"The phone call and the fish make it more than a joke, don't they?"

"The phone call, by itself, is stupidity- like you said, cowardly shit. Someone coming on your property in the middle of the night and killing something is more. All of it put together is more. How much more I don't know, but I'd rather be a little paranoid than get taken by surprise. After we spoke on the phone this afternoon I really wracked my brains about what was bothering me. Went back into the Basille files, found the video, and watched it. And realized it wasn't the phrase that I remembered, it was the screams. Someone had stuck Hewitt's screams on your little gift."

He pulled his wet hand away from the dog's maw, looked at it, wiped it on his jacket.

"Where'd the video come from?" I said. "TV station's raw footage?"

He nodded.

"How much of it was actually broadcast?"

"Not much at all. This TV station has a twenty-four-hour crime-watch van with a scanner- anything for the ratings, right? They got to the scene first and were the only ones to actually record the whole thing. Their total footage is ten minutes or so, mostly no-action standoff before Hewitt comes out with Adeline. What you just saw is thirty-five seconds."

"That's all? It seemed a lot longer."

"Seemed like a goddamn eternity, but that's what it was. The part that actually made it to the six o'clock news was nine seconds. Five of Hewitt with Adeline, three of Rambo close-ups on the SWAT guys, and one second of Hewitt down. No blood, no screaming, no standing dead man."

"Wouldn't sell deodorant," I said, pushing the image of the teetering corpse out of my head. "Why was the sound off for most of it? Technical difficulties?"

"Yup. Loose cable on their parabolic mike. The sound man caught it midway through."

"What did the other stations broadcast?"

"Postmortem analysis by the department mouthpiece."

"So if the screams on my tape were lifted, the source had to be this particular piece of footage."

"Looks that way."

"Meaning what? Mr. Silk's an employee of the TV station?"

"Or a spouse, kid, lover, pal, significant other, whatever. If you give me your patient list, I can try to get hold of the station's personnel records and cross-check."

"Be better if you give me the personnel list," I said. "Let me check it against my patients, so I can preserve confidentiality."

"Fine. Another list you might try to get is the one for your "bad love' conference. Anyone who attended. It was a long time ago, but maybe the hospital keeps records."

"I'll call tomorrow."

He got up and touched his throat. "Now I'm thirsty."

We went into the kitchen, opened beers, and sat at the table, drinking and brooding.

The dog positioned himself between us, licking his lips.

Milo said, "He doesn't get to go for the gusto?"

"Teetotaler." I got up and slid the water bowl over. The dog ignored it.

"Bullshit. He wants hops and malt," said Milo. "Looks like he's closed a few taverns in his day."

"There's a marketing opportunity for you," I said. "Brew a hearty lager for quadrupeds. Though I'm not sure you could set your criteria too high for a species that imbibes out of the toilet."

He laughed. I managed a smile. Both of us trying to forget the videotape. And everything else.

"There's another possibility," I said. "Maybe Hewitt's voice wasn't lifted from the video footage. Maybe he was taped simultaneously by someone at the mental health center. Someone who happened to have a recorder handy the day of the murder and switched it on during the standoff. There'd probably be machines lying around the center, for therapy."

"You're saying there's a therapist behind this?"

"I was thinking more of a patient. Some paranoids make a fetish of keeping records. I've seen some lug tape recorders around with them. Someone who'd been bearing a grudge since seventy-nine could very well be highly paranoid."

He thought about that. "Nutcase with a pocket Sony, huh? Someone you once treated who ended up at the mental health center?"

"Or just someone who remembered me from the conference and ended up at the center. Someone tying me in with bad love- whatever it means to him. Probably anger at bad therapy. Or therapy he perceived as bad. De Bosch's theory has to do with bad mothers letting their kids down. Betrayal. If you think of therapists as surrogate parents, the stretch isn't hard to make."

He put down his bottle and looked at the ceiling. "So we've got a nut, one of your old patients, gone downhill, can't afford private treatment so he's getting county help. Happens to be at the center the day Hewitt freaks out and butchers Becky. Recorder in his pocket- keeping tabs on all the people talking behind his back. He hears the screams, presses RECORD… I guess it's possible- anything's possible in this city."

"If we're dealing with someone who's been stewing for a long time, witnessing Becky Basille's murder and the SWAT scene could have set him off. Hearing Hewitt screaming about bad love could have done it, too, if he'd had experiences with de Bosch or a de Boschian therapist."

He rolled the bottle between his palms. "Maybe. But two nuts with a "bad love' fixation just happening to show up at the same place on the same day is too damned cute for my taste."

"Mine, too," I said.

He drank some more.

"What if it wasn't a coincidence at all, Milo? What if Hewitt and the taper knew each other- even shared a common rage about bad love, de Bosch, therapists in general? If the mental health center's typical, it's a crowded place, patients waiting for hours. It wouldn't be that strange for two disturbed people to get together and discover a mutual resentment, would it? If they were paranoid to begin with, they could have played upon each other's fears and delusions. Confirming for each other that the way they saw the world was valid. The taper might even be someone who wouldn't have been violent under different circumstances. But seeing Hewitt murder his therapist and then seeing Hewitt's face blown off could have pushed him over."

"So now he's ready to do his own therapist? So what's the tape and the call and the fish?"

"Preparing the scene. Or maybe he won't go any further- I don't know. And something else: I might not even be his only target. He might have a current therapist who's in danger."

"Any idea who it could be? From your patient list?"

"No, that's the thing. There's no one who fits. But my patients were all kids. Lots can happen over time."

He sat back in his chair and looked up at the ceiling.

"Speaking of kids," he said. "Where does the kid's voice fit in with your two-nut scenario?"

"I don't know, dammit. Maybe the taper's got a kid. Or he's abducted one- God, I hope not, but that voice stank of coercion, didn't it? So flat- did Hewitt have any children?"

"Nope. The report has him as unmarried, unemployed, un-everything."

"Be good to know who he hung out with at the center. We could also try to verify that my tape was taken from the video footage. Because if it wasn't, we wouldn't have to bother cross-referencing the station personnel list."

He smiled. "And you wouldn't have to expose your patient list, right?"

"Right. That would be a major betrayal. I still can't justify it."

"You're sure it's not any of them?"

"No, I'm not sure, but what am I going to do? Call hundreds of people and ask them if they've grown up to be hate-crazed nuts?"

"No Mr. Silk in your past, huh?"

"Only silk I know is in my ties."

"One thing I can tell you, your tape's not an exact lift off the video. The footage has Hewitt screaming for just over twenty-seven seconds out of the thirty-five, and your segment only lasts sixteen. I had a brief go at it before I came over here- tried running both tapes simultaneously on two machines to see if I could pick out any segments that coincided exactly. I couldn't- it was tricky, going from machine to machine, on-off, on-off, trying to synchronize. And it's not like we're dealing with words, here- doesn't take long before all the screaming starts to sound the same."