What He Saw
by Cathy German
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Sharona rang the bell again and considered using her key.

"Come on, Adrian," she muttered.  She knew he was in there.  He'd called her less than an hour ago.  She was used to peculiar calls from him, but this one had given her chills. 

Most of them just gave her headaches.

He'd sounded shaken.  Not freaked out or goofy or distracted or anal or any of the other things she'd heard in his voice before.  He'd sounded afraid; and not snake afraid or germ afraid or milk or dust bunny afraid.  Afraid like she might sound afraid.  SANE afraid.

With no warning, the door opened.  When she stepped in, Adrian Monk had already turned away and was headed back into the house.

"Adrian," she called, trotting after him.  "Adrian, what is it?  What's the matter?"  In deference to his state, she kept herself from reaching out to stop him.  She followed him into the kitchen and he headed for the silverware drawer.  Not a good sign.  This meant polishing over and over until he got it right, and he never got it right.  He opened the drawer.

"Adrian?"

He didn't answer, but stared into the drawer as if there were a vision there, or an answer to an important question.

"I saw something," he said in a low voice.

"In the drawer?"  She came to stand next to him.

"I've seen things before."  He didn't raise his head.  His hand was still on the drawer pull, his eyes riveted to the tidy stacks of forks, knives, and spoons.

"I saw Trudy die ahead of time.  Did I ever tell you that?"

She drew in a startled breath and brought a hand to her mouth.  She reached tentatively for his arm with the other.

"Oh, Adrian.  No.  No.  You never told me that."

He didn't move.  "I didn't see it precisely.  I couldn't tell when.  I couldn't tell where.  But I saw her ... in pain.  In a car.  I thought it meant a car accident, and I told her to drive carefully, and she said ..."  He drew his eyes from the drawer and looked at Sharona.  "She said, 'Always.'"

Sharona was crushed by the weight of it, by the intense sorrow in Monk's dark eyes, and she felt hot tears ride in her own.  She swallowed.  She wanted to say something soothing, but she couldn't get her anything past the lump in her throat.

"We have to go," Monk said, and he closed the door with great care and pushed past her. 

"Where?" she said, hurrying to follow.

"Where you go when you see someone being killed."  He put on his coat and spent a few seconds shifting it until it fell just right on his shoulders.  It calmed her to see it.  She needed to see him act ... well ... NORMAL.  He pushed her gently to the front door. 

"To the police." 




"Randy," Stottlemeyer called through his office door.  "Are you taking running shoes?  Or a tennis racket?"

Lieutenant Disher straightened from bending over his desk.  He'd been checking the contents of the suitcase that was sitting on top of it.

"Uh ... a tennis racket, Sir?  Will we have that kind of time?" 

Stottlemeyer's smiling face appeared at the door.

"It's a seminar, Lieutenant.  Not prison.  We're not going to be chained to a desk all day long.  They'll let us out to howl at the moon once in a while."

Still not sure of the captain's intentions, Disher stood with a pair of underwear in each hand.  "And a tennis racket will be needed for howling at the moon?  Sir?"

Stottlemeyer shook his head and dismissed Disher's concerns with a wave.  "All work and no play, Randy.  Not a good idea.  I know what I'm talking about.  We'll work hard, but there will be time for play."

Disher considered this and considered the fact that he was standing there with a pair of underwear in each hand.  Lieutenant Nancy Bremmer walked by and gave him a toothy grin and he shoved his hands down into the depths of his suitcase and hid the underwear under a polo shirt.  When he looked up, the captain was no longer at the door.

"All work and no play."  Interesting that a workaholic would say that to him.  If anyone could stand to take a little of his own advice, it was his boss.  He glanced down at the itinerary on his desk.  Didn't look like much time for play, tennis or otherwise.  Three-and-one-half days of criminal justice procedures, profiling, victim rights, recent court rulings that might impact how they did their jobs.  He knew what this meant: box lunches and sheets of paper with study topics taped to the walls, a bad night's sleep, and a choice of chicken or salmon for dinner on the last night there.  That's what it looked like to him.

But it was in Napa Valley, and he could handle that just fine.

Then he felt that tingle on the back of his neck that could only mean one thing.  He turned.

Adrian Monk.  With Sharona.  And he was headed for the captain's office as fast as the Lieutenant had ever seen him move.  Randy shut the suitcase and sped towards them.  He had appointed himself Official Monk Interceptor in deference to his overly-busy boss.  And right now, his boss was in a good mood.  And in less than four hours, he'd been headed with that man who was in a good mood to Napa Valley, where they would share a room for three days.

He wanted to share it with a man who was in a good mood.

He reached them and stepped in the aisle between the desks, blocking Monk from reaching his goal.

"Monk.  What do you want?"

"I need to see the captain."

"What for?"

Monk shuffled to his right.  Randy matched him, shuffling to his left.  Monk pulled his eyes up to Disher's.  The look on Monk's face made his breath catch.  Whatever this was, it was not good.  Disher looked over Monk's shoulder at Sharona.  She shrugged, looking worried.

"Look, Monk," he said, figuring he'd try the reasonable route.  "The captain's busy.  We're leaving tomorrow for a three-day seminar, and he doesn't-"

Some noise came from Adrian Monk's throat that he'd never heard before, and at the same time, Monk � a good four inches shorter than him - unceremoniously shoved Disher aside and strode for the door, Sharona behind him.  Disher had no choice but to follow.

"Well, Adrian Monk!" Stottlemeyer called, evidently still in a good mood.  "And Sharona.  What brings you here this morning?"  Adrian stood stiffly in front of the captain's desk.

"You can't go."

Stottlemeyer shot Disher a look.  <Traitor> it said. 

"What?" the captain said, putting his hands on his hips.  "I can't go to the seminar?"

"No.  You can't go."

"May I ask why?"

Monk nodded, and Disher thought briefly of Monk Bobble-head dolls, and wondered about their marketability.  That was all that Monk seemed able to do: nod.  Stottlemeyer gave Monk a small and patient smile.  Randy was relieved.  His boss was still in a good mood.  The captain hitched a hip up on his desk and crossed his arms.

"Monk.  What's up?"

"You can't go."

"We covered that.  Why?"

Monk stopped nodding.  Now it was the neck thing.  Disher watched him pull his neck away from his collar.  Two times; three, four.

"Adrian," Sharona said.  "Please tell us what's wrong."

Her voice seemed to cut through his fog.

"I saw a murder," Monk said without emotion, as if he were reciting the bus schedule.  "I saw someone killed."

Disher could see that this piqued the captain's interest.  Monk was rarely wrong, and they all knew it.  Stottlemeyer leaned over in an attempt to make eye contact with his old friend, and spoke slowly, with genuine curiosity 

"Do you know who this person is?"

Monk nodded, eyes on the floor.

"Do you know when it's going to happen?"

Monk shook his head "no," eyes still on the floor.  The captain frowned and looked up at Disher, then Sharona.  He rose and moved to his desk drawer.

"Monk, I'm going to be gone for three days.  I'm going to give you Lieutenant Mazetti's card.  You've worked with him a little before, and with Randy and I both being gone-"

"You can't go."

The captain sighed and dropped his head.  He moved back past Monk and handed the card to Sharona, giving her a squinty you'll-have-to-handle-this look as he did.  He spoke as he walked back to his desk.

"Monk, I know that you're more comfortable working with me or with Lieutentant Disher, but-"

And then Monk did an amazing thing.  He touched the captain, pulled him around by the arm and placed him where he wanted him: square in front of him, and he put his hands on Stottlemeyer's upper arms to keep him there.

"You can't go," he growled, giving the captain a shake.

Stottlemeyer was clearly astonished.

"Monk-"

"It's you, Leland.  It's you I see killed."

The silence that followed that proclamation was dark and suffocating.  Randy Disher found it hard to take a deep breath.  He saw Sharona pale and reach for a chair back for support.  And as for Monk and Stottlemeyer, they stood for a long time exactly as they were, eyes locked, Monk's hands on the captain's arms.  Finally, Stottlemeyer took a step back and Monk dropped his arms.

"You don't know when," the captain said, his voice a load of gravel.

"No."

The captain considered this.  "Then you don't know for sure that it will happen."  It was a statement, not a question.  Stottlemeyer backed up another step, as if distancing himself from the possibilities.  "And you've seen things before that have never happened," he reminded Monk.

"And I've seen things that have.  Trudy-"

Stottlemeyer held up a quelling hand.

"Don't.  I can understand your seeing that.  I can understand because of the relationship that you two had.  It was symbiotic, Monk.  It was-"

"Leland, we've been through a lot together as well.  And I think I've seen this so that I can stop it."

For a long moment, Disher's boss considered it, his forehead creased in frown.  And then he rejected it, waving a hand at them all and distancing himself behind the bulk of his desk.

"I have work to do," he said, shuffling papers in the in-basket. 

"I can't believe you're ignoring this," Monk said in a strangled voice.

