Mr. Monk and the Blue Flu (20 page)

“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.”

Of course, Monk didn’t tell us why someone killed three people born on the same day, or why other lives might be at stake. That would make life far too easy.

Monk has this incredibly irritating habit of making big, dramatic announcements like that and then keeping all the details to himself until he can find the missing piece that confirms what he already knows.

So why doesn’t he just keep his mouth shut until he’s got that obscure fact or crucial evidence?

I think it’s because he enjoys seeing us all look at him in slack-jawed amazement, and he gets a thrill out of keeping us in suspense.

The only thing he enjoys more than that is the summation, the moment when he can tell us exactly who committed the crime and how it was done. But the thrill he gets from that doesn’t come from showing off and proving how much smarter he is than everybody around him. It’s the satisfaction of knowing with absolute certainty that he’s cleaned up an ugly mess.

At Monk’s insistence, he and I went out to Allegra Doucet’s house. Chow and Jasper followed us in her black Suburban with a dozen antennae on top and windows tinted so dark, she must have relied on radar to drive her car.

Doucet’s place was exactly as we left it, except for the tape across the front door and the official notice designating the place as a sealed crime scene.

We broke the tape and went inside. Monk went directly to Allegra’s desk, carefully avoiding the big bloodstain on the floor, and asked Chow to turn on the computer.

“Can you call up the astrological chart that was on this screen when she died?” Monk said.

“Sure.” Chow sat down in front of the computer and started clicking and typing. Monk wandered off to the rear of the house.

“Aren’t you afraid of being seen by
them
?” I was referring, of course, to the computer monitor and the cameras hidden inside.

“I dismantled the monitor the last time we were here,” she said. “It was clean. The black-ops agents must have removed the cameras before they left.”

“How do you know they haven’t been back since then and reinstalled them?”

Chow froze, and Jasper glared at me. I know he was pissed at me for provoking her paranoia, but I couldn’t resist. Sometimes I enjoy a little mischief.

She shrugged off her hesitation and resumed her typing.

“With what we’ve discovered, we’re dead already,” Chow said. “There’s no place on earth we can hide now.”

Monk returned wearing a flowery apron and yellow dish gloves and carrying a bucket of soapy water. He crouched beside the bloodstain, took a sponge out of the bucket, and began scrubbing.

There was a time when I might have questioned what Monk was doing. I might have pointed out to him that it wasn’t his house or his responsibility to clean up the mess. I might have mentioned that simply scrubbing the stain was insufficient, even if any obvious signs of it were gone, and that eventually someone would hire professional crime scene cleaners to remove all traces of the blood and bodily fluids that had seeped into the floors.

But Monk knew all that, and I’ve learned the futility of arguing with him about cleaning up anything that has spilled anywhere he happens to be.

This was a double treat for him: He got to clean up two messes at once—the stain
and
the murder that caused it. Monk was practically whistling with happiness.

I was surprised, though, that Jasper hadn’t whipped out his PDA to take more notes about Monk’s obsessive-compulsive behavior. I guess Charlie Herrin was occupying Jasper’s professional interest now.

“Here’s the chart,” Chow said.

Monk didn’t bother getting up or even looking at the screen. He continued scrubbing.

“I can’t read an astrology chart,” he said, “but I’m certain it’s for someone born on February twentieth, 1962.”

“It is,” Chow said, astounded. “How did you know?”

I’m glad she asked that instead of me. If I ever print up those T-shirts with the questions on it, I’ll give her one.

“Because whoever it was written for witnessed her murder,” Monk said.

“Isn’t his name on the chart?” I asked.

Chow shook her head. “Doucet plugged in the date and the software spit out the chart. She hadn’t saved it yet when she was killed. I saved it and gave it a file name.”

“Wait a sec,” Jasper said. “How does any of this prove there was a witness?”

“The proof was right in front of us the very first time we walked in here,” Monk said as he worked. “Here’s what happened.”

And as Monk explained it all, I could almost see the scene playing out in front of me, the ghostly images of the people involved moving through the room, all of them faceless except for Doucet herself.

Allegra Doucet was meeting with a client, preparing his astrological chart, when he excused himself and went to the bathroom. A few moments later the killer came in. It was someone Doucet knew and didn’t feel threatened by. She rose to face him and was stabbed. Taken totally by surprise, she had no real opportunity to defend herself.

Her client flushed the toilet, started to open the door to the bathroom, and saw Doucet being murdered. He fled out of the bathroom window, breaking the towel rack in the process.

The killer never got a good look at the witness. All the killer had to go on was the birth date on the astrological chart.

“So now Allegra Doucet’s murderer is killing anybody born on February twentieth, 1962,” Monk said, and stood up to admire his work. The bloodstain was gone. “That also explains the seemingly improvised nature of the killings. The murderer had no time to prepare. He was in a hurry. All he cared about was accomplishing the murders, and didn’t give any thought to covering up his crimes.”

“There must be tens of thousands of people who were born on that date,” Jasper said. “How is the killer narrowing it down? How did he pick Yamada, Truby, and Eggers out of everybody?”

“I don’t know,” Monk said, and carried the bucket of dirty water back into the kitchen.

“It’s obvious,” Chow said. “They are only targeting those people who were part of the alien crossbreeding program, and are tracking them through computer chips implanted in their skulls at birth.”

Monk came back into the room. He was no longer wearing his apron and gloves. I turned to him and asked him the question that was puzzling me about all of this.

“If what you say is true, why hasn’t the witness come forward and reported what he or she saw to the police?”

“Perhaps the witness was among the three people who have already been killed,” Monk said. “But there’s no way the murderer can be entirely sure, so he has to keep on killing.”

“The witness was one of the children of the alien crossbreeding program,” Chow said. “It’s the only explanation that makes sense.”

If that sounded logical to her, I couldn’t imagine what would qualify in her mind as a really crazy idea.

“Let’s suppose, just for the sake of argument, that the killer isn’t tracking his victims using computer chips or lists of alien offspring,” I said.

“You’re wasting your time,” she said.

“Humor me,” I said. “What other way is there of narrowing down the field of possible victims so you can save the next person on the list from being killed?”

Monk sighed heavily. “I wish I knew.”

Chow tapped the screen. “I’ll analyze this chart. It could be the key that will unlock the entire alien conspiracy on Earth.”

Or she could just ask the aliens next time she was abducted.

My cell phone rang. It was Officer Curtis again. Before she spoke, I knew by now what she was going to say. A murder had been committed somewhere in the city, and they needed Monk to come down and look at the corpse.

I was right.

But what she said next was a shock. The victim was a cop. And it was someone Monk and I knew.

To the east of Potrero Hill, the derelict Bethlehem Steel warehouses, foundries, machine shops, and welding sheds rot away on Pier 70, their windows broken, their bricks weathered, and their rusted, corrugated metal siding peeling off like flakes of dry skin.

Officer Kent Milner’s body was sprawled on the concrete floor in front of his black-and-white police cruiser, which was parked inside the cavernous remains of a brick-walled machine shop. The ceilings were high and gabled like a church, light spilling in from a thousand broken windows and skylights. Birds flew among the exposed rafters overhead.

There seemed to be far more uniformed police officers around than were necessary to secure the scene, but their attendance was understandable. One of their own had been killed.

Monk clipped his badge to his jacket as we walked in, just in case anyone was unaware of his new status as a captain in the homicide division. The crowd of officers and SID techs parted to let us through, revealing Captain Stottlemeyer in front of us, crouching over Milner’s body, and Lieutenant Disher standing behind him, taking notes.