侦探小说：Mr. Monk Is Cleaned Out 节选 (3)

I pulled Monk into the relative privacy of the bottled water aisle
and turned him around to face me.

"Calm down, Mr. Monk. It's not Safeway's fault that Summit Creek has
gone out of business."

"It's a travesty," Monk said. "A crime against humanity."

"Maybe it is but there's nothing you can do about it. It's done.
Summit Creek is gone."

He swallowed hard and looked at me as if he might cry. When he spoke
again, his voice was barely above a whisper.

"How will I survive? What am I supposed to drink?"

"I'm sure you can find another brand of bottled water that is every
bit as good as Summit Creek."

"What do you know about Summit Creek?"

"It's water," I said. "In a bottle."

"It is much more than that," Monk said. "It is water of unmatched
purity that predates the existence of mankind. It is water that fell
from the heavens more than twenty thousand years ago and has been
sealed in limestone caverns deep below the Uinta Mountains ever
since, unsullied, uninfected, and untouched."

"I'm surprised that you'd drink something so old," I said. "Didn't
it pass its expiration date a long time ago?"

"There's nothing more pure on this earth than Summit Creek bottled
water. "

He waved dismissively at the bottles of water on either side of us.

"You don't have a choice, Mr. Monk."

"I don't accept that," Monk said. "There must still be some Summit
Creek on the black market."

"What black market?"

"It's where they sell scarce and illegal goods," Monk said. "We just
have to find it."

"I know what a black market is, Mr. Monk. But I didn't know there
was one for bottled water."

"There is now," Monk said.

I could see that I would have to employ preventative measures right
away if I wanted to stop Monk from having a nervous breakdown.

I hustled him out of the supermarket. He probably thought we were
heading off in search of the mythical black market in bottled water.
But I intended to take him straight to his shrink. Dr. Neven Bell
could deal with Monk's problem while I relaxed in the waiting room
with a hot tea and the latest issue of the "New Yorker."

But my ingenious plan went awry the second my cell phone rang and I
saw who was calling.

It was Death.


CHAPTER TWO
MR. MONK AND THE IMPOSSIBLE MURDER

Okay, maybe that last line was a bit melodramatic, but whenever
Captain Leland Stottlemeyer called me, it was usually because he
needed me to bring Monk to the scene of a murder.

The captain was careful to only summon Monk on those cases that he
knew couldn't be solved quickly or easily, that were unusual in the
circumstances of the crime, the complexity of the situation, or the
crippling lack of evidence left behind.

But Monk would often show up uninvited at crime scenes and, more
often than not, he'd solve the murder right on the spot to
everyone's amazement.  Those were cases that he and his
detectives would have solved eventually without Monk's help. It
wasn't necessary for Monk to show up and make them look like fools
(not that Monk realized that was what he was doing).

It explained why Stottlemeyer wanted to use Monk as infrequently as
possible. Each time Monk was called it was a tacit admission that
there were some mysteries that the police couldn't solve without
him. And that was almost worse for the department's image than not
closing those cases at all.

But there was a far more compelling, personal reason that the
captain didn't like calling him in.

Monk drove him absolutely crazy.

So I knew before we got to the crime scene at the intersection of
Van Ness and Sutter that we were going to be faced with a puzzling
mystery.

What I didn't know was whether Monk would be able to concentrate on
homicide or if he'd only be thinking about where his next drink of
water would be coming from.