Dark Rivers of the Heart

by Dean Koontz

  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.”

  “Unless he already got off the desert and back onto a highway before you put your men in place.”

  “We moved quick. Anyway, in a storm as bad as that one, goin’ overland, he made piss-poor time. Fact is, he’s damn lucky if he didn’t bog down somewhere, four-wheel drive or no four-wheel drive. We’ll nail the sonofabitch tomorrow.”

  “I hope you’re right,” Roy said.

  “I’d bet my pecker on it.”

  “And they say Las Vegas locals aren’t big gamblers.”

  “How’s he tied up with the woman anyway?”

  “I wish I knew,” Roy said, watching as lightning flowered softly under the clouds on the leading edge of the storm front. “What about this tape of the conversation between Grant and the old woman?”

  “You want to hear that?”

  “Yes.”

  “It starts from when he first says the name Hannah Rainey.”

  “Let’s give it a listen,” Roy said, turning away from the wall display.

  All the way down the hall, into the elevator, and down to the deepest subterranean level of the building, Dubois talked about the best places to get good chili in Vegas, as though he had reason to believe that Roy cared. “There’s this joint on Paradise Road, the chili’s so hot some folks been known to spontaneously combust from eatin’ it, whoosh, they just go up like torches.”

  The elevator reached the subbasement.

  “We’re talkin’ chili that makes you sweat from your fingernails, makes your belly button pop out like a meat thermometer.”

  The doors slid open.

  Roy stepped into a windowless concrete room.

  Along the far wall were scores of recording
machines.

  In the middle of the room, rising from a computer workstation, was the most stunningly gorgeous woman Roy had ever seen, blond and green-eyed, so beautiful that she took his breath away, so beautiful that she set his heart to racing and sent his blood pressure soaring high into the stroke-risk zone, so achingly beautiful that no words could adequately describe her—nor could any music ever written be sweet enough to celebrate her—so beautiful and so incomparable that he couldn’t breathe or speak, so radiant that she blinded him to the dreariness of that bunker and left him surrounded by her magnificent light.

  The flood had disappeared over the cliff like bathwater down a tub drain. The arroyo was now merely an enormous ditch.

  To a considerable depth, the soil was mostly sand, extremely porous, so the rain had not puddled on it. The downpour had filtered quickly into a deep aquifer. The surface had dried out and firmed up almost as rapidly as the empty channel had previously turned into a racing, spumous river.

  Nevertheless, before she had risked taking the Range Rover into the channel, although the machine was as surefooted as a tank, she had walked the route from the eroded arroyo wall to the Explorer and checked the condition of the ground. Satisfied that the bed of the ghost river wasn’t muddy or soft and that it would provide sufficient traction, she had driven the Rover into that declivity and had backed between the two columns of rock to the suspended Explorer.

  Even now, after rescuing the dog and putting him in the back of the Rover, and after disentangling Grant from his safety harness, she was amazed by the precarious position in which the Explorer had come to rest. She was tempted to lean past the unconscious man and look through the gaping hole where the side window had been, but even if she could have seen much in the darkness, she knew that she wouldn’t enjoy the view.

  The flood tide had lifted the truck more than ten feet above the floor of the arroyo before wedging it in that pincer of stone, on the brink of the cliff. Now that the river had vanished beneath it, the Explorer hung up there, its four wheels in midair, as though gripped in a pair of tweezers that belonged to a giant.