Mr. Monk is a Mess by Lee Goldberg Read Free Book Online

cop.
    Officer Natalie Teeger.
    Wow
.
    It was hard to believe, but I had the evidence right there in my hands.
    My badge.
    I spent hours staring at the badge and appreciating what it represented about me and what it promised for my future.
    I also had to admire once again how clever Disher was to give us those badges. Up until then, I’d never thought of him as being that smart or manipulative. Then again, I never saw him as chief-of-police material, either. I was obviously a lousy judge of character.
    I wasn’t looking forward to packing up and saying good-bye to everyone, and yet I was eager to see how my parents, my daughter, Julie, and Captain Leland Stottlemeyer—Monk’s oldest friend and our boss at the SFPD—would all react to my badge.
    We arrived at San Francisco International Airport in the early evening and I led a stumbling, very groggy Monk to my car in the long-term parking lot.
    It’s a good thing that Monk was practically sleepwalking, because if he’d been alert and had seen the thick layer of dirt and bird crap on my car, he would not have gotten in, and would probably have called the Department of Health. Lucky for us both, he fell asleep moments after I sat him down and buckled him in.
    I paid the attendant at the exit booth a parking fee roughly equal to the Kelley Blue Book value of my car, an expense that Disher would reimburse, and drove us into the city.
    I hadn’t taken a sleeping pill and yet there was a dreamlike quality to the drive. All the passing scenery was familiar, but I felt removed from what I was seeing, as if it were already a memory.
    San Francisco was the same as it was when I left it, but I didn’t return as the same person I was before. I’d changed in fundamental ways, and not just because I had a badge in my pocket.
    While I was in Summit, I shot a man in the line of duty. I did so without the slightest hesitation. He’d survived and I felt no remorse for my quick action. It wasn’t just pulling the trigger that changed me—it was the knowledge that I
could
and that I
would
.
    It surprised me. And I knew I’d be making more discoveries about myself in the coming months. It was scary and exciting at the same time.
    I glanced over at Monk and wondered if, when he wasn’t sedated, he was feeling the same mix of excitement and anxiety that I was. Then again, feeling anxious was his usual state of mind.
    I pulled up to his Art Deco–style apartment building on Pine, a shrinking pocket of affordability tucked between the old money and Victorian mansions of Pacific Heights to the north and the new money that was gentrifying the Western District to the south.
    I walked him to his door, opened it for him, and then led him all the way in to his bed. He collapsed facefirst on his comforter. I took off his shoes, but beyond that, I left him as he was. If I so much as removed his jacket, he’d be humiliated and outraged when he woke up.
    Most homes that have been closed up for weeks smell musty and stale, but not Monk’s place. It smelled as if it had just been thoroughly cleaned. I credited that inexplicable freshness to the accumulation of disinfectants and cleansers over the years. I was certain that I could bottle the air in his apartment and use it to disinfect operating rooms. On my way out, I checked a few tabletops and shelves and couldn’t find even a particle of dust.
    But I was sure that when Monk awoke he would survey the apartment and decide it was caked in filth and nearly uninhabitable. At least it would make moving out easier for him to accept.
    I slipped away, locked the door behind me, and headed south on Divisadero, across Market Street, and into Noe Valley, the quirky, self-consciously bohemian neighborhood where I lived on a tree-lined street of Victorian row houses, most of which were occupied by young families with lots of kids and dogs and credit card debt.
    I parked in the driveway and immediately felt the emotional tug of home. I fought the urge to run