An Absence of Light

by David Lindsey

  The front light came on over his head, and while he was considering asking Burtell to join him outside rather than going in, the door opened and Ginette stood in the light wearing a pair of brief peach shorts which were very nearly hidden by the loose tail of a tank top.

  “Marcus,” she said with a smile of surprise. “Dean didn’t tell me you were coming by.” She stepped out and hugged him.

  “Sorry, Ginette,” Graver said. Her neck smelled vaguely of perfume. “He didn’t know I was coming… I just need to see him a few minutes.”

  She looked at him with just a flicker of worry in her eyes and then pushed it aside. Even if the men and women who worked in intelligence told their husbands and wives more than they were supposed to about their work, the spouses were well trained to act dumb about it. In reality, they consistently behaved unnaturally incurious.

  “Well, come on in,” she said, stepping back into the entry. “We were sitting out in the patio. It was cool after the rain, but it’s already warming up.” She closed the door behind him. “We’re having drinks… would you like something?”

  Throughout the ordeal of Dore’s well-publicized affair, Ginette Burtell had been exceptionally compassionate. He had learned that her late father had been through something similar years earlier, and she gave Graver all the understanding that she had gained in her own experience. In doing so, she had won Graver’s lasting appreciation, and an unspoken bond grew between them that, despite a long friendship, had not been there before. She was a good bit shorter than Graver, with very white skin and short, jet hair. She was the kind of woman who woke up in the morning looking fresh and unruffled, showing none of the rigors of sleep.

  “No, nothing,” Graver said. “I’ll only be a moment…”

  They started walking through the living room toward an open, very modern bone-white kitchen.

  “Dean was going to work in the yard,” she said, “but the rain gave him an excuse to put it off.”

  “I doubt if he needed much of an excuse,” Graver said.

  She laughed and tucked a bit of hair behind one ear. “No, he wasn’t looking forward to it.”

  Just then the back door in the kitchen opened and Burtell came in, barefoot in jeans and an old rugby shirt with the sleeves pushed up almost to his elbows. He had their drinks in his hands and was concentrating on maneuvering the door closed with his foot when he looked up and saw Graver.

  “Marcus.” His face ran through several emotions in the space of a moment—surprise, puzzlement, foreboding, recovery—before he collected himself and feigned a relaxed smile. He came toward them, handing one of the glasses to Ginette. “What’s up?”

  It was probably Graver’s ill-disguised uneasiness that he reacted to so quickly, but whatever he sensed, he tried to remain nonchalant, though he surely expected the visit was not a social one.

  “I’m sorry for not calling first,” Graver said.

  “It’s all right, no problem,” Burtell said. “Come on, let’s sit in here.” He gestured toward the living room with his drink. “It was cool outside, but it didn’t last long. Oh, uh”—he held up the glass—”want something?”

  “No, but thanks.”

  “Ginny”—Burtell turned to his wife—”would you mind making sure I got everything outside? I know I left some pretzels out there.”

  Ginette Burtell would make herself scarce.

  They sat down, Graver in an armchair, Burtell on a large silk sofa. Graver sat back in the overstuffed chair, the tufted back feeling good against his spine, which had begun to ache. Burtell sat forward on the sofa, sipped from his glass, then rested his forearms on his knees, holding his drink casually in both hands, his eyes fixed on Graver.

  “No easy way to get to this,” Graver said. “Arthur Tisler’s dead. It looks as if he killed himself.”

  Burtell dropped his glass.

  There were only a few sips left, and it sloshed out on the creamy carpet with a couple of pieces of ice.

  “Shit,” he said, his eyes locked on Graver, his voice falling dead, the expletive in reference to Graver’s announcement, not the spilled drink. He looked down at the spill—it was clear, gin or vodka—and then reached down and picked up the glass, fumbled with the few ice cubes, and finally captured them and put them in the glass. Taking a handkerchief out of his hip pocket, he laid it on the damp spot and pressed it, and then put the glass on a side table. He moved slowly, almost as if he were anticipating having to catch his balance. He looked at the handkerchief between his bare feet.

