Mr. Monk and the Blue Flu

by Lee Goldberg

“No, Monk, I’m not. That was a good thing. But did you have to participate in the press conference?”

  “The mayor asked me to.”

  “You could have said no,” Stottlemeyer said.

  “He’s my boss,” Monk said.

  “He’s using you to undermine our negotiating position and turn public opinion against us. It’s one thing for you to be working for him. I could almost justify that to other cops, at least those who know you. But when you stand there while he tears us down, that’s a betrayal.”

  “Did you notice the podium was unbalanced?”

  “Yes, I did.”

  Monk grinned. “He stood in front of millions of people with a wobbly podium. It was political suicide. When it was my turn to go up, I could have let it stand the way it was.”

  “No, you couldn’t,” Stottlemeyer said.

  “But I fixed it. I delivered a devastating blow. It was a deft political move that has left him crippled. He’s vulnerable now. You can take him.”

  Stottlemeyer took a deep breath and let it out slowly. There was no way he was going to make Monk see things any differently. “I’m asking you, as a personal favor, not to publicly align yourself with the mayor or the police commissioner. If you’re going to continue working for the department during this labor action, do it in the background. Keep a low profile.”

  “Okay, but I think that’s like asking a star quarterback not to . . . to . . .” Monk struggled to finish the thought, which wasn’t easy, since he knew nothing about football. “To quarter his back.”

  “We’ll take that chance,” Stottlemeyer said.

  Monk nodded, said good night to us both, and went into his house. Stottlemeyer turned to me.

  “I expected more from you, Natalie.”

  “What is that supposed to mean?” I asked.

  “Your job is to watch out for him.”

  “I am,” I said, feeling my face flush with anger. “I’m watching my employer and my friend enjoy his dream come true. He’s got his badge back.”

  “But at what price?” Stottlemeyer said.

  “That’s not my problem,” I said, but I knew that wasn’t true. I had four new tires that proved it. Stottlemeyer didn’t need to know that, though.

  “Sometimes we have to put our dreams aside for the good of others.”

  Spare me, I thought.

  “I think Mr. Monk has sacrificed enough in his life already,” I said. “All he has left are his dreams. If you ask him to sacrifice those, what else does he have?”

  “Life isn’t always fair,” he said.

  “Fine,” I said. “You take the hit this time and grouse about how unfair life is, not Mr. Monk. Get off his back.”

  Stottlemeyer regarded me as if I’d just sprouted a second nose. After a long moment he nodded his head. “I was wrong about you, Natalie. You are watching out for him.”

  I let him have the last word, especially since I came out on top. I put the car in gear and drove off. That doesn’t mean things were good between us. I was still pissed off.

  How dared he pull that “life isn’t always fair” crap, especially when it came to Monk or me. He’d touched a raw nerve with a branding iron.

  I knew Stottlemeyer was going through a rough patch and feeling sorry for himself, but he’d crossed the line with that remark. Everybody wanted something from Monk lately without caring whether it was good for him or not.

  They could all shove it, as far as I was concerned. It was time someone looked out for Monk’s interests. By default, that someone was me.

  I was so angry and hungry and tired that I didn’t notice the cop car behind me until he squawked his siren once and flashed his lights.

  Cursing to myself, I pulled over and gripped my steering wheel so tightly my knuckles turned white. I had had as much as I could stand of this crap from those petulant children in uniform. A female officer walked up to my window. She looked like she wrestled alligators for a hobby and then ate them raw afterward.

  I wasn’t intimidated.

  Okay, I was, but I wasn’t going to let her see it.

  I rolled my window down. Her name tag identified her as Officer Paola Gomez.

  “Do you know why I pulled you over?” Officer Gomez asked.

  “To harass me over Adrian Monk’s decision to step in as interim captain of homicide, and frankly, I don’t want to hear it. Ticket me, tow me, slash my tires again if you want to; I don’t care. Because it isn’t going to change a thing. Mr. Monk is going to keep solving murders, because that’s what he does. In fact, he probably does it better than anybody else on earth. I know you’ve got money troubles. I know you’re worried about your health care and your retirement. But that’s no excuse for how you’re treating him and me. You’re all so upset that you’ve forgotten what wearing that badge means. Well, he hasn’t. He’s a sweet man who doesn’t want to hurt anyone. He’s just doing his job. You should all be ashamed of yourselves.”

