Mr. Monk in Outer Space by Goldberg, Lee (best sci fi novels of all time .txt) 📕

“It feels awkward,” Monk said and glanced at me. “Don’t you feel awkward?”

“No more than usual,” I said.

I’d been to a lot of crime scenes since I’d met Monk, but I still felt like I didn’t belong there. I wasn’t a cop, for one thing. I had no purpose except to assist Monk, which usually meant doing what I could to limit distractions and keep him focused on the case at hand.

“I think we’d both feel more comfortable on the fourth floor,” Monk said. “Or the sixth. I’m sure the victim would, too.”

Stottlemeyer grabbed Monk by the arm and led us into the outer office across from the stairwell.

“The victim is Brandon Lorber and he was CEO of Burgerville,” the captain said. “He was working late last night. The killer came in the front door using a key card while the security guard was doing his rounds. Archie didn’t know there’d been an intruder or that anything had happened until he found the body.”

The walls were covered with framed photos of a man I presumed to be Brandon Lorber standing in front of various Burgerville restaurants in dozens of cities, though I wouldn’t have known the shots were taken in different places if the locations hadn’t been engraved on each picture frame.

“The guard didn’t hear the gunshots?” Monk asked.

Stottlemeyer shook his head. “The killer must have used a silencer.”

From the pictures, I could see that Lorber was one of those men whose gray hair made him look distinguished, intelligent, and rich rather than old. He was in his fifties and wore the years well, at least until he got killed.

“What about the video surveillance cameras?” Monk asked. “You must have the killer on tape.”

“We do,” Stottlemeyer said. “But he was wearing an overcoat and a cap pulled down low over the face. He also turned his body in such a way that we couldn’t get a clear view. He knew where every single camera was from the lobby to the fifth floor.”

“We’re dealing with a professional killer who was efficient and well prepared,” Monk said.

“A dispassionate professional who knows how to cover his tracks isn’t going to leave the kind of traces that your garden-variety killer will,” Stottlemeyer said. “He’s probably gotten away with murder many times before. I don’t want him to get away with this one. That’s why I called you, Monk.”

We went past the secretary’s desk into Lorber’s inner office, which reeked of cigar smoke. On the plus side, the odor was so strong it nearly masked the smell that came from Lorber’s dead body in the chair behind the large oak desk.

Monk started to cough, which attracted the attention of Randy Disher, who was standing beside the desk, jotting down notes.

“What took you so long?” Disher asked.

“Look who I am with and use your imagination,” Stottlemeyer said. “The possibilities are endless.”

Disher scrunched up his face as he thought about it. “Was it the broken parking meter?”

“There’s a broken parking meter?” Monk turned to go, but Stottlemeyer grabbed him by the arm and pushed him back into the room.

“Randy was joking,” Stottlemeyer said, looking hard at Disher. “Weren’t you?”

“I was joking,” Disher said.

Monk faked a laugh. It sounded like his cough. “Right. Good one.”

Since Monk had no sense of humor and was self-conscious about it, he wasn’t going to question Disher’s lie. Instead, he began surveying the crime scene, if only to hide his embarrassment at not getting the joke.

“Any new developments while I was gone?” Stottlemeyer asked Disher.

“I’ve got it all figured out except whodunit,” Disher said.

“You do?” Stottlemeyer asked skeptically.

I glanced at Monk, who’d already begun wandering around the room, doing his Zen thing, holding his hands out in front of him like a director framing a shot.

“The body tells the story,” Disher said. “You’ll notice he’s been shot twice in the chest and once in the head.”

“Yeah,” Stottlemeyer said. “I noticed.”

“But did you see that he’s also got a through-and-through gunshot wound to his right hand?” Disher asked.

I peered over the table and saw Lorber’s right arm dangling over the edge of the chair, a bullet hole through the middle of his palm.

“Yep, I saw that, too,” Stottlemeyer said.

Looking at a wound like that used to make me sick. I still felt uncomfortable, but I was slowly becoming more analytical and less emotional in my reactions to the bodies of people who’d met a violent end. I guess it was an inevitable psychological adjustment, considering how many corpses I ended up seeing in a typical month.

I glanced at Monk, who was studying a cigar box that had fallen off the table near Lorber’s feet, spilling its contents on the floor.

There was a big bowl of individually wrapped coffee candies on the desk. Between the cigars and the candy, it seemed to me that Lorber was a guy with an oral fixation. I wondered if he’d been breast-fed as a child.

“It’s the deadly triangle,” Disher said.

“Excuse me?” Stottlemeyer said.

“The two shots to the chest and the coup de grâce to the head,” Disher said. “It’s the deadly triangle a hit man uses to assure that he’s made his kill.”

“So why did he shoot Lorber in the hand?” I asked.

“That wasn’t his target,” Disher said. “Lorber looked up, saw the killer standing in front of him with a gun, and held up his hands in a halting motion, as if to say ‘stop, please don’t kill me.’ The killer shot through his hand to his heart.”

Disher held up his hands in front of him to demonstrate. It made sense to me. Even Stottlemeyer was nodding with approval.

“Good thinking, Randy.” Stottlemeyer looked over at Monk, who was squinting at the top desk drawer, which was open slightly. “What’s your take?”

“There’s