaps you would be kind enough to share it with me,” I said. “Who killed Ronald Webster?”

“The same person who killed Ellen Cole.”

I blinked hard and probably even did a double take. It seemed like an enormous leap of logic to make, even for Adrian Monk.

“But these two murders have absolutely nothing in common,” I said.

“They are practically identical,” Monk said.

“The victims weren’t the same sex, they weren’t even in the same city and they were killed in entirely different ways,” I said. “Ellen Cole was clobbered with a lamp by an intruder. Ronald Webster was murdered in a ridiculously elaborate way to make it seem like he was attacked by an alligator on a nude beach.”

“Exactly,” Monk said. “Now do you see the similarities?”

I rubbed my temples. I was getting a Monk-ache.

“No,” I said, “I don’t.”

“It’s me.”

“You’re the killer?” I said.

“I’m what they have in common,” Monk said.

I opened my purse and began searching madly for some Advil to relieve my misery. Or a gun. Unfortunately, I didn’t have either.

“I am very confused and my head feels like it’s being split open by the Jaws of Life,” I said. “I think you could really clear things up and relieve some of my blinding pain by telling me straight out who the killer is.”

“I will be glad to,” Monk said.

“Great,” I said.

“Tomorrow morning,” Monk said. “Sharona will be back by then.”

“You talked to Sharona?”

“That’s who I called on your cell phone,” Monk said. “She’s going to check out something for me and then take the first flight to San Francisco that she can get.”

“Did you tell her who killed Ellen Cole and framed her husband for the murder?” I said.

“I told her she’d find out tomorrow,” Monk said.

“How did she take it?” I asked.

Monk cleared his throat. “If you come to my house