An Absence of Light

by David Lindsey

  “I needed this,” he said. “I appreciate your thinking of it.”

  “To tell you the truth,” she said, “I probably did this as much for me as for you. I’m drained. This has been hard, the whole ordeal, but these last few hours with Ginny have been… so painful. It’s… You just naturally put yourself in her place. I feel so terrible for her, but there’s nothing, really, that I can do.” Lara sipped from her glass. “This is really torment for her.”

  “You were good with her,” Graver said. “I’m grateful to you for how you’ve handled it She needed the attention, the consolation.”

  “Well, anyway, how are you holding up?” she asked.

  “I’m doing okay,” he said evasively. “Much better right this minute than… in a long time.”

  She moved a bare foot over to his crossed feet and rubbed the top of it against the arch of his socked foot The gesture was the kind of small thing that can mean so much at just the right moment Neither of them said anything for a while. Graver could have kissed her just for these few moments, even if they proved not to last very long. He was thankful for this brief shared tranquility, for the companionship in silence, for the shared Merlot, and, even if their thoughts were miles apart, for her willingness to sit quietly with him and not feel that she had to keep up a conversation. He liked seeing her out of her dress clothes, jean-clad legs and shoeless feet beside his on the ottoman. He felt the uniquely human comfort of being with another person who cared whether or not you were tired or worried or simply wanted some company.

  “What do you think about all this?” he asked, turning to look at her.

  She did not answer immediately, and he watched her profile framed in her abundance of chestnut hair casually pulled back, her eyes fixed on something across the room as she thought.

  “I think… that this is a pretty cruel business,” she said. She looked at him. “I think it’s complicated, and it’s addictive, and it’s cruel.”

  “Addictive?”

  “Yes,” she said. “I didn’t really realize it myself until all this happened. There’s this race to uncover layers and layers of secrets. You don’t know where it’s taking you, but you like the ride. It’s challenging. There’s risk. Like gambling. You have to put up something, a stake, to be able to play the game. And it’s voyeuristic. You get to look at people from the back of a mirror. Or through cracks in the walls.”

  “You don’t like that part of it The spying.”

  “Well, that’s refreshing,” she said.

  “What?”

  “Calling it what it is instead of ‘a collection effort’ or ‘strategic intelligence’ or any of those other doublespeak terms.”

  She took a sip of her Merlot, and he watched her, concentrating on the shape of her lips on the rim of the glass, the way the dark wine entered her mouth.

  “There’s something… maybe there’s something a little hypocritical about it Or something like that I don’t quite know how to talk about it,” she said.

  She seemed suddenly embarrassed. The first time Graver had ever seen that in her face. She looked down at her glass.

  “It’s not a simple business,” he said, not wanting her to feel awkward. That hadn’t been his intention in asking her.

  “I didn’t like it that you lied to Ginny Burtell,” she said suddenly. “That was… I don’t know… very hard to watch.”

  “It was hard to do,” he said.

  She turned and looked at him. “Was it?”

  He felt himself flush.

  “I just didn’t like seeing it,” she went on. “I didn’t like… seeing how easily it came to you.”

  For a moment he couldn’t swallow. What she had just said, softly, almost kindly, was an indictment, and he was all the more embarrassed because, perhaps, it had come easily—or at least maybe it hadn’t been as difficult as it should have been.

  “Aren’t you going to tell her at all?” she asked.

  “Lara, I can’t.”

  She took a deep breath and looked into her wine again.

  “God, it’s a terrible thing to see this at work,” she said. “I guess… it’s always been just paperwork to me before. I should have known better, that this kind of… messiness lay behind it all. It was stupid of me not to have thought about it.”

  He didn’t know what it was that he felt, but he did know that she had seen something that he himself had not seen before. It was not that she had seen him deliberately lie. Surely she knew, too, that there was a larger purpose to his lying, maybe even that there were lives to be saved by it. It was, rather, that she had seen that it had come to him so easily. It was an appalling idea, and one that cut even deeper than having to admit—as he did more often lately—that all the reasons he gave himself for doing what he did were actually sounding more and more like rationalizations.

  He could feel her sitting beside him in anticipation, waiting for him to say something, waiting for him to explain things he didn’t understand himself.

  The awkward silence was interrupted by the telephone ringing again. Graver got up and walked to his desk and answered it.

  “Graver, I’ve got a suggestion.” It was Arnette. “Paula’s just come in here. We’re going to put this thing on the computers and see what we come up with, but whatever it is we’re not going to want to waste any more time than is necessary once the information starts pouring out here. I just got through talking to Mona, and your people have agreed, so we’re going to put them up over here tonight I’ve got people working in shifts here, but your two are going around the clock, and they’re going to need some sleep or they’re going to conk out on me. So, we’ll work as late as we can, get three or four hours sleep, and then hit the ground running early in the morning. Okay?’’

  “That’s your call, Arnette. I appreciate it I’ll cover for them at the office in the morning. I’m going to have to go in, probably early, so let me know what you can as soon as you can. And tell Mona I owe her.”

  “Good night, baby.”

