Dark Rivers of the Heart

light went out. While Rocky lay curled in sleep on the backseat, Spencer had remained on watch ana other hour, gazing at the dark house, wondering what books Valerie read, what she enjoyed doing on her days off, what her parents were like, where she had lived as a child, what she dreamed about when she was contented, and what shape her nightmares took when she was disturbed.
        Now, less than twenty-four hours later, he headed to her place again, with a fine-grain anxiety abrading his nerves. She was late for work. just late. His excessive concern told him more than he cared to know about the inappropriate intensity of his interest in this woman.
        Traffic thinned as he drove farther from Ocean Avenue into residential neighborhoods. The languorous, liquid glimmer of wet blacktop fostered a false impression of movement, as if every street might be a lazy river easing toward its own far delta.
        Valerie Keene lived in a quiet neighborhood of stucco and clapboard bungalows built in the late fifties. Those two- and three-bedroom homes offered more charm than space: trellised front porches, from which hung great capes of bougainvillea; decorative shutters flanking windows; interestingly scalloped or molded or carved fascia boards under the eaves; fanciful rooflines; deeply recessed dormers.
        Because Spencer didn't want to draw attention to himself, he drove past the woman's place without slowing. He glanced casually to the right, toward her dark bungalow on the south side of the block. Rocky mimicked him, but the dog seemed to find nothing more alarming about the house than did his master.
        At the end of the block, Spencer turned right and drove south.
        The next few streets to the right were cul-de-sacs. He passed them by.
        He didn't want to park on a dead-end street. That was a trap. At the next main avenue, he hung a right again and parked at the curb in a neighborhood similar to the one in which Valerie lived. He turned off the thumping windshield wipers but not the engine.
        He still hoped that he might regain his senses, put the truck in gear, and go home.
        Rocky looked at him expectantly. One ear up. One ear down.
        "I'm not in control," Spencer said, as much to himself as to the curious dog. "And I don't know why."
        Rain sluiced down the windshield. Through the film of rippling water, the streetlights shimmered.
        He sighed and switched off the engine.
        When he'd left home, he'd forgotten an umbrella. The short dash to and from The Red Door had left him slightly damp, but the longer walk back to Valerie's house would leave him soaked.
        He was not sure why he hadn't parked in front of her place.
        Training, perhaps. Instinct. Paranoia. Maybe all three.
        Leaning past Rocky and enduring a warm, affectionate tongue in his ear, Spencer retrieved a flashlight from the glove compartment and tucked it in a pocket of his jacket.
        "Anybody messes with the truck," he said to the dog, "you rip the bastard's guts out."
        As Rocky yawned, Spencer got out of the Explorer. He locked it with the remote control as he walked away and turned north at the corner. He didn't bother running. Regardless of his pace, he would be soaked before he reached the bungalow.
        The north-south street was lined with jacarandas. They would have provided little cover even when fully dressed with leaves and cascades of purple blossoms. Now, in winter, the branches were bare.
        Spencer was sodden by the time he reached Valerie's street, where the jacarandas gave way to huge Indian laurels. The aggressive roots of the trees had cracked and canted the sidewalk; however, the canopy of branches and generous foliage held back the cold rain.
        The big trees also prevented most of the yellowish light of the sodium-vapor streetlamps from reaching even the front lawns of the properties along that cloistered avenue. The trees and shrubs around the houses also were mature; some were overgrown. If any residents were looking out windows, they would most likely be unable to see him through the screen of greenery, on the deeply shadowed sidewalk.
        As he walked, he scanned the vehicles parked along the street. As far as he could tell, no one was sitting in any of them.
        A Mayflower moving van was parked across the street from Valerie's bungalow. That was convenient for Spencer, because the large truck