Dark Rivers of the Heart

even more confused. “So you’re saying what — that he called someone on his cellular and she came right out to get him?”

Tavelov was not rattled by Roy’s sarcasm. “Could’ve been some desert rat, likes living out where there aren’t phones, electricity. There are some. Though none I know about for twenty miles. Or it could’ve been an off- roader, just having himself some fun.”

“In a storm.”

“Storm was over. Anyway, the world’s full of fools.”

“And whoever it is just happens to stumble across the Explorer. In this whole vast desert.”

Tavelov shrugged. “We found the truck. It’s your job, making sense of it.”

Walking back to the entrance of the rock-walled sluiceway, staring at the far riverbank, Roy said, “Whoever she was, she drove into the arroyo from the south, then also drove out to the south. Can we follow those tire tracks?”

“Yep, you can — pretty clear for maybe four hundred yards, then spotty for another two hundred. Then they vanish. The wind wiped ’em out in some places. Other places, ground’s too hard to take tracks.”

“Well, let’s search farther out, see if the tracks reappear.”

“Already tried. While we were waiting.”

Tavelov gave an edge to the word “waiting.”

Roy said, “My damn pager was broken, and I didn’t know it.”

“By foot and chopper, we pretty much had a good look-around in every direction to the south bank of the wash. Went three miles east, three south, three west.”

“Well,” Roy said, “extend the search. Go out six miles and see if you can pick up the trail again.”

“Just going to be a waste of time.”

Roy thought of Eve as she had been last night, and that memory gave him the strength to remain calm, to smile, and to say, with characteristic pleasantness, “Probably is a waste of time, probably is. But I guess we’ve got to try anyway.”

“Wind’s picking up.”

“Maybe it is.”

“Definitely picking up. Going to erase everything.”

Perfection on black rubber.

Roy said, “Then let’s try to stay ahead of it. Bring in more men, another chopper, push out ten miles in each direction.”

* * *

Spencer was not awake. But he wasn’t asleep, either. He was taking a drunkard’s walk along the thin line between.

He heard himself mumbling. He couldn’t make much sense of what he was saying. Yet he was ever in the grip of a feverish urgency, certain there was something important that he must tell someone — although what that vital information was, and to whom he must impart it, eluded him.

Occasionally he opened his eyes. Blurry vision. He blinked. Squinted. Couldn’t see well enough to be sure even if it was daytime or if the light came from the Coleman lantern.

Always, Valerie was there. Close enough for him to know, even with his vision so poor, that it was her. Sometimes she was wiping his face with a damp cloth, sometimes changing a cool compress on his forehead. Sometimes she was just watching, and he sensed that she was worried, though he couldn’t clearly see her expression.

Once, when he swam up from his personal darkness and stared out through the distorting pools that shimmered in his eye sockets, Valerie was turned half away from him, busy at a hidden task. Behind him, farther back under the camouflage tarp, the Rover’s engine was idling. He heard another familiar sound: the soft but unmistakable tick-tickety-tick of well-practiced fingers flying over a computer keyboard. Odd.

From time to time, she talked to him. Those were the moments when he was best able to focus his mind and to mumble something that was halfway comprehensible, though he still faded in and out.

Once he faded in to hear himself asking, “…how’d you find me…out here…way out here…between nothing and nowhere?”

“Bug on your Explorer.”

“Cockroach?”

“The other kind of bug.”

“Spider?”

“Electronic.”

“Bug on my truck?”

“That’s right. I put it there.”

“Like…you mean…a transmitter thing?” he asked fuzzily.

“Just like a transmitter thing.”

“Why?”

“Because you followed me home.”

“When?”

“Tuesday night. No point denying it.”

“Oh, yeah. Night we met.”

“You make it sound almost romantic.”

“Was for me.”

Valerie was silent. Finally she said, “You’re not kidding, are you?”

“Liked you right off.”

After another silence, she said, “You come to The Red Door, chat me up, seem like just a nice customer, then you follow me home.”

The full meaning of her revelations was sinking in gradually, and a slow-dawning amazement was overtaking him. “You knew?”

“You were good. But if I couldn’t spot a tail, I’d have been dead a long time ago.”

“The bug. How?”

“How did I plant it? Went out the back door while you were sitting across the street in your truck. Hot-wired somebody’s car a block or so away, drove to my street, parked up the block from you, waited till you left, then followed you.”

“Followed me?”

“What’s good for the goose.”

“Followed me…Malibu?”

“Followed you Malibu.”

“And I never saw.”

“Well, you weren’t expecting to be followed.”

“Jesus.”

“I climbed your gate, waited till all the lights were out in your cabin.”

“Jesus.”

“Fixed the transmitter to the undercarriage of your truck, wired it to work off the battery.”

“You just happened to have a transmitter.”

“You’d be surprised what I just happen to have.”

“Maybe not anymore.”

Although Spencer didn’t want to leave her, Valerie grew blurrier and faded into shadows. He drifted into his inner darkness once more.

Later he must have swum up again, because she was shimmering in front of him. He heard himself say, “Bug on my truck,” with amazement.

“I had to know who you were, why you were following me. I knew you weren’t one of them.”

He said weakly, “Cockroach’s people.”