  Graver put down the telephone and rubbed his temples with the thumb and middle finger of one hand. He sipped the wine, thinking.

  “Okay,” he said. “Paula and Neuman are staying at Arnette’s tonight, and they won’t be going in to the office in the morning. I’d like you to be here when Ginette wakes up because we’ve got a bit of a problem with her. I’ll have to talk to her and get her to understand we’ve got to keep this quiet I don’t know anything about her family. We’ll need to find out who’s closest and get someone here to be with her when they confirm that Dean’s boat was the site of the explosion.”

  He walked back to the sofa and sat down on the edge of it, turned a little to Lara.

  “I’ll be able to cover for Paula and Neuman,” he added, “but I guess you’d better call in sick in the morning.”

  Lara nodded. Graver sat back on the sofa again. There was a little bit of wine left in her glass. His thoughts immediately turned to Last. For a while Lara had made him forget the brief but tantalizing exchange of a few minutes before. Could Last really have come up with something significant? Last was going to “deliver Faeber’s ass”? How could Graver possibly believe that?

  “God knows how this is going to end,” he said, shaking his head. “I don’t know how much longer we can keep up this ad hoc task force situation.”

  “Do you think someone higher up is involved in this?”

  “There’s not any way I can guess at that.” He drank some of the Merlot. “Sometimes I think there has to be. Sometimes I think this whole thing was a rogue deal, a blip on the screen, an aberration.” He looked at his hand holding the wine, the wine almost as thick and dark as blood. “And other times I know damn well that’s not true. These people haven’t died because of a blip on the screen. They died because someone set a process into motion, a complex process, that required them to die.”

  “And… where are we in this ‘process’? How many more people are going to have to die?”

  “
Damned if I know. But I think Arnette was right when she said we’re just seeing the tail end of it. Whatever is happening is happening fast, and we’re going to be lucky just to get a whiff of what it was all about. If it continues to accelerate at the rate it’s been going, it’ll be over suddenly and soon. Too soon.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “If something doesn’t open up immediately I’m going to lose Kalatis. God knows how close—or far away—we are to him. He’s making things happen all around us. If I can’t get my hands on Faeber… then I really don’t have much hope I’ll ever even see Kalatis’s face.”

  They sat a while longer, finishing their wine, going over the incredible events that had taken Ray Besom, Arthur Tisler, and Dean Burtell all in four days. Lara found it difficult to grasp the enormity of it, and though Graver pretended to deal with it as philosophically and professionally as possible, the truth was he, too, found it mind-boggling. Paula was right, this kind of thing happens to you only once.

  As to the ramifications of this chaotic episode, Graver thought it would not end well for anyone. It was very likely he would be called on the boards for the way he had handled it, for keeping it to himself. The second-guessers would be all over him. It would be as clear as day that he should have done it another way. There was no avoiding that Having to replay the game came with the job of calling the shots. But for right now, he had to wait once again. The waiting was unavoidable too, and it was easily the hardest part of the job.

  Lara emptied her glass.

  “That was good,” she said. “Look, I realize I’ve got my stuff all over your bed,” she said, starting to get up. “I’ll go up and clear it off so you can get some sleep.”

  “No, don’t worry about it,” he said. “You go ahead and sleep in there. I’ll use Nathan’s room down the hall…”

  They looked at each other a moment.

  “I suppose this has reached the point of the ridiculous, hasn’t it,” he said.

  She smiled, a gentle smile that reminded him of what a fool he had been, and of how lucky he was that what they were about to do was even still a possibility.

  He took refuge with her through what was left of the night He did not suppose that she ever would have imagined that word was appropriate, but that was what she was to him in those too few hours, an asylum from the strain of the silent calamity that he was feeling. All that he could touch and smell and taste of her was comfort to him. And when the passion subsided and silence and stillness returned unhurriedly to them, when they lay together for the first time as if theirs was an old familiar intimacy regained, he lay awake, hopeful, in the company of her comfort.

  THURSDAY

  Chapter 61

  The Fifth Day

  Graver had only just gone to sleep when he was gently shaken awake.

  “It’s six-fifteen,” Lara said.

  He was on his side, his back to her, and for a moment he thought he couldn’t move. Exhaustion lay on him like a blanket of lead. He felt her shake him again.

  “Marcus, it’s six-fifteen.”

  Her use of his first name and the motion of the bed as she got up brought him to the surface, and with a tremendous effort he rolled over. Her back was turned to him, and he saw her untie her dressing gown, slip it off and hang it over the closet door where she had hung her clothes. She glanced back at him over a bare shoulder, her thick, tumbled hair falling down her naked back.

  “I’m going to shower,” she said. “Are you awake?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “Thanks.”

  He watched her hips and long legs disappear into the bath through the louvered doors. It was a sight he hadn’t seen in a long time, and it almost seemed as if it was happening to someone else.

  Getting out of bed, he pulled on his trousers and went downstairs shirtless and barefooted to make coffee. When he got to the kitchen door he could smell it Lara had put it on before she woke him, and it was just finishing perking.

