“Most of the time, yes. But, you know, you get these little ratshit murders where somebody didn’t respect somebody else or somebody tried to rip off somebody’s else’s weed,” Virgil said. “Murders for a dollar forty-two.”
“I didn’t do any of that. The guy had to be after me, it wasn’t random. I’m sure of that now after thinking about it for two hundred hours. He must’ve known where my parking place was . . . I keep thinking it had to be because I was poking around, but I’ve been over every possibility. Every word. I get nothing. Except . . .”
“What?”
“That computer. Somebody kills Barthelemy Quill, it’s a big deal. I keep thinking about that computer. There had to be something on it. That was a thing in Iraq and Syria—you had guys running around with laptops, and some of them had really heavy shit on them. Top secret shit. Maybe that was the deal here. Maybe . . . Maybe if you went to his lab and looked at the computers there you could find some talk back and forth with the library computer that would give you a hint.”
“Not bad,” Virgil said. “The Minneapolis Crime Scene guys have his home computer. I’ll spend some time with it.”
“Gotta be the laptop. That’s all I can see as a motive . . . This woman he was with, it couldn’t be jealousy . . .”
Virgil shook his head. “She was for sale, and Quill knew it. It wasn’t jealousy. We were thinking that maybe she let somebody in to take pictures for blackmail reasons . . . Or maybe a robbery . . . Except he had a lot of cash on him and it wasn’t touched . . .”
“Well, why couldn’t it still be that? Didn’t mean to kill him but did, and ran in a panic?”
Virgil grimaced. “It could be. But it doesn’t feel right . . . Just doesn’t feel right . . .”
Before he left, Virgil picked up the newspaper lying on Foster’s stomach and helped him pinch it between his suspended hands. “How much longer?”
“Don’t know, exactly. Less than a week, I hope. They’re telling me six to eight weeks before the bones completely knit . . . I’m a fuckin’ mess,” Foster said. “If that asshole comes back, if he gets in here, I’m helpless.”
“You could call for help,” Virgil said.
“Yeah, there’s that,” Foster said. “And I will. I do already.”
* * *
—
Outside in the Tahoe, Virgil checked his watch: he still had almost two hours before the meeting at Trane’s office and he was only fifteen or twenty minutes from the university. He could make a quick stop at Quill’s lab to ask a couple of questions.
He left the Tahoe in a university parking structure and walked over to the lab; there were only three people inside: two women researchers and the lab director, Carl Anderson. He got them together, and said to Anderson, “The last time I talked to you, you convinced me that Quill couldn’t be doing something on the sly because there are too many people involved.”
“That’s correct,” Anderson said, and the two women nodded in agreement.
“But that’s with the surgical procedures. Here’s the thing: he was over at the library in a secret space that even the authorities—university authorities, cops, whoever—would have a hard time spotting. The library knew he was there, and some of you folks knew, but it was not obvious. If the FBI had raided him, they could miss it. Or if they found it, it might take a while. Everybody agree?”
They all agreed, and one of the women, whose name was Ann-something, said, “I work here, and I didn’t know about it.”
“Okay. What I’m asking is, what could he do with an extraordinarily fast laptop that he would want to keep in a secret place and that would have something on it that would be worth killing for? That has to do with his research?”
The three looked at one another and simultaneously shrugged.
Virgil: “Goddamnit, people, I’m asking for speculation here, not evidence, not proof.”
The second woman, who was named Rosalind-something, said, “Okay. Suppose he detected something in our lab results that the rest of us haven’t seen. We’ve been working on microinsertion of adipose-tissue-derived stem cells into traumatically damaged spinal cords. Now, if he spotted something significant, that could be valuable to a biology-based medical company.”
Anderson said, “But then you have to ask, what would Barth have gotten out of it? A, money. But he already had more money than he needed and gave a lot of it away. B, anonymity for an important scientific discovery. But one thing Barth was known for, that pissed off a lot of people, was that he always wanted credit. He wanted the full credit for what came out of the lab. His name always came first on the papers.”
Rosalind leaned back into the conversation. “How about this? What if he was using the machine to review the work of other teams and he didn’t want anyone to know about it? He’s always said there was a lot of bad science going on. What if he found a whopper in our area? A paper that got something wrong, maybe committed outright fraud, and he was using his machine to work through the numbers and demonstrate that? That might be worth killing for.”
Ann nodded. “Never thought of that. You know, with these new online papers, the open publication business, there’s a lot of bad science. If he found something and was going back and forth with that person, you might have somebody who needed to both get rid of Dr. Quill and get ahold of the laptop.”
“How would they even know about the laptop?” Virgil asked. “Or where it was?”
“We’re not computer people, but I think a real hacker could do that,” Ann said.
Rosalind said, “How about this? He found something bad and got some hacker at the university to access that lab’s computer system. Once he knew how to get in, he could get in anytime. That’s just typing. So he’s sneaking around in there, pulling out stuff, and the other lab spots him and calls in some security service to find out who’s hacking them. They find out where the computer is and go after it.”
