Hothouse Orchid

by Stuart Woods

  She and Hurd began picking up tires and looking at them. “Bruno’s was a Michelin,” Lauren said. “I remember that.”

  Hurd was looking at the names on the tires and pushing them aside. “Lots of Goodyears,” he said.

  Lauren looked, too. “Here’s a Michelin,” she said. Hurd joined her as they rolled the tire so as to see the whole tread. “Not this one,” she said.

  They continued to look through the remaining tires but found nothing.

  “Well,” Hurd said, “it’s gone.” As they climbed back to the top of the ladder, he pointed to the rear of the shredder. There seemed to be no piece of a tire larger than what would fit into his hand.

  They stopped back on the stairs and Lauren looked at the shredded rubber. “I guess we could go through all that,” she said.

  “What’s the point?” Hurd replied. “Even if we found exactly the right piece, we couldn’t prove it came from Bruno’s car.”

  “I guess you’re right,” she said. They were both filthy from handling the old tires. “Is there some place we can wash up?” she asked Meeton.

  Lauren and Hurd were glum on the ride home.

  36

  Teddy Fay sat at his computer, looking at a digital map of Vero Beach. He found James Bruno’s street. It was a few blocks from the local airport. Teddy printed out the map, then got into his car and followed it to Bruno’s neighborhood.

  He turned off Indian River Boulevard, drove past a large church and found himself in a neighborhood of ranch houses that appeared to have been built in the 1950s. They were well-kept, their lawns mown and their flower beds tended, but Teddy suspected that when demand for land grew in Vero, this would become a neighborhood of teardowns, with single houses bought up, razed and their lots combined to accommodate larger, more ostentatious houses.

  Teddy found Bruno’s house. There was no car in the carport, but Lauren had said that Bruno worked odd hours, so Teddy had no way of knowing when to expect Bruno to be at home. He drove past the house, then turned right at the corner and right again, to put him behind Bruno’s property.

  He found himself looking across a concrete drainage channel that had only a small stream of water flowing through it. After a tropical storm or a hurricane, Teddy reckoned, this would be a raging torrent.

  On the other side of the hedge was a tall, ill-kempt hedge with a number of gaps in it that was the rear border of Bruno’s property. Through the gaps, Teddy could see a weedy backyard and the back of the house, whose trim needed painting. This had all the ear-marks of a rental, since the other houses on the street were so well kept, but it looked good to Teddy. It would have old hardware and easy locks.

  It was late afternoon, and people were arriving home from work, a lot of them probably from the Piper aircraft factory only a few blocks away. A light airplane flew overhead, then made a turn toward the airport. There were lots of students studying at the flight safety school, which trained hundreds of new pilots every year.

  Teddy drove away from the neighborhood and stopped at a large home-building supply store, where he bought a few things, then stowed the paper bag in the trunk of his car. Then he headed toward the Publix market on US-1 to pick up a few things for dinner.

  Holly was coming out of the market, carrying two bags of groceries, when her cell phone vibrated. She set the bags down on the sidewalk and took the phone from its holster. “Hello?”

  “It’s Josh. Don’t cook; I’m bringing dinner.”

  “Now you tell me? I’m just coming out of the market with a bunch of stuff.”

  “We’ll save it for another time. Have you got red wine at home?”

  “Yep.”

  “Then I’ll see you at seven. Bye-bye.”

  Holly returned the phone to its holster and bent to pick up her bags. As she did a gray-haired man got out of a silver Toyota and came toward her across the street, heading for the market.

  As he passed, he gave her a little smile, and she smiled back, as people in Vero and Orchid Beach usually did in their small-town, neighborly way. Holly continued to her car.

  Teddy had recognized her immediately but had not altered his course to the market. It was as good a time as any to see if she would recognize him. He passed her with a smile, and she smiled back. Inside the store, he stood behind a stack of canned goods and watched her through the window. She opened the rear door of her car-a Porsche Cayenne Turbo, he noted-put her groceries inside, got into the car and drove away without a second glance at the market.

  That went well, he thought, and he wondered how a woman on an Agency salary could afford a car that cost around a hundred thousand dollars. Maybe he would look into that.

  Holly drove home, let Daisy out onto the beach and put her groceries away. She showered and changed, then went downstairs to watch the news before Josh came.

  Teddy put his groceries away and started a roast chicken. Then he went to his computer and found a meandering route through several cities, until he found an idle machine in San Diego, California. From there he logged on to the Agency mainframe, then navigated to personnel, where he opened Holly Barker’s file.

  He read through the file slowly, from Lance Cabot’s initial letter of recommendation for her hiring, through her training at the Farm, where she had done exceptionally well in every category and had run up the highest pistol score in the history of the Agency. He made a note not to put himself in a position, as he once had, where she might have an opportunity to shoot at him. He felt lucky to have gotten away with the leg wound.

  There had been a break in her training at the Farm, when she had been transferred to special duty in New York, under Cabot. He was clearly her rabbi at the Agency, and she had chosen him well, if, indeed, she had done the choosing. This was the period when Teddy had met her at the Metropolitan Opera, when he was disguised as an elderly Jewish gentleman, retired from the garment trade. A short time later, she had come uncomfortably close to him again, but he had managed to escape from the city.

