An Absence of Light

Graver agreed with him, but he didn’t say so. He could hardly keep his thoughts on what Westrate was saying. He needed to get to Kepner. When Dean Burtell heard about this he was going to do something. Whatever was happening here, it didn’t look good for Burtell.

“You don’t believe it was a heart attack,” Graver said, trying to think in two directions at once.

Westrate’s eyes widened slightly as he tilted his head downward until he was again glowering at Graver from under his woolly eyebrows.

“Heart attack.” His voice was a mixture of anger and disdain. He was looking over his clasped hands, his two meaty fists gripping each other so tightly that Graver imagined them suddenly bursting and squirting all over the desk like tomatoes. “I don’t care if we find a living, breathing witness to Tisler’s suicide and the guy swears on a Bible that Tisler shot himself. I don’t care if we find a witness who saw Ray Besom fishing, saw him suddenly grabbing his chest and gasping and falling down in the goddamn water. I don’t care if we KNOW that’s exactly how they both died… it by God… looks… SUSPICIOUS!”

Dramatically jerking his head from side to side for emphasis as he spoke these last words, Westrate literally spewed spittle as he hissed “suspicious.” His face was as pink as a pistachio pod, and Graver could see even his scalp flushing through his thinning hair.

“HO-ly JE-sus!” Westrate exclaimed, falling back into his chair. Then suddenly he was up, jamming his hands into his pockets and stalking around his desk to the open door of his office where he stood looking out into the dark anteroom, jangling the change in his pockets.

Westrate’s histrionics were wasted on Graver, who could only think of Burtell and of how critical it was to be close to him now. He wished to God he had asked for taps the first time he spoke to Kepner. At that time Ginette would have been at work and, as it turned out, Burtell wouldn’t have been at home either. Kepner’s people would have had plenty of time. Graver looked at his watch. He had to get out of Westrate’s office.

“What do you want from me, Jack?” he asked.

Westrate didn’t answer immediately, but when he turned around Graver was disconcerted to see that his wrath had physically altered his features. His eyes were puffy, and pasty swags of flesh were forming beneath them; his cheeks, normally taut with obesity, now appeared swollen with a scattering of unhealthy, livid blotches. He unhurriedly closed the door to his office and came over and gave a quick jerk to the other chair in front of his desk and sat down in it facing Graver, his short log-like legs spread out.

“What do you think about all this?” he asked. His voice was uncharacteristically quiet, and for the first time ever Graver saw an expression on his face that conveyed, however slightly, a vague vulnerability.

Graver braced himself. He could see that Westrate was at his wit’s end, and he guessed the assistant chief was beginning to imagine, to see the foreshadowing of plots against him, against his career. What Westrate wanted was for Graver to say it first. He wanted to hear Graver say that something was wrong here.

“I think Tisler killed himself,” Graver said. “And I doubt if we’ll ever know why. And, until another autopsy proves otherwise, I’m going to assume Besom had a heart attack.”

Westrate’s face fell. “That’s it?”

“That’s what I think,” Graver said.

“These two deaths are exactly what they appear to be?” His voice rose with incredulity.

“I’ve got to think so in the absence of any evidence that indicates otherwise.”

“But just the fact that they died so close together… that doesn’t make you suspicious?”

“As a matter of fact it does…” Graver said.

Westrate’s eyebrows lifted in anticipation.

“…but I think we’ve got to be careful, Jack. I think we’ve got to be suspicious of our suspicions. It would be too damn easy to read something into these events that the facts don’t support” He paused and looked at Westrate. “You ever heard of ‘Occam’s razor’?”

Westrate stared at him.

“William of Occam was a fourteenth-century English philosopher who stated a kind of commonsense principle regarding lines of inquiry into the truth of a situation. It was stated in Latin, but translated it means: ‘Plurality must not be posited without necessity.’ A modern rendering might be, ‘An explanation of the facts should be no more complicated than necessary,’ or ‘Among competing hypotheses, favor the simplest one.’ Occam’s razor advocated cutting away all the unnecessary considerations that can clutter up a line of inquiry and sticking to the simplest theory consistent with the facts.”

Westrate’s expression portrayed a disgruntled impatience.