Free Mr. Monk and the Blue Flu by Lee Goldberg Page B

said.
    Monk started to do his thing, walking in a wide circle around us and examining the skid marks on the asphalt. Wyatt watched him warily, as if he might have to draw his gun on him.
    “The car was coming from the north and then sped up as it went through the intersection,” Monk said, reading the skid marks as if they were a transcript of the events. In a way, I guess they were. “You shot out the front right tire and then, as the car passed, the left rear tire. The driver lost control of the car and careened into the front window of that store.”
    Wyatt nodded. “Mighty reckless of him.”
    “Is he the one who ran over the pedestrian?” I asked.
    “No,” Monk replied before Wyatt could answer.
    “That’s a different set of skid marks.” He started to follow those marks back around the corner, where I’d parked the patrol car.
    “I still don’t get what happened,” I said.
    Wyatt looked at me. “I arrived on the scene and was beginning my investigation when I recognized that the driver of a passing vehicle was Trinidad Lopez, the leading suspect in a string of ATM holdups.”
    “So you shot him?” I asked.
    “I shot his car,” Wyatt said. “If I’d shot him, he’d be leaving in a body bag instead of an ambulance.”
    I looked over my shoulder to see a man being lifted into the ambulance.
    “If that’s Lopez, who is that?” I motioned to the tearful, injured man on the bus-stop bench.
    “My anger-management counselor.”
    “You shot him?”
    “It’s just a scratch.” Wyatt shoved his weapon into a shoulder holster as long as my thigh. “You shouldn’t step in front of me when I’m shooting.”
    “That’s a no-brainer,” I said.
    “That’s what he’d be now if I’d been aiming at him,” Wyatt said. “I guess this was his lucky day.”
    “I’ll go tell him to be sure and buy a lottery ticket before he gets home.”
    I thought I saw a hint of a grin at the edges of Wyatt’s grimace. I hoped that didn’t mean he was going to shoot me.
    Monk came back to us. “What can you tell me about the victim?”
    “I don’t call a guy who holds up old ladies at ATMs a victim,” Wyatt said. “I call him target practice.”
    “I think Mr. Monk was referring to the victim of the hit-and-run,” I said, trying to be helpful.
    Wyatt grunted, took a notebook from his back pocket, and referred to the top page.
    “The deceased is John Yamada, forty-four, an architect. He lived in the house on the corner and now resides under that white sheet over there,” Wyatt said. “He was hit by a car while jaywalking across the street to the market. Nobody got a license number, but the vehicle that struck him has been positively identified by witnesses as a Toyota, Ford, Honda, Subaru, Pontiac, Hyundai, Chevy, or Kia sedan.”
    “What do you make of it?” I asked him.
    Wyatt shrugged. “Natural selection.”
    “Excuse me?” I said.
    “The moron should have looked both ways before he crossed the street,” Wyatt said.
    “It wasn’t a hit-and-run,” Monk said. “It was premeditated murder.”
    We both looked at Monk. Well, I did, for sure. I think Wyatt, did, too, but he could have been on the lookout for more felons cruising by whom he could shoot.
    “The skid marks indicate that the driver was double-parked across the street and floored it when Yamada entered the intersection,” Monk said. “The killer was waiting for him.”
    “You got all that just from some skid marks?” Wyatt said skeptically.
    “There’s more.” Monk led us around the corner to our patrol car. “This was where the car was parked, with a clear view of Yamada’s front door. You see this mud?”
    “No, I don’t,” Wyatt said.
    I didn’t either.
    “I’m talking about those big, disgusting globs right in front of your feet.” Monk pointed at the ground.
    Wyatt and I crouched down and peered at the street. There were some tiny crumbs of mud between the two of us.
    “How did he see that?” Wyatt asked