“I told him I’m going home to White Bear tonight. We were going to go out for a pizza about five o’clock. My mom’s picking me up right after the rush hour, probably about six.”
“You don’t have a car here?”
“No, I don’t need one. I’m trying to save money. Tuition is forty thousand dollars a year, and that comes out of my trust fund. I get a scholarship, which saves some, but after rent and everything else there’s not a lot left. I’d like to transfer to the U . . . Anyway, what should I say to Jerry? Exactly.”
“We’re coming to that,” Trane said. “We wanted to get your okay for doing this. I’ll suggest a few things, we’ll rehearse. If we’re going to do this, we need to get the technical people over here.”
Quill nodded. She seemed to be coming alive. “I’ll do it. Call them.”
* * *
—
They had time to rehearse and set up the recording equipment and talk to Dick, the guy down the hall, who agreed, eventually, to go away between four and seven o’clock, not that he wanted to.
“I’d just watch,” he told Virgil.
“Can’t have outside witnesses,” Virgil said. “All the local police forces would be very, very grateful if you’d go watch a movie or go on a date or something. I’ll give you twenty bucks out of my own pocket to get a pizza.”
Dick took the twenty, but grumbled about it.
* * *
—
At four forty-five, Virgil, Trane, and the tech services guy, whose name was Barry, were all in Dick’s room listening to Quill playing a Chainsmokers album. Barry said “She’s gotta turn that down.”
“We told her, she’ll kill it when Krause gets here,” Virgil said. “Did you tell her to turn off her phone?”
“Yeah. That’s all we’d need, a girlfriend call in the middle of a confession.”
“She’s played that goldarn song about thirty times since we started listening,” Barry said.
Trane: “‘Until You Were Gone,’ with Emily Warren . . . Megan’s boyfriend was killed a couple days ago.”
“That song ain’t gonna fix her head,” the tech said.
“We don’t know that,” Trane said. “Anyway, it’s nice. I think it’s nice.”
“Nice the first eight or ten times.”
* * *
—
Krause had told Quill that he’d come get her at five o’clock. Virgil had talked to the phone tech guy at the BCA, had given him Krause’s phone number, and they knew he was running late: his phone was still on the other side of the St. Thomas campus. They didn’t want Krause out of the house with Quill, so they decided that Quill would order a pizza and have it show up about the same time Krause did. At ten after five, the pizza delivery truck showed up, but Krause was still on campus.
The phone tech called a minute later, and said, “Okay, he’s headed your way.”
Virgil had placed himself at the corner of Dick’s only window, where he could watch the sidewalk, and at five-twenty he saw Krause hurrying toward the house.
Trane called Quill, and said, “He’s here,” and she asked, “You okay?”
“Actually, I’m fine,” she said. “I’m putting the pizza in the microwave.”
They heard the door downstairs bang shut when Krause came in, his footsteps on the stairs, and then the quick rap when he knocked on Quill’s door.
She let him in, and said, “I can’t go out. I’m sorry, I’m all fucked up. I ordered a pizza, I thought we could sit around and talk until Mom gets here.” The volume of the music dropped to nothing.
“Okay with me,” Krause said.
Trane: “So far, so good.”
“We’re ten seconds in,” Virgil said.
“I can’t believe it about Brett,” Quill said, her voice wavering, climbing a half octave. “I still can’t believe it.”
Trane: “She’s crying.”
The tech: “Heck, she’s good at this.”
Virgil: “Shh. Shut up, everybody.”
Krause said, “Nobody can believe it. I was talking to some guys today: nobody can believe he was involved with heroin. That’s not . . . That’s not what we do here.”
There was a ding in the background, and Quill said, “I got hungry, the pizza was cold, so I stuck it in the microwave. Let me get it.”
“Great. What’re you doing with your mom?”
“Nothing. I wanted to get away from campus for a couple of days. Hide out in White Bear. I’m going to meet a girlfriend up at the mall, I need some shoes and shit.”
* * *
—
There were dishes banging around for a moment, the scrape of silverware, then Krause said, “You got that nightgown on. You got on anything underneath it?”
Five seconds later, he said; “Oh. My. God. C’mon, give me another shot. Oh. My. God.”
* * *
—
Virgil: “Holy shit, she’s taken off her clothes. She did that when I first talked to her; she was flashing Brett and Jerry.”
* * *
—
Jerry: “You gonna let me touch?”
“Fuck no. That hasn’t changed,” Quill said. “Not yet anyway. I mean, Brett . . .” And now she sobbed.
More dishes, and, a moment later, Jerry said, “Good. Hot. What are the green things?”
“Spinach.”
“Cool.”
“Jerry, I need to ask you something . . .”
* * *
—
“Here we go,” Virgil said.
* * *
—
“You didn’t . . . I mean, don’t take this wrong, okay? . . . You didn’t have anything to do with . . . Dad?”
“What!”
“You know, that computer up there. I was thinking about it. It’s, like, a hot gaming computer . . .”
Long silence.
* * *
—
Then, “Hey, fuck you, Megan! You think I . . . What the fuck are you talking about?”