Dark Rivers of the Heart

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 any more."
        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."
        "That's right."
        "Coulda been one of them."
        "No, because you'd have blown my brains out the first time you were close enough to do it."
        "They don't like you, huh?"
        "Not much. So I wondered who you were."
        "Now you know."
        "Not really. You're a mystery, Spencer Grant."
        "Me a mystery!" He laughed. Pain hammered across his entire head when he laughed, but he laughed anyway. "Least you have a name for me."
        "Sure. But no more real than those you have for me."
        "It's real."
        "Sure."
        "Legal name. Spencer Grant. Guaranteed."
        "Maybe. But who were you before you were a cop, before you went to U.C.L.A, way back before you were in the army?"
        "You know all about me."
        "Not all. Just what you've left on the records, just as much as you wanted anybody to find. Following me home, you spooked me, so I started checking you out."
        "You moved out of the bungalow because of me."
        "Didn't know who the hell you were. But I figured if you could find me, so could they. Again."
        "And they did."
        "very next night."
        "So when I spooked you… I saved you."
        "You could look at it that way."
        "Without me, you'd have been there."
        "Maybe."
        "When the SWAT team hit."
        "Probably."
        "Seems like it's all sort of… meant to be."
        "But what were you doing there," she asked.
        "Well..
        "In my house."
        "You were gone."
        "So?"
        "Wasn't your place any more."
        "Did you know it wasn't my place any more when you went in?"
        The full meaning of her revelations kept giving him delayed jolts.
        He blinked furiously, vainly ming to see her face clearly.
        "Jesus, if you bugged my