Dark Rivers of the Heart

checked his watch. Valerie was now an hour and a half late.
        The waitress's uneasiness had infected him. An insistent image rose in his mind's eye: Valerie's face, half concealed by a spill of dark hair and a delicate scrollwork of blood, one cheek pressed against the floor, eyes wide and unblinking. He knew his concern was irrational. She was merely late for work. There was nothing ominous about that. Yet, minute by minute, his apprehension deepened.
        He put his unfinished beer on the bar, got off the stool, and walked through the blue light to the red door and into the chilly night, where the sound of marching armies was only the rain beating on the canvas awnings.
        As he passed the art gallery doorway, he heard the shadow-wrapped vagrant weeping softly. He paused, affected.
        Between strangled sounds of grief, the half-seen stranger whispered the last thing Spencer had said to him earlier: "Nobody knows… nobody knows… That short declaration evidently had acquired a personal and profound meaning for him, because he spoke the two words not in the tone in which Spencer had spoken but with quiet, intense anguish.
        "Nobody knows." Though Spencer knew that he was a fool for funding the wretch's further self-destruction, he fished a crisp ten-dollar bill from his wallet. He leaned into the gloomy entryway, into the fetid stink that the hobo exuded, and held out the money.
        "Here, take this."
        The hand that rose to the offering was either clad in a dark glove or exceedingly filthy; it was barely discernible in the shadows. As the bill was plucked out of Spencer's fingers, the vagrant keened thinly:
        "Nobody… nobody…"
        "You'll be all right," Spencer said sympathetically. "It's only life.
        We all get through it."
        "It's only life, we all get through it," the vagrant whispered.
        Plagued once more by the mental image of Valerie's dead face, Spencer hurried to the corner, into the rain, to the Explorer.
        Through the side window, Rocky watched him approaching. As Spencer opened the door, the dog retreated to the passenger seat.
        Spencer got in the truck and pulled the door shut, bringing with him the smell of damp denim and the ozone odor of the storm. "You miss me, killer?"
        Rocky shifted his weight from side to side a couple of times, and he tried to wag his tail even while sitting on it.
        As he started the engine, Spencer said, "You'll be pleased to hear that I didn't make an ass of myself in there."
        The dog sneezed.
        "But only because she didn't show up."
        The dog cocked his head curiously.
        Putting the car in gear, popping the hand brake, Spencer said, "So instead of quitting and going home while I'm ahead of the game, what do you think I'm going to do now? Hmmm?"
        Apparently the dog didn't have a clue.
        "I'm going to poke in where it's none of my business, give myself a second chance to screw up. Tell me straight, pal, do you think I've lost my mind?"
        Rocky merely panted.
        Pulling the truck away from the curb, Spencer said, "Yeah, you're right.
        I'm a basket case."
        He headed directly for Valerie's house. She lived ten minutes from the bar.
        The previous night, he had waited with Rocky in the Explorer, outside The Red Door, until two o'clock in the morning, and had followed Valerie when she drove home shortly after closing time.
        Because of his surveillance training, he knew how to tail a subject discreetly. He was confident that she hadn't spotted him.
        He was not equally confident, however, about his ability to explain to her-or to himself-why he had followed her. After one evening of conversation with her, periodically interrupted by her attention to the few customers in the nearly deserted lounge, Spencer was overcome by the desire to know everything about her. Everything.
        In fact, it was more than a desire. It was a need, and he was compelled to satisfy it.
        Although his intentions were innocent, he was mildly ashamed of his budding obsession. The night before, he had sat in the Explorer, across the street from her house, staring at her lighted windows; all were covered with translucent drapes, and on one occasion her shadow played briefly across the folds of cloth, like a spirit glimpsed in candlelight at a seance. Shortly before three-thirty in the morning, the last