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

A week or so after Green’s lecture, Quill and three professors from the medical school held an open seminar at the Mayo Auditorium to discuss the wrong-headedness of Green’s book and to question the very existence of the Department of Cultural Science, which, according to flyers posted in the medical school, advocated “Witchcraft vs. Medicine.”

“Well, you can guess what happened. Green showed up with staff and students from Cultural Science, and they had another riot on their hands,” Trane said. “It’s been pretty much open warfare since then. Quill proposed eliminating the Cultural Science Department entirely—it’s hard to get rid of tenured professors, but if their department is abolished, well, they don’t have jobs.”

“Then everybody in Cultural Science is a suspect.”

“Yeah,” Trane said. “That would be eighteen faculty and graduate assistants and support staff, and a large but unknown number of students.”

“Sounds like you’ve come down on Quill’s side of this thing,” Virgil ventured. “You know, intellectually.”

“Of course I have,” Trane said. “I wouldn’t say it on television, but the Green people, the Cultural Science people, are a bunch of Froot Loops.”

Virgil leaned back in his chair, put his boots up on the desk, and said, “I don’t know. I feel the great karmic twang might favor Greenites. I’ll start there, find this Katherine Green.”

Trane rubbed her face with both hands. “Karmic twang? Oh my God, he said ‘karmic twang.’ You could probably go undercover with Cultural Science. They’d love that T-shirt.”

From the other side of the cubicle wall the cop, who’d by now finished his tuna fish sandwich, said, “I thought he said ‘karmic wang.’”

Trane said, “Shut up,” then said to Virgil, “I’ll get you a phone number.”

“I’d like to go through Quill’s house this evening, if it’s not sealed up,” Virgil said.

“I’ve got the key, I can meet you there after dinner . . . like, seven o’clock?”

“That’s good.”

Tuna Fish said, “You oughta tell Karmic Wang that Green is quite the hottie.”

Trane again said, “Shut up,” and to Virgil said, “I guess she is, but that’s irrelevant.”

Tuna Fish said, “No, it’s not. The hottest sex is always between two people who don’t like each other. That’s why feminists date drug dealers or drummers at some point in their lives. In your situation, you got the handsome, brilliant, rich, and probably horny divorcing professor on one side and the bestselling academic, unmarried hottie on the other. Did you even look at her boobies? Think there might be sparks?”

“Thank you, Dr. Freud.”

“You’re welcome. It’s better than anything you’ve come up with,” Tuna Fish said.

Virgil: “Give me the number for Green.”

Trane gave him the number, and asked, “How are we going to do this? You and me?”

“How about if I work it as kind of, like, an assistant or intern,” Virgil suggested. “On my own, because there’s no point in both of us standing around looking at the same guy. You do your thing, I do mine, and we meet every morning and again every night until we get the killer.”

“I’m happy you’re so . . . sanguine . . . about getting him. We had a fifty percent clearance rate on murders last year. If we don’t do better, Knox’s going to be the new lieutenant guarding the landfill. I’ll be the sergeant in charge of the sloppy diaper dump.”

“Aw, we’ll get him,” Virgil said. “If we don’t, I’ve got an extra pair of barn boots I can give you. You know, for the diapers.”





CHAPTER





FOUR



Virgil called Green, who rejected the call. He called again, was rejected again. The third time a woman answered, a low-pitched growl. “What? Who is this?”

Virgil introduced himself, and Green said, “I’ve spoken to the police several times, Margaret Trane—”

“Yes, but I’ve been appointed to be Sergeant Trane’s assistant on the case and she suggested I start by talking with you,” Virgil said. Trane rolled her eyes. “I need to get a feel for all the various . . . personalities . . . who knew Dr. Quill.”

“I didn’t know Quill, I only knew who he was. And I certainly didn’t murder him, though I should have for calling me a twat. I think it would have been ruled justifiable homicide.”

“Still . . .”



* * *



—

She agreed to meet him at four-thirty, at her office in the Humphrey Center. When Virgil got off the call, he and Trane talked about the case for another ten minutes, then he asked her for a few of her business cards to give to interviewees. She said, “Take a whole stack,” and pushed them across her desk.

Back on the street, Virgil drove across the Mississippi to check into his hotel, which indeed did have an Applebee’s, a Starbucks, and a beer joint. The room was small and decorated in tints of sage, which made him look sickly pale in the bathroom mirror, but was nothing to complain about after years of Motel 6’s. He dumped his bag, went back down to the street, got his car, drove back across the river to the Humphrey Center, a boring brick bunker that any SS dead-ender might have approved of.