“They ever attack?”

“Attack?” He laughed. “I guess if he got attached to you he might try to protect you, but I wouldn't count on it. They're really not good for much but being a friend.”

“Well, that's something,” I said.

“Sure it is,” he said. “That's where it's at, bottom line, right?”

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER

3

I drove away from the clinic stroking the dog and thinking of the child's voice on the tape. I wasn't hungry but figured I'd need some lunch eventually. Spotting a hamburger stand farther up on Sepulveda, I bought a takeout half-pounder. The aroma kept the dog awake and drooling all the way home, and a couple of times he tried to stick his nose in the bag. Back in the kitchen, he convinced me to part with a third of the patty. Then he carried his booty to a corner, sat, masticated noisily, and promptly went to sleep, chin to the floor.

I phoned my service and found out Milo had called back. This time he answered at Robbery-Homicide. “Sturgis.”

“How's it going, Joe Friday?”

“The usual buckets of blood. How's by you?”

I told him about receiving the tape. “Probably just a prank, but imagine getting a kid to do that.”

I expected him to slough it off, but he said, “ 'Bad love'? That's weird.”

“What is?”

“Those exact same words popped up in a case a couple of months ago. Remember that social worker who got murdered at the mental health center? Rebecca Basille?”

“It was all over the news,” I said, remembering headlines and sound bites, the smiling picture of a pretty, dark-haired young woman butchered in a soundproof therapy room. “You never said it was your case.”

“It wasn't really anyone's case because there was no investigation to speak of. The psycho who stabbed her died trying to take another caseworker hostage.”

“I remember.”

“I got stuck filling out the paperwork.”

“How did “bad love' pop up?”

“The psycho screamed it when he ran out after cutting Becky. Clinic director was standing in the hall, heard him before she ducked into her office and hid. I figured it was schizo talk.”

“It may be something psychological—jargon that he picked up somewhere in the mental health system. 'Cause I think I've heard it, too, but I can't remember where.”

“That's probably it,” he said. “A kid, huh?”

“A kid chanting in this strange, flat voice. It may be related to a case I'm working on, Milo. Remember that file you got me—the woman murdered by her husband?”

“The biker?”

“He's been locked up for six months. Two months ago he started asking for visitation with his daughters—around the same time as the Basille murder, come to think of it. If Becky's murderer screaming “bad love' was in the news, I guess he could have taken notice and filed it away for future use.”

“Intimidate the shrink—maybe remind you of what can happen to therapists who don't behave themselves?”