An Absence of Light

by David Lindsey

  When he rolled over to get up, he found the legal pad and pencil among the rumpled sheets and threw them onto the floor at the foot of the bed. Resisting the temptation to fall back onto the pillow, he swung his legs over the side and sat there a moment, feeling heavy-headed and stiff. Then he stood slowly and walked into the bathroom, stepped into the shower, and turned on the cold water.

  After bathing and shaving, he dressed and gathered up the dirty clothes that he had piled on the settee near the windows. After dropping off the clothes at the laundry, he stopped by a neighborhood bakery and bought a cinnamon roll, a small coffee, and a newspaper. The Kashmere Gardens shooting did make the headlines. The gunman holding the hostage had been killed in a barrage of gunfire after he shot his hostage on the small stoop of the garage apartment.

  Graver quickly searched the rest of the paper, but there was no mention of Arthur Tisler’s death. Not a news item. He tossed the newspaper into a trash can and finished the cinnamon roll and coffee on the way downtown.

  The Criminal Intelligence Division was located on the top floor of a doleful, three-story building at the back of the police headquarters compound on the northwestern edge of downtown. Separated from the architectural splendors of Houston’s building-boom years by the thundering concrete maze of ramps, piers, girders, and abutments of the Gulf Freeway, the homely, cement building had the peculiar distinction of having its single front door face outward from the back of the police compound rather than inward as did the other buildings. As a result, its ground floor had a marvelous view of the underbelly of the expressway where Buffalo Bayou screwed its way under the concrete superstructure, and the sticky weeds of summer grew out of control.

  Graver parked in a small parking lot across the alley-like driveway that circled the building, and which was surrounded by a jungle of weeds that grew higher than his head and crowded right up to the lot’s margins. He got out of the car, locked the door, and inhaled the musty odors that emanated from the oozing and fetid cocoa waters of the bayou fifty yards away on the other side of the weedy embankment.

  Lara Casares was always the first person in the office every morning. Always. She had been Graver’s secretary since the first day he stepped into the captain’s position four years earlier when he had pulled her from the stenographer’s pool where she had been a wasted talent Nearly everything about Lara was a surprise, beginning with her appearance. She was an attractive thirty-three-year-old Latina with an astonishingly fine figure, which included a bust of admirable proportions and killer hips which she thrice weekly Jazzersized and pounded to a white-hot firmness. She wore her clothes the way musclemen wore tight shirts, self-aware and lustily pleased with the whole damn thing. Though she had only a high school education, Graver guessed that her IQ must have been off the charts. She was everything a first impression might have suggested she wasn’t, dependable, discreet in a position where discretion was paramount, organized like a computer, always two jumps ahead of his every request, considerate, and sober as a nun when it came to her work, though she was something of a raucous lady on a personal level. Graver relied on her without reservation.

  Beyond that, they shared a mutual attraction that had gone unacknowledged for longer than either of them ever would have predicted. Despite her strong personality, Graver knew that Lara was too smart to be the first one to openly address their attraction, which they both knew was loaded with potential problems. This was one instance in which she would not take the lead. As for Graver himself, his shattered marriage had not had the same effect on him that it might have had on most men. He was not more prone to fall into an affair. Rather, for reasons he did not allow himself to examine too closely, he was determined to keep his feelings for Lara at arm’s length, though now that the divorce was final he had to admit that there really was no longer any reason to do so. In fact, the truth was that at this time in his life he was probably closer to Lara than to anyone else.

  When he walked into the office late, at half past eight, he said good morning to the receptionist and looked down the bare, narrow hallway to his left where the Division’s offices opened off both sides of the corridor, a series of identical doors, their facades appearing increasingly narrow as they progressed to the opposite end of an exceedingly long hall.

