“Ssssh,” Monk said, waving his hands frantically. “There’s no reason to start talking like a sailor.”

“I’ve got to meet this wretched sailor that you keep talking about,” I said. “No, Mr. Monk, I am not menstruating.”

“Ssssh,” Monk said, waving his arms again. “First you’re violent, now you’re a gutter mouth. What is wrong with you?”

“A good friend of mine was just arrested for a murder he didn’t commit-that is what is wrong with me and it should be wrong with you, too.”

I reached into the box and pulled out the Braddock file. Monk tried to grab it from me but I yanked the file away.

“Are you crazy? Acting Captain Disher said we are absolutely forbidden to read that file.”

“Which was his way of saying he wanted us to read it,” I said, laying the crime scene photos out on the empty desk.

“Absolutely forbidden means the opposite,” Monk said, gathering each photo up, one by one.

“But he meant the opposite of the opposite,” I said, laying out the forensic report and the photos of the evidence. “It was his way of saying we weren’t allowed to read the file but he was letting us read it anyway.”

“If that’s what he wanted to say, why didn’t he say that instead of absolutely forbidden?” Monk said, picking up the forensic report and photos.

“He was protecting his butt,” I said, laying out the witness statements. “He was saying that if we get caught reading it, we are on our own.”

“He was saying all that when he said we were absolutely forbidden to open the file.”

“Yes,” I said, dropping the empty file on the desk. “That’s why he gave us the big wink.”

“He probably had dust in his eye.” Monk shoved all the papers and photos back into the file and returned it to the box. “Absolutely forbidden means absolutely forbidden.”

Whether it did or not, I knew that Monk had seen every photo in the file and, whether he wanted to or not, had unconsciously noted every significant detail in them. He couldn’t help himself.

“If you say so,” I said. “How do you feel about visiting the crime scene?”

“Ambivalent,” he said.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

I went to the front desk of the Dorchester and asked the clerk if I could rent a room. I didn’t think that they would let us just look around simply because we were private eyes, and I’m lousy when it comes to bribing people. Besides, I had Slade’s magic credit card.

“Of course,” the clerk said. He was so youthful, clean-cut, and gleamingly straight-toothed that he could have worked at Disneyland. “How long will you be staying?”

I glanced over my shoulder at Monk, who was busy arranging the suitcases at the porter’s stand by size, then returned my gaze to the clerk.

“One night,” I said. “I’d like room seven thirteen.”

The clerk cleared his throat with discomfort. “Perhaps you’d like a different room.”

“Is it occupied?”

“No,” he said, clearing his throat again.

“Then what’s the problem?”

“It’s just that the gentleman who was staying there most recently suffered a tragedy.”

“That’s a shame for him but what does that have to do with me?”

“I wouldn’t want to sleep in a room where someone died,” the clerk said.

“No one’s asking you to,” I said. “I’ve got a companion already.”

I tipped my head towards Monk, who was still busy lining up the suitcases.

The man flushed with embarrassment. “I wasn’t suggesting-I mean, I was just trying to be helpful.”

“By offering yourself to me?”

“No, no, you’ve got it all wrong-” he stammered.

“We’re in a hurry,” I interrupted, handing him my Intertect credit card with a smile. “Could you make it snappy, Romeo?”

He quickly checked us in and handed me an electronic key card.

“Have a pleasant stay,” he said.

“I will.” I winked and took the card from him. It was fun flustering him. It was nice to know I could still fluster somebody.

I went over to Monk, who was admiring the row of suitcases, perfectly staggered from the smallest to the largest like the signal-strength icon on a cell phone.

“We’re in,” I said. “The room is on the seventh floor.”

I figured the uneven floor number was enough bad news for the moment-there was no reason to tell Monk yet that we were going to an odd room, too.

“You didn’t say anything about going to the seventh floor,” Monk said.

“That’s where his room is,” I said.

“He should have been on the fourth or sixth,” Monk said. “Or some other even-numbered floor.”

“But he wasn’t,” I said.

“No wonder he’s dead,” Monk said. “They shouldn’t even put rooms on those floors. It’s irresponsible, dangerous, immoral, and unnatural.”

“What should they do, just leave the odd-numbered floors empty?”

“Yes, for the sake of humanity,” Monk said. “It must have been unbearable for Braddock. Maybe he killed himself.”

“You think Braddock strangled himself with a tie because he couldn’t endure another night on an odd-numbered floor?”

“It’s the most logical alternative,” Monk said. “The captain should use that argument as the cornerstone of his defense strategy.”

I couldn’t take any more of his insanity and marched to the elevator. “I’ll meet you up there.”

I knew that he’d be taking the stairs. He was too claustrophobic to ride an elevator. But if I wasn’t there to meet him on the seventh floor, to physically drag him out of the stairwell if necessary, he might not make it to the room at all.

I got in the elevator, rode it to the seventh floor, and went to room 713. A maid was cleaning the room across the hall, the door propped open with her cart of cleaning supplies, linens, toiletries, and clean glasses.

I opened the door to room 713 and went inside.

There was nothing in the room to indicate that a murder had taken place there a few nights ago. The table was upright, the glasses were replaced, and the bed was made. It was all crisp and clean and smelled of disinfectant.

But I knew better.

A few months ago at a crime scene in another hotel room, Disher demonstrated to me how to use a device that shines a special light to illuminate all the bodily fluid stains that are otherwise invisible to the naked eye. He swept the light over the scene and revealed that everything in the room had been, at one time or another, splattered with bodily fluids-the bedspread, the headboard, the walls, the ceilings, the tabletops, the countertops, the lamps, even the TV remote control.

I couldn’t figure out how some of the stains got where they were. The remote control alone had looked as if it had been dipped in blood or drool or God knows what. It was disgusting to see, even for someone without Monk’s germopho bia. Now I couldn’t enter a hotel room without imagining all the bodily fluids that I knew were all over the place but that I couldn’t actually see.

That was probably how Monk saw everything in this world. His eyes were like that special light.

So were mine as I walked into Braddock’s hotel room. I looked at the bedspread and in my mind I saw the drool that must have spilled out of Braddock’s gaping mouth as he struggled for air that would never come.

I wasn’t sure what bringing Monk to Braddock’s room would accomplish, but it seemed to me that visiting the crime scene, even after it had been cleaned up, was still the logical first step in a homicide investigation.

I left the room and went to the stairwell, getting to the door just as Monk huffed and puffed his way up the final few steps.

“You ought to try the elevator sometime,” I said. “It’s not that bad.”

“If you enjoy the experience of being buried alive in a coffin that moves,” Monk said, catching his breath.