Yup.
“How’s Robin?”
“Fine. She’s up in Oakland, giving a seminar-medieval lutes.”
“Smart kid, working with inanimate objects. All right, I’ll come by, rescue you from your hermitude. If you want me to I can fingerprint the tape, check it against Wallace’s. If it’s him, we’ll report him to his keepers, at least let him know you’re not going to roll over.”
“Okay-thanks.”
“Yeah. .. don’t handle it anymore, hard plastic’s a real good surface for preservation. … Bad love. Sounds like something out of a movie. Sci-fi, splatter flick, whatever.”
“I couldn’t find it in any of my psych books, so maybe that’s it.
Maybe that’s where Becky’s murderer got it, too-all of us are children of the silver screen. The tape was mailed from the Terminal Annex, not Folsom. Meaning if Wallace is behind it, someone’s helping him.”
“I can check the rest of his gang, too. At least the ones with records. Don’t lose any sleep over it. I’ll try to get by around eight. Meanwhile, back to the slaughter.”
“Buckets of blood, huh?”
“Big sloshing buckets. Every morning I wake up, praise the Lord, and thank Him for all the iniquity-how’s that for perverse?”
“Hey,” I said, “you love your work.”
“Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, I do. Demotion never felt so goddamn glorious.”
“Department treating you well?”
“Let’s not lapse into fantasy. The department’s tolerating me, because they think they’ve wounded me deeply with their pissanty pay cut and I’ll eventually cave in and take disability like every other goldbricking pension junkie. The fact that one night of moonlighting more than makes up for the difference in take home has eluded the brass. As has the fact that I’m a contrary bastard.”
“They’re not very observant, are they?”
“That’s why they’re administrators.”
After he hung up, I called Evelyn Rodriguez’s house in Sunland. As the phone rang, I pictured the man who’d carved up her daughter playing with a tape recorder in his cell.
No one answered. I put the phone down.
I thought of Rebecca Basille, hacked to death in a soundproof room.
Her murder had really gotten to me-gotten to lots of therapists. But I’d put it out of my head until Milo reminded me.
I drummed my fists on the counter. The dog looked up from his empty bowl and stared. I’d forgotten he was there.
What happens to therapists who don’t behave themselves. ..
What if Wallace had nothing to do with the tape? Someone else, from my past.
I went into the library and the dog followed. The closet was stacked with boxes of inactive patient files, loosely alphabetized with no strict chronological order, because some patients had been treated at several different time periods.
I put the radio on for background and started with the A’s, looking for children whom I’d tagged with psychopathic or antisocial tendencies and cases that hadn’t turned out well. Even longterm deadbeats I’d sent to collections.
I made it halfway through. A sour history lesson with no tangible results: nothing popped out at me. By the end of the afternoon, my eyes hurt and I was exhausted.
I stopped reading, realized grumbly snores had overpowered the music.
Reaching down, I kneaded the bulldog’s muscular neck. He shuddered but remained asleep. A few charts were fanned on the desk. Even if I came up with something suggestive, patient confidentiality meant I couldn’t discuss it with Milo.
I returned to the kitchen, fixed kibble and meatloaf and fresh water, watched my companion sup, burp, then circle and sniff. I left the service door open and he bounced down the stairs.
While he was out, I called Robin’s hotel in Oakland again, but she was still out.
The dog came back. He and I went into the living room and watched the evening news. Current events were none too cheerful, but he didn’t seem to mind.
The doorbell rang at eight-fifteen. The dog didn’t bark, but his ears stiffened and tilted forward and he trailed me to the door, remaining at my heels as I squinted through the peephole.
Milo’s face was a wide-angle blur, big and pocked, its paleness turned sallow by the bug light over the doorway.