* * *
—
Virgil said good-bye to Booker and headed back north to Edina, where Wesley had his office in a neatly kept brick building that was full of law offices. A secretary emailed Wesley that Virgil was in the office; Wesley, who was apparently no more than twenty feet away through a couple of walls, came out and waved Virgil into his office.
“I can’t imagine why we need this conference,” he said with a friendly smile as they shook hands, “since I’m not going to give you anything.”
Virgil took a chair as Wesley, a thin, pale man with a shock of blond hair, sat behind his desk.
“Here’s the thing. What your client was doing to Mr. Booker was rotten, and I don’t care about it. Or I do a little bit, enough to send Mr. Nash to prison for a while. What I care about is another case I’m working on, the murder of professor Barthelemy Quill at the University of Minnesota.”
Wesley sat back. “Wait a minute. You’re saying that my client is a suspect in that case?”
“That’s a little strong, but we know he made a couple of passes at Quill’s lab and some of Quill’s associates. Other physicians. We also know that he was actually in the Wilson Library, near Quill’s carrel, sometime in the weeks before Quill’s murder there. What we need to do is eliminate Nash as a suspect, if that can be done. If it can’t, then we’ll be considerably more interested in him.”
Wesley thought about that for a moment, then said, “You want an alibi?”
“If he’s got one. We’d look into it,” Virgil said. “Otherwise, we’ll start looking at him for the murder.”
“Give me some details on the Quill case,” Wesley said. “I’ll talk to Boyd and get back to you. I’m not saying we’ll provide an alibi, but I’ll talk to him about whether we might be willing to cooperate at all.”
“Fair enough,” Virgil said. “If you want to make a couple of notes . . . Dr. Quill was killed three Fridays ago, very likely around midnight on Friday . . .”
* * *
—
After leaving Wesley’s office, Virgil was feeling wonky from a lack of sleep and food, so he stopped at McDonald’s for salt, grease, and carbohydrates, and then headed back to the hotel for a nap. He’d been in his room for five minutes when Wesley called back.
“Mr. Nash said that you have all the evidence you need to clear him. That’s all he has to say.”
“Huh. That could be taken in a couple of different ways.”
“I’m sure you’ll think of the relevant one,” Wesley said.
* * *
—
Virgil called Trane. “What’s happening with Nash’s computers?”
“Don’t know. I can check.”
He told her about Wesley’s statement, and said, “I think they’re sending us a signal without admitting to anything. I think they’re telling us that something in the files will indicate that Nash was down at Surface Research that Friday night. We’d been told he’d gone there several times, that he went on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday nights late, when nobody was working.”
“We’re going to provide him with an alibi?”
“I think that’s what they’re signaling,” Virgil said.
“I’ll get with the techs. What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to go take a nap, then pack up my dirty clothes and head home. I’ll be back on Monday.”
“Goddamnit, I feel like we’ve got all kinds of possibilities. But it’s, like, trying to squeeze Jell-O, if you know what I mean.”
“I do. Let’s take a break and think about it.”
* * *
—
They agreed to meet Monday morning in Trane’s office.
Virgil shaved, showered, and dropped on the bed and was asleep in five minutes. He woke up groggy, looked at the clock: almost six. He was thinking about Frankie: he needed to call her. He was fishing around on the night stand for his phone when it rang. He picked it up and looked at the screen: no caller ID.
He answered with “Virgil Flowers . . .”
A woman screamed at him, “Brett’s dead! He’s dead. Right here.”
After a moment of confusion, he thought: Megan Quill. Brett was the sleepy, bare-assed dude. “Easy,” Virgil said. “How do you know he’s dead?”
“Because I’m looking at him,” Quill shouted into her phone. “And he’s dead.”
“You’re looking . . . Did you call the cops?”
“You’re a cop,” she said. “I got your card.”
“Yeah, but . . . Where are you?”
“In Brett’s room.”
“Do you have an address?”
He heard running footsteps, then heard her: “What’s the address? What’s the fuckin’ address here? Hey, you . . .”
There was more shouting in the distance, and then she came back with a St. Paul address not far from the University of St. Thomas.
“Stay where are, don’t touch a thing. And leave the room,” Virgil said. “I’ll call the St. Paul cops, they should be there in five minutes. I’ll be there in ten. Stay right there.”
“It looks like he . . . I think he OD’d. There’s a syringe on the floor. He’s all white-and-gray-looking.”
“What—”
“Heroin. Sometimes he did heroin. He said it made him dreamy.” She started to sob.
“Stay there,” Virgil repeated.
“Jesus Christ, he’s really dead!” she screamed.
Virgil again told her to leave the room, and she did, and he said, “Go someplace and sit down with your back against the wall. You don’t want to faint and hurt yourself. Don’t let anybody go in the room. Sit, and the cops will be there in a couple.”
He clicked off, dialed 911, identified himself, explained the situation, gave the operator the address Megan Quill was calling from. “I’ll be there myself in a few minutes. Tell the responding guys that this could be part of another murder investigation and to be careful with the scene. Tell them to freeze it, nothing more, and call Ryan at St. Paul Homicide.”
When he got off the call to 911, he called Trane. “Megan Quill found her friend dead about two minutes ago,” he said. “She thinks it might be an overdose. St. Paul cops are on the way. I’m going over.”