“You speak Chinese?” Stottlemeyer asked.
“No,” Disher said. “That’s why it’s rusty. From lack of use.”
“There were other witnesses?” I asked.
“A few people in the parking lot saw it and so did some others from the windows of their hotel rooms,” Disher said. “We would have had even more witnesses if the gunshot hadn’t been muffled by an airplane coming in for a landing.”
“If you’ve got all those witnesses and the shooting on tape,” I said, “what do you need Mr. Monk for?”
“We don’t know who did it or why,” Stottlemeyer said. “Or where to find him.”
“Isn’t that true at the outset of most murder investigations? I thought you only brought Mr. Monk in for the really tough ones.”
“This one is a little more complicated than it seems, Natalie,” Stottlemeyer said.
“Much more.” Monk scowled at the corpse. “This man had a lot of enemies who wanted him dead. It could take us the rest of our lives to find them all.”
“Why do you say that?” Stottlemeyer asked.
“Because he was a nasty, foul, disgusting human being,” Monk said. “And nasty, foul, disgusting human beings make enemies.”
“You don’t know anything about him yet.”
“He chewed gum,” Monk said, as if that said it all.
“Lots of people chew gum, Monk. That doesn’t make them bad people.”
“This man stuck a glob of cud soaked in his putrid bodily fluids under the seat of a taxi. If he hadn’t been killed here today, this taxi would have driven off, picked up another fare, and some innocent, unsuspecting, clean-living person would have sat on that seat. God only knows what might have happened then.”
“I’ll grant you that he wasn’t very considerate. But that’s not what makes this case a challenge.”
Monk glared at the corpse. “I hope you burn in hell.”
He said some other things, perhaps even profane things, but they were drowned out by a plane passing overhead. It was so low that I instinctively ducked to avoid being decapitated by the landing gear or crushed by the collapse of the building. Once the plane passed, I spoke up.
“It’s not like the guy drowned in midair or was attacked by an alligator or was found in a room locked from the inside. I don’t see what’s so complicated about this.”
“That’s funny,” Stottlemeyer said, “because five minutes ago you didn’t think you were qualified to offer an opinion.”
I shrugged. “You have no one to blame but yourself.”
“You’ll understand the complexity of the situation after you’ve seen the surveillance tape,” Stottlemeyer said. “I’ve got it queued up and waiting in the manager’s office.”
The captain motioned to the guys from the morgue to take away the body, then led Monk, Disher, and me across the parking lot to the lobby.
“By the way, Monk, I got the medical examiner’s report on Lorber this morning,” Stottlemeyer said. “You were right. He was dead for at least ten minutes before he was shot. It’s not my problem or yours anymore.”
“It’s a case for the Special Desecration Unit,” Disher said. “Or SDU, as it’s known in law enforcement circles.”
“What ‘law enforcement circles’?” Stottlemeyer asked.
“This one. You and me,” Disher said, making a circle with his finger. “And Monk and Natalie.”
“I’m not in law enforcement,” I said.
“But you are in the circle,” Disher said, twirling his finger again. “So you know. Everyone in the circle knows.”
“The SDU has another case,” Monk said.
“We do?” Disher said excitedly.
“The desecration of that taxi.” Monk pointed at the car and then at the body bag being wheeled away on a gurney. “By that man.”
“He’s dead,” Disher said. “There’s not much more we can do to punish him.”
“Justice must be served, Lieutenant,” Monk said. “He needs to be held accountable, even if it’s in name only.”
“What is his name, by the way?” I asked.
“Conrad Stipe,” Stottlemeyer replied.
The name sounded familiar to me. “Why do I know that name?”
“You’ll see,” Stottlemeyer said and opened the door to the lobby.
He took us into a cramped, windowless room behind the front desk, where there was a bank of eight VCRs and several monitors.
“Detectives from Vice and Narcotics have raided this place a few times over the years,” Disher said. “So the management put cameras in plain sight everywhere to try to discourage solicitation and drug dealing.”
What a charming place to stay.
Monk rolled his shoulders. “So why did the killer shoot him here? Why not somewhere else, where he wouldn’t be on camera?”
“Because he wanted to be seen,” Stottlemeyer said.
Disher hit PLAY on the VCR. The display on the monitor was separated into quarters, each one showing a different angle on the loading dock as the taxi drove up.
Stipe got out of the car. A man stepped out from behind the Dumpster, shot him once in the forehead, and then ran into the convention center.
It was sudden, violent, and shocking, and it happened just the way I’d said it did.
Well, almost.
The killer didn’t look anything like I’d imagined. I’d pictured a tattooed gang member. But the actual shooter was wearing a bright orange shirt with a silver starburst insignia on the chest, black pants, and black boots.
The killer also had pointy ears, vertebrae visible under his forehead, and an elephant’s trunk in the center of his face that dangled down to his chin.
I recognized him immediately.
“Oh my God,” I said. “It’s Mr. Snork.”
7
Mr. Monk and the Fan
Monk studied the freeze-frame image of the elephant-nosed killer. “You know that freak?”
“Of course I do,” I said.
“Is he an old boyfriend?”
“No,” I said. “Don’t you recognize him?”
“I don’t associate with freaks,” Monk said.
“That’s Mr. Snork, security chief of the starship Discovery,” I said. “Well, not him exactly, but someone dressed up to look like him.”
And that’s when I