  Officer Gomez glared at me. “Are you done now?”

  I nodded. “So is this when you tell me I ran a red light, made an illegal U-turn, and drove the wrong way on a one-way street?”

  “Your trunk is open,” Officer Gomez said. “If you hit a bump, all that stuff you’ve got back there is going to fall into the street. I thought you might want to close it before you drove any farther.”

  That was when I realized the interior light was on, indicating a door was ajar. I looked up into my rearview mirror and saw that, sure enough, my hatchback wasn’t closed. All of Julie’s soccer equipment was in the way-back, along with my folding chair, a case of Monk’s bottled water, a case of Wet Ones, and a five-year-old edition of the Thomas Bros. San Francisco map.

  Once again that night I felt my face flushing. But this time it was from embarrassment.

  “Oh,” I said. “Thanks.”

  “Have a nice night,” Officer Gomez said, and walked back to her car.

  On Monday morning I overslept. I must have swatted the alarm off when it rang at six forty-five. When I awoke, I stepped into the shower for about one minute, just long enough to get wet, and hurriedly got dressed. I didn’t even have time for a cup of coffee. I made Julie her lunch and hustled her out of the house.

  I dropped Julie off at school, picked up Monk, and got him into the office by nine a.m. But we still didn’t beat Frank Porter. He was already settled in at his desk when we walked in. I was relieved to see he was wearing a fresh set of clothes.

  I don’t know how long Porter had been there, but he’d managed to put all the information on the four open murder cases up on the board that had previously been covered with stuff relating to the Golden Gate Strangler case.

  Allegra Doucet, John Yamada, Diane Truby, and Scott Eggers each had their own column of vital stats topped with a color photo of each of them taken before their grisly deaths.

  Considering Porter’s questionable grasp on details, I wasn’t sure how much Monk should trust the stuff on the board, but I kept my concerns to myself.

  Sparrow was sitting with her head on a desk, sound asleep and still plugged into her iPod. Her mouth was open, and drool was spilling out onto the desk blotter. It wasn’t a pretty sight, which was why Monk took a napkin from his pocket, unfolded it, and draped it over her face.

  If I didn’t get a big jolt of caffeine and sugar I was going to end up just like Sparrow, so I left Monk standing in front of the board and ran out to get some coffee and doughnuts from the Winchell’s across the street. Another week on the policeman’s diet and I was afraid I’d be using my butt for shelf space.

  I came back upstairs with my coffee and a dozen doughnuts. I didn’t buy any doughnut holes, of course, and I ate the evidence that I’d bought a baker’s dozen (the thirteenth doughnut) so Monk wouldn’t wig out.

  Monk had pulled up a chair in front of the board and was staring at it in rapt attention, as if he were watching his favorite TV show (which, at the time, was an infomercial for the Wonder Wiper, an appliance you could
use to clean floors, ceilings, windows, and cabinets, and even to power-wash your car. Monk never got tired of watching the toothy, insincere host demonstrate the product to the awe-struck, paid members of the studio audience. Monk owned four of the Wonder Wipers and had given me two for Christmas). Porter was sitting next to him, dozing in his chair and snoring loudly.

  Cindy Chow, Mad Jack Wyatt, and their two assistants, Jasper and Arnie, had arrived in my brief absence. Chow was walking around the room, waving some kind of electronic device, undoubtedly sweeping the place for bugs. Wyatt sat at his desk, dismantling his gun and cleaning it with little brushes, rags, and oils.

  Sparrow was talking with Jasper over at the coffeemaker. Her whole body was inclined toward him, and they both maintained smiles and eye contact for way too long. The coffee wasn’t brewing, but romance certainly was. I guess it was inevitable after Sparrow’s cute-butt comment. Arnie was making coffee, oblivious to the mating ritual taking place next to him.

