Trane asked, “Was Brett unhappy about something? Depressed?”
She shook her head. “Not that I noticed. And I think I would have noticed. I didn’t want him fuckin’ around with those drugs, I kept telling him that. He was a happy guy, really. If he overdosed, it was an accident.”
“What about the message?” Bryan asked.
She shook her head again. “What message?”
“You didn’t see the message?” Trane asked.
“No, no note. There’s nothing.”
Virgil: “There’s a message written on his stomach.” He turned to Trane and Bryan. “I’m pretty sure you guys spotted this detail, but the note was written so it could read right side up. But from his perspective, he’d have had to have written it upside down and backwards. Upside down and backwards, and he was stoned.”
“I wondered about that,” Trane said, and Bryan said, “Yeah.”
“I looked around the room,” Virgil said. “Unless there are some Sharpies under the bed, where I couldn’t see them, or in the closet, there aren’t any others. Only the one on the floor.”
Bryan said, “That worries me.”
Quill: “Somebody murdered him?”
“We have to think about it,” Bryan said. “And the note . . . Let me ask you this: how well did Brett know your father?”
“I mean, he was with us a couple of times when we went over there. Dad didn’t like him because he thought Brett was a slacker. And Brett couldn’t help himself, he’d get sarcastic. But not mean sarcastic. He’d sort of tweak Dad. One time, he was looking around the music room—the Steinway and the stereos and all—and he said something like, ‘Man, the shit you can get when you inherit money.’ Dad got pissed, went on about hard work and millennials not knowing hard work if it bit them on the ass.”
Bryan: “Do you think Brett could have killed him? Even if it was, you know, by accident?”
Quill: “My father wasn’t killed by accident . . .”
“You know what he means,” Trane said. “They don’t like each other. They run into each other up there in the library. Your father thinks Brett is stealing something, like his computer, and Brett hits him with it. Doesn’t mean to kill him, but there’s a struggle.”
“You told me there wasn’t a struggle,” Quill said to Trane.
“Well, a tussle. An argument. Your father turns away, and Brett hits him.”
“I don’t think so,” she said. “Brett didn’t want to have anything to do with violence.”
Virgil: “You said he experimented with cocaine. When was that? How long ago?”
“A while ago. During the summer. I don’t know exactly.”
“Do you know where he got it?”
“No. I’m not up to date on coke dealers, but I don’t think he had to go very far. He liked to go to clubs when he had the money. You can get coke if you go to the right clubs.”
“Did he ever mention a dealer named China White?” Trane asked.
“No. He never mentioned any dealers.” She put both hands on her forehead. “I can’t believe he’s dead. Right over there. He’s dead. He was alive last night. Now he’s dead.”
Trane patted her on the shoulder. “Look. Let’s go back outside, get some air . . . Virgil, we need to talk.”
* * *
—
Outside, Bryan spent a few moments getting names from Quill: Renborne’s parents, other friends. The landlady said she’d heard Renborne speaking on his cell phone early that morning, before she got up, when he was coming back from a late night out. “I heard him on the steps about, mmm, six o’clock.”
“Was he usually up that early in the morning?”
“Not usually, but that boy would come and go at all times of day and night. Sometimes, he was just getting home at six. Sometimes, he’d be going out the door at six. I got so I didn’t pay much attention.”
“Did you hear him during the day? He had a class at one.”
“No, I’m not here. I get up around seven, I go to work at eight-thirty, I get back at four-thirty or five, depending. Sometimes the other girls and I go out after work.”
She worked as a secretary at the Minnesota Historical Society in St. Paul. She was divorced, and Renborne was the only other person who lived in the house. “My ex never lived here. We broke up, split the money, and I bought this place with my share.”
“Are you sure it was Brett that you heard going up the steps this morning?” Virgil asked.
She shrugged. “Sounded like him. He wore running shoes, he was quiet.”
Renborne, she said, was “a real nice boy. I had no idea he was fooling with drugs. I never saw him, you know, drugged up or anything.”
* * *
—
Virgil and Trane drifted away. Trane asked, “Are you still going home?”
“I’d like to. This isn’t our scene, and St. Paul will do the work. I’ll be back on Monday morning. They should have some labs by then, an autopsy report. Not much for me to do on a Sunday.”
“All right. How are we doing otherwise?”
“I can’t . . . I don’t see where we’re going yet.”
“Neither do I. By the way, your guy Nash . . . Our guys broke into some of the files on the computer. There are some other files there that are encrypted, we’ll probably never get into those. But of the files we’ve seen, a couple of dozen of them were photographs transferred out of a program called Lightroom.”
“I know it,” Virgil said.
“Yeah, and it’s got this metadata stuff. The photos apparently were taken the same night Quill was killed, unless they’ve been faked somehow.”
“So we gave him his alibi.”
“And solidified the charges of industrial espionage,” Trane said. “Which doesn’t solve my problem.”
Virgil said, “I’m going to run down to Faribault, see if I can find this Jerry Krause kid. It’s not exactly on my way, but it’ll only add twenty minutes or so to my drive time. If he hasn’t changed his driver’s license, he should have a home address on it.”
“Okay. You think he’ll know anything?”
“Nah, not really. But the three of them were a gang, and not an entirely healthy one. I oughta check.”