Dark Rivers of the Heart

woke abruptly from a bad dream.
        He would circle the house, from window to window, convinced that the enemy in the land of dreams was every bit as dangerous to him in the real world.
        Spencer looked at the computer screen again.
        A.T.F OP IN PROG. FED ASSERTED.
        Something was wrong.
        If the SWAT team that hit the bungalow the previous night had been composed of agents of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, why had the men who showed up at Louis Lee's home in Bel Air been carrying FBI credentials? The former bureau was under the control of the United States Secretary of the Treasury, while the latter was ultimately answerable to the Attorney General-though changes in that structure were being contemplated. The different organizations sometimes cooperated in operations of mutual interest; however, considering the usual intensity of interagency rivalry and suspicion, both would have had representatives present at the questioning of Louis Lee or of anyone else from whom a lead might have been developed.
        Grumbling to himself as if he were the White Rabbit running late for tea with the Mad Hatter, Rocky scampered out of the kitchen and hurbedroom.
        
        A.T.F OP IN PROG.
        
        Something wrong…
        The FBI was by far the more powerful of the two bureaus, and if it was interested enough to be on the scene, it would never agree to surrender all jurisdiction entirely to the A.T.F. In fact, there was legislation being written in Congress, at the request of the white House, to fold the A.T.F into the F.B.I. The cop's note in the SMPD call report should have read: F.B.I/A.T.F OP IN PROG.
        Brooding about all that, Spencer retreated from Santa Monica to the LAPD, floated there a moment as he tried to decide if he was finished, then backed into the task-force computer, closing doors as he went, neatly cleaning up any traces of his invasion.
        . Rocky bolted out of the bedroom, past Spencer, to the living room window once more.
        Home again, Spencer shut down his computer. He got up from the desk and went to the window to stand beside Rocky.
        The tip of the dog's black nose was against the glass. One ear up, one down.
        "What do you dream about?" Spencer wondered.
        Rocky whimpered softly, his attention fixed on the deep purple shadows and the golden glimmerings of the twilit eucalyptus grove.
        "Fanciful monsters, things that could never be?" Spencer asked.
        "Or just… the past?"
        The dog was shivering.
        Spencer put one hand on the nape of Rocky's neck and stroked him gently.
        The dog glanced up, then immediately returned his attention to the eucalyptuses, perhaps because a great darkness was descending slowly over the shrinking twilight. Rocky had always been afraid of the night.
        HE FADING LIGHT congealed into a luminous red scum across the western sky. The crimson sun was reflected by every microscopic particle of pollution and water vapor in the air, so it seemed as though the city lay under a thin mist of blood. call Dormon retrieved a large pizza box from the back of the white van and walked toward the house.
        Roy Miro was on the other side of the street from the van, having entered the block from the opposite direction. He got out of his car and quietly closed the door.
        By now, Johnson and Vecchio would have made their way to the back of the house by neighboring properties.
        Roy started across the street.
        Dormon was halfway along the front walk. He didn't have a pizza in the box, but a Desert Eagle.44 Magnum pistol equipped with a heavy-duty sound suppressor. The uniform and the prop were solely to allay suspicion if Spencer Grant happened to glance out a window just as Dormon was approaching the house.
        Roy reached the back of the white van.
        Dormon was at the front stoop.
        Putting one hand across his mouth as if to muffle a cough, Roy spoke into the transmitter microphone that was clipped to his shirt cuff.
        "Count five and go," he whispered to the men at the back of the house.
        At the front door, call Dormon didn't bother to ring the bell or knock.
        He tried the knob. The lock must have been engaged, because he opened the pizza box, let it fall to the ground, and brought up the powerful Israeli pistol.
        Roy picked up his pace, no longer casual.
        In