Dark Rivers of the Heart

truths to a confused boy. Though Steven Ackblom was a misguided and tragic figure, Roy owed him a debt.
        It was ironic-and an intriguing example of cosmic justice-that Roy should be the one to rid the world of the troubled and thankless son who had betrayed Ackblom. The artist's quest for human perfection had been misguided but, in Roy's view, well meaning. Their sorry world would inch closer to an ideal state with Michael (now Spencer) removed from it. And pure justice seemed to require that Spencer be removed only subsequent to being subjected to prolonged and severe pain, in a manner that would adequately honor his visionary father.
        As Roy took off the telephone headset, he heard the pilot making an announcement on the public-address system. "… according to Vegas control, allowing for the target's current speed, we're approximately sixteen minutes from rendezzvous. Sixteen minutes to the target."
        A sky like blue glass.
        Seventeen miles to Cedar City.
        On the two-lane highway Ellie used the horn to encourage slow vehicles to get out of her way. When the drivers were stubborn, she took nail-biting risks to get around them in no-passing zones or even passed them to the right when the shoulder of the highway was wide enough.
        Their speed dropped because of the interference that the traffic posed, but the need for increased recklessness made it seem as though they were actually going faster than ever. Spencer held on to one edge of his seat.
        In the back, Rocky was bobbing his head again.
        "Even without proof," Spencer suggested, "you could go to the press.
        You could point them in the right direction, put Summerton on the defensive-"
        "Tried that twice. First a New York Times reporter.
        Contacted her on her office computer, had an on-line dialogue and set up a meeting at an Indian restaurant. Made it clear if she told anyone, anyone at all, my life and hers wouldn't be worth spit. I got there four hours early, watched the place with binoculars from the roof of a building across the street, to be sure she came alone and there wasn't any obvious stakeout. I figured I'd make her wait, go in half an hour late, take the extra time to watch the street. But fifteen minutes after she arrived… the restaurant blew up.
        Gas explosion, so the police said."
        "The reporter?"
        "Dead. Along with fourteen other people in there."
        "Dear God."
        "Then, a week later, a guy from the Washington Post was supposed to meet me in a public park. I actually set it up with a cellular phone from another rooftop overlooking that site, but not obvious enough to be seen.
        Made it for six hours later. About an hour and a half go by, and then a water department truck pulls up near the park. The work crew opens a manhole, sets out some safety cones and sawhorses with flashers on them."
        "But they weren't really city workers."
        "I had a battery-powered multiband scanner with me on that roof.
        Picked up the frequency they were using to coordinate the phony work crew with a phony lunch wagon on the other side of the park."
        "You are something else," he said admiringly.
        "Three agents in the park, too, one pretending he's a panhandler, two pretending to be park-service employees doing maintenance. Then the time comes and the reporter shows up, walks to the monument where I told him we'd meet-and the sonofabitch is wired too! I hear him muttering to them that he doesn't see me anywhere, what should he do.
        And they're calming him, telling him it's cool, he should just wait.
        The little weasel must've been in Tom Summerton's pocket, called him up right Ten miles west of Cedar City, they pulled behind a Dodge pickup that was doing ten miles per hour under the legal limit. At the rear window of the cab, two rifles hung in a rack.
        The pickup driver let Ellie pound on the horn for a while, mule-stubborn about pulling over to let her by.
        "What's wrong with this jerk?" she fumed. She gave him more horn, but he played deaf. "As far as he knows, we have someone dying in here, needs a doctor fast."
        "Hell, these days, we could be a couple of lunatic dopers just spoiling for a shootout."
        The man in the pickup was moved by neither compassion nor fear.
        Finally he responded to the horn by putting his arm out the window and flipping Ellie