Dark Rivers of the Heart (34 page)

“I’ll get you a drink in just a minute,” she said, putting two fingers under his chin and tipping his head up again.

All this head tipping was making him dangerously dizzy, but he managed to say, “Not dreaming? You’re sure?”

“Positive.” She touched his upturned right palm. “Can you squeeze my hand?”

“Yes.”

“Go ahead.”

“All right.”

“I mean now.”

“Oh.” He closed his hand around hers.

“That’s not bad,” she said.

“It’s nice.”

“A good grip. Probably no spinal damage. I expected the worst.”

She had a warm, strong hand. He said, “Nice.”

He closed his eyes. An inner darkness leaped at him. He opened his eyes at once, before he could fall back into the dream.

“You can let go of my hand now,” she said.

“Not a dream, huh?”

“No dream.”

She clicked on the penlight again and directed it down between his seat and the center console.

“This is really strange,” he said.

She was peering along the narrow shaft of light.

“Not dreaming,” he said, “must be hallucinating.”

She popped the release button that disengaged the buckle on his safety harness from the latch between his seat and the console.

“It’s okay,” he said.

“What’s okay?” she asked, switching off the light and returning it to her jacket pocket.

“That you peed on the seat.”

She laughed.

“I like to hear you laugh.”

She was still laughing as she carefully extricated him from the harness.

“You’ve never laughed before,” he said.

“Well,” she said, “not much recently.”

“Not ever before. You’ve never barked either.”

She laughed again.

“I’m going to get you a new rawhide bone.”

“You’re very kind.”

He said, “This is damned interesting.”

“That’s for sure.”

“It’s so real.”

“Seems
unreal
to me.”

Even though Spencer remained mostly passive through the process, getting out of the harness left him so dizzy that he saw three of the woman and three of every shadow in the car, like superimposed images on a photograph.

Afraid that he would pass out before he had a chance to express himself, he spoke in a raspy rush of words: “You’re a real friend, pal, you really are, you’re a perfect friend.”

“We’ll see if that’s how it turns out.”

“You’re the only friend I have.”

“Okay, my friend, now we’ve come to the hard part. How the hell am I going to get you out of this junker when you can’t help yourself at all?”

“I can help myself.”

“You think you can?”

“I was an Army Ranger once. And a cop.”

“Yes, I know.”

“I’ve been trained in tae kwon do.”

“That would really be handy if we were under assault by a bunch of ninja assassins. But can you help me get you out of here?”

“A little.”

“I guess we’ve got to give it a try.”

“Okay.”

“Can you lift your legs out of there, swing them to me?”

“Don’t want to disturb the rat.”

“There’s a rat?”

“He’s dead already but…you know.”

“Of course.”

“I’m very dizzy.”

“Then let’s wait a minute, rest a minute.”

“Very, very dizzy.”

“Just take it easy.”

“Goodbye,” he said, and surrendered to a black vortex that spun him around and away. For some reason, as he went, he thought of Dorothy and Toto and Oz.

The back door of the barn opens into a short hallway. I step inside. No lights. No windows. The green glow from the security-system readout
—
NOT READY TO ARM
—
in the right-hand wall provides just enough light for me to see that I am alone in the corridor. I don’t ease the door all the way shut behind me but leave it ajar, as I found it.

The floor appears to be black beneath me, but I’m on polished pine. To the left are a bathroom and a room where art supplies are stored. Those doorways are barely discernible in the faint green wash, which is like the unearthly illumination in a dream, less like real light than like a lingering memory of neon. To the right is a file room. Ahead, at the end of the hallway, is the door to the large first-floor gallery, where a switchback staircase leads to my father’s studio. That upper chamber occupies the entire second floor and features the big north-facing windows under which the van is parked outside.

I listen to the hallway darkness.

It doesn’t speak or breathe.

The light switch is to the right, but I leave it untouched.

In the green-black gloom, I ease the bathroom door all the way open. Step inside. Wait for a sound, a sense of movement, a blow. Nothing.

The supply room is also deserted.

