As Monk and Natalie return to San Francisco, Stottlemeyer calls to inform them that the medical examiner has completed his report and wants them down at the morgue. When they arrive at the morgue, they find Stottlemeyer and Disher waiting for them, as well as Ian Ludlow himself. Ludlow admits that Randy called him in, and that Randy was one of his top students when he was teaching a class on mystery writing at Berkeley, during the 2007 SFPD police strike. Monk, Natalie, Stottlemeyer, Disher, Ludlow and the medical examiner all look at Webster's body. The bite does appear to have been made by an alligator, judging by the amount of force per square inch applied. At the same time though, the medical examiner mentions that there are traces of bath water and bath salts in the body, suggesting he drowned in his bathtub, which only makes things more complicated. Natalie asks if it is easy to fake an alligator bite, and learns that it is actually more difficult than one thinks: you have to get the right amount of force per square inch, and if there are no signs of a struggle, it's a dead giveaway. Ludlow mentions that one of his characters in "Death Is the Last Word" actually tried faking an alligator bite with a bear trap with no success.