Bloody Genius (Virgil Flowers, #12)(99)

Trane said, “Why don’t we go up and talk in your room . . . Where it’s cool.”

In Quill’s room, Virgil and Trane took the two kitchen table chairs, and Quill perched on the corner of the bed, which she hadn’t folded back into a couch that morning. Quill put her backpack aside, and said, “What’s up?”

Trane looked at Virgil, who said, “Megan, we think we figured out who may have killed your father.”

She looked from Virgil to Trane and back to Virgil, and said, “Jerry.”

Trane: “Why would you say that?”

‘I’m triangulating. Dad’s dead, Brett’s dead, you’re talking to me about figuring it out. The only other one you and I know who knew Dad and Brett is Jerry. Why do you think Jerry did it? Do you think he killed Brett, too?”

“We think it’s a real possibility,” Virgil said.

“Then it’s my fault, isn’t it?” She dropped her head again and looked down at the floor between her legs. “I led him on with all that pussy thing, letting him look but not touch, and sleeping with his best friend. He got back at me by killing my dad and his friend.”

Trane said, “No. That’s an amazing thought, but that’s not it. We think he went to your father’s library carrel at midnight and, purely by accident, bumped into your father.”

Now Quill looked up with a sudden light in her eye. “That fuckin’ computer . . .”

Virgil said, “Yes. We think he went there to steal the computer. One of the best gaming computers you could hope to get, and he ran into your father who was there for another reason. There may have been some pushing. And the woman who was there with your dad thought she heard him say something about calling the police. Jerry may have had the laptop in his hand and struck him with it.”

Now Quill straightened, and said, “I totally believe that. Totally. I don’t know why I didn’t think of it.”

Virgil and Trane laid out the other thoughts they had that pointed at Krause, and Quill confirmed that they’d been in her father’s house several times when he was out of town. “We joked about stealing stuff that he wouldn’t miss, but Brett wouldn’t actually let us do that. We watched movies on Netflix. Dad left his Z8 in the garage, and we talked about driving around like Brett and me once saw in some old movie.”

“Ferris Bueller’s Day Off,” Trane said, “Only, I think it was a Ferrari.”

“That’s the one,” Quill said.

“You went in while he was gone . . . Did you ever run into a housekeeper or anyone?” It would be nice, Virgil thought, if a housekeeper had seen Krause.

“No, but Jen—she’s the housekeeper—only comes in the mornings. We knew that. Brett and I would go up and fuck on Dad’s bed. We made Jerry stay outside the bedroom but told him he could listen. We were such assholes.”

Trane made the pitch. “We want you to help catch Jerry. We’re not there yet.”

She explained that the information they had wasn’t enough for a search warrant and that the best confirming evidence they could possibly find would be the laptop. “We thought that if we could get Jerry up here—”

“He’s coming over this afternoon,” Quill said.

“Okay. We wanted to bring some technical people over here to put in some listening and recording equipment.”

“Bug the apartment?”

“Yes. We’ll be down the hall, in the next apartment—that’s a fellow named Dick, correct?”

“Correct.”

“We’d want you to ask Jerry if he had anything to do with Brett’s death.”

“He was down in Faribault.”

“Somebody, we don’t know who, walked up to Brett’s room before six in the morning. Could have been Brett, but we think Brett may have been unconscious by then. We think Brett may have had a fairly late night, went back to his apartment with some heroin, shot up. We think he was probably asleep, dreaming, when Jerry arrived. He may even have told Jerry what he was planning to do.”

“They did talk about it,” Quill said.

“Faribault’s less than an hour from here,” Virgil said. “Jerry would have had access to his mother’s car. He could have left there at five o’clock before she got up and been back before seven.”

“What exactly would I say to him? Jerry. That’s not something you’d blurt out: ‘Did you kill Brett?’”

“I don’t know, maybe you could,” Virgil said. “What time is he coming over?”

“I told him I’m going home to White Bear tonight. We were going to go out for a pizza about five o’clock. My mom’s picking me up right after the rush hour, probably about six.”

“You don’t have a car here?”

“No, I don’t need one. I’m trying to save money. Tuition is forty thousand dollars a year, and that comes out of my trust fund. I get a scholarship, which saves some, but after rent and everything else there’s not a lot left. I’d like to transfer to the U . . . Anyway, what should I say to Jerry? Exactly.”

“We’re coming to that,” Trane said. “We wanted to get your okay for doing this. I’ll suggest a few things, we’ll rehearse. If we’re going to do this, we need to get the technical people over here.”