“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.
The victim lay flat on his back on the sidewalk. A dark stain marred his throat and spread over the stone. One arm was outstretched toward the street as if beckoning for help that would never come. In that open palm lay a white object.
Arthur zoomed in and tried to identify it, finally discerning the details of its frilled petals and subtle hues. It was an orchid, but not any orchid. Arthur’s stomach knotted with recognition.
It was a Brassocattleya orchid.
Such orchids were common enough, used as corsage flowers because of their powerful scent and their durable beauty. His mother had raised that particular breed because she adored the scent.
Arthur remembered another detail.
Christian had always loved them, too.
His mind’s eye flashed to the poster, to the still life of Christian printed there, his brother’s smile frozen, his eyes so alive even in the photo.
As he stared at the orchid in the dead man’s palm, the sweet smell seemed to drift across the street to him, although that couldn’t be true. He was too far away, but even the imagined scent was enough to dredge up a long-buried memory.
Arthur sat on the stone bench in the corner of his mother’s greenhouse holding a pruning knife. The familiar scents of orchids and bark surrounded him, as the afternoon sunlight, trapped under all that glass, turned the winter outside into a steamy summer inside.
He stared at the long tables filled with exotic plants. Some of the orchids he’d known for years, watching them flower over and over again throughout his lonely childhood.
Since he was a little boy he had come here to watch his mother work with the orchids, crooning to them, misting them gently, stroking their leaves, giving them the love that she did not give to him. They were special and rare and beautiful—and he was not.
He’d had a secret dream that when he grew up he would do something so wonderful that she would look up from her pots and notice him.
But now that would never happen.
She had died two days ago, taking her own life in one of her fits of black melancholy. Today she had been planted in the earth like one of her beloved orchids.
He ran his thumb across the sharp knife.
He’d overheard the staff talking about the value of his mother’s orchid collection. She had spent a lifetime accumulating it—buying each plant from a funny little man dressed all in black with a bowler hat. He gathered them from botanical gardens around the world, from other collectors, and even from men who traveled into the distant rain forests and brought the specimens out in burlap sacks.
Now all her precious orchids would die or be sold.
A light winter rain began to patter on the glass roof and ran down the sides in streaks. Arthur laid the cold knife blade against the warm softness of his forearm.
This is how she did it . . .
Before he could act, the greenhouse door slammed open, and Arthur jumped.
The knife clattered to the tile floor.
Only one person dared to crash around the estate like that. Christian had come to the London house when both boys were fourteen. Christian’s parents had died in a car crash outside of San Francisco. Arthur’s father was second cousin to the boy’s father and took the teenager into their home. Though the two boys were related, it was only in blood—not in demeanor.
“Arty?” he called brashly. “I know you’re in here.”
Arthur stirred on the bench, and Christian spotted him, crossing over to join him. Christian’s brown hair was slicked flat from the rain, and his bright green eyes were puffy and rimmed in red. Unlike Arthur, Christian could let himself cry when he was hurt. It was an American trait. Something Arthur’s father and mother would never tolerate.
Reaching the bench, Christian pulled the dark lens cap off his camera. He carried the thing everywhere. He took pictures all day and spent half the night in a makeshift darkroom developing them. Arthur’s mother said that he had real talent, and she would not have said that if it weren’t true.
Christian planned to become a photojournalist. He wanted to travel to the world’s war zones, taking pictures—using his art to change the world. He’d even convinced Arthur that he could come along, too, as a journalist. They’d be a team. Arthur wasn’t sure that he had the talent for such a career, but he liked to be drawn into Christian’s whimsies. The other boy had a reserve of boundless optimism that Arthur often warmed himself against.
But today even that wasn’t enough.