Hothouse Orchid (5 page)

10

H
olly awoke early the next morning, fed Daisy and herself, then took them both for a walk on the beach. Daisy ran freely among the dunes, as she always did, looking for just the right spot, then she returned to Holly with a stick of driftwood in her mouth, demanding that Holly throw it. Holly obliged, and Daisy dutifully retrieved the stick and returned it to Holly, wanting more. They made progress up the beach as Daisy retrieved, then Holly threw it once more, and Daisy stopped after a few feet and sat down on the sand.

“What’s the matter?” Holly asked, catching up with her. “You tired already? You haven’t even worn me out yet.”

Daisy made an urgent rumbling noise in her throat, then got up and began to walk up the beach, this time very slowly. Holly watched her, mystified. In their time together she had never seen Daisy behave this way. She followed the dog at her pace, and after another hundred yards Holly saw something in the surf ahead.

Daisy trotted ahead a few yards, sniffed at what seemed to be a lump on the sand, then sat down beside it and barked. Holly began to jog toward her. She was ten feet away when she recognized the lump. It was a body, female, naked, with long blond hair, lying face down in the sand. One ankle had a length of rope tied around it. Holly stopped, called Daisy back, then reached for her cell phone.

The sun was well up now, and a small knot of people was gathered inside a taped-off area on the beach. Holly sat on a dune with Daisy, watching them, thinking. She heard a car door slam behind her, and she turned to see James Bruno trudging through the dunes toward the taped-off area. He joined the group inspecting the body, chatted with them for a few minutes, then turned back toward his car. Then he spotted Holly.

He walked slowly toward her, as if to ascertain her identity, then he stopped a few steps away. Daisy was already on her feet in a guarding stance.

“Good morning, Holly,” Bruno said.

“Is it?”

“Will your dog attack?”

“I haven’t decided yet.”

Bruno thought about that and decided to stay where he was. “I understand you found the body.”

“My dog did. I never got closer than ten feet to the woman.”

“Do you know her?”

“She was face down in the sand.”

He nodded. “If you’ve formed any opinions, I’d appreciate hearing them.”

Holly stared toward where the body was being loaded into the coroner’s wagon. “White female, mid- to late twenties, five-five or -six, a hundred and thirty pounds. No deterioration, just some puffiness associated with being in the water, so she was probably put into the sea last night from a small boat with an outboard engine and with a weight tied to her ankle. Her killer was clumsy, and his outboard cut the rope. She came ashore with the tide, and when it went out, it left her there.”

“That’s very good,” Bruno said.

Holly didn’t reply, just stared out to sea.

“Cause of death?”

“Unless there were wounds on the front of the torso, strangulation. There was a faint mark on the back of her neck. You’d be wise to order a tox screen from the state lab. Hurd Wallace could hurry it up for you, if you call him.”

“Why a tox screen?”

“You’ve probably heard that a serial rapist has been operating locally over the last six weeks.”

“Yes, but he hasn’t killed anybody.”

“Maybe he’s graduated to bigger, more satisfying acts,” she replied. “Maybe rape isn’t doing it for him anymore; maybe he’s decided to become a serial killer.”

He was quiet for a moment. “I understand you’ve had some communication with some of my female officers. I don’t appreciate that.”

“You think I care what you don’t appreciate? What did you expect me to do? Get you dates?” She looked at him and saw him go red.

“Good morning,” he said finally, then he started across the dunes toward his car.

Holly thought of siccing Daisy on him, just for the fun of it, but she didn’t. She got up, dusted off the sand and went back to the house. She found Hurd Wallace’s number and phoned him.

“Captain Wallace.”

“Morning, Hurd. It’s Holly.”

“Good morning, Holly.”

“I thought you ought to know, about an hour and a half ago Daisy and I discovered the body of a woman washed up on the beach, not far from my house.”

“Who’s investigating?”

“Orchid Beach. Jim Bruno turned up an hour late and asked for my impressions.”

“Which were?”