Stottlemeyer gave him a hard look.  "Monk, if I start amending how I live, if I stop doing my job because of something that may or may not happen, I'll be like a deer in the headlights of a car."  He shook his head and snapped the briefcase that was on his desk closed.  "I can't do that.  I'll stop living if I do."  He looked at them all.  "I've got to get going."  And then at Disher: "Pick me up around two."  And he left.

Disher still found it difficult to pull a full breath into his lungs.  He frowned at the retreating back of Stottlemeyer and then turned back to address whoever it was that was touching him, and he was startled to be gazing into the dark eyes of Mr. Monk.  Shocked, Disher glanced at the hands on his shoulders, at Monk, at Sharona, and back at her boss and his unprotected hands.

Monk gave him a sharp shake.

"Listen to me, Lieutenant," Monk said in a voice neither Disher nor Sharona had ever heard before.  There was bite in that voice; and steel, and repressed fear.  It didn't sound like Adrian Monk at all.  The fear part, maybe.  The rest was new.

"Are you listening to me?"

"Unh ... yeah.  Yes," Randy said, giving him a nervous nod.

"You will not let him out of your sight.  Night.  Day.  Doesn't matter.  Be at his side."  Monk shook him again for effect.  "Do you understand me?"

Disher shot a look at Sharona.  She shook her head and shrugged back at him.

Monk growled at the lack of response.  "Do you under �" he began again.

"Yes.  Yes, Mr. Monk.  I understand."

For an unnerving minute, the pariah of the San Francisco police department did not remove his hands or take his eyes off of the Lieutenant.  Uncomfortable for a whole host of reasons, Disher cleared his throat.

"Monk," he whispered.  "You're scaring me."

Monk sighed and dropped his arms to his side.

"It's all right.  I'm scaring myself."




Disher was driving.

Disher preferred driving.  Stottlemeyer had a tendency to distraction behind the wheel.  It set Randy's teeth on edge, and he wanted to kiss the ground whenever he got out of a car with the captain at the helm.

He looked over at him now.  He'd been ominously silent since Disher had picked him up.  He'd spent most of the trip with his face averted, apparently absorbed in the view passing outside the window. The good mood he'd been in had long vanished. 

And that was fine, because his own good mood had vanished as well.  He could still feel Monk's insistent hands on his shoulders, could read the fear in his eyes.  Monk's nervous and dark concern had somehow traveled out his fingers and poured into Randy's bloodstream, where it was pounding now.

He cleared his throat.

"Brought my tennis racket, Sir," he said, trying to color the words with a nonchalance he didn't feel.

Stottlemeyer turned and looked at him as if he'd just announced that he was going to wear his clothes backwards for the first day of the seminar.

"What?" 

"Uh, my tennis racket," he said, nodding at the back seat.  "Just in case."

Stottlemeyer, clearly a million miles away, turned and looked behind them.

"What for?"

"You know: 'All work and no play.'  'Howling at the moon.'"  He grinned.  It hurt his facial muscles to pull it off.

"Oh.  Yeah."  The captain nodded absently.  "We could have some extra time.   But I ... I guess I forgot mine."

Small wonder, Disher thought.

And then he crossed the line.  He had to.

"Captain," he said, squeezing the steering wheel and staring straight ahead at the road, "I think you should have listened to Monk."

"I did."

"No, Sir," Randy said, amazed at his own audacity.  "You know what I mean.  I mean you should have listened to him, and I think we should have stayed and talked to Monk and worked this out.  They repeat this seminar every quarter.  We could have caught it later."

Disher could feel Stottlemeyer's eyes rake the side of his face, and then he was silent for a long time, at least five miles by Disher's calculation.

"Randy," he finally said in a voice that made it sound like it physically hurt to talk, "think about what you're saying.  I'm a captain in an organization where people put their lives on the line every day.  How do you think I would feel, and how do you think it would look if I stopped working because somebody had a ... a vision.  A premonition."  He rubbed his hands on his thighs and sighed.  "Police officers' wives and husbands wake up at 3 a.m. in the morning with visions like that all the time."

Disher felt a wave of despair wash through him.  He was going to lose this battle, no question about it.  He swallowed.

"But Monk is never wrong."

Stottlemeyer found it in himself to chuckle.

"Oh, he's been wrong before."

Incredulous, Randy looked to his right.  Stottlemeyer rewarded him with a smile.

"When I found Sharona for him, he said it wouldn't work."




"Waiter, this glass is dirty."

Sharona dropped her head into her hands.  Five.  Five glasses of water, none of them right.  What she'd thought would be a good idea had turned into a disaster.

"Monk ..."

"Well it is.  It's dirty."  Quite serious, he wrapped his knife in the napkin and used it as a pointer.  "Here."  He squinted and frowned.  "And here," he said, tapping, proud to have found another imperfection.

Never, never again, Sharona thought.  What was I thinking?

It seemed like a fine idea at the time: take Benjy to a friend's house and take Monk out to a nice place for dinner to keep his mind off of ... well, the same thing she couldn't keep her mind off of: Stottlemeyer and Disher.  She glanced at her watch.  They were probably in Napa Valley by now.

The take-charge Monk she'd seen that morning had been replaced by the one that she knew far better, and he was awash in his phobias, as bad as she'd ever seen him.

"Waiter!" Adrian called again, his insistent and indignant gaze running through the busy restaurant.  Nearby diners were looking their way.

She reached out and pulled down on his arm.

"Adrian.  Stop.  Adrian."

"But Sharona," his said, turning to her and looking older than she'd ever seen him, "this isn't right."

She nodded, convinced.  "I know that.  It's not right."

His eyebrows rose.

"It isn't?  You agree?"

"I mean this isn't right," she said, putting her palms on the white tablecloth, "and this," she said, spreading her arms wide.  "We shouldn't be here.  I brought you here because I thought I could take your mind off of ..."

He looked down at his plate.  His third.

Sharona removed the napkin from her lap and put it on the table.

"Adrian, help me here.  What should we do?"

"I don't know," he said quietly into the table as a waiter removed the offensive glass of water and replaced it with another.  "I'm not sure."

"Well we can't just sit here."

He looked up, hopeful.

"I haven't been to Napa Valley in years," he said.  "Trudy and I ..."  He looked back down.  "It's been a long time."

Sharona stood, feeling that they had some purpose and direction, feeling  better than she had in hours.

"Adrian, let's take a trip."

Monk stood as well and spoke: 

"Waiter, this glass has a spot on it, too."




Randy Disher had the mother of all wine headaches.

He'd finally relaxed the evening before when they'd arrived at their destination: The Tended Vine Inn, which was an adjunct to The Tended Vine Cellars.  The seminar was being held in a series of meeting rooms in the Inn, a treed, grassy oasis that was a counterpoint to the dusty fields and sere, golden, oak-covered hills surrounding them.

Well, he hadn't relaxed right away.  They'd had to check in at the desk and stop by the table to register for the seminar, get their packets, and slap on their "Hi, I'm ______" name tags, but as soon as they'd dropped their bags in the room, he and Stottlemeyer had headed for the Cellars where there was a wine- and cheese-tasting soiree for seminar attendees. 

It hadn't taken Disher too long to find a wine that pleased him, and once he'd found that, he began to systematically numb his extremities.

Always with an eye on Stottlemeyer.

He hadn't meant to have too much to drink.  It had somehow just happened: the drive, his nerves, the day that began with Mr. Adrian Monk and his premonition ... he had needed to relax badly. 

And so he had. 

Badly.

He was sure that he'd had that much wine before with no adverse effects, but no matter: he'd been on his lips.  No two ways about it.  After a mere hour at The Cellars, his head was echoing painfully with the laughter of the attendees, and he felt unsteady on his feet.

He'd nailed himself to his captain's side for the evening, but Stottlemeyer was so busy pressing the flesh and networking with old co-workers and friends that he hadn't seemed to notice.  Disher knew that he had to get to their room before he passed out, but he was loathe to shirk his guard dog duty.  The only thing he could think to do was to get Stottlemeyer to go with him.

He'd tugged on the elbow of the captain's suit coat until he got his attention.  Disher had pulled him aside behind the wine barrels and confessed his tipsy state in the flicker of the candlelight there, and the amused look on Stottlemeyer's face hadn't helped one bit.

And so they'd staggered down the hallway to their room.

Well, Stottlemeyer had walked, actually, with his arm around Disher.  The captain had only staggered when his lieutenant fell into him.  Randy had been as clumsy as a stringless marionette.

He'd promptly fallen to the bed and begged the captain to stay, begged him, thick-tongued and teary, to stay with him in the room and not go back to the Cellars.  Stottlemeyer, his cheeks rosy from vino, had laughed, pulled off Disher's shoes, and covered him with a blanket.

"Took that 'howling at the moon' thing a little too seriously, Randy," he'd said with a smile, and he patted Disher's leg.  "Sleep tight.  Tomorrow's another day."

And now that day was here, and Disher was dreading it.  He'd never been this sick after drinking, not even in college, and he wondered about his ability to attend the morning sessions.  Hell, he wondered at his ability to attend any of them, given how he was feeling.

