Killer Calories

was saying, “and you’ll be renewing old acquaintances back in the joint-I understand some of your ‘husbands’ there in San Quentin are really missin ’ you.”
    “I told you, I don’t know nothin ’ about Dr. Ross . I’ve only talked to him a time or two... about one of the guests at the spa. That’s all, man.”
    “And what if I told you that a couple of very credible witnesses overheard you blackmailing him?”
    “They’re lyin ’.”
    “And they saw you accept the envelope full of dough from him. Does that make them blind, too?”
    “Yeah... well, who are these witnesses?”
    Standing behind Orlet , Dirk leaned over him, literally breathing down his neck. “Unlike you, they’re responsible, law-abiding citizens. They’re the sort of people that a jury believes. And that’s all that’s important to you right now, buddy. ‘ Cause this is going to be your third felony offense, which means you’ll be goin ’ in forever.”
    Even from twelve feet away, behind the glass, Savannah could see Orlet sweating. He was furiously picking and biting at a hangnail on his thumb that was starting to bleed. Savannah made a mental note not to schedule any more massages with him.
    She knew that Dirk was bluffing. No jury would convict the man of blackmail, even if she and Tammy testified to everything they had seen and heard. The fact that they had broken into his apartment and were hiding under the bed when they overheard the phone call might mar their credibility atad .
    But Dirk wasn’t one to let a little thing like the absence evidence slow him down.
    “Or...” he said, walking around to the front of the table where Orlet could see him, “you could tell me what it was that you had on Dr. Ross. Then maybe he would be the one sharing the honeymoon with your cellmates in San Quentin. And you could remain a free, productive member of society.” Orlet gnawed his thumb and spit. Dirk leaned forward on the table, his hands far apart and fingers splayed. He looked like he was about to crawl into Orlet’s shirt with him.
    “Listen, Joe... I’m a very determined sort of guy,” he said. “I’ll get one of you, believe me. Who’s it gonna be? You or him?”
    Savannah watched Orlet as he bent under the pressure... and broke.
    “All right, all right.” He swiped a shaking hand across his wet forehead. “I think the doctor helped Kat kill herself, ‘cause she was sick and wanted to die. You know, like one of those physician-assisted suicides.”
    “You think? I’m not interested in what you think, pal. Pardon me, but you ain’t exactly no Einstein. I only want to hear what you know.”
    “I don’t know anything for sure. But I heard Dr. Ross and Kat talking one night about how she had this lump in her breast that needed to be cut out. She said she’d rather just die and get it over with, and she asked him to help her.”
    “Where were you when you heard all this?”
    Josef wriggled on his chair. “I was... um... walking by her window and—”
    “Oh, okay. You were outside her window, doin ’ the Peepin ’ Tom routine.”
    “No, I wasn’t! I was just—”
    “Yeah, yeah, so she asked the good doctor to help her croak herself. What did he say?”
    “He told her she was nuts. That he cared too much about her to do something like that.”
    Dirk pulled out an empty chair, turned it around, and sat down, straddling the back. “Well, excuse me, but that don’t sound like somebody who was interested in helping somebody off herself.”
    “I know. But that was only a couple of weeks before she died. And I saw something weird.”
    “Well, I don’t know that you’d be the best judge of what’s weird and what ain’t, but what did you see?”
    “After Kat was found dead... later that night, I was out walking around the grounds, and I saw the doctor putting some strange-looking equipment into his trunk.”
    “What kind of equipment?”
    “I don’t know. But it had a tank and a plastic bag, and the tank and the bag were hooked together with a hose. I remembered seeing something like that before on television. It looked like the kind of gizmo that Dr. Death guy uses to help people kill themselves.”
    “And Ross was putting this stuff into his car?”
    “Yeah, real sneaky and nervous like, late that night. And then he drove away and didn’t come back for over an hour. I figured he used it on Kat and then dumped it somewhere .“
    “And that’s when you decided you’d make him pay you