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.

“Definitely. 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 amp;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 amp;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 amp;M scene from Quantico. Your tax dollars at work. I am now much more informed on the subject.”