"...found him sat by the body, cool as you please, smoking a goddam cigar." Patrolman Grant shook his head. "Creepiest thing I ever saw. At least until I found the fifty pound bag of rice in a t-shirt..."

"Yo, detectives," CSI Carbonell's face was a mix of gleeful and freaked out, "You're going to want to see this..."

The old-fashioned heavy bolt was on the outside of the door. Landry was still staring at that when he walked into the back of Turner, who had stopped abruptly. Both men gazed about them.

"My niece used to have a room looked a bit like this." Turner said, weakly. "Until she hit ninth grade, and decided to paint everything black."

"Jesus, even the restraints are pink and sparkly." Landry twitched the ruffled curtain back, unsurprised to find bars at the window. Turned, and bit back an unmanly shriek. "...oh, man, that has to be the creepiest fucking painting I have ever seen in my life."

At first, he thought it was a parody of 'American Gothic'. Then he realised that the building behind the couple was a church, and the clothing... The tall, thin man in the tuxedo was eerily familiar, blue eyes blazing. The squat figure beside him, in the garishly overblown meringue of a wedding dress, was their latest victim.

The actual dress was on a stand. Spotlit.

"Is that a tiara?"

"Uhuh."

"Is this room sound-proofed?"

"Uhuh."

"Are you as freaked out as I am right now?"

"Oh, hell, yes."

Seasoned detectives do not stampede out of rooms like panicked rookies, they proceed with dignity. Just...quickly...

The bland, beige normality of the rest of the apartment was even more chilling, now. Landry's phone went, and he stepped away to take the call. Turner eyed Carbonell.

"Anything else creepy and disturbing I need to know about?"

"Besides Barbie's House of Pain set up in there? Kitchen's stocked with about three cupboards full of Mama Italia Marinara sauce... There's whole cartons of Red Vines, Mountain Dew...think she was planning on a siege?"

"Maybe more of a long engagement. We need another serious talk with Doctor Cooper."

Landry put his phone away, an odd look on his face.

"Well, actually, Cooper's got a definite alibi for this one. He's in hospital, under observation for a head injury."

"Yeah?"

"Slipped on a wet towel in his neighbour's bathroom, apparently, cracked his skull on her sink. He's damn lucky she called an ambulance, with her blood alcohol level, she'd have probably wrapped that junker of hers round a lamp-post and finished the job."

"What in hell was he doing there?"

"That's where it gets interesting. It was the helpful Doctor Hofstadter who called the cops, claimed his good buddy had to have attacked his girlfriend. She claimed that he'd already slipped. Seems she had a couple of visitors while she was in the shower. The one carrying the noose was apparently about nine pounds and furry. She knocked that one back out the window with a bat. It sounded like it was gonna be matching jackets in the psych ward, until Bergdorf pieced together her story and the domestic disturbance call here."

"Well, shit." Turner eyed at the cage. "Are you seriously telling me our killer is the goddam monkey?"

They looked at each other, the cage, the shattered remains of the harp. Turner pinched the bridge of his nose.

"The report on this one is going to be a motherfucking masterpiece."

0000000000000

Sheldon was still out for the count, but Penny, looking rather young in over-large borrowed scrubs, face scrubbed clean and hair dried anyhow, sat quite determinedly in a chair outside the room.

For some reason, although she knew she should call Amy, call Leonard, she felt a great reluctance to do so. She didn't want to deal with either of them right now, all the whining and drama. She knew what she'd seen.

For now, she was going to stay in this surprisingly comfy chair and wait for Sheldon to open those big blue eyes, so she could know that his big beautiful mind was still okay, that he was still her friend.

Absently, she riffled through some of the leaflets around. Tried not to think why she'd picked the ones on counselling, substance abuse, sexual assault...

She'd felt sorry for these weird, quirky little people, intrigued by their intelligence and utter lack of lifeskills, tried to be nice to them (with a guilty mean little thought that they should be grateful) and they had nearly destroyed her for it. She'd totally bought into their fantasy that academic qualifications made them somehow better, that smarter meant they were always right, had tried to make up for the guilt of her careless teens by making nice, and her condescension had bitten her in the ass, her desire to be liked and admired had made her a target. A victim.

So she wasn't covering bruises from 'walking into a door'. Leonard hadn't had to hit her to make her feel worthless, powerless. So Sheldon was a grown man, didn't mean he hadn't been...assaulted.

