Monk and Natalie head down to Joe's firehouse where they meet Joe and Fire Captain Mantooth, who is pleased to meet Monk again. They explain to Monk that on Wednesday night, earlier in the week, at around 9:00pm, their crew was called away to a car fire in Washington Square. Someone had blown up a painter's van (the arson investigators have ruled it arson, having discovered that someone stuffed rags into the van's fuel tank). Monk quickly figures that the arsonist who did it wanted to get a lot of attention. It took Joe's crew at least two hours to fight the fire and clean up the rubble, and when they got back to their firehouse, they did their standard unloading procedure - cleaning the rig and doing an inventory check - and that's when they found that someone had stolen one of their Jaws of Life kits (the Jaws themselves are designed as a spreader to help extricate people who are trapped in their cars in accidents). Monk learns that the power unit stolen is powered by gasoline, and the Jaws also have a cutting force of 18,000 pounds per square inch. With this, Monk not only has figured out how Ronald Webster was killed, but he's also solved the case - and figured that Webster's killer is the same person as Ellen Cole's killer, even though both crimes have different M.Os (with Ellen being bludgeoned and Webster being mauled). Unfortunately, he doesn't believe he can recover the gear that was stolen, and reluctantly tells Joe and Mantooth that the thief probably dumped the gear in the Bay after he killed Ronald Webster.