An Absence of Light

by David Lindsey

  “Ms. Heath,” Neuman said slowly. “Please, I can assure you…”

  Valerie Heath jumped to her feet, almost losing her romper top which she quickly retrieved, yanking up on the sides.

  “Get the hell out of here,” she said. She was trembling, her eyes blinking furiously, her anger tinged with something besides antagonism.

  Neuman and Paula stood, and Neuman started to say something else, but Valerie Heath beat him to it.

  “Get out of here!” She stretched a leathery arm toward the front door, a trail of cigarette ashes following the arc of her gesture.

  “Look, I apologize if I offended you”—Neuman was keeping up the patter all the way to the door—”but I had to ask these questions. I mean, this is just part of the job. It’s what we have to do if we’re going to help…”

  They were outside, and Valerie Heath slammed the door behind them.

  “Jesus,” Paula gasped as they walked out through the courtyard. “I thought she was going to start hitting you. I really thought she was going to.”

  “You were a lot of help in there, Paula,” Neuman said, grinning at her.

  “Next time, hotshot, why don’t you let me in on the game plan and you might get some help. What did you expect me to do?”

  They walked back along the drive through the drifting mist of the sprinkler system which was still hissing.

  “What was your impression?” Neuman asked as they got into the car.

  “Well, for starters, it was a total washout She didn’t give us one ounce of information we didn’t already know.”

  “Yeah, but what was your impression about how she reacted to the whole thing about Colleen Synar?”

  Paula thought a second. “Frightened. Yeah, she seemed scared, actually. And confused.”

  “Yeah, I thought so too,” Neuman said, starting up the car. “And I noticed she didn’t threaten to call the cops if we didn’t get out.” He turned on the headlights and drove past the house. When he got to the intersection where the street entered the mainland, he made a U-turn and started back.

  “What’s the deal?” Paula said. “You’re not going to go back there…”

  “Just wait a second,” he said. He cut his headlights just before reaching the house again and glided past, doubling back at the end of the street. He pulled to the curb and parked behind one of several cars between him and Valerie Heath’s. He cut the motor.

  “I think we really rattled her cage,” Neuman said. “You saw the name on the magazine subscription label?”

  “Irene Whaley.”

  Neuman picked up the radio and called in the license plate on the Corvette. Paula rolled down her window and flapped the top of her dress for air. The night had grown sultry and with the dead air came an occasional waft of strong harbor odors. When the call came back on the car they both listened. It belonged to Frances Rupp, same address.

  Paula looked at Neuman. “What the hell’s going on?”

  Neuman shook his head, watching the house. “I do not know.” And then: “Okay, here we go.”

  Valerie Heath came out of the front courtyard gates in a hurry. She was still wearing her less than wonderful romper, still smoking furiously, and she was carrying a purse with a shoulder strap. They heard the chirrup of the security system on the car as she hit the disarm button on her key chain, and in a matter of moments she was in the car and was pulling out of the driveway.

  “We’re going to follow her?” Paula asked.

  They watched her taillights grow smaller and smaller.

  “You’d better move it, Casey. She’s—”

  “I’m not going to follow her,” Neuman said, taking off his tie and jacket and tossing them in the back seat He rolled up the sleeves of his shirt “I’m going to go around to the back of her place and get her trash. Watch for me at the left front corner of the house. When you see me, pull up into the driveway.’

  Chapter 32

  They pulled off the Gulf Freeway when they were well out of the subdivisions around Clear Lake, and Houston was still just a glow on the night horizon. Neuman drove down the access road until he came to a dirt track that seemed to lead to nothing but darkness through miles of the flat coastal plain. He turned off and drove a hundred yards or so until the uneven ruts dropped slightly, and the tall clumps of plume and muhly grass hid them from the highway.

  “Okay,” Neuman said, cutting the motor. “If you’ll hold the flashlight, I’ll do the shit work.”

  “No argument from me, but why don’t we just shine the headlights on it?”