It wasn't 'playful teasing', or encouraging Sheldon to 'grow up'. It was sick and unhealthy and destructive. Nobody had the right to demand anyone else's time or attention or body just because they wanted it, regardless.

There was self-pity and guilt and anger in her tears. Just as stupid as they all said she was...

Her eyes were still puffy when she heard her name being called. It was the two detectives from before. And she knew it wasn't going to be good news.

It really wasn't.

Penny sat, both hands over her mouth, wet eyes wide and horrified.

"She always said she loved him. That she would wait for him to love her back, no matter how long it took her."

"People who are being abused sometimes revert to a time in their life when they felt safe." Turner said, bluntly. "You ever stop to think why a world-class brain started acting like he's six and can't tie his own shoes? The more he got pushed, the further he retreated."

She couldn't turn away, pretend it wasn't happening, pretend that the whole 'five year plan', that relentless pursuit, was still funny in any way.

And now there were three innocent girls dead, and Amy... bile rose... the woman who had claimed to be her 'bestie', claimed Sheldon as her boyfriend...

"She called him a 'sexy toddler' once... Oh, god, I'm gonna..."

Landry shoved the wastebin at her just in time.

0000000000000

"How the hell did he even meet her?"

"Wolowitz and Koothrappali signed him up for online dating as a joke. Somehow the profile they cooked up matched. Cooper must've looked good on paper, all the academic smarts. He's got that old-school Jimmy Stewart thing going on, looks-wise. And, frankly, he's a born mark. She reckoned she could mould him into her idea of the perfect boyfriend. And then suddenly, it was three, four months down the line, and she'd embedded herself right into the group. Cooper was too socially inept to figure out she was grooming him, and everyone else was too wrapped up in their own shit to care."

"Yeah, I still don't get everyone else just standing around and watching it happen. They must've noticed that he was losing it."

"Reading between the lines, I think some of 'em thought it was funny to watch him crack up. Wouldn't be the first time, either. Best thing that man could do would be to cut ties with the lot of them and strike out someplace fresh."

"Real friends don't let friends date psychos." Landry murmured. "Told you I thought she was creepy."

"Creepy ain't a crime. Killing people because they look at your boyfriend the wrong way – that we can do something with." Grunted. "Now, I had my suspicions about that Hofstadter."

"Yeah, if I had a sister, I wouldn't want her dating him." Landry grimaced. "I think he's a panty-sniffer."

One thing when dealing with a scientist, the record keeping was meticulous. They had been wading through terrifying documentation for hours, waiting for the hospital to call and tell them Cooper was awake. Landry looked slightly wild around the eyes.

"These notebooks read like a cross between a teenage diary and a lab report – even the porn is badly written and overly-clinical."

"You aren't assigning an English grade."

"No, seriously, it's like the internet threw up. There's pages of this stuff, all about neuro-linguistic conditioning, and fostering emotional dependence, mixed in with...lurid fantasies, and little hearts, and 'Mrs Amy Farrah Cooper', 'Dr Amy Cooper-Fowler', 'ShAmy Rules', 'Amy luvs Sheldon 4eva'..." He looked rather sick. "She had a whole plan worked out, with a timetable, and a...desensitization schedule. The IT department found a powerpoint presentation on her computer, I think Nellis is still throwing up. And I'm certainly never going to look at an electric toothbrush the same way again." He wiped a hand over his mouth, shuddered.

"We've closed another case, too. That weird arson case everyone thought might be an insurance job? His favourite hang-out. This lady did not like to share."

"She burnt down the comic store? Man, it's a good thing Cooper didn't have any pets."

"I'd say it's a damn good thing all his family are in Galveston. He's quite attached to his grandmother, and his sister just had a baby." Tapped the file. "She had a P.I taking pictures. Isn't that adorable?"

"Fuck."

0000000000000

Mrs Fowler was a colourless woman, the same depressed saggy shapelessness as her daughter, small eyes weak and vague behind the thick glasses.

"Such a clever girl, I wanted her to be a doctor, but somehow, people never took to her bedside manner. She always had difficulty making friends, even as a child. She'd bring them home, show them her collection of stuffed animals - her father was a taxidermist, you know - but they'd never come back again. " Shook her head. "And there was that poor little Salich boy...I had to let him out of the cellar once. I guess he'd dropped his inhaler down there and the door blew shut while he was looking for it, but his parents wouldn't ever let him come back and play, after..."

