Anderson leaned back in his chair as if slapped. “Oh... Let’s... Ah, Jesus...”
Virgil registered the name but couldn’t remember exactly where he’d seen it. “Who’s Boyd Nash?”
“He’s this guy. You know, those guys who drive around the country looking for antiques they can buy cheap? They’re called pickers?”
“Antiques?” Virgil said. “I don’t—”
“Nash is like a picker, but he doesn’t pick antiques, he picks scientific ideas. He’s a giant asshole.”
“And a creep,” Rosalind said. “He dyes his hair so it’s auburn, but he’s got all this furry white hair coming out of his ears.”
Virgil: “Wait a minute. He does something with patents? Did you guys tell Sergeant Trane about him?”
“I might have mentioned him in passing,” Anderson said. “I don’t have any good reason to think he’d hurt Barth, but he’s such a greedy, criminal pissant.”
Rosalind: “He did patent trolling. The most unethical... I don’t think he still does it, he got in some kind of trouble.”
“Tell me about patent trolling. Sergeant Trane mentioned it, but I don’t remember the details,” Virgil said.
“Nash has some kind of technical or scientific background. He’d look for companies or labs that were doing research toward a certain product. Something that can be monetized. What he did was, he’d figure out what must be part of that product when it’s finally produced.”
“Give me an example,” Virgil said.
Ann jumped in. “Supposed you knew Apple was doing research on cell phones, so you draw up plans for a tiny microphone, or speaker, because you know the phone will have to have those things. Then you say your tiny speakers are to be used in cell phones and you patent them without any research at all,” shesaid. “When the iPhone comes out, you sue, claiming it infringes on your crappy patent. Usually, it’s a bunch of unethical lawyers, and all they have going for themselves is the willingness to sue forever and be a nuisance until the company they’re suing finally buys them off.”
“Okay. Trane told me about this guy. But you don’t think he’s still doing that?”
Anderson said, “I heard—I don’t know where—that he moved over to industrial spying. Instead of faking patents, he’s looking for people willing to sell out original research. Real research. Go to Motorola and figure out what they were doing with phones and then try to peddle that information to Apple.”
Ann said, “I heard—I don’t know if it’s true—that some witness got caught lying in court about one of his patent trolls, and it looked like he could be in serious trouble, and so could the law firm he was working with. Subornation of perjury or something.”
“I heard that he and the law firm broke up, and that’s when he went to industrial spying,” Anderson added.
“And he might have approached somebody at this lab?”
“Not Barth, but a couple of surgeons over at the med school who worked with us. They told him to take a hike and reported Nash to the university,” Anderson said. “The guy lives here in the Minneapolis area, and he’s been known to snoop around Medtronic, Boston Scientific, 3M, St. Jude, and a whole bunch of hearing aid companies. Either Medtronic or Boston Scientific actually got a restraining order against him, is what I hear.”
“Any hint that he might be violent?” Virgil asked.
“Yes!” Rosalind said. “He was arrested for assault after he was caught trespassing somewhere. I remember seeing it in theStarTribune. I don’t remember where he was trespassing, but I remember the story.”
“The problem with Nash is, he has an alibi,” Virgil said. “If I’m remembering right, he was at a convention that night. There were several people who were willing to back him up on that.”
“Then he probably did it for sure,” Anderson said, leaning toward Virgil, a light in his eyes. “One thing I remember Barth telling me about him is that he always has an alibi. He never moves without an alibi. He’s been arrested at least a couple of times, but always had a story. Wasn’t there, didn’t do it. Wasn’t there when somebody talked directly to him. Barth and I were laughing about it. I was anyway.”
“Interesting,” Virgil said. “Boyd Nash.”
“That’s him,” Rosalind said. “I got a little chill when I thought of him. I think he could be something.”
—
Back across the river again in Minneapolis, Virgil found Trane, Cohen, Hardy, and a Hennepin County assistant attorney named Harmon Watts in an interview room at the jail. Virgil pulled Trane out—“We only need one minute”—and in the hallway told her about Boyd Nash.
“You think it could be something?”
“The lab people thought it was something,” Virgil said. “I think we’ve got to take a serious look at him.”
—
