I blame this on Tony Shalhoub. In a Zap2it interview, the possibility of a Disher/Sharona romance was raised. Shalhoub turned to Bitty Schram & said, "You should be involved with him. You're totally committed & want this long-term relationship; then he has to come to you & tell you he's gay." My brain needed no more encouragement. Anyway, Perpetual Motion asked for this, so here it is.

Mr. Monk Gets Some Closure

God had it in for the SFPD. Disher could think of no other explanation as he surveyed the smoldering wreckage of what had recently been a fairly nice Audi. This was divine wrath, and just because it was falling on his head first didn't mean that it wouldn't eventually spread to the rest of the force.

And beyond.

Captain Stottlemeyer was on his first vacation in over five years. Karen had made rumblings in the direction of one of those fits that had landed the captain at Monk's house last year, and Leland Stottlemeyer was not a stupid man. He'd patted Disher on the shoulder and said, "If you come up against anything you can't handle, Randy, for God's sake, don't call me. You know Monk's number."

Disher did indeed know Monk's number. And Stottlemeyer, it would seem, knew Disher's.

So Lieutenant Disher was the de facto head of SFPD Homicide for two weeks, and now he was looking at the twisted aftermath of a car bombing that looked...his stomach twisted. It looked a lot like the bomb that killed Trudy Monk seven years ago.

(~)

"Damn it, Randy, I told you not to call me."

Disher rubbed his forehead, not really noticing that the motion brought a streak of soot to his face. The crews sped dizzyingly around him. So efficient. So detached. "I know, sir," he apologized, "but something's come up that--"

"Monk!" Stottlemeyer barked. "Call Monk."

"I would, sir, I really would, but this is a car bombing that - sir, I think this might have been the same people who were after him before."

A thick silence at the other end of the line resolved itself in a short word that Disher's grandmother would've washed his mouth out with soap for saying. "The ones that killed Trudy?"

Disher sighed and wished he could swear, too. "Yes, sir."

The thick silence returned, and Disher could picture the captain perfectly, standing on a cabin balcony overlooking some desert landscape, a broad hand on his hip, turning his options over. "I'm not coming back, Randy," he said at last. "I'm not doing that to Karen."

"No, sir. Of course not." Would it help if I threw myself at your feet, sir? Because I would.

"Listen, Randy, you call Sharona. Explain it to her. Let her make the call. Nobody knows him better."

Well, that was quite the knife in the heart, sir. Thank you. "Thank you, sir."

Disher disconnected the call and stared in dismay at the formerly car. There had been two people inside. The driver was a 45-year-old day trader with sticky fingers in all sorts of shady enterprises. Undoubtedly the target of the bombers. The real tragedy was that the person in the passenger seat was his ten-year-old daughter, whose fingers had been sticky with nothing more sinister than melted sugar.

"Adrian Monk's office."

Disher never thought he would be grateful for Monk's problem with telephones. With everything, of course, but at this moment, telephones in particular were at issue. Actually, dead day traders were at issue, and the explosives under that car must have blown up something inside Disher, too, because his brain just wasn't clicking right. Taking on Monk's neuroses for himself, was that the way it was going to be? "Sharona? It's Randy Disher."

"Lieutenant." It was always an insult, the way she said it.

"We have a problem."

She snorted. "The captain's been gone for four days, Randy."

He gritted his teeth. No one got to Monk without Sharona's approval. "It's an unusual case. Your boss's help would be pretty useful to us, but I don't know if you want him anywhere near this."

Something in his voice must have given him away, because Sharona - who seemed to have his number, too - turned instantly concerned. "Randy? What's going on?"

"A car bomb, Sharona." His voice sounded constricted, too small for this chaos. "A lot like the one that killed Trudy."

Sharona gasped. "How much like?"

"Like it could have been made by the same people. I don't know what you feel about--"

But he was talking to nothing, because she had dropped the phone, and in the background he could hear her screaming for Monk to get his jacket; they were going right now.

(~)

Disher understood, perhaps better than anyone, the paradox of Adrian Monk. Everyone who'd known him when Trudy was alive understood that her influence, her love, were what had let him hold it together during his active years on the force. It stood to reason, then, that falling in love again might help him get out of the hole he'd all but thrown himself into since her death. But it was her death that had sent him plunging; his obsession with finding her killers was what drove all of his other obsessions. Until he solved that case, no suitor stood a chance.