He hadn't unwrapped his head yet.  His first reaction upon awakening was to throw his arms over his eyes.  The morning sun was slanting through the wooden blinds of the window at the foot of the bed, and the first unprotected glimpse of it had shot straight through his eyeballs into the tenderest parts of his brain.

He moaned, and then caught himself, wondering if Stottlemeyer was still asleep.  Tentatively, he uncovered one eye.  Looked like the captain was up and gone already.  The bed was made. 

Time for him to do the same.

Randy was pretty sure that he would get physically ill the minute he stood.  His whole body was telling him that.  He was glad that the captain was gone.  That way, he could have the bathroom to himself, and it wouldn't be necessary to visit his misery on an innocent roommate.

The bed was made.

Randy tried to remember which was the first meeting of the day and whether he could pass on it and keep his badge.  Was it the profiling one?  He was interested in that one.  Or was that one tomorrow?

He wasn't crazy about the fact that he'd have to face his boss today after his woozy, helpless display last night.  He was sure that there would be plenty of good-natured ribbing about it on the captain's part.

Think about it: the bed was made.

Randy sat up so fast that he tumbled to the floor. 

Why make a bed at an inn when the maid service would be there as soon as they left the room? 

This wasn't just a case of too much wine.  This was something more, and there was purpose to it.  On his hands and knees, Disher tried to shake the cobwebs from his brain and paid for it with a stab of pain that made him cry out.  He squinted as he surveyed the room through watery eyes.

Stottlemeyer's suitcase was sitting on the dresser by the door, a mere nine feet away, but Disher wasn't sure he could make it there standing.  So he crawled, and when he got there, pulled himself up like a toddler just learning to walk. 

The bag wasn't even unzipped.

Now terrified, he stumbled through the room looking for signs of Stottlemeyer and what might have happened to him.  The signs that he did find were clear and nightmare-inducing: the piece of mint chocolate still in its tidy little box on the pillow.  In the bathroom, no toothbrush, no grooming products laid out.  The place was neat as a pin and ready for guests.

And then that particular guest fell to his knees on the cold tile floor did what he knew he'd do when he'd awakened: he got desperately, violently ill.




By Stottlemeyer's calculation, it was probably around 10 a.m. 

He'd come to full cognition pre-dawn, and had watched a beautiful sunrise through the slats of wherever he was, and then had slept again � if that was what you'd call it � until now.

He'd been awake � if that was what you'd call that � several times during the night as well, but it was only now, mid-morning, that he was feeling the fog that had enveloped his brain dissipate.  But not completely.  A concussion was a real possibility.  He'd been concussed when he was a rookie, and it was no picnic.  He didn't particularly care to go through that again, but there wasn't a hell of a lot that he could do about it, or do about anything else for that matter.

As he became more aware, he wished briefly for the return of the fog.

There wasn't a place where he didn't hurt.  He wasn't a young man anymore, and just the mere act of spending a night on a sawdust-covered concrete floor was enough to lay him low, let alone everything else: a whack on the head with something that would be known in official circles as a "blunt instrument," his hands and arms tied behind him, tight to the point of numbness, and from there tied to a barn slat on the wall behind him.  He couldn't stand because it was tied too low.  He couldn't lay down or he would dislocate his arms.

All in all, the bed in his room would have been a major improvement.

Randy Disher.  He frowned with worry thinking about him.  Stottlemeyer had considered it peculiar that his favorite lieutenant would drink himself to a point of idiocy.  It just wasn't like him.  Disher was too eager to please, too aware of himself and where he fit in the department to make an ass out of himself at a seminar surrounded by a bunch of cops.  And it was especially odd given that he was sure that Randy had been charged by Monk to stay at his side.

He'd done a fine job of that.  For most of the evening, you couldn't have fit a piece of paper between them.

Randy had been taken out of the equation to make it easier to get him.

And � gosh � it couldn't possibly have been any easier.

When he'd turned away from the door after depositing Randy, there was a Tended Vine employee standing behind him.  Or at least he'd worn the outfit of a Tended Vine employee.  Stottlemeyer recognized him as one of the waiters at The Cellar.

"Sir? Could I have a moment of your time?" the unremarkable middle-aged man asked.

"Sure.  What can I do for you?"

The waiter grimaced.

"I'm afraid this is a little ... um ... well, I'd like to be discreet about this.  It has to do with your roommate."

Stottlemeyer jabbed a thumb at the door.

"Randy?"

"Exactly."  He frowned again, appearing unsettled by the situation.  "I've been sent to talk to you by The Tended Vine management.  I'm afraid that your friend Randy was seen taking something that was not his while he was in The Cellar."

Stottlemeyer couldn't help it.  He laughed, long and hard, and waved the worried waiter away.

"Sorry, you've got the wrong guy."

"Oh, please.  Please."  The waiter grabbed his arm as he headed down the hall.  "If you could just take a second.  It was reported that he took a silver candlestick.  These have been in the owner's family for decades."  He gave Stottlemeyer a tentative smile.  "I'd prefer that we keep this between the two of us.  I'd prefer that we not alert anyone else."  He steered him to a room service cart that was a few feet from the door.  "If you can at least take a look at the rest of the set to see if you recognize anything."

It was clear that the guy was not going to take no for an answer, so Stottlemeyer, eager to escape, leaned over the cart in question as the waiter drew away the cloth covering it with a flourish.

There was a single candlestick there, and nothing else.  The waiter picked it up, and as he did so, Stottlemeyer noted that it was a big cart for such a little candlestick.  A very big cart.  And there was space underneath that very big cart, enough space to hide a good-sized person.  Maybe a man.  Maybe a stupid man who should have known better.

His last thoughts:

What a rookie mistake.

And:

Monk was right.


 

For about the hundredth time, Sharona wondered what was going through Adrian Monk's head.

He'd been silent for most of the drive. 

Okay, he had jabbered incoherently and tried to crawl out of the car all the way across the Golden Gate Bridge, which was standard, but he'd settled down around Sausalito and had been in a state of unMonk-like quiet ever since.

Once every ten minutes or so, he'd yell "Watch out!" and Sharona would dutifully slow down so that they wouldn't plow into the car turning onto the freeway about a mile-and-a-half ahead of them.  But other than that ... nothing.

But about a half-hour before their destination � The Tended Vine Inn � short sentences started to pop out of him, and she knew what was on his mind.

"Napa Valley is a very romantic place, don't you think?"

Trudy.  He was thinking of Trudy.

And: "Leland was there for me when no else was."

Stottlemeyer.  He was thinking of Stottlemeyer, and no surprise there.

And: "The people attending the seminar ... I ... I'm not sure I want to see them."

Many of them his former co-workers.  He was thinking about facing these badged people while he was displaced and badgeless.

And: "When was the last time you cleaned this car?  Look at the dust on the dashboard."

How sweet.  He was thinking of her.

As for Sharona, she'd babbled all the way like a top-40 disk jockey, wanting to keep the atmosphere light in spite of her concern for Monk and her concern about what he'd seen.  She could hear herself and was appalled, but once she started, it was hard to stop.

It was in her genes.

"Did you see that, Adrian?  That view from back there?"

"Adrian, do you want to stop for coffee?"

"Are you hungry, Adrian?  There's a little place up here where we can grab a bite.  I went there years ago on a long, long date, and blah-de-blah blah blah."

She'd even asked him if he needed to go to the bathroom, as if he were two years old and incapable of telling her what he needed.

She'd only relaxed and shut up towards the end of their trip when the disparate, sad thoughts began coming out of him.

It was times like this when she wanted to mend him, to pull him to her breast and make everything all right.  But it wasn't that easy and she knew it.  He'd been damaged by what had happened to him.  Of course, she'd been damaged in a less tragic way: single mother, quasi-abusive ex, difficulty keeping a job.

Hell.  Everybody was damaged.  But Monk ...  She pulled her eyes to the right and felt a lump swell in her throat.  She was finding that that happened a lot to her lately: moments of intense, deep sympathy for him.

"What is this sticky stuff on the seat?  Do you ever clean this car?"

And then there were those other moments ...




Lieutenant Disher mopped his face with the cool towel again and looked over into the lined, concerned face of Mr. Fredrico Narducci, the general manager for The Tended Vine Inn. 

Mr. Narducci was not a very happy man.  Things like this did not happen at The Tended Vine.  People did not mysteriously disappear after they'd checked in.  Especially when the Inn was filled with policemen.  He was tapping his fingers on the large desk in front of him.

Disher was pouring out his story in Mr. Narducci's office, and he'd had to stop when he got ill and used the attached private bathroom.  Fredrico had been arguing for calling the local authorities, but was reminded by Disher that a sizable group of them were in meeting rooms in his Inn at that very minute.  And Narducci admitted that he was loathe to open himself up to the bad publicity.

