Page 11 of The Perfect Deception (Jessie Hunt #40)

They talked to Dominik first.

As Ryan escorted him into interrogation room 1, where Jessie was already waiting, she took silent note of the man. Understandably, he looked a mess.

He was unshaven and his black hair was everywhere, as if he hadn’t had time to concern himself with brushing it properly. That made sense, as did the rumpled slacks and the dress shirt, which was mis-buttoned. He’d been told in the middle of the night that his wife had been murdered. Appearances likely weren’t his top priority.

He was clearly a good-looking man, but his eyes were puffy from crying and his face was blotchy, possibly due to the stress. As he sat down opposite Jessie, she noted that his black dress shoes were untied.

“I’m sorry about how I look,”

he said, running his hand through his hair.

“Don’t worry about it,”

Ryan said, taking a seat next to Jessie.

“As I told you last night on the phone, we’re terribly sorry for your loss, Mr. Dominik.”

The man nodded, biting his lip so forcefully that Jessie feared he might draw blood. After a moment, he swallowed hard, and spoke.

“I’m afraid to ask, but it’s been eating at me the whole drive up here. What exactly happened?”

“That’s a little complicated,”

Ryan told him in what Jessie considered quite an understatement.

“We didn’t want to get into all the details when everything was so fresh for you, but we’d like to address some of them now if we could.”

Dominik nodded weakly, looking defeated by the world. “Fine.”

“Your wife wasn’t actually found in your home.”

Ryan treaded delicately.

“Her body was discovered in the home of your neighbors—the Maplewoods—by James Maplewood. The body we found in your bed was Olivia Maplewood.”

Dominik looked at Ryan blankly, as if the words he’d just heard had been spoken in a foreign language. Jessie decided this was a good time to step in.

“Do you have any idea why that might be, Mr. Dominik?”

He stared at her with the same dull, confused expression he’d offered Ryan.

“Wait, you’re saying it wasn’t Cassandra that you found in our house?”

“That’s right.”

She pressed on as gently as she could.

“Can you think of any reason why Olivia would be in your house and Cassandra would be at the Maplewoods?”

He shook his head.

“Do you know the Maplewoods?”

Ryan already knew the answer from their conversation with James Maplewood last night but just like Jessie, he clearly wanted to hear how Dominik would answer.

“I mean, yeah, sure. It’s a tightknit community and they lived a few blocks over. We were always crossing paths with them at neighborhood events and stuff. I didn’t know them super well but they seemed nice.”

“So not friends then?”

Jessie said.

Dominik squirmed a little in his seat. Jessie couldn’t tell if it was because of the question or general discomfort at being in a hard metal chair after just sitting in a car for two hours.

“Friends?”

He pondered the question.

“I don’t know about that. Friendly? You could say that I guess. I mean, they’d been in our house and we’d been in theirs. But you could say that about two dozen other families in the neighborhood. People are always hosting stuff, us included.”

Again he swallowed hard. Jessie wondered if he had dry mouth, maybe parched from the long drive, or if this was a sign of nervousness. She got the distinct feeling that even as he was discussing the death of his wife, he was holding something back.

It could be something as simple as feeling guilt for being out of town when Cassandra was killed or it could be something more ominous. But a mere feeling wasn’t enough to push the guy too hard. Besides, being overly forceful in her questioning could make Dominik start to feel like a suspect. If that happened, he might lawyer up, and then where would they be?

As she was weighing how to proceed, Ryan got a buzz on his phone. He glanced down at the message, then back up at Dominik.

“Would you excuse me and Ms. Hunt for a minute? We need to attend to something.”

“Did you learn something new?”

the man asked excitedly.

“I’m not sure yet. We’ll be right back.”

He nodded toward the stern-looking officer standing in the corner of the room.

“If you need anything, Officer Meyer can help you.”

After they stepped out, Ryan filled her in.

“They just brought Maplewood into interrogation room 3. Shall we see him?”

Jessie was already walking down the hall before he finished the question. She stopped just outside the door.

“Dominik is holding something back,”

she told him after he’d caught up.

“It might not be relevant but there’s more there. I’d like to see how Maplewood comes across. Even last night, in the middle of his grief, the guy seemed wishy-washy on how well he knew Cassandra. I’m curious if he’ll get more specific.”

“Okay, but don’t push too hard. For the time being we need to treat these guys as witnesses who are in mourning. Let’s not antagonize them until we have to.”

“This isn’t my first rodeo, Hernandez,”

Jessie replied. It was the first time either of them had made anything close to a joke all night and he smiled appreciatively.

“Got it, cowgirl,”

he told her as he opened the door with a grin.

By the time they stepped inside the room, they’d both wiped the smiles off their faces. James Maplewood looked even worse than Michael Dominik. More disheveled than when they saw him at his house, his eyes were bloodshot and every part of him looked rumpled.

“How are you feeling, Mr. Maplewood?”

Jessie took a seat in the metal chair next to the man. She didn’t want to come across as adversarial by sitting across the table from him.

“They said it was just a panic attack,”

he said, his voice raspier than it had been at his house.

“But it didn’t feel like it at the time.”

“That’s certainly understandable.”

Ryan was using his most empathetic tone.

“It was good to get checked out, just in case.”

“Did you learn anything new while I was there? Did you catch someone?”

“I’m afraid not.”

Ryan shook his head.

“We’ve got our whole unit working on this. But in these early hours, information from you can be crucial to solving this. We were hoping you could help us clarify a few things.”

“I’ll do what I can.”

He sounded defeated.

“At the house earlier, you mentioned that you knew the Dominiks ‘slightly.’ What does that mean?”

Maplewood sighed heavily and waited several seconds before replying.

“I mean, we knew them from the neighborhood, saw them around all the time.”

“Hmm.”

Jessie said nothing more than that, just letting the one word linger in the air.

“What?”

Maplewood looked at her quizzically.

“It’s just—well, when we spoke to Michael Dominik, he gave us the impression that you were friendly. He said you’d even been to each other’s houses.”

The man’s eyes went wide and it was clear to Jessie that she’d struck a nerve. He seemed to be weighing how best to answer. When he did, his voice was even raspier than before. She wondered if that was the exhaustion, or if nerves were playing a role this time around.

“That’s true.”

He was choosing his words carefully.

“People were always at other people’s houses. It’s the kind of community where everybody has their door open on the weekend. I suppose one person’s ‘casual acquaintance’ is someone else’s ‘friendly.’ I don’t know where you draw the line, I guess.”

Under normal circumstances, with a tired, emotionally drained person who was back on their heels, this would be the ideal time to throw in a curveball question. In this instance, Jessie would have liked to have asked Maplewood point blank if he’d been having an affair with Cassandra Dominik or suspected that his wife was involved with Michael Dominik.

But these weren’t normal circumstances. Any premature question along those lines would put Maplewood in a defensive crouch. He might demand an attorney. For now, it was better to hold off.

Both these men were hiding something. But she had no idea what it was. Maybe they were both so consumed by grief that they were reluctant to share anything negative about their spouses. Maybe they were hiding some impropriety unrelated to their wives’ deaths. Maybe they were just nervous around the police.

One thing was clear. They were both uneasy about something, but that didn’t mean whatever secrets they were keeping were about murder.

That’s why Jessie intended to let them go for now. Whatever they were hiding wouldn’t stay hidden forever. Secrets rarely did.

And she was already formulating a plan to uncover theirs