An Absence of Light

“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.”