Randy was beside himself with worry, unsure as to how to proceed.  After showering and dressing in slacks and a polo shirt, he'd headed to seminar headquarters: the table in the lobby that was manned for the three days that they would be there.  He was pleased to see someone that he knew:  Grace Martin with the Oakland Police Force, and he told her the story, including Monk's grievous warnings.  He asked her to pull some cops from the meeting rooms, just a few of them, ones who were discreet and who they knew that they could trust, and those policemen were now quietly studying the shaded grounds, checking out unoccupied rooms and questioning the staff.  He didn't want a thousand cop cars squealing into the inn with sirens wailing and lights spinning. He didn't want to tip off anyone who might be holding the captain.

And he wasn't altogether sure that some officer of the law attending one of the meetings right now might not have held a grudge against his boss and decided to act on it.

"Are you sure that Mr. Stottlemeyer didn't leave on a forgotten errand?  Or maybe he decided that he had better things to do with his day," Mr. Narducci suggested, raising his bushy eyebrows.  "Maybe he's taking a wine-tasting tour."

Disher shook his head.

"He wouldn't have done that."

"How can you be so sure?."

"He knew that I'd worry.  Monk scared us with what he saw.  The captain would have had that in mind.  He wouldn't have done that to us."

Narducci nodded and leaned back in the chair behind his desk.  It creaked as it rocked back and forth, back and forth.  It was like a sharp stick poking Disher's brain.

Randy held up a hand and pointed at the chair.  "Could you?"

"Hm?"

"The chair.  My head ... it's-" he dropped it forward, as if to illustrate it, and rubbed the back of his neck.

"Oh.  Sorry."  Narducci's voice softened.  "So this Adrian Monk," he said, clearly curious.  "Is he ... crazy?"

Disher's head snapped up in an angry reaction, and he paid for it.  He barely made it to the bathroom, and while he was there, he made sure that he missed the bowl several times.




"Hey."

Ignore it.  You're dreaming again.

"Hey."  This was accompanied by a kick to an ankle, and Stottlemeyer came completely awake.  He blinked his eyes to clear the haze in them.  His heart pounded in his chest.  Finally ... finally! ... he was going to find out what this was all about.  He looked up and squinted at the man standing in front of him.  It was the waiter, but now he had a bellhop uniform on.

"Bet your arms hurt," he said, but he didn't sound concerned about it.

Stottlemeyer tried to get his throat working to answer.  He'd called out for help until his voice was raw, and he was also dying of thirst.

"We can cut those off of you now," the man said, pulling out a pocket knife  and moving behind the captain.  Stottlemeyer stiffened and tried to prepare for whatever might happen.  In spite of his lack of care the night before, he was no fool, and getting untied was not necessarily the best of news.  It could mean movement, but it could also mean movement in a bad direction.  Or he might not use the knife for cutting the ropes at all.

He assessed the possibilities.  The man was crouching next to him.  If he fell over on him right after he was cut loose, if he could grab the pocketknife, if he could sit on the guy's chest and get his bearings, but none of that happened.  His bindings loosened and the pain in his arms was overwhelming.  He wasn't sure that he could pull them in front of himself, let along bring somebody down with them.

His brain told him to wait, wait for the right moment to make a move, and this wasn't it.

He grimaced as he brought his arms forward, and the unassuming man walked back to a spot in front of him and pulled a Tended Vine Inn towel from his waistband, placed it carefully on the floor, and sat down on it cross-legged.

"You don't recognize me, do you?" he asked in a polite but menacing voice.

Stottlemeyer looked up from rubbing at his arms.  He'd never seen the guy before.  On the other hand, he could have passed him on a sidewalk any day of the week and not paid attention.  Medium-sized, middle-aged, round-faced.  Stottlemeyer ran through a saved mental database of criminals who might want to see him suffer, and this guy didn't come up.

He shook his head.

"I'm sorry," he said in a cracked whisper, still having a problem with his throat.  "I don't."

The man nodded.

"I didn't think so.  But then you weren't looking at me.  You were on the stand, looking at my brother.  Testifying against my brother."

Shit.  Stottlemeyer saw a revenge scenario forming in front of his eyes.  He could almost hear the words before they came out of the man's mouth.

"You know, if my brother was here, I doubt you'd even recognize him.  Just another day in court for the big, important policeman."

Yes.  Definitely Shit.

"But he's not here.  And do you know why?"

Stottlemeyer shook his head.

"He was terrified of jail.  He'd never been away from home before."  He smiled, and the hairs on the back of the captain's head rose.  "Isn't that something?  Twenty-two, and he'd never slept away from home.  He was so scared.  So scared."  His voice faded away and the man took the knife back out of his pocket and looked down as he idly rolled it in his fingers.  "He broke away when they were transporting him, and they shot him.  Shot him dead.  Seventeen bullets.  Five policemen.  All for a little drug deal."  He looked up.  "A little corner drug deal for a little extra change."

Stottlemeyer had begun to have feeling in his arms, and, more alert, he could also feel a moment coming up where he might have a chance; by words, or by action.

"I ... I remember that case."  And he did, but little of the courtroom part.  He remembered only the tragic end of it.  "I'm sorry about your brother."  And he was.  "I remember ... say," he said after a pause, his training coming to the fore, "what's your first name?"

The man smiled again.

"Forget it.  I watch TV.  I know what you're trying.  You're trying to stall, to wear me down.  Get to know me personally."  He looked back at his knife.  "You don't need to know my name."

The captain surreptitiously flexed his leg and hip muscles.  If he had an opportunity, he needed to be ready.

"Look," he said, keeping his voice reasonable and firm, "I'm just a cop.  I'm not a judge and jury.  I don't hand out sentences.  I don't get to vote.  I just do my job ... did my job to the best of my ability.  What happened to your brother was tragic, and I'm sorry for that."

"I couldn't believe my luck."  It came out of the man as if he hadn't heard a word, and his face was rapturous as he continued.  "Leland Stottlemeyer right here under my nose.  It was going to be a tough weekend, surrounded by cops, but when you came in ... my God, it made my day."

Stottlemeyer sighed and eyed the knife.  How much harm could a pocketknife do?  If he tried to take the guy, the worst that might happen would be some scratches, a stab wound, but not too deep.  He would try to protect his neck, his wrists ... and then the air was knocked out of him, because the angry brother reached around his back and pulled out a gun.

His gun.  His own goddamned gun.

He put his still-tingling hands in front of him, palms toward the man.

"Look.  Let's slow down.  Let's talk about this."

"Get up," the man said, motioning with the gun.

Stottlemeyer nodded.  He knew that getting up was not going to be easy.  He'd scarcely moved for almost fifteen hours, and his head was still throbbing from the hit with the candlestick.

"Give me a minute to get my feet," he said, one hand held out towards the man, one on the floor next to a hip.  He brought his knees under himself and almost toppled face-first into the floor.  This was going to be harder than he thought.  One foot to the floor, then the other, always with an eye on the legs of the man in front of him.  He found he had to use his hands to walk up the barn wall behind him to stand, and when he reached his full height, the surroundings swam in front of his eyes.  He leaned over and put his hands to his knees, his breath ragged.

The man was unmoved, and he gestured again with the gun and backed up.

"Come on."

Stottlemeyer took a first step in that direction and almost fell again, but steadied himself and took another.  As he moved, he looked to where they were headed.  It was the line of antique wine presses that he'd noticed when he was tied up.  There were four of them, oak and iron, five feet tall and about five feet in diameter.  Wooden platforms ran around them at mid-height, and large, round metal discs were suspended in the metal augers below the handles used for screwing them down.

Great.  He was going to be pressed.

He stumbled again and decided to allow himself to fall to the floor.  It was genuine, but it was also a stall.  As the man went behind him and kicked his foot, Leland's left hand hit something buried in the sawdust, and he ran his hand along it.

A six-inch spike. 

He might be able to use it, and he curled his fingers around it and pushed himself up.  The man, now behind him, used the gun to nudge him up the stairs to the platform of the closest press.  Leland took the steps slowly, thinking, calculating.  At the top of the step, he turned.  The man was right behind him.  The gun was in his face.

"Drop it.  I saw you pick it up.  Drop it now, or I'll pull the trigger."

Stottlemeyer nodded and obeyed, the spike bouncing on the floor and out of sight.

"Get in."

"Look-"

"Get in."

The captain threw an aching leg over the side of the vat, and then the other.  He stood, waiting for instructions.

"Lie down."

Resistance now would be suicidal, and the captain knew it.  He'd just have to hope that someone would come by the barn, or that the police would make a systematic search of The Tended Vine and find him.  He went to his knees, then his side.  Things could be worse.  At least his arms were free, at least he wasn't tied.  And he didn't mind the smell of the press: warm wood and wine, with a pinch of metal.

"I'm going to come back for you," the man said, leaning over the side of the press.  "I need to take you to the family.  They need to see you.  They've never been right since it happened."

Stottlemeyer said nothing.  There was nothing to be said.

The man above him continued.  "But I consider you a flight risk, just like my brother was."  And the captain was unhappily surprised to see his gun come over the side of the vat, down, down to the point where it was touching him.  He was going to be shot, and furthermore the man had thought to muffle the sound of the shot with Stottlemeyer's flesh; and as he realized this, he twisted, trying to avoid a gut shot, and succeeded.

