“Lieutenant Gray Bartlett, Boston P.D.” He accepted her handshake and then gestured with one hand to Mia. “Dr. Mia Perez. We’re working together today.”
He noticed Mia shift, but she didn’t correct him other than to say, “Associate professor of psychology at Northeastern University.”
“Uh-huh.” Jane nodded pleasantly, but Gray saw the concern written across her forehead. “How can I help you?”
“We found some pollen from orchids on a glove left at a recent crime scene,” Gray said, pulling his phone from his holder and reading off the screen. “Latin name Cypripedium calceolus. Commonly called lady slippers. I understand they’re rare.”
“Lady slippers. Yes, very rare. They require a particular fungus to be present in the soil in order to survive. You can imagine those exact conditions don’t occur frequently.” She tilted her head to the side. “May I ask what kind of crime scene this was?”
“Sure, but I’d rather not say at this point.” He gave her a smile. “You know how it is.”
She probably didn’t, but she nodded anyway. “I understand. We are fortunate to have yellow lady slippers in this exhibit. Would you like to see them?”
Gray looked at Mia, who nodded. “We would.”
“Right this way.”
Jane led them into the exhibit, and Gray’s line of vision was instantly overwhelmed by a room filled with color and sound. He’d expected a bunch of potted plants in glass display cases or sitting behind velvet ropes. Instead the exhibit was not merely flowers but flowers presented in a facsimile of their natural environment.
“Beautiful,” he heard Mia whisper to herself. She pointed to a small waterfall. “Jane, it feels like we’re in a rain forest.”
“It’s been a lot of work,” Jane admitted, but Gray detected a note of pride in her voice. “A lot of talent and skill went into creating this exhibit, and we’re all very proud of it.”
A lot of talent and skill? That sounded like a lot of people to process. “How many people are involved with creating this exhibit? Who would have handled that orchid I mentioned?”
“I’m not sure offhand how many people have been involved with the construction,” Jane said. “As you can see, this is an elaborate exhibit, and I’ve been working on it from my end for several years. I’ve consulted with dozens of experts. It would take me some time to cull through my records.”
Time we don’t have. Gray went through his phone and stopped at a picture of the glove they’d found. “Does this glove look familiar to you?”
Jane paused to study the image, and her face pulled in concentration. “I’m sorry but it doesn’t. People working here can use any gloves they prefer. We have all kinds.” She hesitated. “Is that blood?”
“I’m afraid so.” He turned off the screen and slid his phone back into the carrier. “Don’t worry, though. The guy who wore that glove is alive.”
“Oh.” She released her breath and gave a smile. “That’s good news, at least.”
They continued into an adjoining room. “These are our orchids.” She led them to the center and gestured to a collection of flowers set behind ropes. “Here are the lady slippers.”
Mia went right toward the ropes, bending down to get a closer look. To Gray they looked like any other yellow flowers. Yellow orbs on green stems. These were rare? “Who would come into contact with these orchids, Ms. McAlister?” he asked.
“We have a group of botanists who have been caring for the flowers,” she said. “I can get you their names after I show you around.”
Gray was already considering the team he’d need to assemble in order to perform the legwork required to interview a list of botanists. “That would be great.”
“Are the botanists working here?” Mia asked. “Maybe we could speak with a few of them.”
“We have a few on site in the sick ward,” Jane said.
“Sick ward?” Gray said. “For plants?”
“It’s a greenhouse. I’ll show you.”
She led them through a series of hallways and doors and finally into the heated chamber of a large greenhouse lined with rows upon rows of plants. Green bushy plants, exotic-colored vines and lots of flowers. This wasn’t like any nursery Gray had ever seen, though. This was a laboratory, with tables littered with tools, test tubes and vials, and computers.
“Ah.” Jane beamed. “Here is one of our botanists right now.”
