“Did you ever give any to Quill?”

“Oh, no. He never mentioned drugs to me. You know, he was intense about the sex. He even got me off once, which never happens, but he did it because he was so into it. But as far as I know, he wasn’t into dope.”

They went over the story twice more, but nothing changed. Cohen had never been to Quill’s house, didn’t know he was a doctor. “I thought he was probably a finance guy. He acted like a finance guy. Except he didn’t fuck like a finance guy. He knew how to get it on. If you know what I mean.”

In the end, Trane said she’d go with Hardy to walk Cohen through the release procedures, which Watts had already approved. Virgil told Trane about talking to Foster and Foster’s suggestion that there must be something important on the missing laptop.

“Foster’s a smart guy, and he thinks the computer is the key, which would fit with this Boyd Nash character. When you think about it, if Nash is an industrial spy, it’d fit with the CD recording, too—an attempt at blackmail. Maybe he found out about the laptop but didn’t know Quill was . . . comforting . . . Miz Cohen.”

“‘Comforting,’” Trane repeated. “Nice.”

“You want to take Nash or should I?” Virgil asked.

“You found him, you take him. I’ll take a look at Hardy’s partner, this Jones guy. I’m interested in that whole sequence of events. Remember, Quill might not have practiced medicine, but he was an M.D. If he spotted that whole pill bottle problem—the one you spotted—and started mooting around the idea that Frank McDonald was murdered . . .”

Virgil concurred, and asked, “You want to look at my cut lip?”

“No, I believe you. But . . .”

“What?”

“Until you showed up, I was running a nice logical investigation. Somehow, Flowers, you got me up to my hips in weird shit. How’d you do that?”

CHAPTER

NINETEEN

   Virgil started his run at Boyd Nash by going back to Trane’s desk at Minneapolis Homicide. He got Nash’s records from the DMV. Both his past and current driver’s licenses showed the same address. Virgil checked the address with the street view on Google Earth and found himself looking at a rambling ranch-style house, of white stone and natural wood, in the city of Edina, south of Minneapolis. A quick trip out to Zillow suggested the house would be worth something like a million and a half dollars.

If Nash was a thief, he was a good one.

Next he called up the files Trane had pulled from the National Crime Information Center. Boyd had been arrested twice for assault. First for going after a security guard at a Medtronic office in Fridley, a suburb of Minneapolis. That was a mistake: the security guard moonlighted as a bouncer at a biker bar and kicked Boyd’s ass before he called the cops.

The charges had been dismissed.

Then he was charged with domestic assault by a woman named Jon-Ellen Nord.

Again, the charges were dismissed.

Fridley was in Anoka County and he couldn’t raise anyone at the county attorney’s office, but the second arrest was in Hennepin County—in the city of Bloomington—and he did get an assistant county attorney in Hennepin and she was willing to give a little after-hours help.

She walked away from the phone for a few minutes, came back, and said that the woman who was attacked had dropped the charges. When the county attorney had resisted that decision, Nord had said that she’d overstated the seriousness of the attack.

Virgil: “What do you think?”

“There’s a totally improper note in the file,” the assistant county attorney said. “It says ‘The bitch was paid off.’ Remember that because I’m now removing it.”

“What do you think about that? The note?”

“I think the bitch was paid off,” she said.

“You got an address for her?”

* * *

—

Jon-Ellen Nord lived in a snug green bungalow on Minnehaha Creek in south Minneapolis, a distinctly upscale neighborhood with lots of trees and the creek running through backyards. There was a light in the window, but no cars in sight; there was a detached two-car garage in back, so the cars could be there. Virgil cruised by the place a couple of times before he slowed and pulled into the driveway. He could see the flicker of a television screen as he walked to the front door and rang the bell.

Jon-Ellen Nord was a lanky, small-headed, dark-haired woman with suspicious dark eyes. She was probably around fifty years old, Virgil thought. Virgil identified himself and held up his ID so she could read it, and, after she had, she pushed open the door, and asked, “What’s this about?”

“I’d like to talk to you about an acquaintance of yours, Boyd Nash.”

“Haven’t seen Boyd in a couple of years. What’s he done now?”

“I don’t know if he’s done anything. We’re looking at a serious crime, and his name came up. Could be nothing, but we have to check.”

“How serious a crime?”

“Murder,” Virgil said.

She pushed the door farther open, and said, “Come in.”

He followed her inside; she left behind a light trace of floral perfume that reminded him of the scent of lilies of the valley. The house itself was snug: older, with smaller rooms, hardwood floors, a fieldstone fireplace, and built-in bookshelves. Nord had cats, three of them. Two were tabbies, one red and one gray. The third was black and white with a pink nose. The tabbies were shy and peeked around corners. The black-and-white cat came up and rubbed against Virgil’s leg, and when Nord pointed Virgil at a chair, the cat made a move to jump on his lap. Nord grabbed it and deposited it on top of an upright piano. She took an overstuffed chair facing Virgil, and said, “If Boyd killed somebody, it was either an accident or involved really big money. He wouldn’t kill anybody unless there was a large payoff.”

“You think he could kill somebody?”

“Oh, sure. He’s a classic sociopath. Doesn’t care about anyone but number one,” she said. “He can be charming, if he tries, but it’s always calculated. Taking care of number one would include staying out of jail. I’m sure you know he assaulted me, that’s why you’re here.”

“I saw that in a case file,” Virgil said. “Exactly what was the situation there?”

“He beat me up. We’d dated a couple of times—maybe three—and then I broke it off. He showed up at my door, right here, high as a kite and angry. I tried arguing with him through the screen door, and he grabbed the door handle and yanked the hook right out of the jamb,” Nord said. Her voice was flat, unemotional, as though she were talking about something she’d read. “I tried to push him out, and he started slapping me, and then he hit me with his fists. I had bruises all over my face and my rib cage. I hurt for weeks. Lucky for me, a neighbor was passing by with his wife, and they witnessed it and called nine-one-one. Boyd ran for it, but the neighbors jotted down the license plate number and the make of his car, and the police caught him less than a mile from here. He had blood on his hands.”