* * *
—
Virgil asked if she knew anything else he ought to know about. She didn’t. Then, unexpectedly, she added, “You know, I didn’t hate Dad. Toward the end, I even started to like him a little bit. But he was so hard-assed, and he never let up.” She seemed about to tear up.
Virgil nodded, and told her he might be back. “I can’t ever tell in advance what might be relevant, when I talk to people.”
“Anytime . . . But call ahead. I’ll want to get my story straight,” Quill said, back to the sarcasm.
Brett said, “Hey. Tell him about that weird guy we met. On the sidewalk.”
Quill frowned, and said, “Oh, yeah.”
“What weird guy?” Virgil asked.
They told him about the neatly dressed man who they’d encountered on the street who’d asked questions about the investigation. They had no information about him other than a description, which Virgil took down in his notebook. “I thought afterward that he might be a cop, but he said he was a student. He was too old to be a student, though,” Quill said.
“He didn’t give you a name? Nothing at all?”
“No. We were standing there eating ice cream, and he started talking to us. Then he got in his car and drove off.”
Brett said, “He knows that Green person, the professor. He said he was in Anthropology and saw her around the building. I guess they’re in the same building.”
“Huh.” Virgil didn’t know exactly what to think about that. “I’ll ask around.”
As he turned to leave, Brett said, “Have a good day, man,” and he sounded sincere.
Jerry slapped his laptop, and said, “What a piece of shit. It’s like somebody’s gotta carry every fuckin’ byte up the fuckin’ stairs.”
Quill asked him, “Want a pussy shot to keep your blood pressure up?”
“Absolutely.”
Quill turned her back on Virgil and pulled the robe wide. Jerry said, “Oh my God . . .”
Virgil left, muttering, “Jesus.”
“Fuck you!” Quill shouted after him.
* * *
—
Virgil had a text from Trane that said she’d be in the office. Virgil drove back across the river and found her eating lunch at her computer. When he walked in, she turned, and said, “Interesting interview with one of the lab technicians. Remember that I mentioned that Quill was involved in a lawsuit?”
“Yeah, I saw that in your notes.”
“I talked to the university’s lawyer, who’ll be defending the case if it goes to court, but I didn’t pay a lot of attention to it—I couldn’t see a connection. Now the lab guy tells me that a year or so ago a quadriplegic named Frank McDonald had nerve rerouting surgery that was planned and directed by Quill. Another surgeon, a microsurgeon, did the actual procedure. Beforehand, McDonald had some small amount of movement in his arm and fingers; afterward, he got more movement, but supposedly he also had a lot of pain. He had a month of physical therapy after the surgery, but when he returned home that care was reduced to three hours a day, in the morning, early afternoon, and evening. The first day the reduced care started, after his wife went out to a supermarket, the guy used his new mobility to swallow a whole tube of painkillers. He was dead when the wife got back.”
“Whoa!”
“Yeah. His wife is suing the hospital and the doctors involved, saying they should have understood that McDonald needed intensive psychotherapy as well as physical therapy to deal with his new condition. Her main target was Quill, who she said talked McDonald into the surgery.”
“You think she might have gone after him?”
“We should talk to her anyway. The lab tech said Quill described her as a greedy nutjob who was living high on her husband’s insurance payments.”
“You know, it sounds like the tape—talking somebody into surgery,” Virgil said.
“It does.”
“It seems unlikely that she’d kill him, though,” Virgil said. “If she has a lawsuit going, it seems like she’s found an outlet for her anger . . . And how would she get up in the library in the middle of the night? And why would she be up there?”
“Don’t go dissing my lead. She was up there to grab the computer to see what Quill was saying about the operation . . .”
Virgil said nothing, but he raised his eyebrows.
“All right, all right,” Trane said. “You get anything from Megan?”
“She thinks it’s possible that Quill used cocaine. And a friend of hers said he had a girlfriend.”
“What!”
She got up, rocking back and forth on her feet, listening, as Virgil told her about the possible girlfriend. When he finished, Trane said, “A redheaded married woman in English riding outfit who has a German shepherd and goes to the Starbucks. Shouldn’t be impossible to find her.”
Virgil: “The question is, why didn’t anyone else know about her? Why didn’t she come forward? She’s gotta know that Quill was murdered. And, given that description, that we’d eventually hear about her.”
“Unless it really is all disconnected—that she and Quill brushed by each other at Starbucks and exchanged a couple of words, the German shepherd being off the wall, coming from somebody entirely different.”
“Or maybe it wasn’t actually Quill that this guy saw walking the dog. He wasn’t positive,” Virgil said. “He was pretty sure.”
“Look, if he had a girlfriend, we’re starting to develop a picture of a guy who actually did talk to people. That cocaine could have belonged to a friend,” Trane said.
“Jack Combes seemed to think that if you even mentioned it to him, he might cross you off his list of friends.”
“Unless he needed something from the cokehead. Like sex.”
Virgil agreed. “Okay.”
* * *
—
She looked at her watch. “The early shift at Starbucks will be getting off. If we ran over there right now . . .”
Trane drove. As she did, Virgil said, “Things are starting to pile up. There’s a computer and a phone and keys out there somewhere. If we could find any of them, that’d be big. Quill was fighting with Green, and Green supposedly has at least a couple of students who are capable of violence. He has an estranged wife who would greatly profit from his death. He might or might not use cocaine, so he might or might not know drug dealers. He might or might not have a girlfriend with a dog who hasn’t made herself known, which is interesting. He was probably killed by somebody he somewhat trusted, since he was turned away from them in the carrel. He was selfish about giving his employees scientific credit. And Quill might have been involved—somehow—in an illegal medical procedure. The killer’s probably male, or a strong female, to be able to hit him with a heavy laptop. Anything else?”