She repeated the assessment she had given Bruno. “I also think that if you search the garbage cans at the nearest marinas you might find her clothing and handbag.”

“Did you tell Bruno that?”

“No, I thought it would be more fun for someone else to discover what he had overlooked.”

“Is this the first time you’ve seen him since . . .”

“Yes. He’s lucky I wasn’t armed.”

“I understand. By the way, I had a talk with Lauren Cade late yesterday afternoon. I’m going to offer her a job. It’s good that she’s already on the state patrol; it will just take a transfer, not all the rigamarole that would be involved if I were hiring her off the street. I’m grateful for your recommendation.”

“You’re welcome, Hurd.”

“Thanks for the tip about the murder. I’ll get somebody on it.” He said goodbye and hung up.

Holly tried to remember if she had told Hurd that James Bruno had raped Lauren Cade. Probably not; it wasn’t relevant.

11

H
olly had just hung up after talking with Hurd Wallace when her phone rang. “Hello?”

“Good morning, it’s Josh,” he said.

“Good morning.”

“I’m coming back for more; would you like to go out to dinner tonight?”

“Yes, I would,” she replied without hesitation.

“Where would you like to go?”

“You choose; I’m easy.”

“I hope so,” he said, laughing. “I’ll come and get you at seven.”

“That’s good,” she said.

“See you then.” He hung up.

H
e appeared at her door on time, and she let him in. “Would you like a drink before we go?” she asked.

“I’m hungry; let’s have a drink at the restaurant.”

“Okay by me.” She patted Daisy on the head. “Guard the place with your life, and you can sleep on the bed while we’re gone.”

Daisy turned and trotted upstairs. Holly secured the house and left with Josh, who was driving a newish Mercedes convertible, top down.

“Nice car,” she said, when they had cleared the gates. “How do you afford it on a public hospital salary?”

“The money isn’t all that bad, really,” Josh said, “especially if you don’t have to buy a wife a car, too. It isn’t as good as my general-surgery practice, but then I don’t have to support an office and a staff. How does the CIA pay?”

“It’s civil service pay, but I’ve been operating at a fairly high grade, and now that I’ve been promoted to the executive level, I’ll do even better. To tell the truth, I was afraid to ask how much better. I’ll find out when I get back to work. Where are we dining?”

“At the Ocean Grill in Vero Beach,” he replied. “Do you know it?”

“One of my favorites,” she said, “and I’m in the mood for seafood.”

They were halfway through their first drink when he changed the subject.

“I got your tox screen back,” he said.

“I thought that could take weeks,” Holly said.

“Not if you have a friend in the lab and not if you ask for a specific test.”

“And?”

“It was a benzodiazepine, trade name Rohypnol.”

“I know about that,” she said. “It’s a date-rape drug. But doesn’t it take fifteen or twenty minutes to take effect?”

“If you’re ingesting it in a drink, yes. But the perpetrator probably dissolved it in alcohol and injected it, so it would work much faster. I’m very pleased with myself for taking your blood as soon as you were admitted. The body metabolizes the drug quickly, and if we had waited, we might have gotten a negative result on the test. As it was, only a very small amount was detected.”

“Rohypnol is illegal, right?”

“Right. It would have to be obtained through a street dealer, like crack or pot, but it is available.”

“Or,” Holly said, “in a drug bust.”

“Pardon?”

“If the perp is a cop he might well have found the drug in a search of a suspect or a car. He could learn how to use it effectively from the Internet.”

“I guess you can learn almost anything from the Internet these days,” Josh replied.

“How much Rohypnol would it take to kill someone?” she asked.

“I’d have to look that up on the Internet,” he replied, “but I suppose it would depend on how it was administered: a lot, if ingested—it has the same effect as alcohol, only more powerful. It would take less if injected—even less, if it were injected into a vein or an artery.”

“Now there’s a thought,” Holly said.

“Come again?”

“This morning Daisy and I discovered the body of a young woman washed up on the beach not far from my house. I have a gut feeling she’s a victim of the same perp who’s doing the raping. Suppose he’s injecting Rohypnol and he accidentally finds the jugular vein or the carotid artery?”

