User:DReifGalaxyM31/Mr. Monk and the Panic Room

"Mr. Monk and the Panic Room" is the second episode of the third season of Monk, and the 31st episode overall.

Plot summary
Monk enters the monkey business when he investigates the murder of a records producer, killed by a most unlikely suspect.

Plot synopsis
Record producer Ian Blackburn is working late at night in his house studio, alone except for the company his pet chimpanzee, Darwin. He takes a call from his wife, pop star Chloe, and tells her that they can't delay their next song because they are four months behind schedule. He then hangs up and ruminates about how nothing good in life lasts. The otherwise quiet night is interrupted when the intruder alarm sounds. Ian runs with Darwin into the secured panic room, where they'll be safe.

The police arrive a few minutes later. They knock on the door, with no response from Ian. They find the panic room, which has been bolted shut. A police technician cuts a hole in the door, reaches in through the hole, and hits the release button, which opens the door and reveals Ian on the floor, shot four times at point-blank range (twice in the back, once in the chest, and once in the head), with Darwin standing over him, carrying a gun in his hand. One of the uniformed officers sarcastically asks if he should read Darwin his rights.

The next day, Sharona Fleming is patching up her son, Benjy for getting into a fight at school trying to defend another kid from bullies. She lashes out at Benjy, saying there is never any excuse for getting mixed up in violence. Then she takes a call about the murder while Adrian Monk finishes the bandaging.

Monk and Sharona show up at the Blackburn estate where they meet Captain Stottlemeyer and Lieutenant Disher. Stottlemeyer notes that the burglar alarm went off at 5:09 AM when a neighborhood kid broke the window, but the kid got scared away. Despite this, Monk notices an interesting clue: the footprints heading towards the house are complete, indicating that the man was walking, but the footprints leading away from the door show that he strolled away after setting off the alarm (and a neighborhood kid would have ran off at the sound of the alarm).

They are then shown Darwin, the chimp. While Monk and Stottlemeyer go off on their own, Sharona realizes that Darwin is hungry. She goes into the kitchen to feed him a banana. Randy accompanies Sharona, despite her protests that Darwin could not kill anyone.

Monk and the Captain go into the recording studio, where they look at all of Ian's state-of-the-art recording equipment. They also notice a cardboard version of Chloe, who is also state-of-the-art. Stottlemeyer notes that Chloe was in Dallas doing a show and will be flying back later today. Monk hears a beeping noise, and looks under some of Ian's books, where he finds a pill dispenser with a built-in timer. Stottlemeyer immediately remembers Chloe telling him that Ian was on antidepressants. Curiously, the dispenser is set for 4:30 AM, and the alarm came in at 5:09 AM. Monk wonders, why didn't Ian take his pills? Then they go to the panic room, which according to Stottlemeyer is a difficult concept for Monk because for him, every single room is a panic room. It works like this: if there is an intruder in the house, one runs in there, locks the door and waits for the cavalry. It's self-contained, so any human could live in there for a week. Monk accidentally locks himself into the room when he leans on the door panel, and is only rescued when Stottlemeyer reaches back in and opens the door.

As soon as Monk comes out, officers from Animal Control arrive to take Darwin away. For some reason, Darwin suddenly starts acting up and throwing himself around. Sharona is able to calm Darwin down enough for the officers to load him into the cage. She pleads for Monk to do something because Darwin, according to her, is innocent, but Monk merely looks on.

Later at the police station, Sharona gets into a small argument with Randy about whether a chimpanzee like Darwin can fire a gun. Stottlemeyer breaks up the argument, saying that it's a legitimate question that should be tested. Randy gives Stottlemeyer an unloaded gun, and then he goes downstairs with Darwin to an empty interrogation room, puts the gun on the table, and tries a variety of bizarre and very hysterical antics to agitate the chimp into picking up the gun, including using whistles and acting like a cheerleader.

Upstairs, Randy runs a theory by Monk: that Ian Blackburn trained the chimp to shoot him so that Chloe could collect on the insurance. Monk rules that theory out, and notes that Ian had a $100,000 life insurance policy, and Chloe is worth $20 million, which isn't really worth killing for. When Randy looks inside one of the drawers to find a piece of gum for Sharona, he realizes that he just gave Stottlemeyer a loaded gun. Monk, Randy and Sharona race downstairs. As they yell through the glass that the gun is loaded, Stottlemeyer starts acting up even more. There is a shot, and Monk, Sharona, and Randy duck to the ground as the glass shatters. Stottlemeyer walks out, carrying the gun, remarkably composed, and says, “The case is closed.”

