And yet, Jessie got the sense that he was play-acting. She just couldn’t discern whether that was because he didn’t really care about Michaela much and felt like he had to fake it or because he was involved in her death.
The doctor sat down at his desk and punched a few keys and looked at his screen.
“It looks like she was in just this last Monday, in the afternoon. She was on the verge of deciding whether to have a procedure done.”
“What procedure was that?” Jessie asked.
“Um, okay,” he said, no longer concerned with privacy claims. “As you clearly know, Michaela was an adult film actress. She was looking into breast augmentation. She thought it might be good for her career.”
“That’s why she was coming here?” Ryan asked, disbelieving.
“Yes, of course. I consulted with her on three occasions. She told me that she planned to make a final decision this week so that I could schedule surgery if she pulled the trigger. Why else would she come here?”
Had she not seen the photo of Kallas asleep, she would have found his feigned innocence borderline convincing. He was good. The question was whether his deception was to hide an inappropriate relationship with a patient or something more.
“Dr. Kallas,” Jessie said, staring him in the eyes. “That’s the problem. You see, we know that Michaela wasn’t just your patient, if she was ever your patient at all. And the fact that you’re not being straight with us about it can’t help but make us doubt everything else you’ve told us. Would you like to try again?”
“Excuse me?” he said, the sadness on his face now replaced by self-righteous anger. “What exactly are you alleging?”
“Look, Dr. Kallas,” Ryan said, giving Jessie his patented “cool it” glare, “we understand that you’re in a precarious position here. But the more forthcoming you can be with us now, the less messy it has to get later. We’re looking for information, not confrontation. So how about telling us the whole story about your relationship with Michaela? I can’t promise that you’ll emerge from this unscathed. But we’re looking for a killer, not a doctor who let his fantasies get in the way of his professionalism. Once we can eliminate you as the former, we can find a way to deal with you as the latter. What do you say?”
Kallas continued to look indignant.
“I say that this conversation is over. The next one you have will be with my attorney. I hope the police department’s insurance policy covers the damage these false allegations could do to my business, because I’m going to clean it out.”
“We have a picture,” Jessie said sharply.
“What?” Kallas said, his voice still resentful, but his eyes closer to panicked.
“You heard me,” Jessie repeated, enjoying him try not to squirm. “There is a photo that does not comport with your description of your association with Michaela. You don’t have a case. But we do.”
Richard Kallas looked at her with dead eyes that no amount of plastic surgery could mask.
“Please leave,” he said icily, standing up and putting his palms flat on his desk for emphasis.
Ryan looked over at Jessie and shrugged.
“That’s your call, Doctor,” he said. “But we will be back. And when we return, it’ll be with a warrant. Let’s go, Jessie.”
Ryan headed for the door. She looked back at Kallas, standing there fuming, his hands pressed on his desk and his forearms pulsating in anxiety. She didn’t want to go, confident that one more push would make the doctor topple into a pile of his own falsehoods.
“You know we’ve got you,” she said quietly.
Then, despite her reluctance to leave without anything concrete to offer Captain Decker, she followed Ryan. As they reached for the door, Jessie heard an odd click.
“What was that?” she asked as Ryan grabbed the handle.
He tried to turn the knob but it didn’t move.
“It’s locked,” he said, looking for a button or switch on the handle but finding none. He turned around and exasperatedly asked, “What’s the deal with the door, Doctor?”
Jessie turned back as well, in time to see Kallas give a sarcastic shrug of his own to go with a nasty smile. She noticed something else too. Behind him on the wall, below the marathon and Iron Man photos, something was amiss with his collection of surgical blades. It took her a moment to realize what the problem was.
One was missing.
CHAPTER THIRTY THREE
“You know the most important skill in medicine?” Kallas asked as he held up what looked like a small remote control. “Improvisation.”
Then he pushed a button on the remote, casting the office into total darkness.
“Ryan,” Jessie called out as she reached for her gun, “he took a knife off his wall. He’s armed.”
“Got it. Stay quiet,” Ryan murmured from somewhere further to her left than he had been moments earlier.
Realizing he must have started moving the second the lights went out, she followed suit, shuffling to the right until she felt her arm brush the wall. As she tried to quiet the pounding rush of blood in her ears, she heard the snap from Ryan unholstering his weapon and she tried to do the same. But her fingers were clumsy and she couldn’t seem to get them to work properly.
She wanted to exhale to calm herself but knew that would alert Kallas, who had not made a sound since the lights went out, to her location. The only noise in the office was the soft whir of the air conditioning.
Then she had another idea. On the other side of her belt, she had a small torch flashlight that could be slid out of its holster silently. She managed to extricate it and placed her finger on the “on” button.
But she didn’t push yet as two problems became quickly apparent. First, she couldn’t warn Ryan about what she was about to do. And second, once she turned on the light, she’d be alerting Kallas to her location. Even if she managed to find him, he might be on her before she could do anything about it.
Any plan she was formulating flew out of her head when she heard the distinct sound of a knee cracking somewhere near Kallas’s desk. She ordered herself not to react audibly.
He doesn’t know where you are. If you move you might bump into something and expose yourself. Stay still. Stay alert.
Kallas must have realized he’d put himself at risk and stopped moving. Jessie strained her eyes, hoping that might help her adjust to the darkness. But it did no good. The curtains were drawn and the sun had already mostly set so there was no illumination from outside. Kallas, in anticipation of turning off the light, had shut off his computer screen so its glow didn’t reveal him. The only thing visible was the green light on the smoke alarm on the ceiling and it offered no help.
A moment later there was another sound, soft and whooshing, that she couldn’t identify. It came from somewhere in the middle of the office, less than ten feet from her. As she tried to determine what it was, she slid down the wall in a crouching position. Sensing something close to her, she carefully reached out and her fingertip touched a hard surface. It only took a moment to recall that it was a bookshelf that ran along a section of the wall she was pressed against.
And then it occurred to her. What she’d heard moments earlier was the sound of a large blade being unsheathed from its cover. Kallas was close and he was planning to make a move.