  “To the fetishist, the shoe represents different parts of the female anatomy,” Jasper told Sparrow. “But I believe that Charlie Herrin was interested more in the smell of the shoes than what they represented. His victims were all running and sweating. He was a pheromone junkie, and suffered from violent kleptophilia, the need to steal fetish objects for sexual excitement.”

  “Like if you were to steal my bra,” Sparrow said with mock coyness.

  “It looks to me like someone already has,” he said.

  “Oh, my,” Sparrow said. “Should I report the crime?”

  Jasper grinned. “There’s no hurry.”

  Yuck. Psychobabble as seduction. Maybe there was a thesis in that.

  “The murders have more to do with Herrin’s hatred and fear of women than anything else,” Arnie said, offering his unwelcome opinion. “He can’t relate to women, so he kills them and replaces them with a nonthreatening, representational object of femininity instead: their shoes. But why the left shoe and not the right? That’s the real mystery.”

  Jasper and Sparrow both glared at him, upset at his intrusion into their little flirt-fest. I decided to save Arnie.

  “Doughnuts, anyone?” I said.

  Porter woke up instantly and practically flung himself out of his seat. If his heart ever fails, instead of using defibrillator paddles on him, someone should just wave a Krispy Kreme glazed doughnut under his nose.

  I set the box of doughnuts down on the table and opened it up.

  Everybody came over and grabbed a doughnut except Monk. He didn’t like eating anything sticky, covered with sugar, or with holes.

  Monk cocked his head, looking at the board from various angles, as if that might change what he was seeing. Maybe it did. I don’t know.

  I walked over to him. “What are you doing?”

  “These murders are troubling me,” Monk said.

  “Of course they are. They’re unsolved.”

  He turned his back to the board, bent over, and looked at it between his legs, seeing it upside down.

  “It’s something else,” he said.

  “And you think looking at the facts out of the corner of your eye and upside down will reveal what’s wrong.”

  “They say it helps to look at things from a new perspective.”

  “I think they mean it figuratively,” I said. “Not literally.”

  “Let’s go over the facts again,” Monk said.

  We did.

  Everyone gathered around, and we rehashed every detail of the four unsolved murders. I won’t bore you by going over everything again, but here’s a little refresher.

  Allegra Doucet was working on an astrological chart when she was stabbed in the chest, presumably by someone she knew, who either came in or left through the bathroom window. She was bilking her wealthy clients, like Max Collins, by advising them to invest according to “the stars” in companies that paid her kickbacks. Max had a key to her place and was in the neighborhood the night she was killed. Means, motive, opportunity. I’m told that’s a big deal when it comes to a murder investigation or when you’re playing a game of Clue.

  Architect John Yamada was walking across the street when someone ran him over and sped away. It was no accident. The driver was waiting for him to step into the intersection. At the time, Yamada was in the midst of an ugly split with his wife, whose car was stolen a few days before the murder. What a coincidence.

  Waitress Diana Truby was walking home when someone pushed her in front of a bus. That same day, the drooling stalker who’d been terrorizing her for weeks suddenly disappeared. Interesting timing, huh?

  At least we had suspects in those three cases. Scott Eggers’s murder was a dead end so far. He was attacked from behind, clobbered on the head, and suffocated in an alley for no apparent reason—unless his neighbor did it for ratting him out to the city for installing a rooftop hot tub that wasn’t up to code.

  “Yamada, Truby, and Eggers were all taken by surprise and never had a chance to defend themselves,” Monk said.

  “It figures,” Wyatt said. “Most killers are cowards.”

  “But Allegra Doucet was face-to-face with her killer,” Monk said.

  “What’s the point of comparing the killings?” Wyatt asked. “They’re all different cases with nothing in common.”

  “They’re all unsolved,” Monk said.

  “Three of them are forty-four,” Porter said.

  It was a strange non sequitur. I would have ignored it, but Monk didn’t.

  “Excuse me?” Monk said.

  “Everyone but the astrologer was forty-four years old,” Porter said. “That’s something in common.”

