“You know I got nothing useful from her, but go ahead,” Trane said. “Maybe if a cowboy blows softly in her ear, she’ll cough something up.”

“You think she’s . . . needy . . . ?”

“That’s a kind way of putting it, but yes,” Trane said. “She’s a sad sack. She wants somebody to love her, and she’s nice-enough-looking, but she’s annoying. She winds up sleeping with people who want the sex but not the woman. You’ll see.”

“Where am I going to find her?”

“You know, it’s Saturday, so she’ll probably still be asleep, if she’s home. She’s over in St. Paul. Let me give you the address.”

CHAPTER

EIGHT

   Megan Quill lived in the upstairs apartment of a tree-shaded private home off Selby Avenue, three blocks from the University of St. Thomas. The home was older, pre–World War II, two stories with an attic under the roof, with white clapboard siding and a stingy front porch. Virgil was familiar with Selby from his days as a St. Paul cop—he’d taken any number of calls on the street, including a murder, but miles farther east. He parked under a maple tree and walked up to the front door, which had three mailboxes to one side.

Access to the second-floor apartment was up an interior staircase.

Virgil rang the doorbell, and, a moment later, an elderly lady shuffled up to the door, opened it three or four inches, and asked through the crack, “Can I help you?”

Virgil identified himself, and asked about Quill.

“Well, she’s up. I heard her flush the toilet,” the old woman said, opening the door all the way. She was chewing something and smelled of masticated bread. “You can go on up, she’s in number one. There’s another ringer by her door, push the button. She has friends over.”

The house smelled of musty wallpaper and bug spray, and the narrow, dark wooden stairs creaked as Virgil went up. A short hallway apparently led to a bathroom at the back of the house with a door that had a silver 2 next to it. Virgil went back the other way, to the front of the house, to a door with a 1. He pushed the button to the side of the door, and, from inside the room, a woman shouted, “What?”

Virgil didn’t want to shout an answer, so he pushed the button again.

“For Christ’s sakes, who is it? I’m not up,” the woman said. “Is that you, Walt?”

Virgil said, as quietly as he could and still be heard on the other side of the door, “Bureau of Criminal Apprehension.”

After a moment of silence, he heard voices, then footsteps coming to the door, which flew open. Megan Quill, standing there barefoot in a cranberry-colored terry-cloth robe, was a fleshy young woman. She was pretty, medium blond, with a narrow nose and thin lips much like her father’s, and hazy blue eyes. Under her left eye, she had a bruise the size of a half-dollar, now going yellow.

At the same time that she opened the door, the door opened on apartment 2, and a white man with the North Korean dictator’s haircut stuck his head out. Quill shouted, her voice shrill as a stepped-on cat’s, “Go back inside, Dick. This is none of your goddamn business.”

The man’s head disappeared and the door slammed. Quill said to Virgil, “I already talked to the police. Like, three times.”

“I know, but I’m new on the case and wanted to chat,” Virgil said. “What happened to your eye?”

“Well, I wasn’t beat up or anything,” she said. “I got all these games stacked up in my closet. Some asshole in high school gave me a wooden chessboard, and when I tried to pull another game out, the chessboard flew off the top and hit me in the fuckin’ eye. I mean, like, Jesus Christ, I thought I was blinded. It only weighed about fifty pounds.”

“Can I come in?”

She walked away from the open door, and Virgil followed, pushing the door shut. Quill had two rooms—a living room, with a bed that folded out from a couch, and a kitchen/dining area. A fat kid, wearing a T-shirt that said “Waterboard Warehouse—America’s Waterboard Super Store,” sat at the kitchen table, cursing at an Apple laptop; and a tall, long-haired blond dude with an earring and wearing a knee-to-neck cook’s apron, but nothing else, was scrambling eggs at the stove. Both the men appeared to be in their early twenties.

A side door led to a compact bathroom that once had been a large closet. Virgil could see a sink, with a medicine cabinet above it, the edge of a toilet, and a handle to a door that probably opened on a shower. There was a fourth door, closed but with no lock, so it was probably a closet.

Quill said to the two guys, “The cops are here.”

The guy at the computer said, “Eh, what’s up, doc?” in a perfect imitation of Bugs Bunny. The dude said, “I was offered some, but I didn’t inhale,” and, “You want some scrambled eggs? They’re really good: I use paprika.”

Virgil shook his head, said, “No, thanks,” then said to Quill, “I need to ask you some questions. If you’d prefer to do it in private, you could ask your friends to take a walk around the block. The dude might want to put on some pants.”

“No way,” she said. “I want witnesses.”

* * *

—

Quill dropped onto the bed, her robe parting as she did it, exposing her legs to a soft, unblemished mid-thigh. She said to Virgil, “There’s a folding chair in the closet. Or you can sit on the corner of the bed.”

Virgil wanted to look in the closet anyway, so he opened the door without a lock, found four metal folding chairs under a hanger bar that was loaded with jeans and blouses. He pulled out one of the chairs, unfolded it, and sat down.

The computer kid said, “If you lean forward just right, I bet you could see her pussy.”

“Shut up, Jerry,” Quill said, rolling her eyes. She picked up a ceramic ashtray from off the floor, groped in her robe, produced a pack of Camels and a yellow plastic lighter, and fired up a cigarette. She didn’t blow smoke at Virgil, but she didn’t try to blow it away, either.

She said, “Jerry’s obsessed with my pussy. I let him see it, but I don’t let him touch it. Brett can touch it anytime he wants.”

“I appreciate the privilege,” said the dude. Virgil was watching the bare-assed dude: he seemed to be too much in touch with the eggs he was stirring. He was coming down from a high, but from what Virgil didn’t know. “I still vote to let Jerry watch.”

Jerry said, “Props,” and went back to his laptop.

Quill said, “We can talk about it when the cop is gone.”

* * *