In some alternate universe, Disher told himself, he and Monk had a very happy life together. Sometimes he raised his glass in silent toast to them.

Monk circled the ruins of the Audi, muttering to himself. Disher leaned over to Sharona. "Has he figured it out yet?"

Sharona raised a scornful eyebrow. "He figured it out the instant he saw the car, Randy."

Disher shook his head. "I just want--" His hands clenched at his sides. "Why is it so impossible for me to find a way to help him?"

"Because he's him," Sharona said, as though Disher could ever have forgotten that.

"Did I do the right thing? Calling you?" Despite popular opinion, Disher was not stupid. Nor was he given to second-guessing his own decisions. He could never have risen to this position if either of those things had been the case. But he had a blind spot, just like everyone else.

Shading her eyes with her hands, Sharona watched her boss work. "I don't know. That's up to him."

Monk didn't really have a mask that could let him hide his emotions. When he turned away from the car and headed towards them, Disher saw the remembered pain etched on his face as though it had been put there with a chisel. "Come on, Sharona," he said. "We have to go to City Hall."

Sharona looked at Disher, then back to Monk. "Right now?"

"Yes, right now."

Sharona looked at Disher again, shrugging. There was no point in arguing with Monk when he got like this. "Okay. Catch you around, Lieutenant."

"Yeah, su - wait!" Disher jogged to catch up with them. "Monk, what do you--"

Monk's glare was frosty and completely unexpected. "We're going to City Hall."

"No, Monk, damn it, you have to keep the police informed on this. I know what this case means to you, but you can't just go running off on your own and--"

Suddenly, Monk's arms were around him in the most awkward hug ever. Monk didn't bend his arms at all, just threw them, elbows locked, around Disher's. Disher blinked dumbly at Sharona. "Thank you for calling me in on this case, Lieutenant," he mumbled, stepping quickly away.

"Uh. Um, yeah." Disher's brain completely short-circuited. "You're...welcome."

Not until Monk and Sharona were gone did he realize that he'd been tricked.

(~)

"Richard Branch, age 45." Sharona plunked the picture down on Disher's desk. "His daughter, Stephanie, age 10." The second picture landed next to the first, and Sharona was already holding up a third. "His ex-wife--"

"Melinda Reyes," Disher said. "Shit."

Sharona raised an eyebrow. "You know her?"

He nodded, swallowed a mouthful of stomach acid that had jumped up into his throat. "We met a few years ago at a conference. She's a cop in Oakland."

Nodding, Sharona set the picture of Melinda Reyes beside those of her daughter and ex-husband. "He didn't want me to tell you. He wants--" She waved her hand around. "You know how he is. He wants this one for himself."

Groaning, Disher pressed his thumb and forefinger against the bridge of his nose. "No way," he said finally. "I'm not going to--"

"Oh, I didn't think you were," she said casually. "I just figured I should tell you where he's at."

Disher's eyes narrowed. "And where is he at? Right now."

Sharona's eyes flicked toward the squad room door. "Cold case archive."

His teeth set, Disher stood and walked toward the exit. "Thank you."

"Randy," Sharona said helplessly, "just be - I don't know. His entire life has been nothing but this for the last seven years."

There was an urge - a strong one - to say that his life had been nothing but Monk for the past two years, but he swallowed it and nodded. "I did learn basic manners, Sharona." He walked out of the room and down the stairs. "Monk."

Monk looked up, but his back was to Disher, and he didn't turn around. "Lieutenant," he said, and Disher heard it in his voice - the already spinning wheels trying to formulate a plausible excuse as to why he would be in the cold case archive - an excuse that didn't involve Trudy's case.

Usually, it was kind of fun, listening to what Monk could come up with, but Disher wasn't in the mood today. "Sharona told me about Richard Branch. And...and Melinda." He pulled a chair up next to Monk's and dropped wearily into it. "Do you know her?"

Monk nodded, slowly, his fingers hard at work making every piece of paper in the cardboard box in front of him come to exactly the same level. "We worked a case together, must be, oh, nine years ago now." He gestured at the box. "This case."

Only then did Disher look at the box. It wasn't Trudy's case after all. The label on the side of the cardboard read 'Flannery.' "I remember this case. I'd just come to San Francisco." He shuddered slightly. "Such a mess." Ashley Dinsmore had killed his sister-in-law, Rachel Flannery, one late June Wednesday in the middle of a week when he was well-documented to have been in Germany. He'd led the police a merry chase for most of the summer.