They all looked at one another, and then Ann said, “I see one big problem with that, from your perspective.”
“Tell me,” Virgil said.
“If the computer’s in the river, and Dr. Quill is dead, and you don’t have any other evidence, DNA, fingerprints—any of that—how would you ever find out what was going on and who was involved? I think you’d be, you know, screwed.”
“Wish you hadn’t said that,” Virgil said. Then, “A woman who works in the library told me she’d seen a man hanging around Dr. Quill’s carrel last winter. Had kind of brownish red hair, a little porky, a ponytail . . .”
Rosalind put her fingers to her lips, turned to Anderson, and said, “Boyd Nash.”
Anderson leaned back in his chair as if slapped. “Oh . . . Let’s . . . Ah, Jesus . . .”
Virgil registered the name but couldn’t remember exactly where he’d seen it. “Who’s Boyd Nash?”
“He’s this guy. You know, those guys who drive around the country looking for antiques they can buy cheap? They’re called pickers?”
“Antiques?” Virgil said. “I don’t—”
“Nash is like a picker, but he doesn’t pick antiques, he picks scientific ideas. He’s a giant asshole.”
“And a creep,” Rosalind said. “He dyes his hair so it’s auburn, but he’s got all this furry white hair coming out of his ears.”
Virgil: “Wait a minute. He does something with patents? Did you guys tell Sergeant Trane about him?”
“I might have mentioned him in passing,” Anderson said. “I don’t have any good reason to think he’d hurt Barth, but he’s such a greedy, criminal pissant.”
Rosalind: “He did patent trolling. The most unethical . . . I don’t think he still does it, he got in some kind of trouble.”
“Tell me about patent trolling. Sergeant Trane mentioned it, but I don’t remember the details,” Virgil said.
“Nash has some kind of technical or scienti
fic background. He’d look for companies or labs that were doing research toward a certain product. Something that can be monetized. What he did was, he’d figure out what must be part of that product when it’s finally produced.”
“Give me an example,” Virgil said.
Ann jumped in. “Supposed you knew Apple was doing research on cell phones, so you draw up plans for a tiny microphone, or speaker, because you know the phone will have to have those things. Then you say your tiny speakers are to be used in cell phones and you patent them without any research at all,” she said. “When the iPhone comes out, you sue, claiming it infringes on your crappy patent. Usually, it’s a bunch of unethical lawyers, and all they have going for themselves is the willingness to sue forever and be a nuisance until the company they’re suing finally buys them off.”
“Okay. Trane told me about this guy. But you don’t think he’s still doing that?”
Anderson said, “I heard—I don’t know where—that he moved over to industrial spying. Instead of faking patents, he’s looking for people willing to sell out original research. Real research. Go to Motorola and figure out what they were doing with phones and then try to peddle that information to Apple.”
Ann said, “I heard—I don’t know if it’s true—that some witness got caught lying in court about one of his patent trolls, and it looked like he could be in serious trouble, and so could the law firm he was working with. Subornation of perjury or something.”
“I heard that he and the law firm broke up, and that’s when he went to industrial spying,” Anderson added.
“And he might have approached somebody at this lab?”
“Not Barth, but a couple of surgeons over at the med school who worked with us. They told him to take a hike and reported Nash to the university,” Anderson said. “The guy lives here in the Minneapolis area, and he’s been known to snoop around Medtronic, Boston Scientific, 3M, St. Jude, and a whole bunch of hearing aid companies. Either Medtronic or Boston Scientific actually got a restraining order against him, is what I hear.”
“Any hint that he might be violent?” Virgil asked.
“Yes!” Rosalind said. “He was arrested for assault after he was caught trespassing somewhere. I remember seeing it in the Star Tribune. I don’t remember where he was trespassing, but I remember the story.”
“The problem with Nash is, he has an alibi,” Virgil said. “If I’m remembering right, he was at a convention that night. There were several people who were willing to back him up on that.”
“Then he probably did it for sure,” Anderson said, leaning toward Virgil, a light in his eyes. “One thing I remember Barth telling me about him is that he always has an alibi. He never moves without an alibi. He’s been arrested at least a couple of times, but always had a story. Wasn’t there, didn’t do it. Wasn’t there when somebody talked directly to him. Barth and I were laughing about it. I was anyway.”
“Interesting,” Virgil said. “Boyd Nash.”
“That’s him,” Rosalind said. “I got a little chill when I thought of him. I think he could be something.”
* * *
—
Back across the river again in Minneapolis, Virgil found Trane, Cohen, Hardy, and a Hennepin County assistant attorney named Harmon Watts in an interview room at the jail. Virgil pulled Trane out—“We only need one minute”—and in the hallway told her about Boyd Nash.
“You think it could be something?”
“The lab people thought it was something,” Virgil said. “I think we’ve got to take a serious look at him.”
* * *
—
Back in the interview room, Watts asked, “What’s the history here?”
Virgil said, “You guys have to handle the details, I’m here as Maggie’s assistant. But I proposed to Mr. Hardy that we weren’t so much interested in the various possible charges against Miz Cohen as we are in getting complete cooperation from her.”
