“I don’t know. Those cops were over here this morning asking me if I knew what Dad was doing with the laptop, they said it was really, really superhot and they wondered what he was running on it. After they left, I thought about it, and I wondered . . . I mean, what if it wasn’t what he was running, what if it was just the laptop itself?”

“Oh, for Christ’s sakes, Megan. I wouldn’t hurt . . . Hey! If you think I killed your old man . . .” Krause was shouting.

“I didn’t say that.”

“Do you think I killed Brett? Is that what you’re thinking?”

“No, no, I didn’t think that, Jerry. Brett did it to himself. But I was wondering, you know? I remember when Dad bought that laptop, and you couldn’t believe it, looking at the box and everything. Listen, forget I said it.”

“I can’t forget it. How can I? Fuck you and your pussy. And you can take this fuckin’ pizza and stick it up your ass. I’m outta here.”

“Jerry,” Quill wailed. “C’mon, I didn’t mean . . .”

The door slammed, and then they heard Krause banging down the stairs and out. Virgil stepped to the window and saw him stomping down the sidewalk, shoulders hunched. He looked back once, his face either angry or maybe frightened, then turned away and disappeared under the canopies of street-side maples.

Barry said, “Well, that didn’t work out as well as it might have.”

* * *

—

“Let’s go talk with Megan,” Trane said.

“Krause could come back,” Virgil said. “I still think he’s the guy and I don’t want him to know this was a setup. Let me make sure we’re still tracking the phone so that if he turns back, we’ll get a call.”

Virgil made the call to the BCA tech and then they went down to Quill’s apartment and found her changed into jeans and a light pullover blouse. When she let them in, she walked away to the table, picked up a slice, and said, “Now I know for sure.”

Trane: “Know what?”

“Jerry did it. Killed Dad. And probably Brett. I just . . .” She ran out of words.

Virgil: “How do you know?”

She swallowed pizza, and said, “I guess you had to be here. When I popped the question, he was quiet for a long time, and I could see him thinking about what to say. But I could see it on his face: he did it. I’ve known him for a long time and I could see it.”

“That’s probably not going to work in court,” Trane said.

Barry, the tech, was stripping microphones from the apartment, then packed up the receiver and checked out. Quill said, “You had so many mics here, we could have made a record.”

“Could have. Didn’t,” he said with a smile. “But don’t give up. We can try again if we can get him back here.”

“I could try to fuck him into saying it,” Quill suggested.

“No, no,” Trane said. “You saying that could probably get me thrown out of the police department. ‘Yeah, Trane got a teenager to fuck the suspect into a confession.’ Jesus. I get goose bumps thinking about it.”

There were footsteps coming up the stairs as the tech was going down, and they heard him say, “Excuse me,” and Quill looked out the door, and said, “Hi, Mom.”

* * *

—

Out on the street, shadows cast by the setting sun spreading across the lawns, Virgil said to Trane, “I’m gonna get a steak. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“My husband’s at a doctors’ party,” she said, “talking about the lower intestinal tract. And maybe the upper intestinal tract. Telling proctologist jokes . . . Why don’t you buy me a steak?”

“An Applebee’s steak?”

“That’s not as classy as it might be, but I’ll take it.”

* * *

—

They drove separately to the hotel, found a line at the Applebee’s, went over to the beer joint—which actually had a name, The Beacon—ordered steaks, and beer for Virgil and wine for Trane while they waited, and talked about the case for a few minutes, what they considered a near miss with Krause. The steaks came, and they’d almost finished them when the BCA tech guy called.

When he identified himself, Virgil blurted, “Jeez, I’m sorry, I forgot—”

“Krause’s phone just went dark,” the tech guy broke in.

“What?”

“It disappeared.”

“Where?”

“He was just turning south on Highway 61 up by White Bear.”

“Oh, Jesus.” He looked at Trane. “It’s Krause. He’s going after her.”

Trane yanked her phone out of her purse and punched some buttons, and then said, “Ah, no. We told her to turn her phone off. We told her . . . She hasn’t turned it back on.”

“What’s her mom’s name?” Virgil asked.

“I . . . I don’t know. I doubt it’s Quill. I think she remarried . . .”

“We gotta go,” Virgil said. “We gotta go.”

CHAPTER

TWENTY-SIX

   They went together in Virgil’s truck, lights and siren. Virgil took three seconds to dig his Glock out of the backseat gun safe. “I might need this, God help me.”

Trane was on her cell, trying to track down Quill’s mother’s name, without luck. Virgil was on his own hands-free phone, talking with the BCA tech guy.

“We might have a desperate situation here. If we can’t track Krause, we’ve got to see if we can locate a Megan Quill. I have her phone number but I don’t know which service.”

“I’ll find her.”

“Gotta be fast. Gotta go, man.”

* * *

—

“Where’re you going, where’re you going?” Trane snapped at Virgil, pulling her face away from her phone. “You’re going the wrong way.”

Virgil said, “I’m not taking city streets. Even with the lights, they’ll be slower. I’m going over on 94 and then up 35E.”

Trane said, “Okay, I see . . . Go! . . . Go! . . . I can’t get anybody to tell me her mother’s name. It must be somewhere.”

“St. Thomas probably has it.”