Mr. Monk and the Blue Flu

by Lee Goldberg

  Monk sat wide-eyed and pale, molded into the passenger seat as if he’d been pinned by tremendous g-forces. The instant we came to a stop, the ground was rocked by an explosion.

  “I think we broke the sound barrier,” Monk said in a faraway, dazed voice.

  “I barely broke the speed limit,” I said.

  “Then what was that boom I just heard?”

  “It probably has something to do with the fire,” I said, motioning to the smoke in the sky.

  Monk hesitantly unlatched his seat belt, as if afraid the car might suddenly speed forward of its own volition, and then reached out with a shaking hand to open the car door.

  “When I said you could use the siren,” he said, “that didn’t mean I wanted you to speed.”

  “What do you think the siren is for?”

  “To alert other people to clear the road so that we won’t have anyone in our way while we drive slowly and carefully to wherever we are going.”

  “You’re no fun,” I said.

  “Give me a broom, a dustpan, and a dirty floor,” he said, “and I’ll show you fun.”

  He got out and we walked around the corner together, where we saw the ground floor of a building ablaze. Firefighters were battling the flames that were licking out from the charred remains of a car that had gone through the storefront window. An injured man was being wheeled on a gurney to an ambulance, while paramedics treated a balding, sobbing guy who sat on a bus-stop bench, his shoulder soaked with blood. People were gathered on the sidewalks, watching the pyrotechnics.

  Against this backdrop of fire, agony, and pandemonium, a tall figure walked toward us, his arms casually at his sides. He was holding the largest handgun I have ever seen, the sunlight glinting off its smoking silver barrel.

  “Who is he?” Monk asked.

  I recognized the flinty eyes, the world-weary grimace, and most of all, the destruction in his wake. I was relieved to see he didn’t have any grenades clipped to his belt.

  “That’s Mad Jack Wyatt,” I said, “one of your detectives.”

  “What’s he angry about?” Monk asked.

  I shrugged.

  “You must be the new captain,” Wyatt said with a grimace, as if the words were causing him pain.

  “I’m Adrian Monk, and this is my assistant, Natalie Teeger.”

  “An assistant,” Wyatt said. “What a nice perk.”

  “I’m not a perk,” I said.

  “You look perky to me,” Wyatt said.

  “How did that car end up in the middle of that store?” I asked, gesturing to the fire.

  Wyatt glanced over his shoulder. “Maybe he was looking for the drive-through window and got confused.”

  “What got him so confused?” I said.

  “Probably the gunshots,” Wyatt said.

  Monk started to do his thing, walking in a wide circle around us and examining the skid marks on the asphalt. Wyatt watched him warily, as if he might have to draw his gun on him.

  “The car was coming from the north and then sped up as it went through the intersection,” Monk said, reading the skid marks as if they were a transcript of the events. In a way, I guess they were. “You shot out the front right tire and then, as the car passed, the left rear tire. The driver lost control of the car and careened into the front window of that store.”

  Wyatt nodded. “Mighty reckless of him.”

  “Is he the one who ran over the pedestrian?” I asked.

  “No,” Monk replied before Wyatt could answer.

  “That’s a different set of skid marks.” He started to follow those marks back around the corner, where I’d parked the patrol car.

  “I still don’t get what happened,” I said.

  Wyatt looked at me. “I arrived on the scene and was beginning my investigation when I recognized that the driver of a passing vehicle was Trinidad Lopez, the leading suspect in a string of ATM holdups.”

  “So you shot him?” I asked.

  “I shot his car,” Wyatt said. “If I’d shot him, he’d be leaving in a body bag instead of an ambulance.”

  I looked over my shoulder to see a man being lifted into the ambulance.

  “If that’s Lopez, who is that?” I motioned to the tearful, injured man on the bus-stop bench.

  “My anger-management counselor.”

  “You shot him?”

  “It’s just a scratch.” Wyatt shoved his weapon into a shoulder holster as long as my thigh. “You shouldn’t step in front of me when I’m shooting.”

