been putting everything they knew on that He said that yesterday he had gone over to Art’s rent house after he left the office and transferred everything on the computer to the backup tape he’d brought home. He said he then scrambled what was on the computer using special software for that purpose. He said he could use the same software to unscramble it later if he needed to, but the way it was now it was reduced to nonsense.”
“Why didn’t he just erase it after he’d copied it?” Graver asked.
She shook her head. “I don’t know. He didn’t say.”
“Okay,” Graver said. “Go on.”’
She took another sip of water.
“He said that in a little while he was going to have to go out to another meeting. He said that he was reasonably sure now that you weren’t involved in this thing, and that if anything should happen to him that I should give you the backup tapes.”
She stopped and drank some more water, using this to fight back the welling urge to break down again. It was killing Graver to see her going through this and to have to keep her at it until she had told him all she could. He felt cruel and, for some inexplicable reason, hypocritical.
“I just couldn’t believe he had said that. I went crazy. He promised me… promised me that there was nothing to be worried about. He said the only reason he said that was… it was just the same as having life insurance. Nobody expects to be killed in a car wreck, but you make arrangements just the same. I didn’t buy that,” she said, shaking her head. “We went on talking for quite a while. But eventually he had to go. He said he wouldn’t be late. That was around ten-thirty.”
She started breathing heavily, fighting the tears. “And then I was watching television… and they broke in…”
“Ginette,” Graver said, wanting to stop her before she began crying again. “Ginette, do you have the tape?”
But she was already sobbing. Still, she managed to point to her purse which was sitting under the coffee table in front of them. Graver reached down and picked it up, reached inside, felt around, found the tape, and held it up.
“Is this it, Ginny?”
She nodded, sobbing.
Graver patted her on the leg and got up and walked over to the telephone on his desk. He dialed Arnette’s number. When she answered, he quickly explained what he had. She was incredulous.
“You have the tape?” she asked.
“I’m holding it.”
“Can you get it over here now?”
“I can’t come. I’ve got an answering machine full of messages that can’t wait any longer. If it’s okay with you I’m going to send Paula.”
“Get her over here.”
“What about the microfiche?”
“We’ve got the first few pages. So far it’s a detailed record of how Faeber’s collection system is set up. It’s big, baby. They’re buying information you wouldn’t believe. We’ve got names, dates, places, codes. This is Kalatis’s work. It’s highly organized into cells. Compartmentalized. Backstops everywhere. From the looks of this Colin Faeber’s computers are full of some heavy stuff. And there’s CID information in there too. It’s a massive operation.”
“I’m sending her over,” Graver said.
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.”
