Bloody Genius (Virgil Flowers, #12)(10)

She’d found a similar computer, with an identical case, and the medical examiner had confirmed that a corner of it could have done the damage to Quill’s skull, but Trane didn’t have the actual laptop, so that was also uncertain.

Virgil asked Trane, “Is it possible that there was something on his computer or phone that somebody was desperate to get?”

She shrugged. “Who knows? I’ve asked the question, and nobody can think of what it might be. He was a research scientist, but not a loner. There are extensive notes on everything done in the lab. This laptop . . . We know Quill wasn’t a gamer, he didn’t play video games. This thing had fast processors and a lot of storage, and would work well with virtual reality. His top assistant said you might use it to display and manipulate MRI images, yet he didn’t know why Quill would try to hide that, what he’d be doing with it in a study carrel. They have plenty of computer power in the lab. Still . . . he had a huge amount of power there. He must’ve been using it for something.”

“Maybe he screwed something up, with a patient, and wanted to keep the images where only he could see them.”

“That had occurred to me, too. While there is a lawsuit involving one of his patients, a suicide, I don’t see anything there. Virgil, this is something I’ve been struggling with, thinking he might have a secret life of some kind—but all of his work is very public. I mean, it’s all done as a team. When surgery is involved, he doesn’t do it, a team of surgeons does. I cannot, for the life of me, find anything in his professional life that he’d want to hide.”

“Okay.”

“One other thing: that computer is fairly rare. I’ve been watching the local Craigslist and eBay and Googling laptops for sale, and it hasn’t shown up on any of that. It could be in the river.”



* * *



—

Virgil finished taking notes at three o’clock. Trane had been coming and going while he worked, and when he kicked back from the computer, she was coming through the doorway with a paper cup full of coffee.

“Finished?”

“Not really. I need to think about it all. You get any . . . vibrations . . . from anyone?”

“I got vibrations from a lot of people. Quill was highly respected, but not much liked,” Trane said. “A couple of people hinted that he wasn’t particularly generous with giving others credit for scientific papers. That’s a big deal for young job-hunting scientists. His ex-wives didn’t like him, either. I asked them why and they said he was arrogant, cold, mean. Everything but violent. He had a child with his first wife, a daughter, who also didn’t like him much, although he supported her and his first wife quite adequately for more than twenty years until his death. His daughter goes to St. Thomas. She’s pretty much a slacker . . . a C to B student, though her mother says she’s bright enough. She doesn’t want to work, that’s all. Doesn’t want to work—ever.”

“Does she inherit anything? Outside that trust?”

“Nope. She gets a trust fund payout until she’s thirty, enough to pay college tuition through to a Ph.D., if that’s what she wants, and to live in a decent apartment and eat. Then it ends. She gets nothing more in the will. Of course, if he’d lived, he could have changed that.”

“How old is she now?” Virgil asked.

“Nineteen. I interviewed her. She wasn’t too upset about him getting killed,” Trane said. “He wasn’t present as a father—only his money was. I gotta say, my impression was that she’s way too lazy to actually kill somebody. And she’s got a solid alibi for the whole time span when Quill was killed.”

“Quill, on some level, seems to have been successful with women? Maybe girlfriends? Jealousy?”

“Not finding it. Hasn’t dated recently, as far as I’ve been able to determine, but . . . maybe. I’m still looking. Nobody’s come forward. His wife and his exes say he was incredibly smart, which was why they were attracted . . . And, of course, he had family money. Quite a bit of it. Money’s often attractive in a man.”

“I wouldn’t know. I’ve had to rely on my good looks and personal charm,” Virgil said.

She gave him the stink eye, unsure whether he was joking or not, and Virgil said, “You’ve got to get used to my sense of humor.”

She said, “I talked to Lucas. He said you weren’t a terrible guy. Most of the time. Nothing like Hitler anyway. I was supposed to remind you to keep your hands off his daughter.”

“That’s a Davenport joke,” Virgil said.

“I got the impression that it was ninety percent joke and ten percent death threat,” Trane said.

“Yeah, that’s about right,” Virgil said. “So. In five hundred words or less, tell me what you’ve figured out.”

“Won’t take five hundred words. He was killed in the carrel. He must’ve trusted the killer because he’d turned his back to him in a close space—the killer almost had to be inside the carrel with him. If it was a him. It might not have been because the carrel would be crowded with two men in it. If the killer is a her, she’s strong. I’ve tried lifting a similar laptop over my head quickly and then swinging it down hard enough to kill. I can do it, but twelve pounds, overhead, chopping down, accelerating, doing it fast enough that Quill wouldn’t see it coming . . . It’s harder than you’d think.”