Bloody Genius (Virgil Flowers, #12)(23)

“Mean?” Virgil said.

“That’s right, mean,” Harry said. “You get kids who’ll kill you for no reason. To feel important. What’s more important than killing somebody? You say, you’ll go to prison. They don’t care. They don’t even care if they die. They’ll tell you that. ‘Go ahead and kill me, I got no life.’”

“You believe that?”

Harry drank half his beer down. “Virgil, I once got all pissed off at one of these school shootings, one of these massacres. I told one of my girls, one of my employees, that when they convict the guy, they ought to haul his ass out of the courthouse, make him kneel down on the steps, and then shoot him in the back of the head. You know what she said?”

“That you’re nuts?”

Harry laughed. “No. What she said was, ‘If you did that, the guy would be on TV. He’d be happy. He’d be famous. He was on TV.’ Being on fuckin’ TV. Being on the internet. She’s right. I know some of those kids.”

Virgil finished his beer, said, “On that cheerful note, I’m going to bed.”

“I’m here most every night,” Harry said. “Let me know how you’re doing. And Virgil—it’s a young person.”



* * *



—

Virgil spent the rest of the evening watching a ball game from the West Coast and went to bed at ten o’clock, like a farmer. At ten minutes after ten, his cell phone rang.

It was Trane. “You awake?” she asked.

“Yeah. Barely.”

“We need to go back to the Quill house,” Trane said. “I thought of a reason he might have been listening to ‘Home on the Range.’ I’ll meet you there at eight.”

“Well, tell me,” Virgil said.

She did, and Virgil said, “I believe that, Margaret. I mean, maybe you’re wrong, but I believe it right now.”

“Eight o’clock,” she said.

Virgil turned off the lights again, dropped his head back on the pillow. Was she right? Or was it a silly fantasy? Why hadn’t he thought of it when he was standing right there?

And then he worried a little about Harry.





CHAPTER





SIX



Katherine Green was sitting in the coffee shop in the Coffman Memorial Union when she saw one of her students going through the line.

He’d gone to India with her on a summer research trip with six other students. He was older than the others, more her age, she thought. She’d been tempted at the time to give him a mild hit, to see what happened. He was nice-looking: square shoulders, square jaw, neatly trimmed hair, crisp shirt, carefully ironed chinos. He was quiet, soft-spoken, often with a touch of humor.

One of her better students, even though she sensed an underlying skepticism about Cultural Science.

When he finished the line, he looked around for a seat. He saw Green, and she pointed at the chair opposite her. He smiled and came over and sat down.

“Professor Green . . .”

“How’s the paper going?” she asked.

“Well enough, I guess. I’ve only taken the beginning course in stats. I need to do more, maybe go back and hit the algebra again. I’m struggling with the math.”

“No matter what you wind up doing, stats is critical,” she agreed. “You can look at something that seems so right, and a good analysis of the statistics will tell you there’s nothing there.”

“I’ve noticed that,” he said. “In the media.”

“Nobody should be allowed in the professional media without at least a year of statistics,” she said, sipping her coffee. “The bullshit you see on TV and in the newspapers is beyond stupid. The phony research . . .”

“Maybe they know better but go with the clickbait.”

They talked for a few minutes, mostly about the man’s research and statistics, then he asked, “Anything new on the Barth Quill front? More cops coming around?”

Green hunched her shoulders and leaned into the table. “No. They don’t seem to be getting anywhere, the police. They’re spinning their wheels. It’s awful.”

“It is bad,” the man said. “People have said the department . . . I mean, after the hassle at Quill’s lecture . . .”

Green nodded, now grim. “I know. It’s ridiculous. I’ve been reading about motives in violent crime ever since Quill got killed—murder never involves something like that. Quill was killed by somebody who hated him for personal reasons. Or by a crazy man. An academic feud isn’t enough . . .” She took a few more sips of coffee, then said, “Remember the reading I assigned on the causes of the Civil War? Did you get that?”

“Yeah, I read it,” he said. He then used her favorite word. “Interesting.”

“The authors make the point that there were serious economic stresses between the different sections of the country, but the spark that set it off was slavery. Without the emotional trigger of slavery, there would have been no war,” she said. “This murder is analogous—it takes a specific, dynamic, emotional spark to murder, even with crazy people. The anger between members of our department and his was on an entirely different level.”