Sense of Evil - Kay Hooper [31]
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