Dark Rivers of the Heart

felt more alive and happier than he'd been in weeks, months, perhaps even years, Eve drew the silencer-fitted Beretta from her big handbag and shot him three times.
        She also had a Polaroid in the handbag. Although worried that a car might pull into the lot and that other patrons might leave the bar momentarily, she took three snapshots of the dead man as he lay on the blacktop beside his Pontiac.
        Driving home, she thought about what a fine thing she had done: helping that dear man to find a way out of his imperfect life, giving him his freedom from rejection, depression, loneliness, and despair.
        Tears melted from her eyes. She didn't sob or become too emotional to be dangerous behind the wheel. She wept quietly, quietly, though the compassion in her heart was powerful and profound.
        She wept all the way home, into the garage, through the house, into her bedroom, where she arranged the Polaroids on the nightstand for Roy to see when he returned from Colorado in a day or two-and then a funny thing happened. As deeply moved as she was by what she had done, as copious and genuine as her tears had been, nevertheless, she was abruptly dry-eyed and incredibly horny.
        At the window with the artist, Roy watched the limousine as it headed back to the county road and away. It would return for them after the drama of the night had been played out.
        They were standing in the front room of the converted barn. The darkness was relieved only by the moonlight that sifted through the windows and by the green glow of the security-panel readout next to the front door. With numbers that Gary Duvall had obtained from the Dresmunds, Roy had disengaged the alarm when they'd come in, then had reset it.
        There were no motion detectors, only magnetic contacts at each door and window, so he and the artist could move about freely without triggering the system.
        This large first-floor room had once been a private gallery where Steven had exhibited the paintings that he favored among all those that he had produced. Now the chamber was vacant, and every faint sound echoed hollowly off the cold walls. Sixteen years had passed since the great man's art had adorned the place.
        Roy knew this was a moment he would remember with exceptional clarity for the rest of his life, as he would remember the precise expression of wonder on Eve's face when he had granted peace to that man and woman in the restaurant parking lot. Although the degree of humanity's imperfection ensured that the ongoing human drama would always be a tragedy, there were moments of transcendent experience, like this, that made life worth living.
        Sadly, most people were too timid to seize the day and discover what such transcendence felt like. Timidity, however, had never been one of Roy's shortcomings.
        Revelation of his compassionate crusade had earned Roy all the glories of Eve's bedroom, and he had decided that revelation was called for again. Journeying across the mountains, he had realized that Steven was perfect in some way few people ever were-although the nature of his perfection was more subtle than Eve's devastating beauty, more sensed than seen, intriguing, mysterious. Instinctively Roy knew that Steven and he were simpatico to an even greater extent than were he and Eve.
        True friendship might be forged between them if he revealed himself to the artist as forthrightly as he'd revealed himself to the dear heart in Las Vegas.
        Standing by the moonlit window, in the dark and empty gallery, Roy Miro began to explain, with tasteful humility, how he had put his ideals into practice in ways that even the agency, for all its willingness to be bold, would have been too timid to endorse. As the artist listened, Roy almost hoped that the fugitives would not come that night or the next, not until he and Steven were granted sufficient time together to build a foundation for the friendship that surely was destined to enrich their lives.
        Outside Hamlet Gardens in Westwood, the uniformed valet brought Darius's VW Microbus from the narrow lot beside the building, drove it into the street, and swung it to the curb at the front entrance, where the two Descoteaux families waited, fresh from dinner.
        Harris was at the rear of their group, and as he was about to step into the Microbus, a woman touched his shoulder. "Sir, may I give you something to think about?"
        He