—
There was no Recreation and Wellness Center when Virgil attended the university; at the time, even the word “wellness” probably hadn’t been invented, so he would go to “the gym.” Still, he knew where the RecWell was located because he’d driven by it a number of times.
He went there, was astonished at what he found—a fitness center that was a monument to wretched excess. He showed his badge at the front desk, was told that he was a half hour early for Thomas’s class. A female student aide, who looked like she could crack English walnuts between the cheeks of her ass, led him to a women’s locker room, left him outside, and a minute later returned with a slender, muscular woman whose red hair did indeed give her the aspect of a pileated woodpecker. She was wearing a two-piece yoga outfit in red and black that ended just below her knee. Also, below her knee, Virgil spotted an impact hematoma. As she walked up to Virgil, she crossed her arms over her chest, showing off solid biceps—both had dime-sized bruises, as though she been poked by fingertips or sticks—and asked, “What’s up?”
Virgil showed her his ID, and asked, “Have you talked to Terry Foster in the past couple of days?”
She frowned. “Well, no...”
“Terry was mugged—or beaten anyway—out behind his house,” Virgil said. “He’s over at Regions Hospital in St. Paul. He’s in pretty rough shape.”
She touched her lips with her fingers, and said, “Oh my God, he’s not going to—”
“He’s not going to die, but he’s pretty busted up and not in much condition to talk,” Virgil lied. “I’d like to ask you a few questions that might help us out.”
“Sure. Let’s go out in the hall, there are benches... When did this happen?” she asked.
“A couple of nights ago,” Virgil said.
“Okay, I haven’t seen him in a week. I’ll go over there tonight if they’ll let me see him.”
“Tomorrow might be better,” Virgil said. He didn’t want her getting there before he did. “Like I said, he’s hurting and a little drugged up.”
“I wonder why he didn’t call me?”
Virgil said, “For one thing, he can’t use a telephone—both of his arms are broken and in casts.”
“Oh, jeez.”
They found a bench under a big red “M,” and Virgil said, “Everybody says Terry’s a quiet guy and friendly. Would you know of anything at all that might have led to his being attacked? No matter how unlikely it might be?”
She looked at him for a long time, and Virgil thought, Ah—she does, and then she said, “Terry is a nice guy, and I wouldn’t want to get him in trouble.”
“Are you saying there is something?”
She looked down at her shoes for a moment, then said, “Youknow that there was a professor who was murdered here a couple of weeks ago? Over in the Wilson Library?”
Virgil tap-danced. “Oh, yeah. That doctor, right?”
She nodded. “Dr. Quill. Terry’s in the Cultural Science Department—so am I, that’s how we met—and we’ve had this feud with Dr. Quill’s department. Dr. Quill and Dr. Green—she’s the head of our department—were feuding. Last time I was over at Terry’s, he told me he was going to look into it. The murder. He wanted to see if he could clear the department.”
“Look into it? How was he going to do that?” Virgil asked.
“He said... Well, he said he was going to check some people out. I asked him how, and he said on the internet. He knows a lot of computer stuff from when he was in the Army. He was an intelligence officer.”
“You wouldn’t know any names of who he was checking on?”
“No, but I was curious and might have nagged him a little. He said he’d gotten all the names of the people involved from the newspapers and from talking to people around Cultural Science. He said he’d run them through the mill—through the net. Including Dr. Green,” Thomas said. Then, “Oh, wait! I do know one other person. He was going to check Dr. Quill’s daughter because people were wondering if she was going to be the big financial winner from Dr. Quill being murdered. The newspapers said he was rich.”
That was all she had, but Virgil had now connected Foster to the Quill murder. There could be two reasons for Foster’s investigation: he was trying to clear Green and her department or he was monitoring the investigation to see if the cops were getting close to somebody. Or both.
—
One way to find out.
Fifteen minutes after he left Thomas, Virgil pulled into the parking lot at Regions Hospital and took the elevator up to Foster’s floor, walking through a hospital smell that might be alcohol that was the same in every hospital. When he looked into Foster’s room, he found a nurse hand-feeding him. Foster said, “You’re back... I’ll be a couple more minutes here...”
“Take your time,” Virgil said. He asked the nurse, “What causes the hospital smell? That makes all hospitals smell alike?”