I move to the right side of the hall and quietly open the door to the file room. I step across the threshold.

The overhead fluorescent tubes are dark, but there is other light where no light should be. Yellow and sour. Dim and strange. From a mysterious source at the far end of the room.

A long worktable occupies the center of that rectangular space. Two chairs. File cabinets stand against one of the long walls.

My heart is knocking so hard it shakes my arms. I make fists of my hands and hold them at my sides, struggling to control myself.

I decide to return to the house, to bed, to sleep.

Then I’m at the far end of the file room, though I don’t recall having taken a single step in that direction. I seem to have walked those twenty feet in a sudden spell of sleep. Called forward by something, someone. As if responding to a powerful hypnotic command. To a wordless, silent summons.

I am standing in front of a knotty-pine cabinet that extends from floor to ceiling and from corner to corner of the thirteen-foot-wide room. The cabinet features three pairs of tall, narrow doors.

The center pair stand open.

Behind those doors, there should be nothing but shelves. On the shelves should be boxes of old tax records, correspondence, and dead files no longer kept in the metal cabinets along the other wall.

This night, the shelves and their contents, along with the back wall of the pine cabinet, have been pushed backward four or five feet into a secret space behind the file room, into a hidden chamber I’ve never seen before. The sour yellow light comes from a place beyond the closet.

Before me is the essence of all boyish fantasies: the secret passage to a world of danger and adventure, to far stars, to stars farther still, to the very center of the earth, to lands of trolls or pirates or intelligent apes or robots, to the distant future or to the age of dinosaurs. Here is a stairway to mystery, a tunnel through which I might set out upon heroic quests, or a way station on a strange highway to dimensions unknown.

Briefly, I thrill to the thought of what exotic travels and magical discoveries might lay ahead. But instinct quickly tells me that on the far side of this secret passage, there is something stranger and deadlier than an alien world or a Morlock dungeon. I want to return to the house, to my bedroom, to the protection of my sheets, immediately, as fast as I can run. The perverse allure of terror and the unknown deserts me, and I’m suddenly eager to leave this waking dream for the less threatening lands to be found on the dark side of sleep.

Although I can’t recall crossing the threshold, I find myself inside the tall cabinet instead of hurrying to the house, through the night, the moonlight, and the owl shadows. I blink, and then I find that I’ve gone farther still, not back one step but forward into the secret space beyond.

It’s a vestibule of sorts, six feet by six feet. Concrete floor. Concrete-block walls. Bare yellow bulb in a ceiling socket.

A cursory investigation reveals that the back wall of the pine cabinet, complete with the attached and laden shelves, is fitted with small concealed wheels. It’s been shoved inward on a pair of sliding-door tracks.

To the right is a door out of the vestibule. An ordinary door in many ways. Heavy, judging by the look of it. Solid wood. Brass hardware. It’s painted white, and in places the paint is yellowed with age. However, though it’s more white and grimy yellow than it is anything else, tonight this is neither a white nor a yellow door. A series of bloody handprints arcs from the area around the brass knob across the upper portion of the door, and their bright patterns render the color of the background unimportant. Eight, ten, twelve, or more impressions of a woman’s hands. Palms and spread fingers. Each hand partially overlapping the one before it. Some smeared, some as clear as police-file prints. All glistening, wet. All fresh. Those scarlet images bring to mind the spread wings of a bird leaping into flight, fleeing to the sky, in a flutter of fear. Staring at them, I am mesmerized, unable to get my breath, my heart storming, because the handprints convey an unbearable sense of the woman’s terror, desperation, and frantic resistance to the prospect of being forced beyond the gray concrete vestibule of this secret world.

I can’t go forward. Can’t. Won’t. I’m just a boy, barefoot, unarmed, afraid, not ready for the truth.

I don’t remember moving my right hand, but now it’s on the brass knob. I open the red door.

PART TWO

To the Source of the Flow

On the road that I have taken,

one day, walking, I awaken,

amazed to see where I have come,

where I’m going, where I’m from.

This is not the path I thought.

