Killer Calories

time, fingering the bills and studying the note. Savannah could almost hear those mental cogs turning. Dirk might be a slob, but when it came to criminal investigation, the guy was no slouch.
    “All right,” he said. “I’ll talk to Dr. Liu, see if there’s anything we missed. Captain Bloss ain’t gonna be happy about it, though. He thought the whole thing was wrapped up nice and neat.”
    Savannah gave him a saccharine grin. “Now, that’s too bad. Because we both know how much that dear man means to me.”
    Like a true friend, Dirk’s eyes glimmered with hatred for the man who had ousted Savannah from the force. “Yeah, I know how much love you have for him,” he said. “You’d be happy to see him with an apple in his mouth, roasting on a spit.
    Savannah grinned at the fantasy. The apple was a nice touch; sometimes, Dirk had a real way with words. She had always thought of Bloss as a guy with porcine qualities. “Sounds good to me. But only if I can turn and baste him.”

    Savannah looked into Tammy’s eyes, with their long, fluttering Bambi lashes, and thought sadly that the young woman seemed to have lost some of her innocence in the past thirty-six hours. And if she followed Savannah into that autopsy suite, she was going to lose even more.
    They stood outside in the morgue hallway with its calm— to the point of depressing—blue-gray walls and gray-blue carpeting. Assorted abstract paintings completed the placid surroundings, studies of blue on gray and vice versa.
    “You don’t have to come in if you don’t want,” Savannah told her for the third time in the past ten minutes. “Or we could wait to talk to Dr. Jenny when she’s finished this autopsy .“
    “How long would it take?” Tammy was looking a bit Peaked beneath her beach-bum tan.
    “Probably about an hour or so. We could go grab a bite to eat and come back.”
    Tammy shook her head emphatically. “No, as upset as I am, I couldn’t possibly eat a thing.”
    Savannah stared at her, trying to fathom the concept of being too upset to eat. Some things were simply not to be understood.
    “Let’s just go talk to her and get it over with,” Tammy said, squaring her shoulders and hiking her chin up a notch.
    “Okay...” Savannah pointed to the gleaming double doors. “...but promise me you won’t barf. Dr. Jenny hates it when people puke or pass out in her autopsy suite.”
    “You sound like you know what you’re talking about.”
    “I do. I’ve done both.”
    “It can’t be that bad.”
    “Famous last words.”

    “I’m really sorry, Jenny. I should have seen it coming... what with her turning that nice shade of green and all.” Savannah knelt beside a prostrate Tammy, who was splayed across the tile floor.
    Dr. Liu walked to a nearby drawer, withdrew some smelling salts, and passed them to Savannah . “No problem. Happens all the time.”
    Savannah popped the cap and waved the small wand under Tammy’s nose. Wheezing and sputtering, she quickly fought her way back to consciousness.
    As Savannah helped Tammy to a sitting position, Jennifer Liu returned to the stainless steel table and the body she had recently disemboweled .
    Perhaps it had been the dissected liver, lying on a small table at the foot of the larger one, or maybe it had been the coils of intestines pulled out of the belly and piled onto the pelvic region that had sent Tammy over the edge.
    Either way, Savannah positioned herself between her young assistant and the hapless fellow on Jennifer’s table. She didn’t want to risk losing her again so soon.
    “Hey, what happened?” Tammy said as she sat up and held her head in her hands, rocking back and forth. Her face had turned from pea green to a shade of white that was as deathly as the corpse on the table.
    “Don’t worry,” Savannah said, patting her head as though she were a distressed cocker spaniel. “I’ve seen big guys— rough, tough cops—keel over like felled oaks when they see their first autopsy.”
    “Autopsy?” Recollection dawned in her eyes. “Oh, god, that’s right.”
    She cast a furtive glance over Savannah ’s shoulder at the table. Dr. Liu looked moderately amused as she sliced away samples of the liver and placed them into a small specimen jar.
    “So, you’re a virgin, huh?” Jennifer said. “Come over here, and I’ll show you a few things. Once you get over the initial shock, you might find it interesting.”
    Savannah cringed. Jennifer Liu was obsessed