He thought. 

For the moment, it hardly mattered.  His thigh was on fire.  Through slitted eyes he could see the lid cranking down and he breathed deeply, fighting to stay conscious.

Leland Stottlemeyer never considered himself a particularly clever man, but he had come to believe in certain things because of his old and very different friend, Adrian Monk.  If Adrian had seen this ahead of time, maybe he could hear him psychically at this moment.

So he gathered all the waning strength that he had and put it in his brain, and with blackness licking at the edges of his reality, he sent out the strongest, loudest thought that he could:

Monk. 

Help me.




"Adrian?"

They'd arrived at the circular asphalt drive at The Tended Vine Inn and had just gotten out of the car and closed the doors.  When Sharona looked across the roof, Adrian was standing as still as she'd ever seen him, and his eyes were unfocused.  He turned his head to the right, then to the left.

"Adrian?"

He turned and looked straight through her, looked beyond her and then back in the opposite direction, behind him.

Sharona put her hand to her chest.

"Adrian?  What is it?"

He looked at her finally, all of him, and he shrugged in his blazer.

"Mm ... nothing."

Sharona left Monk at the car and headed to the Tended Vine Inn office to check in on Stottlemeyer and Disher.  She knew Adrian's methods when he got to a new place.  He would want to get a lay of the land, just in case anything were to happen.

She wasn't sure still how much of Monk's vision she believed.  She had "visions" all the time: Benjy breaking a leg, Monk forgetting to pay her, accidents, premonitions ... women's intuition, maybe.  Most of the time they never happened.  They were just islands of worry in the sea of a sometimes worrisome life, and she had never lent much credence to them.

But she'd learned to pay attention to her boss.  He was rarely wrong.

As she opened the wide oak door, she stumbled into Randy Disher coming out.

"Sharona," he said, wide-eyed, grabbing her by the upper arms, "is Monk here with you?"  Without waiting for an answer, he buried her in an almost painful hug.  "I can't believe you're here," he said, his voice cracking.  "I can't believe it."  
Her response was muffled by the shirt on his chest.  "Randy.  Randy ...  what-"  She pulled herself back and looked up at him.  "Oh my God," she said as she had the chance to study him: ghost-pale, his hands on her arms cold and clammy, dark smudges under his eyes.  She put a hand to his cheek.  "Are you all right?"  And her words and hand fell away as she guessed why Randy looked as if he'd camped at the gates of hell.

"Oh my God.  Stottlemeyer.  Is he ... "

He looked down at the ground.  "Missing," he said, and looking back up:  "Where's Monk?"

She turned and pointed.  In typical Monk fashion he was standing in the grass near the driveway, and he was doing his peculiar tai-chi dance: a cocked head this way, a hand held up to the west, a short walk to a fountain, a squint at the sky.  Randy nodded, swallowed, and strode towards him, Sharona following at a trot.  Monk was staring out into the surrounding dry and fallow fields when Disher came up behind him.

Adrian turned, and when Sharona saw his grim face she held a breath.

He knew.

"Monk," Randy said with no preamble, "Stottlemeyer is missing."  And then, in a sad whisper that broke her heart: "I lost him."

Adrian Monk didn't move.  Five seconds stretched to ten, and he finally said, devoid of emotion, as if he were stating the current temperature: "That may mean the death of him."

Sharona was mortified.  "Adrian!"  she cried.  Disher rocked back on his heels as if struck, and Monk, all innocence, raised his eyebrows. 

"But it may." 

Incensed, Sharona pushed past Disher and smacked Adrian on the cheek.  She was both embarrassed and satisfied to see the blood rise to where her hand met his skin.  After a moment of shocked silence, he snapped his fingers. 

"Wipe." 

"Oh yeah!  Wipe!  Yeah," she muttered, digging into her bag.  "You need a wipe.  God only knows where my hand has been."  She pulled out the box and tossed a wipe at him.  Then another.  Then two more at once.  She couldn't pull them out fast enough to match her anger.  Frustrated, she threw the whole damn box at him.  "Knock yourself out!  Sit right there on that bench and just wipe yourself to your heart's content.  Randy," she said turning to him, "you come with me."

She sat Randy on a bench in the shade and went into the office for some ice water.  When she came out, Disher, in the bench nearest her, was leaning over, elbows on knees, head in his hands, and Adrian, on the bench out in the sun, was trying to control the free-range wipes as a breeze swept through the gardens. 

Watching both of them and thinking of an absent Stottlemeyer, she idly considered opening a day care.

She'd certainly had the experience for it.

"Here," she said, sitting and handing the bottled water to Randy.  "Drink this."

He waved it away.  "Can't.  I don't think I can keep anything down."

"C'mere," she said, and he obediently turned in her direction.  She checked his eyes, his pulse.

"I think I was probably drugged," he admitted.

"I think you're probably right," she said.

Randy threw a remorseful look towards Monk as she nursed him, and her heart went out to him.  Usually she and Disher were like unruly siblings on a long car trip, but her sympathy for him brought tears to her eyes.

"Randy," she said, taking his hands in hers.  "You have to drink something.  You're probably close to dehydration."

He grimaced.  "I can't-"

"Listen to me.  I know what I'm talking about.  You have to make yourself drink something.  Little sips.  Otherwise you're gonna end up in the hospital.  Then what good are you going to be able to do the captain?"

"What good have I done him so far?" he asked bitterly, pulling his hands away and rubbing at his face.

She sighed.  "Look, Randy," she said, gesturing towards her boss who was studiously wiping the metal arm of the bench, "you can't let him get to you.  You know how he is, how he can be."

Disher ground out a dark laugh.  "He didn't say anything out loud that I hadn't thought in my head already."

"Still, Randy.  Think about it.  You've worked with him.  You know how he is when he's on a case.  And you know the history that he and the captain share, and what he's lost already.  He doesn't ..." she shook her head, searching for the words " ... he doesn't cope very well emotionally.  Or cope very well with anything."  She tried for a smile, leaning over and patting his leg.  "He's not mad at you.  It's the circumstances.  And he's working on this already in his head, I can tell.  He'll figure this out."

Randy looked at her and allowed some hope to shine through his red-rimmed eyes.  Sharona handed him the bottled water.

"Drink," she said.  "I mean it.  And bring out the inn manager.  That's who Monk will want to talk to first."

"Uh, Sharona," Disher said, grabbing her arm as she rose.  "You need to know: The manager thinks Monk is crazy."

Sharona gave a sardonic laugh.  "Great.  We'll start a club and charge dues.  You and I can retire young."  Disher rewarded her with a weak smile in response, and she headed for her charge, who was still rubbing at a stubborn spot on the bench arm.  He looked up as she walked towards him.  She took the seat next to him on the bench.

"You're mad at me again," he said.

"Gosh.  Do ya think?" she shot.

"Yes," he said solemnly, missing the joke in it.  "I do."

Sharona sighed and dropped her head.  It was like being angry at Benjy when he was a year old and didn't know any better.  Anger was wasted here.  She cleared her throat.

"Adrian, do you remember what we talked about after the elephant scared me at the circus, about being more in tune to other people's feelings?"

"Yes," he said, nodding his head and worrying the wipe in his hands.  "I do."

She gestured towards the bench where Randy had been sitting.  "What you said to Lieutenant Disher ... Adrian, it was horrible thing to say."

"But ... but it was the truth," he said with great earnestness.

"Adrian, sometimes the truth-"

"Hurts.  Yes.  Sometimes the truth hurts."

"Especially from you!" she cried.  "Put yourself in his shoes.  Think about how Randy must be feeling.  Now think about what you said and how awful it must have made him feel to hear it.  You know that he wouldn't have let this happen if he could have stopped it.  Whoever did this drugged him.  It could have happened to any of us."

Under his frown, Monk's dark eyes were somber, sadder even than usual.

"Adrian, sometimes a little white lie is not a bad idea.  You can think the truth, but if it's going to harm someone, please think it, but don't say it."  She looked past Monk at Disher, who was headed their way with a curly-headed rotund man in tow.  She patted Monk's leg.  "Now be good.  Please."

He nodded and set his jaw, determined.

"I will try."




Randy Disher had already gotten over Monk's pronouncement.  Adrian Monk was here in the flesh, and that was all that mattered, no matter what he said.  He would save the day, and for that, Disher could take plenty of verbal abuse and more.

"Mr. Narducci, this is Adrian Monk and this is Sharona Fleming.  Monk, Sharona, this is the general manager of The Tended Vine Inn and Winery."

Sharona shook Narducci's hand and pulled a wipe from the box on the bench and handed it to Monk in a fluid, practiced motion.  Narducci shook Monk's hand and watched the wipe relay with fascination.

"Mr. Monk.  Ms. Fleming," he said, bowing at the waist.  "I wish we were meeting under more pleasant circumstances."

