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raised more prints on the other side, and took pictures of them, muttering, “Might as well do it right.” Then he lowered the cassette into a small box lined with cotton, sealed the container, and put it into the case.
    “What do you think?” I said.
    He looked at my print form, then at the tape, and shook his head. “They always look the same to me. Let the lab deal with it.”
    “I meant about the tape. Sound like any movie you know?”
    He ran his hand over his face, as if washing without water. “Not really.”
    “Me neither. Didn’t the kid’s voice have a brainwashed quality to it?”
    “More like brain
dead
,” he said. “Yeah, it was ugly. But that doesn’t make it real. Far as I’m concerned, it’s still filed under B for “bad joke.’ ”
    “Someone getting a child to chant as a joke?”
    He nodded. “We’re living in weird times, Doc.”
    “But what if it
is
real? What if we’re dealing with a sadist who’s abducted and tortured a child and is telling me about it in order to heighten the kick?”
    “The
screamer
was the one who sounded tortured, Alex. And that was an adult. Someone’s messing with your head.”
    “If it’s not Wallace,” I said, “maybe it’s some psychopath picking me as his audience because I treat kids and sometimes my name gets in the papers. Someone who read about Becky’s murderer screaming “bad love’ and got an idea. And for all I know, I’m not the only therapist he’s contacted.”
    “Could be. When was the last time you
were
in the papers?”
    “This summer — when the Jones case went to trial.”
    “Anything’s possible,” he said.
    “Or maybe it’s more direct, Milo. A former patient, telling me I failed him. I started going through my files, got halfway and couldn’t find anything. But who knows? My patients were all children. In most cases I have no idea what kind of adults they turned into.”
    “If you found anything funny, would you give me the names?”
    “Couldn’t,” I said. “Without some kind of clear danger, I couldn’t justify breaking confidentiality.”
    He scowled. The dog watched him unwaveringly.
    “What’re
you
staring at?” he demanded.
    Wag, wag.
    Milo began to smile, fought it, picked up his case, and put a heavy hand on my shoulder.
    “Listen, Alex, I still wouldn’t lose any sleep over it. Let me take these to the lab right now instead of tomorrow, see if I can get some night-shifter to put some speed on. I’ll also make a copy and start a case file — private one, just for my eyes. When in doubt, be a goddamn clerk.”
     
     
    After he left, I tried to read a psychology journal but couldn’t concentrate. I watched the news, did fifty pushups, and had another go at my charts. I made it through all of them. Kids’ names, vaguely remembered pathologies. No allusions to “bad love.” No one I could see wanting to frighten me.
    At ten, Robin called. “Hi, honey.”
    “Hi,” I said. “You sound good.”
    “I am good, but I miss you. Maybe I’ll come home early.”
    “That would be great. Just say when and I’ll be at the airport.”
    “Everything okay?”
    “Peachy. We’ve got a visitor.”
    I described the bulldog’s arrival.
    “Oh,” she said, “he sounds adorable. Now I definitely want to come home early.”
    “He snorts and drools.”
    “How cute. You know, we should get a dog of our own. We’re nurturant, right? And you had one when you were a kid. Don’t you miss it?”
    “My father had one,” I said. “A hunting cur that didn’t like children. It died when I was five and we never got another, but sure, I like dogs — how about something big and protective?”
    “Long as it’s also warm and furry.”
    “What breeds do you like?”
    “I don’t know — something solid and dependable. Let me think about it and when I get back we can go shopping.”
    “Sounds good, bowwow.”
    “We can do other stuff, too,” she said.
    “Sounds even better.”
     
     
    Just before