Dark Rivers of the Heart

wood, painted sour-apple green, unpadded. And a small round table stood beside the chair, where he could put a glass of whatever he was drinking.
        Table was painted purple. The chair was a flat green, but the table was glossy, highly lacquered. The glass that he drank from was actually a piece of fine cut-crystal, and the blue light sparkled in all its bevels."
        "Where did he…" Ellie spotted the door, which was flush with the wall and painted to match. It reflected the blue light precisely as the concrete reflected it, becoming all but invisible. "There?"
        "Yes." His voice was even softer and more distant than the cry that had awakened from July sleep. half a minute didn't so much pass as crumble away like unstable the line.
        He turned the knob.
        Rocky edged back, out of the way.
        Spencer opened the door. concrete stairs that led down into darkness.
        Ellie came to his side. She took his right hand and held it tightly.
        "Let's do what you've come to do, then get the hell out of this place."
        He nodded. He didn't trust himself to speak.
        He let go of her hand and opened the heavy gray door. There was no lock on their side of it, only on the far side.
        That July night, when Spencer had reached this point, his father had not yet returned from chaining the woman in the abattoir, so the door had been unlocked. No doubt, once the victim had been secured, the artist would have retraced his path to the vestibule above, to close the knotty pine doors from the secret vestibule, from within the cabinet; then would have rolled the back of the cupboard into place; he would have locked the upper door from the cellar stairs, would have locked this gray door from inside. Then he would have returned to his captive in the abatI toir, confident that no screams, regardless of how piercing, could penetrate to the barn above or to the world beyond.
        Spencer crossed the raised concrete sill. An exposed switch box was fixed to the rough masonry of a brick-and-plaster wall. A length of flexible metal conduit rose from it into shadows. He snapped the switch, and a series of small lights winked on. They were suspended from a looped cord along the center of the ceiling, leading out of sight around a curved passageway.
        Ellie whispered, "Spencer, wait!
        When he looked back into the first basement, he saw that Rocky had returned to the foot of the stairs. The dog trembled visibly, gazing up toward the vestibule behind the file-room cupboards. One ear drooped, as always, but the other stood straight up. His tail was not tucked between his legs, but held low to the floor, and it wasn't wagging.
        Spencer stepped back into the cellar. He pulled the pistol from under his belt.
        Shrugging the Micro Uzi off her shoulder, taking a two-hand grip on the weapon, Ellie eased past the dog, onto the steep stairs. She climbed slowly, listening.
        Spencer moved with equal care to Rocky's side.
        In the vestibule, the artist had stood to the side of the open door, and Roy had stood next to him, both with their backs pressed to the wall, listening to the couple in the cellar below. The stairwell added a hollow note to the voices as it funneled them upward, but the words were nonetheless clear.
        Roy had hoed to hear something that would ex lain the man's connection with the woman, at least a crumb of information about the suspected conspiracy against the agency and the shadowy organization that he had mentioned to Steven in the gallery a few minutes ago. But they spoke only of the famous night sixteen years in the past.
        Steven seemed amused to be eavesdropping on that of all possible conversations. He turned his head twice to smile at Roy, and once he raised one finger to his lips as if warning Roy to be quiet.
        There was something of an imp in the artist, a playfulness that made him a good companion. Roy wished he didn't have to return Steven to prison.
        But he could think of no way, in the currently delicate political climate of the country, to free the artist either openly or clandestinely. Dr. Sabrina Palma would again have her benefactor. The best Roy could hope for was that he would find other credible reasons to visit Steven from time to time or even to obtain temporary custody again for consultation in other field operations.
        When the woman had whispered urgently to