Dark Rivers of the Heart

earth. The lush fronds of the wind-tossed palm trees rustled and clicked and clattered with what might have been a storm warning.
        Padding along at Spencer's side, Rocky sneezed a couple of times at the chlorine smell, but he was unfazed by the thrashing palms. He had never met a tree that scared him. Which was not to say that such a devil tree didn't exist. When he was in one of his stranger moods, when he had the heebie-jeebies and sensed evil mo'o at work in every shadow, when the circumstances were just right, he probably could be terrorized by a wilted sapling in a five-inch pot.
        According to the information that Valerie-then calling herself Hannah May Rainey-had supplied to obtain a work card for a job as a dealer in a casino, she'd lived at this apartment complex. Unit 2-D.
        The apartments on the second floor opened onto a roofed balcony that overlooked the courtyard and that sheltered the walkway in front of the ground-floor units. As Spencer and Rocky climbed concrete stairs, wind rattled a loose picket in the rust-spotted iron railing.
        He'd brought Rocky because a cute dog was a great icebreaker.
        People tended to trust a man who was trusted by a dog, and they were more likely to open up and talk to a stranger who had an appealing mutt at his side-even if that stranger had a dark intensity about him and a scar from ear to chin. Such was the power of canine charm.
        Hannah-Valerie's former apartment was in the center wing of the U-shaped structure, at the rear of the courtyard. A large window to the right of the door was covered by draperies. To the left, a small window revealed a kitchen. The name above the doorbell was Traven.
        Spencer rang the bell and waited.
        His highest hope was that Valerie had shared the apartment and that the other tenant remained in residence. She had lived there at least four months, the duration of her employment at the Mirage.
        In which time the former roommate might have made an observation that would enable Spencer to track her backward from Nevada, the same way that Rosie had pointed him from Santa Monica to Vegas.
        He rang the bell again.
        Odd as it was to try to find her by seeking to learn where she'd come from instead of where she'd gone, Spencer had no better choice.
        He didn't have the resources to track her forward from Santa Monica.
        Besides, by going backward, he was less likely to collide with the federal agents-or whatever they were-following her.
        He had heard the doorbell ringing inside. Nevertheless, he tried knocking.
        The knock was answered-though not by anyone in Valerie's former apartment. Farther to the right along the balcony, the door to 2-E opened, and a gray-haired woman in her seventies leaned her head out to peek at him. "Can I help you?"
        "I'm looking for Miss Traven."
        "Oh, she works the early shift at Caesars Palace. Won't be home for hours yet."
        She moved into the door-way: a short, plump, sweet-faced woman in clunky orthopedic shoes, support stockings as thick as dinosaur hide, a yellow-and-gray housedress, and a forest-green cardigan.
        Spencer said, "Well, who I'm really looking for is-" Rocky, hiding behind Spencer, risked poking his head around his master's legs to get a look at the grandmotherly soul from 2-E, and the old woman squealed with delight when she spotted him. Although she toddled more than walked, she launched herself off the threshold with the exuberance of a child who didn't know the meaning of the word "arthritis." Burbling baby talk, she approached at a velocity that startled Spencer and alarmed the hell out of Rocky. The dog yelped, the woman bore down on them with exclamations of adoration, the dog tried to climb Spencer's right leg as if to hide under his jacket, the woman said "Sweetums, sweetums, sweetums," and Rocky dropped to the balcony floor in a swoon of terror and curled into a ball and crossed his forepaws over his eyes and prepared himself for the inevitability of violent death.
        Bosley Donner's left leg slipped off the foot brace on his electric wheelchair and scraped along the walkway. Laughing, letting his chair coast to a halt, Donner lifted his unfeeling leg with both hands and slammed it back where it belonged. term, Donner's transportation was capable of considerably greater speeds than any ordinary electric wheelchair. Roy Miro caught up with him,