An Absence of Light

Chapter 59

Graver spent a few more minutes talking to Ginette Burtell, reassuring her, trying to say something to her that would ease her mind enough to allow the sedatives that Lara finally had convinced her to take to achieve their effect He assured her again that he would do all that he could to find Dean, and that she shouldn’t automatically assume the worst He repeated his promise to her to let her know as soon as he knew something definite. After a while Lara took her upstairs to Natalie’s bedroom.

Feeling lousy about having had to lie to Ginette, Graver sat down at his desk and called Ben Olmstead. He tried several numbers, his pager, and handset, before finally getting him at South Shore Marina. According to Olmstead, the impact of the initial explosion had destroyed nearly a dozen boats and as many more were set afire. Unfortunately the area of impact was on one of the docks that held a refueling slip, and a couple of gasoline storage tanks had been ignited. One of the tanks was full, so it was only burning. But the other one had been nearly empty and had blown immediately, increasing the force of the original explosion.

“Can they tell anything about the point of impact, where it originated?” Graver asked.

“No, but we’re getting a slip rental list from the marina management now and ought to be able to get close, within a dozen or so names here pretty soon.”

“What about telephone calls?” Graver could hear the confusion in the background, sirens, men yelling, the roar of water-pumping engines.

“Oh, yeah. They’re coming in. Maybe five so far, but none of the groups we’re seriously concerned about.”

“Is everybody out there?”

“You bet Bomb Squad. Houston Fire Department Arson Squad. ATF. DEA. If you can believe it, the DEA had a stakeout going on over on the other side of the marina. When this blew over here they freaked out They’re confused as hell now, thinking their informant set them up. Oh, and we’ve also got a list of all the people registered in the hotel here. Going over that now. We’re also having the hotel security pull all their surveillance films from their lobby cameras for the last twenty-four hours.” He paused. “Westrate call you?”

“Yeah, I’ve got to call him back,” Graver said, “but I wanted to talk to you first You don’t even know yet if the explosion was a bomb, do you? Whether it was accidental? A gas leak, a butane leak in one of the cabins?”

“No, we don’t know. And the Bomb Squad can’t make very good guesses since the punch of this one was obscured by the gasoline tank going almost simultaneously. Some witnesses say there were two explosions close together, some say one. And this is a hell of a fire, so we’re not going to get to the source for another twelve or fifteen hours I’d guess.”

“Okay, Ben. Thanks, I appreciate it Keep in touch.”

“Will do.”

Graver immediately called Arnette and told her that investigators were pulling lobby tapes and hotel registrations for the last twenty-four hours. If her people think they got caught on camera she might want to do something about it.

Then he called Westrate.

“Where the hell have you been?” Westrate bellowed.

“I’ve just talked with Olmstead,” Graver said, ignoring the question. “They’ve got it nailed down out there as well as can be expected.”

“What does that mean?”

“They’ve done just about all they can do until the fire’s out and they can get in there and study it.”

“Do they think it was terrorists? Some kind of drug thing?”

“They don’t have any idea.” Graver told him about the DEA operation on the other side of the marina.

“This could have been theirs,” Westrate said. “The sons of bitches wouldn’t have let us in on that, though, would they. We’ll have to spend good time and money to duplicate what they know and then they’ll say,*Oh, we could have let you have that information.’”

Graver didn’t want to listen to this kind of thing, Westrate’s favorite pastime.

“I’ve got to go, Jack.”

“Look, keep me posted. But, shit, it’s late. Just wait and get back with me in the morning… unless something spectacular happens.”

“Okay, Jack.”

Graver hung up and slumped back in his chair. He was limp with exhaustion. The day had begun around seven o’clock when he went to Arnette’s even before going to the office and viewed the surveillance photographs Boyd had taken of Burtell meeting with the Unknown at the Transco Fountain the night before… just a little over twenty-four hours from right now. Then around two o’clock in the afternoon he was back at Arnette’s reading the Yosef Raviv dossier after Arnette had picked up Kalatis’s name on the fountain interview recording. By four o’clock he was back at the office and Paula had turned up Colin Faeber’s name on the board of Gulf-stream Bank and an hour later Neuman returned to the office with the news that Faeber’s DataPrint was owned by Concordia International Investments, a subsidiary of Strasser Industries. Around eight-thirty in the evening Graver and Neuman had picked up Valerie Heath and around twelve-thirty Burtell was blown to bits in South Shore Harbor. And now the latest developments of the last few hours.

This had been one of the fastest-breaking investigations he had ever experienced, especially one of such complexity, all of which was complicated by the fact that he was trying to keep it off the books. He needed very badly to sit down and bring his journal up to date, but the thought of doing that now seemed an impossibility to him.

What he really wanted was a glass of wine, a rich, fruity Merlot that would almost be a meal in itself, but he knew if he did that his energy level would plummet right to the bottom.

The telephone rang. Startled, he snatched it off the receiver almost before it stopped ringing.

“This is Graver.”

“It’s Victor. Listen to me.” His voice hushed and quick. “I’ve only a moment We’ve got to meet in the morning, late morning. You’re not going to believe what I’ve got for you, my friend.”

“Give me a clue, Victor,” Graver said.

“I’m going to deliver Faeber’s ass.”

In the euphoria about Neuman’s discovery and then the immediate strain of confronting Ginette Burtell, Graver had forgotten about Colin Faeber, the only living direct link to Kalatis. Now here was Victor Last offering to “deliver Faeber’s ass.”

“What do you mean by that, Victor? Are you speaking physically or judicially?”

“Both, for Christ’s sake! What does it matter?”

“When do you want to meet?”

“Ten o’clock. I can’t get there before then.”

“Get where?”

“Oh, that Italian place of yours. Good coffee.”

The line went dead.

Shit! Graver buried his face in his hands, his elbows on the top of his desk. He seriously needed time to think. It was moving too fast, all of it, and he didn’t like the feeling of… hurtling.

“Graver.”

He turned around and saw Lara standing in the door.

“She’s sleeping. Why don’t you take time for a glass of wine?”