Bloody Genius (Virgil Flowers, #12)(72)

Shrake yawned again and scratched his ribs.

Jones to Virgil: “You’re Flowers? That’s the most disrespectful outfit I’ve ever seen on a cop. A poetry shirt? They’ll be hearing about that, too.”

Virgil looked down at his shirt; it took a minute, but then he tumbled: Poe. Jones must have thought that Edgar Allan’s first name was Larkin. It made him smile.

“You wanna go inside?” Shrake asked. “I’m sweating like a blind lesbian in a sushi bar.”

“Hey! I don’t want to hear that misogynistic kinda talk. And before we go inside, I want to tell you you’re not taking Mrs. McDonald anywhere,” Jones said. “Not to the BCA, not to Hennepin . . .”

Virgil said to Hardy, “Robin’s giving me a sharp pain in the ass.”

“That’s another count,” Jones sputtered. “That’s another—”

“Shut up, Robin,” Hardy said.



* * *



—

They went inside and found Ruth McDonald in the La-Z-Boy with the leg support down; she was huddled in like it was a cave, protecting herself from the wildlife.

She raised her head, and said to Virgil, “I did not kill my husband.”

Jones blanched. “What!” He turned to Virgil, “Did you accuse this woman—”

“Shut up, Robin,” Virgil said. He turned back to McDonald, and said, “We want to hear your story before we decide what to do. I can tell you, my colleague and I have handled a lot of suspicious death cases, and this is one of them. I need to hear the sequence of events the day he died, and more about his physical condition. From what I’ve heard, it seems almost impossible that he could have done what you told the medical examiner.”

“He did it because he was desperate,” Jones said.

Virgil to Jones: “We’re talking to Mrs. McDonald. You can say ‘Answer that’ or ‘Don’t answer that,’ but nothing else. You can’t answer for her.”

“That’s bullshit.”

Virgil to Shrake: “You got your cuffs?”

“Sure do.”

Hardy: “Whoa! Whoa! Whoa! . . . Robin, shut up. And stay shut up.”

Virgil said, “Thank you. Now, it seems impossible—”

“It was because he was desperate. Robin is exactly right,” McDonald said. “He was in pain. The drugs couldn’t stop it without his mind getting all fogged up. Before the operation, he didn’t have much pain.”

“But he couldn’t move at all, as I understand it,” Virgil said.

“He could move a little. His thumb and forefinger, some muscles in his upper arm. After the operation, he could move more, but not enough to mean anything to him. And the pain was on top of the disappointment,” McDonald said. “Then, when they could see the operation hadn’t worked, Quill and his pals just let him go. ‘Sorry, we’ve done everything we can, have a nice life.’ The criminals.”

She began to cry. Hardy moved over to her and patted her shoulder.

“Was there anybody around the house that day?” Virgil asked.

Hardy handed her a tissue from a pocket pack and she took it, wiped her eyes, blew her nose, and said, “No, nobody. Mr. Jones left, and I told Frank I was going to run to the store and I’d be right back.”

Shrake: “Wait. Mr. Jones was here?”

They all looked at Jones. Jones shook his head, and said, “I left well before Mrs. McDonald left for the store.”

“How do you know when she left for the store?” Virgil asked.

“Because we talked about it,” Jones snapped.

“Did you have a key to the house?”

“No, of course not. I’m her lawyer, not a close personal friend. I didn’t have any need for a key.”

Virgil said, “Huh.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Well, it just keeps getting more interesting,” Virgil said.

Shrake said, “I’m with you, big boy. This is getting fascinating.” To Jones: “Exactly what percentage do you get if you win this lawsuit? Thirty?”

“Completely irrelevant,” Jones said.

Shrake asked Hardy, “What do you think? Was the question ‘completely irrelevant’?”

Hardy’s eyebrows went up, the corners of his mouth went down. “Maybe not completely irrelevant, but if you’re suggesting that Robin came back here and . . . attacked . . . Mr. McDonald, then you’re way out of line. The question may not have been irrelevant, but the answer is clear: he, or our firm, would get paid whether or not Frank died. Look, Frank could talk perfectly well. If we wanted to get a big award, we would want nothing more than to be able to wheel Frank into the courtroom to testify. To talk about his pain and the promises that Quill made. We certainly wouldn’t want anything to happen to him. His death by suicide weakened our case, it didn’t make it stronger.”

“But the death of Dr. Quill did,” Virgil said.



* * *



—

They argued about that for a few minutes, then Hardy said, “Believe what you want to believe, but I’ll tell you—and this is the truth—I represent Abby Cohen and Mrs. McDonald, and they were both involved with Dr. Quill, in vastly different ways, in what is a gigantic, pluperfect coincidence.”