Hothouse Orchid Read online

  “It’s either six or eight hours, I think,” Jimmy replied. “You’d have to call our tech guy for an accurate answer on that.”

  “Good work, Jimmy. Thanks.” Bruno turned back to his desk.

  Jimmy returned to his cubicle and sat, thinking about the tire and Bruno’s reaction to it. His phone rang. “Detective Weathers,” he said.

  “Hi, it’s Lauren.”

  “Hi, Lauren.”

  “Bruno had the tire changed before we could get to it and take a cast,” she said.

  “Yeah, he just told me. He noticed the cut and was afraid he’d have a blowout at speed. Now he thinks vandals are persecuting him. He made me turn the back door surveillance camera toward his car, so he can watch it.”

  “Who does he think the vandals are?” she asked.

  “You.”

  “Me? He thinks I cut his tire?”

  “He mentioned it, but I’m not sure he really believes that. He’s just getting paranoid.”

  “That’s going to make it harder for us to nail him,” Lauren said.

  “Yeah, I guess it will make him more careful, but if he’s the guy, he’s already being real careful; we still don’t have anything on him.”

  “No, we don’t. But he’s going to make a mistake eventually,” Lauren said. “I just hope nobody else dies before he does.”

  “So do I,” Jimmy replied. He took a deep breath. “Hey, uh, Lauren, would you like to… have dinner sometime?”

  “Thanks, Jimmy,” she said, “but I’m seeing somebody, and he’s taking all my time.”

  “Oh, okay. Thanks anyway.”

  “Call me if you get any more ideas,” Lauren said. “See you.” She hung up. Oh, God, she thought, how’s he going to take that?

  39

  Lauren was about to leave for the day when her phone rang. “Lauren Cade.”

  “Hi, it’s Holly Barker.”

  “Hi, Holly.”

  “How’d your search for Bruno’s tire go?”

  “Not well,” Lauren replied. She told Holly about the search at the tire recycling plant.

  “That’s a shame,” Holly said. “Maybe if I’d gone with you we would have had a better chance to find the tire before it got sucked into that machine.”

  “Don’t beat yourself up, Holly; it just didn’t work out.”

  “Have you got anything else on Bruno?”

  “Not a thing, nor on anyone else, either.”

  “Lauren, you remember the printout of those clippings and the juvenile record on Bruno I gave you?”

  “Sure, I’ve still got them.”

  “Please shred them. They came from an Agency computer, and I don’t want anyone else to see them. It’s not like they’re evidence; they’re just background for you and Hurd.”

  “Sure, I’ll do that right away.”

  “Something else, Lauren: has anyone else shown you anything that might have come from a CIA computer file?”

  “No, in fact, no one has shown me anything from any computer file, except you.”

  “If anyone shows you anything that you think might come from an Agency file, will you call me immediately, please?”

  “Sure. What’s this about, Holly?”

  “Someone is logging on to the Agency’s computer system and extracting material on Bruno and me.”

  “Together or separately?”

  “Both, and I’ve got to put a stop to that if I can figure out who’s doing it.”

  “Doesn’t the Agency have a lot of security stuff you’d have to go through to get into a computer?”

  “Yes, a lot.”

  “Well, I don’t think anyone I know would have that kind of expertise,” Lauren said. “Certainly not anyone connected with the state police.”

  “That’s what I thought; I’m just alerting you to the possibility.”

  “I’ll keep an ear to the ground, sure.”

  “Thanks, Lauren.”

  “Say, you’re seeing that doctor at the hospital, aren’t you?”

  “Yes, Josh Harmon.”

  “I’ve got a new boyfriend, too, and he’s quite a cook. Why don’t the four of us have dinner together sometime soon?”

  “That sounds like fun, Lauren. Let me know where and when.”

  “I’ll check with Jack and let you know.”

  “Bye-bye, then.”

  Lauren found Holly’s computer files and shredded them, then straightened her desk, locked it and headed for Teddy’s.