"Uh ... yes.  We would wish that as well," Monk said as if English was a second language.  "And ... um ... Lieutenant Disher is a very good and competent man, as you might have noticed."  Monk nodded.  "And decent.  Did I mention decent?"  Sharona rolled her eyes and tugged at the arm of Monk's jacket.

"Enough," she whispered.

Randy pulled two lawn chairs in front of the bench and the four of them sat, three of them looking expectantly at Monk.  He took a deep breath and they leaned forward.

"Lieutenant Disher, could you please tell me everything that has happened since you arrived."

And so he did.  He left out the part about Grace Martin and he sharing a quick kiss behind the barrels at The Cellar, and the part about him weeping like a baby when Stottlemeyer put him to bed.  When he was done, Monk asked for it again, but only the end of it: the walk to their room.

"Did you observe anyone in the hallway?  Anything peculiar?"

"No.  I can't say that I saw anything out of the ordinary."  He looked down at the grass, embarrassed.  "But then I couldn't see straight last night.  I was pretty clumsy.  I stumbled and we fell into the room service cart, and then the captain unlocked the door and ... um �" he squinted out towards the fields � "put me to bed."

"So did you break any dishes?"

"Hunh?"

"The cart," Monk said, and he shook an imaginary box in front of him.  "Did anything break?  Rattle?"

Disher pictured the moment in his mind: his near-pratfall, Stottlemeyer taking his weight, the cumulative weight of both of them hitting the cart, and ... no sound.  He shot an astonished look at Monk.  "There was nothing.  No sound."

"Mr. Narducci, did anyone order room service last night at the inn?"

The manager shook his head.  "No.  This seminar has booked the whole facility.  We have no guests other than the police officers here for this function.  Even if someone had ordered it, we wouldn't have had the personnel available to fulfill it."  He pointed a finger at The Cellar entrance.  "Our staff was fully consumed with serving at the wine-tasting and buffet in The Cellar."

"Randy," Sharona asked, "did the captain ever show up at the wine-tasting after he took you back to your room?"

"No.  No one saw him again."

"You questioned the staff?" Monk asked Narducci.

The manager stiffened in the chair.  "Of course.  Straight away, every one of them.  No one saw anything."

"Anyone on the staff missing today?  Or last night?"

Narducci shook his head.  "All present and accounted for," he said with a hint of pride.

"For every minute?" Monk said.

Narducci's face fell. 

"Well that's impossible, Mr. Monk," he said.  "Everyone has their jobs here, and they go about them independently.  The Inn would be impossible to manage if workers couldn't be trusted to operate on their own."

Monk considered this and looked out of the corner of his eye at Sharona, appearing to Disher to be nervous about what he was about to say.

"Uh ... please understand, Mr. Narducci, that I intend no ... um ... disrespect.  And I'm sure that you run a fine, fine organization here at The Tended Vine Inn, but I'm afraid ... well, I think that it's highly possible-"

"Oh shit," Sharona said with a dismissive wave of her hand.  "Spit it out."

"I think someone who works at The Tended Vine Inn has taken Captain Stottlemeyer."

Mr. Fredrico Narducci, two-time Five-Star Innkeeper of America award winner, was not pleased with Monk's announcement, even though Disher knew that Monk had taken care to couch it in terms as bland as he could manage.

"Certainly you don't believe that this was planned, Mr. Monk, that an employee planned the abduction of a captain of the San Francisco police department and carried it out under our noses.  It's unthinkable!"

"Perhaps not planned," Monk said, frowning into the middle distance and listening to voices that only he could hear.  "Perhaps it was a spontaneous act, an opportunistic one.  Perhaps it was someone who had dealings with the captain in the past."

"I assure you that our employees go through a rigorous screening process, Mr. Monk, Lieutenant Disher.  We don't take hiring lightly."

"I'm sure that you don't, Mr. Narducci,"  Disher said, trying to calm the inn manager down.  They needed his expertise, his knowledge of the Inn and its environs.  He didn't want the man to clam up on them.

"And what about all of these police officers?" Narducci said, spreading his arms out to encompass the grounds.  "How do you know that it's not one of them behind this?  How do you know that someone here at the inn for this seminar doesn't bear a grudge against the captain?"

"Captain Stottlemeyer is not the type to hold a grudge," Monk said, "so it would be peculiar for someone to hold a grudge against him."  Randy was happy to hear Monk refer to the captain in the present.  "Leland is quick to anger, but quick to forgive and forget."  He paused.  "And loyal," he added in a whisper that Disher could hardly hear, "he's a loyal man as well."

"Nevertheless," Narducci said, rising and smoothing the vest under his jacket, "you don't know any of this for sure."

"Not for sure, Mr. Narducci," Monk said, raising a tentative finger, "but I must advise you that I'm rarely wrong."

Narducci's eyebrows shot above his curly bangs.

Monk stood.  "Please.  I have questions about the grounds."

"Of course," Narducci sniffed.  "What do you wish to know?"

Monk pointed west, through the dappled sunlight to a group of buildings on a hill that looked to be several miles away, across the valley.

"Those buildings there.  What are they?"

"Another winery.  The Rusted Nail Winery.  Not affiliated with us."

Monk turned and pointed east past the inn buildings at several barns clustered in another copse of trees.  There was a road that led to the barns from the Inn, a blacktopped one like the driveway on which the car was parked.

"And that?"

"Winery equipment.  Several tractors.  Repair and maintenance is there as well.  We also keep extra tables, chairs, and large tents in case of rain during an outdoor function."

There was a wide break in the trees to the south, and far across the dusty fields was a low barn in a state of disrepair.  Monk pointed.

"And that?"

Mr. Narducci turned and smiled.  "That's 'Mecca': The beginnings of The Tended Vine," he said.  "Someday we plan on refurbishing the antique equipment there and using it for functions and meetings, to add a sense of history to the inn and the winery.  But now," he said, nodding back at the brown and weathered side of it, "we leave it be until we have the means to make that happen."

"Is there any reason for employees to be in either the maintenance barn or ... uh ... 'Mecca'?" Monk asked.

"Oh, of course," Narducci said.  "They're in and out all the time."

Monk raised his eyebrows.  "Both buildings?"

"Oh, no," the innkeeper said.  "Only the maintenance building."  He gestured at the old barn.  "No one goes out there.  We discourage it.  It's a safety issue: old wine presses, rust, a risk of fire, liability."

"I see," Monk said, nodding.  "Any inn vehicles missing today?"

"None."

"And those ... those golf carts over there?" he asked, pointing at a line of white carts with The Tended Vine logo on their sides.

"In use all day long, for laundry services, supplies, food being moved from the kitchen to The Cellar."

Monk put his hands on his hips, shrugged in his jacket, and pulled his neck away from his collar.

"Thank you, Mr. Narducci.  You've been-" Monk coughed and looked at Sharona "-extremely helpful."

The innkeeper gave them a small and less cordial bow than the first he'd given them, and headed back to the office.

"Well?" Sharona said as Monk sat back down next to her.

"Well what?"

"Well, do you know what happened?"

"Yes I know what happened," he said as if she was several slices shy of a full loaf.  "You heard what happened.  Captain Stottlemeyer was abducted by an employee of The Tended Vine Inn.  I'm rarely wrong."

"That's not what I mean!" Sharona shot, and Disher grimaced and backed up in his chair.  "I mean where is he right now?"

Monk sighed and looked down at his shoes.  Disher was glad that Monk didn't lean all the way over to wipe the mark off his right shoe that Disher could see from his vantage point.  He didn't think it would sit well with Sharona at the moment.

"I don't know," Monk said, leaning over and rubbing out the offending smudge with his thumb.

"You don't know?" Sharona asked.  "Can't you ... can't you see where he is?  You saw him before."

"It doesn't work like that."

"Well exactly how does it work then, Adrian?" she said, and sarcasm dripped off her every word.

Disher could stand it no longer.

"Please, please," he said moving the chair closer to them.  "Please.  This is getting us nowhere.  Monk."  He waited until Monk made eye contact.  "Monk.  What do we do now?"

Monk stood.

"We walk."

And so Monk walked, with Disher and Sharona behind him; walked as only Adrian Monk could walk: stutter-step/pause/look up a tree/lean to the right and look up it again/jump away from a dragonfly/see something in the dirt and lean over to examine it.  Disher was a bundle of nerves, ready to leap out of his skin, and he could see that Sharona was too, but he'd seen the man work before, and he could be content to walk behind him and silently observe.

For about maybe five more minutes before his head blew up.

He noticed scattered groups of police officers on break from a session, pointing over at them and conversing.  He felt the color rise on his own cheeks, and noted matching twin blushes on Sharona.

"Have you ever driven one of these?" Monk asked Randy, pointing at the carts.

"You mean have I played golf?  Yeah."

"Me, too," Monk said.  "Once."  He began walking down the line of them.  "I hated it."

"Big surprise," Sharona said to Disher out of the corner of her mouth.

And then Monk froze and made a humming sound.  Afraid to break his concentration, Randy and Sharona silently crept closer to him.