“I get your point,” Josh said. “That could result in death instead of just unconsciousness.”

“Probably surprised the perp,” Holly said. “He was aiming for a neck muscle, but he hit the vein or artery instead, and she dies. He had to get rid of the body in a hurry, so he takes it out in a small boat, ties a weight to an ankle and throws her overboard. Only his outboard severs the rope, and she ends up a floater. Did I mention that she had a rope tied to a leg and that the rope had been severed?”

“No, but that makes sense. I suppose you must have a very rattled perp.”

“Maybe,” Holly said. “Or maybe he ended up enjoying the experience.”

“The experience of killing someone?”

“Maybe. Or maybe the experience of sex with a dead body.”

Josh gave a little shiver. “Creepy.”

“When you think about it, it’s not a very big step from sex with an unconscious body. Either way, she’s not going to fight back, and maybe he feels safer with his victim dead.”

“This is all outside my experience,” Josh said. “I mean, if somebody walks into my ER who appears to be psychotic, I just patch him up, then call for a psych consult and hand him off. Chances are, I never see him again.”

“Lucky you,” Holly said. “Eventually, the cops have to deal with him, and, like our serial rapist, they don’t even know who he is.”

“From what you said before about his finding the Rohypnol in a search, I take it you’re considering the possibility that your perpetrator is a cop?”

“He had a flashing light on his dashboard, and in the dark, a driver seeing the light wouldn’t see much of the car in her rearview mirror. The cop who’s investigating the crimes—you met him, Jimmy Weathers—brought up that possibility right away. He said he had already eliminated the men on the Orchid force as suspects, so he’s thinking of somebody in a neighboring jurisdiction.”

“I guess that makes sense.” Josh cocked his head and looked at her. “You enjoy this process, don’t you?”

Holly laughed. “It’s the cop in me, I suppose. Until a few years ago, I had never done anything but be a cop. My new work is very, very interesting, but it doesn’t involve much in the way of criminal investigation, and I guess I miss that.”

“My guess is, you’re not going to stop thinking about this until you’ve caught the guy,” Josh said.

“Until
somebody
catches the guy,” she replied, “and I guess it would be satisfying if it were me.”

12

L
auren Cade got out of Hurd Wallace’s car at the Indian River Marina and followed him across the parking lot.

“Here we go,” Hurd said, pointing at two Dumpsters. “You take the one on the right; I’ll take the left.”

They both donned lightweight plastic jumpsuits and latex gloves.

Lauren opened the lid of the Dumpster and peered inside. It was nearly full, and to judge from the smell, it hadn’t been emptied for a few days. She took a deep breath, grabbed the edge of the Dumpster and vaulted inside, landing on her feet, but immediately losing her footing and falling backward into the steel side. She struggled to her feet, glad of the plastic jumpsuit, then looked over at Hurd, who was having the same problem.

“We might get lucky and find some loose clothing,” Hurd said, “but they could be in a bag, so let’s toss everything out and work from the tarmac.”

Lauren began picking up plastic garbage bags and tossing them out of the Dumpster. During the process, she found one loose towel but no clothing. When the Dumpster was empty, she crawled out and stood on the tarmac, surveying her work. Most of it was small, kitchen-sized bags, which is what she would have expected from boats. “Are we just going to dump everything out of the bags?” she asked.

“Yes,” Hurd said. “I’ve already called for a garbage pickup from the county, so they’ll do the cleanup.”

“I’ve got one loose item,” Lauren said, holding up the towel.

“Bag it, and set it aside.”

She did so, then took a knife from her pocket and began opening bags, shaking the contents onto the bare tarmac and poking carefully through them before going on to the next bag.

“Look for anything like a wallet or purse, too,” Hurd said.

Lauren looked at every single item in every bag: tin cans, paper plates, condoms, tampons—everything. An hour later she stepped out of the refuse and onto clean tarmac, just as a garbage truck drove up and two sanitation workers got out.

“What a mess!” one of them said. “You had to open every bag?”