  “That’s a no-brainer,” I said.

  “That’s what he’d be now if I’d been aiming at him,” Wyatt said. “I guess this was his lucky day.”

  “I’ll go tell him to be sure and buy a lottery ticket before he gets home.”

  I thought I saw a hint of a grin at the edges of Wyatt’s grimace. I hoped that didn’t mean he was going to shoot me.

  Monk came back to us. “What can you tell me about the victim?”

  “I don’t call a guy who holds up old ladies at ATMs a victim,” Wyatt said. “I call him target practice.”

  “I think Mr. Monk was referring to the victim of the hit-and-run,” I said, trying to be helpful.

  Wyatt grunted, took a notebook from his back pocket, and referred to the top page.

  “The deceased is John Yamada, forty-four, an architect. He lived in the house on the corner and now resides under that white sheet over there,” Wyatt said. “He was hit by a car while jaywalking across the street to the market. Nobody got a license number, but the vehicle that struck him has been positively identified by witnesses as a Toyota, Ford, Honda, Subaru, Pontiac, Hyundai, Chevy, or Kia sedan.”

  “What do you make of it?” I asked him.

  Wyatt shrugged. “Natural selection.”

  “Excuse me?” I said.

  “The moron should have looked both ways before he crossed the street,” Wyatt said.

  “It wasn’t a hit-and-run,” Monk said. “It was premeditated murder.”

  We both looked at Monk. Well, I did, for sure. I think Wyatt, did, too, but he could have been on the lookout for more felons cruising by whom he could shoot.

  “The skid marks indicate that the driver was double-parked across the street and floored it when Yamada entered the intersection,” Monk said. “The killer was waiting for him.”

  “You got all that just from some skid marks?” Wyatt said skeptically.

  “There’s more.” Monk led us around the corner to our patrol car. “This was where the car was parked, with a clear view of Yamada’s front door. You see this mud?”

  “No, I don’t,” Wyatt said.

  I didn’t either.

  “I’m talking about those big, disgusting globs right in front of your feet.” Monk pointed at the ground.

  Wyatt and I crouched down and peered at the street. There were some tiny crumbs of mud between the two of us.

  “How did he see that?” Wyatt asked me.

  “He never misses dirt,” I said. “Anywhere. Ever.”

  “There’s more over there.” Monk pointed a few feet away. “But none in between those two piles. I believe the dirt was shaken off the car while it was idling.”

  “So?” Wyatt said.

  “It wasn’t shaken off anywhere else except those two distinct points, a car length apart, beneath the front and rear license plates. The reason no one saw the license plate numbers was because they were covered with mud.”

  “A pro would have stolen a set of plates from a car and put them on his ride,” Wyatt said. “We’re dealing with a civilian making it up as he goes along.”

  “Maybe someone from Yamada’s personal life,” Monk said.

  “I’ll check into it,” Wyatt said. “And I’ll have the lab analyze the dirt.”

  “I’m counting on you to clean this up,” Monk said.

  “With pleasure,” Wyatt said.

  “Really?” Monk said. “You will?”

  “I was born to take scum off the st
reets.”

  “So was I,” Monk said. “Which cleanser do you prefer?”

  Wyatt opened his jacket to show Monk the gigantic gun in his gigantic holster. “Three-fifty-seven Magnum. You?”

  “Simple Green,” Monk said.

  I caught a hint of disappointment in Monk’s voice. For a moment he’d thought he’d found a kindred spirit.

  My cell phone rang. I reached into my bag and answered it. Officer Curtis was calling again. I listened carefully, hardly believing what she was saying, and then snapped the phone shut.

  “This city is getting way too dangerous,” I said.

  “That’ll change soon enough,” Wyatt said. “I’m back in the game, and my gun has bullets.”

  I looked at Monk. “There’s been another murder.”

  “Three in one day?” Monk said. “If this keeps up, we could become the murder capital of the world.”

  “If this keeps up,” I said, “I’m going to move.”

