Bloody Genius by John Sandford

library?” the man asked. “Books? Who wants books?”
    Brett shrugged. “There’s all kinds of stuff laying around. You don’t think about it, but people leave stuff in their offices—cameras, office equipment, tools. If you were strong, you could get out of there with a printer, or something, sell it at one of those used-computer places. Good money, if you’re on the street.”
    Quill snorted. “You’ve thought about it.”
    Brett: “Well, yeah. I had to drop out the first semester of my third year. I went to Spain that summer using my school money, and the folks wouldn’t give me any more. Said I had to make it up.”
    “Fascists,” Jerry said. He was back poking at his cell phone.
    “Ah, they’re good folks,” Brett said. “Anyway, seeing all theshit people leave around in university buildings, it was sort of tempting to pick some up.”
    Quill: “You do it? Go outlaw?”
    Brett shook his head. “Nah, I chickened out. Got a job pushing a broom over at the HarMar Mall.” He did a comic head turn, checking the street with narrowed eyes as if a cop might be listening. “I’ll tell you what. There was this storage area over at the mall, stuff they used in the restrooms. Toilet paper, paper towels, cleaning stuff. They’d order like six months’ supply at a time, in these big cardboard boxes. I’d push it a couple feet forward from the back wall—you couldn’t tell—and I’d sleep back there. I had a foam mattress and a sleeping bag. I’d get off at two in the morning, shave and take a sponge bath in the restroom, and bag out. Get up at eleven, brush my teeth, hang out until it was time to go to work. My own little apartment.”
    “Cool,” Megan said.
    Jerry shook his head. “Pathetic.”
    The unknown man said, “I admire that. You gotta do what you gotta do. Did you go back to school?”
    Brett flashed his smile. “Yeah. I graduate this winter.”
    “Great.” He turned back to Megan as he started to step away. “Like I said, I’m sorry about what happened.”
    She said, “Yeah, thanks. It’s all a mystery.”
    He ambled away, and Brett, looking after him, said, “That was sort of weird. Guy on the street like that coming up to you.”
    The guy got in a car fifty yards away, did an illegal U-turn, went past them, holding up a hand to wave. Megan nodded, and said, “I’d fuck him.”
    “Fuck me,” Jerry said.
    “No way. Why don’t you fuck Elaine? She’d do it, if you’d tell her where the sniper’s nest is.”
    “Fuck that. She’ll never get past it,” Jerry said. “She’s hung up.”
    “And you won’t get laid. She’ll probably figure it out, sooner or later, so you might as well make it sooner and get laid.”
    “Good point.” Jerry was looking at the man in the car, who’d stopped at the light down the street. He said nothing about Elaine, but he did say to Brett, “You’re right. That was weird.” He lifted his cell phone and took a shot of the car.
    “You don’t think . . .” Quill turned and watched as the car accelerated through the now green light and went on down Cleveland Avenue.
    Brett: “What?”
    “That he might have done it? That he was checking us out to see what we knew?”
    “Oh, fuck no,” Brett said. “Did he seem like a killer to you? He didn’t to me.”
    “You can never tell,” Quill said. “The killer could be anybody.”
----
    —
    That night, at dark, the man was waiting outside Nancy Quill’s condo when the Jaguar pulled into a visitor’s parking slot. He knew the Jag, and the man who got out of it, and Quill as well, who waited for the driver to walk around and open the passenger door. He did, and they went up. The man looked at his watch. It was eight-twenty; her date had picked her up at six o’clock, they’d gone to a restaurant in downtown Minneapolis, and now they were back.
    The man said, “C’mon, nail her. Give me something. Give me something.”
    But at eight twenty-five, the visitor walked out the condo’s