Landry made a twitchy little face movement that could have been a polite smile, and shot a 'help me or I'll kill you' look at Turner, as he tried to extract his hand from the clammy grasp.

Made round eyes at him as they escaped the mortuary, abandoning the hapless M.E.

"When did we walk into a fucking Stephen King novel?" he hissed.

"I see any clowns, I'm shooting them." Turner promised.

0000000000000

The PD had issued a simple statement, designed to avert fear and panic, announcing that the Pasadena Strangler had been caught. It was a masterpiece of diplomacy.

Unfortunately, an enterprising local reporter had encountered Leonard, and a short skirt and lowcut top had over-ridden any other considerations. It had had to be announced that Cooper was not the suspect.

Caltech, deeply anxious not to get caught in the fall-out, were bending over backwards to meet the medical costs. Tacit agreement that a private room for Dr Cooper was best. Nobody wanted him talking to the Press. That a peculiar, plain, frustrated woman had taken out her rage and resentment on younger, prettier girls was considered enough, without dragging Cooper further into the limelight. DMV pictures made most people look like serial killers, anyway, but Fowler's grim visage, next to the bright images of her victims, would tell quite enough of the story for most. Landry had squinted at it, shivered.

"If she'd ever gone to trial, I have visions of her pulling a Manson and carving a little lightning bolt into her forehead, or something."

"We just have to be glad she kept such good records. You imagine trying to make the case to the D.A without 'em?"

"Well, your honour, it's like the flaky actress said, she was in the shower with her best friend's boyfriend when the monkey dropped in on them...yeah. Reckon Cooper would have ended up in a matching cell, regardless. Shit, she'd have probably liked that."

So there was now the added nuisance of needing to keep a uniform on the door of the hospital room, and having to avoid the front door.

"Damn that little weasel."

They turned the corridor corner just in time to see Penny punching said weasel in the face.

"...not getting back together with you, you little creep. And certainly not in a freakin' supply closet!"

Landry looked at Turner. Turner shrugged.

Penny stormed away from the still protesting Leonard, and skidded to halt when she saw them.

"I...oh, um."

"Didn't see a damn thing." Turner said.

"I went home for a change of clothes and there were people taking photographs of my apartment windows." She wrapped her arms round herself. "Is he awake? Can I see him?"

Outside the room, Dr Ramirez fixed them with a tired gaze.

"Dr Cooper is understandably distressed by events, but his faculties are unimpaired. He's perfectly aware of where he is and why. However, he did sustain a severe blow to the head, so I'd recommend that you keep your visit as brief as possible."

"That shouldn't be a problem, ma'am."

Dr Ramirez wanted to protest Penny's inclusion, but Landry stopped her.

"This way, we only have to go through it once."

Besides, he thought that the girl was on the verge of punching the doctor, and then they'd have to take notice of that.

Sheldon was sitting up in the bed, looking very clean, though almost as pale as the crisp sheets around him. He had a hazy memory. A blonde angel with blood-stained hands kneeling above him, a thunder of fists and voices...

"Take the chain off this door, Penny!"

"Not until the paramedics turn up!" A crimson towel by his face. "Oh, sweetie, hang on."

"I don't think I like monkeys any more, Penny." he said, dolefully.

"Me neither." Penny shivered. "When I saw that thing in the window..."

"Not the first time I have been grateful for your brutal instincts." His gaze went past her, sharpened. "Gentlemen, I need to know if you have caught the perpetrator of the attacks yet? I believe Penny will have furnished you with a description."

"We have the...suspect in custody, yes." They exchanged hard looks, Sheldon's eyebrows rose and his mouth pinched, and Turner sighed, "Okay, yeah, we got the goddam monkey, Cooper, but not before it got Doctor Fowler."

"Well, as my mother would say, praise Jesus." He collapsed back against the pillows like strings had been cut. "It's really over?"

Turner gently explained what they'd found. (Not all of it. They didn't need to know about the diaries, with their frustrated outpourings of mingled hate and desire. Or the manikin in the blonde wig and the waitress uniform, with its scarred throat.)

Sheldon took it all a lot more calmly than Penny had. But then, he'd already figured it out, had been on his way to warn her.

"It was the smell in my office. There's only one smoker in our social circle. That's when I realised the how. I had already determined the who."

"What?"

The look was a flash of the old Sheldon.