  Teddy had a rib roast in the oven when Lauren arrived. He fixed them a drink, and they relaxed in the living room.

  “Good day today?” he asked.

  “No. We’re back to square one after the episode with the tire.”

  “No suspects other than Bruno?”

  “Not a one. I know he’s doing this, but he’s been very, very careful not to leave any usable evidence. I wish the man had a conscience; he’d blow his own brains out.”

  Teddy laughed. “I wouldn’t count on that.”

  “Oh, Jack, I have this friend-well, acquaintance-named Holly Barker, who’s in town for a while, and she’s seeing a doctor in the emergency room at the hospital. Why don’t we invite the two of them over for dinner one night soon?”

  Teddy drew in a quick breath. “I’m not sure I want to share you with anybody just yet.”

  She dug him in the ribs. “Oh, come on. It’ll do us both good to socialize a little.”

  “All right,” Teddy said. “When do you want to do it?”

  “How about this weekend? Saturday? I’ll help in the kitchen.”

  “That’s fine with me,” Teddy said, his mind racing.

  “Oh, good,” she said, kissing him. “Holly’s a great girl. I knew her in the army, then she was chief of police here, and now she does something with the CIA.”

  “What on earth is she doing here?”

  “She’s just taking her vacation; she has a house here, from when she was chief.”

  “And her boyfriend?”

  “His name is Josh Harmon, he’s a doctor and that’s about all I know about him.”

  “Okay.” Teddy took a deep breath. “There’s something I want to talk to you about.”

  “Shoot.”

  “I think this relationship is going really well. How about you?”

  “Really well,” she said, kissing him.

  “Something you said awhile back stuck in my mind: you said you hated the hot summers in Florida, that you’d like to live somewhere with a more even climate?”

  “Did I?”

  “Yes. Were you serious about that?”

  “Well, it’s not like I was contemplating moving.”

  “Let me tell you about two places I’ve thought about,” Teddy said. “One is Santa Fe, New Mexico. Have you ever been there?”

  “No, but I’ve heard good things about it.”

  “It has a warm summer but no humidity; it’s seven thousand feet up in the mountains; the winter is cold but, again, dry, so it’s not oppressive. It’s the kind of weather where you can sit in a hot tub and let the snowflakes fall on your face.”

  “Sounds wonderful.”

  “The other place is San Diego, California, specifically La Jolla, a suburb, on the Pacific. The weather is delightful year-round: stays in the seventies, pretty much.”

  “Again, it sounds wonderful. Are you thinking about moving, Jack?”

  “Yes,” Teddy said, “but only if I can take you with me.”

  She laughed. “That’s a pretty good offer. Are you serious or just kidding?”

  “I’m not kidding, sweetheart.”

  “Wow. And how are we going to afford this? Can I get a police job out West?”

  “Only if you want to. I’m very well off, so you don’t have to work.”

  “That’s very tempting,” she said.

  “There’s no rush,” Teddy said. “Think about it, and if it’s what you want, well, when you get these murders cleared, we could just take off. I’ve got the air
plane, remember?”

  “I remember.” She gave him a long kiss. “You’ve a very, very nice man, Jack.”

  “Thank you, ma’am,” Teddy replied. He went back to the kitchen to take a look at his roast and start the vegetables. He had been contemplating telling her who he was but best not to lay too much on her all at once. Maybe best never to tell her who he once was before he was Jack Smithson.

  40

  Teddy woke up a little after two a.m. Lauren was breathing deeply beside him. She never woke up in the night. He rolled gently out of bed, got into the dark clothes he had left on a chair, took a small bag he had packed and left the house. He had parked farther away from the house than usual, so the sound of the cranking engine would not wake Lauren.

  He drove at the speed limit, so as not to attract the attention of the local police, who were on the lookout for lone males driving late at night, and soon he was driving past the big church and into the quiet residential neighborhood where James Bruno lived. He drove slowly past the house, where he saw Bruno’s cruiser parked in the driveway and no lights on in the house.

