Dark Rivers of the Heart

of inarticulateness or distraction. Quite the opposite: His silences spoke more than other men's most polished flights of oratory, and he was always and unmistakably observant and alert. He moved little, never fidgeted. Occasionally, when he accompanied a comment with a gesture, the movement of his cuffed hands was so economical that the chain between his wrists clinked softly if at all.
        His stillness was not rigid but relaxed, not limp but full of quiescent power. It was impossible to sit at his side and be unaware that he possessed tremendous intelligence: He all but hummed with it, as if his mind was a dynamic machine of such omnipotence that it could move worlds and alter the cosmos.
        In his entire thirty-two years, Roy Miro had met only two people whose mere physical presence had engendered in him an approximation of love.
        The first had been Eve Marie Jammer. The second was Steven Ackblom.
        Both in the same week. In this wondrous February, destiny had become, indeed, his cloak and his companion. He sat at Steven Ackblom's side, discreetly enthralled. He wanted desperately to make the artist aware that he, Roy Miro, was a person of profound insights and exceptional accomplishments.
        Rink and Fordyce (Olmeyer and Tarkenton had ceased to exist upon leaving Dr. Palma's office) seemed not to be as charmed by Ackblom as Roy was-or charmed at all. Sitting in the rear-facing seats, they appeared uninterested in what the artist had to say. Fordyce closed his eyes for long periods of time, as though meditating. Rink stared out the window, although he could have seen nothing whatsoever of the night through the darkly tinted glass. On those rare occasions when a gesture of Ackblom's rang a soft clink from his cuffs, and on those even rarer occasions when he shifted his feet enough to rattle the shackles that connected his ankles, Fordyce's eye popped open like the counterbalanced eyes of a doll, and Otherwise they seemed to pay no attention to him.
        Depressingly, Rink and Fordyce clearly had formed their opinions of Ackblom based on what drivel they had gleaned from the media, not from what they could observe for themselves. Their denseness was no surprise, of course. Rink and Fordyce were men not of ideas but of action, not of passion but of crude desire. The a agency had need of their type, although they were sadly without vision, pitiable creatures of limitations who would one day inch the world closer to perfection by departing it.
        "At the time, I was quite young, only two years older than your son,"
        Roy said, "but I understood what you were trying to achieve."
        "And what was that?" Ackblom asked. His voice was in the lower tenor range, mellow, with a timbre that suggested he might have had a career as a singer if he'd wished.
        Roy explained his theories about the artist's work: that those eerie and compelling portraits weren't about people's hateful desires building like boiler pressure beneath their beautiful surfaces, but were meant to be viewed with the still lifes and, together, were a statement about the human desire-and struggle-for perfection. "And if your work with living subjects resulted in their attainment of a perfect beauty, even for a brief time before they died, then your crimes weren't crimes at all but acts of charity, acts of profound compassion, because too few people in this world will ever know any moment of perfection in their entire lives. Through torture, you gave those forty-one-your wife as well, I assume-a transcendent experience. Had they lived, they might eventually have thanked you.
        Roy was speaking sincerely, although previously he had believed that Ackblom had been misguided in the means by which he had pursued the grail of perfection. That was before he had met the man. Now, he felt ashamed of his woeful underestimation of the artist's talent and keen perception.
        In the rear-facing seats, neither Rink nor Fordyce evinced any surprise or interest in anything that Roy said. In their service with the agency, they had heard so many outrageous lies, all so well and sincerely delivered, that they undoubtedly believed their boss was only playing with Ackblom, cleverly manipulating a madman into the degree of cooperation required from him to ensure the success of the current operation. Roy was in the singular and thrilling position of being able to express his deepest feelings, with the