Virgil shrugged, and said, “I dunno, I thought you’d . . . I dunno . . .”

“Are you trying to tell me you’ve never done that?” Trane asked. To Cohen she said, “He’s so straight he gives me a headache.”

“He’s an asshole,” Cohen said.

Virgil: “That’s the second or third time I’ve been called that in the last hour. I’m tired of it.”

“Then why don’t you leave?” Cohen said.

“Because he’s a dedicated law enforcement officer,” Trane said. To Capslock: “How are your hips, Del?”

“Still hurt when I get up in the morning, but Cheryl’s got me doing yoga stretches. That helps.”

To Cohen, Trane said, “Del got shot by some old people down on the Mexican border. Almost got killed.”

Cohen said, “Good.”

* * *

—

Time dragged. A half hour after Cohen called, her attorney showed up, was introduced as Larry Hardy, also known as “Call me Lare” on his ubiquitous billboards.

“I thought you did personal injury,” Trane said.

“I do a little of everything,” Hardy said. “Gotta make the monthly nut.”

“Speaking of nuts, you might want to take a look in that last bedroom down there,” Trane said.

Cohen: “Fuck all of you. Again.”

Hardy went to look, came back, and asked, “Is this a great country or what?” and then added, “Are you charging my client?”

“She’s going to be charged with something,” Trane said. “She left the scene of a crime, for one thing. A murder. If Piggy down there chokes on his gag, we’ll probably add manslaughter.”

Hardy said to Cohen, “Maybe you should cut him loose. Just to be kind.”

Cohen nodded, went down to the bedroom, and came back three minutes later. “I need to talk to my attorney privately,” she said to Virgil.

“We’ll wait in the hallway,” Virgil said. To Hardy: “If she drops out the window, you go to jail. For a long time.”

Hardy, exasperated: “She’s not going anywhere, Virgil. Jesus. Give us twenty minutes. We’ll get this all straightened out, and then we can all go home and go to bed.”

“She’s already admitted to two of us that she was there,” Virgil said. “Keep that in mind when you try to find a way to weasel out of this.”

* * *

—

Virgil, Capslock, and Trane stood in the hallway for ten minutes, then, by mutual consent, sat in the hallway with their backs against the wall opposite Cohen’s door. Virgil told Trane how they’d gotten to Cohen’s place, beginning with the Paisley interview. A woman carrying a pizza went by, asked, “Are you locked out?” and they all said, “No,” as one, and the woman said, “Whatever,” and went down the hall with her pizza.

“Smelled like pepperoni,” Capslock said, looking after her. “I could use a slice.”

Five more minutes, and the fat man stepped through the door. He was wearing a blue-striped seersucker suit and a red tie. Trane said, “We need to talk.”

“Completely voluntary,” the man said. “A once-in-a-lifetime experiment. Can I catch a break here?”

“Let’s go down the hall where we can talk privately away from these two,” Trane said to him. “They’re not sensitive to this kind of adult behavior.”

She led him away, turning only to say, “Call me when they’re done in there.”

* * *

—

When they were out of earshot, Virgil said, “Tell you what, Del. Trane is sort of freaking me out here. That guy—”

“She’s fuckin’ with you, Virgil,” Capslock said. “I know her. This is what her sense of humor runs like. She’s laughin’ up her sleeve.”

“You think?”

“I know.” He laughed. “She’s fuckin’ with you the same way you fuck with Davenport. About his daughter.”

* * *

—

A few minutes later, Cohen’s apartment door popped open and Hardy stuck his head out. “Come on in.”

Virgil called down the hall to Trane, who was still lecturing the man in the suit. She tapped him twice on the chest and then walked toward them, and Virgil and Capslock went to meet her, where Hardy couldn’t hear them.

“Got his details,” she said. “I’ll look him up when we finish here. He admits he paid for the service. I told him that if Cohen wants to take it to trial, he might be called as a witness. But I also told him that I doubt she’ll do that.”

“He got a family?” Virgil asked.

“Divorced. He’s a schmuck. But he agreed to appear if we need him. I’m going to bust Cohen on the prostitution charge so I can get her in an interview room and on a video.”

* * *

—

Inside Cohen’s apartment, they got chairs from the kitchen so everybody would have a place to sit, and Hardy said, “My client is happy to cooperate if we get some consideration on potential charges. She’s willing to concede that she was with Professor Quill in the library when he was murdered but didn’t know he’d been murdered. She doesn’t watch local television news and doesn’t read newspapers. When she heard the sounds of a struggle, she got frightened and ran away. She never saw the other person that Quill was struggling with.”

The cops digested that for a moment, then Virgil said, “That’s not much of a concession, Lare, since she already told Del and me that she was there. If she wants consideration, we’ll need more than that.”

Hardy cleared his throat. “Unfortunately—and I mean it, this is unfortunate—she didn’t see anything. She can give you her history with Quill, but she can’t help with the library situation. She’s willing to make a formal statement about that.”

“That’s it?” Trane asked.

Hardy said, “Unfortunately, that’s what we’ve got.”

Trane said to Cohen, “I’m arresting you on a charge of prostitution. I’ll drop you off at the jail, and we’ll all meet down at my office tomorrow to figure out what to do. Is ten o’clock good for everybody?”

Hardy said, “Come on, Sergeant Trane. Arresting her won’t do anything but piss everybody off.”