Dark Rivers of the Heart

rearview mirror and saw headlights a hundred yards behind him: Johnson and Vecchio.
        He walked to the gate. call Dormon was waiting for him.
        Beyond the chain-link, in the headlight-silvered fog, strange machines moved rhythmically, in counterpoint to one another, like giant prehistoric birds bobbing for worms in the soil. Wellhead pumps. It was a producing oil field, of which many were scattered throughout southern California.
        Johnson and Vecchio joined Roy and Dormon at the gate.
        "Oil wells," Vecchio said.
        "Goddamned oil wells," Johnson said.
        "Just a bunch of goddamned oil wells," Vecchio said.
        At Roy's direction, Dormon went to the van to get flashlights and a bolt cutter. It was not just a fake pizza-delivery truck but a well-equipped support unit with all the tools and electronic gear that might be needed in a field operation.
        "We going in there?" Vecchio asked. "Why?"
        "There might be a caretaker's cottage," Roy said. "Grant might be an on-site caretaker, living here."
        Roy sensed that they were as anxious as he to avoid being made fools of twice in one evening. Nevertheless, they knew, as he did, that Grant had likely inserted a phony address in his DMV records and that the chance of finding him in the oil field was between slim" and nil.
        After Dormon snapped the gate chain, they followed the gravel lane, using their flashlights to probe between the seesawing pumps. In places, the previous night's torrential rain had washed away the gravel, leaving mud. By the time they looped through the creaking-squeaking-clicking machinery and returned to the gate, without finding a caretaker, Roy had ruined his new shoes.
        In silence, they cleaned off their shoes as best they could by shuffling their feet in the wild grass beside the lane.
        While the others waited to be told what to do next, Roy returned to his car. He intended to link with Mama and find another address for Spencer snake-humping-crap-eating-piece-of-human-garbage Grant.
        He was angry, which wasn't good. Anger inhibited clear thinking.
        No problem had ever been solved in a rage.
        He breathed deeply, inhaling both air and tranquility. With each exhalation, he expelled his tension. He visualized tranquility as a pale-peach vapor; he saw tension, however, as a bile-green mist that seethed from his nostrils in twin plumes.
        From a book of Tibetan wisdom, he had learned this meditative technique of managing his emotions. Maybe it was a Chinese book. Or Indian. He wasn't sure. He had explored many Eastern philosophies in his endless search for deeper self-awareness and transcendence.
        When he got in the car, his pager was beeping. He unclipped it from the sun visor. In the message window he saw the name Kleck and a telephone number in the 714 area code.
        . John Kleck was leading the search for the nine-year-old Pontiac registered to "Valerie Keene." If she'd followed her usual pattern, the car had been abandoned in a parking lot or along a city street.
        When Roy called the number on the pager, the answering voice was unmistakably Kleck's. He was in his twenties, thin and gangly, with a huge Adam's apple and a face resembling that of a trout, but his voice was deep, mellifluous, and impressive.
        "It's me," Roy said. Where are you?"
        He said with sonorous splendor: "John Wayne airport, down in Orange County." The search had begun in L.A. but had been widening all day.
        "The Pontiac's here, in one of the longterm parking garages. We're collecting the names of the airline ticket agents working yesterday afternoon and evening. We've got photographs of her. Someone may remember selling her a ticket."
        "Follow through, but it's a dead end. She's too smart to dump the car where she made her next connection. It's misdirection. She knows we can't be sure, so we'll have to waste time checking it out."
        "We're also trying to talk to all the cabdrivers who worked the airport during that time. Maybe she didn't fly out but took a taxi."
        "Better carry it one step further. She might have walked from the airport to one of the hotels around there. See if any doormen, parking valets, or bellmen remember her asking for a cab."
        "Will do," Kleck said. "She's not going to get far this time, Roy.
        We're going to stay right on her ass."
        Roy might have