  The views from Russian Hill are pretty spectacular. Look to the north and you can see Alcatraz and Marin County. Look to the east and you can see Coit Tower and a sliver of the Bay Bridge. Look to the south and you can see the Financial District high-rises. Look to the west and you’ve got the Golden Gate. But that evening, the only view anybody was interested in was of the body of Diane Truby at the bottom of a steep residential street, and the bloody grille of the bus that hit her.

  She’d been a passenger on that very same bus only a few minutes before. The driver let Diane and several other passengers off at the stop on the top of the hill. A few minutes later the bus was heading downhill when she tumbled off the sidewalk into its path. The bus slammed into her, dragging her corpse to the bottom of the hill before the driver could stop.

  An alley bisected the street midway up the hill. That was about where Truby was hit, and that was where Monk and I met Frank Porter and his granddaughter Sparrow, who was leaning against a wall and listening to her iPod, looking so bored that I thought she might throw herself in front of a bus just for the excitement.

  Porter sat on a wooden vegetable crate and explained to us what happened, never once referring to his notes.

  Diane Truby was a waitress on her way home from work. She rode the same bus every day. She lived with a painter who made most of his living doing caricatures for the tourists who waited in line for the cable car at the Powell-Hyde turnaround.

  “I interviewed everybody on the bus,” Porter said. “Nobody saw anything except the driver, and his attention was on the street in front of him when she just flew into his path.”

  Monk listened carefully, then walked out into the street, did an odd little pirouette, and returned to the alley. There was a woman’s purse on the sidewalk, circled with white chalk.

  “And this is Diane’s purse on the sidewalk?”

  “Uh-huh,” Porter said. “There’s sixty bucks in cash in there and a cell phone. I don’t think this was a purse snatching gone wrong.”

  “So she was walking down the hill when someone burst out of this alley and pushed her into the path of that bus,” Monk said.

  “We’re dealing with one pretty sick individual,” Porter said. “I remember a case a buddy of mine investigated in New York. Some kids were shoving people in front of subway trains.”

  “That wasn’t a case,” Sparrow said. “That was the episode of Law and Order you watched last night.”

  “They were doing it for thrills,” Porter said, ignoring Sparrow’s remark. “Sickos like that are the hardest to catch. You never know when or where they are going to strike next.”

  “That crate you’re sitting on,” Monk said. “Where did it come from?”

  “Right here,” Porter said.

  “And it was there where you’re sitting, tipped upside down like that?”

  “I have bad knees,” Porter said, sounding defensive and a bit embarrassed.

  Monk crouched beside the box and looked toward the street. “This is where the murderer sat, too.”

  Porter didn’t move from the crate. “What makes you say that?”

  “From here you’re out of sight from the street, but you have a clear view of the houses on the east side of the street near the bottom of the hill.”

  “What good was that to the killer?” I said. “The victim was walking down from the top of the hill.”

  “The murderer was looking at the reflection in the mirror,” Monk said.

  “What mirror?” I said.

  “The one a homeowner has mounted on the lamppost outside his garage so he can see the traffic coming down as he backs out.”

  I crouched beside Monk and followed his gaze. Sure enough, there was a mirror angled in such a way that it reflected the top half of the street. Whoever sat on the crate could see Diane Truby and the bus before they reached the mouth of the alley.

  “Does this mean I’ve got to get up?” Porter said.

  “You’re sitting on evidence,” Monk said. “You’ve probably already contaminated it.”

  “Damn,” Porter said. “I’m going to need a hand.”

  Monk didn’t make a move to help, which was typical. I sighed, glanced at Sparrow, who also sighed, and the two of us lifted Porter to his feet.

  “That’s odd,” Monk said.

  “Wait until you get old and let’s see how spry you are,” Porter grumbled. “I almost died walking up that hill.”

  “I’m talking about this.” He pointed to a packing slip affixed to the crate with clear tape. “The vegetable crate was delivered this morning to a market two blocks over.”

