“I know that one,” Virgil said.

“Well, that was Barth. He was a guy who’d get out of the shower to pee. A good guy, but stiff. Way stiff. You’d say something a little off-color and it would take him five seconds to decide to laugh, and you knew he didn’t approve.”

“Then why was he a good guy?”

Combes shrugged. “He just was. My wife went into the university hospitals to get her tits done up and she was in there three days. He stopped in twice a day, brought her flowers, chatted with her. Talked to her surgeon, explained some technical stuff to her. That was Barth. He had his own street guy, this beggar, who’d wait for him outside the hospital buildings every morning, and Barth would give him ten bucks. Every day. Told me that with ten bucks you could get enough calories at a Burger King to survive. Probably kept the guy alive. Because he thought he should. He didn’t want anyone to thank him, either. It wasn’t charity. It was his duty.”

“His wives didn’t like him much,” Virgil said.

“’Cause he was stiff, and he could have a mean mouth. He didn’t want to be that way, but he couldn’t help it. He could dance, by the way. He was a hell of a dancer. Ask his wives about that.”

“But no cocaine.”

“No coke.”

Virgil kicked back in his chair, looking at Combes. He knew the kind of guy Combes was. He might have tasted a little cocaine from time to time, probably drank a little too much, probably was okay to his wife, probably had a couple of kids—and they were probably pretty good kids—probably liked to watch a ball game in the evenings—any kind of ball you could name—probably knew his way around a fishing boat but wasn’t a fanatic about it, probably slapped backs. Lots of probablys, but Virgil thought he was probably right.

And, Virgil thought, he was telling the truth. That was always disturbing in a source.

Virgil sighed, stood up, stuck out his hand. “Jack, I appreciate it. I probably won’t need to, but if I do, I might call you again.”

“Anytime,” Combes said.

Combes went back to his friends, and Virgil walked out to the parking lot. As he was pulling out, Combes came out of the clubhouse and waved him down. Virgil pulled up next to him and dropped his side window. Combes said, “Had a thought. Maybe talk to Barth’s daughter. She’s a college kid, kinda out there. I was thinking about the coke. He mentioned one time that she was having some problems, hanging out with the wrong people. I don’t know exactly what that meant. Could have meant, like, slackers. In Barth’s eyes, that’d be as bad as dopers. He might have meant something rougher, though. I don’t know. But he was bothered.”

“I thought he didn’t have much to do with his daughter,” Virgil said.

“He didn’t until she started going to college and messing up. Then they talked. At least occasionally. He mentioned once that she’d been over the night before. It might have been about money—probably was, to some extent. And I might not know what I’m talking about. She might be a real princess.”

“I’ll check,” Virgil said. “Thank you.”

* * *

—

Virgil drove out to the street, pulled over, and called Trane. Trane was in her car. “I talked to my husband. He’s an internist, not a research scientist, but he knows some things. Basically, he said that the university would have a committee that would have to approve human experimentation. With what was on the CD, there’s no way they would give it. He also thought that there was no way that Quill could have avoided getting it, either—no way around the rules. As it turns out, that doesn’t mean anything for us.”

“It doesn’t? There could be a motive . . .”

“I talked to Nancy Quill. She listened to the recording and the first thing she said was, ‘That’s not Barth. None of them is Barth.’”

Virgil thought about it, silently, until she said, “Hello? You still there?”

“Then why would he have the recording? After he got it, why would he keep it? Why would he have been listening to it just before he died? I can’t believe that CD was in the player for very long—he obviously listened to a lot of music and he had about a thousand CDs in there.”

“I don’t know the answers to any of that,” Trane said. “Was he doing something with the computer, in the library, he didn’t want anyone to know about and somehow tied into the CD? Maybe he reviewed the CD before he met somebody over there to talk about it?”

“How about this? Quill was given the CD by one of those guys arguing against human experimentation. Something bad happened—like the experiment went bad and the patient died,” Virgil said. “Quill did know who it was on the CD. He planned on giving it to the committee, or maybe even the cops, but he wanted to check it out first to make sure he wasn’t being played.”

“And somebody on the CD killed him to keep the secret safe. Because if the secret wasn’t kept, some big shot doctors could be looking at murder charges.”

“Yes.”

“I like that,” Trane said. “I like that a lot. But who are the other people?”

“Doctors.”

“What doctors? And when?”

“I don’t know. What do you think?”

“Maybe talk to some of his medical associates, the guys who actually do the surgeries for him. Find out what they think.”

“You gotta be careful, Margaret. You don’t want to play that CD for the wrong guy even if he’s wearing a white doctor’s coat.”

“Not to worry. I’ve got a big gun, and I’m nervous. Now, what are you doing?”

He told her about his interview with Combes. “I believe him.”

“Only one problem with all that,” Trane said. “We know that Quill had cocaine and that somebody had used some of it. Maybe not Quill; maybe he provided it to the hypothetical hookers you were talking about. You say that the drawers in that desk weren’t all that secret because your grandfather had one like that. Well, guess what? My grandfather didn’t, and I’d be willing to bet that ninety-nine-point-nine percent of the people out there didn’t have grandfathers who did. Those drawers were secret for normal people. I never would have found that coke in fifty years, and the Crime Scene guys didn’t, either. That toot was put in the desk by Quill.”

“You’re saying I’m not normal?”

“I thought there was substantial agreement on that.”

* * *

—

Virgil told Trane that he wanted to make a run at Quill’s daughter.