As Tuna Fish had said, Green was a hottie, one of those attractive, smart, professional women with wire-rimmed glasses and a nice haircut and tidy breasts under a pale blue blouse who’d look great with her head on a pillow and her legs wrapped around his neck, in Virgil’s humble opinion. He didn’t mention his opinion but looked steadily into her eyes and extended a hand to be shaken, which she did.

She pointed at the visitor’s chair, sat down herself, and asked, “Have you really killed someone with your shotgun?”

“Yes,” Virgil said. “He was trying to kill me at the time. I tried to talk him out of it, but he was recalcitrant and continued trying to kill me. So, I shot him. I feel bad about it. But not too bad. The memory isn’t incapacitating or anything.”

“That would be an interesting study . . . people who have killed other people and how they feel about it,” Green said. “Has modern American gun society so deadened our reactions to killing that we don’t even experience an emotional toll when we ourselves kill someone? A longitudinal study, going back after a month, six months, a year, two years, and so on, would be interesting. Does the memory fade? Does the shooter avoid negative psychological consequences because of cultural conditioning through social media? How do American reactions to killing compare with non-gun societies? England, perhaps. Or Denmark.”

Virgil crossed his legs, settling into his chair, and said, “I personally know several guys—actually, I know a woman as well—who’ve killed other people and their reactions are all over the place. Some of them, it doesn’t seem to affect, but others are screwed up about it. Still others seem screwed up, but only to the extent that it gets them time off or disability pay or job preferences.”

“Interesting,” she said. She made a note on a desk pad. “Now, what can I do for you? On this Quill murder? I’ve told the police—”

Virgil held up a hand. “I know, I read Sergeant Trane’s account of your testimony. I just wanted to push it around the plate.”

“I don’t believe I’ve encountered that idiom before, ‘push it around the plate,’” Green said. She scribbled another note. “Where’d you hear it?”

“My mother used it,” Virgil said. “So. What was your personal relationship to Dr. Quill?”

She recoiled. “None. I never . . . Are you suggesting—”

“No, no, no.” Virgil smiled. “I’m not talking about sex, heaven forbid. I’m asking if you talked, outside of these conflicts you had recently, about the t-word thing?”

“‘T-word’? You mean ‘twat’?’”

“Yes. Did you talk—”

“I don’t believe I ever said a word to him in my entire life before he came to my lecture and began yelling at me,” Green said. “Then I went to his seminar, and, well, we didn’t actually speak, we shouted at each other.”

“And you didn’t kill him?”

“Of course not! I mean—”

“I had to ask,” Virgil said, holding up his hands, flashing another smile. “How about other people from Cultural Science? Is there anyone involved with your department that you might think capable of murder? Even if the murder was impulsive, as opposed to planned?”

She stared at him for a moment, then said, “I suppose you do have to ask.” She turned away, looking out a window at the brick wall of another building, then turned back and said, “Do you know about Clete?”

“Clete? Was he the guy charged with assault after your speech?”

“Yes. Clete May. He has what I’d call a machismo thing—sometimes a problem, sometimes not. That can be quite useful when doing cultural research. You know, he’s happy to carry heavy things for us women, pick up the check more often than he has to, possibly defend us in the more misogynistic cultures. That kind of thing. He also has a tendency to lean into our female students and staff.”

“‘Lean into’? You mean ‘grab’? ‘Pressure’? ‘Assault’?” Virgil asked.

“No, I meant what I said: lean. He leans into them. He moves into their spaces, whether he’s welcome or not. Somehow, I feel that you might be familiar with the concept.”

“I would never lean into anyone’s space if I weren’t welcome,” Virgil said.

“How can you tell without trying?” Green asked.

“You’d have to be a moron not to know,” Virgil said.

“Really?”

“Yes.”

“Interesting. Differing levels of empathy among males. Does it begin in childhood? Is a dominant mother involved?” She made another note, then asked, “Would you consider your mother to hold the dominant role in your kinship group?”

“Who?”

“Your nuclear family?”

“Well, I never thought about it. Now that you ask, no, not especially. We were all pretty equal.”

“Interesting,” she said. “Did your family group hold any extensive moral attitudes?”

Virgil shrugged. “My father’s a Lutheran minister. I went to church every Sunday and Wednesday night until I was eighteen.”

“Interesting,” she said, and she made another note.

* * *

—

Virgil tried to regain control of the interview. “This Clete May. Do you think—”

“He might be capable of violence, but he’s not a stupid person, a thug, by any means. I know that he’s studied martial arts, but also that he’s deeply interested in Zen Buddhism. He makes friends easily enough, yet I sense a certain . . . calculation . . . in all of it. I’ve heard him talk about fighting—street fighting—but I’m not sure he’s done it, but he sure talks about it. Maybe he gets it from movies, I don’t know.”

“I’ll speak to him,” Virgil said. “You won’t come into it.”

“I appreciate that,” Green said. “There’s another man, Terry Foster, who served in the military in the Middle East. He’s quite mild-mannered. I’ve never seen anything that would suggest that he could become violent, but I’ve been told that he was wounded in action over there. I’ve never heard him speak about it and I never asked.”

Virgil noted the names, and Green said he could get contact information from the secretary. He pushed her on her relationship with Quill, and if she was telling the truth, there was nothing there but an academic conflict.

“Quill was trying to get your department abolished. If that happened, who’d be hurt worst?”