Sharona urges Monk to keep investigating. He does so, reluctantly. They interview the security expert, Kurt Wolff, who designed and built the panic room, and he assures them that it was impossible for anyone to get in. Wolff is pretty renowned in the security field - he's built some of the highest technology security systems in the world. When Monk and Sharona go back to the house to question Chloe, she says that Ian had a depressive personality, and she can easily believe that he wanted to kill himself. Monk notices signs that Chloe is having an affair – a place setting for two – but Chloe seems to lack both motive and opportunity: she was worth much more money than her husband, and was definitely in Dallas when he was killed.

Sharona, upon learning that Darwin is to be euthanized, breaks into the animal shelter and she rescues him. Stottlemeyer and Disher show up at her house the next morning. Reluctantly, Stottlemeyer tells her that they need to talk. They enter the house and notice that it looks like someone ransacked the place. He informs her that she will have to tell them where Darwin is, or he will have no choice but to arrest her. Stottlemeyer notes that the shelter had a surveillance camera that recorded Sharona's car's license plate as she drove away. Darwin, however, is nowhere to be found and she refuses to tell them where he is. She is arrested just as Benjy comes home. To try to explain why Sharona has been handcuffed, Stottlemeyer tells Benjy that she bet Randy that she could escape from his handcuffs but couldn't. Before leaving the house, she sees Benjy and tells him she was wrong, it is important to stand up for people who can’t defend themselves.

Monk visits Sharona in jail, and asks her to cooperate, but she says she can’t. Monk returns home, and finds that Sharona has stashed Darwin there, tearing apart his apartment. Outwardly calm, and not noticing Darwin ransacking the place, he telephones Dr. Kroger, asking him to make an emergency house call. Shortly after Dr. Kroger arrives, Monk’s landlord also arrives, saying that pets aren’t allowed. He removes his hat and steps forward to grab Darwin, who goes berserk and starts shrieking. Monk notices that Darwin calms down when the landlord puts his hat back on, indicating that Darwin is afraid of bald men. Monk says he's solved the case.

Monk, Stottlemeyer, and Disher look over the panic room while Kurt Wolff, the security expert, seals it for them. They say that they overlooked a vital clue: Ian was carrying a tape recorder, switched on, when the alarm sounded, which he carried into the panic room and dropped, so it must have recorded the entire attack. They cannot touch it now, since it is damaged, but will be back in the morning with a technical expert from the FBI.

Here's What Happened
That night, Monk, Sharona, Stottlemeyer and Disher stake out the house. Monk not only tells Sharona that he found Darwin, but he also reveals how he solved the case. When the landlord removed his hat, Darwin went berserk. That's when Monk remembered that Darwin acted the same way when he saw the animal control officer. Both of the men were bald. Darwin is afraid of them. There is one other person who has a bald head: security expert Kurt Wolff.

Wolff met Chloe while he was doing security for her, and they hooked up as lovers. They conspired to kill Ian, as divorce was not the answer: getting a divorce would have cost her over $10 million. So Wolff built the panic room, not to protect Ian Blackburn, but to kill him. He built a secret crawl space from the basement that enters the panic room in the built-in refrigerator. That night, he snuck into the panic room, and set the "test" button on the alarm system. This is how he lured Ian into the panic room. The plan was to make it look like he shot himself in the locked room. However, it all went wrong with Darwin. There was a struggle, and Darwin tried to grab the gun. Wolff shot Ian four times, twice in the back, so suicide would not fly. Knowing that the police would never buy suicide, he gave the gun to Darwin, to frame him. Darwin would remember his master's killer so well that he went berserk every time he saw someone with a bald head.

After the murder, Wolff crawled out the same way he had gotten in, and now, in order to explain what Ian was doing in the panic room, he broke a window and made it look like a burglar tried to get in.

Just then, Randy gets a signal that Wolff has entered the crawl space. They move into the panic room. Wolff emerges from the refrigerator, and the light turns on. Monk mentions to Wolff that he shouldn't have bothered trying to recover the recorder. They've already played it and there isn't anything on it. Wolff is arrested for the murder.

Sharona, Benjy, and Monk, go to the animal shelter to bid goodbye to Darwin, who is being transferred to the San Francisco Zoo. It seems that Chloe has also been arrested for her part in the murder. Darwin, according to the animal control officer, is still acting up around bald people.