An Absence of Light

She stopped and turned around with her hand on the doorknob.

“I do appreciate… everything.”

She smiled again, this time with warmth and the intimacy of an unspoken understanding.

“Wash out that coffee mug before you go home. Okay?”

“It’s done,” he said, and picked up the telephone as she opened the door and walked out.

“Graver.”

It was Westrate, though he didn’t identify himself. “Katz called me just a few minutes ago,” he said. “He’d just gotten a call from Tordella who was still at the morgue. Coroner’s calling it a suicide too.” Graver could hear the relief, the near joy in Westrate’s voice. “Nobody sees any reason to suspect otherwise.”

“Did they interview his wife?”

“Yeah, early this afternoon.”

“Who conducted the interview?”

“Tordella and Petersen, I think.”

“Nothing?”

“I guess not. I just know Katz said they were satisfied so far, and that they’d probably write it up as self-inflicted tomorrow. He just wanted me to know.”

Graver slumped back in his chair. He felt more than relief; it was almost elation.

“But I still want a report from you people,” Westrate said. “We’ve got to give the CID a clean bill of health. His wife’s already screwed on her insurance, anyway. Might as well confirm it, at least make a report on the probabilities. Guy doesn’t kill himself for nothing. Maybe there was a chippy or… I don’t know, something.”

“It’ll be a while, Jack. Several days if we don’t want it to look like we’re sweeping it under the rug.”

“Yeah, okay, take a week,” Westrate said. “Let me know how it’s going.”

Westrate was off the telephone, and Graver turned his chair toward the glass wall. Early in the day the clouds had burned off and the hard blue sky stood empty and hot No thunderstorms today. The expressway was jammed chrome to chrome, a creeping flow of glittering glass and metal wrapped around the girth of downtown.

He looked at his watch. It was five thirty-five, and the offices were empty. He thought about Westrate’s call. Everybody was relieved. Nobody’s ass was going to get singed over this after all. Everyone was pleased that Tisler seemed to have been so desperate as to have killed himself. The man had been driven to blast away his life for reasons none of them knew anything about, and so far no one, with the exception of Dean Burtell, seemed capable of working up anything more than a wince at his death.

Chapter 13

He turned his attention away from the windows and pulled Tisler’s contributor files over in front of him. “Contributor” was an umbrella term for persons who supplied the CID with information about criminal activity. They were the bread and butter of intelligence work and fell into two categories. “Sources” were contributors with no criminal involvements. They included police officers, federal agents, witnesses, and private citizens, mostly people who felt a moral duty to share information or suspicions about criminal activities.

The other category was “informants,” people with criminal backgrounds, prisoners, parolees, probationers, bailees, arrestees, or suspects. Informants were most frequently motivated to share information for quite different reasons than their counterparts. Often they were simply offering information for money. Sometimes they informed for revenge, or jealousy, or in an effort to have “competitors” eliminated, or as “pay back” for some past service on their behalf by law enforcement officials. The reasons were endless, often complex, and usually emotionally charged.

The personal identity of all contributors was closely held information, and their continued anonymity was a matter of enormous importance. Each contributor was assigned a control number which was used on all documents in place of the contributor’s name. Graver had gone to the Central Index File, which could be accessed only through a stand-alone computer system, and pulled Tisler’s name. Then he pulled up his contributor file which produced a column of four-digit control numbers. He then went into the confidential records safe and pulled the contributor folders bearing these control numbers.

He opened the first folder with the same feeling that Paula and Dean Burtell must have had when opening the folders Graver had handed them that morning: What in the hell should he be looking for?

“Graver.”

He started, but wasn’t surprised that the voice he recognized was Paula’s.

“I thought I was the only one here,” she said, leaning against the door frame, a manila folder dangling from her hand.

“Come in,” he said, sitting back in his chair. He was glad to see her, glad to have someone to talk to. “Sit down.”

Paula pulled herself away from the door frame and sat in one of the chairs in front of Graver’s desk, crossing her long legs and looking out the windows. Across the bayou the reflection of the falling sun ignited the skyscrapers like molten pillars against the cobalt sky.