Dark Rivers of the Heart

efforts to vanish behind an elaborate screen of multifarious identities, though he had diligently attempted to erase his past and to make his current existence as difficult to prove as that of the Loch Ness monster, and though he had nearly succeeded in being as elusive as a ghost, he had been tripped up by a musical rubber bone. A dog toy. Grant had seemed inhumanly clever, but the simple human desire to please a beloved pet had brought him down.
        Roy Miro WATCHED from the blue shadows of the eucalyptus grove, enjoying the medicinal but pleasant odor of the oil-rich leaves.
        The rapidly assembled swat team hit the cabin an hour after dawn, when the canyon was quiet except for the faintest rustle of the trees in an offshore breeze. The stillness was broken by shattering glass, the whomp of stun grenades, and the crash of the front and back doors going down simultaneously.
        The place was small, and the initial search required little more than a minute. Toting a Micro Uzi, wearing a Kevlar jacket so heavy that it appeared to be capable of stopping even Teflon-coated slugs, Alfonse Johnson stepped out onto the back porch to signal that the cabin was deserted.
        Dismayed, Roy came out of the grove and followed Johnson through the rear entrance into the kitchen, where shards of glass crunched under his shoes.
        "He's taken a trip somewhere," Johnson said.
        "How do you figure?"
        "In here."
        Roy followed Johnson into the only bedroom. It was almost as sparsely furnished as a monk's cell. No art brightened the roughly plastered walls.
        Instead of drapes or curtains, white vinyl blinds hung at the windows.
        A suitcase stood near the bed, in front of the only nightstand.
        "Must have decided he didn't need that one," said Johnson.
        The simple cotton bedspread was slightly mussed-as if Grant had put another suitcase there to pack for his trip.
        The closet door stood open. A few shirts, jeans, and chinos hung from the wooden rod, but half the hangers were empty.
        One by one, Roy pulled out the drawers on a highboy. They contained a few items of clothing-mostly socks and under-wear. A belt.
        One green sweater, one blue.
        Even the contents of a large suitcase, if returned to the drawers, would not have filled them. Therefore, Grant had either packed two or more suitcases-or his clothin and home-decorating budgets were equally frugal.
        "Any signs of a dog?" Roy asked.
        Johnson shook his head. "Not that I noticed."
        "Look around, inside and out," Roy ordered, leaving the bedroom.
        Three members of the swat team, men with whom Roy had not worked before, were standing in the living room. They were tall, beefy guys.
        In that confined space, their protective gear, combat boots, and bristling weapons made them appear to be even larger than they were.
        With no one to shoot or subdue, they were as awkward and uncertain as professional wrestlers invited to tea with the octogenarian members of a ladies' knitting club.
        Roy was about to send them outside when he saw that the screen was lit on one of the computers in the array of electronic equipment that covered the surface of an L-shaped corner desk. White letters glowed on a blue background.
        "Who turned that on?" he asked the three men.
        They gazed at the computer, baffled.
        "Must've been on when we came in," one of them said.
        "Wouldn't you have noticed?"
        "Maybe not."
        "Grant must've left in a hurry," said another.
        Alfonse Johnson, just entering the room, disagreed: "It wasn't on when I came through the front door. I'd bet anything."
        Roy went to the desk. On the computer screen was the same number repeated three times down the center: Suddenly the numbers changed, beginning at the top, continuing slowly down the column, until all were the same: Simultaneously with the appearance of the third thirty-two, a soft whirrrrr arose from one of the electronic devices on the large desk. it lasted only a couple of seconds, and Roy couldn't identify the unit in which it originated.
        'The numbers changed from top to bottom, as before: 33, 33, 33.
        Again: that whispery two-second hum.
        Although Roy was far better acquainted with the capabilities and operation of sophisticated computers than was the average citizen, he had never seen