The Orchid Keeper: A Sean O'Brien Novel

by Tom Lowe

  Chester slowly sat down on the wooden steps, watching the men drive away. Callie sat next to him. “Grandpa, do you think the man you saw was the killer?”

  He turned to her. “I don’t know. I’ve spent most of my life looking into the faces of orchids. They’re incapable of deception. I have a feeling, though, that a man like Sean O’Brien, a former homicide detective, might have a better insight into that human connection. I would imagine that he has stared into the face of evil more than once. For me, it would be akin to looking at something that doesn’t exist in the world of orchids … a black orchid, for example. It’s neither good nor bad … it just simply doesn’t exist. But darkness does live in the heart of man. I do know there was something about the man driving that car that didn’t seem right. It was more than him appearing out of place in the glades. It was as if he was out of sync with everything around him. Like a planet knocked from its orbit in the cosmos. I could see it in his face. And, if I ever see that face again … I’ll recognize it.”

  FIFTY-SIX

  It didn’t take long for the news media to swarm the Joe Thaxton campaign headquarters. Four TV news trucks parked in the lot, camera operators shooting the exteriors of the building, reporters at the locked door—somber-faced, looking for interviews and over their shoulders at the same time, fueled by competition and deadlines. They learned that Jessica Thaxton had left, picked up her daughter and was sequestered in their home, requesting privacy in their time of mourning.

  Inside the headquarters, staffers openly wept, hugging one another, some trying to hold it together as they answered the barrage of phone calls. Many of the calls were from well-wishers. “Anything we can do,” was the prevailing sentiment. The rest of the calls were from the news media.

  After Jessica Thaxton left to go home, campaign manager Larry Garner, locked the front door and pulled his team of twelve people into a conference room and told them all he knew from speaking with Jessica and the police. He stood next to a white board, Joe Thaxton’s schedule in bold black print for the next week. Garner, eyes red and puffy, looked at his staff. They were mostly young, just over the voting age. All volunteers. All teary eyed. All looking for answers Garner knew he couldn’t give.

  “The first thing Joe would say to us,” Garner said, “would be to march on with the message, the agenda, the passion. He’d tell us to further embrace Hal Duncan’s campaign with all of the fiber in our bodies. Hal and Joe shared a lot in common. They saw beyond partisan issues to reach a mutual goal. And, if Hal is elected governor, much of Joe’s passion will go with Hal to Tallahassee.”

  Garner paused, licked his lower lip and blew out a long breath. “Joe was out there … down in the glades doing what he always did. He sought definitive proof. He combed the water, ground, and the skies looking for scars to the environment. The facts, he always said, carried the weight in a debate about the earth’s environment and removed opinion from the argument. Joe always talked about man’s effect on the environment long before most people recognized climate change. He knew that, for our fragile blue-green planet to sustain life a hundred years from now, we must do something today to curb the toxic pollution. And he searched for ways to do it. Joe wasn’t just about calling attention to the problem … he was about working together to find solutions.” Garner looked out the conference room’s open door to the news media in the parking lot.

  A young woman, hair in a ponytail, arms crossed, said, “Joe was shot in his back. You said police don’t know if it was the result of a hunting accident or murder. Considering the threats, stuff we received on the phone, and the damage to Joe’s truck, how can it not be murder?”

  “I’d like to think in this day and time, that murder … as in a hitman or assassin, is something used by the mafia and drug cartels to settle scores or eliminate competition. I hope and pray Joe’s death was an accident … because, if it was not, what does that say to anyone thinking about running for office in America who has the fortitude to stand up to corporate greed, and to do what’s right for the environment and the people who call Earth home.”

  A woman asked, “Was Hal Duncan notified? With the media frenzy, he shouldn’t be caught off guard.”

  Garner nodded. I spoke briefly with Hal. He’s very upset. Hal sends condolences to Jessica and everyone in this room. He said to ‘stay strong and continue the fight.’”