The man she pointed to was standing in front of a plant with large red blooms, dressed in blue jeans and work boots. The sleeves on his blue plaid shirt were rolled to his elbows, and his hair and beard must have been dark at one point, but now they were both streaked generously with silver. His round spectacles were thick, and the glass enlarged the pale blue eyes underneath to an alarming size. Gray didn’t think he’d ever seen a botanist before, but this guy didn’t measure up to any of his preconceived notions. He’d imagined botanists would walk around stiffly in white lab coats. This guy looked more like a lumberjack.
“Dr. Rousseau,” Jane said, “I’d like to introduce you to Lieutenant Bartlett and Dr. Perez.”
The scientist blinked several times behind the spectacles and extended a hand. “Dave Rousseau,” he said. “You’re taking in the exhibit?”
“Not exactly,” Gray said. “We’re here on business.”
“Oh. Well, stick around if you can. I’m afraid you missed the real excitement. The corpse flower is already wilting.”
“The corpse flower?” Mia said.
“You didn’t hear?” He pointed farther down the room to nothing in particular. “Line was out the door just to get a glimpse.”
“More like just to get a smell,” Jane said, wrinkling her nose. “Corpse flower isn’t just a clever name. The plant smells like decomposition when it blooms.” She turned to Rousseau. “I will never understand why people would wait for hours to smell something so foul.”
Gray thought back to Samantha Watkinson’s crime scene and all the people who’d tried to get a glimpse of her corpse. “A fascination with the macabre,” he mused.
“That must be a rare event,” Mia said. “The blooming of a corpse flower?”
“Event is an apt descriptor,” Rousseau said, nodding his head. “I’ve only seen it a few times myself, and I’ve been at this work for over thirty years now.” He gestured behind them. “Course, this guy was lucky enough to see it in, what? Your first year?”
Gray and Mia turned to see a young man ambling toward them, clutching two white ten-gallon buckets overflowing with what appeared to be debris and clippings. “What’s that?” he said.
“My lab tech, Austin Quinlan,” Rousseau said. “How long you been working here, Austin? A year?”
“Almost two,” he said, lowering the ten-gallon buckets to the ground. He was wearing a long-sleeve T-shirt, jeans and work boots. More like swimming in them. The guy—who didn’t look like much more than a kid—was wiry. Rather than come closer to the group, Austin hovered about twenty feet away, tending to a plant that seemed to be little more than dried stems.
“What’s a lab tech do?” Mia asked, eyeing him.
“He helps out with whatever we need, basically. A bit of this and that.” Rousseau lowered his voice. “He likes tending the flowers. Between you and me, he sometimes goes a little overboard. I’ve had to keep an eye on him.”
Gray watched the young man twisting dead leaves from the plant and dropping them into the bucket. “Overboard? In what way?”
“I’ve had to remind him that he’s not a botanist. He’s just a tech.” Rousseau waved his hand nonchalantly. “It’s not important. Good help is hard to find.”
“You sound frustrated with him,” Mia said.
He folded his arms across his chest and leaned back against the worktable. “He’s got a chip on his shoulder,” he said, his voice conspiratorial. “I give him things to do—odds and ends. Trim this plant, clean that one up. I want my techs to have some responsibility. I thought he’d be eager to learn,
but he seems to think he knows it all already. Like that corpse flower.” He leaned closer. “I caught him poking at it. Now, there’s no reason for that. Botany 101. We don’t pick or poke at the flowers.” He sighed and swept a hand down his cheek. “He’s just a strange kid, that’s all.”
Jane shifted uncomfortably. “Maybe we can discuss this later—”
“Strange?” Gray said. He planted himself between the scientist and the curator. He wanted Rousseau to talk for as long as he wanted. “How so?”
“Weird.” Rousseau leaned forward and gave a quick thumb jab in Austin’s direction. “Like now. He’s standing over by himself instead of saying hello. Sometimes I talk to him and I know he hears me—he just doesn’t respond.”
Jane cleared her throat. “Dr. Rousseau—”
“And other times,” he continued, “he gives me these stares like he hates me. Gives me the creeps.” He pointed to Jane. “You know I’m right. You’ve seen it yourself.”
She laughed nervously and tugged at the hem of her sweater. “I’m sure Lieutenant Bartlett and Dr. Perez are very busy. We can schedule a time to discuss personnel matters later, if you’d like.”
