“Mr. Monk and the Paperboy” · Season 2, Episode 10
In this episode: Adrian Monk (6), Captain Leland Stottlemeyer (4), Sharona Fleming (4), Lt. Randall Disher (4), Dr. Charles Kroger (1)
[Monk refuses to reveal his intimacies with his late wife to his psychiatrist.]
Adrian, we can talk about your sex life with Trudy or we can sing show tunes until this session is over. It's your choice.
[pause]
[singing] If ever would I leave you...
...
[Eventually, Monk stops singing. He looks at his watch and stares at Dr. Kroger for a while, then...]
[singing] If ever would I leave you...
Why do you torture me like this?
Because I can.
[Monk solves a murder in France, just by reading the newspaper]
Listen to this: this is "News from Around the World," Paris, France. There is an unsolved murder; a woman was found strangled, and both of her hands were cut off.
Oh my God!
That happens all the time: no fingerprints. Makes it harder to ID the body.
Now here's the thing: they found the hands. They were a couple of meters away from the body in the grass.
The killer cut off both hands, but then left them near the body?
Yeah. She and her husband both worked as curators at the prison museum in the Bastille.
Prison museum?
[cuts to a Paris police prefecture. A police lieutenant comes into his captain's office]
[in French] Captain Dupres, there is a detective calling from America. He has solved the murder of Madame Beaudreau.
[in French] He solved it?
[in French] By reading a newspaper, from 9,000 kilometers away! [Dupres sighs and picks up the phone]
Captain Dupres, Prefecture de Police. [cuts to Monk's apartment]
Bonjour. Je m'appelle Captain Leland Stottlemeyer. Je travaille avec le department de police de San Francisco. Uhhhh, parlez vous English? ["Hello, my name is Captain Leland Stottlemeyer. I work for the department of police of San Francisco. Do you speak English"]
I speak enough. What can I do for you?
Uh, hi, I've got a friend. His name is Adrian Monk.
[into the phone] Bonjour.
He has a theory about an unsolved case of yours. Here, I'll put him on. [hands the phone to Monk] He speaks English well enough. [Monk wipes down the phone, pressing several of the other buttons]
Yes, yse, hello. I think I know who killed Madame Beaudreau.
[skeptically] Oui, Monsieur Monk, what is your theory?
I think her husband did it.
Well, we suspected him from the beginning. But why did he cut off her hands?
He must have used a pair of handcuffs from the museum to restrain her.
I do not follow you.
They were antique handcuffs, very distinctive, so they could easily have been traced back to him.
Mon Dieu...
He must have lost the key. So he was desperate, he had to get them off the body.
Well, that makes sense! Lafitte, why didn't I think of that? Monsieur Monk, you are a genius! Perhaps someday, you will come to Paris so I can thank you in person.
[Monk, Sharona, Stottlemeyer and Disher arrive at a body shop to arrest a businessman named Malcolm Cowley for a hit-and-run death]
Is there a problem?
I was reading about you in the newspaper. [Shows the copy of the paper to Cowley] That's you, isn't it? "It Just Wasn't His Day." It says here that you had two accidents in the course of ten minutes: first you hit a little tree, and then you drove another half a mile and hit a lamppost.
That's right. Is that a crime?
Uh, yeah, it is if you were intentionally damaging your car so you wouldn't have to explain a smashed-in grille. See, Mr. Monk found this other article. [turns to a front page article] "Hit-and-Run Driver Kills a Grandmother." Same neighborhood. Same approximate time. We thought there might be a connection.
[looking at Cowley's car's headlights] Captain. Blood.
Turn around. Put your hands on the car. [Cowley complies and Stottlemeyer handcuffs him] You sir, are under arrest, for vehicular manslaughter, leaving the scene of a crime, and for the murder of Nestor Alvarez. Come with me. [He starts to lead Cowley away]
He's not the guy.
What? Monk, we've got him dead to rights.
He is guilty of the hit-and-run, but he didn't kill the paperboy. He didn't know who I was. There is something else in this newspaper, something I'm missing. [He drops the newspaper, disgusted, realizing that he has accidentally wiped his hands with a garage rag, smearing them with oil.] Oh, my God! Oh, the humanity!
[Disher walks into Stottlemeyer's office while Stottlemeyer does work on his laptop]
Captain, I have a thought. [Stottlemeyer doesn't look up, and waves his fingers] About paperboy. [Stottlemeyer continues gesturing with his fingers]
This means "hurry up".
It was a burglary; the paperboy interrupted a B&E in progress. It fits: there were five break-ins on that block last year alone.
[stands up] Nope. I already looked into that. All of those break-ins were hot prowlers - forced entry with a crowbar.
Right.
Our guy was empty-handed.
What about a car thief?
Well, that doesn't explain the taking of the newspapers, doesn't it? [He puts on his overcoat]
Right. So we're back to Monk's theory?
I'm afraid so. [shows Randy the door] And this means "we're leaving".
[Monk and Sharona are at the Stop 'n Go]
How 'bout a lottery ticket?
Oh no. You just had a big winner. I never buy a ticket unless the jackpot's more than 10 million dollars.
[pretending to laugh] Yeah, 10 million dollars. I don't know how they can even call that a jackpot.
[Monk, Sharona, Stottlemeyer and Disher are at the scene of the store clerk's death]
When did it happen?
The M.E. is saying two and a half, three hours. He worked as the night manager at the Stop 'n Go on Ridgedale.
Oh my God, we were just there! That's where we bought the newspaper. [to Randy] Along with your letter in it to me.
It wasn't to you!
His shift ended at 4:00 AM, he came here to make the night deposit. He got jumped by the killer, stabbed twice: once in the neck, once in the stomach, with that bottle. [Monk looks at the remains of the bottle that Vicki Salinas used as the murder weapon]
No prints on the bottle?
Nothing yet.
Surveillance camera?
Negative. It's over by the ATM, facing the wrong way. It didn't see a thing. [Stottlemeyer turns to Monk]
Now what I can't get over, is that we haven't had a homicide in this neighborhood for over four years, all of a sudden we've got two: first your newspaper boy, killed for a newspaper, and now this robbery.
No, this was no robbery.
But the killer took the money.
The killer wants us to think robbery. But why wouldn't he do it in a more secluded spot? He could have killed him anywhere between here and the store.
Well maybe the killer just waited for him here by the bank.
No. No, the killer had to have followed the victim from the store. [points at the bottle] Cream soda bottle. You can't find that brand anywhere else.
Well how do you know the victim wasn't drinking it? He worked at the Stop 'n Go.
That's true. [Sharona examines the bottle]
It's a woman. There's lipstick on the bottle. [Monk and Stottlemeyer squat and see some lipstick towards the bottom of the bottle]
How did I miss that?
She's stronger and smarter than you.
These quotes come from Wikiquote's Monk pages and are available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.
