MR. MONK AND THE HEAD INJURY
By Len
Rated: PG-13
Spoilers: Up to ‘Twelfth Man’
Notes: This fic was initially sparked by a comment made by April on the MonkandSharona Yahoo! Group. Thanks for letting me run with it, April!
More Notes: Don’t worry, I know this entire idea would be insanely implausible in real life. But it makes for darn fun writing!
Summary: Monk is injured on a case, and wakes up with a whole new view on life. Meanwhile, Sharona is faced with the discovery that sometimes when you finally get what you want, it’s not so perfect after all.
“Hmm,” Adrian Monk said, tilting his head one direction, and then another. He stooped suddenly. “Now that’s…interesting.” He stood again, shifted uncomfortably inside his jacket, and wandered off a little further down the path.
Captain Stottlemeyer glared at his back. “What, Monk? What the hell is so interesting about that damn stoop? Monk?” Adrian didn’t answer, he was busy pacing something off. “Damn it,” Stottlemeyer repeated. “We’re down to the wire here and Monk’s decided to take up funny walks.”
Sharona, however, was not as impatient. “Give him a minute,” she said confidently. “Just a minute.”
As they watched, he crouched again, looking intently at a crack in the sidewalk. Finally, he stood, paced back to his original spot, and froze. ‘He knows what happened,’ Sharona thought. A smile spread across her face, and Adrian met her eyes from across the crime scene and answered it with one of his own.
“It was Robert Hartwell,” he said.
“Hartwell? Monk, Robert Hartwell left for Bermuda two days before the murder took place,” Stottlemeyer said.
“I know. But it was him. Think about it: Robert Hartwell was the only one who knew for certain that Marie would be alone, that no-one would discover her body for several days, and that there would be something to remove the evidence for him.”
Lieutenant Disher frowned. “What would do that?”
Suddenly, Sharona realized what he was getting at. “The sprinklers!”
“The sprinklers,” Monk affirmed, moving to stand next to her. “The wire was tied at the bottom of the handrail – where it would be sure to hold, and not rip the whole thing off – and strung across the path to the tree. He knew Marie would be riding the motorcycle down that path – she always did. So the wire killed her, and looked like a garroting and mugging. Meanwhile, the tell-tail bloodspatter was washed away by Mr. Hartwell’s sprinklers, and the wire was easy to get rid of once he arrived – appropriately frantic – home again.”
Stottlemeyer looked back across the path, to the tree, to the handrail, and finally back at Monk. He nodded in understanding. “He killed his own lover because she was in the way of his career.”
They all took a moment to let this sink in. Sharona thought that hearing the sounds of birds chirping and nearby traffic flowing as usual was almost obscene, standing as they were at the sight of such a cold-blooded murder. She sighed and put a hand on Adrian’s arm. He looked at her questioningly.
“Good job,” she said.
“Oh, it was nothing,” he replied.
“Okay. Never mind, then.”
“Shar—oh. You were teasing me again, weren’t you?”
“Yeah, Adrian.”
He appeared to consider this for a moment. “Alright. Just so we’re clear.”
Sharona grinned at him.
“Sorry to interrupt this…” Stottlemeyer said. “But we still don’t know where Hartman is now.”
It was Sharona’s turn to answer. “Try the graveyard.”
Disher immediately went to the car to call for back-up, leaving the other three behind on the steps. “We’ll meet you over there,” Sharona told the Captain, starting towards the street. “C’mon, Adrian.”
He followed obediently, carefully stepping over the cracks and avoiding the chewing gum spots on the cement. “I can’t wait to see the look on Hartman’s face when he realizes you figured it out. The bastard deserves what’s coming to him,” Sharona commented.
“Yeah,” Adrian agreed. He was started to open the passenger-side door, but stopped to look over the car roof at his friend. “You know, you’re the one who figured it out. You remember what you said when we first saw this place? You said, ‘Boy, his lawn sure is green.’ You said you bet he was exceeding his water allotment. That was the key to this whole case.”
“Oh…” Sharona said softly. Her eyes went a bit swimmy for a moment, and she jabbed her key blindly at the driver’s side lock. Adrian rarely – very rarely – gave compliments to anyone. But when they were sincere, well, just look what they did to her. She wanted so badly to be good at this whole detecting thing, but it was only times like this that Adrian showed he understood. “Well, you know me…” she said lightly, sniffled, and jabbed at the lock again. It hit the lock this time; slid home, turned about three degrees, and then…stuck. She blinked, and tried again.
“I don’t believe this.”
Adrian frowned across at her. “What’s wrong?”
“This! The stupid key is stuck in this stupid lock.”
“Did you try turning it the other way?”
She rolled her eyes. “Yes, Adrian, I tried turning it the other way. It’s stuck.”
“Did you jiggle it? Because sometimes keys will jiggle.”
“Not this key. It’s stuck. God, I hate this stupid crap car!”
“Did you—“
“Look, Adrian – if you have an idea, you come over and try it. Because I can’t get it to budge.”
With a small sigh and a shift of his shoulders, he headed around the car. Sharona took a step to the side and crossed her arms over her chest. Adrian looked at her and swallowed. “Right. I’ll just…have a look.”
The keys were indeed stuck tight. He tried to turn it, tried to jiggle it, and finally leaned over to look closely at it. “Gum,” he said.
“What?”
“Chewing gum. Someone put chewing gum in the lock.”
“What!” Sharona stared at him. “What kind of sick…never mind. I’m calling Stottlemeyer. Maybe he’ll be able to swing around and pick us up.”
She pulled her cell phone out of her purse and moved to the sidewalk to wait. Monk, of course, was unable to let the keys just…hang there, and tried to remove them from the sticky mess without actually…touching…something.
Both he and Sharona were so distracted by what they were each doing that they never saw car accelerate towards them. They never noticed the color or got a look at the driver. Because just as Adrian finally pulled the key-chain loose, it clipped him with its front fender, sending him flying over the hood of Sharona’s Volvo. He hit the parking space in front of Sharona with a sickening thud, and lay still.
“Adrian!” Sharona screamed.
The car that struck him rounded the corner, tires squealing, and disappeared.
To be continued…
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