Orchid Beach

CHAPTER

1

Holly Barker, with the rest of the crowd, was called to her feet as the panel of officers filed into the courtroom. She was a spectator now, no longer a witness, but she wanted to be here for this.

Colonel James Bruno stood at the defense table, ramrod straight, and watched his judges with beady eyes. For the first time since his trial had begun, he was not smiling.

“Seats!” the clerk of the court called out, and all sat.

The brigadier general, who was president of the court, cleared his throat. “The following three verdicts have been reached unanimously,” the general said. “As to the first charge, sexual harassment, we have reached a verdict of not guilty.”

Holly’s stomach shrank into a knot. She locked her knees so that they would not buckle. She knew what could only come next.

“As to the second charge, attempted rape, we have reached a verdict of not guilty,” the general said. “And as to the third charge, conduct unbecoming an officer, we have reached a verdict of not guilty.”

“Yes!” screamed a woman in the front row.

Holly recognized her as Colonel Bruno’s wife. It was the first time she had appeared in court.

“Colonel Bruno,” the general said, “you are restored to duty. This court is adjourned.”

Holly made her way slowly through the crowd, ignoring the reporters who were demanding her reaction to the verdict. On her way she came abreast of the young blond lieutenant who had been the other complainant in the case. Holly found her hand and squeezed. The woman was in tears.

The cold outside air struck like a slap, reviving her, and she saw her father’s car at the curb. She got in beside him.

“I’m sorry,” he said. He was dressed in his master sergeant’s uniform and wore the green beret of the special forces.

“You knew, didn’t you?” she asked.

Hamilton Barker nodded. “It was in the cards,” he said. “It was Bruno’s word against yours. He’s a West Pointer, and so were most of the court. They weren’t going to destroy his career.”

“They’ve destroyed mine,” Holly said. She could see the gold oak leaf on her left shoulder out of the corner of her eye.

“You can request a transfer, and they can’t deny it,” her father said.

“Come on, Ham. They’d never let me forget it. I’d end up in some unit commanded by a classmate of Bruno’s, and I’d be repeatedly passed over for promotion on some pretext or other.”

Her father said nothing.

“I could get a job on a police force somewhere,” she said.

“Funny you should mention that,” her father replied.

They sat in a steak house near the base, the ruins of their dinner before them. The talk had been of army, Vietnam and army, and Holly had done all the listening.

She liked Ham’s friend and old comrade-in-arms, Chet Marley; he was smaller and skinnier than Ham, but he had the same wiry toughness as her father, the same crow’s-feet around the eyes from squinting into the distance. And he seemed very smart.

“Okay, enough of this old-soldier stuff,” Marley said suddenly. “I’ve got a problem, Holly, and I think you might be the person to help me solve it.”

“Tell me, Chet,” Holly said.

“I’m chief of a twenty-four-man force in Orchid Beach, Florida, and there’s a gaping hole where the number-two man ought to be.”

“Don’t you believe in promoting from within?” Holly asked.

“I believe in the best man for the job,” Marley said. “Or woman,” he added.

“You short of good men?”

“I’m short of experienced men. Most of them are in their twenties. I’ve got one man who’s forty and has experience, but I don’t trust him.”

“Don’t trust him, how?” Holly asked.

“He’s a politician, and I don’t like politicians. He thinks he should have my job, which is okay, I guess, except he’d screw it up if he had it.”

“Why don’t you fire him?”

“He’s never given me any real cause, and he’s connected with some of the city council.”

“That’s bad, I guess,” Holly replied. “I’m no politician, but I can see how that could be difficult to deal with.”

“I’m going to retire next year, and I don’t want him to have my job,” Marley said. “My idea is to bring in an experienced…person, somebody who can take charge and be ready when I go.”

Holly nodded, but said nothing.

“I know about your record from your old man,” Marley said, “and I’ve asked around some, too, because I wouldn’t take his word for anything.” He grinned and cast a sideways glance at Ham Barker. “You’re already running more MPs than I’ve got cops. I’ve heard about your unit citations and the level of training and performance you demand from your people, and I like what I hear.”

“Thank you,” she said.

“Of course, we’re not the army, and things have to be handled a little different in civilian life, but I think you could get used to that.”

“I’m sure I could,” Holly said.

“It’s a nice town, Orchid Beach. It sits on a barrier island halfway down the east coast of Florida, has a population of around twenty thousand, a lot of them retirees.”

“Lots of tourists?”

“No, not really tourists. We get the same folks back, year after year, most of them to family beach houses—folks from Atlanta and Charlotte and Birmingham, and a lot of northeasterners. We’ve got no high-rise hotels, no casinos and only a few motels. There’s a small black community and a stable blue-collar group, mostly construction workers, plumbers, electricians, and a few retired military folk. We’ve got a low crime rate and not much of a drug problem, until recently.”

“How much of a drug problem?”

“Less than in a lot of small towns, but it’s there, and it has to be dealt with. We don’t have the violent crime that comes with a bad drug problem.”

“That’s good.”

“You interested?”

She certainly was. “Yes.”

“I can pay you what you’re making as a major,” he said. “There’s no PX, but we’ve got health insurance and a pension plan.”

“What’s the housing situation like?”

“Not great. Prices are going up, and cheap houses are getting knocked down and replaced with more expensive stuff.”

“I live in a trailer here,” Holly said.

“Bring it with you. I’ve got a friend runs a real nice park south of town, on the river side of the island.”

“This all sounds very good,” Holly said, her gloom beginning to lift. “Ham’s retiring one of these days, too, and I guess he wouldn’t mind moving south.”

“Got any golf down there?” her father asked.

“You bet. Got a great public course and six or eight good private ones—one or two a retired master sergeant could afford to join.”

Ham turned to Holly. “Chet’s not a bad guy to work for,” he said. “I worked for him for three years, and I didn’t have to kill him.”

“When can you start?” Marley asked.

“Hang on, this is all kind of quick,” Holly said.

“I like decisiveness in a…an officer.”

Holly stuck out her hand. “You’re on,” she said, “as soon as I can get my resignation in and turn over my command in an orderly fashion.”

Ham ordered another round of drinks. “My daughter, the cop,” he said, raising his glass.

“Your daughter, the cop, has hardly ever been anything else,” Holly said, laughing.

They drank deeply and sat in silence for a moment. Marley seemed to want to say something, but he was having trouble.

“Was there something else, Chief?” Holly asked.

“I don’t want to get into this too deep right now,” he said, “but I’ve got a problem you need to know about up front.”

“Okay, shoot.”

“Somebody on my force is working for somebody besides me,” he said. “I don’t know who it is, and I don’t know who he’s working for, but I’ve got some suspicions about that.”

“Drugs?”

“Could be. Could be more than that. Thing is, I don’t have anything like an internal-affairs department, so in addition to all your other duties, you’re going to have to be it. You’ll come to the job without any slant on personalities or on who’s doing what, and I think you can be a lot more objective than I can.”

“I see.”

“Does this trouble you?”

“On the contrary. It intrigues me.”

Marley grinned. “Good. Like I say, I don’t want to go into all this right here and now, but I promise, your first day on the job I’ll brief you on everything I know. And by that time, I should know a lot more.”

“Fair enough.”

Marley sighed deeply. “I’m glad I got that off my chest. I was worried it might make some kind of difference to you.”

“Not to worry,” Holly said. She lifted her glass. “To Orchid Beach.”

They all drank again.