  “Does that mean something?” I said. In fact, I asked that question so often around Monk I was tempted to write it on a card so I could just flash it at him when necessary.

  “It means the killer brought the crate so he’d have something to sit on.” Monk frowned and cocked his head. Something about the crime scene wasn’t fitting in the way it should, and it was giving him a kink in his neck. “Why didn’t the killer just stand? Or lean against the wall? Or crouch on the ground?”

  “Maybe he had arthritis,” Porter said. “Or sore feet. Or a bad back. Or, like me, all of the above.” Porter caught his breath and shot a worried look at Sparrow. “Oh, my God. Maybe I did it.”

  “You have an alibi,” Sparrow said irritably.

  “You were at the police station when she was killed.”

  “I was?” Porter said. “Well, that’s a relief.”

  “And you didn’t know her,” Sparrow said.

  “Are you sure?” Porter asked.

  “Yeah,” Sparrow said.

  “That’s good.” Porter tipped his head toward me. “Do I know her?”

  I wasn’t sure whether Porter was serious or having some fun at his granddaughter’s expense. I looked into his eyes, hoping to see a glint of mischief. Instead, I saw two rheumy eyeballs looking vacantly into the street. He was serious.

  “I’m Natalie Teeger,” I said. “Captain Monk’s assistant.”

  Porter nodded, then narrowed his eyes at Monk. “You’re the guy who freaked out when Stottlemeyer brought in the doughnut holes. You wanted us to find the doughnuts they came from and put them back.”

  “They shouldn’t have been removed from the doughnuts and sold separately in the first place,” Monk said. “It’s like selling chicken legs without the rest of the chicken.”

  “What’s wrong with that?” Sparrow said.

  “That’s how it starts,” Monk said. “And the next thing you know, you’re selling your mother’s jewelry to support your crack habit.”

  “They’re called doughnut holes,” I said, “but they aren’t actually poked out of the center of doughnuts.”

  “Yeah, right,” Monk said. “If you can fall for that, then you probably think this was a random thrill killing, too.”

  “Wasn’t it?” I said.

  “Diane Truby was the intended target all along.”

  “How do you know?” That was another question I’d have to writ
e on a card. I figured I’d better start making a list.

  “There’s nothing thrilling about waiting,” Monk said. “The thrill comes from the impulsiveness and potential danger of the act.”

  I wondered how Monk could possibly know anything about thrills. His idea of being impulsive was to clean a counter with Fantastik instead of Formula 409. And then go back and clean it with Formula 409 after all.

  “But this killer brought something to sit on,” Monk continued. “He knew it might be a while until the person he was waiting for walked by. And he was willing to wait.”

  “I’ll have some officers canvass the neighborhood and see if anybody saw a guy walking around with an empty vegetable crate,” Porter said. “A guy with bad knees, a sore back, and corns on his feet. I’ll have them show people my picture, just in case.”

  “And yet,” Monk said, lost in his thoughts, “for a premeditated murder, shoving someone in front of a bus seems strangely impulsive.”

  “You’re contradicting yourself,” I said.

  “I am,” Monk said thoughtfully. “And I’m not.”

  8

  Mr. Monk Plays Make-believe

  I talked Monk into coming home with me for dinner but, to be honest, it wasn’t because I wanted more of his company or that I thought he might enjoy more of mine. I wanted to take Julie for a ride in the patrol car, and I didn’t feel comfortable driving it without a police officer with me.

  But I was glad I offered him the invitation, because I don’t think he really wanted to be alone. As we drove to my house he sat quietly, staring at his badge. He was obviously troubled.

  In all the excitement of rushing from one homicide to another, I’d forgotten that this was Monk’s first day back on the force. On top of that, it was also his first time in command, which couldn’t have been easy for a guy who barely had control over his own life.

  “Big day, wasn’t it, Mr. Monk?”

  He put the badge back in his jacket pocket and sighed. “I finally got my badge back.”

  “That’s exciting, isn’t it?”

  “It was while it lasted,” Monk said.

  “No one has asked you to give it back.”