  “Because this is going to take a few minutes, and I don’t want anybody seeing us and deciding to drive out here to see what it is we’re doing.”

  They got out of the car and Neuman opened the trunk and took out two large plastic bags of garbage and set them beside the road. He took a pair of surgical gloves from a box of them that he kept in the trunk, pulled them on, and walked over to the plastic bags.

  “If this doesn’t pay off, I’m going to be pissed,” he said. He bent down and tore open the first bag and began dumping everything out in one of the sandy ruts of the road, walking backward as he shook out the contents of the sack. The hot humid days had steamed everything in the sacks, and the odor was horrendous. Paula held her nose and quickly found the downwind side of the refuse. Taking a step or two into the tall grass, Neuman came back with a stick, straddled the string of garbage, bent down, and set to work.

  There was a soft breeze coming across the grasses from the coast, but it was warm and gummy and there was not enough of it to carry away the stench of what Neuman was stirring around with his stick. But more important it wasn’t enough to blow away the host of mosquitoes that quickly found them. The spring rains had provided these insects with enough pools and puddles and mud holes to multiply themselves into numbers that approached plague proportions and within minutes they were swarming as thick as a fog. Paula swatted at them furiously and swore and fidgeted while Neuman inched his way along the rope of garbage. After ten minutes of this Neuman stopped and looked up.

  “Paula, if you don’t hold the damn light still I can’t do this,” he said, his voice rising slightly.

  “We’ve just got to figure out something else. This is not going to work.” She was writhing. “They are eating me!”

  “You wearing a slip?” he asked.

  “Yeah…”

  “Squat down, pull the slip down over your legs, pull the dress up over your head, stick the flashlight out of a hole, and KEEP IT STILL!”

  While Neuman waited, Paula did as she was told, taking a few minutes to arrange herself in the manner Neuman had described, squatting in the grassy median between the two sandy ruts and finally managing to get the flashlight through a hole near her face and guide the beam onto Valerie Heath’s garbage.

  “Beautiful,” Neuman said, and returned to perusing his cache, flicking at pieces of paper with his stick. Now and then he would pick up something crumpled and unfold it or pry sticky things apart from one another or pull wadded pieces of paper from cans or waxed cartons. If it was something with printing on it, he picked it up and looked at it; if it was something he couldn’t identify, he picked it up and looked at it Not wanting to use his hands to swat at the insects, every few moments he would duck his head and wipe at the mosquitoes on his face with his shirtsleeves. Neither of them spoke. They just wanted to get it over with as quickly as possible.

  As trucks whined by on the highway, Neuman gathered up a little pile of papers he had salvaged from the debris of the first bag and put them in the trunk of the car. Then he went to the second bag, ripped it open, and strung out its contents a little way from the first line of garbage.

  “This is actually going pretty damn good,” he said, picking up his stick and waiting for Paula to rearrange herself near the second line of garbage.

  “Aren’t the mosquitoes killing you?” she said from under her dress.

  “Not that bad,” he said. “Come on.”

/>   She focused the beam of the flashlight on the new row of refuse in the road, and Neuman started the process all over again.

  It seemed like an hour, but it was only a little over twenty minutes from the time they got out of the car until Neuman said, “That’s it” Paula stood quickly and pulled down her dress and held the flashlight while Neuman hurriedly collected his latest bits of salvage from the strewn garbage and took it to the opened trunk of the car where he put them with the others in a plastic evidence bag. He peeled off the surgical gloves and threw them down, grabbed another pair, slammed the trunk, and both of them ran around to opposite sides of the car, got in, and slammed the doors.

  “This was a take,” Neuman said enthusiastically. “I think we’ve got some stuff here, some good stuff.”

  “Jesus, I hope so.” Paula was running her fingers through her hair which was disheveled from pulling her skirt over her head. “I don’t believe those goddamn things out there,” she snapped. She picked up the pair of latex gloves and pulled them on. “Let me see the bag,” she said.