“Every one,” Hurd replied.

“We’re gonna have to bag all this again,” the man said.

“Well, you can put it back in the Dumpsters, then use your equipment to dump everything into the truck.”

“I guess that makes more sense. Get some pitchforks and brooms, Eddie,” the man said.

Lauren picked up her bagged towel and took one last look in her Dumpster. “Hang on!” she shouted. She vaulted back into the bin and peered into a corner. “Car keys,” she yelled, and tossed them to Hurd.

She climbed out of the Dumpster and went to take a closer look at them.

“Hertz,” Hurd said. “Ford Focus.” He read out the license plate number. Then they both started walking around the parking lot: not a single Ford Focus.

Lauren walked back to the parking lot entrance and looked up and down the road. “Hurd?” she called. “What color is the Focus?”

“Blue,” he called back.

“I’ve got one,” she said and began trotting down the road. She came up on the car and walked carefully around it, looking inside.

Hurd drove up in their car. “Anything?”

Lauren struggled out of the dirty jumpsuit and pulled on a fresh pair of latex gloves. “Rental folder,” she said, opening the car door and reaching for the folder, which had been tucked into a cup holder. She opened it and read the contract. “Patricia Terwilliger,” she said, “Atlanta address. Rented the car at Melbourne Airport three days ago. Here’s her Georgia driver’s license number,” she said, walking toward the car.

Hurd was already tapping computer keys. In seconds, the driver’s license was displayed on the screen. “Looks like our girl,” he said.

“You saw her?” Lauren asked.

“At the morgue.”

“Can I have the keys, please?” Lauren asked.

Hurd handed them to her.

She walked around to the rear of the car, inserted the key and opened the trunk. “I’ve got a wheelie carry-on and a purse here,” she said. She lifted the carry-on out of the trunk and set it on the ground, then reached for the handbag and stopped. “Hurd, when you saw her corpse, was it missing anything?”

“No,” he replied.

“Then you’d better get out an APB for a female body missing the right hand.”

H
olly, naked and sweating, was lying in her bed with Josh next to her. “What time do you have to be at work?” she asked.

“Noon,” he panted.

“Good,” she said.

The phone rang. “Hello?”

“Holly, it’s Hurd.”

“Hey, Hurd.”

“Your idea about checking marina Dumpsters paid off, right out of the box.”

“You found her clothes?”

“First her car keys, then her car—a rental out of Melbourne three days ago. The contract was inside with her license number, and we pulled up her license: Patricia Terwilliger from Atlanta. Then we opened the trunk and found her carry-on, her purse and another woman’s right hand.”

“Oh, shit,” Holly said.

“I’m going back to the office to work this. I just thought you’d like to know.”

“Thanks, Hurd,” she said. “I appreciate the call. Maybe you’ll get a print or two off the car.”

“Lauren’s with me. She’s staying with the car until Forensics gets here.”

“Keep me posted?”

“You bet I will.”

“Will you call Jimmy Weathers? He’s the lead on the case, and I know he’d appreciate it.”

“Sure. I’ll do it right now. I’m going to keep Jim Bruno out of the loop for as long as I can.”

“Good. Oh, Hurd, I had a call from the doctor who treated me the other night. He got the tox screen back. The perp used Rohypnol on me.”

“I’ll let the morgue know.”

“He says it metabolizes quickly, but the girl could have died from it very quickly if the perp hit a vein or artery, so you might get lucky.”

“I’ll take all the luck I can get,” Hurd said. “Bye-bye.”

Holly hung up.

“What?” Josh said.

“They’ve ID’d the woman Daisy and I found on the beach. Sounds like a tourist.” She didn’t mention the hand.

“Will it help you catch the guy?”

“God, I hope so,” Holly said. “He’s not going to stop this now; he’s having too good a time. It’s all working for him.”

“Anything I can do?”

“You can tell your ER to be on the lookout for any other women who come in—women like me, hurt or unconscious.”

“I can do that,” he said, sitting up and reaching for his clothes.