She stared at Gail Yeager’s finely toned body. “I don’t think it’s kinky at all. These are beautiful pictures.”

“Yeah, whatever. Bedroom’s in here.” He pointed through the doorway.

She stopped at the threshold. Inside was a king-size bed, its covers thrown back, as though its occupants had been abruptly roused from sleep. On the shell-pink carpet, the nylon pile had been flattened in two separate swaths leading from the bed to the doorway.

Rizzoli said, softly, “They were both dragged from the bed.”

Korsak nodded. “Our perp surprises them in bed. Somehow subdues them. Binds their wrists and ankles. Drags them across the carpet and into the hallway, where the wood floor begins.”

She was baffled by the killer’s actions. She imagined him standing where she was now, looking in at the sleeping couple. A window high over the bed, uncurtained, would have spilled enough light to see which was the man and which the woman. He would go to Dr. Yeager first. It was the logical thing to do, to control the man. Leave the woman for later. This much Rizzoli could envision. The approach, the initial attack. What she did not understand was what came next.

“Why move them?” she said. “Why not kill Dr. Yeager right here? What was the point of bringing them out of the bedroom?”

“I don’t know.” He pointed through the doorway. “It’s all been photographed. You can go in.”

Reluctantly she entered the room, avoiding the drag marks on the carpet, and crossed to the bed. She saw no blood on the sheets or the covers. On one pillow was a long blond strand-Mrs. Yeager’s side of the bed, she thought. She turned to the dresser, where a framed photograph of the couple confirmed that Gail Yeager was indeed a blonde. A pretty one, too, with light-blue eyes and a dusting of freckles on deeply tanned skin. Dr. Yeager had his arm draped around her shoulder and projected the brawny confidence of a man who knows he is physically imposing. Not a man who would one day end up dead in his underwear, his hands and feet bound.