Teddy could see the ocean thirty yards away. He got out of the car and followed her to the front door. She unlocked it and led him inside.
The house reminded him of his childhood on Chesapeake Bay, on the eastern shore of Maryland. There was a living room with a small dining table, a kitchen with older appliances, two small bedrooms and a small room with a desk in it.
“How much?” he asked.
She told him.
“How long?”
“As long as you like.”
“I’ll take it.”
She looked surprised. “Don’t you want to look at anything else?”
“No. This is perfect. Did you bring a lease?”
She sat in a chair, put her briefcase on her lap and opened it. “I can fill in the blank form for you. You sign it, give me a check for one month’s rent and a security deposit, and I’ll mail it to the owners for their signatures.”
“I’d like to move in right away,” Teddy said.
“Let me call them and see if that’s satisfactory. My office will run a credit check, as well.” She handed him a form. “Please fill this out.”
Teddy entered the information he had assembled for his new identity, including the social security number he had implanted in that agency’s computers, then he walked around the house again while she made her calls. He came back, and she handed him the lease.
“Everything’s fine,” she said.
“I don’t have a local bank account yet,” Teddy said. “Will you take American dollars?”
She laughed. “Of course.”
Teddy opened his briefcase and counted out some of the cash he had obtained on a recent trip from the Bahamas to the Caymans, then closed it again.
“Here’s your lease,” she said, handing it to him. “I’d better run.”
“Could you drop me in town?” he asked.
“Of course.”
She drove him back into Vero Beach and he pointed at a Toyota dealership. “Just over there will be fine,” he said.
He got out of the car and stood at her open window. “Thank you so much for finding me just the right place.”
“It was my pleasure.”
“By way of thanks, I’d like to take you to dinner.”
“I’d like that.”
“Tomorrow night?”
“What time?”
“Seven o’clock?”
“I’ll come and get you,” she said, “since you don’t know your way around yet.”
“I’ll look forward to it,” he said as she drove away.
It took Teddy half an hour to find and assess a four-year-old, low-mileage Camry and buy it, after which he returned to the airport, unloaded the airplane and began putting everything into the car. As he was doing so, a Beech Bonanza taxied onto the ramp and parked a couple of spaces down from his airplane. Two women got out.
Teddy’s heart began to beat faster. He knew one of them; she had taken a shot at him once, but, of course, she wouldn’t know him now, with his balding head covered with a clever gray hairpiece and his eyes hidden behind aviator glasses. They walked past him with hardly a glance and went into the little flying school beside the ramp.
Teddy got into his car, took a few deep breaths and let his pulse return to normal as he drove away. That woman, Holly Barker, worked for the Agency, for Lance Cabot; what the hell was she doing in this beach town that he had so carefully selected?
All the way to his new house, he made turns and checked his rearview mirror, and he didn’t turn into his drive until he knew there was no one following him.
18
Holly sat in her living room with Hurd Wallace and Lauren Cade. She laid her file on Jim Bruno’s juvenile record and the stories from the New Jersey newspaper on the coffee table and sipped a Diet Coke while they read it.
“Well,” Hurd said finally, “this is all very interesting, but there’s nothing here that ties him to the recent rapes and murders locally.”
“Not in an evidentiary sense,” Holly admitted, “but all this shows a past which gives him a predisposition to that sort of crime.”
“None of this could ever be presented in court,” Hurd said. “You haven’t even tied him to the New Jersey murder when he was still a young man.”
“Don’t you think I know that, Hurd?” She tried not to sound irritated. “All I want to do here is place Bruno on your list of suspects. Oh, and you can add to this material that he keeps a boat at the marina that’s tied to the death of two victims and the disposal of one body.”
Lauren spoke up. “I have to agree with Hurd, Holly. Even that could be no more than a coincidence. Eighty or ninety other people, including Detective Jimmy Weathers, keep boats there, too.”
“Maybe you should investigate all of them, Lauren, and when you’re done I’d be willing to bet that not one of them would have the sort of background that Bruno has.”
“You’re convinced that Bruno is our perpetrator?” Hurd asked.
“Of course not, Hurd. I just think he’s your best suspect right now.”
“Our only suspect,” Lauren said.
“All right,” Hurd said, tucking the file into his briefcase, “James Bruno is a suspect. Is that what you want?”
Holly nodded. “Thank you, Hurd. And for God’s sake, don’t show his juvenile record to anybody. It was sealed by the court, and I don’t want to have to explain how I got it.”
“How did you get that record?” Lauren asked.
“Don’t ask,” Holly replied.
“Holly,” Hurd said, “do you want to work on this full-time? Do you want me to get you a badge?”
“No!” Holly said. “Please, no! I’m on vacation here, and I don’t want my head filled with this case. Of course, I would appreciate updates.”
Hurd laughed. “You mean you want to be involved but not involved.”
Holly laughed, too. “I mean I don’t want to explain to anybody my past with Bruno or how I’ve looked into his past, especially in court. My boss would not like for me to be cross-examined by some hot defense attorney.”
“All right,” Hurd said, “we’ll keep you out of the official record on the case.”
“Thank you, Hurd. I appreciate your understanding.”
Hurd got to his feet, and Lauren followed him out the front door. Holly waved them off, then turned back into the house. She had to shower and change before Josh came for her.
Josh arrived, and they took their drinks outside to Holly’s deck and sat down in comfortable chairs to watch the light change on the ocean as the sun went down.
“I ran into the county ME at the hospital this afternoon,” Josh said. “He told me something interesting about one of your crime victims, the one you found on the beach.”
“Tell me,” Holly said.
“He checked for needle marks on her neck, and he found how the Rohypnol had been administered. It wasn’t by needle, it was by gun.”
“I don’t follow,” Holly said.
“A vaccination gun,” Josh explained. “Surely you had one of those used on you during your years in the army.”
“Yes, you’re right,” she said, “but I remember those things as attached by hoses and electrical cords to things.”
“There’s a version that holds a vial of something and is powered by a fairly small battery, the way power tools are these days.”
“Still, it wouldn’t be something you could stick in your pocket, would it?”
“If you had a big enough pocket,” Josh pointed out. “It would be easier to deal with than a hypodermic syringe. You’d just press it against the neck and pull the trigger.”
“Where would a perpetrator obtain one?” Holly asked.
“Probably from the manufacturer or maybe even from a medical supply store-there’s a big one in Vero Beach.”
“Okay, I buy it.”
“It makes the perpetrator more interesting, doesn’t it?”
“I suppose,” Holly said. “It also adds another way to find him. The police could visit that medical supply store in Vero and find out whom they’ve sold the things to. Anybody who wasn’t a doctor or a hospital purchasing agent would stand out as a suspect.”