Free Bloody Genius by John Sandford

under the edge, couldn’t see anything except a scratch.
    “There’s a scratch . . .” he said, going down to his knees.
    “So what?”
    “Well, it’d be a hard place to scratch,” Virgil said. “There’s, ah, a hole here . . . by the scratch . . . That’ll be it.”
    “For a secret door? You gotta be joking,” Trane said.
    “Everybody knew about my grandpa’s hidey-hole, including me,” Virgil said. “Wasn’t a secret. A lot of these old desks had them. They weren’t safes. You might put confidential stuff in there, maybe tax stuff and so on, but not money. Like I said, the drawers weren’t all that secret at the time.”
    He stood up again, opened the top right drawer. A plastic tray held pencils, ballpoint pens, paper clips, fingernail clippers, scissors . . . and a single, right-angled Allen wrench. He took it out, carried it around to the side of the desk, fit it in the hole, and pushed.
    A side panel clicked loose and out, then folded down. Inside was a vertical stack of small drawers, almost like trays.
    “Agatha Fuckin’ Christie,” Trane said, amazed. “Open the drawers.”
    Virgil did. They were all empty. He crawled around to the other side of the desk, found an identical hole, popped the side panel, revealing another stack of drawers. He pulled open the top drawer, and they both peered inside.
    Trane said, “Oh, no. Nope. Nope. Nope. Shut the drawer, I don’t want to see that.”
    “Could be laundry detergent,” Virgil said. “You know, like Tide? I could snort a little to see if it is.”
    “How much you think?”
    “I never worked dope,” Virgil said. “But I’ve seen cocaine, and that’s cocaine. Not much, but we don’t know what he started with.”
    “Our murdered boy’s got cocaine stashed in a secret cubbyhole? That’s the cherry on the cake, you know? That’s just fuckin’ perfect. I hope the television people find out about it so they can go berserk.”
    “Could be Tide . . .”
----
    —
    They called the narcs and continued to probe the office, although Trane had already done that. She took each of the antique boxes down, looking for false bottoms or secret drawers. They didn’t have any. A Narcotics cop named Bill Offers showed up, said that the baggie had contained a standard eight ball, an eighth of an ounce of cocaine. “Good stuff, not been stepped on much . . . Originally, he probably paid a couple hundred bucks for it, depending on his connection.”
    “Then he could have gotten it from anybody outside the back door of a bar,” Trane said.
    “Yeah, like that. Might want to talk to his wife about it,” Offers said.
    “I will,” Trane said. “Tonight.”
    “I was planning to call her,” Virgil said. “Mind if I tag along?”
    “Suit yourself,” Trane said.
    Not exactly a heartwarming welcome from Trane, but maybe a little progress, Virgil thought. Offers had a scale in his car. They weighed the coke, with the baggie, and Virgil and Trane signed it over to Narcotics for safekeeping.
    “You said you were at the Graduate Hotel?” Trane asked Virgil, as they finished the paperwork.
    “Yeah. All checked in.”
    “Nancy Quill doesn’t live far from there, she’s over by the Witch Hat,” Trane said. “You could follow me over.”
----
    —
    The Witch Hat referred to the Prospect Park neighborhood that had an old water tower perched on the second-highest piece of land in Minneapolis. Visible for miles, the tower was topped with what looked like a green witch’s hat. Quill didn’t live in Prospect Park itself but in an adjacent neighborhood, in a neat, yellow-brick condo. Trane called ahead, and Quill buzzed them through the door to the elevators.
    On the way up, Trane asked, “Do you know anybody in the media? Here in the Cities?”
    “Couple people,” Virgil said. “Why?”
    “It would be nice if word leaked out that we’re actually making progress without it coming from me or anyone in Homicide. I don’t want to get