Kay Hooper - Sense Of Evil

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.”

“Men and women,” Hollis said. “She really did want to be boss, didn’t she? I wonder what would happen if she ran into somebody who wanted to be boss even more than she did?”

“A trigger, maybe,” Isabel said in an absentminded tone.

“His trigger?” Rafe asked. “He wanted to be the one on top-so to speak-and it wasn’t a position Jamie was willing to allow him to assume?”

“Maybe.” Isabel’s tone was still abstracted. “Especially if we find out the other two primary victims from the earlier murders were unusually strong women. Dominant women. That could be his trigger, his hot button. Finding himself interested in women literally too strong for him.”

“Some men just prefer their women to be sweet and submissive, I guess,” Hollis said dryly.

“Jerks,” Mallory said, then lifted a brow at Rafe. “Forensics?”

“Yeah, get them out here,” Rafe said. “But only T.J. and Dustin with their kits, not the van. I’d still like to keep this quiet as long as we’ve got a hope in hell of it.”

“Right.” She pulled out her cell phone.

Rafe walked over to Isabel, still uneasily sensing that something wasn’t right with her. She was no longer touching the mattress but was gazing off into space with that distant expression he was beginning to recognize in her eyes. But this time she seemed to be looking so far away that it sent a chill through him.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

“There is,” she said slowly, “a lot of pain in this room.”

“You don’t feel it, do you?”

“No. No, I’m not an empath. I feel during the visions, but not this. I just… I just know there’s a lot of pain in this room. Physical. Emotional. Psychological.” She reached both hands up and rubbed the nape of her neck. Her hair was in its accustomed neat, high ponytail, and Rafe could see how hard she was kneading the tense muscles of her neck. But before he could ask about that, she went on in the same level tone.

“Jamie was strong. Very strong. But she’d spent her life being the good girl. Pretending to be what everybody wanted her to be. Hiding inside that shell. But this part of her life… this is where she could be in control. Really in control. Where she could be herself and be respected-demand respect-for who she really was.”

Hollis stepped closer, her frown deepening. “Isabel-”

“This is where she called the shots. Her partners, male or female, were never her lovers, never close to her emotionally; they were… validation. That she was strong and certain. That she was the one in control. They did anything she told them to do. Everything. No matter what, no matter how wild she got. No matter how much she hurt them.”

When Rafe realized that Isabel’s nails were literally digging into her own skin despite the gloves she wore, he stripped his own gloves off and reached up and grasped her wrists, ignoring the again visible and audible flash that was a hell of a lot stronger than any static shock he’d ever felt. He pulled her hands away from her neck.

“Wow,” Hollis murmured. “Talk about sparks.”

Rafe ignored her. “Isabel.”

She blinked, those vivid green eyes still distant but seemingly focusing on him. “What?”

“You’ve got to stop. Now.”

“I can’t.”

“You have to. This is hurting you.” He wasn’t entirely sure she knew who he was. She was looking at him, he thought, as though he were the only Technicolor object in a black-and-white universe. Puzzled and wondering.

“It always hurts,” she said matter-of-factly. “What difference does that make?”

“Isabel-”

“Bad things happened here, you know. It’s been going on for years. Years. But Jamie was always in control. She had to be. Always. At least until…”

She frowned. “They sold insurance here, and before that-no, after that-somebody sold bootleg whiskey out of here for nearly a year. Moonshine, just like you said. How strange. And a preacher spent some time here, a few weeks. Except that he wasn’t a preacher anymore, because he’d been caught in bed with a deacon’s wife and it hadn’t been the first time. He thought God had abandoned him, but it was the other way around…”

Hollis said, “Take her outside. There are too many secrets in this place. Too much pain. Too much information for her to sort through all at once.”

Rafe didn’t wait for a more complete explanation; Isabel was pale, he could feel her shaking, and it didn’t require anything more than common sense to know she was very close to some kind of collapse. So he took her outside.

Isabel didn’t really protest, although once they were outside she did mutter under her breath, “Shit. I hate it when this happens.”

He put her in the passenger seat of his Jeep and got the engine and air conditioner running, then dug into his first-aid kit and pulled out a gauze pad.