The victim they were waiting to bag was producer Kingston Mills, who was sprawled facedown in the parking lot behind the black Lincoln Town Car that presumably had delivered him to the hotel. His aloha shirt didn’t look quite so festive soaked with blood.
There were wounds in his back and his right leg and a trail of blood leading from the open rear door of the limo to the producer’s body.
“This isn’t right,” Monk said.
“Murder never is,” I said. I was glad I hadn’t had breakfast before I left Joe’s place.
There was a crowd of Beyond Earth fans being kept a safe distance away by a couple of uniformed officers, who’d stretched some yellow crime scene tape between several lampposts. It was odd to see people dressed up as four-breasted women, aliens with external internal organs, and elephant-trunked aliens watching us as if we were what was unusual.
Stottlemeyer was leaning into the limo talking to Judson Beck, who was sitting inside wearing a new Confederation uniform, which I noticed had the same insignia but a much more militaristic look than the original.
“You’re going to have to leave the vehicle now, Mr. Beck,” Stottlemeyer said.
Beck shook his head. “No way.”
“I’m sure the killer is long gone,” Stottlemeyer said.
“He could be hiding in the brush, just waiting for me to come out so he can finish the job.”
“There is no brush and you are surrounded by armed police officers,” Stottlemeyer said, opening his jacket to show Beck the gun in his shoulder holster. “I assure you that you are perfectly safe.”
Beck folded his arms across his chest and shook his head again. “No.”
“This limo is a crime scene and we need to collect evidence from it,” Stottlemeyer said.
“The killer was out there, not in here,” Beck said. “This is where I am staying. You can drive me straight to the airport and then do whatever you want with this car.”
Stottlemeyer sighed and walked over to us.
“I guess this experience was a little too authentic for him,” he said. “Hard to believe that guy is an action hero.”
“He only plays one on TV,” I said.
“He must be a hell of an actor,” Stottlemeyer said. “Would you like to guess what happened here this morning?”
“The limo arrived, Kingston Mills got out, and Mr. Snork popped up from behind the Dumpster and shot him,” I said.
“You’re a natural. You should enroll in the police academy immediately. Beck closed the door, locked it, and called 911 on his cell phone,” Stottlemeyer said, then turned to Monk. “This pretty much blows away your hit man theory.”
“I don’t see why,” Monk said.
“Because some guy dressed like Mr. Snork just murdered another producer of the new Beyond Earth.”
“The reimagined Beyond Earth,” I said.
“Whatever,” Stottlemeyer said. “We’ve got this one on tape, too.”
“I’m sure you do,” Monk said. “That was the point.”
“You’ve lost me,” Stottlemeyer said. “As usual.”
“There are two explanations for this killing,” Monk said. “Number one, the hit man learned that we’ve discoveredthe Lorber connection and wanted to lead us astray again. Or, number two, this is a copycat killing by someone who is taking advantage of the publicity surrounding Stipe’s murder.”
“Or number three, you were wrong and there’s no connection between Stipe’s killing and the desecration of Lorber’s body,” Stottlemeyer said. “It’s just a coincidence that Stipe rode in the same taxi as the cabbie who was killed the other night.”
“I suppose you think it’s also a coincidence that the same cabbie picked up a fare near the Burgerville headquarters the same night that Lorber was shot.”
“Sure, why not?” Stottlemeyer said. “Stranger things have happened.”
“Give me some examples,” Monk said.
“I don’t have any off the top of my head,” Stottlemeyer said, and looked over at Disher. “Hey, Randy, tell me something strange that you’ve heard about.”
“I read this morning about a goat born with two noses,” Disher said.
“There you go,” Stottlemeyer said to Monk. “That’s strange.”
“It’s not a coincidence,” Monk said. “It’s a birth defect.”
“Okay, how about this?” Disher said, closing his notebook and joining us. “I read about a woman here in San Francisco who has been searching for the birth mother who gave her up for adoption in Boston twenty years ago. It turns out that they’ve been working together as waitresses in the same restaurant for the last three years.”
“That’s one coincidence,” Monk said. “This case has at least three. There’s no comparison.”
“Wait a minute, Monk,” Stottlemeyer said. “You asked me to give you some examples of strange things and I did and now you’re changing the rules. Why don’t you just admit that you were wrong?”
“I’m not,” Monk said. “We have the gum and the candy wrapper.”
“I’ve got a video that shows the same guy who killed Conrad Stipe shooting another Beyond Earth producer in exactly the same spot. I think my evidence trumps yours.”
“I don’t see how,” Monk said.
“Maybe because you don’t want to see it,” Stottlemeyer said. “You’re blind to anything that goes against the way you think things should be.”
“The way I think things should be happens to be the way things should be,” Monk said. “So it’s okay.”
“I’ve got news for you, Monk. A gob of dried gum and a wrinkled candy wrapper aren’t enough to build a homicide case on, much less two of them, not even for you.”
“The fact is that somebody hired a hit man to murder Brandon Lorber,” Monk said. “But then Lorber died of natural causes before he could be killed.”
“There you go,” Disher said. “That’s a strange thing.”
Monk
