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I’ve done for you and this community! I’ve sacrificed everything!”
    “You didn’t sacrifice shit,” Marla snarled. “Your slut-hound husband left you because you are fuckin’ insane , and you lost the club because you mismanaged funds and shit on everybody—”
    “No! It wasn’t my fault! All I’ve ever done is try to keep the community together and help—”
    Cassandra was approaching hysteria, as she did whenever someone confronted her with reality. How many times had Marla listened to her bullshit?
    “Leave now.” Marla’s voice was icy, but her hands were shaking. “Or I will call the police.”
    “I’ve lost everything! My husband, my club—everything!” Cassandra was babbling now. “I’ve even lost my best client to that bitch!”
    Suddenly, Marla wanted to laugh. So Cassandra had lost her trust fund baby, had she? He had been Cassandra’s pride and joy, the one she had said would set her up in a new club, one that would put the Inferno to shame.
    If another dominatrix had him now, more power to her, Marla thought. Even cute little rich boys deserved a better mistress than Cassandra Lee.
    She watched as Cassandra tottered to her battered Volvo. She watched as the woman sat there, head bowed and dabbing at her eyes with a tissue, before starting it up.
    Marla knew it was all part of her act. Cassandra played the victim so well.
    I hope she burns in hell, Marla thought.
    Then she began to cry.

Chapter 9
    Thou art to me a delicious torment.
    —R ALPH W ALDO E MERSON
     
     
     
     
    H anson tried not to think about baseball bats, but another bloody, beaten body so soon on the heels of Roger Banks was pretty damned coincidental.
    “Check-out was noon,” Griggs said. “They rang the room, got no answer. Housekeeping banged on the door. When they still got no answer, the manager used the master and found this.”
    “Looks like Roger Banks all over again.”
    “She don’t look like a hooker.” Griggs stared down at the body on the bed. “Crack head, either.”
    The Madison Inn didn’t rent by the hour (that would be the Airways, over on the other side of town), but it was a dump that offered free twenty-four-hour porn. Most of the Madison’s clientele checked in with no luggage.
    The manager, a small Pakistani man who spoke in heavily accented English, would not come into the room. He stood wringing his hands in the doorway, insisting that nothing like this had ever happened at his motel before.
    “She’s in rigor,” Miles volunteered. “Anal temp is eighty-six degrees.”
    “Can’t you just say body temp?” Hanson asked sourly. It was bad enough that someone should die so violently; he didn’t like thinking about Miles shoving a thermometer up the victim’s dead ass.
    Griggs was going through a purse on the sad little dresser.
    “Still got her wallet.” He pulled the driver’s license out. “Robyn Ann Macy.”
    “What time did she check in?”
    “Mr. Patel here says he never saw her check in. Says a man rented the room, paid cash—”
    “Let me guess. John Smith?”
    “Nah. George Harrison.” Griggs grinned. “Mr. Harrison checked in around three p.m. yesterday afternoon.”
    “So she died sometime between . . .” Hanson hesitated, hoping Miles would jump in and do the math for him.
    “She’s been dead at least four hours,” Miles said. “It could have been much earlier. Lividity is no help, because it looks like there’s very little blood left in her.”
    So much blood. The mattress literally squished as Miles removed his knee from its edge.
    They would have to get Mr. Patel together with a sketch artist. Talk to housekeeping and other guests—assuming they could be found. He wondered if her car was in the lot.
    “Well, lookee here!” Griggs pulled a neatly braided length of rope from a small duffel bag. “She musta been here for a little of the nasty if she was carrying this much rope around.”
    “Sure the bag is hers? Maybe the killer left it