Sense of Evil by Kay Hooper Page A

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