Dark Rivers of the Heart

it would be Ethel and George Porth. Assuming that they actually existed and were not just names on a form that a recruitment officer had failed to verify twelve years ago.
        Roy asked for a printout of the pertinent portion of Grant's service file. Even with what seemed to be a good lead in the Porths, Roy wasn't confident of learning anything in San Francisco that would give more substance to this elusive phantom whom he'd first glimpsed less than forty-eight hours ago in the rainy night in Santa Monica.
        Having erased himself entirely from all utility-company records, from property tax rolls, and even from the Internal Revenue Service files-why had Grant allowed his name to remain in the DMV, Social Security Administration, LAPD, and military files? He had tampered with those records to the extent of replacing his true address with a series of phony addresses, but he could have entirely eliminated them.
        He had the knowledge and the skill to do so. Therefore, he must have maintained a presence in some data banks for a purpose.
        Roy felt that somehow he was playing into Grant's hands even by trying to track him down.
        Frustrated, he turned his attention once more to the two most affecting of the forty photographs. The woman, the boy, and the barn in the background. The man in the shadows.
        On all sides of the Explorer lay sand as white as powdered bones, ash-gray volcanic rock, and slopes of shale shattered by millions of years of heat, cold, and quaking earth. The few plants were crisp and bristly. Except for the dust and vegetation stirred by the wind, the only movement was the creeping and slithering of scorpions, spiders, scarabs, poisonous snakes, and the other cold-blooded or bloodless creatures that thrived in that and wasteland.
        Silvery quills and nibs of lightning flashed continually, and fast-moving thunderheads as black as ink wrote a promise of rain across the sky.
        The bellies of the clouds hung heavy. With great crashes of thunder, the storm struggled to create itself.
        Captured between the dead earth and tumultuous heavens, Spencer paralleled the distant interstate highway as much as possible. He detoured only when the contours of the land required compromise.
        Rocky sat with head bowed, gazing at his paws rather than at the stormy day. His flanks quivered as currents of fear flowed through him like electricity through a closed circuit.
        On another day, in a different place and in a different storm, Spencer would have kept up a steady line of patter to soothe the dog.
        Now, however, he was in a mood that darkened with the sky, and he was able to focus only on his own turmoil.
        For the woman, he had walked away from his life, such as it was.
        He had left behind the quiet comfort of the cabin, the beauty of the eucalyptus grove, the peace of the canyon-and most likely he would never be able to return to that. He had made a target of himself and had put his precious anonymity in Jeopardy.
        He regretted none of that-because he still had the hope of gaining a real life with some kind of meaning and purpose. Although he had wanted to help the woman, he had also wanted to help himself But the stakes suddenly had been raised. Death and disclosure were not the only risks he was going to have to take if he continued to involve himself in Valerie Keene's problems. Sooner or later, he was going to have to kill someone. They would give him no choice.
        After escaping the assault on the bungalow in Santa Monica on Wednesday night, he had avoided thinking about the most disturbing implications of the swat team's extreme violence. Now he recalled the gunfire directed at imagined targets inside the dark house and the rounds fired at him as he had scaled the property wall.
        That was not merely the response of a few edgy law-enforcement officers intimidated by their quarry. It was a criminally excessive use of force, evidence of an agency out of control and arrogantly confident that it wasn't accountable for any atrocities it committed.
        A short while ago, he had encountered equivalent arrogance in the reckless behavior of the men who harried him out of Las Vegas.
        He thought about Louis Lee in that elegant office under China Dream.
        The restaurateur had said that governments, when big enough, often ceased to play by the codes of justice under which they were