  “Holy shit,” he said. His face was drawn.

  Neither of them said anything for a moment as Burtell stared down at the handkerchief.

  “I went out there tonight—”

  “Out there?” Burtell interrupted, his eyes still on the handkerchief. “He did this at home?”

  “No. He’d parked in an empty field near the runways at Andrau Airpark. A patrolman just happened to see it and checked it out.”

  Burtell hadn’t moved. “How?”

  “He shot himself.”

  Silence.

  “In the head?”

  Graver nodded. He was watching Burtell closely. The two men were good friends. They didn’t socialize all that often outside their professional relationship, but they were closer than most within that context. Graver almost felt like an older brother to Burtell who was a decade younger, and the feeling was reciprocated. They each knew how the other’s mind worked, and both of them probably invested more of themselves in the intelligence game than was healthy for their marriages. They were kindred spirits and knew it.

  “In the mouth?”

  An odd thing to want to have clarified, but sometimes a person’s curiosity about suicide, the precise activity of it was as unexpected as the act itself.

  “His right temple, Dean. He used his own gun.”

  Burtell’s eyes were still fixed on the handkerchief. “Suicide,” he said.

  Graver heard the flatness in Burtell’s voice and found his preoccupation with the handkerchief between his feet a curious behavior. Graver noted that Burtell was actually wan, seemingly nauseous.

  “Well, that’s what it looks like. That’s not official yet There was no note, not there with him, anyway.” Graver spent a few minutes telling Burtell how the evening had unfolded, all of it just as it had happened. When he stopped, Burtell looked up.

  “What about Peggy?”

  “She doesn’t know yet,” Graver said. He hesitated. “1 hate to ask you this, Dean, but I’d appreciate it if you’d break it to her.”

  “Jesus Christ,” Burtell said. He reached down and picked up his handkerchief and tossed it on the table beside the glass. “Sure,” he said, sinking back on the sofa. “Sure, it’s fine. I don’t mind. It ought to be me. I know that” He looked at Graver. “Is that all there is to it? That’s all you know?”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  Burtell frowned incredulously, but when Graver didn’t elaborate Burtell’s eyes drifted away. “What in the hell did he think he was doing?”

  “I was really hoping you could give me some insight into that,” Graver said.

  Burtell’s eyes jerked back to Graver. He seemed taken aback.

  “You probably knew him better than anyone,” Graver reminded him.

  “Look, I don’t… I just…” He paused, then, doing what he did best, he collected his thoughts, organized his thinking. “Okay,” he said, raising his opened hands, palms out, a gesture of calming himself, starting over. “We weren’t that close, for Christ’s sake, Marcus…” He thought about it, staring past Graver, out to the blackness through the windows, shaking his head slowly.

  “God, I don’t know… uh, at home,” he began. “I can’t imagine anything going on at home, between him and Peggy anyway, that was eating at him… enough… you know, for this. Honest to God, I don’t. Their marriage was… I don’t know,” he cleared his throat “It would seem boring I guess to some people. Art wasn’t… he didn’t play arou
nd. He didn’t hang out with a bunch of guys even. Peggy wasn’t a sports widow, anything like that. He went to work; he went home. They pretty well did everything together.

  “They didn’t have any obvious troubles, serious ones anyway. Art was content with going to Peggy’s cat shows, helping her with that kind of shit That was actually their big ‘outside activity,’ her cat shows.”

  He paused, his thoughts straying for a moment before he caught himself and shook his head. “I just don’t see anything there to kill yourself about. No lovers or crazy sex or frustrations.” He caught himself. “I mean… I never saw any evidence of that kind of stuff. All I’m saying is, Art and Peggy… you just never saw anything like that. Nothing extreme about either of them, nothing that was in danger of getting out of control.”

  He laid his head back, twisted his neck in an effort to relieve the tension. He straightened up.

