“You didn’t tell me that part.” She spoke softly, breathlessly. He’d upset her.

“He made two calls in the five minutes before his suicide. The first to a friend to say he was sorry for what he was about to do. The last call he made was to you. You want to tell me why he was calling you?”

“I’d tell you if I knew.”

“You would?”

“Maybe,” she said. “Maybe not. But I really don’t know.”

“How about this? How about you tell me how he might have gotten your card?”

She took a long breath, puffing her cheeks out as she exhaled. “Well…that’s my old New York number. Maybe he went there on a trip looking for kink.”

“Did Mr. Edge ever give out your cards?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll need to speak to him then.”

“Good luck.”

He ignored that. “You say Father Ike might have gone to New York looking for kink. I’m not very familiar with what dominatrixes do. Can you walk me through it?”

“You really think he wanted to do kink right before he died?”

“I don’t know what he wanted right before he died. But I do need to find out.”

She looked away, crossed her legs, nodded. “What do you want to know?”

“Father Isaac Murran was sixty years old. Do you have a lot of clients in their sixties?”

“A few.”

“Really?”

“Many sixty-year-old men still have strong libidos and sexual longings. The man I love will be sixty in nine years, and I fully intend to have good sex with him nine years from now. I mean, before then too but also nine years from now.”

She was playing with him again.

“Can you tell me what goes on between you and your clients? The basics?”

She sat forward and gave him her full attention. “A basic session begins like this. A client comes to my dungeon—”

“And where is your dungeon?”

“Do you really need to know that?”

“I really need to know that. I’m not the cops, okay?”

“Fine—828 Piety Street. Old brick factory.”

“You have a dungeon on Piety Street?”

“It’s not my fault half the streets in this town have religious names.”

“Okay,” Cyrus said. “Go on. Who are your clients, mostly?”

“We’ll go with the usual demographics. Most of my clients are straight white men between the ages of twenty-five and seventy-five who are middle class or above. Professional men—white-collar types. A few military guys but mostly doctors, lawyers, bankers, that sort. The bulk of my clients are in their forties and fifties, midlife crisis age. The ‘it’s now or never’ stage.”

“A client arrives at your dungeon and then what?”

“I greet them at the door and they come in. Then I make them take off all their clothes.”

“But not for sex?”

“For protection. I need to see they aren’t hiding any weapons.”

“Got it. Go on.”

“We’ll talk a few minutes about what he wants. Most of the time, it’s some pain and dominance, like I said. Maybe some foot worship. Maybe he wants to be called a specific name like ‘slut’ or ‘bitch’ or ‘baby boy.’ Something that’s part of his fantasies. I’ll leave him alone a minute or two to get into the right headspace. He’ll probably kneel on the floor and close his eyes. I’ll come back in and the scene will start.”