Mr. Monk and the Blue Flu (2 page)

I’m not a cop or a medical examiner, but I’d picked up a little basic knowledge about homicide investigation over the years as Monk’s assistant. Even I could tell from the bruising around her neck that someone had throttled her.

But my imagination wouldn’t leave it at that. I put myself in her shoes. Or
shoe
, I should say, since she was missing her left one, just like the other victims who had been killed over the last month.

She had been jogging along the path in the early-morning stillness, enjoying the quiet and the view, her breathing steady and deep. And then he attacked her, knocking her off her feet. He wrapped his hands tightly around her throat. Her lungs ached for air. Her heart pumped madly. Her head and chest felt like they were going to burst.

She had suffered horribly.

I got scared just thinking about it, and I wasn’t even in any danger.

It’s that kind of overactive imagination that would make me a lousy cop. Since I’m not one, and have no official status with the police, I tend to keep my mouth shut at crime scenes and be as unobtrusive as possible. I feel like I’m in the way and that if I speak up, it will only call attention to the fact that I’m someplace where I really shouldn’t be.

Capt. Leland Stottlemeyer chewed on a toothpick and studied the body. Maybe he was imagining the same stuff I was. Maybe he was wondering what the victim had been like, whether she could carry a tune or how her face changed when she smiled. Maybe he was asking himself why his wife left him and if there was anything he could do to get her back. Or maybe he was just trying to decide where to eat lunch. Cops can be amazingly dispassionate about death.

Lt. Randy Disher was standing beside him, busily scrawling something in his notebook. My guess was that he was doodling, because there wasn’t anything for him to take notes on. Not yet, anyway. And while he was good at running down facts, and eager to please his captain, deduction wasn’t his strength.

The truth is, they were both waiting for Monk, the brilliant detective and my boss, to share his observations or, better yet, solve the murder right then and there. It wasn’t that crazy a thing for them to hope for. Monk had done it before. That’s why the SFPD paid him to consult on the trickiest homicide cases. He used to be a cop himself once until his obsessive-compulsive disorder made staying on the force impossible for him.

I stood beside Monk. Behind us, several uniformed officers and crime scene techs were going over the playground and jogging path, searching for clues.

Stottlemeyer looked up at us expectantly. “Are you going to be joining us?”

“I don’t think so,” Monk said.

“The body is down here, Monk.”

“Yes, I can see that.”

Monk grimaced with disgust, lowering his binoculars. But it wasn’t the body that made him uncomfortable; it was where it was located—right in the middle of a dog park. There were no dogs in the park now, but when we arrived some officers were still cleaning up the evidence that dogs had been there, if you catch my drift.

“This is the crime scene.” Stottlemeyer pointed to the body.

“So is this,” Monk said.

“The crime scene is where the body is,” Stottlemeyer said.

“I beg to differ,” Monk said.

“You can’t investigate the murder from up there.”

“I can’t investigate the murder if I’m dead.”

“Standing here isn’t going to kill you,” Stottlemeyer said.

“If I had to stand there,” Monk said, “I would kill myself.”

“We’ve cleaned up all the dog poop,” Stottlemeyer said. “I guarantee you won’t step in anything.”

“The ground is saturated with it,” Monk said. “This entire park should be dug up, put in a rocket, and sent into deep space.”

Stottlemeyer sighed. There was no way he was going to win this one; he had to know that. “Okay, fine. What can you tell me?”

“The killer was hiding in the playground equipment over in the sandbox.” Monk gestured behind himself to a fortlike structure that was part slide, part jungle gym. “When the victim ran past on the track, he tackled her, pinned her to the ground, and killed her. She was easy to overcome because she was already winded from running. He took her left shoe and then rolled her off the edge of the hill into the toxic-waste dump.”

“Dog park,” Stottlemeyer said.

“Same thing,” Monk said.

“I’ve got the mayor, the chief, and the news media all over me on these killings, and we’ve got nothing. I don’t even know who this poor woman is. She’s not carrying any ID,” Stottlemeyer said. “I need you to tell me something I don’t already know. Have you got anything at all?”

Monk sighed. “Not really.”