  “What about their families,” Graver asked. “Any complications there? What about money? Debts?”

  “Family worries,” Burtell said. “Art’s dad is dead, five or six years ago. His mom lives in Dallas, in a retirement community near his only sister. He’s never expressed any concern about any of them. I think Peggy’s parents live in Corpus Christi. I don’t really know anything about them.

  “As for money problems, hell”—Burtell smiled thinly—”Art is ‘fiscally conservative.’ I doubt if he knew the definition of squander. He would have to be taught how to live beyond his means. One of the few people in the United States who operated on a cash basis. Really. I’d bet the only dime they owe is on their house…” He stopped. “In fact, Christ, I would have thought Tisler would be the last person in the world to kill himself, if for no other reason than it would cheat Peggy out of her insurance. He’s paid premiums for years… money down the tubes… that’s the way he’d see it He would have thought it was a damned stupid thing to do. I mean, it would have been the first item crossed off his list of options. He just wouldn’t have considered it… practical.”

  “You think he didn’t kill himself?”

  Burtell looked up. “No, that’s not what I meant at all. I’m not implying anything…” He stopped and stared at Graver, who remained silent “We’ve got to go into his investigations, is that it?”

  “Regardless of what Homicide comes up with, we’re going to have to audit them for our own internal satisfaction,” Graver said. “We’ve got to make sure there’s no connection, you know that.”

  Burtell swallowed and nodded. “Sure… I know.”

  “Was he holding something?” Graver asked.

  It was a legitimate question, and Burtell knew it. Intelligence investigators were no different from other people when it came to occasional judgment calls that crossed over the line. Though a proper intelligence organization used a voluminous paper-trail system to account for—and justify—its activities, and to” keep a firm rein on its investigators, there was no process that could anticipate acts of omission. For an infinite variety of reasons, there were occasions when investigators did not put everything they knew into the mountain of reports they were responsible for filing for each target they investigated. A good investigator had a side of him that was intensely private. He never told anyone everything he knew, not even his superiors who relied on his integrity. A good superior officer would know this, and he would know that there wasn’t anything he could do about it In this business secrets were the coin of the realm, and everyone had a few coins put away—just in case.

  Ultimately, however, you had to believe the system would work because it was a system. You had to believe your investigators would not withhold information to the detriment of the operation or the Division, or to the detriment of the ideals inherent in the profession. In the end, as in all things, it came down to trust. It was an irony not lost on Graver. He knew from experience that the number of people any given intelligence officer would trust at any given time, inside or outside the business, would fall in the low single digits.

  “Honest to God,” Burtell said. “You knew him well enough to know he didn’t have a loose tongue. If he was holding anything significant, he didn’t give me a clue about it. The Seldon operation was definitely on his mind. It was getting tougher, but I just can’t see how it would, even remotely, have a connection to something like this.”

  “Jesus, Dean. You don’t think the combination of dumping toxic waste and drug trafficking held potential dangers?”

  “Of course, but my point is that Art wasn’t that far into it yet He wasn’t near anything. You’ve seen his contact reports. He was just beginning with this informant. The guy had potential, but Art was having to work his ass off to develop it. But he didn’t know enough yet to get him killed.”

  “That you know about.”

  “Well, yeah,” Burtell conceded, “that I know about.”

  “He wasn’t working on anything else that had the potential of turning nasty?”

  Burtell shook his head and stared away toward the night beyond the windows. “The three other targets he was working…” His voice trailed off and again he seemed to let his thoughts drift on to something else. For a moment neither of them said anything. Then Burtell continued, his gaze still directed outside, “…with me, they were pretty much on idle.” He shifted his eyes back to Graver. “I don’t know,” he said. It was a statement of puzzlement, not ignorance.

  Graver studied Burtell. He had expected him to be shocked, to be sobered, even stunned by the news of Tisler’s death, but he had no idea that Burtell would be affected like this, that he would be so… disturbed.

