Hothouse Orchid

16

Holly waved goodbye to the two men and went back inside her house. She stood at the sliding glass doors, looking out at the ocean, thinking. Then she went to her newly constructed office, tapped in the code to unlock the door and sat down at the Agency computer.

She entered her passwords through three levels of security, and then she logged on to the National Criminal Database, which combined the FBI and a network of local law enforcement, and typed in “James Morris Bruno, Jr.” The computer thought about it, then reported the messages, “No criminal convictions as an adult. No arrests as an adult.”

Holly thought about that. As an adult? She hadn’t seen that before. Bruno might have a juvenile record, but if so, it wouldn’t be part of a national database; in fact, it probably would be sealed. Where did Bruno grow up? She racked her brain. She had known all sorts of things about him when she had worked for him, but that had been years ago, and anyway she had worked at forgetting everything about him.

New Jersey, she finally remembered, but what city? She couldn’t remember. She went to the state of New Jersey website and, after working her way through multiple levels, she found it: Juvenile Criminal Records. She typed in Bruno’s name again, and the message came up: “Record sealed by the court.”

So, he did have a juvenile record. She wrote down the URL, then minimized the website and returned to the Agency site. Giving her password again, she entered a subsite called Unlocksmith, which demanded her authority for entry. The system had already identified her by her password, but it wanted a higher authority. She knew Lance Cabot’s entry code, even though she was not supposed to, and she entered that, followed by the URL of the juvenile case files.

After a few seconds, she was greeted with the message: “This site is available only to authorized personnel. Any attempt to enter without proper authority is punishable by up to one year in prison and a $10,000 fine.” There would be a record that somebody had visited the site, but the New Jersey authorities would never be able to trace it back to the Agency, because Unlocksmith entries were self-obscuring. Any attempt to backtrack would be met with gobbledygook.

She typed in Bruno’s name once more, and there was his record in all its glory: two assault-on-minor charges, one male, one female, and one conviction for statutory rape. She examined all three case files. The assault-on-minor charges consisted of one incident of schoolyard bullying that had put a younger boy in the hospital for two days and one incident of sexual assault on a twelve-year-old girl when Bruno had been fourteen-a harbinger of things to come.

The statutory rape charge had come when Bruno was sixteen and the girl thirteen. The initial charge was rape, but the girl had testified that her participation had been consensual, and, with the agreement of her parents, the charge had been reduced to one count of statutory rape and the sentence was one year in prison, suspended on condition of good behavior, record to be expunged after that, except it hadn’t been expunged. All three incidents had occurred in Morristown, New Jersey.

Surely, these cases would have been of interest to an investigator or a prosecutor, but, since the file was sealed, they would be inadmissible in court. And Bruno had had a clean record since the age of sixteen. Or maybe he had just stopped getting caught.

She Googled New Jersey newspapers and went to the Star-Ledger website, where she searched various topics, from sexual assault on a minor to rape and rape-murders. She began calling up the news reports and reading them. Finally, she found what she had been looking for: the body of a fifteen-year-old Morristown girl had been found in a local river after she had been missing for eleven days. She had been raped and strangled. Holly found a dozen other articles on the case, the last one three years after the incident. The case had never been solved.

She dug through the local police department records but could find no mention of any suspects being questioned. All right, she thought, assume the worst: all this had happened thirty-five years earlier, before DNA testing; Bruno would never be connected with the crime, even if he had been guilty of it. She logged off the various sites, but before she could log off the Agency system, a message appeared on her screen:

CALL ME ON A SECURE LINE. CABOT.

She picked up the Agency phone and dialed Lance’s direct line.

“Cabot,” he said.

“It’s Holly. You left me a message.”

“What are you doing?” he asked. “I beg your pardon?”

“You’re visiting sealed court records, somewhere in darkest New Jersey, using my authority. What are you doing?”

“Oh, that,” she said.

“Yes, that.”

“There’s been a series of rapes and murders locally.”

“Locally where?”

“In or around Orchid Beach.”

“You are supposed to be down there, clearing your brain and resting up to reenter the fray, and you’re messing with a serial rapist?”

“And murderer. He’s killed two of them.”

“The city and state still maintain police forces, do they not?”

“They do.”

“Then why are you involved?”

“I was one of the victims.”

Lance was silent for a moment. “You were raped?”

“No, but I was unconscious, and had passersby not come to my rescue, the worst could have happened.”

“Are you all right, Holly?” Lance was almost solicitous.

“I’m all right, Lance, honestly I am. I spent one night in a local hospital, recovering from a dose of Rohypnol, administered by the perpetrator.”

“Will you be able to identify him?”

“No. I hate to say this, but it all happened so fast.”

“You’re sure you’re all right.”

“I’m sure. I’ve had the proper medical care.” Including two dates and one roll in the hay with Josh, she thought.

“All right, then, use my authority to do any searches you need to,” Lance said. “Apart from being drugged and nearly raped and murdered, are you having a nice vacation?”

“Just lovely,” she said. “Apart from that.”

“I’m glad to hear it,” he said. “Goodbye.” Lance hung up.

Holly printed out the news reports and put them into a file folder, then she relocked the office and started thinking about dinner.

The phone rang. “Hello?”

“Hi, it’s Josh. How about dinner?”

“You’re on,” she replied.