  Another staffer, this one an older man with gray hair, who manned the phones during the meeting, came to the door and said, “Larry, when you have a minute, can you speak to all the reporters. It’s quite a scene out there. And the phones won’t stop ringing, TV producers with national news organizations are calling … all asking for information and interviews.”

  Garner nodded. “They can get details from the police. I’ll speak with them about Joe. It won’t be easy talking about my best friend … but Joe would want us to face the media and continue to tell our story. And the ending is certainly not done.”

  FIFTY-SEVEN

  There’s something about planting a tree, hand-digging with a shovel, the organic smell when new dirt is exposed to morning air, that is its own form of physical and emotional therapy. I thought about that as I dug the first hole to plant one of the orange trees—trying to tuck away Joe Thaxton’s death in a file I kept sequestered on a back shelf in my mind. I couldn’t help but feel some guilt for not taking the job. If I’d taken it, could I have made any difference? Even the Secret Service can’t fully protect the president. I was shirtless, dressed in a pair of faded, old jean shorts and scuffed work boots.

  Max sniffed one of the rubber pots that held an orange tree, sitting next to it and looking over at me. I drove the shovel blade hard and deep into the hole, scooping out black earth, sweat rolling down my face and chest. After it was the depth I wanted, I dropped to my knees and used my hands to smooth out the bottom of the hole, sweat dripping from my chin onto the new soil, a pink earthworm wriggling through the soil. After a moment, I stood and looked at the first tree. They all were less than five feet high, their roots squeezed into the hard rubber pots filled with dry potting material.

  “You’re up,” I said, lifting the first small tree from its pot and gently setting it down in the hole. “I’ve already watered the ground with my sweat.” I had to smile—talking to a tree, using my hands to fan out the ball of roots, covering them with fresh moist earth. I could almost hear the tree sigh. I recalled what Chester Miller had said about the Venus flytraps: The plants have no nervous system. No muscle. No brain, yet they are triggered at the right second to move.

  As I finished with the first tree, my phone buzzed. I’d set it down on the grass next to a half-consumed water bottle. Max stood, staring at the phone and then cutting her brown eyes up at me. “Yeah, I know.” I looked at the screen. Wynona was calling.

  I answered, and she said, “Sean, I have more information about Joe Thaxton’s death. I met at length with your old friend Detective Gilson and compared notes.” She told me they’d sent the cigar stogie, hunter’s make-up kit, and trail mix wrapper to the state crime lab for analysis. Cory wanted to wait for the lab to finish before pursuing a homicide case. Wynona didn’t want to wait, but she had little to go on until DNA might be extracted or a print lifted.

  She said, “It’s an odd case, not only in terms of jurisdiction, but in the scope. Here we have a fairly well-known man running for office, shot in the glades as he collects water pollution data, and he manages to make it across the boundary to die on Seminole land—the rez. It’s more than a half mile from where they found his backpack and some blood to where we found the body. Cory Gilson and I will work the case as a co-op, inter-police taskforce the best we can. But I’m not going to wait to see if the cigar and other things might be connected to a deer hunter. I’m pursuing it as a homicide until I have proof otherwise.”

  “That sounds like a good plan,” I said. “I’m sure Cory will follow your lead. He’s not about ego. He never was a guy concerned with taking credit … but more o
f an investigator who wanted to flesh out all leads in a case.”

  Wynona sat at her office desk. “I hope you’re right, Sean. But my spidey sense is tingling just a tad. I think Gilson is a straight shooter, but he seems quick to look at the side of the coin that’s spinning toward an accidental death. Maybe I’m wrong.” She sighed. “I’m at my desk reading a Thaxton campaign flier. After standing next to his body, thinking about how far he’d walked and crawled after he was shot … what must have been going through his mind … and then looking at the pictures of Thaxton and his family, my heart breaks. It breaks for his wife and little girl. Jessica Thaxton needs to know whether her husband was killed in a hunting accident or murdered by a hitman. And daughter Kristy deserves to know as well. If it was a hitman, who sent him and why. That’s where I want to go if the evidence opens that door.”