"Penny, I am a genius. It became obvious that I was the focus of events fairly quickly, but then I knew I wasn't the one killing people." His face lost some of the assurance then, and he looked a lot younger. "Her possessive jealousy was getting worse, not only was she never going to let me go, she was determined to remove anyone she saw as a threat to her plans. I couldn't think how to protect you, and once you fought publicly with Leonard, you were in serious danger." The long hands closed sharply on the blankets. "I didn't like touching...her like that, but she was always wanting me to, told me I needed to be a proper boyfriend to her. She told me I was stupid for not wanting to touch her, that she was the best girlfriend I was ever going to have, that she deserved to have me after all the effort she put in."

"You know she was wrong to say that, don't you, Dr Cooper?"

"No, I didn't. Nobody told me." Sheldon looked at them, big blue eyes. "I thought that was how it worked. She had called dibs on me, the way Leonard had called dibs on Penny. Everyone kept tellin' me to be nicer to her, to try harder. Nobody told me I didn't have to!" He was beginning to get agitated. "I was always wrong, I was always supposed to be the one to change, to give things up. I couldn't work, couldn't think, but that didn't matter to her, to any of them. All she wanted was for me to put my...in her..." The blanket was practically in strips by now. "Wanted to be my dirty, dirty girl, but I like things clean. She ...kept goin' on about natural musk and pheromones...pawing and wet mouths and spanking and everyone tellin' me it was romantic...I jest felt sick, an' everyone said it was in my mind..."

"Son, there's nothing wrong with you." Turner's voice was the sure proclamation of a prophet. "You didn't like the woman that way, then you shouldn't have been pushed."

"They should have stopped her, then." His eyes were red-rimmed now. "I should've stopped her, but I didn't know how..."

Penny bit her lip, and half-reached out a hand.

"You should have said something to someone..."

"Who was I going to talk to? You were absorbed in your on-going tiresome disaster of a relationship, and when I went home my mother was no better. The one person I have been able to have a discussion with about feelings has been Howard Wolowitz. Wolowitz, Penny."

"...oh."

"Even that cockamamie psychic you dragged me to was goin' on about me givin' in... it was like the whole durned world had nothin' better to do than push me towards her rampant desire for coitus. I was suffering a crisis of unprecedented proportions in my life, and everyone else just wanted me to drop my pants. In this atmosphere, how could I even begin to try explaining that the woman who had determined herself to be my lifemate was busy training a capuchin monkey to strangle designated targets by means of musical coercion and rewards of nicotiana tabacum?"

"Yeah, it does sound like something out of a shitty b-movie..." She blanched. "I was going to be killed in the shower by a mad science monkey thing, talk about irony."

The detectives exchanged baffled looks.

"It's over now, and you can start to get better." Dr Ramirez said, firmly. "Gentlemen, if you've got what you needed?"

"Yeah, I think we have."

"Well, I'm going home and burning my furniture." Penny vowed. "And then I'm gonna scrub the place with Lysol."

Hell, she was going to scrub herself with Lysol.

"I am willing to pay for a professional crime scene cleaning service." Sheldon cleared his throat. "I will certainly be using one in my apartment."

"At least your comics and things all have plastic covers. I'm gonna have to torch my Care Bears." She shivered. "I don't know if I want to sleep there tonight, actually."

"I don't see any reason why you can't stay someplace else, as long as you leave contact details."

"I don't feel like being around a whole load of people right now. Most of them thought Sheldon was capable of murder. And Leonard was thinking with his dick as usual, so now there's reporters all over."

Turner and Landry looked at each other, and Turner nodded.

"We might have a solution." Landry said. "There's a place outside of town we sometime use for witnesses. It's clean, it's quiet and it's entirely discreet."

"Somewhere clean and quiet, out in the country." Penny said, wistful. "Yeah, that sounds nice, right about now."

"They're used to people who've had, well, difficulties with delusional individuals, and they take security seriously. Cooper's photogenic, but he really shouldn't talk to the Press. Ever."

"Yeah, no, that would not end well." She gave a tremulous, relieved smile, and there again was the ghost of the bright, bubbly girl she should be. "Thank you."

They looked back through the doorway, the tired little blonde, the stiff upright figure in the bed.

"He was in the running for the Nobel, one day." Turner said, quiet and sad. "Who knows if he'll ever get his mojo back? Such a goddam waste... She wanted a life-size sex dolly to play with, and that poor bastard fitted the bill. She didn't give a damn about his work or his hobbies, just wanted to mark off her checklist."

