An Absence of Light

by David Lindsey

  “Was he?” She looked at him, visibly bracing herself. It was a brave question, and one that revealed that she believed Graver already knew the truth.

  “I don’t know anything about what’s happened out there,” Graver lied. “The Department’s gotten a ton of calls about it, but I doubt if I’ll know much of anything until tomorrow. I understand it’s chaos out there.”

  “The boat was in slip forty-nine,” she said, stiffening.

  “Ginny, we don’t know that kind of detail yet I’m pretty eager to know myself, and when I do find out something I’ll let you know immediately.”

  He paused, and she continued to stare at him. He thought she might be seeing right through him, but he plunged on.

  “Dean was officially on vacation, Ginny,” he said. “He wouldn’t be going to meet someone now, would he?”

  She sat staring at the tissue she was kneading. “I, uh, I said to, Paula, that… Jesus”—she looked up and away toward the windows, her eyes batting back the tears—”Dean’s… Dean’s had something else going on… besides work… I mean CID work… something else…”

  She stopped, finding it difficult to broach the subject.

  “Did he tell you this?”

  She shook her head.

  “No, of course not,” she said. “He wouldn’t have done that” She took a deep breath. “Uh, about a year ago… or a little less… he began going out at night again. I got used to that when he was an investigator, but that was years ago. As an analyst it was pretty rare that he would do that But it got to be he’d go out at least one night almost every week. I finally asked him about it, I said what’s the deal with this going out? You don’t have to do that” She dropped her eyes. “I thought… I thought he was seeing another woman. I blew up. He sat me down and said there was a special investigation under way and that everyone was having to put in extra time. It was a big project, a long one, and that this would have to go on for a while. After that he was very… sensitive about it, never tried to hide it or make it mysterious. But he reminded me that if I ever spoke to any of you, you know, when I came to see him at the office, that I must never mention that he’d been working late, that it wouldn’t look good if it seemed that he’d been talking about his work at home.”

  Ginette reached a hand up and wiped it across her brow, brushing aside a wisp of her short, jet hair. She sighed heavily, exhausted from the tension that was eating every bit of her strength.

  “About four or five months ago Dean began to change. He seemed… stressed. He grew kind of broody, irritable. I’d seen this before when he was an investigator, if something he was working on wasn’t going right. And in those days he’d talk about it after a while, if I insisted. But this time”—she shook her head—”this time he just got angry when I tried to draw him out. He made it clear, in no uncertain terms, that it wasn’t something we could talk about.

  “Then he began going out more often at night. Sometimes I think he was going to meet Art. Sometimes Art would come by here, or he’d call and come over, and they’d stand outside in the drive and talk. So I knew it was business, not another woman. But it was eating him up. He couldn’t sleep. I’d wake up in the night, and he wouldn’t be in bed. I’d find him sitting out in the courtyard, or in the living room. Or I’d wake up suddenly, and he’d just be lying there, staring at the ceiling… or… or just be staring at me.”

  She stopped and swallowed and, though she didn’t sob, tears rolled out of her eyes so that she had to stop and use more tissue. Graver glanced at Lara, whose large, dark eyes were fixed on him with sober concern. Again Ginette got herself under control and went on.

  “Sunday night when you came over and told him about Art—God, it seems like a month ago—it was terrible. After you left Dean came in and told me. He told me we had to get over to Peggy’s and break the bad news to her. Then he went into the bathroom and closed the door. In a few minutes I heard him vomiting. He stayed in there a long time. I went ahead and changed clothes, and he was still in there. He, uh, he was sick until there was nothing left… uh, I, uh, could hear him in there just, you know, coughing and coughing.”

  She started crying again, covering her face in the wad of tissues. Lara quickly got up and came over to the sofa and sat down on the other side of her, putting her arm around her. She took the wet tissues out of Ginette’s hands and gave her dry ones and hugged her and said something to her.