Stottlemeyer sighed. “Damn.”

“Except she’s from Russia, probably the Republic of Georgia, where she was active in the United National Movement, which favors closer ties with the European Union. So did she. She married a Jewish man from Eastern Europe.”

Stottlemeyer and Disher shared a stunned look. I was pretty stunned, too.

“Is that all?” Stottlemeyer asked dryly.

“Her shoes are new,” Monk said.

Disher glanced down at the body. “How do you know that?”

“The soles aren’t worn down and the leather isn’t creased yet,” Monk said. “The only dirt on the laces is the red dust from the track.”

“That’s very observant,” Stottlemeyer said, “but I think Randy meant how did you know the other stuff?”

“One of her teeth is capped with steel, which you see a lot in Soviet dentistry.”

“I don’t see much Soviet dentistry,” Stottlemeyer said. “I guess I need to get out more.”

“The tattoo on her back is the five crosses, adopted as the symbol of resistance by the Georgian nationalist movement in 1991. It became part of the Georgian flag in 2004,” Monk said. “She’s wearing a gold wedding ring on her right hand, which is a common practice in Eastern European countries, particularly among the Jewish faith. You’ll notice the ring has a slight reddish tint because Russian gold has a higher copper content than Western gold.”

“You saw all that from up there?” Stottlemeyer asked.

“I had these.” Monk held up his binoculars.

Stottlemeyer shook his head. “I’m standing right over the body and I couldn’t see half that stuff.”

“It’s okay, sir,” Disher said. “I didn’t even see three-quarters of it.”

Stottlemeyer gave him a look. “I feel so much better now.”

Disher smiled. “I’m glad I could be there for you.”

One of the things that amazed me about Monk was that he knew all about things like Soviet dental fillings or the copper content of gold from different regions, but if someone had a gun to his head he wouldn’t be able to name one of the judges on
American Idol
or tell you what a Big Mac was. I often wondered how he decided what obscure knowledge was worth knowing and what wasn’t. After all, which was he more likely to come across, a Big Mac carton or the Georgian flag?

Monk rolled his shoulders and tilted his head like he was working a kink out in his neck. But I knew that wasn’t it. What was irritating him was a detail, some fact that didn’t fit where it was supposed to. Stottlemeyer noticed it, too.

“What’s bugging you, Monk?”

“She’s a brunette in her twenties,” Monk said. “And almost six feet tall.”

“That’s obvious,” Stottlemeyer said. “Even to me.”

“She’s buff,” Monk said.

“She’s in good shape; that’s true.”

“The first victim was a blonde in her early thirties and kind of flabby,” Monk said. “The second victim was a short Asian young woman in her late teens.”

“They were all female joggers who were strangled and had their left running shoe taken,” Stottlemeyer said. “What’s your point?”

“I think we should call the killer the Foot Maniac,” Disher said. We all looked at him. “Since he takes their left shoe.”

“No,” Stottlemeyer said.

“How about the Foot Strangler?”

“You can’t strangle a foot,” I said.

“The Foot Phantom,” Disher said.

“No,” Stottlemeyer said firmly.

“We need to call him something, Captain.”

“How about ‘the perp’?” I said.

“How about the Foot Fiend?”

“How about you put a sock in it,” Stottlemeyer said, and glanced up at Monk. “What are you getting at, Monk?”

“Why these women?”

Stottlemeyer shrugged. “They were the women who happened to be jogging by when nobody else was around. They were in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

Monk shook his head. “I don’t think so. He picked these three women for a specific reason. They have something in common that we’re missing.”

“I checked the first two victims out thoroughly,” Disher said. “One was married; the other was single. They didn’t know each other. They didn’t live in the same part of the city. They didn’t work in the same professions. And they were wearing different brands of running shoes.”

“There must be a pattern,” Monk insisted.

“Not everything in life has a pattern,” Stottlemeyer said. “Sometimes life is messy.”

“It shouldn’t be,” Monk said.

“It is,” Stottlemeyer said.

“We should fix that,” Monk said. “Isn’t that our job?”

“I suppose you could say that,” Stottlemeyer said.

