Bloody Genius

by John Sandford

  “You found him, you take him. I’ll take a look at Hardy’s partner, this Jones guy. I’m interested in that whole sequence of events. Remember, Quill might not have practiced medicine, but he was an M.D. If he spotted that whole pill bottle problem—the one you spotted—and started mooting around the idea that Frank McDonald was murdered . . .”

  Virgil concurred, and asked, “You want to look at my cut lip?”

  “No, I believe you. But . . .”

  “What?”

  “Until you showed up, I was running a nice logical investigation. Somehow, Flowers, you got me up to my hips in weird shit. How’d you do that?”

  CHAPTER

  NINETEEN

  Virgil started his run at Boyd Nash by going back to Trane’s desk at Minneapolis Homicide. He got Nash’s records from the DMV. Both his past and current driver’s licenses showed the same address. Virgil checked the address with the street view on Google Earth and found himself looking at a rambling ranch-style house, of white stone and natural wood, in the city of Edina, south of Minneapolis. A quick trip out to Zillow suggested the house would be worth something like a million and a half dollars.

  If Nash was a thief, he was a good one.

  Next he called up the files Trane had pulled from the National Crime Information Center. Boyd had been arrested twice for assault. First for going after a security guard at a Medtronic office in Fridley, a suburb of Minneapolis. That was a mistake: the security guard moonlighted as a bouncer at a biker bar and kicked Boyd’s ass before he called the cops.

  The charges had been dismissed.

  Then he was charged with domestic assault by a woman named Jon-Ellen Nord.

  Again, the charges were dismissed.

  Fridley was in Anoka County and he couldn’t raise anyone at the county attorney’s office, but the second arrest was in Hennepin County—in the city of Bloomington—and he did get an assistant county attorney in Hennepin and she was willing to give a little after-hours help.

  She walked away from the phone for a few minutes, came back, and said that the woman who was attacked had dropped the charges. When the county attorney had resisted that decision, Nord had said that she’d overstated the seriousness of the attack.

  Virgil: “What do you think?”

  “There’s a totally improper note in the file,” the assistant county attorney said. “It says ‘The bitch was paid off.’ Remember that because I’m now removing it.”

  “What do you think about that? The note?”

  “I think the bitch was paid off,” she said.

  “You got an address for her?”

  * * *

  —

  Jon-Ellen Nord lived in a snug green bungalow on Minnehaha Creek in south Minneapolis, a distinctly upscale neighborhood with lots of trees and the creek running through backyards. There was a light in the window, but no cars in sight; there was a detached two-car garage in back, so the cars could be there. Virgil cruised by the place a couple of times before he slowed and pulled into the driveway. He could see the flicker of a television screen as he walked to the front door and rang the bell.

  Jon-Ellen Nord was a lanky, small-headed, dark-haired woman with suspicious dark eyes. She was probably around fifty years old, Virgil thought. Virgil identified himself and held up his ID so she could read it, and, after she had, she pushed open the door, and asked, “What’s this about?”

  “I’d like to talk to you about an acquaintance of yours, Boyd Nash.”

  “Haven’t seen Boyd in a couple of years. What’s he done now?”

  “I don’t know if he’s done anything. We’re looking at a serious crime, and his name came up. Could be nothing, but we have to check.”

  “How serious a crime?”

  “Murder,” Virgil said.

  She pushed the door farther open, and said, “Come in.”

  He followed her inside; she left behind a light trace of floral perfume that reminded him of the scent of lilies of the valley. The house itself was snug: older, with smaller rooms, hardwood floors, a fieldstone fireplace, and built-in bookshelves. Nord had cats, three of them. Two were tabbies, one red and one gray. The third was black and white with a pink nose. The tabbies were shy and peeked around corners. The black-and-white cat came up and rubbed against Virgil’s leg, and when Nord pointed Virgil at a chair, the cat made a move to jump on his lap. Nord grabbed it and deposited it on top of an upright piano. She took an overstuffed chair facing Virgil, and said, “If Boyd killed somebody, it was either an accident or involved really big money. He wouldn’t kill anybody unless there was a large payoff.”

  “You think he could kill somebody?”

  “Oh, sure. He’s a classic sociopath. Doesn’t care about anyone but number one,” she said. “He can be charming, if he tries, but it’s always calculated. Taking care of number one would include staying out of jail. I’m sure you know he assaulted me, that’s why you’re here.”

  “I saw that in a case file,” Virgil said. “Exactly what was the situation there?”

  “He beat me up. We’d dated a couple of times—maybe three—and then I broke it off. He showed up at my door, right here, high as a kite and angry. I tried arguing with him through the screen door, and he grabbed the door handle and yanked the hook right out of the jamb,” Nord said. Her voice was flat, unemotional, as though she were talking about something she’d read. “I tried to push him out, and he started slapping me, and then he hit me with his fists. I had bruises all over my face and my rib cage. I hurt for weeks. Lucky for me, a neighbor was passing by with his wife, and they witnessed it and called nine-one-one. Boyd ran for it, but the neighbors jotted down the license plate number and the make of his car, and the police caught him less than a mile from here. He had blood on his hands.”

  “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?”

  “Did you ever know a guy named Dex, maybe Dexter, may or may not have dealt drugs, looks like a taller version of one of the Seven Dwarfs?”

  “Sure. Dexter Hamm. He’s a hangout guy, does this and that.”

  “Selling drugs?”

  “Maybe, at one time or another, but not as a profession. He might have dealt to friends as a favor. Deals a little real estate, buys cars out at the auction, resells them. He puts this guy with that guy, and deals get done. He’s been around forever, knows everybody. Like that.”