"One of the worst. Three detectives worked nothing but this case for the entire summer. We got him eventually, but I wonder..." Monk's voice trailed off.

"You wonder what?"

Monk had copies of the pictures of Richard and Stephanie Branch sitting on his other side. He picked them both up and looked at them for a minute before holding them out to Disher. "I wonder if it was worth it."

Disher gripped Monk's arm. Monk's eyes widened in alarm, but Disher held on. "Don't say that, Monk. Ever."

Monk pulled his arm free and smoothed futilely at the wrinkles Disher's tight grasp had put in his sleeve. He gave Disher a withering look and a brief 'tsk' before turning his attention back to the file. "All these years, I've assumed that I was the target of the bomb that killed Trudy." His lips compressed, face chalk-white with pain. "But what if it was her they were after? Someone connected to the Flannery case - to Dinsmore - watches The Godfather a few too many times and decides to make the detectives involved in the case suffer by blowing up their loved ones. It's just the sort of thing that sick bastard or one of his slimeball friends would've done, too."

Disher shook his head. "But why wait? Trudy died seven years ago. Why wait all this time to go after Reyes's family?"

Monk picked up Ashley Dinsmore's mug shot. "Maybe they were otherwise occupied."

(~)

Even with the department's snazziest equipment at their disposal, the search had already taken almost two hours and still wasn't complete. Disher felt every second that passed in his veins. Monk couldn't contain his nervous energy; he alternated between pacing and standing stock still - except for the constant tremor that ran through his entire body. He had already lined up everything on Disher's desk - stapler parallel to tape dispenser parallel to three-hole punch; pencil cup and coffee mug turned so that their handles faced in exactly the same direction. He'd leveled the coffee pots, of course (Sharona slipped over to them five minutes later and taped 'out of order' signs to both machines to prevent anyone pouring themselves a cup, which would've forced Monk to start all over again). Now he had a pair of scissors and was headed with an expression of grim determination toward the three scraggly potted plants on the squad room window sill.

Sharona sprang into action. "Adrian!"

He looked up guiltily, blades hovering over the straggling fronds of Lieutenant Mackie's spider fern. "What?"

"What are you doing?" she demanded.

"They're all different lengths." He waved the scissors at the plants as though that explained everything. In Monk's mind, Disher reflected, it must.

Sharona levered herself off the edge of Disher's desk, where she'd been leaning throughout, despite Disher's repeated offers of a chair. "Come on, Adrian," she ordered.

He lowered his arm and stared at her. "Where are we going?"

"For a walk."

Monk shook his head. "No, that's okay. I'm fine here."

"No you're not," Sharona countered.

"No, it's fine," he said amiably. "I'm just going to stay here and--" Again he waved the scissors at the plants.

"Adrian, you're molesting innocent foliage," Sharona countered. "We're going." She gave Disher the look she was always giving him - half smile, half grimace, kind of caught between apologetic and snide. "We'll be back. You know my cell number if anything comes up?"

Disher nodded, and Sharona hauled her still-protesting boss out of the room. Watching them go, the lieutenant sighed. As difficult as this must be for Monk - and he imagined it must be nearly unbearable - it had to be worse for Sharona, who simply had to bear his insanities, day in, day out.

A wry smile ghosted across Disher's face. Wasn't that what he was proposing to do, himself? At least Sharona got paid.

When Disher's computer dinged at him, alerting him that it had found something interesting, he stared at the screen for almost twenty seconds, wondering at the brilliant simplicity of it. Even Monk probably wouldn't have remembered it. Then he dove for his phone, pulling Sharona's number from some dimly lit corner of his memory. "Get him back here. Now."

(~)

"It's not about Ashley Dinsmore, it's about Ashley Dinsmore?" Sharona repeated, staring slack-jawed at Disher.

"Yeah," he said proudly.

"Randy, did you fall and hit your head on something sharp?"

Disher watched the light snap on in Monk's eyes. "I hadn't thought of it that way," he said.

Sharona swung her incredulous gaze to him. "Did you both hit your heads on sharp things?"

But Monk was already lost in the picture Disher had handed him. "The third brother," he said, as though that was supposed to explain everything to Sharona.

"Ashley Dinsmore has a brother named Ashley Dinsmore?"

