“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.”
“Theydidtalk 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.”
Quill nodded. She seemed to be coming alive. “I’ll do it. Call them.”
—
They had time to rehearse and set up the recording equipment and talk to Dick, the guy down the hall, who agreed, eventually, to go away between four and seven o’clock, not that he wanted to.
“I’d just watch,” he told Virgil.
“Can’t have outside witnesses,” Virgil said. “All the local police forces would be very, very grateful if you’d go watch a movie orgo on a date or something. I’ll give you twenty bucks out of my own pocket to get a pizza.”
Dick took the twenty, but grumbled about it.
—
At four forty-five, Virgil, Trane, and the tech services guy, whose name was Barry, were all in Dick’s room listening to Quill playing a Chainsmokers album. Barry said “She’s gotta turn that down.”