  Teddy switched off his headlights and circled the block, looking for lights in the neighboring houses. He saw none. He parked behind Bruno’s house, across the concrete drainage ditch and sat quietly in the car for a moment, looking for lights. None.

  He popped the trunk and got out of the car. He retrieved the paper bag from the home store and the small bag he had packed, then crossed the drainage ditch, jumping across the narrow stream to keep his feet dry. He walked to the hedge at the rear of Bruno’s property and passed through one of the gaps where a plant had been allowed to die.

  He stopped just inside the hedge and opened the paper bag. He withdrew the painter’s soft paper socks he had bought and put them on his feet, tucking his trousers into them, then he put on a paper hairnet and pulled on a pair of latex gloves. He took the.22-caliber semiautomatic pistol from the bag, racked the slide and secured the safety, then he tucked the weapon into his belt. He left his bag and the paper bag beside the hedge and walked slowly toward the house.

  He looked through the back door into the kitchen and saw a night-light glowing, probably in the house’s central hallway. He used a strip of flexible plastic to pop the cheap lock on the kitchen door, then, very slowly, he opened it and let himself into the house, leaving the door ajar.

  As he expected, there was no security system in the old ranch house, and he stood still in the kitchen for two minutes, listening for any sound. Finally, he walked into the hallway, found the night-light and unplugged it, then he stood still for another two minutes to allow his eyes to become accustomed to the darkness.

  There was just enough light coming into the house from a streetlamp out front to allow him to move around with confidence, and he made his way to the rear, where he thought the master bedroom would be. He stopped again to listen and heard a gentle, regular snoring coming from the rear room. He walked to the door and stepped inside.

  James Bruno lay on his back, soundly asleep, snoring. Teddy walked toward him and stopped, perhaps four feet away, to get a better look at him. Then he saw the gun.

  It was a 9-mm Glock, and it lay on the bedside table in its holster. This was an unexpected benefit; he wouldn’t need the.22. Teddy lifted the holster and gun slowly from the table, tucked the holster under his arm and, very slowly, pulled the Glock free. He replaced the holster on the bedside table next to a half-empty bottle of Famous Grouse Scotch whiskey and an empty glass.

  Gently, he eased the pistol’s slide back far enough to ascertain the presence of a cartridge in the chamber, then he eased it closed. He took a step closer to Bruno, and a board squeaked under his foot. Bruno stopped snoring and made a noise. Teddy waited patiently for him to fall fully asleep again.

  Soon Bruno resumed snoring. Teddy held the pistol in his left, gloved hand and eased it slowly into position a fraction of an inch from Bruno’s open mouth. He aimed carefully, not wishing to strike a tooth or a lip, then fired a single shot.

  Bruno made a jerking movement and then relaxed. The shot had passed through his mouth, then severed the spine at the neck before passing into the pillow beneath his head.

  Teddy held his position for just a moment, then he lifted Bruno’s right hand, rubbed the pistol on his hand and forearm to deposit gunshot residue there, then dropped the weapon. It landed on Bruno’s upper chest and slid off his body to the floor beside the bed.

  Now Teddy switched on a small flashlight and had a look around the room, not seeing what he was looking for. He left the room and walked quickly down the hall, finding a small den with a desk. The center drawer yielded what Teddy was seeking: a medical insurance card that bore a sample of Bruno’s signature and a stack of printed letterheads.

  He took a sheet of stationery from the desk drawer, closed the drawer and then fed the paper into a portable typewriter on the desktop. He held the flashlight in his mouth, thought for a moment, then typed:

  To whom it may concern:

  I can’t do this anymore. It is enough. The women were all innocent; that’s what attracted me to them. I’ve punished enough, and now I will end this once and for all.

  Teddy typed the date at the bottom, then took the paper from the typewriter and looked closely at the signature on the card. He was a good forger, and he didn’t even need to practice. He signed the letter with a pen from the desk drawer and left it on the desk.

  He visited the bedroom once more to be sure everything was in order, then he went back to the kitchen and left the house, first locking and closing the door.

