Mr. Monk and the Blue Flu (21 page)

The captain quickly glanced up at us, acknowledged our presence with a barely perceptible nod, then returned his attention to the victim.

Monk crouched across from Stottlemeyer, the corpse on the concrete floor between them. There was a bullet hole in the center of Milner’s forehead and a look of wide-eyed surprise frozen on his face.

I turned away. It was hard enough for me to see the dead bodies of strangers. But seeing the corpse of someone I knew, even someone who was barely an acquaintance, was too much.

But I looked back, and the longer I stared at the corpse, the less it resembled Officer Milner. This wasn’t the Officer Milner I spoke to yesterday; it was a wax likeness with glass eyes and a hole in his head.

And, for a moment, I felt what must be the cold, professional detachment that Monk, Stottlemeyer, and Disher have toward death.

I didn’t know whether to be proud of it or feel sorry for myself.

“Captain?” Monk said. “What are you doing here?”

“My job,” he said.

“What about your flu?”

“An officer is down, Monk,” he said. “That trumps everything.”

“How did you find out about this?” Monk asked.

“I’ve sort of been monitoring the police band while I’ve been sick,” Stottlemeyer said a bit sheepishly, like he expected to get some flak about it. He didn’t get any from us.

“I know him.” Monk tipped his head toward the body.

“Officer Kent Milner. Potrero Hill was his beat,” Stottlemeyer said. “He was at the park, securing the scene. He loaned you some binoculars.”

“We saw him again yesterday in the marina at the scene of another homicide,” I said. “He told us he was working all over town and trying to accumulate some overtime.”

“He was married with two kids,” Disher said, not looking up from his notes. “Ages four and six.”

Monk pointed to Milner’s gun belt. “He didn’t draw his gun. The holster isn’t even unsnapped. He wasn’t expecting trouble.”

“These docks are patrolled by private security,” Stottlemeyer said. “There was no reason for him to be down here, unless he saw something suspicious or was rousting some vagrants. But he would have called that in to dispatch. Since he didn’t call in or tell anybody he was going to be here, I’m thinking he was meeting an informant. Either his snitch shot him or he was set up.”

“I bet the shooter tossed the gun into the bay afterward,” Disher said, still conspicuously not looking at either Monk or me. “It might be worth having some divers spend a few hours checking out the water off these docks.”

“Good idea,” Stottlemeyer said, nodding his approval. “Get the dive crew out here.”

“Milner was a young patrol officer.” Monk stood and wandered over to the police car. “Wouldn’t it be unusual for him to be meeting with informants?”

Stottlemeyer shrugged. “Maybe he was a better cop than anybody thought. Maybe he got a line on something big and stupidly tried to pursue it himself instead of alerting his commanding officer.”

“Maybe he saw whatever it was as his ticket to a gold shield,” Disher said.

“That’s a lot of maybes.” Monk opened the driver’s-side door of the police car. There were travel brochures and car magazines on the passenger seat.

“Chasing the maybes. That’s what detective work is all about, for most of us anyway,” Stottlemeyer said. “Whatever Milner’s story is, we’ll find out. We’re working this twenty-four/seven until the shooter is either behind bars or on a slab in the morgue.”

I was getting annoyed by Disher’s refusing to look at us, so I stepped in front of him and leaned my head over his notebook. “Is something bothering you, Randy?”

“You’re consorting with the enemy,” Disher said.

“I haven’t consorted with anyone in so long, I may need lessons before I can do it again.”

“Monk sold us out for filthy lucre,” Disher said.

“First off, Mr. Monk wouldn’t touch anything filthy,” I said. “Second, what
lucre
?”

“The badge.” Disher snorted. “Isn’t that the ultimate irony? He betrayed it to get it.”

Consorting? Lucre? Irony? Hmmm.

I narrowed my eyes at Disher. “Have you been taking an English class of some kind?”

Disher blinked hard, stunned. “How did you know?”

My God, I made a deduction. And was Monk there to witness it? No. He was busy peering into Milner’s cruiser. Stottlemeyer milled around behind him, pretending he wasn’t looking over Monk’s shoulder.

“Just a hunch,” I said.