He was looking down at the pavement under a specific cart.  No, Disher realized, not the pavement.  He was squinting at the wheels of the cart.  Disher moved closer and stared at the wheels as well.

There was a layer of golden dust covering the small tires.

Disher's eyes followed the pavement from under the cart out to their left as it stretched like a smooth, black river to the maintenance barn, and then he looked back at the wheels, then at Monk, and then Sharona.

As one, they peered past the Tended Vine Inn buildings at Mecca, a distant, rarely-visited island in a sea of dusty fields.

Monk slid in the front of the cart and looked at Disher.

"You drive," he said, gingerly touching the wheel, and then to Sharona, who squeezed in beside him: "Wipe, please."




Sharona coughed as the waves of dust rolled through the cart.

"Please," Monk admonished putting up a hand between them.  "Turn your head away."

"As if it matters," she said, waving her hands at the grit that covered them all.  And they were only half-way there.

"Monk," Disher said as if he were afraid to ask.  "Is this the place?"

Monk, sitting stiffly, his hands on his thighs, shrugged.

"I don't know.  I mean from a deduction standpoint, I'm positive.  But whether Leland will still be here, or still be ..."  He let that hang dark and heavy in the air.  "But I think you should hurry."

Sharona knew that there was only one speed on a golf cart, in this case Slow and Dusty, but Disher leaned forward as if his desire and momentum might help.  Ten more minutes of chugging over the furrowed land and they were at their destination: the original Tended Vine barn, and they parked on an apron of cement that spread from the large, rolling double door.

"Don't ask for a wipe, Adrian," Sharona admonished, getting out and brushing a hand over her hair.  "They're all gone, and a suitcase full wouldn't do us any good now."

Monk wasn't listening.  He and Disher were already at the barn door, and Disher was testing it, tugging at the handle there.  After a few hard pulls and a grunt, the door began to open.  Sharona joined them at the threshold and shaded her eyes with her hands as she tried to acclimate to the dimness within.

"What is all this stuff?" Disher asked, taking a few steps in.

"Wine-making equipment," Monk said in a voice filled with wonder and appreciation.  "Antique equipment, used for making wine the old-fashioned way."  Sharona glanced at his spellbound face and was reminded that her boss had a mind like a steel trap, and not just for crime, but for the world and everything in it, big and small.  He was sometimes, and in the best possible way, like a child, and she loved it when she saw that.

"These things haven't been used for years," Monk said softly.

"Are you sure?" Randy asked, and he pointed towards the round barrel closest to them.  "Is that wine?"

Sharona and Monk looked to where he was pointing: at a pool of liquid on the floor that could barely be seen under the edge of a platform that girded the barrel.  Although it didn't seem possible, it did, indeed, look like wine. 

Red wine.

In all the time she'd been with Adrian Monk, she'd never heard him swear, and she didn't hear him this time, because they all said the same two words at the same time:

"Shit.  Blood."

In the blink of an eye, Lieutenant Disher was up the steps and on the platform trying to figure out the wheel that would bring up the metal plate.  Sharona stood on the floor and put her hands to the vat's side and an eye to a loose board.  It was too dark to see anything, but the smell of blood was strong, and she thought she heard a moan. 

"Oh God, Randy, hurry up!  I think he might be in there!"

"Give me a second!" Disher cried, frustrated.  "I don't want to crank it down by mistake!"

Sharona could hear Monk behind her, chanting a low mantra:  "Oh god oh god oh god oh god �" and over that she heard Randy grunt "Got it!" and she tore up the stairs to stand beside him.  Slowly, slowly, as Disher struggled with the rusty mechanism, the metal disc rose, and she tried to peer underneath it.

She could see Monk out of the corner of her eye.  He was standing on the sawdust-covered floor, hopping from one foot to the other: left, right, left, right, "oh god oh god oh �"

"Adrian!  Shut up!  You're not helping!"

Randy gave the wheel a strong twist and the disc finally rose enough for her to see, and when she did, something squeezed her heart.

There was Leland Stottlemeyer on his side with his back curled to the outside of the barrel.  The suit he wore was light, so it was not hard to see even in the dim light of the barn that it was stained from waist to knee with blood.

"Oh, God," she said, trying to jump up and crawl over the barrel side.  "It's him.  Get me in there."

Randy stopped cranking and swung the disc away, giving him a clear view.  He froze, horrified.

"Randy!" she snapped.  "Get me in there.  And call 911."

Disher, his lips pale, nodded, picked her up, and gently placed her on the opposite side of the barrel from his boss.  He pulled out his cell phone.  "Shit.  Shit.  It says 'No Service.'  I'll try outside the barn."

Sharona had stopped listening.  She was intent on Stottlemeyer, and she went to her knees and put shaking fingers to the pulse at his neck.  It took her three tries to find it, and it was weak and thready.

"Oh God.  Captain," she said, grimacing and pulling back his suit coat to look for a wound, "you're gonna be just fine.  We're here now, and Monk is here, and you're gonna be just fine."

There it was: a hole in his suit pants just below his waist, and the blood was still welling from it.  She needed to stop it.

"You're gonna be fine.  Just fine," she said, making a snap decision and pulling her sweater up over her head.  It would have to do.  She wadded it up and pressed it to the wound with her left hand.  "The ambulance will be here before you know it," she whispered, and with her right hand she smoothed his hair back from his clammy forehead.

"Don't move, or the lieutenant ends up like the captain."

"Oh god oh god �"

"And you shut up.  I heard the cops talking about you."

Sharona held her breath and looked through a crack in the barrel.  Disher was standing stiffly at the barn door, his hands above his head, and behind him was a man that Sharona had never seen before: bland and broad-faced, and he wore the uniform of a Tended Vine employee, and although she couldn't see it from her vantage point, she knew that he must have a gun.  She saw Randy shoot a look at the barrel and then look away.

"Well this is certainly more than I bargained for," the man said, and he nodded towards the barrel.  Sharona gasped and pulled away from the crack.  "I see you found Captain Stottlemeyer.  And the good news is that there are enough of these old wine presses to take care of both of you."

"Look," she heard Disher say, "the captain is still alive.  Stop this now and you might have a chance.  If you kill all of us, you'll never get out of jail alive."

She leaned forward towards the crack.  She could see that the man was unmoved by Randy's plea for reason.  He looked determined.  Determined and crazy.

And speaking of crazy, her boss was silent, but she could see the top of his head as he bobbed from side to side in a peculiar and frantic dance.  A plan formed in her mind.  She apologized in her head to Stottlemeyer and leaned over and untied his shoe.  She frowned in concentration as she tried to pull it off of him without banging it on the side of the press.

"Jesus!  Stop hopping around, will you?" she heard the man say.  "Some of those cops said you were nuts.  I don't usually agree with the police, but in this case I think I might."  Sharona heard him laugh, and she peered out the crack again. 

She'd been a pitcher on the girl's softball team in high school.  If Catholic girl's schools were good for nothing else, they were good for that.  Sister Marie Irene had taught her all the finer points of a good beanball.  She could hit the guy easily from where she was, but she was too short.  If she stood up, only her head would be higher than the wooden side.  She needed the freedom to swing her arm.  She looked below her at Stottlemeyer, at his shoulder wedged against the side of the barrel.  It would give her the height she needed, and she apologized to him in her head again.  He would have to be her stepladder.

She just needed the right moment.  Then she'd throw the shoe right at the guy's face.  And they were big shoes, too.  Heavy.  Size twelve or better at least.  Hopefully he would drop the gun, and drop it in a place where Disher could get to it. 

And hopefully her boss would stay out of the way and not get hurt.

She'd just have to wait for the moment.  The right moment ... 

And then it came.

"Hey," the guy said, looking around the barn.  "Where's that ditzy blond I saw you with at the Inn?"

Incensed for a thousand reasons, she felt her blood boil, and in one, swift movement, she rose, jumped up on Stottlemeyer's shoulder, called out:  "Here I am, you son-of-a-bitch!" and threw the beanball of a lifetime.  It zipped past Disher's head and whacked the guy right above the ear, and as she hoped, the gun dropped from his hand, clattered to the cement floor, and slid.

In exactly the wrong direction.

It was headed for Adrian Monk.

Her heart sank, and she looked over to Disher.  He was struggling with the man, who had - incredibly - stayed on his feet.  The man had at least fifty pounds on the lieutenant, and he was trying to get past Disher to the gun.  Now it was a race, a fight between the two of them, and she considered crawling out of the vat to join the fray.

But then, from the corner of her eye, she saw movement.  It was Adrian, and he moved towards the gun as smooth as a cat, and he caught it in his fingers as it was still spinning on the floor and came up in a perfect, crouched stance.

"Drop it!" he called out in a strong voice.  The gun, held in both his hands, was as steady as a rock, and her eyes followed the end of it over to Disher and the man.  He had Disher in a headlock, a knife at his throat.

"I said drop it and assume the position on the floor!" Monk growled.  "I am a crack shot.  And if you don't follow my directions to the letter, I will take your goddamned eyelashes off, one by one."

Disher's mouth dropped open.

