Trane drove. As she did, Virgil said, “Things are starting to pile up. There’s a computer and a phone and keys out there somewhere. If we could find any of them, that’d be big. Quill was fighting with Green, and Green supposedly has at least a couple of students who are capable of violence. He has an estranged wife who would greatly profit from his death. He might or might notuse cocaine, so he might or might not know drug dealers. He might or might not have a girlfriend with a dog who hasn’t made herself known, which is interesting. He was probably killed by somebody he somewhat trusted, since he was turned away from them in the carrel. He was selfish about giving his employees scientific credit. And Quill might have been involved—somehow—in an illegal medical procedure. The killer’s probably male, or a strong female, to be able to hit him with a heavy laptop. Anything else?”
“I’ll think of something else later. Right now, that seems to be the list. I don’t see any connections.”
“Neither do I. Maybe we’ll get some from the horsewoman.”
“There’s a word you don’t often hear: ‘horsewoman.’”
“But you hear it more often than you do ‘horseman,’” Virgil said.
—
They spoke to the staff at Starbucks. Nobody could remember seeing a redheaded horsewoman. They had a number of redheads, though, and a horsewoman in English riding gear who was a frequent customer, but the woman was black. Another frequent customer came in with a German shepherd guide dog, but was seeing-impaired and male, and the dog was mostly tan with some black markings.
Several members of the weekday staff weren’t working. Trane got a Venti cappuccino, and Virgil a hot chocolate, and they walked back to her car. “I’ll check with the staff on Monday. You’re going home tonight?” she asked.
“Yeah. I’ll take a printout of your files with me, read them again,” Virgil said. “The rest of the day, I got the names of thesetwo Green grad students who she thought might be capable of violence. I’ll look them up before I leave town. I’ll call if that turns into anything.”
“I’m interested in this girlfriend. I’ll check everybody on that, and I’ll see if I can wake up a narc and ask about dealers who sell coke to faculty over here... if they know anybody like that.”
“One hand on your gun if you find the dealer.”
“Always.”
CHAPTER
NINE
Virgil had gotten two names from Katherine Green, the Cultural Science professor. They were Clete May, the man who might have macho problems but was useful for carrying heavy stuff; and Terry Foster, an Army veteran who’d apparently fought in Iraq or Syria.
May lived in Dinkytown, which was closest, so Virgil went there first. He always preferred not to call ahead, when he could avoid it, but to surprise the subject. May’s address turned out to be an old, blue two-story clapboard house, cut up into four apartments, much like the house Megan Quill lived in.
May lived in apartment A, at the front of the house on the first floor. When Virgil rang the bell, he heard footfalls, and then a barefoot young woman with dark brown hair and dark brown eyes, carrying a bagel with cream cheese, opened the door, and asked, “Yes? Who are you?”
Virgil identified himself, showed his ID, and asked for May.The woman said, “He’s around the side of the house, shooting his bow.”
“He won’t shoot me, will he?”
“Not on purpose. But he’s not very good with it yet, so I can’t make any promises. You know, like, ricochets.” She smiled and pointed him around to the side of the house, and he walked back outside and around and found May lying on his back on the concrete driveway, shooting extraordinarily long wooden arrows from an extraordinarily long wooden bow at a straw target the size of a dinner plate backed with a sheet of plywood.
As Virgil watched, May released an arrow, which missed the target but hit the plywood sheet and bounced off. Two other arrows were already sticking out of the target, and two more lay in front of the backing.
When the arrow bounced, Virgil asked, “What happens if you miss the plywood?”
May craned his neck around, took in Virgil, and said, “I don’t do that anymore. When I did do it, they’d skid down the driveway until they stopped. It’s not a heavy bow; they don’t go far. Fucks up the arrow feathers, though.”
Virgil identified himself again, and May stood up. He was an inch taller than Virgil, a bit overweight but with solid biceps and triceps, and he appeared to be in his mid-twenties. He had black hair that fell over his brown eyes, a scruffy beard, and a fleshy nose. He said, “I already talked to the lady detective. Who sicced you on me?”
“She did. She thought maybe you’d figured something out since she talked to you. And she told me about you being arrested for hitting a guy with a chair.”
“I pled not guilty. The other guy was a serious asswipe,” Maysaid. “The county attorney is already talking to my dad—my dad’s a lawyer—about me taking a plea on a lesser charge, but we declined. I didn’t hit the guy with the chair, I defended myself with it. The video proves it. I was keeping him off me.”
Virgil bobbed his head, but said, “That’s not quite the reputation you have around Cultural Science. They say you can be a little overaggressive. Into martial arts and so on.”
“Well, that’s true,” May said. “But I didn’t kill Quill. I wasn’t even pissed off at him. I sorta like Cultural Science because you don’t have to work too hard at it, and if you’ve got the cash, you can make interesting trips to places you don’t usually see. I’ve been to Egypt, Madagascar, Japan, made a couple trips to India. I’ll get my Ph.D. and go teach someplace that’s got a ski mountain and no restrictions on screwing your students. Utah, Colorado, Vermont. Like that.”
“Did you know Quill?”
“Not really. I mean, he showed up at Katherine’s lecture with a bunch of his apostles and started screaming at her,” May said. “Called her a twat. If you didn’t take it too seriously, it was pretty funny.”
