An Absence of Light (25 page)

“Heart attack.” His voice was a mixture of anger and disdain. He was looking over his clasped hands, his two meaty fists gripping each other so tightly that Graver imagined them suddenly bursting and squirting all over the desk like tomatoes. “I don’t care if we find a living, breathing witness to Tisler’s suicide and the guy swears on a Bible that Tisler shot himself. I don’t care if we find a witness who saw Ray Besom fishing, saw him suddenly grabbing his chest and gasping and falling down in the goddamn water. I don’t care if we
KNOW
that’s exactly how they both died… it by
God
…
looks
…
SUSPICIOUS!”

Dramatically jerking his head from side to side for emphasis as he spoke these last words, Westrate literally spewed spittle as he hissed “suspicious.” His face was as pink as a pistachio pod, and Graver could see even his scalp flushing through his thinning hair.

“HO-ly JE-sus!”
Westrate exclaimed, falling back into his chair. Then suddenly he was up, jamming his hands into his pockets and stalking around his desk to the open door of his office where he stood looking out into the dark anteroom, jangling the change in his pockets.

Westrate’s histrionics were wasted on Graver, who could only think of Burtell and of how critical it was to be close to him now. He wished to God he had asked for taps the first time he spoke to Kepner. At that time Ginette would have been at work and, as it turned out, Burtell wouldn’t have been at home either. Kepner’s people would have had plenty of time. Graver looked at his watch. He had to get out of Westrate’s office.

“What do you want from me, Jack?” he asked.

Westrate didn’t answer immediately, but when he turned around Graver was disconcerted to see that his wrath had physically altered his features. His eyes were puffy, and pasty swags of flesh were forming beneath them; his cheeks, normally taut with obesity, now appeared swollen with a scattering of unhealthy, livid blotches. He unhurriedly closed the door to his office and came over and gave a quick jerk to the other chair in front of his desk and sat down in it facing Graver, his short log-like legs spread out.

“What do you think about all this?” he asked. His voice was uncharacteristically quiet, and for the first time ever Graver saw an expression on his face that conveyed, however slightly, a vague vulnerability.

Graver braced himself. He could see that Westrate was at his wit’s end, and he guessed the assistant chief was beginning to imagine, to see the foreshadowing of plots against him, against his career. What Westrate wanted was for Graver to say it first. He wanted to hear Graver say that something was wrong here.

“I think Tisler killed himself,” Graver said. “And I doubt if we’ll ever know why. And, until another autopsy proves otherwise, I’m going to assume Besom had a heart attack.”

Westrate’s face fell. “That’s it?”

“That’s what I think,” Graver said.

“These two deaths are exactly what they appear to be?” His voice rose with incredulity.

“I’ve got to think so in the absence of any evidence that indicates otherwise.”

“But just the fact that they died so close together… that doesn’t make you suspicious?”

“As a matter of fact it does…” Graver said.

Westrate’s eyebrows lifted in anticipation.

“…but I think we’ve got to be careful, Jack. I think we’ve got to be suspicious of our suspicions. It would be too damn easy to read something into these events that the facts don’t support” He paused and looked at Westrate. “You ever heard of ‘Occam’s razor’?”

Westrate stared at him.

“William of Occam was a fourteenth-century English philosopher who stated a kind of commonsense principle regarding lines of inquiry into the truth of a situation. It was stated in Latin, but translated it means: ‘Plurality must not be posited without necessity.’ A modern rendering might be, ‘An explanation of the facts should be no more complicated than necessary,’ or ‘Among competing hypotheses, favor the simplest one.’ Occam’s razor advocated cutting away all the unnecessary considerations that can clutter up a line of inquiry and sticking to the simplest theory consistent with the facts.”

Westrate’s expression portrayed a disgruntled impatience.

“I’ve got a lot of data that tells me Tisler committed suicide,” Graver elaborated. “The simplest explanation is that he did. I’ve got a lot of data that tells me Ray Besom had a heart attack. The simplest explanation, consistent with the facts, is that he did. So, unless we obtain other facts, facts that are inconsistent with the explanation, then the weight of my suppositions will have to fall with the simplest explanation.”

