“Then why sleep with the men? Just to keep her secret life secret?”
“I'd say so. Emily was right; in a small town like Hastings, any successful woman like Jamie would hesitate to come out of the closet. Especially if that closet contained whips, chains, and black leather. She wouldn't have wanted that image in a client's mind while she was trying to sell them real estate.”
“Hell, I don't want the image in my head. But it's there now.”
Isabel smiled wryly. “I know. The question is, how important is this information? Is it what triggered our killer's compulsion? Did he find out he could never possess Jamie Brower the way he needed to? Did he discover her secret and find himself unable to bear it for some other reason?”
“Or,” Mallory finished, “is it just an extraneous fact completely unconnected with Jamie's murder.”
“Exactly.”
Mallory put the Jeep in gear and headed toward the end of the Browers' circular driveway. “Well, it's a new fact for us, at any rate. Lucky you could get chummy with Emily about the trials of sisterhood.”
“I never had a sister,” Isabel said.
After a beat, Mallory said, “Ah. You used what you picked up psychically from Emily to encourage her to talk. The cartoon numbers she drew in school. Being lousy at math when her sister was so good at it. You used the knowledge to be sympathetic, be on her side so she'd feel comfortable talking to you. So that's how your abilities can be used as investigative tools.”
“That's how,” Isabel said. “An edge that sometimes makes all the difference. But something else I learned in there is that Emily was all but invisible in that family. Which is why she knew about Jamie's secret life. Why she saw more than anyone else realized. And why there's a good chance she saw something that could get her killed.”
“What?”
“Her sister's murderer.”
3:30 PM
Isabel closed the folder and looked at Rafe with a sigh. “Just like I remembered. As far as we could determine both times, the twelve women killed before he came to Hastings were all straight. No secret sexual closet, with or without whips and chains. And the second and third victims here, Allison Carroll and Tricia Kane, were straight as well, according to the information you got. Right?”
“Right.”
“Still, I'm going to ask Quantico to reopen those old files, maybe send an agent to the towns in Florida and Alabama to double-check, particularly the lives of the primary victims just before they were killed. With Jamie's secret life staring us in the face, we have to be sure whether or not it has anything to do with what triggers his killing rage.”
“Makes sense to me. Could be, he got the kind of rejection he couldn't take. Rejection as a man, for being a man.”
“That is entirely possible.”
Rafe looked down at the three small in-living-color photographs of Jamie Brower in full dominatrix gear: a silver-studded, black leather bustier, fishnet stockings held up by garters, stiletto heels—and a whip. In each shot, there was another woman, crawling, fawning, or in some clearly submissive pose, just as Emily had said.
And while Jamie's face was unmasked and highly visible, her companion was completely unidentifiable due to a black leather hood and mask.
He lined up the photos on the table and studied them intently. “I'd say this is the same woman in all three shots.”
Isabel nodded. “And I'd guess all three shots were taken on the same day. Same . . . session. Though all the details of costume and . . . um . . . accessories being exactly the same could be part of their whole ritual, so we can't assume too much.”
“Can I assume the second woman is nobody I know personally? Please?”
Isabel smiled wryly. “It is unsettling, isn't it? Other people's secrets.”
“This sort of secret, at least. I guess you never really know about people.”
“No. You don't.” There was something oddly flat about Isabel's response, but she went on before Rafe could question it. And her voice was easy once again. “That outfit the other woman is wearing shows a lot of skin, but considering how tight and rigid it is, it's also doing a dandy job of disguising her true body shape. So are her positions; we can't even realistically estimate how tall she is. Her face is never turned to the camera, so not even her eyes are visible. And her hair's caught up under that hood.”
Rafe cleared his throat. “And since she's shaved . . .”
Isabel didn't seem at all embarrassed or disturbed, and nodded matter-of-factly. “Not uncommon in S&M scenarios, according to the list Quantico sent us, but pubic hair would at least have given us a hair color, and probably natural. I didn't see a birthmark, tattoo, even a blemish that might help us I.D. her.”
