Mr. Monk in Outer Space

by Goldberg, Lee

  I was on my way home when I got a call from Firefighter Joe, my “friend-with-benefits.” He had finished his shift at the firehouse and wanted to know whether I might be free for dinner.

  I tried not to sound too enthusiastic when I said yes, but I think I gave myself away when I said I would meet him at his house in five minutes.

  He made reservations at his favorite Italian restaurant in North Beach, but we never got there. I walked through his front door and into his arms, and that’s where I stayed.

  I won’t go into detail about what happened the rest of the night, but let’s just say that it was sweet and tenderand that by morning I was beginning to seriously rethink my strict policy against ever getting seriously involved with another man in a dangerous profession.

  This friends-with-benefits thing had its pluses, that’s for sure, but I think we both felt unsatisfied on a fundamental emotional level. I knew that he did and I pretended like I didn’t. He never brought it up, but I could feel it. I also knew that I could lose him if a woman came along who was as cute and lovable as me but was more willing to let him into her life.

  It wasn’t just my life, or I would probably have taken the risk. I had to think about Julie’s heart, too, and what she would feel every time Joe Cochran went back to work at the firehouse. She’d lost her father and I didn’t want her to go through anything like that again.

  I didn’t want to either.

  Yes, I know you can’t protect yourself or those you care about from heartbreak, not if you want to enjoy all the wonderful things that come from close relationships with other people.

  But I felt I could lower the chances of Julie’s experiencing that kind of pain again by consciously avoiding close relationships with anyone who regularly and intentionally put his life in jeopardy.

  So that’s what originally led me into that friends-with-benefits thing with Joe, which, by the way, I kept secret from Julie.

  But that night, after my experience with Scooter, and seeing the solitary lives that Monk and Ambrose led, and observing the lengths to which the Beyond Earth fans went to belong to something, I was reevaluating my thinking. I certainly appreciated what I had with Joe Cochran that night a whole lot more than I had before.

  I thought about what I’d said to Ambrose.

  It was worth it . . . love always is.

  Maybe that’s what I was needy for.

  Even so, I wasn’t brave enough to change my arrangement with Joe just yet. I was, however, about to show him just how much I appreciated him when I got a call very early in the morning.

  I rolled over in bed and knocked my cell phone off his nightstand when I tried to reach for it. I practically tumbled out of bed scrounging around for the phone on the floor.

  “Hello?” I said.

  It was Captain Stottlemeyer. “Sorry for the wake-up call, but I need to see Monk. And you’d better prepare yourself for a very bad day.”

  “It’s not the first day that’s started off for him with a corpse,” I said. “Or for me either.”

  “I thought I was pretty lively,” Joe whispered. I poked him in the chest and almost broke my elbow. He’s that buff.

  “This homicide is different,” Stottlemeyer said. “It proves that everything Monk said yesterday about the murders of Brandon Lorber, Conrad Stipe, and the cabbie was wrong.”

  “Monk is never wrong about murder,” I said.

  “He is now,” Stottlemeyer said.

  25

  Mr. Monk and the Strange Thing

  A visit to the San Francisco Airporter Motor Inn is a bleak and depressing way to start your day even if there isn’t a dead body involved.

  I can’t imagine what it must be like to stay there, even for a one-night stand. I’ve never had one, but from what I’ve heard from my friends it’s miserable enough waking up next to someone you’d rather forget without it also happening in a place where you wish you’d never been.

  Then again, it’s not a whole lot better when you’re there to see a bullet-riddled corpse.

  Monk and I were once again at the rear of the convention center, which was once again a crime scene, where once again we found a car, a distraught driver being interviewed by Lieutenant Disher, and two morgue guys with a body bag to be filled and zipped.

  The victim they were waiting to bag was producer Kingston Mills, who was sprawled facedown in the parking lot behind the black Lincoln Town Car that presumably had delivered him to the hotel. His aloha shirt didn’t look quite so festive soaked with blood.

  There were wounds in his back and his right leg and a trail of blood leading from the open rear door of the limo to the producer’s body.

  “This isn’t right,” Monk said.

  “Murder never is,” I said. I was glad I hadn’t had breakfast before I left Joe’s place.

  There was a crowd of Beyond Earth fans being kept a safe distance away by a couple of uniformed officers, who’d stretched some yellow crime scene tape between several lampposts. It was odd to see people dressed up as four-breasted women, aliens with external internal organs, and elephant-trunked aliens watching us as if we were what was unusual.

