Page 18 of The Perfect Deception (Jessie Hunt #40)

They sent squad cars for the men.

It was Jessie’s idea. She wanted them on edge, worried about why they were being brought in a second time, and in police cars no less. They might be mourning the deaths of their wives, but their lack of candor bordered on obstruction and she intended to use that against them. She had an unusual idea for how to go about that.

Dominik, who was still at the Cordelia Hotel, arrived first. They put him in interrogation room 1 but waited until Maplewood was brought from his sister’s house in the valley, which he’d never left, before proceeding. When he arrived and was put in interrogation room 3.

But rather than go in and question the men themselves, they put Jessie’s idea into action. Susannah Valentine was sent in to question Dominik, while Karen Bray took Maplewood. Jessie and Ryan had prepped them so that they were up on everything.

The questioning would take place concurrently, so Jessie and Ryan could watch the interviews on monitors from an observation room. That way they could note any major discrepancies in real time, or worse, any stories that sounded too similar. The latter might indicate that they’d conspired to get those stories straight.

“Go for it, ladies,”

Ryan said into the earpieces that both detectives wore in one ear.

“But remember, we don’t want them to lawyer up, so stop shy of any accusations.”

Susannah dived right in.

“Why didn’t you tell Detective Hernandez and Jessie Hunt about your life swaps, Mr. Dominik?”

The man looked stunned before stammering a reply.

“I didn’t think that would matter.”

“You didn’t think it mattered that a woman you temporarily lived with on two separate occasions died in your home? In your bed?”

“Look, I was so shocked by what happened, I wasn’t really thinking in those terms. I was woken up in the middle of the night and driven back to L.A., where I knew my dead wife was waiting. It was like some crazy fever dream, only it was real. I’m sorry if I wasn’t completely on the ball.”

Karen Bray, in the other interrogation room, used a different interview style. She had an unflappable air of professionalism to go with her keen sense of perception. And as a married mother of a five-year-old, she was generally more patient than Susannah so she was slightly less aggressive with James Maplewood.

“Can you please explain why my colleagues had to hear about your life swap situation from Elise Prager instead of you? Didn’t you think that might be relevant to your wife’s death, as well as that of Mrs. Dominik?”

He paused for several seconds before replying. When he did, he sounded remorseful.

“I guess. Maybe. The truth is that I wasn’t really in the head space to focus on that. I found Cassandra lying dead in my bed. And then I couldn’t get hold of Olivia. I was panicky. I mean, the doctors said that I had an actual panic attack. And frankly, I’m still freaked out. The only thing that’s allowing me to sit here without breaking down is the sedative I took a little while back. It hasn’t worn off yet and thank god for that.”

Back in interrogation room 1, Susannah wasn’t worried about whether Dominik was sedated.

“Why did you meet with Elise Prager at the Cordelia Hotel?”

“How did you know about that?”

he objected.

"We're investigating two murders Mr. Dominik. Of course, we would know. Please answer the question."

He shook his head in frustration.

“Once I had some time to think about things, I started to wonder if the swaps might somehow be connected to what happened. I thought maybe she could give me some answers. I wanted to know if anyone working for her had a criminal record or if our personal information had gotten loose.”

“And what did she say?”

“That she handles all aspects of the swaps herself, to protect our privacy. And that nothing personal had gotten out.”

“That’s all you discussed?”

He squirmed a little in his chair.

“I also told her that I was worried about the swaps becoming public. I didn’t want Olivia’s memory sullied by something that other people might judge. She said she’d keep it quiet if she could. But that clearly didn’t stick.”

“Ask about the sleeping arrangements,”

Jessie said quietly into the mic in the observation room.

Susannah nodded slightly to indicate that she'd heard her. "So how did it work with these swaps? Did the person sleeping over stay in the guest room, or did things get more intimate?"

Dominik’s expression turned dark.

“Do I have to answer that?”

“Hey, we’re just out here trying to solve your wife’s murder, but if you think holding back is the way to go here, you do you, Mr. Dominik.”

He lowered his head so that there was no eye contact when he answered.

“Of course things got intimate. That was part of the excitement of the whole thing. We weren’t just switching lives so we could wash dishes together.”

In interrogation 3, Karen was pursuing the same line of inquiry with James Maplewood.

“And everyone was on board with that?”

“Not the first night,”

he said, blushing.

“Cassandra and I shared a bed but nothing happened. After that, we agreed that we were being silly, that the sex component was part of the whole swap experience. So we embraced it from then on.”

“And apparently everyone was so cool with how things went that you decided to have a second go-around?”

“Look, for us it was a positive experience.”

His voice was plaintive.

“Yeah, it was a little weird at first. But it was also exciting, a change of pace after seven years of marriage. Plus, it had an unexpected effect.”

“What was that?”

Karen asked.

“It made us appreciate our spouses more once we returned to our regular lives. There’s something to be said for trying a wild experiment like this. But that excitement can fade. Being comfortable around someone, being in love with someone, despite the quirks that sometimes frustrate you—I valued that a lot more after we returned to normal.”

The questioning went on for a little while longer, but eventually Jessie and Ryan told the detectives that they could shut it down. It was clear that the two men hadn’t coordinated their answers before. They had parallels in their versions of events but nothing so similar as to suggest they’d planned what they would say.

And neither man said anything that raised obvious red flags. Their explanations for why they hadn’t mentioned the swaps were unsatisfying, but not wholly unconvincing. Between that and their ironclad alibis, Jessie was inclined to doubt their involvement in their wives deaths.

But she didn’t completely eliminate the possibility. After all, they now knew that these swaps involved sex. And sex often led to heightened emotions like jealousy, even obsession. That was always a solid motive for murder, whether by these guys, or someone else entirely.

The fact of the matter was there was only one way they’d be able to discern if these life swaps were a catalyst for the killings of Cassandra Dominik and Olivia Maplewood. They would need to look at Elise Prager’s files.

The question was: would she turn them over willingly or would they have to force her hand