An Absence of Light

By the time he had finished, he had paced back and forth the length of his office several times. He had massaged his back the entire time and had loosened his tie somewhere in the process. Finally he walked around and sat down behind his desk. When he finished he was sitting with his elbows on his desk, the fingers of both hands working the muscles at the back of his neck.

Lara said nothing for a moment She was sitting with her back against the back of her chair, straight and correct, the way you were supposed to sit though no one ever did. Her posture conveyed a comfortable efficiency, a natural preciseness, and she studied him from a mind that rarely portrayed ambivalence, an attribute that appealed to Graver because it was so alien to him. He did not understand that kind of uncluttered mental process.

“I guess I’m missing something… significant,” she said, the fingers of her right hand toying with the top button on her blouse, “but I don’t necessarily see it that way.”

“What, that he’s mixed up in this?”

“I guess he’s ‘mixed up in it,’ “she said. “I just don’t think it’s necessarily… a criminal involvement I mean, what if this man at the fountain is a government person, like Arnette believes. Maybe Dean’s working for him… undercover for a federal agency. If he is… he’d have to keep it from you, wouldn’t he?”

“You’re right,” he said. “That’s true, and that kind of thing happens. But it’s rare. Rare enough for it not to be a serious consideration here. I’d like to believe it… but…”

“What do you believe, Marcus? What do you realty think Dean is doing?” she asked suddenly. The use of his first name caught Graver by surprise and focused his attention. “Have you-Marcus Graver, not Captain Graver -honestly ruled out that… you might be misreading what’s happening?”

Graver checked a quick response, something passionless and flavorless-and dishonest-right out of the knee-jerk guidebook. They stared at each other over the desk. She did not blink. Her expression did not convey that she had offered him a challenge. She simply had asked an honest question and was waiting for him to give her-and himself-an honest answer.

“No,” he said finally, slumping back in his chair. “I haven’t ruled it out And that’s… a very good reason why I probably should have turned this over to someone else.” He paused, but she said nothing. “I haven’t even admitted to myself what I’m doing. No, I’m not buying it yet. But if it’s true,” he said, his own eyes moving thoughtfully to the cobblestone, “if he’s dirty… I want to be the one to deal with that. I guess that’s part of the irrationality of… attachments, of a friendship. It feels like… as if it would be cowardly of me, maybe it seems it would even be cruel of me, to let someone else deal with this. If it turns out badly, I ought to be the one to handle it. I mean, entirely aside from my job, on a personal level, I ought to be the one to pull the switch.”

His choice of words surprised him. Jesus. As Freudian slips go, that was a grim one.

She continued staring at him, her eyes almost losing their focus as she thought She stopped toying with the button, and her hand dropped to her lap.

“I don’t know if I could do it the way you’re doing it,” she said, “but I can see how you would want to.”

“How I would want to?”

“After what you’ve been through… with your wife”-she looked him squarely in the eyes as if she were saying she was not going to dodge the hard issues anymore, the personal issues-”I’m not really surprised you’d want to see this resolved in a way that would allow you to have control over it.”

“Why is that?” He could tell she was getting at something.

“If you turned it over to someone else, that would almost be like having another relationship dissolve without your having had anything to say about it I can see why you’d want to be involved in this no matter how painful it was for you.”

Graver was speechless at this observation. This wouldn’t have occurred to him in a million years. Was this a valid line of speculation? Could something so deeply contained, so personal, as Dore’s leaving him really affect the way he was handling this investigation? Jesus Christ. Unwittingly, Lara had raised once again the issue of his greatest fear. Whether it dealt with Dore and his failed marriage, or whether it dealt with his relationship with Dean Burtell and this case, or whether it even dealt with his relationship to her, the issue of self-deception nagged at Graver like an obsession, and he wondered if Lara had seen how thoroughly it had come to preoccupy him.

There was a knock on the door, and Paula pushed her way in with Neuman immediately behind her.

“Oh.” She started, looking back and forth between the two of them. “Sorry, I thought everyone was gone.”

Graver and Lara were looking around at her, obviously having been engaged in a conversation that was not entirely business.

“No, it’s okay,” Graver said, standing. “No problem, come on in.”

Lara didn’t get up, though Paula looked at her as if she expected her to.