“Well, that’s what it looks like. That’s not official yet There was no note, not there with him, anyway.” Graver spent a few minutes telling Burtell how the evening had unfolded, all of it just as it had happened. When he stopped, Burtell looked up.
“What about Peggy?”
“She doesn’t know yet,” Graver said. He hesitated. “1 hate to ask you this, Dean, but I’d appreciate it if you’d break it to her.”
“Jesus Christ,” Burtell said. He reached down and picked up his handkerchief and tossed it on the table beside the glass. “Sure,” he said, sinking back on the sofa. “Sure, it’s fine. I don’t mind. It ought to be me. I know that” He looked at Graver. “Is that all there is to it? That’s all you know?”
“I’m afraid so.”
Burtell frowned incredulously, but when Graver didn’t elaborate Burtell’s eyes drifted away. “What in the hell did he think he was doing?”
“I was really hoping you could give me some insight into that,” Graver said.
Burtell’s eyes jerked back to Graver. He seemed taken aback.
“You probably knew him better than anyone,” Graver reminded him.
“Look, I don’t… I just…” He paused, then, doing what he did best, he collected his thoughts, organized his thinking. “Okay,” he said, raising his opened hands, palms out, a gesture of calming himself, starting over. “We weren’t that close, for Christ’s sake, Marcus…” He thought about it, staring past Graver, out to the blackness through the windows, shaking his head slowly.
“God, I don’t know… uh, at home,” he began. “I can’t imagine anything going on at home, between him and Peggy anyway, that was eating at him… enough… you know, for this. Honest to God, I don’t. Their marriage was… I don’t know,” he cleared his throat “It would seem boring I guess to some people. Art wasn’t… he didn’t play around. He didn’t hang out with a bunch of guys even. Peggy wasn’t a sports widow, anything like that. He went to work; he went home. They pretty well did everything together.
“They didn’t have any obvious troubles, serious ones anyway. Art was content with going to Peggy’s cat shows, helping her with that kind of shit That was actually their big ‘outside activity,’ her cat shows.”
He paused, his thoughts straying for a moment before he caught himself and shook his head. “I just don’t see anything there to kill yourself about. No lovers or crazy sex or frustrations.” He caught himself. “I mean… I never saw any evidence of that kind of stuff. All I’m saying is, Art and Peggy… you just never saw anything like that. Nothing extreme about either of them, nothing that was in danger of getting out of control.”
He laid his head back, twisted his neck in an effort to relieve the tension. He straightened up.
“What about their families,” Graver asked. “Any complications there? What about money? Debts?”
“Family worries,” Burtell said. “Art’s dad is dead, five or six years ago. His mom lives in Dallas, in a retirement community near his only sister. He’s never expressed any concern about any of them. I think Peggy’s parents live in Corpus Christi. I don’t really know anything about them.
“As for money problems, hell”-Burtell smiled thinly-”Art is ‘fiscally conservative.’ I doubt if he knew the definition of squander. He would have to be taught how to live beyond his means. One of the few people in the United States who operated on a cash basis. Really. I’d bet the only dime they owe is on their house…” He stopped. “In fact, Christ, I would have thought Tisler would be the last person in the world to kill himself, if for no other reason than it would cheat Peggy out of her insurance. He’s paid premiums for years… money down the tubes… that’s the way he’d see it He would have thought it was a damned stupid thing to do. I mean, it would have been the first item crossed off his list of options. He just wouldn’t have considered it… practical.”
“You think he didn’t kill himself?”
Burtell looked up. “No, that’s not what I meant at all. I’m not implying anything…” He stopped and stared at Graver, who remained silent “We’ve got to go into his investigations, is that it?”
“Regardless of what Homicide comes up with, we’re going to have to audit them for our own internal satisfaction,” Graver said. “We’ve got to make sure there’s no connection, you know that.”
Burtell swallowed and nodded. “Sure… I know.”
“Was he holding something?” Graver asked.
It was a legitimate question, and Burtell knew it. Intelligence investigators were no different from other people when it came to occasional judgment calls that crossed over the line. Though a proper intelligence organization used a voluminous paper-trail system to account for-and justify-its activities, and to” keep a firm rein on its investigators, there was no process that could anticipate acts of omission. For an infinite variety of reasons, there were occasions when investigators did not put everything they knew into the mountain of reports they were responsible for filing for each target they investigated. A good investigator had a side of him that was intensely private. He never told anyone everything he knew, not even his superiors who relied on his integrity. A good superior officer would know this, and he would know that there wasn’t anything he could do about it In this business secrets were the coin of the realm, and everyone had a few coins put away-just in case.
Ultimately, however, you had to believe the system would work because it was a system. You had to believe your investigators would not withhold information to the detriment of the operation or the Division, or to the detriment of the ideals inherent in the profession. In the end, as in all things, it came down to trust. It was an irony not lost on Graver. He knew from experience that the number of people any given intelligence officer would trust at any given time, inside or outside the business, would fall in the low single digits.
“Honest to God,” Burtell said. “You knew him well enough to know he didn’t have a loose tongue. If he was holding anything significant, he didn’t give me a clue about it. The Seldon operation was definitely on his mind. It was getting tougher, but I just can’t see how it would, even remotely, have a connection to something like this.”
“Jesus, Dean. You don’t think the combination of dumping toxic waste and drug trafficking held potential dangers?”
“Of course, but my point is that Art wasn’t that far into it yet He wasn’t near anything. You’ve seen his contact reports. He was just beginning with this informant. The guy had potential, but Art was having to work his ass off to develop it. But he didn’t know enough yet to get him killed.”
“That you know about.”
“Well, yeah,” Burtell conceded, “that I know about.”
“He wasn’t working on anything else that had the potential of turning nasty?”
Burtell shook his head and stared away toward the night beyond the windows. “The three other targets he was working…” His voice trailed off and again he seemed to let his thoughts drift on to something else. For a moment neither of them said anything. Then Burtell continued, his gaze still directed outside, “…with me, they were pretty much on idle.” He shifted his eyes back to Graver. “I don’t know,” he said. It was a statement of puzzlement, not ignorance.
Graver studied Burtell. He had expected him to be shocked, to be sobered, even stunned by the news of Tisler’s death, but he had no idea that Burtell would be affected like this, that he would be so… disturbed.
“Okay,” Graver said. He had heard enough. Maybe Burtell would have a new perspective on it in the morning. “Look, maybe I should go on over there and tell Peggy myself. Or I could go with you…”
“No, it’s all right,” Burtell said, shaking his head. “I really ought to. Ginny and I.” He looked over at his glass as if he expected there might be something there to drink. He looked at Graver.
“Tomorrow was supposed to be the first day of my vacation,” he said. “Guess I’ll hold up on that.”
Graver had forgotten. “Were you leaving town?”
“No, not the first week. Ginny couldn’t get away just now. But we were going away the second week.”
“Maybe we can clear this out in a couple of days.”
“What about Besom? He can’t be reached can he?”
“No, but I think he’s supposed to be back in the city late tomorrow, though he’s not scheduled to return to the office for another week.”
“This is going to be a stunner for him.”
“I’ll try to get him as soon as he’s back in town.”
“Westrate, what about him?”
“I haven’t talked to him,” Graver said.
“He’s going to shit.”
“Probably.”
