Dark Rivers of the Heart

blocked those neighbors' view. No men were working at the van; the move-in or move-out must be scheduled for the morning.
        Spencer followed the front walkway and climbed three steps to the porch.
        The trellises at both ends supported not bougainvillea but nightblooming jasmine. Though it wasn't at its seasonal peak, the jasmine sweetened the air with its singular fragrance.
        The shadows on the porch were deep. He doubted that he could even be seen from the street.
        In the gloom, he had to feel along the door frame to find the button.
        He could hear the doorbell ringing softly inside the house.
        He waited. No lights came on.
        The flesh creped on the back of his neck, and he sensed that he was being watched.
        Two windows flanked the front door and looked onto the porch. As far as he could discern, the dimly visible folds of the draperies on the other side of the glass were without any gaps through which an observer could have been studying him.
        He looked back at the street. Sodium-yellow light transformed the downpour into glittering skeins of molten gold. At t'he far curb, the moving van stood half in shadows, half in the glow of the streetlamps.
        A latemodel Honda and an older Pontiac were parked at the nearer curb.
        No pedestrians. No passing traffic. The night was silent except for the incessant rataplan of the rain.
        He rang the bell once more.
        The crawling feeling on the nape of his neck didn't subside. He put a hand back there, half convinced that he would find a spider negotiating his rain-slick skin. No spider.
        As he turned to the street again, he thought that he saw furtive movement from the corner of his eye, near the back of the Mayflower van.
        He stared for half a minute but nothing moved in the wind except torrents of golden rain falling to the pavement as straight as if they were, in fact, heavy droplets of precious metal.
        He knew why he was jumpy. He didn't belong here. Guilt was twisting his nerves.
        Facing the door again, he slipped his wallet out of his right hip pocket and removed his MasterCard.
        Though he could not have admitted it to himself until now, he would have been disappointed if he had found lights on and Valerie at home. He was concerned about her, but he doubted that she was lying, either injured or dead, in her darkened house. He was not psychic: The image of her bloodstained face, which he'd conjured in his mind's eye, was only an excuse to make the trip here from The Red Door.
        His need to know everything about Valerie was perilously close to an adolescent longing. At the moment, his judgment was not sound.
        He frightened himself. But he couldn't turn back.
        By inserting the MasterCard between the door and jamb, he could pop the spring latch. He assumed there would be a deadbolt as well, because Santa Monica was as crime-ridden as any town in or around Los Angeles, but maybe he would get lucky.
        He was luckier than he hoped: The front door was unlocked. Even the spring latch wasn't fully engaged. When he twisted the knob, the door clicked open.
        Surprised, stricken by another tremor of guilt, he glanced back at the street again. The Indian laurels. The moving van. The cars. The rain, rain, rain.
        He went inside. He closed the door and stood with his back against it, dripping on the carpet, shivering.
        At first the room in front of him was unrelievedly black. After a while, his vision adjusted enough for him to make out a drapery-covered window-and then a second and a third-illuminated only by the faint gray ambient light of the night beyond.
        For all that he could see, the blackness before him might have harbored a crowd, but he knew that he was alone. The house felt not merely unoccupied but deserted, abandoned.
        Spencer took the flashlight from his jacket pocket. He hooded the beam with his left hand to ensure, as much as possible, that it would not be noticed by anyone outside.
        The beam revealed an unfurnished living room, barren from wall to wall.
        The carpet was milk-chocolate brown. The unlined draperies were beige.
        The two-bulb light fixture in the ceiling could probably be operated by one of the three switches beside the front door, but he didn't try them.
        His soaked athletic shoes and socks squished as he crossed the living