Bloody Genius (Virgil Flowers, #12)(35)

“Whoa!”

“Yeah. His wife is suing the hospital and the doctors involved, saying they should have understood that McDonald needed intensive psychotherapy as well as physical therapy to deal with his new condition. Her main target was Quill, who she said talked McDonald into the surgery.”

“You think she might have gone after him?”

“We should talk to her anyway. The lab tech said Quill described her as a greedy nutjob who was living high on her husband’s insurance payments.”

“You know, it sounds like the tape—talking somebody into surgery,” Virgil said.

“It does.”

“It seems unlikely that she’d kill him, though,” Virgil said. “If she has a lawsuit going, it seems like she’s found an outlet for her anger . . . And how would she get up in the library in the middle of the night? And why would she be up there?”

“Don’t go dissing my lead. She was up there to grab the computer to see what Quill was saying about the operation . . .”

Virgil said nothing, but he raised his eyebrows.

“All right, all right,” Trane said. “You get anything from Megan?”

“She thinks it’s possible that Quill used cocaine. And a friend of hers said he had a girlfriend.”

“What!”

She got up, rocking back and forth on her feet, listening, as Virgil told her about the possible girlfriend. When he finished, Trane said, “A redheaded married woman in English riding outfit who has a German shepherd and goes to the Starbucks. Shouldn’t be impossible to find her.”

Virgil: “The question is, why didn’t anyone else know about her? Why didn’t she come forward? She’s gotta know that Quill was murdered. And, given that description, that we’d eventually hear about her.”

“Unless it really is all disconnected—that she and Quill brushed by each other at Starbucks and exchanged a couple of words, the German shepherd being off the wall, coming from somebody entirely different.”

“Or maybe it wasn’t actually Quill that this guy saw walking the dog. He wasn’t positive,” Virgil said. “He was pretty sure.”

“Look, if he had a girlfriend, we’re starting to develop a picture of a guy who actually did talk to people. That cocaine could have belonged to a friend,” Trane said.

“Jack Combes seemed to think that if you even mentioned it to him, he might cross you off his list of friends.”

“Unless he needed something from the cokehead. Like sex.”

Virgil agreed. “Okay.”



* * *



—

She looked at her watch. “The early shift at Starbucks will be getting off. If we ran over there right now . . .”

Trane drove. As she did, Virgil said, “Things are starting to pile up. There’s a computer and a phone and keys out there somewhere. If we could find any of them, that’d be big. Quill was fighting with Green, and Green supposedly has at least a couple of students who are capable of violence. He has an estranged wife who would greatly profit from his death. He might or might not use cocaine, so he might or might not know drug dealers. He might or might not have a girlfriend with a dog who hasn’t made herself known, which is interesting. He was probably killed by somebody he somewhat trusted, since he was turned away from them in the carrel. He was selfish about giving his employees scientific credit. And Quill might have been involved—somehow—in an illegal medical procedure. The killer’s probably male, or a strong female, to be able to hit him with a heavy laptop. Anything else?”

“I’ll think of something else later. Right now, that seems to be the list. I don’t see any connections.”

“Neither do I. Maybe we’ll get some from the horsewoman.”

“There’s a word you don’t often hear: ‘horsewoman.’”

“But you hear it more often than you do ‘horseman,’” Virgil said.



* * *



—

They spoke to the staff at Starbucks. Nobody could remember seeing a redheaded horsewoman. They had a number of redheads, though, and a horsewoman in English riding gear who was a frequent customer, but the woman was black. Another frequent customer came in with a German shepherd guide dog, but was seeing-impaired and male, and the dog was mostly tan with some black markings.

Several members of the weekday staff weren’t working. Trane got a Venti cappuccino, and Virgil a hot chocolate, and they walked back to her car. “I’ll check with the staff on Monday. You’re going home tonight?” she asked.

“Yeah. I’ll take a printout of your files with me, read them again,” Virgil said. “The rest of the day, I got the names of these two Green grad students who she thought might be capable of violence. I’ll look them up before I leave town. I’ll call if that turns into anything.”

“I’m interested in this girlfriend. I’ll check everybody on that, and I’ll see if I can wake up a narc and ask about dealers who sell coke to faculty over here . . . if they know anybody like that.”

“One hand on your gun if you find the dealer.”

“Always.”





CHAPTER





NINE