  Neuman handed it to her as Paula opened the glove box, turned on the flashlight again, and laid it on the open glove box door. Neuman picked up his notebook and took a ballpoint out of his shirt pocket.

  Paula carefully picked the first item out of the bag and leaned over and held it under the flashlight beam.

  “Okay, we’ll begin with the biggest pieces, the envelopes, three of them. One: from Gulfstream National Bank and Trust. Looks like maybe bank statements came in it. You know, a little window in it, so we don’t know who’s the addressee. Two: from Secure Maintenance Services, but this thing wasn’t mailed. Uh, the name ‘Doris W.’ written in ballpoint on the front. Maybe she brought something home in it.”

  “Then shouldn’t her name be on the envelope? You think she works there?”

  “In the office, maybe. Casey,” she said, dropping her hand in her lap and straightening up, “I’m melting. Since we can’t roll down the window because of the damn mosquitoes, can we at least turn on the air conditioner?”

  Neuman started the car, put the air conditioner on high and picked up his pen again.

  Paula continued. “Three: from Excell Executive Secretarial Services, ‘Olivia M.’ written in pencil on the outside.”

  “Same handwriting?”

  “Doesn’t look like it.”

  Neuman nodded, writing.

  “Okay,” Paula continued. “Receipts.” She slapped a mosquito on her arm. “Some of those little bastards are in this car.” She scratched the bite vigorously. “One: from the Total Detailing, a car wash, one of those places that does everything that can be done to your car plus some more, over on Bay Area Boulevard.”

  “Gotta keep that ‘Vette lookin’ good,” Neuman said.

  “Yeah. Two: this one from—oh, you’ll like this, Casey—Victoria’s Secret in Baybrook Mall.”

  “Great. What’d she get?” Neuman asked, still writing.

  “Four pairs of Chancery Lace bras and matching panties in champagne and toasted almond…”

  “What?”

  “Champagne and toasted almond, those are the colors.”

  “Whoa, no red and black?” He squashed a mosquito on his notepad.

  “And some other stuff…” Paula said, setting it aside and going on to the next item. “This is a… lawn maintenance receipt Next one is a…”

  They went through the rest of the bits of paper which included receipts from a pharmacy, a laundry, a liquor store, and a grocery, and several sheets from a notepad with doodles on them including three different telephone numbers, and the name “Don C.” which had been so decoratively embellished—perhaps during a telephone conversation—that it was difficult to decipher.

  “And that’s it,” Paula said, putting the last scrap of paper into the plastic bag. She was scratching her arm. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”

  “We’d better call Graver.”

  “I’ll call him on the way in. Let’s go.”

  “You want to run by Sheck’s first?”

  “What!” Paula looked at her watch with her flashlight “Are you going to… ? It’s after one o’clock, for God’s sake. No way. I’m exhausted, really, really tired.”

  “Yeah, but I’d like to know if the lovely Ms. Heath went over there. It’s just right there,” he said, gesturing back toward the highway, “Nassau Bay…”

  “I know where it is, Casey…”

  “Okay, okay.” Neuman slapped at a mosquito near his ear, put the car in reverse, and turned around with his right arm on the back of the seat.

  “Wait, what about the garbage?” Paula asked.

  Neuman looked at her, nonplussed. “I recycle at home—newspapers, green glass, clear glass, and cans. I don’t buy plastic unless I have to. I go with a girl who takes her own canvas bag to the supermarket My conscience is clean.”

  He turned around again, gunned the motor, and plowed back over Valerie Heath’s trash and didn’t slow down until he got all the way to the access road where he whipped the car around, threw it in drive, and roared onto the pavement.

  “Roll down the windows,” he said, cranking his handle as fast as he could. “We’ll blow the little shits out of here.”

  Which they did, all the way back into the city.

  “Well, we caught the meeting,” Arnette said.

