Mr. Monk on the Couch by Lee Goldberg Page B

each item.
    There was the nurse. Try to date and trace her uniform? Her shoes? The watch on her wrist?
    There was the little girl. Try to date the bike? Her clothes? Her shoes?
    There was the house, which appeared to have been recently built at the time the photo was taken. The black address numbers 9-2-8 were glued on a white plastic light that was mounted on the brick trim beside the garage. That design detail, and the style of the house, screamed 1970s to me. If it’s a tract home, can I trace the style to a particular developer and then, perhaps, to a place and a date?
    There were potted plants out front, waiting to be put into the fresh dirt. Could the plants tell me where the house is?
    There was the car in the driveway. The license plate wasn’t photographed, but I could tell the car was a Ford Country Squire, metallic blue with faux wood paneling on the exterior.
    What year was the car? Was the metallic blue color a special-order option? Could that help me track the owner?
    I looked at my list and frowned. I was going to need help with the research.
    But where was I going to get it?
    I wrote that question down, too, as if that would help me find the answer.
    Monk never had to make up lists. He absorbed the details that he saw and heard and then noticed the one thing that was missing, was out of place, or didn’t fit where it was supposed to. And that’s how he solved his cases.
    But I wasn’t Monk. I’d have to develop my own detecting technique. I just wished that I knew what it was. And that thought gave me the last question for my list.
    What is my technique?

CHAPTER SEVEN
    Mr. Monk and the Knee-slapper
    D r. Neven Bell’s office in North Beach, with its wood paneling and leather furniture, was so aggressively masculine, I half expected the balding shrink to emerge from his office in a silk bathrobe, a cigar in his mouth, and his arms around two Playboy bunnies.
    But Dr. Bell was no Hef. His standard attire leaned more toward cable-knit sweaters and corduroy pants. He greeted me in the waiting room, where Monk was busy organizing the magazines on the coffee table by name and publication date.
    “What kind of person leaves a mess like this?” Monk said. “Your patients need serious psychiatric help.”
    Dr. Bell ignored Monk and smiled at me. “Adrian tells me you’re taking on a case.”
    I glanced over at Monk. “I didn’t think he noticed.”
    “I notice everything,” Monk said.
    “But you haven’t shown much interest in it,” I said.
    “That’s because I have none,” he said.
    I handed Dr. Bell the snapshot of the nurse and the little girl. “What do you make of this?”
    Dr. Bell glanced at the photo, then looked up at me. “What do you make of it?”
    “Please don’t psychoanalyze me,” I said. “Analyze the picture.”
    “I can’t,” Dr. Bell said. “The meaning of the picture depends entirely on the interpretation of the person who is looking at it. What I see is irrelevant. Each of us is going to see something different.”
    “It’s not an abstract painting,” I said. “It’s a straightforward photograph. What’s there is there. We all see the same thing.”
    “Really?” Dr. Bell turned to Monk and held up the picture. “Adrian, what’s the first thing you notice when you look at this?”
    Monk glanced quickly at the picture, then returned to his magazine sorting. “The house isn’t symmetrical.”
    Dr. Bell turned to me. “Did you see that?”
    “No,” I said.
    “I rest my case,” Dr. Bell said. “What do you see in the picture?”
    “I made a list,” I said, reaching into my purse for the notebook.
    “That’s not what I meant,” Dr. Bell said, then held up the picture in front of my face. “What do you see? Don’t think about it. Tell me the first thing that pops into your mind.”
    “I see a nameless man desperately holding on to a faded memory as he dies alone in a dark hotel room.”
    Dr. Bell handed the photo back to me. “That’s not in the