Bloody Genius (Virgil Flowers, #12)(33)

“Throwing your daughter a few bucks doesn’t cure you of being an asshole,” Jerry said.

Brett: “He was a global asshole, but he could be okay on the specifics.”



* * *



—

Virgil asked Quill what she knew about her father’s second and third wives. The answer was straightforward: nothing. “Never met either one of them.”

“So you had no idea about any stress, or conflicts, he might be going through?”

“Well, his fight with that lady professor is pretty famous. Made the TV news. They even argue about it over here at St. Thomas. I’d look at her, if I were you.”

“Or his girlfriend,” Jerry said.

Virgil’s eyebrows went up. “His girlfriend. I didn’t know he had one.”

“He did. I believe she was married—she was wearing a ring. I gotta wonder if his wife knew about her. Megan said when he died, the wife got in line for a bundle. If he doesn’t die—and there must be a prenup—she wouldn’t get much, and there’s already a girlfriend set to scoop him up. Of course, maybe the girlfriend’s husband got overheated and took him out. Or maybe the girlfriend didn’t want her husband to find out she’d been fuckin’ Barth and she did him in. Lots of possibilities there.”

Virgil to Quill: “Sergeant Trane didn’t say you mentioned a girlfriend.”

She shrugged. “Jerry hadn’t told me about her when Trane talked to me.”

Back to Jerry: “You don’t know her name? Anything about her?”

“Nope. What happened was, I walked into a Starbucks and saw Barth talking to this good-looking woman. Maybe forty. Reddish hair, cut short, like Olympic ice-skaters used to have. Looked rich: she was wearing clothes like she was going out horseback riding. You know, tall leather boots, tight-ass pants, the whole Brit horsey thing. Like she walked out of a castle to hunt a fuckin’ fox. And that wedding ring. The two were laughing, and I thought, Hmm, because you never saw Barth laughing that much. But then I forgot about it.”

“What made you think they might be close?”

“A week after that, I was over at the U, and I’m pretty sure I saw him walking along with a black German shepherd on a leash. That was a surprise. As far as I knew, he didn’t have a dog.”

Quill shook her head. “Never.”

Jerry: “Then, let me see . . . Saturday? . . . No, Sunday morning . . . I saw the woman again and she was walking a German shepherd, and it looked like the exact same dog. She went past me, six feet away; she called the dog Blackie, which was pretty clever since he was black.”

“You’re sure it was him you saw with the dog? You said ‘pretty sure.’”

“That’s what I was. Pretty sure. Not positive.”

Virgil: “No idea where we could find the woman?”

“No . . . she was just a woman,” Jerry said. “I can’t even promise there was anything going on there. But . . . I think there was. Why would he be walking that dog when he didn’t even like dogs? That was in the morning, early, like the dog had been with him the night before.”



* * *



—

Quill, Jerry, and Brett all hung out in Dinkytown, a business/residential area adjacent to the University of Minnesota that catered to students, because there was more going on in Dinkytown than around St. Thomas. Quill and Brett both knew this because they had high school friends going to school there.

“I’ve got a guy over there in Dinkytown,” Quill said. “About a month ago, I spent the night—you know, fuckin’ and suckin’—”

“Don’t tell me that,” Jerry said. “I’m getting nothing—”

Virgil held up a finger. “Something for all three of you? In June, I busted a young woman down in Worthington, for murder. She was a couple of years younger than you guys, seventeen. She got drunk and wasted on methamphetamine. She was on the bed naked with her boyfriend and his other girlfriend, taking turns with each other, and she freaked out and started brawling with her boyfriend and the other girl. She wound up stabbing the boyfriend to death with a kitchen knife. Stuck it right in his neck, severed his carotid artery, and he spewed blood all over the trailer, coming out like a fire hose. The other girl was trying to help him, but then this first girl, the killer, went after her, too, and cut up the other girl’s face and hands and breasts. When I saw her, the other girl looked like she’d been shoved through a woodchipper. So neither your language nor your sex life is gonna shock me. The language is just sort of . . . tiresome. It makes me tired to hear it. If you wouldn’t mind, knock it the fuck off. I’m trying to stay alert. I don’t need to be dozing off.”

Brett laughed, a soft, rolling laugh that made Virgil again think he might be coming down off a high, but Quill snapped, “Tough shit . . . Fuck you.”

Virgil made a rolling motion with his index finger. “The friend. You spent the night with a friend . . .”

“Yeah. Suckin’ and fuckin’,” she said defiantly. She shook another cigarette out and twiddled it. “This was a month ago. About one o’clock in the morning we went out to see if we could get a slice at this bar, and I saw Barth go by in his sports car. This silver Bimmer with its top down, supposed to be some kind of rare ride. I thought he was cruising. You know, for women. I thought the car might be bait.”