  Graver had answered the telephone on the first ring. He had just spoken with Paula on the radio, had learned what they had done, and that they were on their way in. But they weren’t coming back to the office. Neuman was going to drop Paula off at her car in the parking lot. They would have an early meeting in the morning.

  “What happened?” he asked.

  “He met one person, a man in his late fifties, early sixties. I’m relatively sure we got good photographs, but I’m afraid the audio is a very iffy prospect.”

  “Why? What’s the matter?”

  “They met at the Transco Tower park and walked straight to the fountain. Stood right in the cup of the waterfall and had a nice thirty-two-minute conversation.”

  “I’ll be damned.”

  “Yeah. No dummies. Not only that, Burtell took my people on one hell of a road trip. The man’s definitely got a technique.”

  “I guess that doesn’t surprise me. Where is he now?”

  “Looks like he’s going back home. They’re still on the streets, but that seems to be what he’s doing.”

  “Were you able to get the taps in place?”

  “Yes, but only after he left for his meeting. I’ve had to pull a lot of people in for this. The logistics haven’t been easy.”

  “Okay, fine. I appreciate it.”

  “That’s pretty weird about Besom,” she said.” You sure they’re going to do another autopsy?”

  “That’s what I was told.”

  “What do you think?”

  “What the hell am I supposed to think? As a coincidence, the two deaths are pretty hard to buy, but every time I let my mind dwell on the alternatives… well, what I come up with is just as outrageous.”

  Arnette didn’t speak for a moment and then she said:

  “Marcus, listen to me. Trying to understand what the bad guys of this world are doing is like gazing at the stars. By the time you see their light it’s all over, it’s past tense, and they’ve long since gone on to something else. All you’re left with is the evidence of what they were doing a million years ago. You can’t wait for all the facts to come in to start figuring things out, baby. You’ve got to use your imagination if you want to get a jump on the physics of iniquity.” She paused again. “Believe me, anything you can dream up, no matter how outrageous, is already happening. The thing is, most people won’t figure that out for a long time to come. And that’s exactly what the bastards are counting on.”

  Now it was Graver’s turn to be silent, and when he finally spoke all he could think to say was, “When can I see the pictures?”

  “You want to come over here
early in the morning?”

  “What time?”

  “Seven-thirty.”

  “I’ll be there.”

  Chapter 33

  “It can’t be very much of an insurance company,” she said, throwing her fourth cigarette into the water. They were sitting on the dock of one of the marinas, their legs hanging over the side above the water, looking across the bay at one of the yacht basins, the strings of lights draped across the masts of the sailboats, the slightly different colored lights strung along the basin’s docks. “I called 800 information, and it wasn’t listed. Can’t be much of a company.”

  She picked up the pack of cigarettes beside her and took out another one.

  “Here, give me one of those damn things,” he said. He hated seeing her like this. It only meant more trouble for him, every time.

  “I think they were cops,” she said, blowing smoke away into the soft breeze.

  “Just because it was about Synar?”

  “‘Just’ because?” She turned and looked at him. He was only wearing jeans, no shirt, no shoes. She had called the service they used, and he had called her right back. She figured she had gotten him out of bed. She would rather have gotten him into bed. She guessed he just threw on his jeans and came like that “I hardly remembered the goddamn name the first time she called. Then finally I did.”

  He smoked. “These are nasty little things,” he said, holding the cigarette up and looking at it in the gloaming darkness. “This is one of those ladies’ brands isn’t it? Little thin things.”

  “Jesus!” She was exasperated. Don was always calm. He was so macho. Some guys acted macho, wore it like they wore their cologne, put it on just before going out and then washed it off in the shower afterward. But Don never acted anything. He was macho and never even seemed to notice it, which was like catnip to women like her. He was one of those guys who always knew just what to do in every situation. It had something to do with survival instincts, or something primitive like that, that had gotten bred out of most modern men, the suburban Happy Hour kind of guys. Don C. was always going to take care of himself; he knew exactly how to do it without even thinking. And he could take care of other people, too, if he wanted to.