That evening, they caught a movie beamed down from the satellite, then, just before dark, went for a walk.
The night was quiet, except for the random cricket. The sky had cleared out in the afternoon, and the wind had dropped to nothing. Virgil could smell the hayfield, and, overhead, the stars were so close they could almost be touched.
“Is there anywhere better than Minnesota in the summer?” Virgil asked.
“There’s isn’t,” Frankie said. “Unless you’re dead in the library.”
CHAPTER
ELEVEN
Monday.
Virgil got an early start and was halfway to Minneapolis when Trane called. “Where are you?”
“Coming up to Shakopee. Did something happen?”
“Listen to this. I’m going to hold my phone close so you can hear it.”
“. . . Please leave a message. Beep!”
A man’s voice, but pitched high, maybe faked: “Uh, this is a message for Detective Trane about Dr. Quill. I know a woman named China White who told me that she was afraid she killed him. She hit him with a laptop. He was talking on his telephone in his study room but left his computer out on a library table, and there was nobody around, so she picked up the computer and hit him with it. She hit him two times. This wasn’t at night. The newspaper said it was at night, but she said this was in the daytime, right before the library closed. She took his cell phone, shut the door and locked it with his key, then took his computer and threw it in the river along with his car keys. She forgot about the cell until the next day. There should be video of her going out of the library. She did it because she was selling cocaine to Dr. Quill and he said there was something wrong with it and he wasn’t going to pay her. She said there was nothing wrong with it and got angry and hit him. She sometimes goes to the Territorial Lounge. Thank you for listening.”
* * *
—
Trane came back. “That’s it.”
Virgil said, “Damn.”
“Thank you. That’s the kind of insight I was hoping for.”
“Well, give me a goddamn minute to think, will you?” Virgil snapped. “You’ve had it for a while. What do you think?”
“I’ve had it for, like, five minutes,” she snapped back. “I don’t know what to think.”
“If you took all the different factual parts—that the caller knew to call you, that the laptop, phone, keys were missing, that he was hit twice—how much of that is public?”
“One way or another, all of it,” Trane said. “The newspapers and television knew everything except the fact he was hit twice, but that was mentioned in the autopsy report, and his wife and daughter had access to it. Who knows who they might have told? The keys, laptop, and phone—all those details were leaked during the first week of the investigation, but at different times. Would a scammer have seen all those mentions on TV and in the papers? I mean, ’CCO had the missing keys and phone, but the Star Tribune got the computer.”
Virgil said, “Have you talked to your Narcotics guys? You know what China White is?”
“Yeah, but we’re not talking about China White, we’re talking about coke . . . At least, I think that’s what we’re talking about. I’m trying to find somebody who knows about this Territorial Lounge.”
“I got a guy at the BCA who might be able to help,” Virgil said.
* * *
—
Virgil thought about the tip and China White as he continued into the Cities and across the Mississippi to the university. There were, in his experience, a whole bunch of reasons that somebody could wind up violently and illegally dead. There were a whole bunch more that somebody could wind up violently but legally dead, but those didn’t apply in the Quill case.
In his territory, in the southern third of Minnesota, the most common murders were domestic conflicts. Domestics were followed in frequency by alcohol- or drug-inspired mayhem. Psychological upsets counted for a few, and the rest were for a variety of reasons: money, sex, revenge, immaturity—the ten-year-old who shoots his mother for taking away his cell phone—and ideology. Virgil had never seen a purely ideological murder, Republicans being too cautious, Democrats generally being bad shots.
Mostly it was domestics and booze.
Where would the Quill murder land in that matrix? Wasn’t a domestic, and there was no reason to think alcohol was involved. Not ideology. Unlikely money, since he had an elaborate will that would be hard to break; people would get what he left them, no more, no less. All of the people who seemed possible suspects were mature adults except his daughter, who didn’t have any reason to kill him except general disdain, which wasn’t usually enough. So a maturity problem didn’t seem likely.
Could be anger or revenge, if Green were involved, or somebody in Quill’s lab, if the killer was an employee unhappy about not receiving credit for scientific work or a low salary or had other job tensions. Was somebody about to be fired?
Could be sex, if Quill were having an illicit relationship or if he were inviting hookers up to the carrel late at night.
Virgil thought about that for a moment. If the library was empty, and if he didn’t want to take a chance of inviting a prostitute into his home, that would explain the pubic hairs on the yoga mat. The ex-wives did say Quill liked sex, and with the breakup with his third wife, he wasn’t getting any. But a hooker? A hooker wouldn’t likely forget a wallet, and Quill had seven hundred dollars in his and it was still in his back pocket when he was found.
Then, finally, drugs, and the tip on an unknown dealer called China White. Drugs could explain a lot. If the cocaine found in the old desk was Quill’s, and if he were involved with a dealer, it would explain surreptitious meetings late at night. And if he was getting drugs from a prostitute, which was not unheard of, it’d be an even more credible explanation.
* * *
—
It would also mean that the attack on Terry Foster was almost certainly not related to the Quill murder. Maybe Foster was the victim of a random act, a coincidence.
He called Trane, who picked up instantly. “What?”
“I wanted to mention a couple of things that we should keep in mind. If the Terry Foster attack is related to the Quill murder, then we’re dealing with a planner, not an impulse killer. If Foster is related, then the killer is male, not a female named China White. Foster was sure of that.”
“That’s all true, but only if Foster is related to Quill.”
“You were planning to talk to the St. Paul cops yesterday. Did you get that done?”