“What about Synar?”
“Absolutely nothing. Again, nowhere on the computers, everything the same as Sheck… no traffic violations, not registered to vote, all that,” Paula said. “I called her old roommate again. She said Colleen wasn’t from Houston, thought Los Angeles was her home. She remembered Colleen referring to a cousin in New York who was also a Synar. But there were no Synars with telephone numbers in either Los Angeles or New York.”
“You know what,” Neuman said, stepping over and picking up the contributor’s ID record sheet from Paula’s lap, “I’ve been thinking. That’s a bullshit name.” He held up the sheet and pointed to the small photograph of Colleen Synar in the lower right corner. “This is not Colleen Synar. No way. But I’ll tell you what you do. You drive over to that address right now and talk to that woman who said she was her roommate… What was her name?”
“Valerie… Heath,” Paula said, looking down at her notes.
“Yeah, you talk to Valerie Heath, and I’ll bet you a hundred bucks you’ll be talking to ‘Colleen Synar.’ I don’t know where they came up with that name-Synar-but that woman took a flyer when she gave you her ‘lead,’ the two biggest cities in the country. That was right off the top of her head. She probably thought there ought to be Synars in those cities if there were going to be any anywhere, and by the time we ran them all down she would have bought some time.”
Paula stared at him.
“In fact,” Neuman said,” we ought to run a computer check on her right now. My hunch is her stats are going to look like Sheck’s-bare bones.”
“I think you’d better do it,” Graver said to Paula.” If he’s right, if they used that name only for this one reason, then it’s a trip wire, and they’re already on to us. If they’re as finely tuned as we think, they’ll know we’ve found a loose thread and are pulling on it I don’t know if we could have done it a better way, but it’s too late now for us to go at this as if we were doing background checks on these two. We’ve got to go right to them. So run the computer check on Heath right now.”
“Casey,” he said, getting up and walking to the safe cabinet, “I want you to go down to the tech room and get three radios with secure frequencies.” He opened the safe and got a key and tossed it to Neuman.
He looked at the two of them, Paula now standing and looking apprehensive, quite a different expression on her face than when she was so hungry to pin Burtell to the wall with her research findings. Neuman, on the other hand, looked like he had been born to the task; he was ready to hunt.
“After you’ve run the computer check, the two of you go out to Heath’s place and talk to her.”
Paula looked at her watch. “It’s almost ten-thirty.”
“It’ll take you, what, thirty minutes to drive out there?”
Neuman nodded. “If we push it.”
“Then push it,” Graver said. “Keep in mind: unfortunately, except for Dean, she and Sheck are the only two people we know about who might give us access to the bigger picture here-if there is a bigger picture. Keep checking in with me. I don’t want to have to wonder where you are or what you’re doing.”
They walked out of his office without saying a word, and Graver went back to his desk and sat down. He stared at the cobblestone. Jesus Christ The single feeling that weighed most heavily on him now was one of urgency.
Graver was used to taking suspicions seriously, but everything that came to mind to explain what was, and had been, going on right under his nose seemed so radical that he doubted his own abilities to read the meager facts with any clarity.
Within a few minutes Neuman and Paula came by the office again and gave Graver one of the three handsets. Paula’s first pass through the computers had yielded exactly what Neuman had predicted. Nothing. Valerie Heath seemed to live a life as tenuously attached to society as did Bruce Sheck.
They coordinated the radio frequencies, and Graver followed them to the outside door, reset the security system behind them, and then returned to his office. He sat down at his desk and turned to his own computer. With a few clicks on the keys he brought up his internal report regarding Tisler’s death. Actually he was already through with it, but he wanted to read it over very carefully a few times before he turned it in for Westrate’s approval in the morning. When he was satisfied, he printed out the final document, put it in a departmental envelope, stamped it Confidential, and put it in the locked distribution drawer so that it would be hand-delivered to Westrate’s office first thing in the morning.
Returning to his desk, he picked up the telephone and dialed Burtell’s number. Graver waited as the telephone rang two, three, four times, nervously hoping he would be able to discern something informative from Burtell’s reaction to the news. On the fifth ring Ginette Burtell answered.
“Ginny, this is Graver,” he said.
“Oh, hello,” she said, and for some reason he was surprised at the animation in her voice. Before he could speak again she said, “Oh, if you’re wanting to speak to Dean, I’m afraid you’ve just missed him.”
“Yeah, I did need to talk to him.”
“I’m sorry, but he left not four or five minutes ago.”
“You don’t happen to know how I could get in touch with him, do you?”
“No, actually, I don’t even know where he was going.”
Graver was surprised by this. How often did this happen? She must have sensed his surprise.
“Uh, he got a telephone call… and… he said he had to go out for a while.”
Graver waited.
“I don’t always, uh, ask him where he’s going,” she said hesitantly.
“You have any idea when he’ll be back?”
“No, I really… Well, he said… a couple of hours,’ I think.”
He wanted to ask if she knew who had called, but if Burtell quizzed her, he didn’t want her to say that he had asked.
On the other end she was hesitating. “Uhhhhh… can I take a message, have him call you or something?”
“Sure, if you don’t mind asking him to call me when he gets in. Tell him it doesn’t matter how late.”
“Oh… okay, Marcus. Sure, I’ll see that he gets the message.”
“Listen, Ginny,” Graver said, “I appreciate you and Dean going over to Peggy Tisler’s. I know that wasn’t easy. I owe you.”
“It was something we would have wanted to do anyway,” she said. “I felt so sorry for her.”
They visited a few moments longer, and then Graver told her good night and hung up. For the fourth or fifth time that night, he hoped Arnette’s people were in place and prepared. He resisted the temptation to call her. He knew the curious little control room he had been in earlier that evening would be buzzing now. Their target was on the move.
Wearily he started cleaning off his desk and discovered among the paperwork a packet of faxed reports stapled together with a note from Lara. “These came in one right after the other (note times circled) between 5:00 and 6:15.” He must have shuffled the packet aside several times while he was putting together the Tisler report Lara even had attached a red translucent plastic “Alert” tag to the staple.
He picked up the packet and sat back in his chair. The reports were responses to his inquiries that morning about Victor Last.
Chapter 30
They picked him up the moment he left the house. Four cars, two with only drivers, two with drivers and a single passenger each. Three of the cars were Japanese models, and the fourth was American. Each car was light in color, none of them new, none older than five years. The cars were driven by Arnette Kepner’s own heterogeneous mix of specialists who, for purposes of their radio communications, were identified only by their first names.