Page 25 of The Perfect Deception
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
CHAPTER NINETEEN
They had to threaten her.
Jessie had no problem with it.In fact, she was more than willing to be the one to drop the hammer on Elise Prager.The woman's enthusiasm over the juicy details of her side project and her general callousness about the deaths of the victims made Jessie want to put a bit of fear in the woman.But she and Ryan agreed that his rapport with Prager was a little better, and he might have more success.
That’s why, late on a Thursday afternoon, Elise Prager once again sat across from them in interrogation room 2.She didn’t seem to be as giddy to be here this time around.