  He noted that she had recently been promoted to assistant deputy director, again under the aegis of Lance Cabot, and that she had, accordingly, received a substantial raise. Still, her Agency income didn’t seem to support the purchase of an expensive German SUV with a 500-hp turbocharged engine.

  He went to her original application and read, in fairly telegraphic form, of her progress through her army career and her hiring as chief of police in Orchid Beach. Then he came to her financial disclosure form.

  “Ahhhh,” he said aloud to himself. The woman had a substantial estate, amounting to nearly three million dollars, nearly all of it inherited from her fiancé, who had been killed as an innocent bystander in a bank robbery the day before her wedding. Teddy felt sorry that she had experienced such pain, but her personal wealth accounted for the ownership of the Cayenne as well as for her Orchid Beach house.

  Teddy logged off the mainframe and closed his computer. What an interesting woman she was, he thought. It was a pity that he couldn’t know her better. Still, from what he had just read, he knew more about her than most people.

  He went back into the kitchen, checked on the roasting chicken, and began preparing the rest of their dinner.

  He couldn’t do what he wanted to tonight, because Lauren would be there. Jim Bruno would have to wait a little.

  37

  Lance Cabot was at his desk in the early morning when there was a rap at his door. His secretary was not in yet, and no one was screening his visitors. “Come in,” he said.

  The door opened slightly and the disheveled head of the computer geek who had visited him before appeared. “Got a second?”

  “What is it?” Lance asked, not a little annoyed. He couldn’t remember the kid’s name, but he thought he had solved his problem.

  “Our visitor returned to the mainframe early last evening,” he said, “this time via a chain of computers around the country ending in San Diego.”

  “And?”

  “And he got into Holly Barker�
�s personnel records.”

  This stopped Lance in his tracks. “Are you sure about this?” he asked, giving himself time to think.

  “Absolutely. I still haven’t been able to track him back to a specific computer, but I think he may be in the state of Florida.”

  “What was it he was looking for last time?”

  “Information on the background of a retired army colonel, James Bruno. Also, he accessed his driver’s license record in Florida.”

  “Can you set some sort of trap for him?”

  “I already have; when I came in this morning I had an alert from the mainframe waiting on my work station.”

  “But you can’t track him to a specific computer?”

  “That’s hard. The guy-or girl-is very smart. If he continued to use the same computer chain, that would make it a lot easier, but both times I discovered him he had created a new chain. It’s like he’s making big geographical leaps around the country every time he logs on.”

  “And to stop him we’d have to change all the log-on codes?”

  “Right. And circulate the new codes to every authorized Agency employee around the world, in a highly secure manner.”

  “And that’s a big job.”

  “It is, and every time we do something like that we run the risk of opening new security breaches, of having the codes fall into the hands of some hacker lurking out there.”

  “When was the last time the codes were changed?”

  “Six years ago. We had teething problems, of course, but the mainframe has remained secure since we worked those out. If we issue new codes, we’ll have to start all over again.”

  Shit, Lance thought. He stared at the desk in front of him.

  “If I could make a suggestion?” the kid said.

  “Go ahead.”

  “This guy has not shown any evil intent with these intrusions; he’s just looking for information. It might make sense to let him continue and hope that he’ll make a mistake that will make it easier to nail him. I’ve got the alert on the mainframe, and if he makes a more threatening move, then we can act on a code change.”

  Lance was pleased to have a way out of this mess. “All right, do that, but every time he logs on I want to know what he’s looking at.”

  “I’ll see that you do,” the kid said. He gave a little wave and left, closing the door behind him.

  Lance was still thinking, though. This intruder had made two visits to the mainframe, both looking for information about Holly, and he didn’t like that. Of course, it could be somebody from Holly’s past: an old lover, maybe, who had worked at the Agency and still harbored a crush on her. But he kept returning to another possibility: Teddy Fay.

  Lance had really begun to believe the man was dead; certainly that’s what he had repeatedly told the director, though she still seemed skeptical. To be frank with himself, he didn’t care if Teddy was alive and well as long as he didn’t call attention to himself and embarrass everybody, particularly himself but up to and including the director and her husband, President Will Lee.

  Lance turned to his phone and pressed a speed-dial number, then he stared at the screen.

  Holly was jarred awake by the ringing phone. She rolled over and looked at the bedside clock: seven fifteen. Then she realized the television screen at the foot of her bed had come alive, and Lance was staring at her-and at Josh, who had not yet woken up.

  “Call me back on your secure line,” Lance said, “as soon as you can be alone.”

  Josh woke up. “Huh?”

  “It’s nothing. Go back to sleep,” Holly said. She grabbed the remote and switched off the TV.

  “I heard a man’s voice,” Josh said.

  “No, you didn’t,” Holly replied, placing a hand on his forehead and pushing down. “Go back to sleep.”

  She got out of bed, threw on a shirt and jeans and went downstairs to her Agency cubbyhole. She tapped in the code that opened the door, then went inside, closed the door behind her and logged on to her computer. A few keystrokes later, she had Lance on the screen.

