Dark Rivers of the Heart

the night, the owl and his question, but I know I can't sleep.
        I'm wearing only briefs, so I quickly pull on a pair of jeans.
        Now that I'm committed to act, denial and sleep have no attraction for me.
        In fact, I'm in the grip Of an urgency at least as strange as the previous denial Bare-chested and barefoot, I'm drawn out of my bedroom by intense curiosity, by the sense of post-midnight adventure that all boys share-and by a terrible truth, which I don't yet know that I know.
        Beyond my door, the house is cool, because my room is the only one not airconditioned. For several summers, I've closed the vents against that chillfloa, because I prefer the benefits of fresh air even on a humid July night… and because, for some years, I've been unable to sleep withe the hiss and hum that the Icy air makes as it rushes through the ductwork and seethes through the vaines in the vent grille.
        I've long been afraid that this incessant ifsubtle noise will mask some other sound in the night that I must hear in order to survive. I have no idea what that other sound would be. It's a groundless and childish fear, and I'm embarrassed by it. Yet it dictates my sleeping habits.
        The upstairs hallway is silvered with moonlight, which streams through a pair of skylights. Here and there along both walls, the polished-pine floor glimmers softly. Down the middle of the hall is an intricately patterned Persian runner, in which the curved radius of and and undulant shapes absorb the radiance of' the till oon and dim with it: Hundreds k, luminous coekiitertite forms seem to be not immediately under my feet but well below me, as if I am not on a carpet but am walking Christlike on the surface of a tidepool while gazing down at the mysterious denizens at the bottom.
        I pass my father's roo. The door is closed.
        I reach the head of the stairs, where I HESITATE.
        The house is silent.
        I descend the stairs, quaking, bhing my bare arms with my hands, wondering at my inexplicable fear Perhaps even at that moment, I dimly realize that I am going down to a place from which i'll never again quite be able to ascend…
        With the dog as his confessor, Spencer spun his story all the way through that long-ago night, to the hidden door, to the secret place, to the beating heart of the nightmare. As he recounted the experience, step by barefoot step, his voice faded to a whisper.
        When he finished, he was in a temporary state of grace that would burn away with the coming of the dawn, but it was even sweeter for being so tenuous and brief. Purged, he was at last able to close his eyes and know that dreamless sleep would come to him.
        In the morning he would begin to search for the woman.
        He had the uneasy feeling that he was walking into a living hell to rival the one that he had so often described to the patient dog. He could do nothing else. Only one acceptable road lay ahead of him, and he was compelled to follow it.
        Now sleep.
        Rain washed the world, and its susurration was the sound of absolution-though some stains could never be permanently removed.
        In THE MORNING, Spencer had a few tiny bruises and red marks on his face and hands, from the sting-grenade pellets. Compared with his scar, they would draw no comments.
        For breakfast, he had English muffins and coffee at his desk in the living room while he hacked into the county tax collector's computer. He discovered that the bungalow in Santa Monica, where Valerie had been living until the previous day, was owned by the Louis and Mae Lee Family Trust. Property-tax bills were mailed in care of something called China Dream, in West Hollywood.
        Out of curiosity, he requested a list of other properties-if anyowned by that trust. There were fourteen: five more homes in Santa Monica; a pair of eight-unit apartment buildings in Westwood; three single-family homes in Bel Air; and four adjacent commercial buildings in West Hollywood, including the address for China Dream.
        Louis and Mae Lee had done all right for themselves.
        After switching off the computer, Spencer stared at the blank screen and finished his coffee. It was bitter. He drank it anyway.
        By ten o'clock, he and Rocky were heading south on the Pacific Coast Highway. Traffic passed him at every opportunity, because he obeyed the speed limit.
        The storm had moved east