Stuart Woods - Hothouse Orchid

“Mr. Smithson…” she began.

“Please, call me Jack.”

“And I’m Lauren. How old are you?”

He smiled. “I’m sixty.”

“I had thought a bit younger,” she said.

“I think of myself as younger. And you?”

“I’m thirty-eight,” she said. “And I think of myself as older.”

“That’s odd,” Teddy observed.

“I suppose it is,” she agreed.

“Have you had a hard life?”

“Not particularly,” she said. “I’ve had some rough moments.”

“So have we all, some rougher than those of others. How did you come to be a state police officer?”

“I came from a family who had little, and I joined the army as a means of getting a college education. I majored in criminology, and I applied for Officer Candidacy School with an eye toward the military police. I served for fourteen years, then left and applied to the Florida State Police.”

“Were you disappointed in the army as a career?”

“On the contrary, I liked it and thought I would do the full thirty years.”

“What happened?”

“Let’s just say I was disappointed in some of the officers I served with.”

Teddy felt he shouldn’t question her too closely about that. If she wanted to talk about it she would. “My life was more mundane,” he said. “I did an apprenticeship as a machinist after high school, and then started inventing gadgets, mostly kitchen stuff. Somewhat to my surprise I was able to make a good living at it. I married, and she died four years ago of ovarian cancer. No kids.”

“I didn’t marry,” Lauren said. “The only men I met were army officers, and they always seemed to be either just timeservers or too ambitious to be promoted.”

They talked on over their dinners and shared a bottle of wine. When they were done, he walked her back to her car.

“Am I too old for you?” he asked.

“I don’t think so,” she replied.

“Then may we have dinner again?”

“I’d like that.”

“Perhaps tomorrow night?”

“That’s good for me. I should warn you that sometimes I get called to work on short notice.”

“I’m flexible. May I cook for you at my house?”

“That would be lovely.”

“Seven o’clock?”

“I know where to find you,” she said, getting into her car. She handed him a card. “That’s how you can reach me, should something come up.”

He wrote down his own number and gave it to her. “Nothing will come up,” he said. “I’ll see to it.”

“Until tomorrow evening, then,” she said, starting her car.

He closed her door and walked back to his own car. This had been an unexpected but very pleasant surprise, he thought. And he was curious about her past relationship with James Bruno.

He went home and fired up his computer. He didn’t need to go into the Agency mainframe; there was enough on Bruno through Google. He read about the man’s trial for rape and even found a photograph of Lauren, who looked much younger at the time.

And another surprise: Holly Barker was in the photo, too.

Ham Barker sat in his Boston Whaler, a rod in his hand, casting into the shallows of the Indian River. As he reeled in his line, a roar came from the river behind him, and his boat rose alarmingly on the wave from a wake.

Ham turned and watched the sports fisherman as it passed him at about twelve knots, not on the plane but with its stern low, pushing out a small tsunami behind it. He saw the name on the stern, Party Girl, and made a mental note to remember it, in case he ever met its owner ashore. Then he caught sight of the man at the helm: one James Bruno. Ham recognized him from his court-martial. A young woman in a bikini sat in the stern, sunning herself.

Ham laid his rod in the boat, pulled in his anchor, started the engine and turned upriver, following Party Girl. He crossed half its wake then settled dead astern, where the wake was smooth. Ham felt a flush of anger just at the sight of Bruno. It was a good thing he wasn’t armed, he thought, or he might have put a couple of rounds into the retired colonel.

He followed the boat upriver and watched as it put into a marina where Ham knew fuel could be bought at a discount, then he slowed and stood off a dozen yards while Bruno tossed his lines to a dock man, then hopped off his boat and walked up the ramp to the marina office to order fuel.

Ham put his boat into gear and motored slowly alongside Party Girl. “Excuse me, miss,” he said to the young woman, who was applying suntan lotion to her body.

She looked up from her work. “Yes?”

“May I ask, how long have you known James Bruno?”

She blinked. “Not long. Why?”

“Are you aware that he has a history of raping women?”

“Don’t be ridiculous!” she said. “He’s a perfectly nice man.”

“That’s what the women he raped thought, until he raped them.”

“But he’s the chief of police.”

“Ironic, isn’t it? Don’t take my word for it; Google him and read about his court-martial when he was in the army. I tell you this only for your protection.” Ham looked up and saw Bruno walking back down the ramp toward his boat. Ham put the engine in gear and slowly motored out of the marina.

He looked back and saw an angry discussion taking place on the sports fisherman, then he watched as the woman grabbed a duffle, stuffed some things into it, hopped off the boat and practically ran up the ramp. Ham smiled broadly.

Bruno stood in the stern of his boat, shaking his fist. “You son of a bitch!” he yelled. “Come back here!”

“You’re lucky I don’t,” Ham said to himself, then he put the throttle forward and began running downriver again, laughing aloud. At least he had ruined Bruno’s afternoon, and maybe he had spared the girl an awful experience. He felt very pleased with himself.

Bruno came through the back door of the Orchid Beach police station and stalked down the hall toward his office, still white with rage. As he reached the door he looked across the squad room and saw Lauren Cade leaving Jimmy Weathers’s cubicle. She glanced at him, then turned her head and walked out the front door of the building.

Bruno walked down to Weathers’s cubicle and leaned against the doorjamb.

“Hey, Chief,” Weathers said.

“What was that little bitch doing here?” Bruno demanded.

“She’s working on the rape case, too-you know, with Hurd Wallace’s new unit?”

“You’re the detective in charge of the case,” Bruno said. “Why do you need her?”

“Well, nominally, it’s our case, but Hurd’s outfit has authority from the governor to participate in any case they like. I don’t mind, really, since they can get things like lab work done faster than we can. They have priority.”

“I don’t like that,” Bruno said. “Resign us from the case and let them do the fucking work.”

“Excuse me, Chief, but I don’t think that’s a very good idea.”

“And why not?”

“Well, I’ve put a lot of time into this case, and I think the more hands we have on it the better we’ll do.”

“And when you break it, you want to share the credit with Hurd Wallace and that bimbo?”

“She’s not a bimbo, Chief; she’s a good police officer and very smart.”

“Yeah, I know how smart she is; she worked for me in the army.”

“I didn’t know that, Chief.”

“She was a disloyal officer.”

“Disloyal? How?”

“She was lazy, undisciplined and tried to take credit for the work of others. She’ll try to take credit for your work, too.”

“Chief, I don’t really think she’s like that,” Jimmy said. “That hasn’t been my experience with her.”