  He poured a cup for each of them and then took them back upstairs. She was still in the shower, a large corner one which was nearer the vanity where she had laid out her things. He stepped over and put her coffee next to her basin, pausing to look at her through the glass door, her arms raised, her eyes closed, her hands buried in her hair piled with a lather of shampoo. She was leaning back to keep her head out of the shower’s spray. He noticed she had laid out only one towel on the little bench near the shower door, and he stepped over to the cabinets and got out another. Dore had always used two, one to wrap her hair in, one to dry with. He put the additional towel on the bench, and then went to his own basin, turned on the water, and began shaving.

  They maneuvered through the next half hour of bathing and dressing with a collaborative naturalness that seemed more like a resumption of old ways than a first-time experience. For Graver it was very much a healing activity, like something had been set right in his life that had been wrong for a long time.

  She was wearing only a bra and panties and was bent over drying her hair when he finished dressing and, catching her eye in the mirror, motioned to her that he was going downstairs. Unlocking the front door, he stepped outside and got the paper off the front lawn. The coastal clouds were already clearing, and the day promised to be clear and blistering. The hottest days of the year had arrived with their unrelenting swelter and humidity. Unfolding the paper as he walked back into the house, he saw that the explosion at the marina had commanded a banner headline.

  Tossing the paper onto the kitchen table, he set about making breakfast. He took out the toaster and bread and quickly made a couple of pieces of toast, took some strawberry jam out of the refrigerator, and sat down at the table with a fresh cup of coffee to read the coverage. There wasn’t much to it, interviews with people who worked at the hotel and marina, with a couple of people who owned boats that were destroyed, with the fire chief who didn’t want to speculate whether it was a bomb or a gas leak, with several people who were staying in the hotel and had a bird’s-eye view of the scene. A lot of photographs. A boxed story on the background of the marina’s development, whom it catered to, NASA people, well-to-do people who had summer homes in the area. A story about the estimated dollar figure on the damage.

  The telephone rang on the near end of the kitchen counter, and he got up and grabbed it.

  “This is Olmstead, Captain. I’ve got some interesting information for you.” He paused.

  “Okay, go ahead.”

  “First of all, they finally got the fire out about an hour ago. That gave us a chance to get a little closer and start estimating the slip positions. Close to ground zero, or pretty damn close to it, is a boat slip rented by a guy named Max Tiborman. On the rental papers he gives his address as Lake Charles, Louisiana. But the telephone company in Lake Charles has no listing for Tiborman. We got the police down there to go by and check the address on the papers. Turns out it’s a U-Haul rental company. So we check out the boat registration number. That turns out to be in the name of Mrs. Ginette Sommer.”

  Olmstead paused. Graver said nothing. Olmstead continued.

  “On a boat registration you have to give your home address, but on this form there was only a post office box number. I don’t know how that happened.” Another pause. “Now, Captain, I don’t know, this could be an absolute fluke, but I happen to know that Dean Burtell’s wife’s name is Ginette, and I know her maiden name is Sommer. I know because I had a good friend with the same last name and that came up at a Division Christmas party one time and we talked about it…”

  He stopped, his point made.

  “Goddamn,” Graver said. “What’s the slip number?”

  “Forty-nine.”

  Shit Anybody else know about this?” Graver meant anyone else on the HTTF, anyone in the FBI. Olmstead knew what he meant.

  “Well, no. I mean, this is a little unusual, and I just kept my mouth shut when the registration fax came through. I didn’t know… I thought maybe you guys had something working, an in
vestigation cover set up or something. Thought I’d better run it by you.”

  Graver’s mind was racing. He couldn’t let Burtell’s involvement surface so soon. It had to be staunched at this moment, at this point.

  “Ben, we do have something out there,” Graver said. “It’s touchy, very touchy. Hell of a coincidence. Let me get with the people involved and see if we can agree on a way to handle this, who to bring into it, at what level. Dean’s on vacation so it might take me a while to get to him, but I’ll get right on it You handled it right, Ben. Exposure now would have cost us the operation, a lot of time and work and money. It’s been a long time in the making. Hold on to this, and I’ll get back to you on it.”

  “Yeah, okay.”

  “Was anyone hurt out there?”

  “God, we don’t know. The fire’s only been out about an hour, like I said, and everything’s hot as hell. The Arson Squad and Bomb Squad people are just now beginning to pick their way into all the debris. You know, moving around in boats. The smoke’s still hanging over the water. The docks are all unstable. It’ll be slow going.”

  “Okay, Ben. Thanks. I’ll be going into the office in another half hour. Let me know if anything else comes up.”

  “Will do. See you later.”

  Graver put down the telephone and looked up. Lara was standing just inside the kitchen watching him. She probably had heard the whole thing, his pretense at assuming that Burtell was still alive.

  “They’ve already found out who owns the boat,” Graver said, going over to the table to get his coffee cup for a refill.

  Lara came over to the cabinet too and refilled her own cup.

  “Thanks for the coffee,” she said.

  “Sure.”

  They both leaned back against the cabinet.

  “They… haven’t found anything?” she asked.

  “You mean bodies, or what’s left of them? No.”