“How will you know if you’re getting complete cooperation?” Watts asked.
“Because if we don’t think we’re getting it, we walk away and refile,” Trane said.
“I’m going to need a false arrest waiver,” Watts said.
“We’re okay with that,” Hardy said.
Cohen said, “Wait. False arrest? Can we sue them for this?”
“Not really,” Hardy said.
Watts: “If you don’t sign the waiver, we don’t drop the charges and you go to jail. ’Cause it wasn’t a false arrest, but we don’t want you coming back later saying that it was.”
Hardy: “She’ll sign.”
And so on and so forth. Cohen signed, Watts picked up the paper, said, “Bless you all,” and left.
* * *
—
Virgil and Trane started pushing Cohen. She and Quill had made three separate trips to the library, all in the middle of the night. “An adventure,” she said, which Quill seemed to enjoy. “I wasn’t all that big on it because that yoga mat wasn’t thick enough and it hurt my back and ass,” she added.
Quill paid her five hundred dollars per trip.
They’d met on Tinder, first hooking up in Dinkytown. She knew he was well-off because of the car, but she hadn’t known his real name. She’d asked, and he told her it was Alex Nolan. She’d later tried to look him up on the internet, and while she’d found lots of Alex Nolans, none of them seemed to be the man she was having sex with. She hadn’t learned his real name until she’d seen a TV news story about his murder.
“So you did know about it,” Trane said. “In your apartment you told us—”
“She may have misspoken,” Hardy said. “Hardly a major issue.”
Cohen admitted that she knew that Quill must have been the man who’d taken her to the library, but said she was afraid to talk to the police. “I didn’t see how anything good could come from that. I mean, I didn’t know anything. And, you know, with my job and all, I’d be an easy one to pin it on.”
They took her through a second-by-second recital of their approach to the library. They’d met at a bar in Dinkytown, had walked across the campus, then across the footbridge, past a couple of dormitories, scouting the Wilson Library for lights.
“We saw some kids outside the dorms, around the dorms, but there was never anybody around that library. I mean, this was midnight,” she said. “The first two times, it was even later—like, one o’clock.”
Quill had a key. They entered the library, listened for sounds, heard none, then Quill took her hand and led her up a flight of steps to the second floor. His carrel was behind some high book stacks, and as they got close, they saw a light.
“I think it was an iPhone light. Alex—I mean, Dr. Quill—was holding my hand going up the stairs, but then we saw the light.”
Quill dropped her hand and whispered for her to stay where she was. She didn’t. She hid behind one of the tall bookshelves on the other side of the aisle from the shelves near the carrel. She heard Quill say something but wasn’t sure exactly what it was but thought he said he was calling the police. “I think I heard that word ‘police.’”
“Do you think they just ran into each other? Or was the killer waiting for Dr. Quill?” Virgil asked.
“Oh, I don’t know.” She squinted at the ceiling. “You know, why would he have the light on if he was trying to sneak? I think maybe it was an accident, that they ran into each other.”
Virgil: “Do you think the person, whoever it was, was already in the carrel when you got there?”
“Oh, yeah, I think so. Something else, you know, that I just thought of: I think Dr. Quill knew the person. Recognized him. I don’t know what he said, but the tone of his voice, it was like he knew him.”
“Maybe somebody from his lab?” Trane suggested.
“I don’t know. I’m not even sure about it. But when I think back, I think he reco
gnized him. Knew him.”
She heard the struggle, heard the door close, thought she heard keys, but remained huddled behind the shelves where she thought she wasn’t visible. When the light headed toward the stairs, she didn’t look at it, or the man who carried it, because she was afraid he’d see her eyes. “I kept my head down. So I never saw this other person.”
Virgil asked about drugs. “I’m not going to hassle you about it, but I need to know. Do you use coke?”
“I’ve tried it,” she admitted. “The guy buys it and wants to party, you know? I don’t buy it myself. It’s nice, but it’s expensive.”
“Did you ever give any to Quill?”
“Oh, no. He never mentioned drugs to me. You know, he was intense about the sex. He even got me off once, which never happens, but he did it because he was so into it. But as far as I know, he wasn’t into dope.”
They went over the story twice more, but nothing changed. Cohen had never been to Quill’s house, didn’t know he was a doctor. “I thought he was probably a finance guy. He acted like a finance guy. Except he didn’t fuck like a finance guy. He knew how to get it on. If you know what I mean.”
In the end, Trane said she’d go with Hardy to walk Cohen through the release procedures, which Watts had already approved. Virgil told Trane about talking to Foster and Foster’s suggestion that there must be something important on the missing laptop.
“Foster’s a smart guy, and he thinks the computer is the key, which would fit with this Boyd Nash character. When you think about it, if Nash is an industrial spy, it’d fit with the CD recording, too—an attempt at blackmail. Maybe he found out about the laptop but didn’t know Quill was . . . comforting . . . Miz Cohen.”
“‘Comforting,’” Trane repeated. “Nice.”
“You want to take Nash or should I?” Virgil asked.
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