An Absence of Light

“Yeah, I guess I agree with that,” Graver said, “and that’s precisely the point that makes me want to believe him. His story is just too… clumsy. I can’t see them deliberately setting up something like that. I just can’t imagine what they would have thought they could gain by having him do what he’s done.”

“Let’s say he’s telling the truth,” Paula said. “Who did he overhear? Sheck? You think Bruce Sheck is the kind of guy who would be at a tony party like Faeber’s?”

None of them, of course, believed a “stud” who frequented the kinds of bars where he could have picked up the likes of Valerie Heath would also have been at a party in the polite company of a Tanglewood crowd like the one Last had described. They fell silent Graver ate his sandwich as Neuman studied his notes again, and Paula stared at the kitchen floor. Graver didn’t know what they were thinking, but he was increasingly aware that this thing was all over the place. What in the hell did he expect to accomplish? It would take an enormous task force and a lot of time to investigate this properly. He didn’t have either the task force or the time. And even as he was thinking this, Paula was ahead of him.

“Graver,” she said, interrupting his thoughts. She had turned around in her chair and was facing him, her bare feet slightly apart on the floor, her hands together in her lap pushing the skirt of her dress down between her thighs. It was a college kid’s posture. “Do you really think anyone in the police department other than Dean is involved in this? Is that what you’re trying to discover before you get someone else in on this?”

He put an olive in his mouth and bit into it, tasting the pimiento and the salty oil. He chewed it and then washed it down with a swallow of beer.

“Why?” he asked.

“Because you know as well as I do this is… impossible.” She cut her eyes at Neuman, then back to Graver. “We’re not doing this justice. There ought to be people all over this Heath and Sheck operation. It’s enormous. There could be five or six Shecks and thirty Heaths and more than a hundred, maybe hundreds of people stealing information to sell to them. It’s incredible when you think about it I’m probably not even imagining on a big-enough scale. It gave me the creeps listening to that woman upstairs. These people… the information they have is spooky. And even spookier is imagining what they might be doing with it It’s just that… this is so big, for Christ’s sake.”

Graver nodded, chewing the last bite of his sandwich. He wasn’t sure how he was going to answer her, but he was sure of how he felt about it.

“Look,” he said, taking a sip of beer and wiping his hands on a paper towel he was using for a napkin. He pushed the nearly empty beer bottle back on the tile countertop and walked over, pulled out a chair, and sat down.

“You’re right It is big. You’re right, we absolutely cannot handle it. Not in the long run. But we’re actually only in the discovery stages of this thing right now. Do I think someone else from the police department is involved in this? I don’t know, but I have growing doubts that men like Kalatis and Strasser and even Faeber, for that matter, would be involved if it was the kind of operation that didn’t go any higher up than Dean Burtell. An analyst is nothing to these men. They may need an analyst, they may use him, but I’m guessing that what they’re trying to get into requires a higher level of cooperation. Dean, for all his intellect and ability, is only a stepping-stone here. I’ve got to believe they’re aiming higher than what he can provide. He’s simply being used.”

He looked at Neuman and then back at Paula.

“So what do I do? I make the assumption that a lot of money is involved here because the big players don’t come to small games. There’s a big game somewhere right under our noses. Now who among the HPD’s top people am I going to trust with this? It’s not that there aren’t any good men and women here who can be trusted. Of course there are. It’s just that there may be same here who can’t be trusted, but I don’t know who the hell they are. So how do I know who to bring into it? Who do I involve? Should I risk this whole operation that you’ve just talked about, this enormous something, on a bet that it stops with Dean? Or on a bet that I’ll be able to pick the right people to reveal it to?” He paused. “I don’t think so.”

“What about the FBI? If it’s so big, they ought to be the ones going into this. They’ve got the resources.”

Graver looked at her. “All right, Paula, here’s an honest answer to that. You’re right, in a well-ordered world that would be the way to go.”

Then he explained to her what Arnette had pointed out to him about the conflicting jurisdictions of the CIA, DEA, and FBI regarding Kalatis.