Bloody Genius (Virgil Flowers, #12)(55)

They speculated for a few minutes, then Quill reappeared, and said, “I talked to my attorney. He said I shouldn’t talk to you without him present, but he can’t come here tonight. He said we could talk tomorrow.”

“What time?” Trane asked.

“Ten o’clock, at his office in Minneapolis.”

Trane looked at Virgil. “Can you make that?”

“Sure. Will you be there?”

“If I can. But this trial . . . I might not be able to make it.”



* * *



—

Back outside, Trane asked, “You okay with handling this?”

“I’m fine. And I’ve got some other running around I want to do.”

“I was mostly interested in seeing Nancy’s first reaction,” Trane said. “We know she lied to me, but we don’t know why. If her attorney shuts her down tomorrow without any explanation, then we’ll have something to work with. Something on the Quill murder. On the other hand, maybe it’s just something embarrassing . . . Something sleazy.”

“You could be right,” Virgil said. “I’ll push her about the recording. I’d like to know how old it is, who else is on it, if she has any idea about who they’re talking about, the guy Quill wanted to operate on. I’ll try to open her up. The woman I talked to in the lab said the recording would be important enough to kill for, if it’s recent. Although . . .”

“What?”

“If the recording was important enough to kill for, wouldn’t it be Quill who would have done the killing? Killing a blackmailer? The other guys on the recording were trying to talk him out of what he wanted to do.”

“We don’t know what we’re talking about, Virgil. If the other men talked him out of the operation, refused to go along, then the recording’s not so important,” Trane said. “But if they did do it and the patient died, that’s something entirely different. You could argue that it was murder. The fact that Quill had apparently listened to the recording recently, or maybe even had just gotten it in the mail or something, suggests that the threat was active. Was real. Right now.”





CHAPTER





FOURTEEN



Virgil went back to the hotel, hit Applebee’s—Bourbon Street Steak, fries, lemonade—got a brew at the beer joint, where he found Harry sitting on a barstool talking to Alice, the barmaid.

Virgil climbed up on the next stool, said, “Harry, Alice.”

Harry said, “Another bottle of cow piss?”

Virgil said, “Yep,” and Alice went away to get it.

“Catch the kid yet?” Harry asked.

“I investigated every one of them that I know about and they’re all clearly innocent,” Virgil lied. “Your theory sucks a hot desert wind.”

“Haven’t found the right kid yet, that’s all,” Harry said. “Let me make another observation—also from the files of NCIS.”

“Feel free,” Virgil said, as Alice delivered the Miller Lite.

“Here’s the thing, Virgil: you’ve already met the killer.”

“I’ve met the killer?”

“Sure. Gibbs always meets the killer early in the show when he doesn’t know the other guy is the killer. Every single time,” Harry said.

Virgil said, “Huh. Harry, I suspect that might have more to do with the story structure of the show. They can’t have Gibbs going along investigating and investigating, getting nowhere, and then pull the killer out of his butt at the last minute. If they did that, how would the audience even know that the bad guy was all that bad?”

Harry shrugged. “All right, don’t believe me, but you’ll see. A murder investigation, as far as I can tell, is exactly like you see on a TV show.”

“I told somebody a couple of days ago that a murder investigation is never like TV,” Virgil said.

“Well, you’re wrong. You’ve got your cast of characters, and you know, going in, that one of them did it. If you’ve been investigating for weeks, you’ve already met the whole cast.”

“We’re going to have to agree to disagree,” Virgil said.

Alice had been listening in and she said to Virgil, “Okay, so I ask you this, Virgil. Did you ever investigate, like, a real mystery? Not somebody holding up a gas station or a liquor store? A real mystery?”

“A few times,” Virgil said.

“In any of those times,” she asked, “did you ever not meet el villano, el malo, before you know that he was el villano?”

Virgil had to think a minute, then said, “You know, I guess I haven’t. I’m sure I will, but so far—”

“Ha,” Harry said. “Now that you know that you’ve met the killer, you can probably figure this out before morning. For that, you owe me a beer.”

Virgil looked at Alice, and asked, “Where is he on the beer total?”

“Only two. After four, he recites this poem. That is not a good time to be here.”

“That hurts, honey. Greatest poem ever written,” Harry said. He looked at Virgil. “‘The Cremation of Sam McGee.’”

Virgil: “No.”

“All of it,” Alicia said. “Unless the bouncer throws him out in the street.”