She paused, then added, “Several things interest me about this little twist. We don't know if any or all of Jamie's playmates lived here in Hastings, though my guess is that more than one isn't very likely.”
“A few weeks ago,” Rafe said, “I would have said investigating a serial killer in Hastings would be the next thing to impossible. A few S&M games seem fairly tame by comparison. Hell, almost innocent.”
“Yeah, but not innocent to Jamie. If she was so afraid of discovery, it could well have been because her partner—at least the most recent one—lives here and maybe isn't as good at keeping secrets as Jamie was. That might explain what Emily saw as Jamie's increasing worry and fear. Another thing is that we don't know where these photographs were taken, and though Emily claims she borrowed these three from a photo box full of them, your people found no sign of the box at Jamie's apartment when they did an intensive search.”
“I'm surprised Emily found it,” Rafe said. “This is not the sort of thing you'd leave lying around, I'm thinking.”
“Oh, you can bet Emily snooped. She said she caught a glimpse of the corner of the box under her sister's bed and was curious, but she had to be looking for secrets. She knew her sister was afraid of something, and she wanted to know what that was. It was the first chink she'd seen in Jamie's armor.”
“Why take these?” Rafe wondered.
“Proof. Even if she never planned to show them to anyone—including Jamie—she had something that proved to her that Jamie wasn't as perfect as her family believed she was. That was probably enough for Emily; she doesn't strike me as a blackmailer or the vindictive type.”
“Yeah,” Rafe said, “I'd agree with you there.”
Isabel shrugged. “I'm also willing to bet that she left the box just enough out of place to make Jamie uneasy about it. If it really was filled with photos, then she couldn't be sure any were missing. But she had to wonder if her sister found the box. That's probably why we haven't found it.”
“Because she hid it somewhere safer.”
“I would have. The question is, where? Your people checked her office thoroughly, but I wouldn't have expected to find something like those photographs there anyway. Did she have a safe-deposit box?”
“Yeah, but the only items in it were legal documents. Insurance policies, deeds to some property she owned, stuff like that. I've got some people putting together a list of the properties, what they are, where they are, but nothing else in the box provided anything in the way of a lead.”
Mallory came into the room in time to hear that, and said, “Jamie's lockbox? I just double-checked, and that's the only one she had. No other bank has her on their customer list.”
“At least not under her real name,” Rafe said.
Mallory sighed. “I can go around to all the area banks and show them a picture of her. Or, better yet, send a few of the guys out on Monday to do that, since it's too late to get a decent start today. Although you'd think someone would have come forward after seeing all the pictures of her in the newspapers.”
“People generally don't,” Isabel said. “Don't want to get involved, or honestly don't believe they have any knowledge of value.”
“And secrets of their own to protect,” Rafe noted.
“Definitel
y. It's amazing how many people get nervous about some little transgression they're afraid we'll be interested in.”
“Transgressions can be entertaining,” Mallory noted.
Isabel grinned, and said, “True enough. But in this case, we hardly have time for them. Pity we can't make that announcement publicly. It'd probably save us time.”
“And trouble,” Rafe agreed.
“Yeah. Anyway, if Jamie had a lockbox under another name, she may well have worn a disguise of some kind when she visited. Just a wig, most likely, something that wouldn't have looked too phony. You probably won't have much luck showing her photo, but it's something that needs to be done. And we might get lucky.”
Rafe nodded. “We do need to do whatever we can to make sure we've covered all the bases. But I'm not holding out much hope either. Especially after finding out she was pretty good at keeping secrets.”
“Maybe a lot more secrets than we've yet discovered,” Isabel said. “I know she made very good money, but she's also invested quite a bit in properties in the area, and she lived very well. I'm thinking that maybe the S&M stuff wasn't all fun and games for Jamie.”
“Shit,” Rafe said. “Mistress for hire?”