  Graver sat there helplessly, the image of Burtell vomiting playing over and over in his mind. Paula was sitting near Graver’s desk with a pen and notepad, staring at Ginette with a drawn face. Graver saw that she hadn’t written down a word.

  It was a few minutes before Ginette was able to continue, and when she did her voice was thin and without strength. This time Lara stayed at her side.

  “We went over and stayed Sunday night with Peggy,” she went on. “We got a sedative for her and finally, about three in the morning, she went to sleep. Neither Dean nor I slept a minute. When Peggy’s folks came in from Corpus Christi about five-thirty the next morning, we went home. We both bathed, cleaned up and went to work. But Monday night was miserable. Dean wasn’t able to sleep at all. Tuesday morning the loss of sleep was killing me, and I called in sick. Dean got up and went to work as usual. I slept through the day and got up late in the afternoon. Dean had left a note on the kitchen table saying that he had left the office early, that, you know, you had let him start his vacation, and that he would be home again later.

  “When he came in around nine o’clock that evening he looked terrible. He was carrying a computer backup tape which he said he’d tell me about later. We ate dinner and then about ten-fifteen he said he had to go to a meeting and would be back in a few hours. As soon as he left, you called. I was so glad to hear from you… I… almost told you I was seriously worried about him, but I rationalized. I thought, no he’s had this big investigation, then Art’s suicide. It’s just that it’s a terrible time for him. I didn’t want to be an alarmist Dean wouldn’t have wanted me to run whining to you about how much stress he was under. So I didn’t say anything to you about it He came in late that night… God, that was last night… and went straight to bed with a sick headache.

  “This morning I went to work and let him sleep. He told me later that he had slept all day. When I got home this afternoon we had a few drinks, and he started talking.”

  Ginette stopped and swallowed. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I could use a glass of water after all.” Paula got up, went into the kitchen, and brought one back to her. Ginette took several drinks and then held it in her lap as she went on.

  “He started talking,” she said. “He said that he had been involved in an investigation that… you… didn’t know anything about. He said that six or eight months ago he began to suspect someone was selling CID intelligence. He said after a month or so of looking into it he was sure it was happening, and he brought Art in because he trusted him and needed some help. But he said he hadn’t involved you because… he said, you know, he didn’t know how high up it went…”

  “He wasn’t sure if I was involved or not,” Graver said.

  She nodded uncertainly and shrugged. “I guess.”

  “He was right to do that, Ginny,” Graver said. “He did the right thing. Then he believed people above him were involved?”

  “He said he had proof that Ray Besom was selling intelligence.”

  “Proof?”

  “Yes. He said he and Art had set up a separate computer system in a rent house that Art owns, and they had been putting everything they knew on that He said that yesterday he had gone over to Art’s rent house after he left the office and transferred everything on the computer to the backup tape he’d brought home. He said he then scrambled what was on the computer using special software for that purpose. He said he could use the same software to unscramble it later if he needed to, but the way it was now it was reduced to nonsense.”

  “Why didn’t he just erase it after he’d cop
ied it?” Graver asked.

  She shook her head. “I don’t know. He didn’t say.”

  “Okay,” Graver said. “Go on.”’

  She took another sip of water.

  “He said that in a little while he was going to have to go out to another meeting. He said that he was reasonably sure now that you weren’t involved in this thing, and that if anything should happen to him that I should give you the backup tapes.”

  She stopped and drank some more water, using this to fight back the welling urge to break down again. It was killing Graver to see her going through this and to have to keep her at it until she had told him all she could. He felt cruel and, for some inexplicable reason, hypocritical.

  “I just couldn’t believe he had said that. I went crazy. He promised me… promised me that there was nothing to be worried about. He said the only reason he said that was… it was just the same as having life insurance. Nobody expects to be killed in a car wreck, but you make arrangements just the same. I didn’t buy that,” she said, shaking her head. “We went on talking for quite a while. But eventually he had to go. He said he wouldn’t be late. That was around ten-thirty.”

