Dark Rivers of the Heart

dollars."
        "After taxes?"
        "See, the value of his paintings soared with the notoriety. Seems funny, doesn't it, that anyone would want to hang his work in their homes, knowing what the artist did. You'd think the value of his stuff would just collapse. But there was a frenzy in the art market. Values went through the roof."
        Roy remembered the color plates of Ackblom's work that he had studied as a boy, at the time the story broke, and he couldn't quite understand Duvall's point. Ackblom's art was exquisite. If Roy could have afforded to buy them, he would have decorated his own home with dozens of the artist's canvases.
        Duvall said, "Prices have continued to climb all these years, though more slowly than in the first year after. The family would have been better off holding onto some of the art. Anyway, the boy ended up with fourteen and a half million after taxes. Unless he lives high on the hog, that ought to have grown into an even more substantial fortune over all these years."
        Roy thought of the cabin in Malibu, the cheap furniture and walls without any artwork. "No high living."
        "Really? Well, you know, his old man didn't live nearly as high as he could have, either. He refused to have a bigger house, didn't want any livein servants. just a day maid and a property foreman who went home at five o'clock. Ackblom said he needed to keep his life as simple as possible to preserve his creative energy." Gary Duvall laughed. "Of course he really just didn't want anyone around at night to catch him at his games under the barn."
        Wandering back along the side of the chopper again, the Mormon cops looked up at Roy, where he was watching them from the porthole.
        He waved.
        They waved and smiled.
        "Still," Duvall said, "it's a wonder the wife didn't tumble to it sooner.
        He'd been experimenting with his 'performance' art for four years before she got wise."
        "She wasn't an artist."
        "What?"
        "She didn't have the vision to anticipate. Without the vision to anticipate… she wouldn't become suspicious without good reason."
        "Can't say I follow you. Four years, for heaven's sake."
        Then six more until the boy had found out. Ten years, forty-two victims, slightly more than four a year.
        The numbers, Roy decided, weren't particularly impressive. The factors that made Steven Ackblom one for the record books were his fame before his secret life was discovered, his position of respect in his community, his status as a family man (most classic serial killers were loners), and his desire to apply his exceptional talent to the art of torture in order to help his subjects achieve a moment of perfect beauty.
        "But why," Roy wondered again, "would the son want to hold on to that property? With all its associations. He wanted to change his name.
        Why not rid himself of the ranch too?"
        "Strange, huh?"
        "And if not the son, why not the grandparents Why didn't they sell it off when they were his legal guardians, make that decision for him?
        After their daughter was killed there… why would they want to have anything to do with the place?"
        "There's something there," Duvall said.
        "What do you mean?"
        "Some explanation. Some reason. Whatever it is, it's weird."
        "This caretaker couple-"
        "Paul and Anita Dresmund." -did they say whether Grant ever comes around?"
        "He doesn't. At least, they've never seen anybody with a scar like he's got."
        "So who oversees them?"
        "Until a year and a half ago, they only ever saw two people related to the Veil Memorial Trust. This lawyer, Lingerhold, or one of his partners would come by twice a year, just to check that the ranch was being maintained, that the Dresmunds were earning their salary and spending the upkeep fund on genuinely needed maintenance."
        "And for the past year and a half."
        "Since Vanishment International has owned the place, nobody's come around at all," Duvall said. "God, I'd love to find out how much he's got stashed away in Amelia Earhart Enterprises, but you know we're never going to pry that out of the Swiss."
        In recent years, Switzerland had grown alarmed by the large number wiss accounts of American citizens by invoking asset-forfeiture statutes without proof of criminal activity. The Swiss increasingly viewed such