An Absence of Light

Shit Anybody else know about this?” Graver meant anyone else on the HTTF, anyone in the FBI. Olmstead knew what he meant.

“Well, no. I mean, this is a little unusual, and I just kept my mouth shut when the registration fax came through. I didn’t know… I thought maybe you guys had something working, an investigation cover set up or something. Thought I’d better run it by you.”

Graver’s mind was racing. He couldn’t let Burtell’s involvement surface so soon. It had to be staunched at this moment, at this point.

“Ben, we do have something out there,” Graver said. “It’s touchy, very touchy. Hell of a coincidence. Let me get with the people involved and see if we can agree on a way to handle this, who to bring into it, at what level. Dean’s on vacation so it might take me a while to get to him, but I’ll get right on it You handled it right, Ben. Exposure now would have cost us the operation, a lot of time and work and money. It’s been a long time in the making. Hold on to this, and I’ll get back to you on it.”

“Yeah, okay.”

“Was anyone hurt out there?”

“God, we don’t know. The fire’s only been out about an hour, like I said, and everything’s hot as hell. The Arson Squad and Bomb Squad people are just now beginning to pick their way into all the debris. You know, moving around in boats. The smoke’s still hanging over the water. The docks are all unstable. It’ll be slow going.”

“Okay, Ben. Thanks. I’ll be going into the office in another half hour. Let me know if anything else comes up.”

“Will do. See you later.”

Graver put down the telephone and looked up. Lara was standing just inside the kitchen watching him. She probably had heard the whole thing, his pretense at assuming that Burtell was still alive.

“They’ve already found out who owns the boat,” Graver said, going over to the table to get his coffee cup for a refill.

Lara came over to the cabinet too and refilled her own cup.

“Thanks for the coffee,” she said.

“Sure.”

They both leaned back against the cabinet.

“They… haven’t found anything?” she asked.

“You mean bodies, or what’s left of them? No.”

“What happens now?”

“I hate to ask you to do this, Lara, but Ginette’s going to have to be looked after somehow until this mess comes together.” He hesitated. “I mean, we’ve got to make sure she doesn’t contact anyone else with the police department She thinks everyone’s going to be devoting a lot of energy to finding out whether or not Dean’s alive, and no one there even knows that he’s ‘missing.’”

“What about her family?”

“When I get to the office, I’ll look in Dean’s personal file and get her family information. I’ll call them, get somebody here as soon as I can.”

Lara sipped her coffee, and Graver waited for her to say something.

“Do you want us to stay here?”

“Why, what do you mean?”

“Practicalities. She doesn’t have any clothes. She’s going to need some.”

“Christ” His first thought was of their safety. Would Kalatis consider Ginette Burtell a risk? But Graver had had no similar fear for Besom’s wife or Peggy Tisler. He couldn’t allow himself to lose perspective. “Okay. Just don’t stay there long, Lara. I’d feel better if she were here.”

The telephone rang again, and Graver reached around and picked it up. It was Neuman calling from Arnette’s computer room.

“I thought I’d try to catch you before you went to the office and bring you up to date,” he said. “We’re getting tons of stuff from Sheck’s microfiche. It’s going to be a lot of fun just deciding the best way to use it Sheck’s outlined this operation from the grass roots to the top. Goes into a lot of detail. We may want to keep some of these people running, see if we can’t turn some of them. Sheck’s infiltrated so many businesses and institutions it seems to me there ought to be a way to use his system. We need to talk about that Anyway-we’ve got enough on Faeber to close him down.”

“Is there anything there on any of our people?”

“Yeah. It looks like it started with Besom, a couple of years ago. He was selling investigation information to Faeber. Faeber wanted more. Besom couldn’t do it by himself and brought Tisler into it The money was just too good. Besom made a couple of hundred thousand his first year. Tisler over a hundred. Right now I’m reading about the kind of CID information Faeber was asking for. So far Dean hasn’t come into the picture yet.”

“And what about Dean’s tapes?”

“Paula’s back there working on that now. Dean had done some cipher work to protect it, even on this copy, but it was just elementary stuff and Arnette’s people broke into it sometime early this morning. So Paula’s only been working inside the files for about an hour.”

“What about Kalatis?”

“Nothing on him yet.”

They talked another few minutes and then Graver hung up. While he had been talking Lara had put a piece of toast in the toaster and was now eating it, sitting sideways at the table with her coffee, listening to Graver’s end of the conversation as she watched him.

“They’re making some progress,” he said. “I don’t know… are you going to be all right here?”