I sounded like a thousand TV cops. Nobody but TV crime solvers ever say, “Just a hunch,” so I savored the opportunity to use it in proper sleuthing context.

“Since I had some time on my hands, I thought I’d finally get started on that novel I’ve got in me,” Disher said. “So I signed up for a university extension class taught by Ian Ludlow, the Tolstoy of the mean streets.”

“I didn’t know you had a novel in you,” I said.

“I have all kinds of stuff in me,” Disher said. “I’m filled with complexity.”

Monk sat down in Milner’s cruiser, picked up a copy of
Motor Trend
magazine off the passenger seat, and began flipping through it.

Stottlemeyer dropped any pretense of doing anything but waiting to see what Monk came up with.

Disher watched Stottlemeyer for direction and, getting none, simply followed his lead. He waited, too.

“For the record, ‘Golden Gate Strangler’ was a lousy name for Charlie Herrin,” Disher said to me. “ ‘The Foot Fiend’ was much better and more alliterative.”

“Did the Tolstoy of the mean streets tell you that?” I asked.

“He’s very attuned to the savage heart of the urban wilderness,” Disher said. “Like me.”

“This is odd,” Monk said. “Officer Milner marked down the corner on an article about German luxury cars.”

“I know you find marking down corners offensive,” Stottlemeyer said, “but lots of people do that when they want to save their spot or read an article later.”

“But he couldn’t afford to buy a BMW.” Monk unfolded the corner and smoothed the page out. “He was also reading Hawaii travel brochures and a magazine of new home listings in Marin County.”

“So he liked to dream,” Stottlemeyer said. “I’ve got a magazine on Caribbean cruises in my bathroom. I like to picture myself on one of those ships, sipping a tropical drink. I’ve been doing that a lot lately.”

“Officer Milner was behaving like a man with money to spend,” Monk said. “I find that unusual for someone at the lowest pay grade in the department and who was risking the scorn of his fellow officers by working overtime during a labor dispute.”

“Are you saying that you think he was on the take?” Stottlemeyer said.

“I’m saying something just doesn’t fit,” Monk said.

I rolled my shoulders, preceding Monk’s rolling of his shoulders by a second. I’m not sure whether I did it because my shoulders were stiff or because I was unconsciously mimicking what I knew he was about to do.

I caught myself before I tipped my head from side to side in tandem with Monk, too, but not before Stottlemeyer noticed what I was doing.

“We’ll check out his bank account,” Stottlemeyer said. “But I don’t think we’re going to find anything unusual.”

“Okay.” Monk got out of the car and motioned to me for a wipe. I gave him one, and he cleaned his hands. “I guess I’ll go home now. Give me a call if you need anything.”

“You can’t go home,” Stottlemeyer said. “Your shift isn’t over.”

“But you’re back,” Monk said.

“You’re still a captain,” Stottlemeyer said.

“I
am
?”

“Until the mayor says otherwise,” Stottlemeyer said. “You’ve got four open homicide cases to close, and a squad of detectives waiting for your instructions. Since I was the first on the scene here, I’d like to take this one while you stick with the others.”

“That’s up to you, Captain,” Monk said. “You’re the boss.”

“You’re a captain, too, Monk. We have equal rank. You don’t work for me. I’m asking you this as a colleague.”

“That is so wrong,” Disher muttered.

“No, Randy, it’s not,” Stottlemeyer said pointedly. “It’s the way it is. So, Monk, what’ll it be?”

“Whatever you want, Captain.”

“Thanks, Captain,” Stottlemeyer said.

“My pleasure, Captain.”

“Can we please stop calling each other captain now?”

“Sure,” Monk said. “Captain.”

The astrological chart from Allegra Doucet’s computer was tacked to the board in the squad room along with all the other information on the four murders.

Cindy Chow and Sparrow were talking to each other in front of the board while Porter, Wyatt, Jasper, and Arnie sat around, waiting for something to happen. I think that something was us.

Everybody turned our way as we walked in. Wyatt got up.

“Word is that a cop was killed,” Wyatt said. “Put me on the street and I’ll hunt down the bastard who did it.”

“We aren’t handling the investigation,” Monk said.

