She smiled at that, then said, “You know what I think? I think he was in the library with a woman. Maybe a paid woman, for sex. And she killed him. Maybe not even on purpose. He did something she didn’t like and she struck out at him.”

“A prostitute?” His eyebrows went up. “That would explain a few things. Like why he snuck into the library after hours.”

“A man like that wouldn’t want a prostitute in his house,” Green said. “He probably wouldn’t want her to know where he lives . . . or even his real name.”

“I don’t think . . .”

“Where else could he go where he could be sure he wouldn’t be seen?” Green asked. “Not a hotel, not around here. His face was too well known. He was hidden there in the library—they didn’t even find him after he was murdered, not for days.”

“A prostitute. An interesting idea,” the man said. “I wonder if the police are looking into it? Maybe you should be a cop.”

She pointed a finger at him. “It occurred to me once that Cultural Science would be an excellent background for a police officer. The life experience, the research we do . . . You begin to understand the fabric of a culture.”

* * *

—

   Clete May was sitting barefoot on his couch watching a snooker tournament from England, swilling Dr Pepper and eating Fritos, when the doorbell rang. “Ah, shit,” he muttered, and got to his feet and opened the door.

The guy there said, “Hey, man. You busy?”

“Watching a snooker tournament. If I only understood it, it’d probably be entertaining. What’s up?”

“I was walking by and wondered if you’d heard anything new about the Quill thing?”

“Come on in.” The guy stepped inside, and May led him to the couch facing the TV. They sat down, and May said, “Everybody’s still talking. That detective chick—uh, Trane—is flying around like a rabid bat. I don’t think she’s getting anywhere . . . Want some Fritos?”

“Yeah, thanks.” The guy took a half handful, crunched them. “Anybody got any new ideas?”

“Not that I’ve heard. I did hear that Trane told somebody that Quill hadn’t been in a fight, looked like he was jumped by surprise.”

“Huh.”

May turned toward him, hands cupped, intent. “Listen. I’m thinking Quill had that computer up there. The big one. I’m wondering if it was hooked into his lab? Maybe somebody was going up there, in the middle of the night, and using it to get into the lab’s files and download his research. That medical research can be worth a bundle. Or it could be the Russians or Chinese. Quill figures it out, see, and maybe, just maybe, there are logs, and he sees that library computer coming online and knows it’s his, but he wasn’t doing it. He sneaks into the library to see who’s doing it, but the guy gets the jump on him somehow and kills him and then has to take the computer to hide what was going on.”

“International spies. Russian or Chinese.”

“I know it sounds wild,” May said. “We know the Russians and Chinese do that stuff, though, steal tech, and they sure as shit wouldn’t want to be caught at it again.”

“You talk to the cops about this?”

“No, but I will if anybody asks me. Like I said, it sounds wild at first, but when you think it over . . .”

* * *

—

Carol Ann Soboda was walking back to her table at Stub & Herb’s bar, after a visit to the restroom, and nearly bounced off a guy with a beer in his hand. The guy said, “Oops,” caught her arm, got her right again, and she smiled at him, and he said, “Hey . . . Aren’t you one of the people who worked with Dr. Quill?”

“I did, yeah. I don’t remember you . . .”

“Ah, I was sorta on the other side . . . I was with Dr. Green at Fight Night. I didn’t get involved, I thought the whole thing was crazy, but I saw you there.”

The guy was good-looking and friendly, and Soboda was flattered that he remembered her. She was between relationships—way between relationships—so she let herself talk, what could it hurt? “Yeah, I was there. Who was that crazy guy with the chair?”

They spent ten minutes leaning on the bar, and the man, who said his name was Terry, said he’d read about the murder and wondered what was going on with Quill and his secret carrel in the library.

“Nobody knows,” Soboda said. “My girlfriend thinks he was looking at child porn or going out looking for hookups, but I don’t think so. That computer was, like, a workstation. You can look at porn or find hookups on your iPhone.”

“Maybe he was doing secret research? Maybe he needed a good computer for that. And maybe he was in the library because he was away from everything and liked a quiet space to think.”

“He had all kinds of quiet places to think. I tell you, it’s a mystery. We talk about it every day at the lab and we can’t figure it out.”

“What happens with the lab? You out of a job?”

“Nobody knows what’s going to happen yet,” Soboda said. “Our lab manager is looking around to see if he can merge us with somebody doing the same kind of research, but we’re pretty far out there.”

“Okay, how about this?” Terry said. “Your guy was spying on other labs doing the same kind of research, trying to get a leg up.”

She thought about that, then said, “Wouldn’t you have to be a hacker to do that? Barth wasn’t a computer person. I mean, he could use our software, but that’s like using a toaster. You don’t have to be a programmer, and he wasn’t one.”

“Huh. Well, it’s a mystery. So what are you up to? You come here often?”

“Not too often . . .”

Like that.

* * *

—

Megan Quill was standing outside a SuperAmerica store on Grand Avenue, where she’d tapped a Wells Fargo ATM and used a few bucks to buy Nestlé Drumsticks for herself and her friends Jerry and Brett.

On a hot day, the cones had a propensity to drip on your clothing if you weren’t careful, so they stood in a tight huddle, bent toward one another, licking the cones, dripping on the sidewalk, and mumbling a few words like “Okay” and “Not bad” and “Watch the drip, Brett.”

Megan was dressed in fashionable black, something like a sexy tennis dress, and it worked for her. Jerry was dressed in unfashionable black: a sloppy black T-shirt to cover up his overstuffed body, sloppy black cargo shorts, sloppy black cross-trainers with short black socks. Brett, the nonconformist, was wearing a plain white T-shirt and red running shorts and flip-flops. He was bobbing up and down to some music that only he could hear and that ran through his brain like the sound track to his life.