An Absence of Light

“I just don’t know… The thing is, I can’t see that this kind of operation would turn over enough money, the kind of money it seems to me it would take to buy off three intelligence officers. If they were going to risk a career, jail, everything… wouldn’t you think it would be for bigger money than this kind of operation would pull down? And if we’re going to stick with our theory that Tisler and Besom were professional hits…”

“Yeah”-Paula nodded, glancing at Neuman-”we talked about that That’s why we think we’ve just scratched the surface of this thing. And, uh, this is where our imaginations got carried away, and after a while we were bouncing off the wall. We thought we’d better run some of this by you, see what you thought.”

“Like I said,” Neuman added, “we don’t think Heath and Sheck are the heads behind all this. We see them as underlings, subordinates.”

Graver looked at them as he turned the cobblestone. He thought they were right on track. They didn’t know that Burtell had been photographed meeting with an unknown man the night before and that the meeting was overseen by a man and woman countersurveillance team, a pair who most certainly were not Bruce Sheck and Valerie Heath. And they didn’t know about Arnette Kepner whose judgment in such matters Graver trusted even more than his own. They didn’t know that she also suspected a larger, more important enterprise than the scam Probst had been operating. Yet they were right on target.

“What we need to do,” he said, “to give us a little more confirmation is to get a list of the companies each of those places have under contract Maybe what we find there will give us an idea of the direction they’re moving, even give us some sense of the dimensions, the size of their objectives.”

“Sooner or later,” Neuman said cautiously-he didn’t want to seem too eager-”we’re going to have to confront either Heath or Sheck. I mean, in the interest of time. We don’t have that much time, do we?”

“What are you suggesting?” Graver knew Neuman was right about the lack of time. It made their job seem nearly impossible.

Neuman was rolling back the cuffs on his plaid shirt His tie, though still knotted, was tucked into his shirt placket between the first and second buttons to keep it out of his way.

“We could interview Sheck, just as we talked to Heath,” he said. “But odds are she’s going to have talked to him already, and he’ll probably be expecting us. It’ll be a tougher interview no matter what he’s like, unless he’s completely spineless.” He glanced at Paula. “Heath though, she’s vulnerable. I think we can panic her without too much of a problem. We’ve got all this false ID stuff on her. I think we can make her believe we know more than we do, put her in a corner, press her, turn her around. I think it could pay off.”

“But that really commits us, Casey,” Paula hedged. “If we can’t get her to cooperate and she walks away, we’ve given ourselves away.”

“I think we have anyway,” Neuman admitted. “That insurance business isn’t going to hold up.” He looked at his watch. “By now she already knows there’s no such company.”

Graver stared at his notes, turned the cobblestone a few more times. It was a close call. If he thought nothing was going to be forthcoming from the tail and the tap on Burtell, if he thought the password puzzle on Tisler’s computer tape was not going to be broken within the next twenty-four hours, if the audio tape of Burtell’s meeting was not going to yield any information today, then he would be all for Neuman’s plan. But Paula was right too. To try to turn Heath and to fail in the effort would scatter the pigeons without a doubt. The investigation would be out in the open.

“Here’s what I want to do,” Graver said finally. “As incredible as this may seem, I’ve got an informant who save me something last night that may lead right into the middle of this.” Without telling them anything about Last, Graver told them of the conversation Last had over-heard at the party at Colin Faeber’s house.

Paula’s eyes widened in amazement as she turned to Neuman who simply shook his head at yet another weird wist Graver entertained the idea of bringing them into he picture even more, telling them about Last, about Arnette, giving them all the pieces. But something warned him to hold back. As usual he was being cautious, and in doing so he knew he might be hampering their investigation by not having the benefit of their analysis of the en-ire scope of what they were dealing with. Still, he held back.

“Casey, I want you to do a work-up on Faeber,” Graver said. “He may have nothing to do with the conversation these two guys had, I don’t have any idea, but we need to try to find out I’ll keep after my informant. There’s no way for me to corroborate this, obviously, but we can’t be picky at this point.”

Graver rubbed his face with his hands. His neck was getting stiff; he could feel the tendons drawing, growing taut and rigid. He shook his head.