Stuart Woods - Hothouse Orchid

“I do,” she said, “but there’s nothing I can do about it.”

That was something he could offer her, he thought: a better climate somewhere else. “Where would you like to live, if you could live anywhere?”

“Paris,” she said unhesitatingly.

“That’s a nice thought,” Teddy said. “Do you have the language?”

“Two courses in high school. I can order dinner.”

“That’s about the extent of my French, too,” he admitted.

“I think if I lived in Paris the language would come to me quickly enough.”

Teddy changed the subject. “When you nail this Bruno character, what will your next job be?”

“The next big crime, I guess.”

“Wherever it is?”

“Wherever in Florida.”

So she might get yanked away from him. He didn’t like that.

“Our charter from the government is to investigate ‘major’ crimes, but Hurd Wallace has a lot of discretion over what cases he works. Of course, the governor could call at any time and send him off to Miami or Jacksonville or someplace to solve some murder that had statewide or national implications.”

“Are you having Bruno followed?”

“No, not yet, anyway. But I’ve told Jimmy Weathers-you met him-that Bruno is a suspect, so I expect he’ll be paying a lot of attention to him until we break the case.”

“Does he spend most of his time in the office?”

“Jimmy says he works odd hours. Sometimes he’s at the station in the middle of the night. It’s like he’s always checking up on the people who work for him.”

“I’m no cop,” Teddy said, “but I should think that if he’s your suspect, you’d follow him night and day, until he made an incriminating move.”

“To do that, Hurd would have to request more manpower from the state police, and then it starts to get political. If he meets with resistance, he has to get the governor involved. I think Hurd is reluctant to do that, or we’d already be following Bruno.”

“He’ll make a mistake eventually,” Teddy said.

“Let’s hope so,” Lauren replied.

Teddy was thinking he wouldn’t wait for Bruno to make a mistake.

Jimmy Weathers worked until after midnight, then, as he was locking his desk, he saw a light go on down the hallway. Bruno was in his office.

He walked down the hall toward the rear door to the parking lot and stopped at Bruno’s door. “Evening, Chief.”

“Good evening, Jimmy,” Bruno said.

“Did you just get here?”

“Yes,” Bruno replied. “You, too?”

“No, I’m just leaving. You going to be late?”

“Probably an all-nighter,” Bruno replied. “I’m working on personnel files, and, by the way, I’m giving you a good performance rating.”

“Thank you, Chief. Good night, now.”

“Good night,” Bruno said

Jimmy walked out to the parking lot, and, as he was about to get into his car, he noticed that Bruno’s unmarked cruiser, parked next to him under a streetlamp, had the keys in it. If Bruno kept doing that, Jimmy mused, he was going to end up with a stolen police car.

The next morning Lauren Cade was fifteen minutes late for work, having spent longer in bed with Jack Smithson than she’d meant to. Hurd Wallace called to her as she passed his door.

“Lauren?”

“Yes, Hurd. Sorry I’m late.”

“You’re just in time. The Vero department called two minutes ago. They’ve had a call about a dead woman in a car, and they’re en route now.”

“Is it another one, do you think?”

“I think,” Hurd said. “Do you know the fairgrounds west of town?”

“Yes.”

“That’s where they found her. You ready to go?”

“Sure.”

“We’ll take your car,” he said, grabbing his jacket.

The fairgrounds were located on a grid of roads just west of Vero Beach, a place that Lauren passed when she was driving from her house to the Indian River Mall. There was a police car blocking the entrance, but Lauren identified herself and was allowed in.

She drove into the grounds, and it was immediately obvious where the crime scene was. Two Vero cars and a van were in the middle of the large, grassy field that served as a parking lot when there was an event at the grounds. She cut across the field toward them.

She stopped, and she and Hurd got out of their car and identified themselves to the detective in charge.

“I’m Ed Rankin,” the detective said. “I’ve heard about you folks. You going to take this one away from us?”

“We don’t want to do that,” Hurd replied. “We just want to help.”

“Well, I hope you don’t help like the FBI helps,” Rankin replied. The Bureau had a reputation among cops for letting them do the work, then taking the credit.

“Nothing like that,” Hurd said. “This is probably one more in a series we’ve had. You know about that.”

“Sure, I do, and I think you’re right,” Rankin said.

The medical examiner’s truck pulled up next to them, and the ME got out. “What we got here?” he asked.

“Let’s look together,” Hurd said, leading the way around the victim’s car.

The driver’s door was open, and a naked woman was on her knees in the driver’s seat, her head toward the passenger door. There was blood on her buttocks and thighs and on the back of her head.

Lauren winced when she saw the position, and she was immediately struck by the difference between what she and Jack had been doing an hour ago and what this woman had experienced.

The ME conducted his on-site examination, then stood back.

“Tell me what you think,” Hurd said.

“I think she was forced to strip and kneel on the driver’s seat, then was raped vaginally and anally from behind, then shot once in the back of the head, probably with a twenty-two pistol, eight to ten hours ago.”

“I concur,” Hurd said, looking at Lauren.

“So do I,” she said.

“Can I take the body?” the ME asked.

Hurd turned to Rankin. “Ed?”

“Sure. We can look at the interior of the car better with her gone.”

The ME and his assistant removed the body from the car, loaded it on a gurney and put it into his truck. Shortly, they were gone.

“We got a handbag,” Rankin said, holding it up by a strap. It was on the seat under the body. He walked to the front of the car and emptied the bag onto the hood. “We got a wallet,” he said, opening it, “and a driver’s license.” Rankin took the license from the wallet and peered at it. “Oh, shit,” he said.

“What?” Lauren asked.

“I know her. Jeanine Clark. She sells tickets at the mall movie theater. My oldest boy went to high school with her. The family lived a couple of blocks from us.”

“How late would she work at the movie theater?” Hurd asked.

“I think they have shows as late as midnight,” Rankin replied. “I’ll check out there and see what time she left last night; that’ll probably give us a time of death, and I’ll bet it agrees with the ME’s estimate.”

Lauren stepped away from the car and made a phone call.

“Detective Weathers,” Jimmy said.

“It’s Lauren. We’ve got another one.”

“Where?”

“In the Vero jurisdiction, out at the fairgrounds.”

“He’s moving around, then.”

“Yes. I want to know where Bruno was last night. Can you find out without alerting him that he’s a suspect?”

“I already know,” Jimmy said. “I left here a little after midnight, and he had just arrived, said he was going to be working all night on personnel files. He’s gone, now; probably at home asleep.”

“That’s interesting,” Lauren said. “Was anybody else in the station last night?”

“Just the switchboard operator; everybody else would have been on patrol until the shift change, at eight a.m.”