Burtell looked at him. “That’s right.”
Even in this, Burtell was playing his role perfectly. His eyes met Graver’s as though he was admitting his fault like a man. He would courageously swallow the medicine, admit that he had let the investigation get away from him. Graver felt like he was in a theater group. His next question was calculated to see if Burtell could keep this up.
“Did Ray know you were pushing this?”
At this there was a slight bobble in Burtell’s demeanor and in what had been, up to this point, a smoothly-played hand. Now Burtell had to ask himself some quick, tough questions. Should he drag Besom into the deception? Should he expand the cast of characters? Burtell’s answer demonstrated how well he could balance on the wire.
“No, he didn’t know. Art and I were skating this on our own.”
Graver reached out and gave the cobblestone a few thoughtful turns.
“Did you ever get the impression from Art that there was anything… sinister about Nieson? Do you think there’s even the slightest reason to suspect that he killed Art?”
“No, honestly I don’t,” Burtell said. “I’ve been over and over that too, Marcus, don’t think I haven’t But… I just can’t see it.”
“Did he ever call Art here?”
“Yes.”
Graver stared at the Seldon documents in front of him. That was it Burtell had not hesitated to commit himself wholeheartedly to a course of action that was a clear abandonment of everything that Graver, at least, had thought he stood for. Burtell was embracing a deception that could not be explained away. If he ever had an inclination to get out of it he had to know that now was the moment to do so and that Graver was his best hope for effecting an extrication. He had to know this, and yet Burtell did not hesitate to step over the line that would separate them for a certainty. For Graver it was a truly painful display of hypocrisy. Graver felt as if Burtell had walked up to him and hit him in the stomach.
“Okay,” Graver said, closing the manila folder. “I’ve got to think about this.” He sat back in his chair and leveled his eyes at Burtell. “You shouldn’t have let yourself get caught empty-handed-I mean completely empty-handed.”
He wanted to say something entirely different, but that, at least, was expected of him. As he sat there staring at the man who was like a younger brother to him he came within a hairsbreadth of dropping all pretense, of stopping the charade. He wanted to take Burtell by the shoulders and shake him and ask him for God’s sake what was he doing; how could he do what he was doing; what in the hell was happening to him.
Burtell was nodding at him, his eyes cast awkwardly to the side as he pretended to swallow the reprimand. “Yeah, I know,” he said. “I screwed it up.”
Graver was suddenly assaulted with a confusion of emotions. He was furious at Burtell’s performance, standing in front of him dressed immaculately in lies, wearing them so well he was fluid and articulate and-if it had not been for Paula’s and Neuman’s discoveries-believable. He was furious that Burtell had played the altar boy for more than two years while at the same time he had operated some kind of shell game that Graver didn’t even yet understand. He was disgusted with himself for having let it happen. He was frightened that the dimensions of this game were still unknown. He was baffled and maybe even a little rattled that he didn’t yet know how to deal with it. And he was stung to the quick by the betrayal.
“I’ll get back to you,” he managed to say dismissively, hoping that his face was not giving away the turmoil he was feeling. Burtell nodded and for an instant Graver thought he hesitated. But he could no longer allow himself to trust anything he saw in Burtell’s behavior. It was as if Dean Burtell had died right there in front of him.
Burtell bent down and picked up his files from his chair and headed for the door. But then he stopped and turned. He looked at Graver and then advanced a few steps to Graver’s desk.
“Uh, Marcus. Did you… remember that I was scheduled for vacation?”
Graver looked at him blankly. “Sorry,” he said. “I’d forgotten about it.”
“Do you have any objections to me going ahead with it now? Under the circumstances… I… frankly, I could use it.”
Graver shook his head. “No, of course not. I can’t see any reason for you to hang around now.” He pushed aside the paperwork on his desk and looked at the calendar. “That’s two weeks. Starting tomorrow,” he said.
Burtell nodded. “Thanks, I appreciate it.” He seemed to hesitate again, then turned abruptly and walked out of the office.
Graver slumped back in his chair and stared at the closed door. “Jesus Christ,” he said.
Chapter 22
Graver opened his desk drawer and got his car keys. He needed to talk to Paula and Neuman, but he also had to do something else, and he had to do it now. After locking his desk, the files, and the safe, he walked out of the office and told Lara that he had to leave for several hours, and it probably would be after lunch before he would be back.
She looked at him, and as their eyes met he could tell instantly by her expression that she saw something on his face that caught her attention. He turned and walked out of the office without telling her where he could be reached. It was something he never did. He felt her eyes on him until he was out the door.
Four or five blocks away from the office, he pulled into a self-service station to fill the car with gasoline. He set the nozzle on its slowest automatic setting and made a brief telephone call from a pay phone outside the station. After the call he gave the attendant fifteen dollars and got back to the nozzle just in time to catch the fifteen clocking around on the pump dials. He checked his watch.
It took him longer than he had thought it would to get to Arnette’s. She lived in one of Houston’s older neighborhoods where the ethnic diversity was reflected in almost exactly the same proportions as the city’s demographic pie charts. It was a mixture that pleased Arnette Kepner just fine.
She lived in a World War II-vintage house that backed up to one of the city’s bayous. When Arnette cashed in her twenty-five-year retirement from the federal government eight years ago, she looked for a long time before she found just the situation she wanted, a modest-to-low-income neighborhood, three houses in a row. It took every penny of her savings, but she bought all three of them and then proceeded to transform the yards of the three lots into something resembling a tropical nursery with the outside property lines of the two outside houses fortified with thick walls of rangy Asian bamboo. Although from the front each house appeared to have an entirely different owner, Arnette’s three properties actually formed a compound with each adjacent house accessible to the other through a common back yard from which the interior fences had been removed creating one large, wooded lawn that was not visible from the street. Aside from this slightly overgrown appearance, nothing distinguished Arnette’s houses from the others in the neighborhood since all of them tended toward a careless woodiness.
Within the perimeter of Arnette’s bamboo wall was a well-hidden security system that encircled the three lots. It was a very thorough piece of technology. The mailbox of each house was set into a rock pillar by each of the front gates and was accessible from the back side; one was completely covered with fig ivy, one was moss green with a lichen patina, and the other was almost hidden in Paradise bamboo.
Graver parked in front of the middle house, which was Arnette’s residence, and got out of the car. He knew the security lock on the front yard gate already would be opened for him, so he didn’t hesitate to open it and step inside the yard. The winding street, which closely followed the curves of the bayou for a dozen or more blocks, was shaded by large pecans and oaks and cypresses which seemed to be populated with every kind of bird that could inhabit a coastal, subtropical region, and their screeching and whistling and burbling filled the still, late morning air. As Graver made his way along the short brick path through the elephant ears and plantains and palmettos, he thought how closely Arnette had come to making the place seem like “a little bit of ‘Nam,” as she had said she wanted to do.