It certainly was for Monk. He craved order, and there was nothing more disorderly than a murder. My theory is that for him, solving the crime was simply a matter of organizing the facts until they fit into the places where they belonged. In other words, he wasn’t really investigating homicides; he was cleaning up a mess. And he probably wouldn’t stop until he cleaned up the mess at the center of his own seemingly orderly life—the unsolved murder of his wife, Trudy.

Stottlemeyer turned to Disher. “Take some officers and canvass the neighborhood. See if anybody knows a young Russian woman. You might also check with immigration and missing persons for a woman matching her description.”

“Will do,” Disher said.

“The killer will probably have red gravel and dog . . .” Monk couldn’t bring himself to say the word.

“Poop,” I said.

“. . . on his shoes,” Monk continued. “You should put out an APB.”

“And say what?” Disher said. “ ‘Be on the lookout for a man with dog poop on his shoes’?”

Monk nodded. “I see your point.”

“You do?” Stottlemeyer said.

“I was being ridiculous,” Monk said.

“I never thought I’d hear you say that,” Stottlemeyer said. “That’s showing real progress, Monk.”

“We should alert Homeland Security,” Monk said.

Stottlemeyer sighed. Some things never changed.

“I’ll add that to my to-do list.” Disher started to go.

“One more thing, Randy,” Stottlemeyer said. “Check the credit card statements of all the victims for recent purchases at shoe stores or department stores. Maybe they all shopped at the same place.”

“That’s quite a list,” Disher said. “I could use a hand.”

“Get all the help you need.”

“What will you be doing?” Disher asked pointedly.

“Captain stuff,” Stottlemeyer said, his eyes daring Disher to push it beyond that.

“Right,” Disher said, and hurried off.

Monk motioned over the officer who’d loaned him the binoculars. His name was Milner and, if not for the wedding ring he was wearing, I might have been interested in his first name, too.

“Thank you for loaning me these.” Monk returned the binoculars to Officer Milner, then waved his hand at me for a disinfectant wipe. I dug into my purse for one and gave it to him.

“My pleasure, sir,” Officer Milner said. For a moment, I thought he might salute. His uniform was perfectly starched, and he moved with an almost military bearing. Perhaps that was what attracted me to him. “It’s amazing how you noticed all those little details.”

“Those are good binoculars,” Monk said, wiping his hands.

“You’re just being modest,” Officer Milner said.

“Yes,” Monk said. “I am.”

We started back toward my Jeep. Stottlemeyer met us there.

“Listen, I need to give you a heads-up on something,” he said quietly, obviously not wanting to draw much attention.

“Oh, sweet Mother of God,” Monk gasped, backing away.

“What?” Stottlemeyer said.

Monk hunched over and covered his face with his hands. I leaned close to him and whispered in his ear, “What’s wrong, Mr. Monk?”

“I don’t know how to tell him,” Monk said.

“Tell him what?”

“He stepped in it,” Monk said.

“In what?”

“It,” Monk said gravely.

I looked back at Stottlemeyer, then down at his shoes. The captain followed my gaze. He’d stepped in dog crap.

“Oh, hell.” He started to scrape the sole of his right shoe against the edge of the curb.

“No!” Monk shrieked. “Are you insane? There are innocent bystanders all around you.”

Stottlemeyer started to put his foot back on the ground and Monk shrieked again. So the captain stood on one foot, his other leg bent at the knee, the dirty foot held off the ground behind him.

Monk addressed the police officers and crime scene techs. “Everybody stand back. Way back. For your own good. We don’t want any collateral damage.”

“Okay, Monk,” the captain said in a low voice. “What would you like me to do?”

Stottlemeyer was adept at handling Monk, more so than me sometimes, and was eager to quickly defuse the situation.

“Don’t move,” Monk said, and rushed over to the crime scene van.

“I’m not,” Stottlemeyer said. “So much for trying to be discreet.”

“What’s up?” I asked.

“Monk has to hear this,” Stottlemeyer said.

Monk came back with several large evidence bags and handed them to me.

“What am I supposed to do with these?” I asked.

Monk looked Stottlemeyer in the eye. “We’re going to get through this together. I won’t abandon you, Captain.”