  “One thing that might open that door is a missing piece of evidence that could hold the key. They’ve found a stogie, food wrapper, hunter’s makeup, Joe’s backpack and drone control, but search teams haven’t found the drone. If we’re lucky, it just might have captured something that could help.”

  “We think alike, Sean. That’s one of the reasons I’m calling you. I’d like to see if Joe Billie would try to find it. Joe knows the area better than anyone I can think of at the moment. He hunted and fished the land most of his life. He cut palm fronds to build chickees for people and businesses. He’s an excellent tracker, too.”

  “I agree, but how do you follow something that doesn’t leave tracks? The drone, of course, zips through the air. Joe has enormous talents in the wild, but I’m not sure even he can track a bird in flight.”

  “Eventually the bird must stop and rest. So, will the drone. I don’t have Joe’s number. He doesn’t come to the rez that often. He has family here. I could ask them, but I know you have his number. Maybe you could give him a call for me.”

  “That doesn’t mean he’ll answer his phone. Sometimes it takes him a week to get back to me. I can always go to his trailer. I might have better luck.”

  “That would be great. Thanks.”

  “You said that was one of the reasons you called. What’s the other?”

  “It has to do with Chester Miller.”

  “What about him?”

  “Gilson told me he spoke with him. Apparently, Chester was in the glades, driving out there to replant rare orchids like he does often, but he saw something.”

  “What?”

  “A man in a black SUV leaving the area not far from where they found Joe Thaxton’s truck. Chester said he could ID the guy if he saw him again. When we bought those orchids from Chester and his granddaughter, I could tell he likes you a lot, or maybe he respects you. I thought maybe you’d go with me when I interview him. I’d like for you to hear what he has to say—what he saw, and then maybe we can take a ride into the Everglades.”

  FIFTY-EIGHT

  Chester Miller was loading a dozen orchids into the bed of his pickup truck when an unscheduled visitor arrived. He looked up to see a TV news truck coming down the long drive to his cabin. Chester closed the truck’s tailgate, wiped his hands with a red rag he had in the side pocket of his denim coveralls, and walked toward the picnic table where Callie was setting up more orchids to be photographed. She looked at him and said, “I wonder how they found us? It looks like they’re from a Miami news station.”

  Chester inhaled deeply and said, “It may be because my name is on a police blotter when I called in to report what I’d seen in the glades. Or maybe after the detective spoke with me, it’s on some kind of police report.”

  They watched as the van rolled to a stop less than twenty feet from them. A blonde woman, late twenties, attractive, dressed in designer jeans and a blazer, got out of the passenger side. She flashed a wide smile. A tall man, balding, wearing a Channel Two polo shirt and jeans carried a video camera in one hand, microphone in the other. He had a tattoo on his right forearm of the cartoon character, Scooby Doo.

  The reporter approached first, smiled and said, “Hi, I’m Linda Brown with Channel Two News. My camera operator is Raul Cordero. Are you Mr. Miller?”

  “I am. This is my granddaughter, Callie.”

  The reporter stepped closer and shook their hands. “It’s nice to meet you both. Before we left the station, I spoke with our feature reporter, Simon Hernandez. He told me he did a story with you a couple of years ago … about how you replant rare orchids in the Everglades and sell them on the side to support the effort. That’s so cool.”

  Chester grinned. “I remember Simon. We spent a few hours in the glades, and he bought a lavender orchid for his new bride.”

  The reporter smiled. “I wish we were doing another feature story. It’s truly incredible in here. Raul and I were talking about that during the drive in, how you’ve got so many exotic flowers set next to the driveway and up in trees.” She looked at Callie and then back at Chester. “We’re doing a story on the death of Joe Thaxton. He’d built quite a following the last few months on the campaign trail. A lot of folks would like to know how he died in the Everglades. We know he was shot once, but detectives aren’t calling it a homicide … at least not yet. We understand that you, Mr. Miller, were in the general area where deputies found Joe Thaxton’s truck. We’re told that you spotted someone leaving the area and spoke with detectives about that. Right now, police have no way of knowing if the person you saw is in any way connected to Thaxton’s death. However, if we could do a brief interview with you, perhaps something you say might help investigators.”