“Give me a break, Graver,” Westrate snapped, his small nostrils flaring with agitation at Graver’s professorial anecdote. “I’ve got four divisions to manage here.”

That sounded like a non sequitur to Graver. He wasn’t sure what Westrate meant, but it was clear he was sweating pearls over this. If he had suspicions that something was terribly wrong in CID, he sure as hell wasn’t going to say so now. He was too sly for that If he did express such a belief and it turned out that Besom did indeed have a heart attack, Westrate would end up sounding like a conspiracy theorist and an alarmist—one of my men kills himself, another one has a heart attack, ergo the CID is riddled by spys and cabalists. No, Westrate wasn’t going to risk that with anyone, especially not with Graver. But he believed it.

Once again the pager on Graver’s belt vibrated. Without looking down he turned it off.

“Is there something you want me to do?”

“No,” Westrate said, getting up quickly.

“Does Hertig know this?”

“Goddamn right he knows it. I called him.”

“What was his reaction?”

“What do you mean—he goddamned couldn’t believe it Wants some answers… just like the rest of us,” he said pointedly. He waited a beat “It’s only a matter of hours before the media’s going to catch on to this. CID’s going to get some publicity. They’re going to call you spies, secret police, all those kinds of liberal shit buzz words.” He thrust his head forward. “Any suggestions?”

“Yeah,” Graver fired back. “You handle it. Put whatever spin you want on it.”

Westrate came to his feet and glared at Graver. Managing to get the best of his tongue, he stalked around behind his desk again. He fumbled in the debris there and found a cigar box, opened it, and took out a cigar. He jammed it in his mouth without lighting it and stood there, looking at Graver, mouthing the cigar, hands once again thrust deep into the pockets of his wrinkled trousers.

“Let’s put it this way, Graver,” he said, talking around the cigar. “You’d better get all over this situation like a sailor on a whore. If there’s something to these ‘coincidences,’ if there is, and you don’t snap to it until it’s too goddamned late…” He took the cigar out of his mouth and said calmly, “…I’m gonna be so far up your ass you’ll have to shit through your nose for the rest of your life.”

Ray Besom’s death was indeed a potential disaster for them, but Graver didn’t think you should try to damage-control a disaster by letting your brain explode. Westrate was going to have to get a grip on himself if he was going to handle the media intelligently. But Graver couldn’t do anything about that. He imagined Westrate and Chief Hertig’s public relations crew would convene early in the morning. They would start putting together something that would be palatable and would effectively cover up the panic. Then they were going to turn to Graver.

“Anything else?” Graver asked, standing.

Westrate jabbed the cigar into his mouth again and sat down in his chair. “No,” he said, and started pawing around in the mayhem of his desk.

Graver walked out into the semidarkness of the reception area and paused long enough beside a table lamp to look at his pager. The number was Paula’s. She was still at the office.

He took the elevator downstairs to the lobby and went straight to the pay phones. He called Kepner, told her what had happened. She didn’t have to be told anything else. After hanging up, he walked back through the lobby and out the back door and through a covered driveway that led in one direction to the motor pool, and in the other to the squat, smog-begrimed building where the CID occupied the southeast corner of the third floor.

Graver stared at the darkness just in front of him as he followed the crumbling asphalt drive around to the back side of the compound. He had been shaken by the news of Ray Besom’s death, though Westrate had not realized it, so preoccupied was he with his own over-the-top performance. It was hard to believe Besom had had a heart attack, especially in light of what Graver knew about Tisler and Besom’s involvements. No, he didn’t think it was a heart attack. But that was instinct His judgment reminded him that if the Besom/Tisler/Burtell conspiracy—whatever it was—was indeed coming apart, it would be logical that the fear of the consequences would be exacting a severe toll on the participants. Weren’t heart failure and stress undeniably linked? So what the hell was he supposed to think? The grim fact was, he still didn’t know much of anything.

He stopped in the spartan lobby beneath the CID offices and called Paula on the pay phone. “I’m downstairs,” he said. “Catch the security system for me, will you?”

She met him just as he approached the receptionist’s glass booth and reactivated the security system after he came through.

