Dark Rivers of the Heart

death to realize at once that I would never see my mother again, and the chill of that March day had been the most penetrating cold that I’d ever known.

Now I stand on the moonlit lawn, wondering why my thoughts leap repeatedly to my lost mother, why the eerie cry that I heard when I leaned out my bedroom window strikes me as both infinitely strange and familiar, why I fear for my mother even though she’s dead, and why I fear so intensely for my own life when the summer night holds no immediate threat that I can see.

I begin to move again, toward the barn, which has become the focus of my attention, though initially I had thought that the cry had come from some animal out in the fields or in the lower hills. My shadow floats ahead of me, so that no step I take is on the carpet of moonlight but, instead, into a darkness of my own making.

Instead of going directly to the huge main doors in the south wall of the barn, in which a smaller, man-size door is inset, I obey instinct and head toward the southeast corner, crossing the macadam driveway that leads past the house and garage. In grass again, I round the corner of the barn and follow the east wall, stealthy in my bare feet, treading on the cushion of my moonshadow all the way to the northeast corner.

There I halt, because a vehicle I’ve never seen before is parked behind the barn: a customized Chevy van that no doubt isn’t charcoal, as it appears to be, for the moonlight alchemizes every color into silver or gray. Painted on the side is a rainbow, which also seems to be in shades of gray. The rear door stands open.

The silence is deep.

No one is in sight.

Even at the impressionable age of fourteen, with a childhood of Halloweens and nightmares behind me, I’ve never known strangeness and terror to be more seductive, and I can’t resist their perverse allure. I take one step toward the van, and—

— something slices the air close overhead with a whoosh and a flutter, startling me. I stumble, fall, roll, and look up in time to see enormous white wings spread above me. A shadow sweeps over the moonlit grass, and I have the crazy notion that my mother, in some angelic form, has swooped down from Heaven to warn me away from the van. Then the celestial presence arcs higher into the darkness, and I see that it’s only a great white owl, with a wingspan of five feet, sailing the summer night in search of field mice or other prey.

The owl vanishes.

The night remains.

I rise to my feet.

I creep toward the van, powerfully drawn by the mystery of it, by the promise of adventure. And by a terrible truth, which I don’t yet know that I know.

The sound of the owl’s wings, though so recent and frightening, doesn’t remain with me. But that pitiful cry, heard at the open window, echoes unrelentingly in my memory. Perhaps I’m beginning to acknowledge that it wasn’t the plaint of any wild animal meeting its end in the fields and forests, but the wretched and desperate plea of a human being in the grip of extreme terror….

In the Explorer, speeding across the moonlit Mojave, wingless but now as wise as any owl, Spencer followed insistent memory all the way into the heart of darkness, to the flash of steel from out of shadows, to the sudden pain and the scent of hot blood, to the wound that would become his scar, forcing himself toward the ultimate revelation that always eluded him.

It eluded him again.

He could recall nothing of what happened in the final moments of that hellish, long-ago encounter, after he pulled the trigger of the revolver and returned to the slaughterhouse. The police had told him how it must have ended. He had read accounts of what he’d done, by writers who based their articles and books upon the evidence. But none of them had been there. They couldn’t know the truth beyond a doubt. Only he had been there. Up to a point, his memories were so vivid as to be profoundly tormenting, but memory ended at a black hole of amnesia; after sixteen years, he’d still not been able to focus even one beam of light into that darkness.

If he ever recalled the rest, he might earn lasting peace. Or remembrance might destroy him. In that black tunnel of amnesia, he might find a shame with which he could not live, and the memory might be less desirable than a self-administered bullet to the brain.

Nevertheless, by periodically unburdening himself of everything that he did remember, he always found temporary relief from anguish. He found it again in the Mojave Desert, at fifty-five miles an hour.

When Spencer glanced at Rocky, he saw that the dog was curled on the other seat, dozing. The mutt’s position seemed awkward, if not precarious, with his tail dangling down into the leg space under the dashboard, but he was evidently comfortable.

Spencer supposed that the rhythms of his speech and the tone of his voice, after countless repetitions of his story over the years, had become soporific whenever he turned to that subject. The poor dog couldn’t have stayed awake even if they’d been in a thunderstorm.

Or perhaps, for some time, he had not actually been talking aloud. Perhaps his soliloquy had early faded to a whisper and then into silence while he continued to speak only with an inner voice. The identity of his confessor didn’t matter — a dog was as acceptable as a stranger in a barroom — so it followed that it was not important to him if his confessor listened. Having a willing listener was merely an excuse to talk himself through it once more, in search of temporary absolution or — if he could shine a light into that final darkness — a permanent peace of one kind or another.

He was fifty miles from Vegas.

Windblown tumbleweeds as big as wheelbarrows rolled across the highway, through his headlight beams, from nowhere to nowhere.

The clear, dry desert air did little to inhibit his view of the universe. Millions of stars blazed from horizon to horizon, beautiful but cold, alluring but unreachable, shedding surprisingly little light on the alkaline plains that flanked the highway — and, for all their grandeur, revealing nothing.

* * *

When Roy Miro woke in his Westwood hotel room, the digital clock on the nightstand read 4:19. He had slept less than five hours, but he felt rested, so he switched on the lamp.

He threw back the covers, sat on the edge of the bed in his pajamas, squinted as his eyes adjusted to the brightness — then smiled at the Tupperware container that stood beside the clock. The plastic was translucent, so he could see only a vague shape within.

He put the container on his lap and removed the lid. Guinevere’s hand. He felt blessed to possess an object of such great beauty.

How sad, however, that its ravishing splendor wouldn’t last much longer. In twenty-four hours, if not sooner, the hand would have deteriorated visibly. Its comeliness would be but a memory.

Already it had undergone a color change. Fortunately, a certain chalkiness only emphasized the exquisite bone structure in the long, elegantly tapered fingers.

Reluctantly, Roy replaced the lid, made sure the seal was tight, and put the container aside.

He went into the living room of the two-room suite. His attache case computer and cellular phone were already connected, plugged in, and arranged on a luncheon table by a large window.

Soon he was in touch with Mama. He requested the results of the investigation that he’d asked her to undertake the previous evening, when he and his men had discovered that the DMV address for Spencer Grant was an uninhabited oil field.

He had been so furious then.

He was calm now. Cool. In control.

Reading Mama’s report from the screen, tapping the PAGE DOWN key each time he wanted to continue, Roy quickly saw that the search for Spencer Grant’s true address hadn’t been easy.

During Grant’s months with the California Multi-Agency Task Force on Computer Crime, he’d learned a lot about the nationwide Infonet and the vulnerabilities of the thousands of computer systems it comprised. Evidently, he had acquired codes-and-procedures books and master programming atlases for the computer systems of various