  Monk rose from his chair, stood in front of the board, and leaned so close to the papers taped to it that his nose was almost touching them.

  “Frank,” Monk said, “you’re a genius.”

  “He is?” Sparrow said.

  “Who is Frank?” Porter asked.

  “Not only were they all forty-four,” Monk said.

  “All three of them were born on the same day—February twentieth, 1962.”

  So there was another serial killer running around San Francisco. What wonderful news. And not even twenty-four hours had passed since the Golden Gate Strangler was apprehended.

  The San Francisco Chamber of Commerce and the Tourist Bureau might as well close up for good. Who would want to live in or visit a city with so many psychopaths prowling the streets? I was about ready to call a real estate agent myself. We wouldn’t have to move far. Berkeley, maybe.

  “That’s it!” Chow shouted. “All the pieces of the conspiracy are falling into place. The four killings are all connected.”

  “You mean the three,” Monk said. “Allegra Doucet was twenty-seven, and she wasn’t born on February twentieth.”

  “She’s the center of the whole conspiracy,” Chow said.

  “Here we go,” Jasper mumbled.

  “On February twentieth, 1962, astronaut John Glenn made history by becoming the first person to orbit the Earth. That same day these three people were born. Allegra Doucet was an astrologer, perhaps even an escapee of Project Subzero,” Chow said, her words tumbling out in an excited rush. “Remember how I said her murder might have been a result of her stumbling on the date, time, and location of an alien landing? That date was February twentieth, 1962. John Glenn’s orbit was a distraction from the real, historic, interstellar event. Are you with me so far?”

  Monk, Jasper, and Sparrow nodded. Arnie, Porter, Wyatt, and I shook our heads.

  “Remember how I said Doucet spent time in New Mexico, where the extraterrestrials have their underground base and conduct their mind-control experiments? Okay, this is where things get interesting. Like thousands of women, I’ve been abducted and impregnated by aliens.”

  “Maybe you’ll start getting more dates here on Earth now that there isn’t a radio taped to your head,” Wyatt said. “But I doubt it.”

  “Open your eyes to what’s going on, Jack. The Omega Agency
is desperate to create alien/humanoid offspring capable of surviving here and on their home planet,” Chow said. “I think Yamada, Truby, and Eggers were three of the offspring of their crude, initial experiments in crossbreeding, which began on February twentieth, 1962. Doucet found out, and all four of them had to be eliminated.”

  Chow sat back down in her chair, quite pleased with herself.

  “Of course, this means agents are being dispatched at this very moment to kill us,” she said. “We know too much.”

  “Just give them the Vulcan neck pinch when they walk through the door,” Wyatt said.

  Monk looked at her for a long moment, and I looked at him. I knew what the spark in his eye and the smile tugging at the corner of his lips meant. But I didn’t believe what I was seeing.

  “Cindy,” Monk said. “You’re a genius.”

  I stepped in front of Monk. “Look me in the eye and tell me that you honestly think she’s right.”

  “She’s solved the murders of John Yamada, Diane Truby, and Scott Eggers,” Monk said.

  I knew he was going to say that. It was all over his face.

  “You’ve lost your mind, Monk,” Sparrow said, then elbowed Jasper in the side. “You’d better give him one of your cards.”

  “Detective Chow is right,” Monk said. “All four murders are connected. Allegra Doucet is at the center of it, and February twentieth, 1962, is the key.”

  “You really think Yamada, Truby, and Eggers were extraterrestrial test-tube babies, that Allegra Doucet was killed by the men in black, and we’re all next on the hit list?” Wyatt asked.

  “I didn’t say that,” Monk said.

  Now I was sure Monk was losing it. “Mr. Monk, you just said Cindy Chow solved the murders.”

  “I did,” Monk said.

  “I’m lost,” I said.

  “Me, too,” Frank Porter said. “Could someone please show me how to get back to my desk?”

  “I don’t know why Allegra Doucet was killed or who did it,” Monk said. “But I know why the other three were murdered, and if we don’t move fast, more people will die.”

  17

  Mr. Monk Cleans Up the Mess