Dark Rivers of the Heart

Roy wanted to tell him that the most dangerous people of all — and evidently the most dangerous dogs as well — were those who had been beaten down the hardest. When even their pride and hope had been taken from them, when they were driven into the last of all corners, then they had nothing to lose. To avoid producing such desperate men, applying compassion to the suffering as early as possible was the right thing to do for them, the moral thing to do — but also the wisest thing to do. He couldn’t tell the artist any of that, however, because in addition to being paralyzed, he found that he couldn’t speak either.

* * *

“Rocky, no! Off! Rocky, off!”

Spencer pulled the dog by the collar and struggled with him until at last Rocky obeyed.

The artist was sitting on the floor. His legs were drawn up defensively. His arms crossed over his face, and he was bleeding from his hands.

Ellie had picked up the Uzi. Spencer took it from her.

He saw that her left ear was bleeding. “You’ve been hit again.”

“Ricochet. Grazed,” she said, and this time she could have met the dog’s eyes forthrightly.

Spencer looked down at the thing that was his father.

The murderous bastard had lowered his arms from his face. He was infuriatingly calm. “They’ve got men posted from one end of the property to the other. Nobody here in the building, but once you step outside, you won’t get far. You can’t get away, Mikey.”

Ellie said, “They won’t have heard the gunfire. Not if no one above-ground ever heard the screams from this place. We still have a chance.”

The wife-killer shook his head. “Not unless you take me and the amazing Mr. Miro here.”

“He’s dead,” Ellie said.

“Doesn’t matter. He’s more useful dead. Never know what a man like him might do, so I’d be edgy if we had to carry him out of here while he was alive. We take him between us, baby boy, you and me. They’ll see he’s hurt, but they won’t know how badly. Maybe they value him highly enough to hold back.”

“I don’t want your help,” Spencer said.

“Of course you don’t, but you need it,” his father said. “They won’t have moved your truck. Their instructions were to stay back, at a distance, just maintain surveillance, until they heard from Roy. So we can move him to the truck, between us, and they won’t be sure what’s going on.” He rose painfully to his feet.

Spencer backed away from him, as he would have backed away from something that had appeared in a chalk pentagram in response to the summons of a sorcerer. Rocky retreated as well, growling.

Ellie was in the doorway, leaning against the jamb. She was out of the way, reasonably safe.

Spencer had the dog — what a dog! — and he had the gun. His father had no weapon, and he was hampered by his bitten hands. Yet Spencer was as afraid of him as he had ever been on that July night or since.

“Do we need him?” he asked Ellie.

“Hell, no.”

“You’re sure whatever you were doing with the computer, it’s going to work?”

“More sure of that than we could ever be sure of him.”

To his father, Spencer said, “What happens to you if I leave you to them?”

The artist examined his bitten hands with interest, studying the punctures not as though concerned about the damage but as though inspecting a flower or another beautiful object that he had never seen before. “What happens to me, Mikey? You mean when I go back to prison? I do a little reading to pass the time. I still paint some — did you know? I think I’ll paint a portrait of your little bitch there in the doorway, as I imagine she’d look with no clothes, and as I know she’d look if I’d ever had the chance to put her on a table here and make her realize her true potential. I see that disgusts you, baby boy. But really, it’s such a small pleasure to allow me, considering she’ll never have been more beautiful than on my canvas. My way of sharing in her with you.” He sighed and looked up from his hands, as if unperturbed by the pain. “What happens if you leave me to them, Mikey? You’ll be condemning me to a life that’s a waste of my talent and joie de vivre, a barren and tiny existence behind gray walls. That’s what happens to me, you ungrateful little snot.”

“You said they were worse than you.”

“Well, I know what I am.”

“What’s that mean?”

“Self-awareness is a virtue in which they’re lacking.”

“They let you out.”

“Temporarily. A consultation.”

“They’ll let you out again, won’t they?”

“Let’s hope it doesn’t take another sixteen years.” He smiled, as if his bleeding hands had suffered only paper cuts. “But, yes, we’re in an age that’s giving birth to a new breed of fascists, and I would hope that from time to time they might find my expertise useful to them.”

“You’re figuring you won’t even go back,” Spencer said. “You think you’ll get away from them tonight, don’t you?”

“Too many of them, Mikey. Big men with big guns in shoulder holsters. Big black Chrysler limousines. Helicopters whenever they want them. No, no, I’ll probably have to bide my time until another consultation.”

“Lying, mother-killing sonofabitch,” Spencer said.

“Oh, don’t try to frighten me,” his father said. “I remember sixteen years ago, this room. You were a little pussy then, Mikey, and you’re a little pussy now. That’s some scar you’ve got there, baby boy. How long did you have to recuperate before you could eat solid foods?”

“I saw you beat her to the ground by the swimming pool.”

“If confession makes you feel good, go right ahead.”

“I was in the kitchen for cookies, heard her scream.”

“Did you get your cookies?”

“When she was down, you kicked her in the head.”

“Don’t be tedious, Mikey. You were never the son I might have wished to have, but you were never tedious before.”

The man was unshakably calm, self-possessed. He had an aura of power that was daunting — but no look of madness whatsoever in his eyes. He could preach a sermon and be thought a priest. He claimed that he wasn’t mad, but evil.

Spencer wondered if that could be true.

“Mikey, you really owe me, you know. Without me, you wouldn’t exist. No matter what you think of me, I am your father.”

“Without you, I wouldn’t exist. Yeah. And that would be okay. That would be fine. But without my mother — I might have been exactly like you. It’s her I owe. Only her. She’s the one who gave me whatever salvation I can ever have.”

“Mikey, Mikey, you simply can’t make me feel guilty. You want me to put on a big sad face? Okay, I’ll put on a big sad face. But your mother was nothing to me. Nothing but useful cover for a while, a helpful deceit with nice knockers. But she was too curious. And when I had to bring her down here, she was just like all the others — although less exciting than most.”

“Well, just the same,” Spencer said, “this is for her.” He fired a short burst from the Uzi, blowing his father to Hell.

There were no ricochets to worry about. Every bullet found its mark, and the dead man carried them down to the floor with him, in a pool of the darkest blood that Spencer had ever seen.

Rocky leaped in surprise at the gunfire, then cocked his head and studied Steven Ackblom. He sniffed him as if the scent was far different from any he had encountered before. As Spencer stared down at his dead father, he was aware of Rocky gazing up curiously at him. Then the dog joined Ellie at the door.

When at last he went to the door too, Spencer was afraid to look at Ellie.

“I wondered if you would actually be able to do it,” she said. “If you hadn’t, I’d have had to, and the recoil would have hurt like hell with this arm.”

He met her eyes. She wasn’t trying to make him feel better about what he had done. She had meant what she’d said.