“She was ostensibly using it for storage,” Rafe noted as they stood just inside the front door. The early sunlight slanted through the dusty front windows so that the interior of the front part of the building was easily visible to them.
“Just barely ostensibly,” Isabel agreed, looking around at a half dozen or so large pieces of old furniture in obvious need of restoration or repair, and a few crates labeled STORAGE. “Only enough stuff so that anybody looking in the front window would assume that was what she was using it for.”
“The real story is in the back,” Mallory called from a doorway about thirty feet from the front door and roughly halfway down the length of the building, where a wall divided the space. “The tools the locksmith gave us worked on this door and the rear entrance-which is conveniently hidden from the road. Great place to park your car if you don’t want anybody to know you’re here. And there are signs quite a few cars have been parked back there in recent months.”
“Why does that not surprise me?” Hollis wondered aloud.
“It’s about time we got lucky,” Rafe said as he, Isabel, and Hollis joined Mallory, all of them stepping into the half of the building that was quite obviously the reason Jamie had bought this place.
It was the room in the photographs.
“The submissive did know she was being photographed,” Rafe said, gesturing toward the camera set up on a tripod several yards from the bed platform. “There’s no place in here to hide that thing. The distance and angle look just right.”
Hollis, wearing latex gloves, as they all were, went to examine the camera. “Yeah, it’s set up to work on a timer. No cartridge or disk,” she said. “Whatever last photos she took weren’t left in the camera.”
“No, I’d expect her to be more cautious than that,” Isabel said, looking slowly around. “The really interesting thing is the question of whether the camera was part of the ritual. If she really does have a box full of photos, as Emily said, then it’s likely most if not all of her partners were photographed.”
Rafe kept watching her instead of studying the room, bothered by something he couldn’t quite put a finger on. He thought Isabel was somehow uncomfortable or uneasy here. Her posture seemed a bit stiffer than usual, and something about the very calm of her features was almost masklike.
So when he spoke, it was absently. “It’s all about control. And submission. Being photographed probably was part of the ritual, one of Jamie’s rules. Her partners had to submit completely to her and her rules, even to the extent of having their secret needs and desires, their humiliation, recorded on film-and left in the hands of the dominant.”
Mallory had located a large built-in closet or storage area on the right-hand wall and was working on the padlocked double doors with the ring of all-purpose tools provided by the locksmith. “Just for the record,” she said, “I don’t ever want to want anything that much.”
“I’ll second that,” Rafe said. He was still watching Isabel, and directed his question to her. “Picking up anything?”
“Lots,” she answered. “I don’t know yet how much of it will be important, though. Or even relevant.”
Her voice had been completely serene, but Rafe found himself frowning nevertheless. He glanced at Hollis and saw that she was also watching her partner intently, a crease between her brows indicating worry or unease.
Isabel walked over to the bed platform and bent slightly to place her gloved hand on the bare, stained mattress. Her face remained expressionless, though her mouth seemed to firm.
“I guess the latex doesn’t interfere with psychic contact,” Rafe said.
It was Hollis who replied, “No, it doesn’t seem to. Although some of the SCU psychics say it has a slight muffling quality. Like everything else, it varies from person to person.”
“Got it,” Mallory announced suddenly. She unfastened the padlock and opened the two doors. “Christ.”
“The toy box,” Hollis murmured.
Dana Earley would have been the first to admit that being in Hastings at this particular time was making her extremely nervous. It had always been easy in the past for her to blend in, become a part of the background until she was ready to step in front of the camera and report the news.
This time, she was afraid of becoming the news.
“You shouldn’t be out here,” one male citizen of the small town scolded her in front of the coffee shop when she attempted to interview him about his feelings.
“I’m not alone,” Dana said, gesturing toward Joey.
The man gave her cameraman the same scornful look Alan had offered the previous day. “Yeah, well, he might drop his camera on the killer’s toe before he cuts and runs, but I wouldn’t count on it if I were you.”
“I resent that,” Joey said sullenly.
They both ignored him.
“You should at least protect yourself,” the man told Dana earnestly. “The police department is offering pepper spray to any woman who asks. I got some for my wife. You need to go get some for yourself.”
“What about you?” Dana asked, making a mental note about the pepper spray. “Aren’t you worried the killer might start going after men?”
He glanced from side to side warily, then opened his lightweight windbreaker to show her a pistol tucked into his belt. “I hope the bastard does come after me. I’m ready. A lot of us are ready.”
“Looks like,” she offered brightly, trying not to show him how much it frightened her to see guns in the hands of people other than the police. Especially angry and very nervous people. “Thank you very much, sir.”
“No problem. And you watch it, you hear? Stay off the streets as much as you can.”
“Yes. I will.” She watched him walk away, then stood gazing around at Main Street, where there was less than normal activity for a lovely Saturday morning in June. And where there were far too many men just like the one she’d interviewed, walking around with windbreakers half-zipped and wary, watchful expressions on their faces.
“Can we go now?” Joey whined.
“I wish we could,” Dana said, half-consciously reaching up to touch her hair. “I really wish we could. Hey-have you seen Cheryl?”
“Nah. Saw their van parked near the town hall this morning. Why?”
Dana bit her lip, hesitated, then said, “Let’s head back toward the town hall.”
“Ah, jeez.”
“You’re getting paid,” she reminded her cameraman.
“Not enough,” he muttered, following behind her.
“It could be a lot worse,” she told him irritably. “You could be a blond woman. The way I hear it, the surgeon wouldn’t have to cut off much to make that happen.”
“Bitch,” he grunted under his breath.
“I heard that.”
He gave her the finger silently, reasonably sure she didn’t have eyes in the back of her head.
“And I saw that,” she said.
“Shit.”
Inside the large storage closet of Jamie’s playroom was, neatly arranged on shelves and hanging on hooks, all the paraphernalia necessary for sadomasochistic games. Whips, masks, padded and unpadded handcuffs, an extremely varied selection of dildos and vibrators, ropes, chains, and a number of unidentifiable objects, some quite elaborate.
Also a tasteful selection of leather bustiers, garters, and stockings, including, seemingly, the outfits Jamie and her partner had worn in the photographs.
“I’m no expert,” Hollis said, “but I’m thinking at least a few of those gadgets are meant to be used on a man.”
Rafe could see the ones she meant. “I’d say so. And given that, it’s beginning to look more and more like Jamie was… an equal-opportunity mistress. She may not have enjoyed sex with men, but it looks like she enjoyed dominating them.”