“You can buy gloves that keep your wrists straight and teach you to rock your shoulders,” Virgil said.
O’Brien glanced back and asked, “You try them?”
“Yup. And some other things.”
“They work?” he asked.
“Not especially.”
“Thanks for the tip, then.” He said it with a quick smile, friendly enough.
—
O’Brien’s office wasspacious, but not ostentatious: picture of a woman with two kids on his L-shaped desk, turned so a visitor could see it. Probably his family, though they didn’t ask. Much of the wall space was taken up with plaques, photos with well-known senior politicians, including Senator Henderson. A flag hung from a pole in a corner.
O’Brien settled behind his desk, knit his fingers together on the desktop and asked, “What can I do for you?”
Lucas turned to Virgil and nodded, and Virgil said, “Twenty years ago, Doris Grandfelt, an accountant with Bee Accounting…”
Both Lucas and Virgil were watching O’Brien closely, and saw his eyes widen as he took a breath. He knew what was coming.
“…was murdered, stabbed to death. Recently, the investigation was reopened, and without going into a lot of detail, it wasdetermined that Doris was providing sexual services for pay and that you were one of her customers.”
O’Brien looked down at his fingers, then pulled them back and dropped his hands into his lap. He said, “Yeah. I…dated her once or twice. I certainly didn’t have anything to do with her murder.”
“Did you pay her?” Lucas asked.
“I…gave her gifts. We went dancing one time, the two other times…I gave her gifts.”
“You didn’t talk to police after her murder,” Virgil said.
O’Brien shrugged. “I was married at the time. I had nothing to do with the murder and I had no clue who might have done it. I was running for office, for the state legislature. This was in pre-Trump days, when an…affair…would have instantly thrown me out of the race. Which I won, incidentally.”
“We know,” Virgil said. “Would you be willing, now, to take a DNA test?”
“If it could be private. If it wouldn’t be spread all over these true crime sites,” O’Brien said. “I’ve been following this whole thing in the papers, on television, and it seems like you guys have pretty much gone to mob rule.”
Lucas, sharply: “Not us.”
“Bullshit. I saw lots of investigations when I was in the House, and I never saw anything like this,” O’Brien said, just as sharply. “Everybody in town is watching it. Every TV news show, and then this poor bastard from Nebraska got murdered.”
Lucas didn’t bother to correct him, but said, less sharply: “Okay, I know what you mean. I don’t like it any more than you do. Now…do you know any more of her customers? Anything that could help us?”
“I could give you a name, but I’d hate for it to get out, that the name came from me,” O’Brien said. “I’d feel like a rat. I’dbea rat.”
“This is not a TV show,” Lucas said. “We don’t think people who help us are rats.”
“Thisisa TV show, that’s the whole problem,” O’Brien said, rapping on his desktop with his knuckles. “Have you seen those pictures of her customers they have on the true crime sites? They’re all over the morning news programs. They’re hunting those guys down. I don’t know, there must be nine or ten of them, and the mob has torches and pitchforks and they’re hunting them down.”
“I didn’t know that they were on TV news,” Lucas said.
“They are. It scares the shit out of me,” O’Brien said, pushing away from his desk and looking around at his plaques in what looked like desperation. His face was red, and Virgil suddenly feared he might have a heart attack.
“Easy,” Virgil said. “We’ll have a crime scene woman come over to collect the DNA from you. It’s a simple gum scrub, takes only a couple of minutes. If you weren’t the last one to have sex with Doris…”
“No! No! That won’t help if my name gets out there. These other guys, the guys in the photos…There must be a dozen of them…”
“Eleven,” Lucas said.
