Westrate’s eyes widened slightly as he tilted his head downward until he was again glowering at Graver from under his woolly eyebrows.
“Heart attack.” His voice was a mixture of anger and disdain. He was looking over his clasped hands, his two meaty fists gripping each other so tightly that Graver imagined them suddenly bursting and squirting all over the desk like tomatoes. “I don’t care if we find a living, breathing witness to Tisler’s suicide and the guy swears on a Bible that Tisler shot himself. I don’t care if we find a witness who saw Ray Besom fishing, saw him suddenly grabbing his chest and gasping and falling down in the goddamn water. I don’t care if we KNOW that’s exactly how they both died… it by God… looks… SUSPICIOUS!”
Dramatically jerking his head from side to side for emphasis as he spoke these last words, Westrate literally spewed spittle as he hissed “suspicious.” His face was as pink as a pistachio pod, and Graver could see even his scalp flushing through his thinning hair.
“HO-ly JE-sus!” Westrate exclaimed, falling back into his chair. Then suddenly he was up, jamming his hands into his pockets and stalking around his desk to the open door of his office where he stood looking out into the dark anteroom, jangling the change in his pockets.
Westrate’s histrionics were wasted on Graver, who could only think of Burtell and of how critical it was to be close to him now. He wished to God he had asked for taps the first time he spoke to Kepner. At that time Ginette would have been at work and, as it turned out, Burtell wouldn’t have been at home either. Kepner’s people would have had plenty of time. Graver looked at his watch. He had to get out of Westrate’s office.
“What do you want from me, Jack?” he asked.
Westrate didn’t answer immediately, but when he turned around Graver was disconcerted to see that his wrath had physically altered his features. His eyes were puffy, and pasty swags of flesh were forming beneath them; his cheeks, normally taut with obesity, now appeared swollen with a scattering of unhealthy, livid blotches. He unhurriedly closed the door to his office and came over and gave a quick jerk to the other chair in front of his desk and sat down in it facing Graver, his short log-like legs spread out.
“What do you think about all this?” he asked. His voice was uncharacteristically quiet, and for the first time ever Graver saw an expression on his face that conveyed, however slightly, a vague vulnerability.
Graver braced himself. He could see that Westrate was at his wit’s end, and he guessed the assistant chief was beginning to imagine, to see the foreshadowing of plots against him, against his career. What Westrate wanted was for Graver to say it first. He wanted to hear Graver say that something was wrong here.
“I think Tisler killed himself,” Graver said. “And I doubt if we’ll ever know why. And, until another autopsy proves otherwise, I’m going to assume Besom had a heart attack.”
Westrate’s face fell. “That’s it?”
“That’s what I think,” Graver said.
“These two deaths are exactly what they appear to be?” His voice rose with incredulity.
“I’ve got to think so in the absence of any evidence that indicates otherwise.”
“But just the fact that they died so close together… that doesn’t make you suspicious?”
“As a matter of fact it does…” Graver said.
Westrate’s eyebrows lifted in anticipation.
“…but I think we’ve got to be careful, Jack. I think we’ve got to be suspicious of our suspicions. It would be too damn easy to read something into these events that the facts don’t support” He paused and looked at Westrate. “You ever heard of ‘Occam’s razor’?”
Westrate stared at him.
“William of Occam was a fourteenth-century English philosopher who stated a kind of commonsense principle regarding lines of inquiry into the truth of a situation. It was stated in Latin, but translated it means: ‘Plurality must not be posited without necessity.’ A modern rendering might be, ‘An explanation of the facts should be no more complicated than necessary,’ or ‘Among competing hypotheses, favor the simplest one.’ Occam’s razor advocated cutting away all the unnecessary considerations that can clutter up a line of inquiry and sticking to the simplest theory consistent with the facts.”
Westrate’s expression portrayed a disgruntled impatience.
“I’ve got a lot of data that tells me Tisler committed suicide,” Graver elaborated. “The simplest explanation is that he did. I’ve got a lot of data that tells me Ray Besom had a heart attack. The simplest explanation, consistent with the facts, is that he did. So, unless we obtain other facts, facts that are inconsistent with the explanation, then the weight of my suppositions will have to fall with the simplest explanation.”
“Give me a break, Graver,” Westrate snapped, his small nostrils flaring with agitation at Graver’s professorial anecdote. “I’ve got four divisions to manage here.”
That sounded like a non sequitur to Graver. He wasn’t sure what Westrate meant, but it was clear he was sweating pearls over this. If he had suspicions that something was terribly wrong in CID, he sure as hell wasn’t going to say so now. He was too sly for that If he did express such a belief and it turned out that Besom did indeed have a heart attack, Westrate would end up sounding like a conspiracy theorist and an alarmist-one of my men kills himself, another one has a heart attack, ergo the CID is riddled by spys and cabalists. No, Westrate wasn’t going to risk that with anyone, especially not with Graver. But he believed it.
Once again the pager on Graver’s belt vibrated. Without looking down he turned it off.
“Is there something you want me to do?”
“No,” Westrate said, getting up quickly.
“Does Hertig know this?”
“Goddamn right he knows it. I called him.”
“What was his reaction?”
“What do you mean-he goddamned couldn’t believe it Wants some answers… just like the rest of us,” he said pointedly. He waited a beat “It’s only a matter of hours before the media’s going to catch on to this. CID’s going to get some publicity. They’re going to call you spies, secret police, all those kinds of liberal shit buzz words.” He thrust his head forward. “Any suggestions?”
“Yeah,” Graver fired back. “You handle it. Put whatever spin you want on it.”
Westrate came to his feet and glared at Graver. Managing to get the best of his tongue, he stalked around behind his desk again. He fumbled in the debris there and found a cigar box, opened it, and took out a cigar. He jammed it in his mouth without lighting it and stood there, looking at Graver, mouthing the cigar, hands once again thrust deep into the pockets of his wrinkled trousers.
“Let’s put it this way, Graver,” he said, talking around the cigar. “You’d better get all over this situation like a sailor on a whore. If there’s something to these ‘coincidences,’ if there is, and you don’t snap to it until it’s too goddamned late…” He took the cigar out of his mouth and said calmly, “…I’m gonna be so far up your ass you’ll have to shit through your nose for the rest of your life.”
Ray Besom’s death was indeed a potential disaster for them, but Graver didn’t think you should try to damage-control a disaster by letting your brain explode. Westrate was going to have to get a grip on himself if he was going to handle the media intelligently. But Graver couldn’t do anything about that. He imagined Westrate and Chief Hertig’s public relations crew would convene early in the morning. They would start putting together something that would be palatable and would effectively cover up the panic. Then they were going to turn to Graver.
“Anything else?” Graver asked, standing.
Westrate jabbed the cigar into his mouth again and sat down in his chair. “No,” he said, and started pawing around in the mayhem of his desk.
Graver walked out into the semidarkness of the reception area and paused long enough beside a table lamp to look at his pager. The number was Paula’s. She was still at the office.