“Yeah. Sergeant Trane asked me about it, why he’d have it, what he was doing with it. I didn’t know, but I asked her what the big deal was, we’re not doing anything secret here. She said it was possible that the laptop was the murder weapon.”
“Can you think of anything somebody could do with that computer, something that he might have on it, that would get him killed?” Virgil asked. “I understand it was a heavy-duty machine.”
“Sergeant Trane asked me the same question. I couldn’t think of anything. But I’m not sure the power of the computer was significant. Barth was a gear freak. If he bought a set of golf clubs, he’d get the best ones anybody ever heard of; if he bought a shotgun, it’d be a great shotgun—y’know, from Italy or something. If he bought a laptop, he’d get the fastest, most powerful he could find. He was rich. When it came to gear, he routinely bought the best. He had a Leica camera and a bunch of lenses he used for snapshots, the same stuff the rest of us use our iPhones for.”
Quill wasn’t sleeping with anybody in the lab, Anderson said, and none of the women there seemed like they’d be much interested in him. He had that three-wife history and was curt, at best, with all the lab people, even those he liked.
“Any possibility that he might get together with women online?” Virgil asked.
Anderson thought for a moment, then said, “I don’t know. Frankly, it wouldn’t astonish me. The efficiency of it would appeal to him. Sex on demand, without commitment. I understand that there’s often a money exchange involved in the hookups.”
“So, women might be another form of gear,” Virgil suggested. “Get what you want, pay your money, and be done with it.”
“That’s about it,” Anderson said.
—
Anderson walked through the lab and into the computer space with Virgil as Virgil was leaving but stopped to talk to the woman Virgil had followed into the lab. Anderson said to him, “This is Julie Payne. She knows everything.” Then to Payne: “Was Barth interested in any of the women in the lab?”
She cracked a smile, and said, “No.”
“It was that clear?” Virgil asked.
“Yes. He wasn’t interested in any of us.”
Virgil: “Did he have a girlfriend?”
“That’s harder. Some days he’d come in—this was after he’d left his wife—and he’d have that look that men get after a night of hot sex,” Payne said. “The postcoital, empty prostate macho glow. Both relaxed and predatory, looking for a new target.”
“I didn’t know we got that look,” Virgil said.
“Well, you do. I first spotted it in my ex-husband. First because of me, then later not so much,” Payne said.
“Then you think a girlfriend is likely?”
“Sex seemed likely. I wouldn’t go so far as to say he had a girlfriend. One time, this girl from the hospital came over with someimages for Sally—Sally works here, she’s a tech—and they were talking, and this girl said she might try Tinder. Dr. Quill was going by and heard that and said something like, ‘Real bad idea.’ He didn’t say anything else, just kept walking, but he obviously knew what Tinder was.”
“Tinder is pay-to-play?”
“Not supposed to be but sometimes is,” Payne said. “Not all full-time hookers. Sometimes, it’s just a girl who needs a quick couple of thousand so she can go to Mardi Gras or something. The Virgin Islands or Cabo in February.”
“Would Dr. Quill take that risk? A hookup for money?”
She shrugged. “Don’t know. If he did, it would be calculated and probably not much of a risk.”
“How would I find one of these women?”
“Stroke to the right, big guy,” Payne said. And then she had to explain what that meant.
—
Something to think about. Pubic hairs, a yoga mat, an empty prostate macho glow. Why would a hooker kill him and why would she leave behind his wallet, with its unidentifiable currency? Everything she did take—the computer, the keys, the phone—would be evidence against her. And only the computer could be fenced, and not for much, no matter what it originally cost.
—
Virgil had some time to kill before the meeting with Trane and the cop, so he stopped off in St. Paul for a Butter Flake Roll at Breadsmith, went next door for a Strawberry Surf Rider Smoothiefrom Jamba Juice, then idled around the corner and looked in a bookstore window until he finished eating and drinking his smoothie, then went inside and bought the latest Dave Robicheaux novel by James Lee Burke.
He made it to St. Paul police headquarters fifteen minutes ahead of time and sat and read the novel until he saw Trane coming down the street.
