An Absence of Light

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.”