An Absence of Light

“They didn’t lie,” Graver said. He was tired too, and shaken. “Everything the sources provided was good, the take was corroborated by second, sometimes third parties. There were convictions, for Christ’s sake.”

“But they’re shielding the sources. Besom probably. But for sure Tisler… and Dean.”

An EMS siren warbled on the expressway, its lights flashing in the dusk as it moved past them on one of the turns heading north. Graver stared out the wall of glass long after the ambulance had disappeared.

“Jesus, Paula,” Graver said, “I…”

He couldn’t believe it, and he had just come within a hairsbreadth of blurting his disbelief at Burtell’s involvement It was easy to entertain the idea of Tisler’s corruption. He was dead, and Graver had no personal attachments to him anyway. And Besom was one of his least favorite people on earth, one of Westrate’s buddies whom the assistant chief had foisted onto Graver. But to see this kind of incriminating evidence against Burtell was stunning.

He stared at the cobblestone. The implications of her analysis were undeniable. He stood and stepped to the windows. There wasn’t enough air in the room; his heart labored with little effect.

Paula nervously toyed with her bracelets, clacking them back and forth on her wrist. Graver knew it was clear to her what he was going through. Christ The world had not stopped, but it had slowed suddenly and dramatically.

“Okay,” he said, staring out the window but seeing nothing beyond the glass. “Then what do we have? Let’s say they’re protecting sources. Why would they do that? I mean, to what purpose?”

“Maybe the sources aren’t legitimate,” Paula said. “Maybe they… What if there’s only one source and this thing is being run from the outside, not from here.”

“That would be asking a lot,” Graver said. “It’s not like these three operations had much in common.”

“They wouldn’t have to. The common denominator would be the motive of whoever’s outside. It’s not likely we’d see a connection from this side of the picture.”

Graver knew she was right She obviously had given this a lot of thought before bringing it to him. He anticipated where her logic had taken her next.

“This has been going on a long time,” he said, turning around and coming back to his desk. “And it’s been working well. By now all the kinks have been worked out of it. We’re not likely to find anything to connect these investigations in the documentation. No frayed ends.”

Neither of them spoke for a moment.

“We can’t confront Besom or Dean,” Graver said finally, sitting down behind his desk again. “At the first hint that we suspect something, this entire thing will evaporate.”

“When is Besom supposed to be back from his fishing trip?”

“Day after tomorrow… Wednesday.” Graver was getting a headache. “But he’s got another week of vacation. He’s not due to be back in the office until a week from Wednesday.”

“You think Dean can get in touch with him?”

Graver shrugged. He stared at the cobblestone, forcing himself to move on, to push Burtell’s image out of his mind, to think in the abstract about the logistics of Paula’s discoveries. The implications were mushrooming in his mind.

“I’ve got to cut Tisler’s inquiry short,” he said.

“What?”

“Wrap it up as quickly as possible,” he said. “I won’t take the week I told Westrate it would require. Casey’s going to come up empty-handed on that background check. I’m sure of that now. Dean’s not going to ‘find’ anything. I’ll close it out, write a clearance paper and put it to bed. That’s all Westrate wants anyway, a tidy ending. We’ll give it to him.”

“Then what?” Paula was frowning, uncertain where he was taking this.

“If Tisler wasn’t murdered,” Graver said, “then his suicide is likely to have caught them by surprise, just as much as it did us. They’ve got to be off balance, probably worried that he’s left something behind that would blow this wide-open. It could be that whatever drove Tisler to kill himself is also bringing pressure to bear on the others. Maybe something’s unraveling and Tisler couldn’t face the consequences. His suicide can only have made things worse. I’ve got to avoid spooking them. It would be better if we made it look like we’re buying the suicide and want to sweep it under the rug as quickly as possible.”

“What about the Seldon investigation?”

Graver shook his head wearily. “I’ll have to replace Tisler. It’s got to go on… routinely, as if we have no suspicions.”

“Christ. How will they handle that? You don’t think they’ll actually go ahead with a bogus ‘source,’ do you?”

“No.” Graver shook his head emphatically. “They won’t do that. I think… I think when I put it to Dean he’ll say the source has dropped out of sight. Vanished. Tisler’s suicide is definitely a good-enough reason for a ‘source’ to spook and disappear. He’d be wary, unsure of what was ‘really’ happening. That would be entirely logical under the circumstances.”

Paula said nothing, waiting.