Rousseau waved a hand at her and turned back to the plant on the worktable. “It’s fine. The other guys seem to like him. Maybe it’s just an issue with me.”
“We appreciate your candor, Dr. Rousseau,” Gray said. He turned to Jane. “We’d like to speak with Austin for a few minutes, if that’s all right with you. After that, we can show ourselves out.”
“I’ll go work on that list I promised,” Jane said with a tight nod, and pulled a business card from her pocket. “If there’s anything else, feel free to call or email.”
Gray and Mia thanked her for her time and then stepped away, out of earshot of Rousseau. Mia tugged at the wrist of Gray’s sleeve, and he bent closer. “Austin’s short,” she whispered in his ear.
Gray nodded, and his heart kicked up a notch. He’d noticed that, too. “Short and antisocial, knows his way around a nursery bed. Sounds like just the guy we’ve been looking for.”
* * *
For the past year, Mia had imagined herself knowing when she spotted Valentine, as if he’d be wearing a graphic T-shirt with the words serial killer on the front. She knew it was an absurd thing to think, but her heart had jumped into her throat when she saw Austin and she wondered if, maybe...
He was cleaning up the plants, pulling dead leaves from stalks and tossing them into his buckets. Examining flowers. She studied his face. He had a large head for his lean frame and a ropy neck, and she half expected his head to begin wobbling. She was feeling warm in her clothes; the greenhouse had to be a sweltering ninety degrees, and the floor fans were doing little to circulate the air. Austin’s long-sleeve T-shirt was ringed at the front, back and underarms with sweat, and yet he hadn’t rolled his sleeves. She wondered whether he was hiding cuts on his arms.
Without another word to Gray, she approached him on unsteady legs, trembling under the force of her own nervous heartbeat. It may not be him. You don’t know anything yet. And still every cell in her body vibrated with excitement and a gripping bottomless fear.
He continued to work without acknowledging her, his focus on the tasks before him laserlike in its intensity. His hands were covered in thin white gloves—the kind that could be found at any gardening store. He delicately peeled dead matter from the plant in front of him, almost loving in his attention. She opened her mouth to say something, anything, but lost her breath. Here she was looking at a man fitting Valentine’s physical description. She’d dreamed of the day she would finally see his face, and she’d imagined what she would do to him—and now maybe, just maybe, that day had come, but she couldn’t breathe well enough to say hello.
Behind her, Mia heard Gray’s footsteps. “Hello, Austin,” he said, his voice ringing in her ears with characteristic confidence.
Austin glanced at him from the corner of his eye before looking back at his work. He grunted an inaudible response.
Gray pulled up right beside her, his strong, muscular frame nearly touching hers. She leaned a bit to steady herself against him. He always seemed so sure of himself, but Mia knew that despite the confident demeanor, he was anxious, too. Gray wanted Valentine as badly as she did. “You’re a lab tech?”
Austin’s face remained blank. “That’s right.”
“So, what?” Gray rested his hands on his waist. “You clean up the plants? Water them? Stuff like that? Basic gardening?”
Mia couldn’t be sure, but she thought she saw Austin flinch. “It’s much more than that.”
The steel of his reply prickled her skin like ice against the back of her neck. “More?” she ventured, feeling emboldened by Gray’s calming presence. “Like what, exactly?”
Now he turned to look at her, and the animosity in his eyes caught her breath. As part of her ongoing research, Mia had interviewed dozens of violent criminals, but for the first time, she felt as if she was looking into the eyes of evil.
“Flowers are the artistic expression of the divine,” he said with steely calm. “It takes more than some fancy degree to get them to grow. These plants respond to me.” He turned away again, and a shudder of relief swept through her. “It’s a gift.”
“A gift?” Gray said with an arch of his brows. “Seems like it comes down to science. Soil pH, water levels, sunlight.” Austin chuckled under his breath. “You’re laughing,” Gray said. “What am I missing?”
The young man looked sidelong at Gray. “I wouldn’t expect you to understand.”
