And that was how Arthur first found out about the orchids.
Before Arthur could inquire further, Miller lunged to the side as a rake-thin man grabbed an easel near the door, clearly intending to steal the blown-up photo of the folksinger. The thief’s dark eyes looked wild under his unkempt hair, his dirty hands gaunt as a skeleton’s.
As the officer interceded, the man abandoned the photo, grabbed the easel, and swung it like a club. Miller tried to dodge, but his hip crashed against a neighboring pew. The easel struck the officer on the shoulder, driving him to his knees. The thief raised the easel again, high above the head of the dazed officer.
Before Arthur could consider otherwise, he rushed forward. It was the kind of foolhardy action his brother, Christian, would take in such a circumstance — but it was out of character for the normally reserved Arthur.
Still, he found himself barging between the two men as the crowd hung back. He grabbed the attacker’s arm before he could deal a fatal blow to the fallen police officer. He struggled with the assailant, giving Miller time to scramble to his feet. The officer then manhandled the attacker away from Arthur and quickly secured the man’s wrists behind his back with handcuffs. The man glared all around. His pupils filled his entire irises, making his eyes look black. He was definitely under the influence of some kind of drug.
Miller caught Arthur’s gaze. “Thanks. I owe you one.”
Breathing hard, his heart thumping in his ears, Arthur could barely manage a nod and pushed back toward the exit.
What was I thinking…
As he reached the streets, the bright City by the Bay seemed suddenly a darker place, full of shadows. Even the morning light failed to dispel them. He fetched up against a light pole and stood there for a moment, trying to slow his breath, when a flash of white caught his eye.
A paper flyer had been pasted onto the pole. The title drew his attention.
But it was what was beneath those hand-scrawled words that sucked the air from his lungs and turned his blood to ice. It was a black-and-white photo of a handsome young man in his midtwenties, with dark hair and light eyes. Though the photo had no color, Arthur knew those eyes were a piercing green.
They belonged to his brother.
Christian.
The flyer contained no further details except a phone number. With trembling fingers, Arthur wrote the number on the bottom of his notebook. He hurried down the crowded street, searching for an empty phone box. When he found one, he slotted his money into it and waited. The phone burred in his ear, once, twice, five times. But he couldn’t put it down.
He let it ring, balanced between disbelief and hope.
Finally, a man answered, his voice spiked with irritation. “What the hell, man? I was sleeping.”
“I’m sorry.” Arthur apologized. “I saw your flyer on the street. About Christian Crane?”
“Have you found him?” The man’s tone sharpened, annoyance replaced with hope. “Where is he?”
“I don’t know,” Arthur said, fumbling for his words. “But I’m his brother. I had hoped—”
“Damn,” the voice cut him off. “You’re the Brit? His foster brother. I’m Wayne… Wayne Grantham.”
From the man’s tone, he clearly thought Arthur would recognize him, that Christian might have spoken to Arthur about him — but Arthur hadn’t shared a word with Christian for over two years, not after the way they had left matters in England, after their fight. It was why Arthur had come to San Francisco, to mend fences and start anew.
Arthur pushed all that aside. “How long has Christian been gone?”
“Eleven days.”
That was one day before Jake was killed. It was a ridiculous time to peg it to, but the folksinger’s murder was fresh in his mind.
“Have you called the police?” Arthur asked.
A snort answered him. “Like they give a damn about a grown-up man gone missing in San Francisco. Happens all the time, they said. City of Love, and all that. Said he’d probably turn up.”
“But you don’t believe that?”
“No.” Wayne hesitated. “He wouldn’t have left without telling me. Not Christian. He wouldn’t leave me not knowing.”
Arthur cleared his throat. “He left without telling me.”
“But he had his reasons back then, didn’t he?”
Guilt spiked through Arthur. “He did.”
Wayne had nothing else to add, and Arthur reluctantly gave up without asking the most important question of all. There were some questions he still had difficulty asking, stifled by prejudice and made uncomfortable by his ingrained formal upbringing.
Instead, he went back to the hotel and filed his story, burying the new detail of the orchid a few paragraphs in. For good measure, he also reported Christian missing to the police.
As Wayne had said, they did not care.
The next day, Arthur woke to the screaming headline of a second murder. He read the paper standing at his kitchen counter, a mug of coffee growing cold in his hand. As with Jackie Jake, the victim’s throat had been torn out. The body of the young man — a law clerk — had been found only a few blocks away from St. Patrick’s Church — where Jackie Jake’s memorial service had been held. The article hinted that the murders were connected, but they didn’t elaborate.
Two hours later, Arthur sat at a diner across from Officer Miller, calling in his favor, admitting that he was a reporter for the Times.
“Can’t tell you much more than was in the Chronicle here,” Miller admitted, tapping the local newspaper. “But there was a flower — another orchid — found at this crime scene, too. According to a roommate, the victim found the orchid in his bedroom the morning he was killed, like the murderer left it as a calling card.”
“Were there any witnesses? Did anyone see someone at the crime scene… or see whoever left that orchid?”
“Nothing concrete. Someone said they saw a skinny, dark-haired man lurking around the church at the time of the murder, taking pictures, but it could be a tourist.”
Arthur could glean nothing else from what the officer told him. The mysterious photographer did add a good detail for the report Arthur intended to file, but the fact was certainly not as juicy as the detail about the second orchid.
That afternoon, Arthur composed and wired in the story. He dubbed the murderer “the Orchid Killer.” By the next day, the name was plastered across every newspaper in the city and across the nation, and his reputation as a journalist grew.
His editor at the Times extended his assignment to cover the murders. He even convinced the paper to give him enough of a stipend to rent a dilapidated room in the Haight-Ashbury district — where both victims spent most of their time. Arthur used the little money left over to buy a radio and tuned it to the police band.
Over the next days, he worked and ate with the radio on. Most of the chatter was dull, but four nights later, a frantic call came over the band. A dead body had been discovered, just blocks from Arthur’s rented room, a possible third victim of the Orchid Killer.
He hailed a cab to get there quickly, but the police had already cordoned off the area to keep the press away.
Standing at the yellow strip, Arthur lifted his Nikon camera. It was outfitted with a zoom lens. Christian had given it to Arthur as a present when he finished school, telling him that he could use the extra eye. Arthur still wasn’t very good with the camera — he preferred to tell stories with words rather than pictures — but without a photographer assigned to him, he would have to manage on his own.
To get a better vantage point, he shifted away from the police cordon and climbed a few steps onto the porch of a neighboring Victorian home. He leaned against a brightly painted column to steady himself and examined the crime scene through the lens of the camera. It took some fine-tuning of the zoom to draw out a clear picture.