“Were you on your way here when I called?” she asked.

“Kind of,” he said, pushing past her and walking straight to his office.

She followed him and stood in the doorway and waited as he sat down behind his desk and quickly jotted down a couple of notes.

“What’s the matter?” she asked.

He looked up at her and saw that she was barefooted, and her hair was pulled back in a bun, much of it working loose from the few pins she had holding it together. “You’ve been here all this time?”

“Yeah, me and Casey. We think we may have something.”

“Good. Get him in here. Is there any coffee in there?”

“Yeah, we made a fresh pot about half an hour ago.” She was staring at him with a puzzled frown, knowing something was wrong.

She stepped out into the hall and called Neuman from her office down at the other end as Graver went across to the coffee room and poured half a mug of the Division’s stout generic coffee. When he came back, he took off his suit coat and hung it on the hat rack in the corner and then sat down behind his desk. As Paula and Neuman came in, he was taking his first sip of coffee. Paula sat down, but Neuman remained standing, his arms folded, a notebook sticking out from under his elbow as he twisted his waist and shoulders. He had already had enough sitting.

“You guys had anything to eat?” The air-conditioning seemed not to be working well, and Graver loosened his tie.

“We brought in sandwiches,” Paula said.

Graver nodded. “Look, before we get started, there are two developments. First, when I got to Tisler’s rent house I found a computer setup. Nobody lives there, apparently, but it looked like Tisler must have spent quite a bit of time there. It was a fairly good-sized computer. I wasn’t able to get in, but I did manage to copy the hard drive.”

“My God.” Paula looked as if she had been given another clue to the location of the Holy Grail. “So where is it?” Neuman took a step forward.

“I’ve got someone working on it.”

Paula was incredulous. She started to speak, but Graver quickly preempted her.

“And some worse news,” he said. “Ray Besom has been found dead down near Port Isabel.”

Paula gasped as if she had been punched in the stomach, and Neuman unfolded his arms and walked behind her to the windows.

“Holy shit.” Neuman looked outside, then turned and walked back to where he had been standing.

“Heart attack,” Graver explained quickly, “according to the autopsy. Apparently he died while he was surf fishing.”

“Oh God, Marcus,” Paula said, placing the flat of her hand on her forehead, her bracelets rattling, “I’m not going to believe that.” She dropped her hand. She shook her head slowly. “I can’t believe that.”

Graver looked at her.

“We know too much… just too damn much to swallow that,” she said. “What’s going on here?”

“There’s going to be another autopsy,” Graver said. “Here.”

Paula was still shaking her head. “It doesn’t matter, even if the Harris County ME says it
was
a heart attack—”

“Wait a minute,” Neuman interrupted. He was moving back and forth between the windows and the door again, his eyes darting back and forth between Paula and Graver. “The thing is, if Besom was killed somehow—in whatever way—it was meant to be disguised as a natural death, wasn’t it?
If we
believe that, if that’s true, then this is… this is definitely a high-octane situation. I mean… what kind of people do shit like that?”

Neuman, of course, had quickly closed on the central question. Each of them knew at this point that even they, with all their suspicions, had probably underestimated what they had stumbled upon. And Graver suspected all three of them were turning their suspicions in the same direction.

“What about Dean?” Paula asked quickly. “Maybe he’s in danger.”

“Or maybe he isn’t”—Graver shook his head—”which is even scarier.” Now he had confirmation that he hadn’t overreacted by going to Arnette Kepner. He thought a moment and then he said, “I’ve got to call him.”

“What?” Paula was lost “What the hell for?”

“It’s what I would do,” Graver said. “If I didn’t know about all this other I’d call him to let him know about Besom.”

“I hope you’ve got good people on this,” Paula said. “When Dean hears about this he’s going to freak out, he’s going to do something.”

“Unless he already knows,” Neuman said.

Graver was a little surprised at Neuman’s remarks. He was quick to see a deeper, meaner undercurrent here, and Graver thought he was justified. Graver also guessed that each of them was feeling a sudden trepidation at the realization that the water was deeper and far more treacherous than they ever had expected.