Bloody Genius (Virgil Flowers, #12)(25)

“You talk to the cops about this?”

“No, but I will if anybody asks me. Like I said, it sounds wild at first, but when you think it over . . .”



* * *



—

Carol Ann Soboda was walking back to her table at Stub & Herb’s bar, after a visit to the restroom, and nearly bounced off a guy with a beer in his hand. The guy said, “Oops,” caught her arm, got her right again, and she smiled at him, and he said, “Hey . . . Aren’t you one of the people who worked with Dr. Quill?”

“I did, yeah. I don’t remember you . . .”

“Ah, I was sorta on the other side . . . I was with Dr. Green at Fight Night. I didn’t get involved, I thought the whole thing was crazy, but I saw you there.”

The guy was good-looking and friendly, and Soboda was flattered that he remembered her. She was between relationships—way between relationships—so she let herself talk, what could it hurt? “Yeah, I was there. Who was that crazy guy with the chair?”

They spent ten minutes leaning on the bar, and the man, who said his name was Terry, said he’d read about the murder and wondered what was going on with Quill and his secret carrel in the library.

“Nobody knows,” Soboda said. “My girlfriend thinks he was looking at child porn or going out looking for hookups, but I don’t think so. That computer was, like, a workstation. You can look at porn or find hookups on your iPhone.”

“Maybe he was doing secret research? Maybe he needed a good computer for that. And maybe he was in the library because he was away from everything and liked a quiet space to think.”

“He had all kinds of quiet places to think. I tell you, it’s a mystery. We talk about it every day at the lab and we can’t figure it out.”

“What happens with the lab? You out of a job?”

“Nobody knows what’s going to happen yet,” Soboda said. “Our lab manager is looking around to see if he can merge us with somebody doing the same kind of research, but we’re pretty far out there.”

“Okay, how about this?” Terry said. “Your guy was spying on other labs doing the same kind of research, trying to get a leg up.”

She thought about that, then said, “Wouldn’t you have to be a hacker to do that? Barth wasn’t a computer person. I mean, he could use our software, but that’s like using a toaster. You don’t have to be a programmer, and he wasn’t one.”

“Huh. Well, it’s a mystery. So what are you up to? You come here often?”

“Not too often . . .”

Like that.



* * *



—

Megan Quill was standing outside a SuperAmerica store on Grand Avenue, where she’d tapped a Wells Fargo ATM and used a few bucks to buy Nestlé Drumsticks for herself and her friends Jerry and Brett.

On a hot day, the cones had a propensity to drip on your clothing if you weren’t careful, so they stood in a tight huddle, bent toward one another, licking the cones, dripping on the sidewalk, and mumbling a few words like “Okay” and “Not bad” and “Watch the drip, Brett.”

Megan was dressed in fashionable black, something like a sexy tennis dress, and it worked for her. Jerry was dressed in unfashionable black: a sloppy black T-shirt to cover up his overstuffed body, sloppy black cargo shorts, sloppy black cross-trainers with short black socks. Brett, the nonconformist, was wearing a plain white T-shirt and red running shorts and flip-flops. He was bobbing up and down to some music that only he could hear and that ran through his brain like the sound track to his life.

They all saw the guy coming: blue golf shirt, tan slacks, blue sneaks. He was older than they were—late twenties or early thirties, Quill thought—trim and square-jawed in a way that you didn’t see that much. He had blue eyes and a nice smile. He slowed as he came up, and then asked, “Are you Megan Quill? Professor Quill’s daughter?”

Quill stopped licking her cone, staring hard at him. “Yes. Who are you?”

“I’m a grad student over at the U. Jeez, I was sorry to hear about what happened.”

Quill said, “Yeah . . .” She licked a couple of times, self-consciously now, with this good-looking guy watching her. “It was pretty awful.”

“Any signs that they’re going to catch whoever did it?”

“The cops don’t have a fuckin’ clue,” Jerry said. He laughed. “They oughta make them all wear clown shoes so we’ll know what we’re dealing with. Bunch of fuckin’ maroons.”

“Harsh, man,” Brett said. “They’ll catch him. Trane’s smart.”

“Not a chance,” Quill said. She asked the man in the slacks, “Do you work in medicine or something? Did you know my father?”

“No, I was sort of on the other side of the big feud,” he said. “I’m in Anthropology, and I know Dr. Green. Or, at least, I see her around the building. She can be a little . . . out there . . . at times. Lot of people over at the U wonder if somebody in Cultural Science had something to do with it—the murder—but she doesn’t seem worried. I see her laughing with her friends at lunch . . . Are you at the U? Or here?”

St. Thomas was across the street. “I’m here. I kinda wish I was at the U, but my mom thought there’d be better discipline here and that I needed that.”