Stuart Woods - Hothouse Orchid

“Yes, he does.”

“Why do you think you can handle him? Physically, I mean.”

“I’m not at all sure I could; I have to keep it from coming to that.”

“Let me tell you bluntly why I can’t authorize this,” Hurd said, “either officially or unofficially.”

“Tell me,” Lauren replied.

“In order to pull this off, you’re going to have to make Jimmy believe that he’s going to…”

“Yes.”

“He has to believe that you want him to fuck you.” Hurd blushed. “I said I’d be blunt.”

“It’s all right, Hurd; be blunt.”

“If he thinks that’s going to happen and you try and stop him, you could make him very angry.”

“That’s kind of the idea.”

“You’ve seen his victims. He wasn’t gentle with them before he killed them. There’s no reason to believe he would be gentle with you.”

“I suppose it would be up to me to control him,” Lauren said.

“And you think that, if you led him along, you could stop him from fucking you without… consequences?”

“The consequences would have to be for him.”

“Lauren, let me be even blunter. Are you willing to kill him?”

“As you say, he’s a big guy. I would probably have to kill him to stop him.”

Hurd blushed even more. “Are you willing to fuck him, just to break this case?”

“If I have to. I mean, if I kill him, there’d be no witnesses, and we’d need evidence that he raped me.”

“You mean semen.”

“Yes. Inside me.”

“What would your boyfriend say about this?”

“I have no intention of mentioning it to him.”

“And suppose you did fuck Jimmy. Is there any way to resolve the case without killing him?”

“I think that, if he were excited enough, he might well talk about what he’d done. Especially if he thought I knew and that I was excited about knowing.”

“Lauren,” Hurd said, “one more question, and I want a straight answer. After what you went through with Bruno, why would you want do this?”

Lauren regarded him evenly. “I think I want to do it because of what I went through with Bruno.”

Hurd swiveled his chair around and gazed at the wall for half a minute before turning back to her. “Here’s my decision, Lauren,” Hurd said. “I will not allow you to try this. In fact, I order you not to. Is that perfectly clear?”

“Perfectly,” Lauren replied.

“I want to explain why I’m giving you this order.”

“I understand. You don’t have to explain.”

“Yes, I do, and I have three very valid reasons. One: such an attempt would place you in mortal peril. Two: even if you survived, the chances of your getting a confession from him would be remote. Three: even if you survived and got a confession, it’s likely that either a judge would refuse to allow your evidence on grounds of entrapment, or the defense would characterize it as entrapment and say that Jimmy confessed only because he wanted so badly to fuck you.”

“I see your point,” Lauren said.

“Will you follow my order?”

Lauren hesitated.

“Lauren, unless you tell me that you will follow my order-and mean it-I will fire you out of hand right this minute, and then you will have no legal standing to attempt what you propose.”

Lauren regarded her shoes. “All right, Hurd, I accept your order. Really, I’ll table this plan.”

“It’s not a plan,” Hurd said. “It’s a dangerous fantasy. This is not how we solve homicides.”

“Then,” Lauren said, “we’re probably going to have to accept another murder. Maybe more than one.”

“We can’t control that,” Hurd said.

“Maybe we can,” Lauren replied.

“You have an alternate plan, then?”

“I do.”

Holly walked into the Ocean Grill in Vero Beach, stood just inside the door and looked for Lauren Cade.

“I’m right behind you,” Lauren said.

“Hi,” Holly said. “Let’s get a table.”

When they were settled in and iced tea had been served, Holly looked closely at Lauren. “What is going on?” she asked. “You look funny. Is something wrong?”

“No. Well, not yet. I want to run something by you.”

“Go ahead.”

Lauren told her about the plan she had considered.

“Did you propose this to Hurd?” Holly asked.

“Yes.”

“I was hoping you wouldn’t say that.”

“Hurd turned down the idea. In fact, he ordered me not to do it.”

“Of course.”

“In fact, he said he would fire me on the spot, unless I agreed not to.”

“Good for Hurd. What you proposed is not good judgment.”

“Holly, what would you do in the circumstances?”

Holly thought about that.

“That’s what I thought,” Lauren said.

“I was thinking, not deciding to do something stupid.”

“So you’re against it?”

“In every possible way,” Holly said.

“I had another thought, which I proposed to Hurd.”

“Let’s hear that one.”

“We bug Jimmy’s cruiser with a microphone and GPS.”

“This is sounding better already.”

“We follow him at a distance of, say, a quarter of a mile, just out of sight.”

“Good,” Holly said. “And you rush in as soon as he makes a wrong move?”

“Right.”

“I like it, but I’ll tell you how I would like it even better.”

“Please do,” Lauren said.

“You install multiple audio and video cameras, along with the GPS. It’s too easy for something to go wrong with the equipment; you’ve got to have backup. And you’re going to need the video for the trial.”

“You’re right.”

“The problem is, you may have to tail Jimmy for days or even weeks before he makes his move. I mean, right now he’s home free, and he knows that if he commits another murder the whole Bruno-as-killer thing will be blown.”

“I think he would change his MO, make it seem that there’s a different murderer out there,” Lauren said.

“You may be right,” Holly agreed, “but you’re still going to have to wait for the pressure to build inside Jimmy, and that could take a while.”

“It won’t take a while,” Lauren said.

“How can you make it happen sooner?” Holly asked.

“By being the victim.”

“Lauren, I thought we agreed that was a stupid idea.”

“Listen to me, Holly. If I don’t do this we have only one other alternative: we wait for Jimmy to grab another woman. We’d be using an innocent person as bait, and who knows what could happen?”

“You have a point,” Holly said.

“But if his intended victim is me, we have two advantages: we choose the time, and we have him on video and audio. All I need to do is use a code word, and backup is all over us. They have the location, and they’re close.”

Holly shrugged. “Again, you have a point.”

“Cops do this sort of thing all the time,” Lauren pointed out. “It’s just like an undercover drug bust, and the state police have the equipment to make it work. They have surveillance vans that can track his car in real time, pinpoint it, and they have real-time viewing of what’s happening in the car. Hurd can make that happen.”

“Lauren,” Holly said, “do you know what transference is?”

“I think so,” Lauren replied. “It’s like when you transfer your feeling about someone, like your wicked stepfather, onto someone else, like your boyfriend.”

“Right. And do you see any transference going on here?”

“Yeah, I’m transferring my feelings about Bruno to Jimmy. That’s a perfectly valid conclusion, and I think I have perfectly valid reasons for doing it. I hate rapists.”

Holly thought about that for a few seconds. “I think you should have a helicopter, too,” she said. “There’s going to be a very short time between when Jimmy makes his move and you’re in real trouble. Remember, all the other victims, including me, were unconscious immediately.”