Dark Rivers of the Heart by Dean Koontz Read Free Book Online Page B

turmoil and self-destruction as inevitably as the earth was drawn to complete its annual revolution of the sun.
    His sadness deepened.
    Under the telephone number on the video display, the correct name appeared. The address, however, was listed as unpublished by request of the customer.
    Roy instructed the home-office computer to access and search the phone company’s electronically stored installation and billing records to find the address. Such an invasion of private-sector data was illegal, of course, without a court order, but Mama was exceedingly discreet. Because all the computer systems in the national telephone network were already in Mama’s directory of previously violated entities, she was able to enter any of them virtually instantaneously, explore at will, retrieve whatever was requested, and disengage without leaving the slightest trace that she had been there; Mama was a ghost in their machines.
    In seconds, a Beverly Hills address appeared on the screen.
    He cleared the screen and then asked Mama for a street map of Beverly Hills. She supplied it after a brief hesitation. Seen in its entirety, it was too compressed to be read.
    Roy typed in the address that he’d been given. The computer filled the screen with the quadrant that was of interest to him, and then with a quarter of that quadrant. The house was only a couple of blocks south of Wilshire Boulevard, in the less prestigious “flats” of Beverly Hills, and easy to find.
    He typed POOH OUT , which disengaged his portable terminal from Mama in her cool, dry bunker in Virginia.

    The large brick house—which was painted white, with hunter-green shutters—stood behind a white picket fence. The front lawn featured two enormous bare-limbed sycamores.
    Lights were on inside, but only at the back of the house and only on the first floor.
    Standing at the front door, sheltered from the rain by a deep portico supported on tall white columns, Roy could hear music inside: a Beatles number, “When I’m Sixty-four.” He was thirty-three; the Beatles were before his time, but he liked their music because much of it embodied an endearing compassion.
    Softly humming along with the lads from Liverpool, Roy slipped a credit card between the door and the jamb. He worked it upward until it forced open the first—and least formidable—of the two locks. He wedged the card in place to hold the simple spring latch out of the niche in the striker plate.
    To open the heavy-duty deadbolt, he needed a more sophisticated tool than a credit card: a Lockaid lock-release gun, sold only to law-enforcement agencies. He slipped the thin pick of the gun into the key channel, under the pin tumblers, and pulled the trigger. The flat steel spring in the Lockaid caused the pick to jump upward and to lodge some of the pins at the shear line. He had to pull the trigger half a dozen times to fully disengage the lock.
    The snapping of hammer against spring and the clicking of pick against pin tumblers were not thunderous sounds, by any measure, but he was grateful for the cover provided by the music. “When I’m Sixty-four” ended as he opened the door. Before his credit card could fall, he caught it, froze, and waited for the next song. To the opening bars of “Lovely Rita,” he stepped across the threshold.
    He put the lock-release gun on the floor, to the right of the entrance. Quietly, he closed the door behind him.
    The foyer welcomed him with gloom. He stood with his back against the door, letting his eyes adjust to the shadows.
    When he was confident that he would not blindly knock over any furniture, he proceeded from room to room, toward the light at the back of the house.
    He regretted that his clothes were so saturated and his galoshes so dirty. He was probably making a mess of the carpet.
    She was in the kitchen, at the sink, washing a head of lettuce, her back to the swinging door through which he entered. Judging by the vegetables on the cutting board, she was