  “Okay,” Graver said. He had heard enough. Maybe Burtell would have a new perspective on it in the morning. “Look, maybe I should go on over there and tell Peggy myself. Or I could go with you…”

  “No, it’s all right,” Burtell said, shaking his head. “I really ought to. Ginny and I.” He looked over at his glass as if he expected there might be something there to drink. He looked at Graver.

  “Tomorrow was supposed to be the first day of my vacation,” he said. “Guess I’ll hold up on that.”

  Graver had forgotten. “Were you leaving town?”

  “No, not the first week. Ginny couldn’t get away just now. But we were going away the second week.”

  “Maybe we can clear this out in a couple of days.”

  “What about Besom? He can’t be reached can he?”

  “No, but I think he’s supposed to be back in the city late tomorrow, though he’s not scheduled to return to the office for another week.”

  “This is going to be a stunner for him.”

  “I’ll try to get him as soon as he’s back in town.”

  “Westrate, what about him?”

  “I haven’t talked to him,” Graver said.

  “He’s going to shit.”

  “Probably.”

  Graver wasn’t surprised by the question. Jack Westrate kept so much pressure on the Division that every time something happened out of the ordinary, every time there was an administrative or budgetary change or an investigation became “sensitive,” everyone wondered how Jack Westrate was going to react. No one ever believed he would go to the wall for them. Westrate was consistent; he always put himself and his own concerns first. Every time there was a ripple in the water his first thought was how was it going to affect his own little boat Arthur Tisler’s self-centered act of despair would be an enormous annoyance for Westrate’s own self-centered preoccupations.

  Graver watched Burtell absently wind his watch. It was a dress watch, the classic kind that didn’t have a battery. You had to wind it regularly. Graver guessed it wasn’t even water-resistant, that kind of a dress watch. Burtell fidgeted with the band, a leather band with a gold buckle. You didn’t see much death in the kind of work they did. You never really got much of an opportunity to see how people would react to it.

  Chapter 5

  As he walked outside and retraced his way along the gently curving sidewalk to his car, Grave
r thought the night air seemed even more oppressive than before. Feeling uneasy, he unlocked his car and got in, started the engine, and looked toward Burtell’s house as he turned on the headlights. There wasn’t much to see through the staggered, straight silhouettes of the pines, only glimpses of the lighted windows in the chalky black haze.

  He pulled away from the curb and drove out of the cul-de-sac. Burtell, he thought, had reacted pretty much as Graver had expected. And then again he hadn’t. Though Burtell was indeed shocked at the news of Tisler’s death, shocked even that it had been suicide, his reaction seemed, somehow, to exceed the import of this grim news. It wasn’t that he had behaved inappropriately or ingenuously, or that his reaction was emotive. Burtell was not given to melodrama. It was just that his response was more inclusive, as though there were another dimension to the news, and that he was understanding more than Graver had told him. Graver didn’t doubt anything he saw. He simply had seen more than he was expecting.

  But then the way Graver was looking at this might say more about himself than about Burtell. Perhaps the fact that Graver thought Burtell’s reaction to the news of Tisler’s suicide was more… reactive… than Graver had expected was because Graver himself felt so little. Or, at least, Dore would have said that. According to her, Graver was an “emotional cripple.” Someone else might have said that he was too analytical or reserved or low-key. But Dore had said “emotional cripple,” and the description had stung. In fact, Graver remembered at the time how much he had been hurt by that. Sometimes those words ran through his mind when his eyes and thoughts stopped momentarily on the cobblestone memento on his desk. Graver had spent a lot of time second-guessing his feelings after that, and he regretted that Dore had saved those words as her parting shot, after she had already filed for divorce, and they had almost stopped speaking. He would like to have talked with her about that, before the emotions that once had tied them together had been severed and cauterized. But it was too late now, and he was left to puzzle over this unflattering description in solitude. Maybe that was the way Dore had intended it to be—to leave the barb in the flesh after the sting, a lasting, reminding hurt.