An Absence of Light

He stopped in the spartan lobby beneath the CID offices and called Paula on the pay phone. “I’m downstairs,” he said. “Catch the security system for me, will you?”

She met him just as he approached the receptionist’s glass booth and reactivated the security system after he came through.

“Were you on your way here when I called?” she asked.

“Kind of,” he said, pushing past her and walking straight to his office.

She followed him and stood in the doorway and waited as he sat down behind his desk and quickly jotted down a couple of notes.

“What’s the matter?” she asked.

He looked up at her and saw that she was barefooted, and her hair was pulled back in a bun, much of it working loose from the few pins she had holding it together. “You’ve been here all this time?”

“Yeah, me and Casey. We think we may have something.”

“Good. Get him in here. Is there any coffee in there?”

“Yeah, we made a fresh pot about half an hour ago.” She was staring at him with a puzzled frown, knowing something was wrong.

She stepped out into the hall and called Neuman from her office down at the other end as Graver went across to the coffee room and poured half a mug of the Division’s stout generic coffee. When he came back, he took off his suit coat and hung it on the hat rack in the corner and then sat down behind his desk. As Paula and Neuman came in, he was taking his first sip of coffee. Paula sat down, but Neuman remained standing, his arms folded, a notebook sticking out from under his elbow as he twisted his waist and shoulders. He had already had enough sitting.

“You guys had anything to eat?” The air-conditioning seemed not to be working well, and Graver loosened his tie.

“We brought in sandwiches,” Paula said.

Graver nodded. “Look, before we get started, there are two developments. First, when I got to Tisler’s rent house I found a computer setup. Nobody lives there, apparently, but it looked like Tisler must have spent quite a bit of time there. It was a fairly good-sized computer. I wasn’t able to get in, but I did manage to copy the hard drive.”

“My God.” Paula looked as if she had been given another clue to the location of the Holy Grail. “So where is it?” Neuman took a step forward.

“I’ve got someone working on it.”

Paula was incredulous. She started to speak, but Graver quickly preempted her.

“And some worse news,” he said. “Ray Besom has been found dead down near Port Isabel.”

Paula gasped as if she had been punched in the stomach, and Neuman unfolded his arms and walked behind her to the windows.

“Holy shit.” Neuman looked outside, then turned and walked back to where he had been standing.

“Heart attack,” Graver explained quickly, “according to the autopsy. Apparently he died while he was surf fishing.”

“Oh God, Marcus,” Paula said, placing the flat of her hand on her forehead, her bracelets rattling, “I’m not going to believe that.” She dropped her hand. She shook her head slowly. “I can’t believe that.”

Graver looked at her.

“We know too much… just too damn much to swallow that,” she said. “What’s going on here?”

“There’s going to be another autopsy,” Graver said. “Here.”

Paula was still shaking her head. “It doesn’t matter, even if the Harris County ME says it was a heart attack-”

“Wait a minute,” Neuman interrupted. He was moving back and forth between the windows and the door again, his eyes darting back and forth between Paula and Graver. “The thing is, if Besom was killed somehow-in whatever way-it was meant to be disguised as a natural death, wasn’t it? If we believe that, if that’s true, then this is… this is definitely a high-octane situation. I mean… what kind of people do shit like that?”

Neuman, of course, had quickly closed on the central question. Each of them knew at this point that even they, with all their suspicions, had probably underestimated what they had stumbled upon. And Graver suspected all three of them were turning their suspicions in the same direction.

“What about Dean?” Paula asked quickly. “Maybe he’s in danger.”

“Or maybe he isn’t”-Graver shook his head-”which is even scarier.” Now he had confirmation that he hadn’t overreacted by going to Arnette Kepner. He thought a moment and then he said, “I’ve got to call him.”

“What?” Paula was lost “What the hell for?”

“It’s what I would do,” Graver said. “If I didn’t know about all this other I’d call him to let him know about Besom.”

“I hope you’ve got good people on this,” Paula said. “When Dean hears about this he’s going to freak out, he’s going to do something.”

“Unless he already knows,” Neuman said.

Graver was a little surprised at Neuman’s remarks. He was quick to see a deeper, meaner undercurrent here, and Graver thought he was justified. Graver also guessed that each of them was feeling a sudden trepidation at the realization that the water was deeper and far more treacherous than they ever had expected.

Picking up a pencil from his desk, Graver tapped the cobblestone a couple of times.