Virgil moved deeper into the shade, and said, “I’m glad I wasn’t dumb enough to wear a suit and tie.”

Shrake yawned.

Virgil: “Listen, You did okay with her, but now let’s dial it back to a seven.”

“That’s where I was, a seven,” Shrake said. “You ain’t never seen my eleven.”

“Okay, take it back to three. I don’t want Internal Affairs taking up residence in my shorts.”

* * *

—

A lawyer arrived, but it wasn’t Jones, it was Hardy. He jumped out of his green Range Rover, looked at Virgil as though he couldn’t believe his eyes, then strode across the lawn, and Virgil said, “Mr. Hardy,” and Shrake said, “Watch your hair. There’s a robin up in the tree that’s been trying to shit in ours.”

Hardy looked up in the tree for a second, wiped his hand across the top of his head, then turned back to Virgil, and asked, “What are you doing here?”

“Waiting for Mrs. McDonald’s attorney of record. As a courtesy. Before we take her in.”

“A courtesy? Take her in? For what? And, by the way, I’m one of her attorneys of record. In addition to Robin Jones.”

“We find that interesting,” Virgil said. “And that’s what we want to talk to Mrs. McDonald about. You guys filed a nuisance suit against the university, which is prepared to take you on, with one of the smartest and most admired men in the Cities ready to testify that everything you claim is bullshit. Then it turns out that one of your clients lures—”

“She didn’t lure anybody!” Hardy shouted. “They were lovers.”

Shrake snorted. “A famous rich doctor is in love with a hooker when he could date any one of a thousand single women in the Twin Cities for free? Tell me another one.”

Virgil rode over both of them. “Lures him into the library, where he’s killed and therefore can no longer testify in your lawsuit, which Robin Jones has said he might split and sue Quill’s estate separately? Did I get that right?”

“No. It’s like you’re taking crazy pills.”

Another car arrived, a Mercedes SL550 with its hard top down, and Hardy said, “Here’s Robin.”

The top on the Mercedes started up, and Shrake said to Hardy, “You know those billboards of yours? ‘Call me Lare’?”

“What?”

“You ought to call yourself Batman since your sidekick’s named Robin. You could put—”

“You know how many times I’ve heard that joke?” Hardy asked. “About a million. You should be embarrassed.”

Shrake shrugged, but in fact he was. Nothing like being the millionth guy to tell a bad joke.

Jones got out of the car and hurried over, a briefcase under his arm. Virgil pegged him to be in his early thirties, with a well-tailored light blue summer suit that was too expensive for his age. You tended to look at him, with his car and his suit, and think, Asshat. He nodded at Hardy, and said, “Glad you could make it. I wanted to talk to you before I file a criminal complaint against these two.”

Shrake yawned again and scratched his ribs.

Jones to Virgil: “You’re Flowers? That’s the most disrespectful outfit I’ve ever seen on a cop. A poetry shirt? They’ll be hearing about that, too.”

Virgil looked down at his shirt; it took a minute, but then he tumbled: Poe. Jones must have thought that Edgar Allan’s first name was Larkin. It made him smile.

“You wanna go inside?” Shrake asked. “I’m sweating like a blind lesbian in a sushi bar.”

“Hey! I don’t want to hear that misogynistic kinda talk. And before we go inside, I want to tell you you’re not taking Mrs. McDonald anywhere,” Jones said. “Not to the BCA, not to Hennepin . . .”

Virgil said to Hardy, “Robin’s giving me a sharp pain in the ass.”

“That’s another count,” Jones sputtered. “That’s another—”

“Shut up, Robin,” Hardy said.

* * *

—

   They went inside and found Ruth McDonald in the La-Z-Boy with the leg support down; she was huddled in like it was a cave, protecting herself from the wildlife.

She raised her head, and said to Virgil, “I did not kill my husband.”

Jones blanched. “What!” He turned to Virgil, “Did you accuse this woman—”

“Shut up, Robin,” Virgil said. He turned back to McDonald, and said, “We want to hear your story before we decide what to do. I can tell you, my colleague and I have handled a lot of suspicious death cases, and this is one of them. I need to hear the sequence of events the day he died, and more about his physical condition. From what I’ve heard, it seems almost impossible that he could have done what you told the medical examiner.”

“He did it because he was desperate,” Jones said.

Virgil to Jones: “We’re talking to Mrs. McDonald. You can say ‘Answer that’ or ‘Don’t answer that,’ but nothing else. You can’t answer for her.”

“That’s bullshit.”

Virgil to Shrake: “You got your cuffs?”

“Sure do.”

Hardy: “Whoa! Whoa! Whoa! . . . Robin, shut up. And stay shut up.”

Virgil said, “Thank you. Now, it seems impossible—”

“It was because he was desperate. Robin is exactly right,” McDonald said. “He was in pain. The drugs couldn’t stop it without his mind getting all fogged up. Before the operation, he didn’t have much pain.”

“But he couldn’t move at all, as I understand it,” Virgil said.

“He could move a little. His thumb and forefinger, some muscles in his upper arm. After the operation, he could move more, but not enough to mean anything to him. And the pain was on top of the disappointment,” McDonald said. “Then, when they could see the operation hadn’t worked, Quill and his pals just let him go. ‘Sorry, we’ve done everything we can, have a nice life.’ The criminals.”

She began to cry. Hardy moved over to her and patted her shoulder.

“Was there anybody around the house that day?” Virgil asked.

Hardy handed her a tissue from a pocket pack and she took it, wiped her eyes, blew her nose, and said, “No, nobody. Mr. Jones left, and I told Frank I was going to run to the store and I’d be right back.”