  At the hedge, he shucked off the paper socks, hairnet and latex gloves; put them into the paper bag; picked up his own small bag and returned to the car. Halfway across town he came to a construction Dumpster and deposited the paper bag there.

  He was at home and in bed with Lauren slightly less than an hour after he left.

  They both woke early, as usual. “Did you sleep well?” he asked. “Like a baby,” she said.

  “So did I,” he replied.

  41

  Detective Jimmy Weathers was at his desk early, as usual. He had been there only a moment when his phone rang.

  “Detective Weathers.”

  “Jimmy, it’s Lauren Cade.”

  “Good morning, Lauren.”

  “We have another one.”

  “Where?”

  “On the Orchid Island golf course, north of Vero Beach, specifically, in a sand bunker beside the fourth fairway.”

  “I’m on my way,” Jimmy said. He got his coat on and walked toward the back door, passing the desk of Chief Bruno’s secretary. “When the chief comes in, will you tell him that we’ve had another woman murdered, and I’m at the crime scene? I’ll call him when I’m done there and let him know the details.”

  “Oh, God, not another one,” the woman replied. “I’ll tell him. He has an interview here at nine with a candidate for the deputy chief’s job.”

  Jimmy got into his car and drove out to the Orchid Island Club, a beautiful gated community out past the Disney Resort. He showed his badge at the gate and was waved through. He had played golf here once with Bruno, who was a nonresident member, and he remembered that he could drive nearly all the way to the fourth tee without getting on the grass. He parked near the tee and walked the rest of the way toward a group standing around a bunker on the left-hand side of the fairway.

  “Good morning,” he said as he walked up to Lauren.

  “Not so good,” she said, nodding toward the naked corpse, posed in a kneeling position in the sand.

  Jimmy held his position, not wanting to interfere with the forensics people and the ME, who were already in the bunker. “Looks a lot like the last one, only without the car.”

  “Yeah, and we haven’t found her car yet. They’ve mostly been left in or near their cars. I can’t figure out how he got the body onto the golf course. He would have had to drive through the main gate, wouldn’t he?”

 
; “No, there’s a second gate off Route five ten that members can enter with a pass card.” He paused for a moment. “Bruno is a member here.”

  “Ahh,” she said.

  There was a stand of tall evergreen trees behind the bunker, and a car could be seen passing behind them. “But that’s not how he got the body here,” Jimmy said, pointing. “There’s a road behind the trees there that runs alongside the golf course of the Windsor development, which is right next door. There’s a fence, but I guess he could get over that.”

  “That would account for some cuts and scrapes on the body,” Lauren said.

  “I guess it would,” Jimmy replied.

  The ME stood up from his work and came over to where they stood. “Death by strangulation, probably around midnight last night. Raped anally and vaginally, like the others. I’m supposing she was doped first, like the others.”

  Lauren nodded. “You find anything that might help us?” she asked one of the crime lab people.

  “Not a thing,” the man said. He pointed to a rake. “There’s a rake in every bunker he could use to smooth over the whole area around the body and, of course, his tracks as he left.”

  “Shit,” Lauren said.

  Jimmy spent an hour with Lauren, walking the area around the bunker and checking along the fence behind the trees, but they found nothing else.

  Jimmy was walking with Lauren back to where the cars were parked when his cell phone vibrated. “Hello?”

  It was Bruno’s secretary. “Jimmy, the chief hasn’t shown up for his interview, and he’s an hour late. That’s unlike him, and he’s not answering either his home phone or his cell phone, and he always has that cell phone with him. I’m worried that he might have had a heart attack or something. Would you swing by his house and see if he’s there?”

  “Sure, I will,” Jimmy replied. “See you later, Lauren; I’ve got to check by Bruno’s house and see if he’s all right; he’s late for a meeting, and he can’t be found.”

  “Well, we can always hope, can’t we? If you find him, question him about his whereabouts last night, and see if he has an alibi.”