  Nowhere were the strapped finances of the city’s budget more apparent than in these quarters. All of the offices, with the exception of his own, could not be described as anything more than cubicles. The offices on the right side of the hall were the more desirable ones because of the enormous advantage of being on the exterior wall of the building and therefore having small windows. On the other side of the hall the cubicles were like Cappadocian caves dug into the inside of the building. They were little more than coffins.

  The door to the communications room was open and one of the printers was hammering away, dumping a roll of paper on the floor which was already littered with paper from reports that had come in over the weekend. The computers stayed alive around the clock to receive “contributions” from police officers—patrolmen and detectives—anywhere in the city.

  Graver turned and walked past Lara’s office and stuck his head in. She was on the telephone, and he pointed to his office and went on. By the time he had settled behind his desk and made a couple of notes, Lara came in the door with his Charlie Chan mug full of fresh coffee. She set the mug in front of him with a napkin, straightened up, and tugged once sharply on the hem of her red suit jacket.

  “You left this on your desk over the weekend—with coffee in it. There was mold in it this morning,” she said pointedly.

  Every morning when Graver came into his office, he found his desk clear and neatly arranged, a condition in which he seldom left it. Lara was responsible. She dusted the amber glass shade on the lamp he had brought from home to offset the anemic fluorescent lighting in the ceiling. She made sure that the marbled fountain pen that Nathan had given him was in the narrow green glass tray on the front of his desk. She made sure the bone-white coffee mug with its silhouette of Charlie Chan on it that Natalie had given him was clean. And she made sure that his book-style calendar was held flat open with the black, smoothly worn cobblestone that a hundred years ago he and Dore, slightly inebriated and laughing, had dug out of a narrow lane near St. Paul’s Cathedral.

  That was another thing about Lara. She had an intuitive understanding of the lingering power of small things, of old gifts from a son and daughter, or of a mnemonic cobblestone that was not a reminder of the woman who was no longer his wife, but of the girl he once had married.

  “Sorry,” he said, motioning for her to close the door, which she did, coming back and standing in front of his desk.

  “Some bad news,” he said. “Arthur Tisler was found dead in his car last night. It looks like he killed himself.”

  Her mouth dropped open, and she sat down slowly in one of the chairs.

  “My God,” she said. “He killed himself?”

  “That’s what it… seems.”

  “Seems?”

  “It’s got to be investigated, Lara, that’s all.”

  “I know, but… My God…” Her black eyes looked at him, and he could see her remembering Tisler.

  “Of course Westrate’s worrying about damage control, the way it’s going to look.”

  “Nobody knows about this yet?”

  “Burtell knows. He notified Peggy Tisler last night.”

  “Jesus, poor woman.”

  Graver would have liked to talk to her a while, just discuss it as he would have done with Dore years ago, but there wasn’t time. Reluctantly he moved on.

  “I guess you’d better call each of the squad supervisors and have them meet me in here at nine o’clock,” he said. “I’ll let them take care of telling their people. And you’d better hold all calls for me for the rest of the day except any from Jack Westrate or anyone in Homicide or IAD.”

  He briefly explained to her about the requisite inquiry and how it would have to take
precedence over the normal routine of his responsibilities. Graver monitored the activities of his squads by the daily review of a steady stream of investigation summaries, intelligence reports, initial investigation summaries, operational requests, contributor management reports, and on and on, a seemingly endless flow of cumbersome but necessary forms, files, contracts, vouchers, records, summaries, lists, and logs. All of these—all but the most urgent of them—would now have to be set aside until Graver could complete a report that would give the CID’s file a clean bill of health, free from any stain of Tisler’s suicide. Lara was going to have to help him deal with more than he could handle.

  At nine o’clock the three squad supervisors filed into his office. Ray Besom was the fourth, though absent on his Fishing trip. Graver told them straight out what had happened. He told them as much as he had told Burtell the night before, but none of them was close to Tisler and kept their reactions to a soft curse or a wincing, jaw-clenching frown. He explained everything, the situation at the scene, who was on the investigation from Homicide and IAD.

