Silent Fall

stopped by his house when he wasn’t home and swiped his membership card. I made a reservation for the two of us for dinner on a night when my father would be out of town. I figured by the time he got back, I would have what I needed."
    "So what happened after you got into the club?"
    "To make a long story short, I found Erica. She was one of the hostesses. At first she didn’t want to talk to me. I could tell she was scared that I was trying to connect her to Ravino. In the end I convinced her that if she knew something, and if her pal Ravino had killed his wife, then she could be in danger, too. After all, a man like Ravino would not want any of his dirty little secrets -- and Erica was certainly one of them -- to come out. Eventually she broke down and confessed that she and Ravino had been having an affair and that she was afraid she’d slept with a murderer. I convinced her to help me prove it."
    "Surely she knew it would put her in danger to reveal something damaging about a state senator."
    "I can be very persuasive when I want to be," he said with a shrug.
    "I’ll bet. I’m surprised you waited until you’d finished the story to go to bed with her."
    "I didn’t have to use sex to get the information out of her."
    "But you would have, right?"
    "What are you asking me, Catherine? Wondering just how low I’ll go?" he challenged.
    "Maybe I am. I don’t know you, Dylan. You’ve asked me to be your partner, your ally. I need to know where your boundaries are."
    "I don’t have any boundaries." He didn’t particularly like the impression she seemed to be forming of him, but he couldn’t deny that he could be ruthless in his pursuit of the story. "I do what it takes to get the truth."
    "Are there lines you won’t cross?"
    "I haven’t seen any yet."
    She tilted her head to one side as she gave him a thoughtful look. "I don’t believe you, Dylan. I think you have a conscience, even if you won’t admit it. I also believe that you’re worried about Erica, not just because of what she did to you last night, but for her own sake."
    "I don’t know where you’d get that idea. Right now I’d like to wring her neck."
    "Fine. You’re a tough, ruthless guy -- I get it. Let’s go back to the Ravino case."
    "Erica told me that Deborah had known about the affair because she came and confronted Erica at her apartment. Erica, who thinks very well on her feet, decided to tape the conversation, unbeknownst to Deborah. She thought she might need the tape for some reason. In their conversation Deborah reveals that she told the senator she knew about the affair, that she had photos of him and Erica together, and that she would give them to the press if he didn’t stop seeing Erica immediately. She would also divorce him, and under their prenuptial agreement a proven affair would cost him millions. Apparently her reason for going to Erica was to try to gain her cooperation. She offered Erica a sizable chunk of money to cut off contact with the senator."
    "Did Erica take it?"
    "She was still thinking about it when Mrs. Ravino was killed. The taped conversation, however, gave the senator a motive for murder. But it wasn’t enough. There was no proof that the senator injected his wife with too much Botox until I came up with some."
    Dylan had a difficult time keeping the boastful note out of his voice. He was damn proud of his accomplishment. "I discovered that when the senator made a trip to Mexico with several other members from the state congress to discuss trade and immigration problems, he also made a side trip to a Mexican doctor who offered up his own version of discounted Botox. With my new information, the coroner’s office reran the tissue tests and toxicology screening and discovered that the substance offered by that physician matched what was in Deborah’s bloodstream."
    "Very impressive," Catherine said. "Since Deborah wasn’t in Mexico, then her husband was the one who brought the poison home."
    "But that still wasn’t enough, because the senator claimed his wife simply asked him to pick up the discounted medication. Unfortunately for him, I discovered a money trail that revealed that the senator had paid the Mexican physician five times the going rate. I also located a female friend of Deborah’s who was willing to testify that there was no way Deborah would have used any medication from Mexico, because a