“It’s a homicide,” Wyatt said. “You’re the captain. Who else is gonna handle it? Parking enforcement?”

“Captain Stottlemeyer is back on duty,” Monk said.

“Of course he is, only hours after we exposed the alien conspiracy,” Chow said. “Coincidence? I think not. The cover-up is already beginning. Our ‘accidental’ and ‘natural’ deaths will follow shortly. There will be no trace left of us or our work here.”

“It was fun while it lasted,” Wyatt said. “Where do we turn in our badges?”

“You don’t,” Monk said. “Captain Stottlemeyer is handling the Milner homicide, and we’re continuing with these.”

“We are?” Chow said incredulously.

“We are,” Monk said.

“You’re very clever,” Chow said to the nearest computer monitor. “Plots within plots. Machinations within machinations. Boxes within boxes. I wonder what your endgame is?”

“Who is she talking to?” Porter asked Jasper.

“Them,” Jasper said.

“Oh.” Porter looked at his computer and waved at the screen. “Hey, how’s it going?”

Monk stepped up to the board and squinted at the astrological chart. I don’t know what made him think that squinting would suddenly give him the ability to make sense of what was in front of him, but I gave it a try, too. It didn’t make the mishmash any clearer to me.

The chart looked like a wheel. There was a narrow band around the outer ring filled with numbers, which were written as degrees, and dozens of symbols, none of which I recognized. It could have been Sanskrit, for all I knew. The inner ring was divided like a pizza into twelve slices, each of which was also filled with numbers and symbols. In the center of it all was another circle filled with multicolored intersecting lines that gave me a frightening flashback to high school geometry and Mr. Ross, the math teacher who continues to have a starring role in many of my nightmares.

“What were you able to learn about the witness from his astrological chart?” Monk asked Chow.

“Everything important about him except his name, address, and phone number,” Sparrow said. “Mercury is in Aquarius, and Venus is in Pisces, so you’re looking for someone who is charming and creative, but also probably secretive, greedy, and really full of himself. Uranus is in Leo, so this is a guy who likes his freedom, bucks authority, and has very litle self-discipline. I’d be worried about this Neptune in Scorpio; it means he’s capable of extreme violence.”

Monk turned to her, surprised. “You know about astrology, too?”

“My name is Sparrow,” she said. “What do you think?”

Monk stared at her blankly. He had no idea what she meant.

“What kind of parent names their kid Sparrow?” she said.

He still didn’t get it. She sighed, imbuing it with so much hopeless frustration, it was a wonder she could breathe at all.

“My parents are very New Age and consider themselves plugged into the cycles of nature,” she said. “And those cycles are all tied to the movement of the Earth around the sun, the most profound cycle of all.”

One of Sparrow’s parents was Frank Porter’s child. I had a hard time imagining one of his kids being that liberal and earthy. It must have been an act of rebellion against Frank that his kid never outgrew.

One of these days Julie was going to start acting out against me, just like I did against my parents. I couldn’t help wondering what form her rebellion would take. I figured I still had a couple of years left to prepare myself for it.

“So how does this chart help us locate the killer’s next victim?” Monk asked.

“It’s a map,” Sparrow said. “If you know how to read it.”

“The longitude and latitude on the chart indicates that Allegra’s unknown client was born in San Francisco,” Chow said. “These things here, around the outside of the chart, are ‘transits,’ which represent the daily motion of the planets. The transits are calculated based on where the subject lives now.”

“San Francisco,” Monk said.

I could see that glimmer in his eye. Chow hadn’t even finished her explanation, but I knew that the clues were all starting to fall into place in his mind.

“That’s right,” Chow said. “The transits indicate he lives in San Francisco. The solar return chart is pinned on his
next
birthday, which has the same transits, so that implies that he’s planning on sticking around here until then. Or at least, he was until he saw Allegra Doucet stabbed to death.”

Now it made sense, even to someone like me with no detective skills whatsoever.

“So that’s how the killer narrowed the field of possible witnesses,” I said. “He knows whoever was in Allegra Doucet’s bathroom the night of the murder was born in San Francisco on February twentieth, 1962, and is still living in the city. But how could he get a list of people who fit that description?”