Disher laughed. "He has a brother named Gilroy. He has a son named Ashley."

"That was how he committed the murder - we thought. He sent his nephew to Germany in his place. They look very similar - when Rachel Flannery died, there were all these receipts signed by Ashley Dinsmore, and the description of the uncle was close enough to the description of the nephew that no one really checked into it."

"But what does that have to do with Trudy? Or Melinda Reyes?"

Disher picked up a file on his desk. "Ashley the Younger was never charged with anything in the Flannery case. He convinced everyone that he had no idea why his uncle had given him the trip to Germany."

"Almost everyone," Monk said darkly.

"But he got arrested for the first time two months later on an unrelated charge. Within eighteen months he'd been sentenced to twelve to fifteen for armed robbery."

"His father hung the police out to dry," Monk said, aligning the edges of Ashley the Younger's criminal record. "He said that our - that the detectives' 'harassment' of his son pushed him into a life of crime."

Sharona snorted. "If that's all the push it took, it must have been a really short fall."

Disher smiled at her. Then his gaze fell on Monk again, and the smile faded. "The first bomb turns out to have detonated the day Ashley the Younger was incarcerated."

A hush descended over them, ponderous with expectation. What would happen to Monk, Disher wondered with morbid fascination, when Trudy's murder was at last laid down? Would he pick up and move on, suddenly sane again? Or would he, deprived of the single motivating factor of his last seven years, completely collapse?

And if he did, would he let Disher pick up the pieces?

"So," Sharona said hesitantly, and now the silence was broken, but not the tension, "why the gap? Or, why start again at all?"

Disher held out the print-out that had ended his long search. "Ashley the Younger died in prison last week."

"This is the revenge of a grief-stricken father," Monk said, and he sounded almost awed.

Disher nodded. "All we have to do now is find Gilroy Dinsmore."

"Oh, is that all?" Sharona snorted. "No problem."

Disher started to chuckle, but the noise broke off in a gasp. "Monk!" Monk looked up sharply. "You said there were three detectives on the Flannery case."

Monk's eyes widened. "Captain Stottlemeyer," he said, panic clear in his voice. "He was the third."

If Disher were an even slightly more pathetic man than he already was, he might've made much of the way Monk's hand kept colliding with his as they scrambled for the phone on his desk. As it stood, he was just desperate to get to the captain before something happened that would lose him both Monk and Stottlemeyer forever.

"Damn it, Randy, I told you not to call me!" Stottlemeyer barked.

"Karen, sir," he gasped. "Is Karen there?"

The disbelief on Stottlemeyer's end of the call was almost palpable. "You want to talk to my wife?"

"No, sir, I just want to know if she's there."

"Come on," Monk muttered behind him. "We're losing time."

"As a matter of fact, Lieutenant, she just left. To do some shopping. Does that meet with your approval?"

"She left?" Disher blinked. "As in, she already left? In the car?" Disher brightened, tension beginning to leave him. Monk he could feel still coiled tight just behind him.

On the other end, Stottlemeyer growled. "No, Lieutenant, she's putting her purse into the passenger seat and heading to the driver's side right--"

"NO!" Disher heard his phone creak a warning beneath his clenching fingers. "Sir, you can't let her start the car."

"What? Randy, have you lost your--"

Monk yanked the phone from Disher's hand. "Do it, Captain!"

"Fuck." Stottlemeyer must've dropped the phone on the table, because there was a loud thunk, followed by silence. Their heads bent side-by-side against the receiver, breath held in, Disher and Monk listened to the sounds of a door wrenching open, and of Stottlemeyer's frantic scream of, "Karen! DON'T!"

In the silence after, Disher kept on not breathing. He was hyper-aware of every detail around him. Sharona's perfume. The perfect alignment of his office equipment on his desk. Monk's breath, hot and ragged in his ear. Disher closed his eyes. He prayed.

And then the most beautiful sound they'd ever heard - Karen Stottlemeyer's most furiously pissed-off voice, and Disher pictured it again - the captain with his arm around his wife's shoulders, desperate and protective, smothering her head in kisses, she fussing and peeved, calling all cops everywhere hopeless paranoiacs. He grinned right before her tirade cut his eardrum in two. "You'd better have a damned good excuse for this, Adrian! Nobody comes between this woman and the largest New Age retailer in this state without a fight and a much better reason than 'because Monk said so.'"