This is not the place I sought.

This is not the dream I bought,

just a fever of fate I’ve caught.

I’ll change highways in a while,

at the crossroads, one more mile.

My path is lit by my own fire.

I’m going only where I desire.

On the road that I have taken,

one day, walking, I awaken.

One day, walking, I awaken,

on the road that I have taken.

—The Book of Counted Sorrows

ELEVEN

Friday afternoon, after discussing Spencer Grant’s scar with Dr. Mondello, Roy Miro left Los Angeles International aboard an agency Learjet, with a glass of properly chilled Robert Mondavi chardonnay in one hand and a bowl of shelled pistachios in his lap. He was the only passenger, and he expected to be in Las Vegas in an hour.

A few minutes short of his destination, his flight was diverted to Flagstaff, Arizona. Flash floods, spawned by the worst storm to batter Nevada in a decade, had inundated lower areas of Las Vegas. Also, lightning had damaged vital electronic systems at the airport, McCarran International, forcing a suspension of service.

By the time the jet was on the ground in Flagstaff, the official word was that McCarran would resume operations in two hours or less. Roy remained aboard, so he would not waste precious minutes returning from the terminal when the pilot learned that McCarran was up and running again.

He passed the time, at first, by linking to Mama in Virginia and using her extensive data-bank connections to teach a lesson to Captain Harris Descoteaux, the Los Angeles police officer who had irritated him earlier in the day. Descoteaux had too little respect for higher authority. Soon, however, in addition to a Caribbean lilt, his voice would have a new note of humility.

Later, Roy watched a PBS documentary on one of three television sets that served the passenger compartment of the Lear. The program was about Dr. Jack Kevorkian—dubbed Dr. Death by the media—who had made it his mission in life to assist the terminally ill when they expressed a desire to commit suicide, though he was persecuted by the law for doing so.

Roy was enthralled by the documentary. More than once, he was moved to tears. By the middle of the program, he was compelled to lean forward from his chair and place one hand flat on the screen each time Jack Kevorkian appeared in closeup. With his palm against the blessed image of the doctor’s face, Roy could
feel
the purity of the man, a saintly aura, a thrill of spiritual power.

In a fair world, in a society based on true justice, Kevorkian would have been left to do his work in peace. Roy was depressed to hear about the man’s suffering at the hands of regressive forces.

He took solace, however, from the knowledge that the day was swiftly approaching when a man like Kevorkian would never again be treated as a pariah. He would be embraced by a grateful nation and provided with an office, facilities, and salary commensurate with his contribution to a better world.

The world was so full of suffering and injustice that
anyone
who wanted to be assisted in suicide, terminally ill or not, should have that assistance. Roy passionately believed that even those who were chronically but not terminally ill, including many of the elderly, should be granted eternal rest if they wished to have it.

Those who didn’t see the wisdom of self-elimination should not be abandoned, either. They should be given free counseling, until they could perceive the immeasurable beauty of the gift that they were being offered.

Hand on the screen. Kevorkian in closeup.
Feel
the power.

The day would come when the disabled would suffer no more pain or indignities. No more wheelchairs or leg braces. No more Seeing Eye dogs. No more hearing aids, prosthetic limbs, no more grueling sessions with speech therapists. Only the peace of endless sleep.

Dr. Jack Kevorkian’s face filled the screen. Smiling. Oh, that smile.

Roy put
both
hands to the warm glass. He opened his heart and permitted that fabulous smile to flow into him. He unchained his soul and allowed Kevorkian’s spiritual power to lift him up.

Eventually the science of genetic engineering would ensure that none but healthy children were born, and eventually they would all be beautiful, as well as strong and sound. They would be
perfect.
Until that day came, however, Roy saw a need for an assisted-suicide program for infants born with less than the full use of their five senses and all four limbs. He was even ahead of Kevorkian on this.

In fact, when his hard work with the agency was done, when the country had the compassionate government that it deserved and was on the threshold of Utopia, he would like to spend the rest of his life serving in a suicide-assistance program for infants. He could not imagine anything more rewarding than holding a defective baby in his arms while a lethal injection was administered, comforting the child as it passed from imperfect flesh to a transcendent spiritual plane.