Sheldon was still plucking at the edge of his sheets, blue eyes wide.

"I don't know what to do now, Penny."

"It's okay, Sheldon. We'll help each other."

Tentatively, she reached out and touched his hand. He flinched, but he didn't draw away. For now, that was enough.

0000000000000

"So, Cooper wasn't even an accessory, he was the motive. Three girls dead, all because her boyfriend wasn't stepping up to the plate fast enough."

"I don't blame him, you could practically smell the crazy on her."

"Don't think it was the crazy you could smell. CSI said there were... secretions all over the apartment. So far, they all appear to belong to her."

Landry looked at the report, blinked.

"What kind of a person licks their light-switches?"

"The kind that trains their pet monkey as an assassin?"

"...there is that."

"So, she was nudging him along. But he was dragging his heels too much, he'd already made a break for it once, next time he might get away."

"How was framing him for murder gonna help?"

"By casting just enough suspicion on him. He knew the previous victims, but then so did dozens of other people. There was no reason to connect him further. The atmosphere was getting uncomfortable for him, but that just made him more emotionally dependent and malleable. He'd been gradually isolated from his former friends and colleagues, he had minimal contact with his family, nobody was going to miss him too much. A ticket on the Coast Starlight, to make it look like he'd skipped town again..."

"...And Cooper was going to wake up one day chained to a bed with a voice telling him that it rubs the lotion on its skin." Landry shivered. "Her idea of happily ever after. She really thought she was going to be able to hide him away in her little love-dungeon."

"She might have gotten away with it, too, if her creation hadn't turned on her. The only one up to bat for Cooper was that ditzy neighbour of his. And even she'd been encouraging the relationship... all his friends did. They were all but dragging the poor bastard in there for her."

"It sure as hell wasn't coincidence that she went after the blonde grad students, though."

"Hell, no, she was nearly as fixated there as she was on Cooper."

"So what triggered the u-turn?"

"I think she panicked. Everything was going well, until the third victim was found in Cooper's office, by Cooper himself. Up 'til that point, there was no tangible evidence to connect him. Now, we were focussed on him properly. And then - Hofstadter wanted to take his girlfriend out of town for a while."

"That's understandable. Can't blame him for being protective."

"Except he blew it by talking about being able to take over the larger apartment together when they came back, because Cooper was sure to have been committed by then."

"Okay, so he's kind of a shitheel as a friend."

"Yeah, so there was a lot of yelling about that. Turns out Fowler was in the next room, listening to her best girlcrush telling her own boyfriend to go to hell, while refusing to give up on her best friend, Cooper."

"Crap, yeah, that would do it. So it was gonna have to be 'bye-bye, Blondie'."

"Only Cooper alerted her in time to swing for the fences..." Turner looked up, considering. "He's utterly terrified of heights. Hofstadter and the others had him penned up in his room, whether for his protection or theirs, I'm not sure. And he still climbed out of his window and scaled his way round the building to warn her."

"I suppose if he'd called up and told us it was the monkey that did it, the whacko wagon would have turned up for him. I mean, I've seen the training videos, and I still don't believe it. No wonder he was bouncing off the walls."

"A guy like Cooper, he's a loon. But he didn't care, he was happy. He had his routines, he had his work. Sure, he probably needs someone to tell him when to come in out of the rain, but he didn't need to be told who he was. Guys like him, they aren't a three-bed ranch in the suburbs, couple of kids and the 9 to 5. Fowler tried to make him over into something he couldn't be, and he came apart."

"If I'd opened my door and found that stuffed in a corset and heels simpering at me, I'd have cracked up, too." Landry twitched.

"She was - not physically blessed." Turner agreed.

"Yeah, it's just...I interviewed her, and it wasn't only the looks, y'know? I mean, if oatmeal was a person...cold, lumpy oatmeal...evil cold lumpy oatmeal. The woman was like Dolores Umbridge's cousin, or something."

Turner wiped a hand down over his face.

"Just 'cos the woman was a whackjob who fell out the crazy tree and hit every branch on the way down with her face don't mean we can up and say that. Or we'll end up in a go round with that sensitivity training bullshit again."

"Crimes committed whilst the balance of her mind was disturbed, yeah, I know. But let's face it, boss, paint her green and she'd be a dead ringer. Grafting wings on this poor little guy was probably gonna be the next big idea."

"Your mind ain't right, you know that?"

"Least I haven't got Radio Batshit plugged into it."