Monk swallowed hard, gave Sharona and Disher a sickly smile. "Yes, Karen. Of course. Lieutenant Disher will be happy to explain everything to you."

Disher didn't realize Monk was leaving until he was gone. From the squad room doorway, Sharona called a hasty, "Sorry, Randy!" He was alone at his desk, a death grip on his phone, Karen's infuriated waiting on the other end.

He gulped. "Why don't we both sit down?" he asked.

(~)

Disher left the interview room feeling like throwing up was a really good idea. And if he felt that awful, he could only imagine how things must be going for Monk. "Monk?"

Monk looked up, his face at once both dead white and faintly green. "I can't listen to that."

Boldly, Disher put his hand on Monk's shoulder. Monk barely flinched. He didn't have the energy. "Then don't."

"An accident," Monk said numbly.

Disher sank into the chair at Monk's right. A 'happy accident' - that was how Gilroy Dinsmore described the death of Trudy Monk. He had been after Adrian, but he said he'd been 'pleasantly surprised' when he saw how much more devastation was wreaked by killing the detective's wife instead.

Gilroy Dinsmore was very polite. He was well-dressed and well-spoken, and he had come quietly and easily when the police found him, sitting a mere quarter-mile from the Stottlemeyers' cabin, patiently waiting for Karen and her car to blow up. Disher couldn't remember a single other perp in his entire career who'd made him this violently ill.

"We have him now," he said, leaning his head against the wall. "I guess that's what's important." But it felt pretty ridiculous, pretty hollow, as he said it.

Monk didn't seem to mind - or to notice, really. Staring at the wall opposite - counting the tiles, probably, Disher thought - he said, "Randy, I know you've always wanted--"

Panic surged through Disher, and he held up his hand. "I wanted the same thing you wanted, Adrian. To find the person who killed Trudy. To get you some closure."

Monk shook his head. "That's just it, though. There is no closure. Not for me. Trudy was my life, and...and then finding her killer was. But it doesn't just go away now that Dinsmore is going to jail."

Disher stared at him. "Adrian, I would never expect it to 'go away.' Trudy is a part of you. A wonderful part. I know I can't compete with her memory, and I would never try to. All I've ever wanted is for you to be happy." He took a deep breath. "And I think I could make you happy. Help you build some new memories."

Monk laughed nervously and looked around - anywhere but at Disher. "That was very bold of you, making declarations like that in the middle of the station." He finally looked at Disher - and smiled. "Though it maybe wasn't all that smart."

Grinning back, Disher shrugged. "The force gives commendations for bravery, not wisdom."

"Yeah." Monk stood and pointed to the exit. "Walk me out."

Disher jumped to his feet. "Of course."

They walked silently toward the exit. It wasn't an awkward silence for once - just a quiet one. As Disher held the door open, Monk looked at him with a thoughtfulness that made all of Disher's nerve endings twitter.

"Trudy kept me stable," Monk said. "You probably wouldn’t say 'sane' - even she wouldn't have said sane, and she was the one who saw me at my best. My old best, I mean. My new best is pretty pathetic, I know, but she--"

"Adrian?" Disher cut in gently.

"Hmm? Oh." Monk looked at him sheepishly. "Trudy balanced me." He smiled. "I think maybe you could balance me, too, given time."

It was as though the wind had whipped through Disher and swept out all of the dark spaces. He felt flooded with sunlight. "Given time, Adrian, I imagine I could do just about anything."

Monk gave him a smile so warm he had to smile back. "Probably." And then Monk's hand brushed his. Deliberately. Well, okay, so Monk's sleeve, which he'd pulled over his hand to avoid actual contact between his skin and Disher's germs, brushed Disher's hand. But it was deliberate. 'Given time,' Monk had said, and in that instant, Disher knew that he would be given all the time he wanted. And he wanted all the time.

Knowing he was probably grinning like an utter moron, Disher said, "Good bye, Adrian."

Monk looked into the sunset. "Good night, Randy."

Sharona was waiting for Monk in the parking lot. As he opened the passenger side door of her car, she leaned over and winked at Disher. He laughed and waved, letting the exit swing shut. Turning, he spotted Karen and Captain Stottlemeyer at the end of the hall. The captain still held Karen like he feared she could evaporate at any second, but when Disher caught his eye, he winked, too.

Disher laughed harder and headed back to the squad room. Looked like everyone still had his number. And he'd just decided that he didn't mind at all.

END

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