  She started breathing heavily, fighting the tears. “And then I was watching television… and they broke in…”

  “Ginette,” Graver said, wanting to stop her before she began crying again. “Ginette, do you have the tape?”

  But she was already sobbing. Still, she managed to point to her purse which was sitting under the coffee table in front of them. Graver reached down and picked it up, reached inside, felt around, found the tape, and held it up.

  “Is this it, Ginny?”

  She nodded, sobbing.

  Graver patted her on the leg and got up and walked over to the telephone on his desk. He dialed Arnette’s number. When she answered, he quickly explained what he had. She was incredulous.

  “You have the tape?” she asked.

  “I’m holding it.”

  “Can you get it over here now?”

  “I can’t come. I’ve got an answering machine full of messages that can’t wait any longer. If it’s okay with you I’m going to send Paula.”

  “Get her over here.”

  “What about the microfiche?”

  “We’ve got the first few pages. So far it’s a detailed record of how Faeber’s collection system is set up. It’s big, baby. They’re buying information you wouldn’t believe. We’ve got names, dates, places, codes. This is Kalatis’s work. It’s highly organized into cells. Compartmentalized. Backstops everywhere. From the looks of this Colin Faeber’s computers are full of some heavy stuff. And there’s CID information in there too. It’s a massive operation.”

  “I’m sending her over,” Graver said.

  Chapter 59

  Graver spent a few more minutes talking to Ginette Burtell, reassuring her, trying to say something to her that would ease her mind enough to allow the sedatives that Lara finally had convinced her to take to achieve their effect He assured her again that he would do all that he could to find Dean, and that she shouldn’t automatically assume the worst He repeated his promise to her to let her know as soon as he knew something definite. After a while Lara took her upstairs to Natalie’s bedroom.

  Feeling lousy about having had to lie to Ginette, Graver sat down at his desk and called Ben Olmstead. He tried several numbers, his pager, and handset, before finally getting him at South Shore Marina. According to Olmstead, the impact of the initial explosion had destroyed nearly a dozen boats and as many more were set afire. Unfortunately the area of impact was on one of the docks that held a refueling slip, and a couple of gasoline storage tanks had been ignited. One of the tanks was full, so it was only burning. But the other one had been nearly empty and had blown immediately, increasing the force of the original explosion.

  “Can they tell anything about the point of impact, where it originated?” Graver asked.

  “No, but we’re getting a slip rental list from the marina management now and ought to be able to get close, within a dozen or so names here pretty soon.”

  “What about telephone calls?” Graver could hear the confusion in the background, sirens, men yelling, the roar of water-pumping engines.

  “Oh, yeah. They’re coming in. Maybe five so far, but none of the groups we’re seriously concerned about.”

  “Is everybody out there?”

  “You bet Bomb Squad. Houston Fire Department Arson Squad. ATF. DEA. If you can believe it, the DEA had a stakeout going on over on the other side of the marina. When this blew over here they freaked out They’re confused as hell now, thinking their informant set them up. Oh, and we’ve also got a list of all the people registered in the hotel here. Going over that now. We’re also having the hotel security pull all their surveillance films from their lobby cameras for the last twenty-four hours.” He paused. “Westrate call you?”

  “Yeah, I’ve got to call him back,” Graver said, “but I wanted to talk to you first You don’t even know yet if the explosion was a bomb, do you? Whether it was accidental? A gas leak, a butane leak in one of the cabins?”

  “No, we don’t know. And the Bomb Squad can’t make very good guesses since the punch of this one was obscured by the gasoline tank going almost simultaneously. Some witnesses say there were two explosions close together, some say one. And this is a hell of a fire, so we’re not going to get to the source for another twelve or fifteen hours I’d guess.”

  “Okay, Ben. Thanks, I appreciate it Keep in touch.”