His heart swelled with love for those less fortunate than he. The halt and blind. The maimed and the ill and the elderly and the depressed and the learning impaired.

After two hours on the ground in Flagstaff, by the time McCarran reopened and the Learjet departed for a second try at Las Vegas, the documentary had ended. Kevorkian’s smile was no longer to be seen. Nevertheless, Roy remained in a state of rapture that he was sure would last for at least several days.

The power was now in him. He would experience no more failure, no more setbacks.

In flight, he received a telephone call from the agent seeking Ethel and George Porth, the grandparents who had raised Spencer Grant after the death of his mother. According to county property records, the Porths had once owned the house at the San Francisco address in Grant’s military records, but they had sold it ten years ago. The buyers had resold it seven years thereafter, and the new owners, in residence just three years, had never heard of the Porths and had no clue as to their whereabouts. The agent was continuing the search.

Roy had every confidence that they would find the Porths. The tide had turned in their favor.
Feel
the power.

By the time the Learjet landed in Las Vegas, night had fallen. Although the sky was overcast, the rain had stopped.

Roy was met at the debarkation gate by a driver who looked like a Spam loaf in a suit. He said only that his name was Prock and that the car was in front of the terminal. Glowering, he stalked away, expecting to be followed, clearly uninterested in small talk, as rude as the most arrogant maître d’ in New York City.

Roy decided to be amused rather than insulted.

The nondescript Chevrolet was parked illegally in the loading zone. Although Prock seemed bigger than the car that he was driving, somehow he fit inside.

The air was chilly, but Roy found it invigorating.

Because Prock kept the heater turned up high, the interior of the Chevy was stuffy, but Roy chose to think of it as cozy.

He was in a brilliant mood.

They went downtown with illegal haste.

Though Prock stayed on secondary streets and kept away from the busy hotels and casinos, the glare of those neon-lined avenues was reflected on the bellies of the low clouds. The red-orange-green-yellow sky might have seemed like a vision of Hell to a gambler who had just lost next week’s grocery money, but Roy found it festive.

After delivering Roy to the agency’s downtown headquarters, Prock drove off to deliver his baggage to the hotel for him.

On the fifth floor of the high rise, Bobby Dubois was waiting. Dubois, the evening duty officer, was a tall, lanky Texan with mud-brown eyes and hair the color of range dust, on whom clothes hung like thrift-shop castaways on a stick-and-straw scarecrow. Although big-boned, rough-hewn, with a mottled complexion, with jug-handle ears, with teeth as crooked as the tombstones in a cow-town cemetery, with not a single feature that even the kindest critic could deem perfect, Dubois had a good-old-boy charm and an easy manner that distracted attention from the fact he was a biological tragedy.

Sometimes Roy was surprised that he could be around Dubois for long periods, yet resist the urge to commit a mercy killing.

“That boy, he’s some cute sonofabitch, the way he drove out of that roadblock and into the amusement park,” Dubois said as he led Roy down the hall from his office to the satellite-surveillance room. “And that dog of his, just bobbin’ its head up and down, up and down, like one of them spring-necked novelties that people put on the rear-window shelves in their cars. That dog, he got palsy or what?”

“I don’t know,” Roy said.

“My granpap, he once had a dog with palsy. Name was Scooter, but we called him Boomer ’cause he could cut the godawfulest loud farts. I’m talkin’ about the dog, you understand, not my granpap.”

“Of course,” Roy said as they reached the door at the end of the hall.

“Boomer got palsied his last year,” Dubois said, hesitating with his hand on the doorknob. “’Course he was older than dirt by then, so it wasn’t any surprise. You should’ve seen that poor hound shake. Palsied up somethin’ fierce. Let me tell you, Roy, when old Boomer lifted a hind leg and let go with his stream, all palsied like he was—you dived for cover or wished you was in another county.”

