Profound.

I went to the bedroom and retrieved Ruthanne Wallace's police file.

Big as a phone book.

"Trial transcripts," Milo had said, hefting it as he handed it over. "Sure isn't because of any hotshot detection. Your basic moron murder."

He'd pulled it from Foothill Division's CLOSED files, filling my request without question. Now I flipped pages, not knowing why I'd asked for it. Closing the folder, I took it into the library and crammed it down into a desk drawer.

Ten in the morning and I was already tired.

I went to the kitchen, loaded some coffee into the machine, and started going through the mail, discarding junk mail, signing checks, filing paper, then coming to the brown-wrapped package that I'd assumed was a book.

Slitting the padded envelope, I stuck my hand in, expecting the bulk of a hardcover. But my fingers touched nothing and I reached deeper, finally coming upon something hard and smooth. Plastic. Wedged tightly in a corner.

I shook the envelope. An audiocassette fell out and clattered onto the table.

Black, no label or markings on either side.

I examined the padded envelope. My name and address had been typed on a white sticker. No zip code. No return address either. The postmark was four days old, recorded at the Terminal Annex.

Curious, I took the tape into the living room, slipped it into the deck, and sank back onto the old leather couch.

Click. A stretch of static-fuzzed nothing started me wondering if this was some sort of practical joke.

Then a shock of noise killed that theory and made my chest tighten.

A human voice. Screaming.

Howling.

Male. Hoarse. Loud. Wet- as if gargling in pain.

Unbearable pain. A terrible incoherence that went on and on as I sat there, too surprised to move.