  Stottlemeyer was leaning into the limo talking to Judson Beck, who was sitting inside wearing a new Confederation uniform, which I noticed had the same insignia but a much more militaristic look than the original.

  “You’re going to have to leave the vehicle now, Mr. Beck,” Stottlemeyer said.

  Beck shook his head. “No way.”

  “I’m sure the killer is long gone,” Stottlemeyer said.

  “He could be hiding in the brush, just waiting for me to come out so he can finish the job.”

  “There is no brush and you are surrounded by armed police officers,” Stottlemeyer said, opening his jacket to show Beck the gun in his shoulder holster. “I assure you that you are perfectly safe.”

  Beck folded his arms across his chest and shook his head again. “No.”

  “This limo is a crime scene and we need to collect evidence from it,” Stottlemeyer said.

  “The killer was out there, not in here,” Beck said. “This is where I am staying. You can drive me straight to the airport and then do whatever you want with this car.”

  Stottlemeyer sighed and walked over to us.

  “I guess this experience was a little too authentic for him,” he said. “Hard to believe that guy is an action hero.”

  “He only plays one on TV,” I said.

  “He must be a hell of an actor,” Stottlemeyer said. “Would you like to guess what happened here this morning?”

  “The limo arrived, Kingston Mills got out, and Mr. Snork popped up from behind the Dumpster and shot him,” I said.

  “You’re a natural. You should enroll in the police academy immediately. Beck closed the door, locked it, and called 911 on his cell phone,” Stottlemeyer said, then turned to Monk. “This pretty much blows away your hit man theory.”

  “I don’t see why,” Monk said.

  “Because some guy dressed like Mr. Snork just murdered another producer of the new Beyond Earth.”

  “The reimagined Beyond Earth,” I said.

  “Whatever,” Stottlemeyer said. “We’ve got this one on tape, too.”

  “I’m sure you do,” Monk said. “That was the point.”

  “You’ve lost me,” Stottlemeyer said. “As usual.”

  “There are two explanations for this killing,” Monk said. “Number one, the hit man learned that we’ve discoveredthe Lorber connection and wanted to lead us astray again. Or, number two, this is a copycat killing by someone who is taking advantage of the publicity surrounding Stipe’s murder.”

  “Or number three, you were wrong and there’s no connection between Stipe’s killing and the desecration of Lorber’s body,” Stottlemeyer said. “It’s just a coincidence that Stipe rode in the same taxi as the cabbie who was killed the other night.”

  “I suppose you think it’s also a coincidence that the same cabbie picked up a far
e near the Burgerville headquarters the same night that Lorber was shot.”

  “Sure, why not?” Stottlemeyer said. “Stranger things have happened.”

  “Give me some examples,” Monk said.

  “I don’t have any off the top of my head,” Stottlemeyer said, and looked over at Disher. “Hey, Randy, tell me something strange that you’ve heard about.”

  “I read this morning about a goat born with two noses,” Disher said.

  “There you go,” Stottlemeyer said to Monk. “That’s strange.”

  “It’s not a coincidence,” Monk said. “It’s a birth defect.”

  “Okay, how about this?” Disher said, closing his notebook and joining us. “I read about a woman here in San Francisco who has been searching for the birth mother who gave her up for adoption in Boston twenty years ago. It turns out that they’ve been working together as waitresses in the same restaurant for the last three years.”

  “That’s one coincidence,” Monk said. “This case has at least three. There’s no comparison.”

  “Wait a minute, Monk,” Stottlemeyer said. “You asked me to give you some examples of strange things and I did and now you’re changing the rules. Why don’t you just admit that you were wrong?”

  “I’m not,” Monk said. “We have the gum and the candy wrapper.”

  “I’ve got a video that shows the same guy who killed Conrad Stipe shooting another Beyond Earth producer in exactly the same spot. I think my evidence trumps yours.”

  “I don’t see how,” Monk said.

  “Maybe because you don’t want to see it,” Stottlemeyer said. “You’re blind to anything that goes against the way you think things should be.”

  “The way I think things should be happens to be the way things should be,” Monk said. “So it’s okay.”

  “I’ve got news for you, Monk. A gob of dried gum and a wrinkled candy wrapper aren’t enough to build a homicide case on, much less two of them, not even for you.”