“Lots of people, apparently, willing to pay to be humiliated. Jamie was a smart businesswoman, so why wouldn't she charge for all her talents?”
Cheryl Bayne had been working hard on her career, doing all the frequently boring and certainly fluffy junk demanded of baby reporters—and female reporters. Especially when they worked for fourth-place TV stations. Dumb filler pieces on what the society ladies were wearing this season, or the mayor's daughter's birthday party, or the baby lion cub born at the zoo.
She was really sick of fluff.
So when her producer had offered her the chance to come to Hastings and cover this story—because a woman would play better, he'd said, and she was brunette, after all—Cheryl had jumped at it.
Now she was mostly just jumping at shadows.
Presently, on this Friday afternoon, she felt relatively safe standing in front of the town hall under the shade of a big oak tree. Her cameraperson was off getting background shots of the town, but she wasn't really alone, since the area was crawling with media.
“This is getting old.” Dana Earley, a more experienced reporter for a rival Columbia station, sidled closer, studying the police department across Main Street with a slightly jaundiced eye. “Whatever they know over there, they aren't anxious to share.”
“At least the chief called that press conference yesterday,” Cheryl offered.
“Yeah, and told us squat.” Dana reached up to tuck a strand of blond hair behind one ear. She looked at Cheryl, hesitated, then asked, “Have you had the feeling you were being followed, watched, especially at night? Or it is just us blondes?”
A little relieved to be able to talk about it, Cheryl said, “Actually, yeah. I thought it was my imagination.”
“Umm. I've been asking around, and so far every woman I've talked to has had the same feeling. Including, by the way, a couple of female cops who refused to speak on the record. I'd say it was just paranoia if it was only one or two of us, but all of us?”
“Maybe it's just . . . nerves.”
Bluntly, Dana said, “I think he's watching us. And I have a very bad feeling about it.”
“Well, you're blond—”
Dana shook her head. “I just got a peek at a list of women missing in the general area. And very few of them are blondes. Watch your back, Cheryl.”
“I will. Thanks.” She watched the blond reporter walk away, hearing the hollowness in her own voice when she added half under her breath, “Thanks a lot.”
“Jesus,” Mallory muttered.
“She wouldn't have considered it prostitution,” Isabel pointed out. “Merely a fee-for-services-provided arrangement. Especially since she was the one in charge, the one making all the rules. No emotional involvement to clutter up her life, yet she gets the satisfaction of dominating other women. Maybe men as well. We don't know all her lovers—or clients—were women, after all. We only have Emily's word for it, and even she claims she didn't look through all the photos in that box.”
“Do you believe her on that point?” Rafe asked.
“I think she saw more than she's admitted, but I didn't get a good sense of just how much.”
“Every answer we get just opens up more questions,” he said with a sigh.
Isabel, who was sitting at the end of the conference table near him, reached over and turned one of the photos so that she could study it. “Par for the course in serial-murder investigations, I'm afraid. In the meantime, does either of you have a clue where this room might be? It doesn't look like a room at the inn, and I doubt it's any other local hotel or motel. Anything about it look familiar to either of you?”
Mallory sat down on the other side of Rafe and leaned an elbow on the table, staring at the photos. “Not to me. There's not a lot there to go by. Bare paneled walls, what looks like an old vinyl floor, and a—yuck—stained mattress on a plain wooden platform. I guess comfort wasn't the point.”
“The opposite, if anything,” Isabel said with a grimace. “Have you tried stilettos? I have. It's a hideous thing to do to a foot.”
Rafe looked at her with interest. “Stilettos? My God, how tall are you in them?”
“The ones I was wearing put me at about six-four. Note the past tense. I will never wear them again.”
Curious, Mallory said, “Why did you wear them once? Or would that be sharing too much?”
Isabel chuckled. “Business, not pleasure, I promise you. Bishop believes our law-enforcement training should be varied and extensive, so at one point I worked for a while with a narc squad. Naturally, when they needed somebody to pose as a hooker . . .”