"Now!"

Something in Monk's voice and stance did the trick, and the man raised his arms and Disher took the knife from him and the man went to the floor, spread-eagle.

Sharona was beside herself with joy.  It was the most beautiful thing she'd ever witnessed, and still standing on Stottlemeyer's shoulder, she threw her arms wide and cried:

"Monk!  Oh my God!"

Whereupon Monk and Disher turned around to look at her; look at her, she suddenly realized, as she stood in her half-naked glory in the sexiest black bra that she owned, and both of them said back, appreciatively, as one:

"Sharona.  Oh my God."





"Stop that.  You don't need a wipe.  Hospitals are sterile for Pete's sake."

Adrian was walking beside Sharona down the hospital hallway.  The captain was finally out of Intensive Care, and it was their first visit.

"People come here sick," Monk reminded her as he gave a wide berth to a patient in a walker.  "There are more germs here than there are in my own home."

"Adrian, there are more germs anywhere on the planet than there are in your home."

She sighed and dug for a wipe.

She'd hoped that the incredible display of grace and strength under fire at the barn would mean a breakthrough for him, but she'd been disappointed.  It may have been some small step to a better place for him, but as they wove through the potential catastrophes in the corridor, she certainly couldn't see it.

But it was okay for the moment.

He'd saved them all and the captain was on the mend.  She couldn't ask for more than that.

"Here it is," she said at Room 303, and she pushed through the door, Adrian behind her.

Her eyes fell on Randy Disher, seated at the end of the bed.  He still didn't look himself.  He seemed less ebullient, older than his years, still stressed from the near-loss of his mentor.  He rose as they entered.  She looked towards the bed.

"Captain!" she said in as cheery a voice as she could manage under the circumstances.  "You look great!"

He didn't, of course.  He looked like a man who had been concussed and tied up for fifteen hours and shot and left to bleed to death.  She heard Monk take a choked breath behind her.

"Leland," he said in a shocked wheeze.  "You look-"

"Could you please excuse us for just a minute?" Sharona said raising a finger and grabbing Monk by the arm.  She steered him out the door.  It swung closed behind them.

"You were going to say something awful, Adrian.  I could hear it in your voice.  Remember that conversation we had?"

Monk appeared shell-shocked.  "He looks awful.  He looks like death!  How am I supposed to � to make nice about that?"

"Little white lies," she reminded him.  "It won't kill you."

"He knows me better than that.  He won't buy it."

"Trust me.  It'll make him feel better."  She turned for the door and then back to him and poked him in the chest with her finger.  "It'll make me feel better."

Monk nodded and pulled at the bottom of his suit coat.  "Right.  Right."

They entered again.  Disher was still standing, hands in his pants' pockets, looking amused.  They approached the bed, and as they did, Sharona doubted Monk's ability to pull it off.  The captain looked like a different person: uncharacteristically fragile, his eyes bruised, skin sallow.

"Leland," Monk said.  "You look � uh ... you � look �"  Monk described something in the air in front of him with his hands.  "I mean, since we last saw you, it's amazing.  It � uh �"  He shrugged and put his hands on his hips and did one of the best Billy Crystal imitations Sharona had ever heard.  "You look maahhvelous."

It broke the tension, and Sharona laughed and Disher and the captain chuckled as well.

"Adrian Monk," Stottlemeyer said in a sandpapery rasp, "you were always a lousy liar."  Monk looked at Sharona, raised his eyebrows, and made a wide, shrugging gesture down at the bed.

"Did I tell you?  Did I tell you?"

"Oh my God," Sharona said, pointing at the captain's left shoulder.  It was in a sling.  "Did I do that?"

Stottlemeyer looked down at it and back at her.  "Dislocated.  But well worth it."

"I'm so sorry," she said, patting his leg.

"Hey.  It's a great trade-off," he said with a smile that reminded her more of the Stottlemeyer she knew, and she smiled back, relieved.  "But you owe me a shoe."

"What?"

"They bagged it for evidence," Disher said.

"That's fine.  I won't need it for a while," the captain said, and he grimaced as he tried to reposition himself on the bed.  Sharona pushed past Monk and helped.

"There," she said, smoothing his pillow when she was done.  As a nurse, she knew they should leave.  Stottlemeyer needed all the rest he could get.  She saw the captain and Monk exchange a long and silent look, filled with things unspoken, and she read it easily.  They needed to talk.  Alone.

"Randy.  Let me buy you a cup of coffee," she said going to the end of the bed and taking his arm.  "There's a cafeteria on the first floor."  She turned to Monk and Stottlemeyer and tapped at her wristwatch.  "Ten minutes.  Absolutely no more than that.  Okay?"

"Okay," they answered, and she pulled Randy through the door, looking back at the two of them as the door swung closed.

She couldn't get the vision of a different Adrian Monk out of her head: strong, competent, unfazed by guns and knives, and she allowed herself to consider Monk and Stottlemeyer as they must have been years ago on patrol, how they must have appeared when they arrived on the scene of a crime: blond/red strength and energy with a love for the game; dark intensity with a mind like a steel trap and uncanny intuition � they must have made quite the pair, and she was sorry for the moment that she'd never been able to see them in that way.  And as the door closed completely on the two of them, she admitted to herself that  she was just a little jealous of a long history that they had and that she didn't share.

She looked at Randy standing next to her, hands in his pockets, washed-out, waiting to be led to wherever they were going.  Poor Randy, chasing around after his boss, trying to protect him.

Just like me, she thought.

They had a lot in common, the two of them, and she smiled and steered him down the corridor with her hand on his back.

"Come on, Disher.  Let's get some caffeine in you."




Stottlemeyer considered Monk as he gingerly half-sat on the empty bed next to him, his hands on his thighs.

"I owe you-" he began, and Monk stopped him, putting up both hands in front of him.

"No.  No.  You don't owe me anything."

"I should have listen-"

"No.  No.  You did what you had to do, Leland."

"So did you, Adrian," he said, shifting again in the bed and wondering why the pain medications didn't seem to be working.  "You operated above and beyond the call of duty.  Randy told me how you handled yourself, what you did  in the barn, how you brought the guy down."

Monk seemed to allow himself a small smile of self-congratulation, but it was there and gone in a nanosecond.  "It was nothing," he said, looking down at the floor.

"It was everything, Monk.  You saved me, saved us all."  Stottlemeyer dropped his head back to the pillow and sighed.  He was exhausted, and all he was doing was talking.  He could see some serious down-time in his future.  But he had to say now what he'd been thinking ever since he'd heard the tale of Monk's heroics.  He squinted at the sunlight streaming through the window beside the bed and then looked back at Monk.

"You'll be expecting me to call a reinstatement hearing."

Monk's head shot up, and his face was bright with hope, but within seconds the light in it dimmed, and he shook his head, his lips pressed tight.

"There's only one thing I want from you right now, Leland" Monk said, standing.

Stottlemeyer closed his eyes and hoped that he could pull off whatever it was that Adrian Monk wanted.  And whatever it was that he wanted, Stottlemeyer would make sure that it happened, no matter what it took.

"I want you to get better."

Stottlemeyer opened his eyes.

"What?  That's it?"

"It would also help if you didn't allow something like this to happen again, but we'll take it a step at a time."  And Adrian gave him an easy smile; a big smile for him, and a genuine one.  Stottlemeyer tried to calculate how many years it had been since he'd seen that.  He swallowed.

"I'll try my best, Adrian."

"Good.  Good," Monk said, nodding, and he moved closer to his bedside and reached out for an IV line and unkinked it.

"There," he said, smoothing the front of his suit coat.  "I feel better."

Stottlemeyer sensed the warmth of the pain-killer flowing through him, and he gave Monk a hazy smile.

"Funny.  So do I all of a sudden."

And warmed by the narcotics in his system and the vision of three Adrian Monks standing at his bedside smiling benevolently down at him, Captain Leland Stottlemeyer closed his eyes and allowed himself a well-needed sleep.




"How was your talk with the captain, Adrian?" Sharona asked as they pulled from the hospital parking lot.

"Fine, fine," Monk said staring out the passenger window.

Sharona wondered if reinstatement had come up.  She hoped not.  He wasn't ready, and she was pretty sure that he knew that.

"Monk.  I have to tell you: you were � fabulous."

He looked at her, bemused.  "The Billy Crystal thing?  I've been doing that for years."

"No.  I mean in the barn."  She gripped the wheel and looked over at him.  "I mean it, Adrian.  It was the most fantastic thing I've ever seen."

He looked back out the window.  "I have my moments."

She reached for his hand and he turned to look at her.  She was pleased when he didn't immediately ask for a wipe.  "Adrian, you need to know that I was very, very proud of you.  And no matter what happens in the future, I'll always have that picture of you in my mind."

He nodded, looking back out at the view.  "It's hard sometimes �" he said, and he left it hanging.

"I know, I know," she said.  "A step at a time, Adrian.  A step at a time." She released his hand.

"Sharona?"

"Yes?"

"Wipe, please."



The End
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