“Understand what?” Mia pressed.
“What I do requires sensitivity,” he said, stroking the leaves of the plant. “I’ve brought some of these plants back from the dead. You can ask anyone. These so-called scientists would be lost without me. They’re always measuring and calculating.” He leaned forward toward the plant, talking as much to it as to Mia and Gray. “I’m listening. They’re heartless.”
Heartless. Instantly the image of Valentine’s victims cropped up in Mia’s mind, their hearts ripped from their chests. “You feel contempt for scientists,” she said. “Maybe for academics in general.”
He didn’t reply. On a whim, she yawned and didn’t bother to cover her mouth until she was almost finished. Beside her, Gray stifled a yawn and shook his head. Austin watched them both with some amusement, and a sick smile twisted itself across his lips. “I have a lot to do,” he said.
Mia felt Gray’s gaze on her, but she couldn’t tear her own away from the man before them. Everything about him sent her senses ringing, and she wasn’t about to walk away so easily. As he worked on the plant, she glanced at his gloves. The fingertips were muddy, but they otherwise looked fairly new. “You’re bleeding,” she observed quietly, pointing to his left hand.
He froze and looked to where she had indicated. A fresh patch of red was expanding across his palm. “Must’ve just caught a thorn,” he said, but Mia observed him turning slightly away from her.
“Looks like more than that.” She kept her voice level. Cool. “Looks like you really hurt yourself. You don’t want to get dirt in that wound.”
“You’ll get an infection,” Gray added.
She hoped he would remove the glove to investigate the cut, but instead he swallowed and once again turned his shoulder to them. “It’s not the first time it’s happened.”
“Awfully hot in here, isn’t it?” Gray said to Mia. “In fact, I’m going to roll up my sleeves.” He began to do so, and then nodded at Austin. “I’m surprised you can work like that, with your sleeves down. Don’t you feel hot?”
C’mon, show us those arms. Mia’s heart beat nearly in her throat as she waited to see whether Austin would actually take the bait and roll his sleeves. He had to be sweltering if the sweat on his clothing was any indication.
“Lieutenant?”
Mia hadn’t heard Jane approach, and judging from the way Gray snapped around to face her, he hadn’t, either. But
Austin paled.
“I’m glad you’re still here,” Jane said, extending an envelope. “I printed a list of the professional consultants I used on the exhibit. Names, contact information and specialties.”
“That’s great, Ms. McAlister,” Gray said tightly. “Thank you for your help.”
“My pleasure. Do let me know if there’s anything else I can help you with.”
Mia didn’t watch as Jane left. Instead she watched Austin’s face as the realization sank in. Then just as quickly as it had appeared, his anxiety vanished and he was back to his old arrogant facade. “You’re cops?”
“I am,” said Gray. “She’s a psychologist.”
Austin looked at Mia with renewed interest. No, make that contempt. He looked away without additional comment. Mia’s insides were stuttering and her fingers felt like ice, but she tried to ignore it. They might have only one shot at this, and if this was Valentine, they needed to nail it. “Must have been interesting to see something like a corpse flower bloom,” she said. “When did that happen—over the weekend?”
“Full bloom Friday,” he said as he brushed waste from the counter surface into one of the ten-gallon buckets. “Ever seen one of those?”
“I can’t say I have.”
This time he turned to her with a full smile, and she could see every crooked tooth in his mouth. “Some people can’t handle the smell. Rotting flesh. The inside of the flower is purple like a bruise, and up from the middle there’s a long stamen that points up, up, up. It’s like the finger of God.”
Mia felt ill at the wild look in his eyes. “You seem excited by it.”
“Flowers have meanings. You know that, right?” He laughed. “Maybe you don’t. They don’t teach that in psychology school.” He spat the words. “When I saw that corpse flower, when I smelled it, it was like I knew. I finally understood.”
Gray’s face was dangerously dark, and he pulled closer to Mia’s side. She barely registered the contact, fixated as she was on the bulging eyes of the man in front of her. “What did you understand?” Speaking took effort, but she’d managed to whisper the words.
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