  “And I’m going to head our own inquiry myself,” he said. “Review his investigations, make sure we’re all right.” They all knew what he meant. He looked at Matt Rostov, a thin, angular man in his early forties, who supervised the Research and Analysis Squad. “Matt, if it’s all right with you, I’d like to pull Dean Burtell and Paula Sale to help me. Can you spare them for a week maybe?”

  Rostov nodded and said sure.

  “When you go back to your office would you let them know I’ll be calling them a little later in the morning?”

  Again Rostov nodded. Sure.

  “I’m going to get Casey Neuman out of OC also.”

  “What about the people in OC,” asked Lee Stanish, “they know yet?”

  Stanish had been in Ray Besom’s position as head of the Organized Crime Squad four years earlier. He was a superb supervisor, and Graver had moved him to the Anti-Terrorist Squad when the supervisor there had retired. He had had an excellent relationship with his investigators and never had thought that Besom had done a good-enough job with his old group.

  “Not yet,” Graver said. “I’m talking to them after this. I decided against making a general announcement. It’s touchy, and there’s a lot pending. I just thought it would be best if we kept it low-key.”

  Everyone nodded, everyone understood, and Graver dismissed them. Only Bob Penck, who supervised Technical Services had said nothing, which was normal for him. He might have said something if a bomb had gone off in the office… or maybe not.

  After they left, Graver asked Lara to go ahead and call in all nine of the Organized Crime Squad’s investigators. He got a fresh cup of coffee from across the hall and waited for them sitting at his desk. When they filed in, all of them expecting a bombshell since they never had been called in as a group before, they all stood around the walls, none of them wanting to take any of the three chairs in front of Graver’s desk. So Graver stood too, and repeated the story of Arthur Tisler’s death for the fourth time.

  Chapter 11

  “We’ve got a lot to do and very little time,” Graver said, putting his hand on the stack of manila folders. He was leaning against the front of his desk, and the three people he had just called into his office wore grim expressions.

  Dean Burtell was sitting in the chair nearest the windows, and despite a fresh shave and his predictably neat appearance, his normally bright personality was nowhere in sight. He was glum and the loss of sleep had changed the appearance of his face. Earlier Graver had spoken to him briefly about his visit with Peggy Tisler. She had been understandably distraught, and Dean and Ginny had stayed with her all night They had called her family in Corpus Christi, and they had arrived in Houston near dawn just in time for Dean and Ginny to go home, shower, and go to work. Still, something more than the loss of sleep seemed to be at work in Burtell’s demeanor.

  Graver looked at him, and then looked out through the windows where the morning’s smutty Gulf clouds were drifting rapidly inland, forming a muted backdrop for the downtown skyline. The southeastern exposure of Graver’s corner office gave him a sweeping view of the city’s western face. It was the only felicitous attribute this grim little building offered. The traffic on the expressway rumbled by in deep undertones that at times Graver actually could feel.

  “I’ve already pulled all of Tisler’s folders. You’re going to work with the hard copies at this point because I want you to be able to see the original documents in case there’s a handwritten marginal notation, a check mark in the text, anything that might catch your eye.”

  Next to Burtell, sitting a little farther back from Graver, was Paula Sale, the second person Graver had pulled from Rostov’s R&A Squad. Thirty-six years old, she had a doctorate in sociology from Rice University and was one of four civilians Graver had managed to bring into the Division despite Westrate’s objections. She had turned out to be a brilliant analyst Right now she sat with one long leg crossed over the other, one hand holding a cup of coffee she rested on her knee. She was staring at him with critical, gray eyes as she tried to read between the lines. Paula wore her light chestnut hair with a blunt cut just above her shoulders. Straight, no permanent. She favored shirtwaist dresses which she wore with an unexpected panache. She liked bracelets. Divorced for three years, she could be abrasive to men who showed an interest in her. She most decidedly was not interested in men. Graver sometimes wondered if there wasn’t more than a small degree of perversity in her rather forward sexuality and the way she bristled at men who reacted so predictably to it.

