“Exactly. There'd be nothing criminal in that, would there? Just sending a tape.”

“Wouldn't even buy him snack bar demerits, but how could he figure you'd make the connection?”

“I don't know. Unless this is just an appetizer and there's more coming.”

“What's this fool's name, again?”

“Donald Dell Wallace.”

He repeated it and said, “I never read the file. Refresh me on him.”

“He used to hang out with a biker gang called the Iron Priests—small-time Tujunga bunch. In between prison sentences, he worked as a motorcycle mechanic. Dealt speed on the side. I think he's a member of the Aryan Brotherhood.”

“Well, there's a character reference for you. Let me see what I find out.”

“You think this is something I should worry about?”

“Not really—you might think of locking your doors.”

“I already do.”

“Congratulations. You going to be home tonight?”

“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.