Dark Rivers of the Heart

spite of its high-quality silencer, the.44 emitted a hard thud each time it was fired. The sound wasn't like gunfire, but it was loud enough to draw the attention of passersby if there had been any. The gun was, after all, a door-buster: Three quick rounds tore the hell out of the jamb and striker plate. Even if the deadbolt remained intact, the notch in which it was seated was not a notch any more, it was just a bristle of splinters.
        Dormon went inside, with Roy behind him, and a guy in stocking feet was coming up from a blue vinyl Barcalounger, a can of beer in one hand, wearing faded jeans and a T-shirt, saying "Jesus Christ," looking terrified and bewildered because the last bits of wood and brass from the door had just hit the living room carpet around him. Dormon drove him backward into the chair again, hard enough to knock the breath out of him, and the can of beer tumbled to the floor, rolled across the carpet, spewing gouts of foam.
        The guy wasn't Spencer Grant.
        Holding his silencer-fitted Beretta in both hands, Roy quickly crossed the living room, went through an archway into a dining room, and then through an open door into a kitchen.
        A blonde of about thirty was facedown on the kitchen floor, her head turned toward Roy, her left arm extended as she tried to recover a butcher knife that had been knocked out of her hand and that was an inch or two beyond her reach. She couldn't move toward it, because Vecchlo had a knee in the small of her back and the muzzle of his pistol against her neck, just behind her left ear.
        "You bastard, you bastard, you bastard," the woman squealed. Her shrill words were neither loud nor clear, because her face was jammed against the linoleum. And she couldn't draw much breath with Vecchio's knee in her back.
        "Easy, lady, easy," Vecchlo said. "Be still, damn it!"
        Alfonse Johnson was one step inside the back door, which must have been unlocked because they hadn't needed to break it down. Johnson was covering the only other person in the room: a little girl, perhaps five, who stood with her back pressed into a corner, wide-eyed and pale, too frightened yet to cry.
        The air smelled of hot tomato sauce and onions. On the cutting board were sliced green peppers. The woman had been making dinner.
        "Come on," Roy said to Johnson.
        Together, they searched the rest of the house, moving fast. The element of surprise was gone, but momentum was still on their side.
        Hall closet. Bathroom. Girl's bedroom: teddy bears and dolls, the closet door standing open, nobody there. Another small room: a sewing machine, a half-finished green dress on a dressmaker's dummy, closet packed full, no place for anyone to hide. Then the master bedroom, closet, closet, bathroom: nobody.
        Johnson said, "Unless that's him in a blond wig on the kitchen floor. .
        Roy returned to the living room, where the guy in the lounge chair was tilted as far back as he could go, starin into the bore of the.44 while call Dormon screamed in his face, spraying him with spittle: "One more time. You hear me, asshole? I'm asking just one more time-where is he?"
        "I told you," the guy said, "Jesus, nobody's here but us."
        "Where's Grant?" Dormon insisted.
        The man was shaking as if the Barcalounger was equipped with a vibrating massage unit. "I don't know him, I swear, never heard of him. So will you just, will you just please, will you point that cannon somewhere else?
        Roy was saddened that it was so often necessary to deny people their dignity in order to get them to cooperate. He left Johnson in the living room with Dormon and returned to the kitchen.
        The woman was still flat on the floor, with Vecchio's knee in her back, but she was no longer trying to reach the butcher knife. She wasn't calling him a bastard any more, either. Fury having given way to fear, she was begging him not to hurt her little girl.
        The child was in the corner, sucking on her thumb. Tears tracked down her cheeks, but she made no sound.
        Roy picked up the butcher knife and put it on the counter, out of the woman's reach.
        She rolled one eye to look up at him. "Don't hurt my baby."
        "We aren't going to hurt anyone," Roy said.
        He went to the little girl, crouched beside her, and said in his softest voice, "Are you scared, honey?"
        She turned her eyes from her