“You got the call.”
“And the makeup and big hair and skanky outfit—and the stilettos. I gained a whole new respect for hookers. Their job is hard. And I mean just the walking around on the streets part.”
Rafe cleared his throat again and tried to clear his mind of the image of Isabel dressed as a hooker. He tapped one of the photos in front of him. “Getting back to this room . . .”
Mallory grinned, but then sobered and said, “Maybe it's a basement, but look at the shaft of light on the floor; that doesn't look like it's artificial light. There's a window in that room, and not a little basement window, I'm thinking. High, though.”
“A walk-out basement could have full-size windows,” Rafe noted almost absently. “I don't know, though, it doesn't look like a basement to me. The angle of the camera gives us a floor-to-ceiling view, and that ceiling's too high for most basements I've seen. Might even be something like a warehouse.”
“Could be. And, judging by how fixed the positioning is, I'm guessing the camera was on a tripod and taking timed shots; neither woman is paying particular attention to it. So no third person was present. Probably.”
“Maybe the submissive isn't even aware there is a camera,” Rafe suggested.
“The submissive?” Mallory eyed him with faint amusement. “Did you take a crash course in S&M, or is the lingo a lot more standard than I thought it was?”
“I should refuse to answer that,” Rafe said, “but in my defense I have to say we spent time about half an hour ago gathering and downloading information on the S&M scene from Quantico. Your tax dollars at work. I am now much more informed on the subject.”
“I'll just bet you are.”
“They sent plain facts, Mal, not pages from a magazine or some how-to manual.”
“Ah. Learn anything interesting?”
“Nothing helpful.”
“That wasn't what I asked.”
“That's what I answered.”
“Do you two do parties?” Isabel asked.
Rafe sighed. “Sorry.”
“Oh, don't apologize. In a case like this one, I'd much rather laugh when I can. The chuckles tend to be few and far between.”
/>
Mallory said, “We've already had a few moments of gallows humor here and there. And I have a feeling this dominatrix stuff is going to provide a few more. Hard to take it seriously, you know? I mean, hard to imagine somebody you knew dressing up and making another woman lick her foot. What's that about?”
“In this context, a need to be in control and a high level of insecurity. Or, at least, that's my reading of Jamie Brower.”
“Your psychic reading?” Rafe asked.
“From what I picked up at her parents' home and from Emily, yeah. Also a fair psychological stab in the dark. I'd like to check out her apartment, though, and try to get a better sense of her.”
“I'd rather do that than keep staring at these damned pictures,” Rafe said frankly. “I'd also rather not post them on the board, if it's all the same to you.”
Knowing that virtually every cop in the place had access to the conference room and the boards set up with victim information, Isabel agreed with a nod. “We'll keep them in the Eyes Only file.”
“We have one of those?” Mallory asked.
“We do now. I have a feeling there'll be more stuff for it as we go along, but for now I'd just as soon keep these photos and Jamie's secret between us. If this particular avenue of pursuit turns out to be a dead end, I don't see any reason for us to be the ones to out Jamie. Especially posthumously.”
“Emily will probably take care of that,” Mallory said.
“Or,” Isabel said, “she'll keep it to herself and feel superior knowing her sister's dirty little secret. Could go either way, I'd say.”
Mallory said, “You suggested to me that Emily might have caught the attention of her sister's killer; how serious were you about that?”
Isabel leaned back in her chair, absently rubbing the nape of her neck. “I don't have anything concrete, no evidence to support it. Not even a clairvoyant sense, really. Emily just barely fits the victim profile; she's blond, but on the young side for our killer. Not especially successful in any career, since she's still in school, but she's smart and observant.”
“But?” Rafe said.
“It's just . . . a feeling I got in that house. Emily was actively snooping in Jamie's life during the weeks before she was killed, and we can be reasonably sure that during that period our killer was involved in Jamie's life, that he crossed her path. Which means he probably crossed Emily's path as well.”