  “Will do.”

  Graver immediately called Arnette and told her that investigators were pulling lobby tapes and hotel registrations for the last twenty-four hours. If her people think they got caught on camera she might want to do something about it.

  Then he called Westrate.

  “Where the hell have you been?” Westrate bellowed.

  “I’ve just talked with Olmstead,” Graver said, ignoring the question. “They’ve got it nailed down out there as well as can be expected.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “They’ve done just about all they can do until the fire’s out and they can get in there and study it.”

  “Do they think it was terrorists? Some kind of drug thing?”

  “They don’t have any idea.” Graver told him about the DEA operation on the other side of the marina.

  “This could have been theirs,” Westrate said. “The sons of bitches wouldn’t have let us in on that, though, would they. We’ll have to spend good time and money to duplicate what they know and then they’ll say, *Oh, we could have let you have that information.’”

  Graver didn’t want to listen to this kind of thing, Westrate’s favorite pastime.

  “I’ve got to go, Jack.”

  “Look, keep me posted. But, shit, it’s late. Just wait and get back with me in the morning… unless something spectacular happens.”

  “Okay, Jack.”

  Graver hung up and slumped back in his chair. He was limp with exhaustion. The day had begun around seven o’clock when he went to Arnette’s even before going to the office and viewed the surveillance photographs Boyd had taken of Burtell meeting with the Unknown at the Transco Fountain the night before… just a little over twenty-four hours from right now. Then around two o’clock in the afternoon he was back at Arnette’s reading the Yosef Raviv dossier after Arnette had picked up Kalatis’s name on the fountain interview recording. By four o’clock he was back at the office and Paula had turned up Colin Faeber’s name on the board of Gulf-stream Bank and an hour later Neuman returned to the office with the news that Faeber’s DataPrint was owned by Concordia International Investments, a subsidiary of Strasser Industries. Around eight-thirty in the evening Graver and Neuman had picked up Valerie Heath and around twelve-thirty Burtell was blown to bits in South Shore Harbor. And now the latest developments of the last few hours.

  This had been one of the fastest-breaking investigations he had ever experienced, especial
ly one of such complexity, all of which was complicated by the fact that he was trying to keep it off the books. He needed very badly to sit down and bring his journal up to date, but the thought of doing that now seemed an impossibility to him.

  What he really wanted was a glass of wine, a rich, fruity Merlot that would almost be a meal in itself, but he knew if he did that his energy level would plummet right to the bottom.

  The telephone rang. Startled, he snatched it off the receiver almost before it stopped ringing.

  “This is Graver.”

  “It’s Victor. Listen to me.” His voice hushed and quick. “I’ve only a moment We’ve got to meet in the morning, late morning. You’re not going to believe what I’ve got for you, my friend.”

  “Give me a clue, Victor,” Graver said.

  “I’m going to deliver Faeber’s ass.”

  In the euphoria about Neuman’s discovery and then the immediate strain of confronting Ginette Burtell, Graver had forgotten about Colin Faeber, the only living direct link to Kalatis. Now here was Victor Last offering to “deliver Faeber’s ass.”

  “What do you mean by that, Victor? Are you speaking physically or judicially?”

  “Both, for Christ’s sake! What does it matter?”

  “When do you want to meet?”

  “Ten o’clock. I can’t get there before then.”

  “Get where?”

  “Oh, that Italian place of yours. Good coffee.”

  The line went dead.

  Shit! Graver buried his face in his hands, his elbows on the top of his desk. He seriously needed time to think. It was moving too fast, all of it, and he didn’t like the feeling of… hurtling.

  “Graver.”

  He turned around and saw Lara standing in the door.

  “She’s sleeping. Why don’t you take time for a glass of wine?”

  Chapter 60

  They sat side by side on the sofa, their heads resting on the cushioned back, their shoes off, their feet propped on the ottoman with its tapestry picture of a Tuscan hillside.