  “Unfortunately we’re not looking for anything specific,” he continued. “Nothing that could narrow this down for us. There’s just a single fact: Arthur’s dead: and a single question: Is there anything in the files that speaks to that? I want you to come up with more questions, a lot of questions. Anything. Everything. I don’t care how tenuous they are, if they make any connection at all in your mind, bring them forward for discussion.”

  Casey Neuman sat near the door. He was the youngest investigator in Besom’s OC Squad. Innovative and a quick study, Neuman never had to be told anything twice and most of the time never had to be told anything at all. He was an anticipator, he could see things coming—an invaluable asset. With a shock of thick, light brown hair that he wore boyishly long, Casey favored plaid or tatter-sall shirts with button-down collars that he never buttoned and khaki suits or the odd sport coat with casual trousers. Though he was quiet, he was a born mimic and liked nothing more than having to change his appearance or take on a role to collect information. He was one of the few men the waspish Paula got along with without some kind of sparing tension. Maybe it was because he was young and boyish, or maybe it was because he never reacted to her acidic tongue with anything other than an openly amused smile. She never got a rise out of Casey.

  “I’m going to give Paula the four investigations Tisler was working with you, Dean,” Graver said, picking up the largest stack of manila folders and stepping over to Paula. She uncrossed her legs and lifted her coffee mug to let Graver set the stack on top of her legs.

  This was standard, good management, and everyone there knew it, but everyone also knew that on a personal basis it was awkward. Burtell had already told Graver that he couldn’t think of anything in Tisler’s investigations that might relate to his death, and now Paula was going to be second-guessing him. She was going to have to ask questions that could easily seem like caviling to Burtell. They each understood, and each of them wanted to be responsibly dispassionate.

  Graver took the other stack from his desk and handed them to Burtell. “You take the other four, Dean. They’re equally divided between Rankin and Derr. They’re the only other analysts Tisler’s worked with besides yourself. But I don’t want you to talk to them about this.”

  Burtell accepted the folders and nodded. Graver’s attention lingered hesitantly on him, and then he turned to Neuman. “Okay, Casey, I want you to work up A
rthur just as you would any other new target Start at the beginning. Run everything. Don’t let anything slide, don’t make any assumptions.”

  He paused. Casey and Paula were looking at him with fixed, sober expressions, still trying to absorb the news they had received less than an hour ago.

  “This might seem a little distasteful,” Graver acknowledged, “but we’re going to do it. We’ve got to pick him apart.”

  “You don’t know… anything, do you?” Paula interjected.

  Though it might have sounded accusatory, it was asked with the kind of affrontive inquiry that was sterling Paula. She knew her place; she knew about hierarchy, but she also possessed an artless honesty and self-assurance that had a leveling effect on all of her relationships. She knew damn well that if he wasn’t telling them something it was for a reason he would not share with them, and that he would have to lie to her and continue withholding it But that was Paula. She wanted to see his face when he said it.

  “No,” he said. “I don’t know anything.” He picked up his Charlie Chan mug and sipped his coffee. It was his third cup of the morning, and many more would follow. “Last night they were leaning toward suicide, but that was just an on-the-spot hunch. Maybe later on this morning they’ll have something to back that up. But right now there are no suspicions about anything, nothing to guide us in one direction or the other.”

  He stopped a moment and let his eyes drift to the clouds that were breaking a little now, the bright morning sun piercing through to the skyscrapers in brilliant shafts.

  “Everyone clear about what we’ve got to do here?” he asked. They all nodded. “If there are any surprises waiting in those folders, or in Tisler’s background, I want to see them coming. Okay?”

  Everyone nodded again.

  “You want our assessments on each target worked up in reports?” Paula asked.

  “No, and that’s a good point. If you think you’ve got something, come to me, let’s talk it through “first.”