  “I’m here,” she said.

  “Sorry to wake you; something odd has come up.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “One of those geeks in computer services has come to me twice, now, with the news that someone outside the Agency has managed to log on to the mainframe, at least twice.”

  “Yes?”

  “Yes. Of course, he may have logged on before, but he has been caught at it only twice.”

  “Who is it?”

  “Unknown. He creates a sort of channel through several computers around the country, then logs on from one of them, so we haven’t been able to pinpoint his location.”

  “What has he been doing on the mainframe?”

  “Both times we’ve caught him he’s been looking at information about you.”

  “Me?”

  “Yes. Is there some old lover of yours out there who used to be Agency who might still be obsessed with you?”

  “No. I don’t know anybody who fits that description, especially the obsession part. What did he want to know about me, do you think?”

  “The first time, he was looking up background information on one Colonel James Bruno.”

  “What kind of information?”

  “The trial record of his court-martial and Bruno’s Florida driver’s license application.”

  “Bruno is a suspect in the series of rapes and murders we’ve been having here,” Holly said. “The search could be related to that.”

  “The other time we caught him, he went into your personnel records.”

  “Holy shit,” Holly said involuntarily.

  “Exactly. Who would want to do that?”

  “I can’t imagine,” Holly said.

  “I can imagine somebody who might be just a tiny bit obsessed with you.”

  “Enlighten me, please.”

  “You attended the opera with him once, and you may have put a bullet in him at one point. Let’s not mention any names.”

  Holly winced. “You say you haven’t been able to pin down his location?”

  “Not yet. He may be on the move, but the last time, our geek thought he might be somewhere in Florida.”

  “You think he might be looking for revenge?”

  “Possibly, but he wouldn’t need your personnel file for that; he’d just find you and kill you.”

  “Well, yes. Maybe he hasn’t gotten over our last encounter.”

  “Perhaps not, but I don’t have any sense that you’re in any real danger. You might keep an eye out for him, though, or for someone who might be him.”

  “I take your point.”

  “Then go armed and be careful.”

  “I’ll do that,” Holly replied.

  The screen went blank. Holly shut down the computer and left the little office. She walked into the kitchen to find Josh, naked, making coffee.

  He jumped. “Where did you come from?”

  “I was just on the phone.”

  “Where? I couldn’t hear you.”

  “In a secret place,” she said. “You look very nice.”

  “Oh, no you don’t,” he said, backing away. “I’ve got to get to work.”

  “Oh, you have some time,” she said, advancing on him.

  38

  Jimmy Weathers was sitting at his desk when Chief Bruno appeared in his cubicle door. “Good morning, Chief,” he said.

  “Somebody has vandalized my car,” Bruno said.

  “How’s that, Chief?”

  “Somebody cut one of my tires; I had to have it replaced yesterday.”

  “Why do you think it was a vandal?” Jimmy asked. “Couldn’t you just have run over something?”

  “It wasn’t that kind of damage; it was a clean cut or, rather, two clean cuts. The tire would have blown as soon as I ran over a bump of some sort, like a pothole, and if I had been driving fast-say, in a pursuit-I could have been killed or seriously injured.”

  “Buy why
would anybody cut your tire, Chief?”

  “I don’t know; I’m asking you for ideas.”

  “I’m afraid I don’t have a clue,” Jimmy replied.

  “Are you sure?”

  “I’m sure, Chief. I don’t know anybody who would want to cause you harm.”

  “What about the Cade girl?” Bruno asked.

  “Lauren? Why would she…”

  “Oh, come on, Weathers. You know about the false charges she brought against me.”

  Jimmy colored slightly and decided not to deny it. “I just don’t think Lauren is the type to do that,” he said finally.

  “She’s a woman, isn’t she? A woman with an imagined grievance?”

  “I guess you could put a guard on your car,” Jimmy said.

  “We don’t have enough manpower as it is,” Bruno said.

  “Well, we have a surveillance camera pointed at the back door. I guess you could aim it at the parking lot instead.”

  “Now that’s a damn good idea, Jimmy,” Bruno said. “Do it now.” He walked away.

  Jimmy sighed. Why hadn’t he just kept his mouth shut? It was a fault of his that, around anyone of authority, he tended to talk too much. He got up from his desk, walked downstairs to the basement and found a ladder. He left the building through the outside basement door and set up the ladder on the back porch of the building, then he turned the camera so that it was pointing directly at Bruno’s cruiser.

  He was about to get down from the ladder when he saw a silver Toyota across the street pull out of a parking spot and drive away. The driver looked like that man he and Lauren had questioned, Smithson, his name was.

  Jimmy climbed back down the ladder, stowed it in the basement and went upstairs again. He went to Bruno’s office. “Chief, I turned the camera so that it points at your car.”

  “Let me see,” Bruno said, turning to his computer. He tapped a few keys and a grid of images appeared on his screen, views of a dozen cameras set up inside and outside the building. “Yeah, there it is. What kind of tape loop do we have?”