  “A street guy, then,” Virgil said.

  “Yeah, but not a bottom-feeder. He’ll make a few bucks by the end of the year.”

  “Where would I find him?”

  “Damned if I know,” Capslock said. “He’s more Minneapolis than St. Paul. I’ve never been to his place, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he had a set address. Check the DMV.”

  “Thanks for that,” Virgil said.

  “Sure. Hamm—two ‘m’s. I get the feeling that I’m your new go-to guy for dirtbag contacts.”

  “Well, yeah.”

  * * *

  —

  According to the DMV, Hamm lived in a condo in what used to be the warehouse district adjacent to downtown Minneapolis. Though it was getting late, Virgil decided to take a shot at a contact and headed downtown.

  Hamm’s place was a brick-and-glass cube, a couple of decades old, with a keypad at street level to get into the lobby and a video camera that looked down at a brass plate with buttons for each individual apartment. Hamm was listed, and when Virgil pushed the button, he answered, “Do I know you?”

  “No. I’m an agent with the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension,” Virgil said. “I need to speak to you for a few minutes.”

  “About what?”

  “Boyd Nash.”

  “We’re no longer associated,” Hamm said.

  “I still need to speak to you. Push the button for the door or it’ll get unnecessarily complicated.”

  After a moment of silence, the door buzzer sounded, and Virgil pushed inside. Hamm lived on the third floor, and Virgil took the stairs, both because he needed the exercise and because if Hamm ran for it he’d probably take the stairs.

  Virgil met no one coming down, and when he emerged in a third floor lobby, he saw Hamm standing down the hall at an open door; he did look like a taller version of one of the Seven Dwarfs—Sneezy, Virgil thought.

  On the other hand, his voice sounded like Waylon Jennings’s. He said, “In here,” and led the way into his apartment. “What’s your name?”

  “Virgil Flowers.”

  “Flowers? I used to know a Tommy Flowers, out of Chicago.”

  “No relation,” Virgil said.

  Hamm’s apartment was like an unconscious man cave—not designed to be one, but it was—two brown corduroy-covered easy chairs, with a matching ottoman for each, facing an oversized TV with five-foot-high speakers on either side of it tuned to an all-sports channel, the baked-in scent of cigars and microwaved mac ’n’ cheese, floor-to-ceiling windows looking out at the condo across the street.

  Hamm pointed at one of the chairs, and said, “This has got to be way after duty hours. Want a beer?”

  “Sure,” Virgil said.

  Hamm got two Dos Equis out of his refrigerator, popped off their caps with a counter-mounted opener, handed one to Virgil, settled into the other brown chair, and asked, “What’s that asshole up to now? Boyd.”

  “I was hoping you could tell me.”

  “We haven’t been associated for more than a year,” Hamm said. “I set up a deal on a nice piece of property off Lake Nokomis: little old lady died and left a teardown sitting on a gold mine. The relatives—the heirs—were out in Dayton, didn’t know their ass from a hole in the ground. Nobody saw it but me. My piece would have been fifty K. And Boyd fucked me out of it.”

  “I’ve been told that he’s ethically challenged,” Virgil said.

  Hamm snorted. “That’s the kindest description you could put on him.” He poured some beer down his throat, coughed, then asked, “What are you looking for?”

  “I would fear for your future as a go-to guy if I told you and then you spread it around,” Virgil said.

  “Us go-to guys can keep our mouths shut when we need to,” Hamm said. “That’s part of our package.”

  Virgil nodded. “I’m investigating the murder of Barthelemy Quill, a professor over at the university. He was doing cutting-edge research on spinal cord repairs. You know, trying to repair nerve damage in quadriplegics and paraplegics.”

  “Okay, that sounds like something Boyd would try to steal. You think he killed Quill?”

  “I don’t know, but his name c
ame up as somebody who’d spent time stalking Quill’s lab,” Virgil said. “You think he could kill?”

  “Boyd? Sure, no problem. Well, small problem: he wouldn’t want to get caught. He wouldn’t kill unless he thought he was ninety-nine-point-nine percent likely to get away with it. If he planned to kill, he’d have a heavy-duty alibi.”

  “And you have no idea of what he’s up to now?”

  “I didn’t say that,” Hamm said. “I asked if you knew, to see if it was the same thing I know.”

  “I have no idea what he’s doing,” Virgil said. “I’ve never seen the guy or spoken to him. So, what do you know?”

  “He won’t hear it came from me? Because he could be a killer, and I know he holds a grudge,” Hamm said.

  “I’ll keep it under my hat best I can,” Virgil said.

  Hamm took another swallow of beer, then said, “Have you ever heard of a company called Surface Research?”

  “No.”

  “It’s not huge,” Hamm went on. “But, it’s not small, either. The engineers who started it, they have a private jet, you know. A small jet, but they’d like to have a big one. What they do is, they develop paints for different kinds of difficult to cover surfaces. That’s where their name comes from—they cover surfaces.”

  “Paint?”

  “Yeah. Big money in it, you’d be surprised,” Hamm said. “Stock tip: you can buy Surface Research for ten bucks a share right now, and it’s going to fifty in two years, maybe more.”

  “Why would—”

  “—Boyd be interested in paint? Because of the money involved,” Hamm said. “What I hear is, Surface Research is developing a glass-and-metal-based paint for striping highways. It has to be certain specific colors—white and yellow, I guess—and, I’m told, also a clear paint, transparent. It has to be way durable and make it through all kinds of traffic and temperature extremes twenty-four hours a day.”

  “The road paint they’ve got now isn’t good enough?” Virgil asked. “Seems like there might be a lot of competition.”