  “The fact is that somebody hired a hit man to murder Brandon Lorber,” Monk said. “But then Lorber died of natural causes before he could be killed.”

  “There you go,” Disher said. “That’s a strange thing.”

  Monk ignored him and continued. “So the hit man shot Lorber three times, in a manner consistent with a professional killer, in order to collect his full fee.”

  “The deadly triangle,” Disher said.

  “The hit man took a taxi to the airport, the same one that picked up Conrad Stipe,” Monk continued. “But the assassin left something incriminating behind, so he killed Stipe and made it look like a fan did it, and then he killed the cabbie and made it look like a robbery.”

  Stottlemeyer sighed. “Yes, so you’ve told me already. And now that I’ve heard it all again, I’m asking myself how I could have bought it the first time. Do you really think it’s plausible that a guy would kill two people on the possibility that somebody might come after him for shooting a corpse?”

  “He did it so he wouldn’t forfeit the money he was earning for the assassination,” Monk said. “It was motivated by greed.”

  “That explanation doesn’t make the theory sound any more plausible to me,” Stottlemeyer said.

  “It’s not a theory and I can prove it,” Monk said. “Could you turn the body halfway over for me?”

  “Sure,” Stottlemeyer said and looked at Disher. “Go ahead.”

  “Why me?” Disher said.

  “Because I’m the captain and these are new shoes,” Stottlemeyer said. “I don’t want to get blood on them.”

  Disher put on a pair of rubber gloves, leaned down, and gingerly lifted Mills enough so Monk could see the front of the body.

  Monk crouched beside Disher. “As you can see, Kingston Mills has been shot in the shoulder, the back, and the leg.”

  “So?” Stottlemeyer said.

  Monk stood up.

  “Here’s what happened. When Mills got out of the limousine, the shooter emerged from behind the Dumpster and shot him in the shoulder. The bullet spun Mills around and he started to flee towards the hotel. The killer shot him in the leg and then once more in the back before escaping into the crowd in the convention center.”

  “Yes, I know,” Stottlemeyer said. “I heard it from a dozen witnesses and I saw it with my own eyes on the security video.”

  “But Stipe was shot only once, right in the heart,” Monk said. “Mills was shot three times and only the last bullet was fatal.”

  “So what?”

  “The man who killed Stipe was a crack shot. The man who killed Mills was not.”

  “Or the killer got lucky the first time,” Disher said, rising to his feet again.

  “Either the hit man is trying to make it look like this is a copycat killing or that’s exactly what it is,” Monk said. “Either way, this doesn’t change anything.”

  “It does for Kingston Mills,” I said.

  “I’ve got to go with the evidence, Monk,” Stottlemeyer said.

  “I’m glad you’re seeing reason,” Monk said. “So we’re going back to looking for the hit man and whoever hired him.”

  “We’re going back to our original notion that Conrad Stipe was killed by someone in the Beyond Earth community, ” Stottlemeyer said. “I’m betting that whoever did that also took out Kingston Mills. It’s the simplest explanation.”

  “Simple isn’t always right,” Monk said.

  “Nine times out of ten it is,” Stottlemeyer said. “It’s that tenth case that keeps you in business, Monk.”

  “Does this mean that the Special Desecration Unit is taking the lead again in the Lorber investigation?” Disher asked Stottlemeyer.

  “It’s all yours, Randy,” Stottlemeyer said. “You can start by getting Judson Beck out of that limo.”

  “What does that have to do with the Lorber case?”

  “Nothing,” Stottlemeyer said.

  “No problem. I can do that,” Disher said. “All it takes is a little finesse.”

  “That’s why I asked you,” Stottlemeyer said. “Because you’re so smooth.”

  Disher took a deep breath and marched over to the limo.

  “Could I get a copy of the security video?” Monk asked. “I’d like to see it.”

  “I’m glad to hear that. I was afraid you might quit on me in a huff.” Stottlemeyer reached into his jacket and handed me a DVD.

  “I don’t huff,” Monk said. “Or puff. I’ve never puffed. I am firmly against all puffing.”

  “That’s good to know,” Stottlemeyer said. “I still need you on this one, Monk. We’re back to trying to find a needle in a box of needles and you’re the best man for the job.”

  We heard a scream from the limo. We turned to see Disher yanking Beck out of the backseat by the collar of his shirt and dragging him towards a police car.

  “Finesse.” Stottlemeyer smiled. “It works every time.”