They both looked at the cage, the occupant sitting there looking back at them. There was a pad of gauze taped over one side of its head, which gave the creature a slightly lopsided and comical look.

"The vet got all the pieces of the headset out of him. Wired right into his brain, apparently. All the crazy, all the time." Landry fed a last slice of apple through the bars. "Bergdorf came by earlier, and he was more interested in the banana than her, so I guess without a target and a trigger, he's harmless."

"You know, she was convinced she could sell the idea to DARPA."

"I can't see it being worth much to Uncle Sam in the long run, though. Anytime anyone put an Enya tape on, there'd be the risk of a massacre." Landry shook his head. "Mad science, man. It starts off with one tiny little monkey, next thing, it'll be killer gorillas and the Statue of Liberty buried in a beach."

Turner snorted.

"Work in this town, sooner or later, you're gonna see weirder. Somewhere out there, right now, some hack is working this up into a script, you just know it."

"Ghouls." Landry shrugged into his jacket, and followed his partner towards the door. "So, if this makes it to the screen, who d'you think they'll cast as us?"

"I'm black, bald and badass, who the hell else they gonna get to play me?"

"The DS9 dude?" Dodged a swipe. "Oh, well, if we're going A-list, I want that Renner guy."

"Nah, they'll probably make you a woman..."

"Fuck you."

"...an Asian-American woman..."

"Seriously, fuck you, man..."

Behind them, dark intelligent eyes watched them go.

00000000

….And that's the story. I was brought low by bad living, and a wicked woman. I never wanted to kill those girls, you know. That hellbitch stuck her wires in my brain, and turned me into her puppet. If you had had that voice, that music in your head, you'd have done whatever it took to make it stop, too.

So, now I'm staring at a set of bars, while they argue about 'culpability'. It's either back to 'medical research', or the Big Sleep for me. Meantime, though, I got three hots and a cot, and a ready supply of smokes. Best of all, there's no music. No more grooming, no more petting, no more listening to her droning on about her 'sweet Baboo' and how happy they were gonna be when he finally wised up. Hell, he wised up alright. Seems the blow to the head knocked some sense into him. Same with Blondie, when she started drying out. I don't blame her for freaking out and nailing me with that bat, that dame's got a hell of a swing. Apparently, she hauled off and socked the boyfriend when he came round the hospital – scuttlebutt at the precinct has it that it was the suggestion of 'glad you're okay' sex in the nearest supply closet that really tipped her over. And then the good Doctor told him to pack up his traps, because he didn't want to share a roof with someone who thought he might kill people like that. (It probably wasn't so much the suspicion, more the thought he'd be dumb enough to get caught at it that bugged him.)

Still, I kinda hope those two crazy kids make it out okay. She messed with their heads as much as she ever messed with mine.

See, some folks are just fucked up inside. Nothin' to do with any weirdass hobbies, comics or tv shows or costumes. It's the ones who go looking at someone else and deciding that they deserve them. When they start thinking the world owes them something to make up for whatever crap they got put through in high school, at work, all the pretty girls or hot guys that won't date them, don't know their damn names, don't want to be their pass to social acceptance, or punch their v-card. Because they see other people like their little plastic action dolls, things to make them feel better, just stuff to own. I was practise.

She never had friends, growing up, because other kids can sense creepy, and so when she finally caught some folks even more broken than she was, she decided to keep 'em real close, whether they wanted to be, or not. And then she saw the big prize, wrote herself a nice little fairy-tale where the princess was gonna have her prince. Except she was planning on keeping him locked up in a nice gilded cage until he didn't want to escape. That's the problem with physical cages, you can see the way out. Cages in the mind... Well, being knocked out of a fourth-floor window shook more than that lojack loose for me, but I wouldn't go recommending it. I'm gonna have a gimpy leg and a deaf ear the rest of my days. However long those may be...

Ah, yeah, see, now talking of the way out – some dumb flatfoot left his clipboard within reach earlier when they brought the chow round. So I've got me a paperclip. Tool-making, it's not just for you hairless apes, you know. The catch on this door, the cover off that air-vent there, and then sweet, sweet freedom. Reckon I might hitch a ride south, I always wanted to travel. You ever make it down to Tijuana, you keep an eye out, and if you see a monkey doing rope tricks for the tourists, well, sling a few pesos in the hat, okay? Smokes don't come cheap.

.

.

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Ricky the Monkey was voiced by Sebastian Stan.