Monk, Season 3

[In John Ricca's apartment]

Capt. Stottlemeyer:
[to an officer] Get a list of tenants. Start knocking on doors. [Randy comes in, awestruck] Lieutenant, I thought you had the perimeter. [Randy starts pointing at various Sonny Chow movie posters in the living room]

Lt. Disher:
Fist of the Cobra, 1975. I've got that same poster in my room. [points at another poster behind the TV] Oh look at this! It's from Ten Fingers of Doom. He broke his arm doing that stunt, but he still finished the scene, though. [squats in front of the TV and finds a VHS tape] Oh my God!

Capt. Stottlemeyer:
What?

Lt. Disher:
He's got a bootleg copy of Enter the Cobra. Can I have it?

Capt. Stottlemeyer:
No you can't have it, Detective! This is a crime scene!

Lt. Disher:
Let's watch it. [starts to put it into the VCR, but stops and reconsiders it] Okay. Sir, I have a theory on this: this guy John Ricca. He's published a book on Sonny Chow, right?

Capt. Stottlemeyer:
Right.

Lt. Disher:
Well it was a real hatchet-job, I mean it made the Cobra look terrible.

Capt. Stottlemeyer:
The Cobra?

Lt. Disher:
Sonny Chow. Maybe we should be looking for a Sonny Chow fan. I mean they all hated the book, and most of them? Pretty nuts. I mean, I've seen the conventions all the time and they were real fanatics. [Monk and Natalie come in and step over the body to join Stottlemeyer and Disher]

Monk:
Captain?

Capt. Stottlemeyer:
Monk, thank you for coming. Miss Teeger. I assume they filled you in downstairs.

Monk:
More or less. How did he enter the building?

Capt. Stottlemeyer:
He broke in through a door on the roof around 4:00 AM, but get this: when he left after the murder, he took the elevator down and ran out.

Monk:
He didn't mind being seen?

Capt. Stottlemeyer:
No.

Natalie:
Was he really killed with nunchucks?

Lt. Disher:
Yeah, check this out. [walks in with an evidence bag containing the death nunchucks] Gold-plated. Look at those insignias. Sonny purchased ones like these in Ninja Fury.

Monk:
The killer left these behind?

Capt. Stottlemeyer:
Well, they either belonged to the killer or to the victim. I mean, he was writing a book on all this crap. [An officer hands a VHS tape to Stottlemeyer]

Police Officer:
Captain, here's the videotape you wanted.

Capt. Stottlemeyer:
Ah, thank you. [plugs it into the VCR] Elevator B, at... 4:07. Let's have a look. [He presses play. A grainy image of a ninja getting on the elevator is seen]

Natalie:
You can't even see his face!

Lt. Disher:
He looks like the Cobra. Sonny wore a uniform just like that in Kung-Fu Assassin.

Capt. Stottlemeyer:
Sonny Chow is dead. [walks back into the other room, where the medical examiner is standing over Ricca's body] Doctor, give me a good note.

Medical Examiner:
He was clutching some hair. He must have grabbed it off the killer's head. That means we have a shot at some DNA.

Monk:
How could he grab any hair? We just saw the tape. The intruder was wearing a hood.

Capt. Stottlemeyer:
Well it could have fallen off during the fight.

Medical Examiner:
Because we hit her. The victim wrote you a note. [Under Ricca's right hand is the word "OW," written in blood. Monk, Stottlemeyer and Disher all squat to examine it]

Lt. Disher:
"OW"? Why would anybody write "OW"? Usually, that's something you'd say. [Monk moves Ricca's arm aside, revealing the whole word: "CHOW"] Oh my God. Chow's alive. Sir, the rumors are true: he's been hiding out overseas just waiting for a time to make a comeback.