  Chester smiled. “Well, I’ve told them all I know. There’s not a lot more to say.”

  “Maybe someone in our audience will hear your interview … jog their memory, and perhaps know where to find the person you saw. If the person you saw out there happens to see himself on TV and calls police to tell them whether he, too, saw something in the Everglades. If it was a hunting accident, maybe the hunter who fired the stray shot will come forward. Can we chat with you on camera? We won’t take much of your time.”

  Chester looked at Callie. She said, “It’s up to you, Grandpa.”

  He nodded. “If I can be of help, I don’t mind.”

  “Great,” said the reporter. She looked over her shoulder.

  The cameraman handed her a microphone and said, “Rolling in five.”

  She stood next to Chester. “Mr. Miller, we really appreciate you speaking with us today. We know you’ve spoken with sheriff’s investigators in the mysterious death of Joe Thaxton. Can you tell us what you saw that day you were in the Everglades and found the truck Joe Thaxton drove out there?”

  “Well, I didn’t see much, really. It was a typical day. I’d forgotten it was the first day of hunting season in sections of Big Cypress Preserve. That’s one of the reasons I steered clear of that area. But I have plenty of spots in the glades to replant orchids. Like I told police, I saw a man coming out of the glades on a little used trail. If I ever do see folks that far into the glades, they’re most often in ATVs, airboats or swamp buggies.”

  “What was he driving?”

  “An SUV. It was black. Mud splattered all over the sides. Looked like he might have become stuck and somehow managed to pull out of the muck.”

  “What kind of an SUV was it … could you tell?”

  “I’m not that good with the makes and models of cars anymore. But it might have been a BMW. I’ve never seen one of those in the glades. It must have had four-wheel drive to navigate through that country.”

  “Did the driver say anything to you?”

  “One word. He shouted move. I backed my truck up to allow him to safely go around me.”

  “Can you describe him?”

  “To some extent. I’d say he was in his early forties. Dark complexion. No beard. Shaved head. He had what you might call a prominent nose—a Roman nose, if you will. And he seemed in a real hurry to leave.”

  “If you saw him again, could you recognize him?”

&nbs
p; “I believe I could. I’ve spent much of my life finding, recognizing, and categorizing rare and exotic orchids. You train your mind to remember details. It stays with you.”

  FIFTY-NINE

  I didn’t expect he’d call for a few days. He rarely, if ever, took his phone with him when he went deep into the Florida wilderness. I’d locked my river cabin and headed to Joe Billie’s trailer about twenty miles away near Lake Woodruff, a large lake fed by the St. Johns River.

  I remembered the first time I ever saw Joe Billie. He was almost my height, six-three, long salt and pepper colored hair, dark skin. He grew up on the Seminole reservation but chose to leave after he spent two years in the Army, returning to open a business.

  I met him two weeks after buying my cabin. I’d been replacing rotten lumber on my dock. Max spotted him first. He was walking in the river, not far from the bank, chest-deep, and he was hunting with his toes and the bamboo pole he carried.

  The first time I saw him, I did a double take. He was at least seventy yards away, up river, midday in the heat of a Florida summer. He was in silhouette, the hot sun bouncing off the water in shimmering heat waves, wet hair hanging to his broad shoulders. In the distortion off the water, holding the pole, it gave him the illusion of a sea god emerging from the murky depth.

  He walked in bare feet, feeling the river mud with his toes. When he felt something that could be an ancient artifact—an arrowhead or spearhead, he’d use his toes to dig it out of the mud, placing the object in a small gunny sack he carried on his belt.

  Sometimes, when the object was too large to lift with his toes, he’d lower his entire body in the river, using his hands to free ancient history from the grasp of the river. His only protection from alligators was a ten-inch knife he carried on his hip. However, in two decades of harvesting from the river, he said he’d never been attacked by a gator. He told me that more than once he’d been approached by them, but never attacked.