Free Mr. Monk Gets Even by Lee Goldberg Page B

there’s this,” he said and pointed at the pool.
    Julie and Devlin stepped up to the edge and peered into the water.
    “I don’t see anything,” Devlin said.
    “Neither do I,” Julie said.
    “You don’t see that piece of bark?” Monk said.
    They both leaned closer and saw a speck of red wood floating on the surface.
    “It’s a sliver,” Devlin said.
    “But it’s more than enough to send someone to death row.”
    Devlin turned and looked at him. “How do you figure that?”
    “Because there is tan bark in the flower beds in the front yard and none in the back. So how did it get in the pool?”
    “Does it matter?” she asked.
    “When I arrived, I noticed a depression in the bed of bark where one of the rocks had been removed,” he said. “That rock is in the dirt beneath the bush on the other side of the pool, and it is wet.”
    Devlin walked around the pool to the bush, got down on her knees, and peered underneath it. She took a pair of plastic gloves from her pocket, put them on, and reached into the bush for the rock. It was one of the smooth beach rocks from out front and it was wet. She sniffed the rock.
    “It smells of chlorine.” She looked over her shoulder at Monk across the pool. “I’ll be damned.”
    “Here’s what happened,” Monk said. “The killer arrived at her door, picked up the rock, and slipped it into his pocket before he rang the bell. She answered the door, invited him in, and they had a few drinks. At some point, he hit her on the forehead with the rock and then held her head under the water in the pool until she drowned. Then the killer cleaned the rock off in the pool, washing away the blood but also bits of mud and tan bark, then tossed it in the bushes. The killer undressed Carin, put her in a swimming suit, and threw her body in the pool.”
    By now Monk had everyone’s attention, including the two uniformed officers and the four forensic techs, who had stopped what they were doing to listen to him.
    Devlin dropped the rock into an evidence bag and directed the nearest forensic tech to photograph the sliver of bark in the water and then bag it as evidence.
    “Good work, Monk,” Devlin said.
    Julie was stunned. She’d expected Devlin to be angry with him. But then Julie realized that this was different from any of the crime scenes they’d been at with her before. This time, Monk and Devlin arrived on the scene together. He hadn’t shown up after her to contradict her conclusions and make her feel foolish in front of her colleagues. She had nothing to feel defensive about in this situation.
    “Thank you,” Monk said. And everything would have been fine if he’d just left it at that, but he had to add one more comment. “But it was nothing. It was blatantly obvious what happened here.”
    Devlin’s face tightened. “In other words, any fool could have seen it.”
    “Well, not any fool,” Monk said. “But any reasonably observant person.”
    Julie spoke up. “I do have one question.”
    She didn’t really. She just wanted to stop Monk from irritating Devlin any further. Now they were both looking at her, waiting for her question. She searched her mind for one and, after a long moment, finally came up with something.
    “What makes you think the killer had drinks with her?”
    “He wouldn’t have put out the bottle of booze and the glass to suggest she’d had too much to drink unless he knew we’d find alcohol in her system during the autopsy.”
    “She could already have been drinking when he got here,” Julie said.
    “The tabletop is dirty,” Monk said, pointing to the tiny glass-topped table between the two chaise lounges. “The second glass, which the killer removed, washed, and probably put away, left a ring. That proves she had a guest and they were sitting out here together.”
    “So she was killed by someone she knew,” Julie said.
    “A friend,” Monk said. “Just like David Zuzelo.”
    “That’s a huge leap, even for you,” Devlin