Mr. Monk and the Blue Flu by Lee Goldberg Read Free Book Online Page A

should be white with thirty-four blue lines spaced an eighth of an inch apart. I’ll also need four paper clips, two square erasers, a desk lamp like the ones outside, a telephone, and ten unsharpened number two pencils.”
    Officer Curtis left. Monk looked up at me. I looked back at him. There was a very uncomfortable silence.
    “What do I do now?” he said meekly.
    “You’re the cop, not me.”
    “Give me a hint,” he said.
    I sighed. “I suppose you could ask for the file on the Golden Gate Strangler case, go over the crime lab reports, and check to see if Lieutenant Disher discovered whether the victims all bought shoes from the same store.”
    “Good idea,” Monk said. “You should get right on that.”
    “I’m not a cop,” I reminded him.
    “I can deputize you.”
    “No, you can’t.”
    “Yes, I can.”
    “This isn’t the Old West and you aren’t the town sheriff rounding up a posse.”
    “Perhaps you’ve forgotten who you’re dealing with,” Monk said. “I’m a captain in the homicide division of the San Francisco Police Department.”
    “Then start acting like it,” I said and walked out, nearly colliding with Frank Porter in the hall.
    The retired detective hobbled into the squad room, with a young woman following two steps behind him, dragging her feet as if she were carrying a two-hundred-pound pack on her bony shoulders.
    Porter wore an oversize cardigan sweater, a checkered shirt, and corduroy pants with crumbs caught in the ridges. His head reminded me of a vacant lot, dry and empty, with weedy patches of rangy hair. Drool spilled over the edge of his thin, chapped lips like water over an earthen dam.
    “Frank Porter, reporting for duty.” He offered me his age-spotted hand.
    “I’m Natalie Teeger, Captain Monk’s assistant.” I shook his hand lightly, feeling all twenty-seven brittle bones under his thin skin like twigs wrapped in tissue. “I’m not a police officer.”
    “Technically, neither am I. This is my granddaughter Sparrow,” Porter said. “I guess you could say she’s my assistant. She looks out for me.”
    Sparrow shrugged. “Beats slinging burgers at McDonald’s.”
    “I hear you,” I said.
    Sparrow was barely out of her teens, wore too much eyeliner, had a dozen studs lining each of her ears, and was working really hard to radiate boredom and discontent. I knew the look. I’d perfected it when I was her age.
    I excused myself and hunted Monk down. He wasn’t in the interrogation room anymore. I found him in the evidence room, sitting at a table, looking at three right-foot running shoes that must have been recovered from the dead women. Each shoe was in a plastic evidence bag, and they were laid out in front of him in a vertical row.
    “I can’t live with this,” Monk said.
    It was true that three innocent women had been killed, but this wasn’t the first time Monk had dealt with murder. I didn’t understand why these deaths were affecting him so strongly.
    “What happened to those women is a terrible thing,” I agreed. “But is this really any different from the other murder cases you’ve solved?”
    “I’ve never seen such depravity. This is a crime against nature,” he said. “Wasn’t it enough to take their lives? Did he have to take one of their shoes, too? He’s upset the entire balance of the universe.”
    “By taking three shoes?”
    “Shoes come in sets of two; that’s the natural order,” Monk said. “Until those shoes are recovered and this madman is caught, life as we know it is over.”
    “So you’re saying that not only do you have to catch a killer—you have to restore the balance of the entire universe.”
    “It’s my awesome responsibility now.”
    “At least you’re not putting too much pressure on yourself,” I said. “One of your detectives is here.”
    Monk rose from the table and pointed at the shoes. “ That is going to haunt my every waking moment.”
    “I believe it,” I said.
    “And my unawake