“Like measuring noodles,” I said.
“It’s so sad,” he said.
Yes, it was, for both of them.
What kind of mother makes her kids confirm that all the noodles on their plates are the same length? Mrs. Monk must have been crazy. But I know that they loved her anyway.
Thinking about what childhood must have been like for Monk and Ambrose made me want to cry, and to take back every bad thing I ever said about my own parents. They’d never asked me to measure my noodles.
My cell phone rang. I glanced at the caller ID and knew without answering the phone that some unfortunate person in San Francisco wasn’t going to be celebrating any more birthdays.
6
Mr. Monk and the Final Frontier
The San Francisco Airporter Motor Inn was a decaying example of early-1960s architecture.
The name of the hotel was written on peeling plywood script across a lava rock facade. The entire front of the building was slightly angled to evoke a tail fin and a sense of motion. Instead, it looked like the place was about to tip over—if it wasn’t flattened first by one of the incoming planes that were flying in so low their landing gear nearly scraped the roof.
The hotel was not only in the airport’s flight path but it was also right off the 101 Freeway, and I was pretty sure that the only person enjoying a quiet stay was the dead guy that we’d come to see.
So I couldn’t figure out why the parking lot was full of cars and the NO VACANCY sign was lit up in the lobby window. I’d rather sleep in my car than stay in a place like this.
There was a taxi parked close to the loading dock at the rear of the hotel’s “convention center,” a converted factory warehouse attached to the main building by a long breezeway. The right rear passenger door of the car was open, and just beside it was the body.
Crime scene techs were taking pictures of everything and scouring the immediate area for forensic evidence. Two bored guys from the morgue stood beside a gurney with an empty body bag, waiting for the okay to take the corpse away.
Disher was interviewing the taxi driver, an Asian man who talked rapidly in Chinese and gestured even faster. The lieutenant had his pen in hand, ready to write something down in his notebook the instant he understood any of what the taxi driver was saying.
Stottlemeyer stood by the body, his hands in his pockets, and chewed on a toothpick, watching us as we approached.
“Thanks for coming down.”
At least I think that’s what he said. The words were drowned out by the sound of a landing airplane.
I saw some movement out of the corner of my eye. The taxi driver was pantomiming a man popping up and shooting a gun. It was very vivid. The taxi driver would have been great to have as a partner in a game of charades. At least now Disher had something to put in his notebook.
Monk circled the body, examining it from various angles. I did too, for lack of something better to do. After a moment or two, I looked up and saw Stottlemeyer studying me. He waited to speak until the plane passed over us.
“So what do you think happened here?”
I felt a shiver of anxiety. It was seventh-grade French class all over again. I used to sit in the back of the room and pray that the teacher, Gino Barsuglia, wouldn’t call on me.
“I’m really not qualified to offer an opinion,” I said.
“I wouldn’t say that. You’re sharp, you’ve been to a lot of crime scenes, and you’ve been hanging around cops for a while now. I bet you know more about this job than you think you do.”
Maybe he was right. Judging by the taxi driver’s dramatization of the shooting, the location of the taxi, and the position of the body, it seemed obvious to me what had happened, so I gave it a try.
“Okay. It looks to me like the taxi pulled up and the minute the victim got out of the car, someone jumped out from behind the Dumpster there and shot him.”
I walked over to where I thought the shooter had stood and I turned to look at the scene from his perspective.
I was facing the car head-on.
“If the killer was standing here,” I said, “the taxi driver must have had a real good look at him.”
I saw a security camera mounted over the loading bay, another one above the door to the convention center, and one more on a tall light in the parking lot.
“And if those cameras were working, you should have no problem getting a good look at him yourself, considering that the shooting happened in broad daylight and the killer was standing out here in the open.”
Stottlemeyer nodded. “Not bad.”
“You gave me an easy one. This wasn’t exactly the work of a criminal mastermind,” I said. “It’s just a straightforward shooting.”
“It certainly seems that way,” Stottlemeyer said and turned to Monk, who was leaning inside the backseat of the taxi. “Unless there’s anything else you’d like to add.”
“There’s fresh gum under the seat.” Monk stood up straight and pointed accusingly at the corpse. “And I’m certain that he was responsible.”
“That’s good to know,” Stottlemeyer said. “That’ll be one less question keeping me up at night.”
Disher joined us, shoving his notebook into his inside jacket pocket. “The taxi driver picked Stipe up at the Belmont Hotel in Union Square and brought him straight here. He confirms what we know and what the other witnesses told us. Well, at least I think he does. My Chinese is a little rusty.”
