Bad Love

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.

'Police. Open up or I'll shoot.'

He bared his teeth in a Halloween grimace. I unlocked the door and he came in, carrying a black briefcase. He was dressed for work: blue hopsack blazer, gray slacks, white shirt stretched tight over his belly, blue and gray plaid tie tugged loose, suede desert boots in need of new soles.

His haircut was recent, the usual: clipped short at sides and back, long and shaggy on top, sideburns down to the earlobes. Country yokels had looked that way back in the fifties. Melrose Avenue hipsters were doing it nowadays. I doubted Milo was aware of either fact. The black forelock that shadowed his forehead showed a few more gray streaks. His green eyes were clear. Some of the weight he'd lost had come back; he looked to be carrying at least two hundred and forty pounds on his seventy-five inches.

He stared at the dog and said, 'What?'

'Gee, Dad, he followed me home. Can I keep him?'

The dog gazed up at him and yawned.

'Yeah, I'm bored, too,' Milo told him. 'What the hell is it, Alex?'

'French bulldog,' I said. 'Rare and pricey, according to a vet. And this one's a damned good specimen.'

'Specimen.' He shook his head. 'Is it civilized?'

'Compared to what you're used to, very.'

He frowned, patted the dog gingerly, and got slurped.

'Charming,' he said, wiping his hand on his slacks. Then he looked at me. 'Why, Marlin Perkins?'

'I'm serious- he just showed up this morning. I'm trying to locate the owner, have an ad running in the paper. The vet said he's been well cared for. It's just a matter of time before somebody claims him.'

'For a moment I thought this tape stuff had gotten to you and you'd gone out and bought yourself some protection.'

'This?' I laughed, remembering Dr. Uno's amusement. 'I don't think so.'

'Hey,' he said, 'sometimes bad things come in small packages- for all I know it's trained to go for the gonads.'

The dog stood on his hind legs and touched Milo 's trousers with his forepaws.

'Down, Rover,' he said.

'What's the matter, you don't like animals?'

'Cooked, I do. Didja name it yet?'

I shook my head.

'Then 'Rover' will have to do.' He took his jacket off and tossed it onto a chair. 'Here's what I've got so far on Wallace. He keeps a low profile in slam and has some associations with the Aryan Brotherhood, but he's not a full member. As for what kind of hardware he's got in his cell, I don't know yet. Now where's the alleged tape?'

'In the alleged tapedeck.'

He went over and turned on the stereo. The dog stayed with me.

I said, 'You know where the meatloaf comes from, don't you?'

He cocked his head and licked my hand.

Then the screams came on and the hairs rose on the back of his neck.

• • •

Hearing it the third time was worse.

Milo 's face registered revulsion, but after the sound died, he said nothing. Taking his briefcase over to the deck, he switched it off, ejected the tape, and removed it by inserting a pencil in one of the reel holes.

'Black surface,' he muttered. 'Ye olde white powder.'

Placing the cassette atop the plastic cover of my turntable, he removed a small brush and a vial from the case. Dipping the brush into the vial, he dusted the cassette with a pale, ashlike powder, squinting as he worked.

'Well, looks like we've got some nice ridges and swirls,' he said. 'But they could all be yours. Your prints are on file with the medical board, right, so I can check?'

'They printed me when I got my license.'

'Meaning a week or two going through channels in order to pry it loose from Sacramento – noncriminal stuff's not on PRINTRAK yet. You haven't been arrested for anything recently, have you?'

'Nothing I can remember.'

'Too bad. Okay, let's get a quick fix on your digits right now.'

He took an inkpad and fingerprint form from the case. The dog watched as he inked my fingers and rolled them on the form. The audiocassette was near my hand and I looked at the concentric white patches on its surface.

'Keep that pinkie loose,' said Milo. 'Feel like a scumbag felon yet?'

'I don't say squat without my lawyer, pig.'

He chuckled and handed me a cloth. As I wiped my fingers, he took a small camera out of the case and photographed the prints on the tape. Flipping the cartridge over with the pencil, he dusted, 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