Bloody Genius (Virgil Flowers, #12)(79)

“But you dropped the charges.”

“We . . . came to a private settlement.”

“A large one?”

“I don’t want to get into numbers. It was substantial. I was at a critical stage in my entrepreneurial career, and the money was welcome. I inherited this place from my mother and mortgaged it to start my business and didn’t have enough money to expand when I needed to do that. Boyd, uh, filled the gap.”

She owned three coffeehouses, she said, in different but trendy parts of the Twin Cities. Virgil had been in one and liked it: the coffee was good, all the local papers were free, and The New York Times and Wall Street Journal were sold over the counter.

“Who’d he kill?” she asked.

Virgil explained that he was investigating the death of Barthelemy Quill, a professor at the University of Minnesota. Nord’s head started going up and down as soon as Virgil mentioned the name, said she’d read the news stories about the case.

“This all ties into his rather crappy career as a patent troll? Or his spying?”

“You knew about that?”

“Sure. He wasn’t embarrassed about it. He was right up front, in fact. He said if a company didn’t protect itself, it deserved what it got.” She shook her head. “He crossed a lot of lines, though. He would actually spy on companies, I think. He got beat up once by a security guard. He could beat on a woman, I guess, but apparently wasn’t real good against somebody who actually knew how to fight.”

“I have a note about that,” Virgil said. “He was charged in that case, too, and it was also dismissed.”

“I don’t know what happened there, but I knew about it,” she said. “He was a slippery fuck, if you’ll excuse the language. That was my final verdict.”

“As far as you know, did Nash have a relationship with Dr. Quill?” Virgil asked.

“I don’t know anything about that. I didn’t know much about what Boyd did, the details. I picked up a little in conversation while we were going out, and of course I looked him up on the internet. I don’t even know why I went out with him that third time. I didn’t like him that much on the first date, but I guess I decided to give him a second chance, and then maybe I went out the third time because I was bored. I wasn’t bored enough to go out a fourth time. Then he beat me up.”

“You said he was high when he beat you. That doesn’t sound like marijuana.”

“Cocaine, his drug of choice. I doubt he ever tried marijuana. Or, if he did, not more than once. It was always cocaine.”

They talked for another ten minutes, but she didn’t have much to add. They’d never gotten to a sexual relationship—not even close.

Virgil asked about Nash’s friends. “I don’t think he had any real friends, but he did have, like, an acolyte. This guy who followed him around and did chores for him. His name was Dex—short for Dexter, I think. I don’t know if I ever knew Dex’s last name. He was a short, stumpy guy. Like one of the Seven Dwarfs, only two feet taller. Among other things, I think he got Boyd’s dope for him. I’m not sure if Dex knew a dealer or was a dealer, but he held Boyd’s coke.”

“If you only went out three times, how did you get to know Dex?”

She smiled for the first time. “Because he sorta came on the date with us. All three times he was in the backseat when Boyd showed up, then Boyd would drop him off somewhere near the place we were going for dinner, he’d disappear, and I wouldn’t see him again until the next date. He had a line of patter he’d keep going from the backseat: news stories, stuff about the city, about where we were going, about people he knew. It was weird. I actually sorta liked Dex better than Boyd, except he was funny-looking. A funny-looking guy. I think he was probably in his thirties maybe. But he looked old. He had a sixty-year-old face.”

When Virgil ran out of questions, Nord said, “I hope you get him. I know I shouldn’t have settled, but I really, really needed the money. And Virgil”—she reached across the gap between their chairs and touched his knee—“you be careful. I do think Boyd could kill somebody. Maybe he already has. He’s a bullshitter, but there’s a mean bastard under that fat face.”

Virgil was on his way out the door when he was struck by a thought. He turned back, and asked, “You wouldn’t have a picture of him, would you?”

Nord said, “Hmm, probably. I take pictures of everyone and never clean them out of my phone. Let me look.”

She scanned photos for a moment, her thumbs and fingers moving as fast as a longtime typist’s, and then: “Ah. Here we go. What’s your number, I’ll send it to you.”

A moment later, it popped up on Virgil’s phone: a smiling, overweight man with reddish brown hair pulled back in a ponytail.

Back in his car, he called O’Hara, the map thief. When she answered, he said he was going to send her a photo. “Could you take a moment to look at it?”

“Of course.”

He sent the picture, and a moment later O’Hara said, “That’s the man.”



* * *



—

His next call went to Del Capslock, got his wife. He knew Cheryl, and they chatted about Frankie’s pregnancy for a moment while Capslock got out of the bathroom. When he did, Cheryl handed him the phone. “What’s up?”