Bloody Genius (Virgil Flowers, #12)(93)

“Do you know where he got it?”

“No. I’m not up to date on coke dealers, but I don’t think he had to go very far. He liked to go to clubs when he had the money. You can get coke if you go to the right clubs.”

“Did he ever mention a dealer named China White?” Trane asked.

“No. He never mentioned any dealers.” She put both hands on her forehead. “I can’t believe he’s dead. Right over there. He’s dead. He was alive last night. Now he’s dead.”

Trane patted her on the shoulder. “Look. Let’s go back outside, get some air . . . Virgil, we need to talk.”



* * *



—

Outside, Bryan spent a few moments getting names from Quill: Renborne’s parents, other friends. The landlady said she’d heard Renborne speaking on his cell phone early that morning, before she got up, when he was coming back from a late night out. “I heard him on the steps about, mmm, six o’clock.”

“Was he usually up that early in the morning?”

“Not usually, but that boy would come and go at all times of day and night. Sometimes, he was just getting home at six. Sometimes, he’d be going out the door at six. I got so I didn’t pay much attention.”

“Did you hear him during the day? He had a class at one.”

“No, I’m not here. I get up around seven, I go to work at eight-thirty, I get back at four-thirty or five, depending. Sometimes the other girls and I go out after work.”

She worked as a secretary at the Minnesota Historical Society in St. Paul. She was divorced, and Renborne was the only other person who lived in the house. “My ex never lived here. We broke up, split the money, and I bought this place with my share.”

“Are you sure it was Brett that you heard going up the steps this morning?” Virgil asked.

She shrugged. “Sounded like him. He wore running shoes, he was quiet.”

Renborne, she said, was “a real nice boy. I had no idea he was fooling with drugs. I never saw him, you know, drugged up or anything.”



* * *



—

Virgil and Trane drifted away. Trane asked, “Are you still going home?”

“I’d like to. This isn’t our scene, and St. Paul will do the work. I’ll be back on Monday morning. They should have some labs by then, an autopsy report. Not much for me to do on a Sunday.”

“All right. How are we doing otherwise?”

“I can’t . . . I don’t see where we’re going yet.”

“Neither do I. By the way, your guy Nash . . . Our guys broke into some of the files on the computer. There are some other files there that are encrypted, we’ll probably never get into those. But of the files we’ve seen, a couple of dozen of them were photographs transferred out of a program called Lightroom.”

“I know it,” Virgil said.

“Yeah, and it’s got this metadata stuff. The photos apparently were taken the same night Quill was killed, unless they’ve been faked somehow.”

“So we gave him his alibi.”

“And solidified the charges of industrial espionage,” Trane said. “Which doesn’t solve my problem.”

Virgil said, “I’m going to run down to Faribault, see if I can find this Jerry Krause kid. It’s not exactly on my way, but it’ll only add twenty minutes or so to my drive time. If he hasn’t changed his driver’s license, he should have a home address on it.”

“Okay. You think he’ll know anything?”

“Nah, not really. But the three of them were a gang, and not an entirely healthy one. I oughta check.”



* * *



—

Virgil said good-bye to Quill and headed south on I-35. Faribault was a bit less than an hour straight south, and, on the way, he talked to the duty officer at the BCA and got Krause’s home address. He got turned around once he was in town, but he found the house with help from his iPhone map app; it was an older but well-kept neighborhood whose maple trees were already showing a hint of autumn orange. An older woman came to the door, looking sleepy, said she was Jerry’s mother. “He’s not in trouble, is he?”

“No. A good friend of his has died, and it’s possible that it’s suicide. We’re talking to his friends—”

“Oh, boy, not Brett?”

“I’m afraid so.”

“Oh, boy. Oh, Jerry’s going to be upset,” she said. “Let me get my jacket. He just walked over to the Kwik Trip.”

Virgil and Krause’s mother, whose name was Connie, walked a zigzag course four blocks over to the Kwik Trip and saw Krause walking back toward them, eating an ice cream cone. “Always with the ice cream,” his mother said.

Krause stopped eating the cone as they came up, and he said, “You’re that Virgil officer.”

“Yes. Have you heard from Brett recently? Talk to him at all this morning or last night?”

“No. Why? What happened?”

“I’m afraid he’s dead,” Virgil said.

Krause started, his hand tilted, and the top of his cone fell on the grass verge. He cried, “Shit,” and kicked it into the street. “Oh my God!” Tears came to his eyes, and he asked, “Was it drugs?”