Dark Rivers of the Heart

miles from Vegas.
        Windblown tumbleweeds as big as wheelbarrows rolled across the highway, through his headlight beams, from nowhere to nowhere.
        The clear, dry desert air did little to inhibit his view of the universe.
        Millions of stars blazed from horizon to horizon, beautiful but cold, alluring but unreachable, shedding surprisingly little light on the alkaline plains that flanked the highway-and, for all their grandeur, revealing nothing.
        When Roy Miro woke in his Westwood hotel room, the digital clock on the nightstand read 4:19. He had slept less than five hours, but he felt rested, so he switched on the lamp.
        He threw back the covers, sat on the edge of the bed in his pajamas, squinted as his eyes adjusted to the brightness-then smiled at the Tuph tupperware container that stood beside the clock. The plastic was translucent, so he could see only a vague shape within.
        He put the container on his lap and removed the lid. Guinevere's hand.
        He felt blessed to possess an object of such great beauty.
        How sad, however, that its ravishing splendor wouldn't last much longer.
        In twenty-four hours, if not sooner, the hand would have deteriorated visibly. Its comeliness would be but a memory.
        Already it had undergone a color change. Fortunately, a certain chalkiness only emphasized the exquisite bone structure in the long, elegantly tapered fingers.
        Reluctantly, Roy replaced the lid, made sure the seal was tight, and put the container aside.
        He went into the living room of the two-room suite. His attache case was arranged on a luncheon table by a large window.
        Soon he was in touch with Mama. He requested the results of the investigation that he'd asked her to undertake the previous evening, when he and his men had discovered that the DMV address for Spencer Grant was an uninhabited oil field.
        He had been so furious then.
        He was calm now. Cool. In control.
        Reading Mama's report from the screen, tapping the PAGE DOWN key each time he wanted to continue, Roy quickly saw that the search for Spencer Grant's true address hadn't been easy.
        During Grant's months with the California Multi-Agency Task Force on Computer Crime, he'd learned a lot about the nationwide Info net and the vulnerabilities of the thousands of computer systems it comprised.
        Evidently, he had acquired codes-and-procedures books and master programming atlases for the computer systems of various telephone companies, credit agencies, and government offices. Then he must have managed to carry or electronically transmit them from the task-force offices to his own computer.
        After quitting his job, he had erased every reference to his whereabouts from public and private records. His name appeared only in his military, DMV, Social Security, and police department files, and in every case the given address was one of the two that had already proved to be false. The national file of the Internal Revenue Service contained other men with his name; however, none was his age, had his Social Security number, lived in California, or had paid withholding taxes as an employee of the LAPD.
        Grant was missing, as well, from the records of the State of California tax authorities.
        If nothing else, he was apparently a tax evader. Roy hated tax evaders.
        They were the epitome of social irresponsibility.
        According to Mama, no utility company currently billed Spencer Grant-yet no matter where he lived, he needed electricity, water, telephone, garbage pickup, and probably natural gas. Even if he had erased his name from billing lists to avoid paying for utilities, he couldn't exit their service records without triggering disconnection of essential services.
        Yet he could not be found.
        Mama assumed two possibilities. First: Grant was honest enough to pay for utilities; however, he altered the companies' billing and service records to transfer his accounts to a false name that he had created for himself The sole purpose of those actions would be to further his apparent goal of disappearing from public record, making himself hard to find if any police agency or governmental body wanted to talk to him.
        Like how-Or, second: He was dishonest eliminatin himself from billill records, paying for nothing-while maintaining service under a false name. In either case, he and