“Sounds like someone should have put him to sleep,” Roy said as Dubois opened the door.

The Texan followed Roy into the satellite-surveillance center. “Nah, Boomer was a good old dog. If the tables had been turned, that old hound wouldn’t never have taken a gun and put granpap to sleep.”

Roy really
was
in a good mood. He could have listened to Bobby Dubois for hours.

The satellite-surveillance center was forty feet by sixty feet. Only two of the twelve computer workstations in the middle of the room were manned, both by women wearing headsets and murmuring into mouthpieces as they studied the data streaming across their VDTs. A third technician was working at a light table, examining several large photographic negatives through a magnifying glass.

One of the two longer walls was largely occupied by an immense screen on which was projected a map of the world. Cloud formations were superimposed on it, along with green lettering that indicated weather conditions planetwide.

Red, blue, white, yellow, and green lights blinked steadily, revealing the current positions of scores of satellites. Many were electronic-communications packages handling microwave relays of telephone, television, and radio signals. Others were engaged in topographical mapping, oil exploration, meteorology, astronomy, international espionage, and domestic surveillance, among numerous other tasks.

The owners of those satellites ranged from public corporations to government agencies and military services. Some were the property of nations other than the United States or of businesses based beyond U.S. shores. Regardless of the ownership or origin, however, every satellite on that wall display could be accessed and used by the agency, and the legitimate operators usually remained unaware that their systems had been invaded.

At a U-shaped control console in front of the huge screen, Bobby Dubois said, “The sonofabitch rode straight out of Spaceport Vegas off into the desert, and our boys weren’t equipped to chase around playin’ Lawrence of Arabia.”

“Did you put up a chopper to track him?”

“Weather turned bad too fast. A real toad-drowner, rain comin’ down like every angel in Heaven was takin’ a leak at the same time.”

Dubois pushed a button on the console, and the map of the world faded from the wall. An actual satellite view of Oregon, Idaho, California, and Nevada appeared in its place. Seen from orbit, the boundaries of those four states would have been difficult to define, so borders were overlaid in orange lines.

Western and southern Oregon, southern Idaho, northern through central California, and all of Nevada were concealed below a dense layer of clouds.

“This here’s a direct satellite feed. There’s just a three-minute delay for transmission and then conversion of the digital code back into images again,” said Dubois.

Along eastern Nevada and eastern Idaho, soft pulses of light rippled through the clouds. Roy knew that he was seeing lightning from above the storm. It was strangely beautiful.

“Right now, the only storm activity is out on the eastern edge of the front. ’Cept for an isolated patch of spit-thin rain here and there, things are pretty quiet all the way back to the ass-end of Oregon. But we can’t just do a look-down for the sonofabitch, not even with infrared. It’d be like trying to see the bottom of a soup bowl through clam chowder.”

“How long until clear skies?” Roy asked.

“There’s a kick-ass wind at higher altitudes, pushing the front east-southeast, so we should have a clear look at the whole Mojave and surrounding territory before dawn.”

A surveillance subject, sitting in bright sunshine and reading a newspaper, could be filmed from a satellite with sufficiently high resolution that the headlines on his paper would be legible. However, in clear weather, in an unpopulated wasteland that boasted no animals as large as a man, locating and identifying a moving object as large as a Ford Explorer would not be easy, because the territory to be examined was so vast. Nevertheless, it could be done.

Roy said, “He could leave the desert for one highway or another, put the pedal to the metal, and be long gone by morning.”

“Damn few paved roads in this part of the state. We got lookout teams in every direction, on every serious highway and sorry strip of blacktop. Interstate Fifteen, Federal Highway Ninety-five, Federal Highway Ninety-three. Plus State Routes One-forty-six, One-fifty-six, One-fifty-eight, One-sixty, One-sixty-eight, and One-sixty-nine. Lookin’ for a green Ford Explorer with some body damage fore and aft. Lookin’ for a man with a dog in
any
vehicle. Lookin’ for a man with a big facial scar. Hell, we got this whole part of the state locked down tighter than a mosquito’s butt.”