Page 44 of The Perfect Prey

“Okay,” Susannah interjected, “but the filing deadline isn’t till tomorrow.So how are you able to cut out in the middle of the afternoon today?”

Lambert looked suddenly sheepish.

“I told my boss that one of my kids was sick and that I had to take her to the doctor,” he muttered, barely above a whisper.“I promised that I’d be back this evening.”

“So you were so intent on going to this sex party,” Jessie concluded,” that you lied to your employer about a sick child on one of the most important days of the year for your business?”

Lambert shrugged unceremoniously.

“I’m a sex addict of sorts,” he said.“I get off on watching other people get off.I’m not super proud of how I conduct my life, but I’m not committing any crimes as far as I can tell.But you seem to think I have.So can you please tell me what this is all about?”

Jessie looked over at Susannah.She wasn’t inclined to let the man know anything, but she’d defer to the detective on this one.Apparently, they were in lockstep.Susannah tossed a pen and a notepad on the table in front of him.

“Write down the names of everyone who can confirm your whereabouts at the times we discussed,” she ordered.

“Including my wife?”he asked.“She was in bed with me on Saturday night.”

“What a change of pace that must have been,” Susannah snarled.“Including your wife.You’re under suspicion for something much worse than staring at people having sex, Mr.Lambert.And the more proof you can give us of where you were, the better it will be for you.Maybe not in your marriage, but in terms of your freedom.”

As the man began scribbling, Jessie and Susannah exchanged a glance.Jessie knew her partner was thinking the same thing that she was: this guy might be a scumbag and a hypocrite, but he didn’t feel right for these murders.If they were right, then this whole undercover operation might have been for naught.

Jessie’s fear was further exacerbated by Jim Nettles, who had continued to furiously text during the entire interrogation.He looked up at her now.

“What is it?”she asked.

“Apparently the sudden departures by you two and Mr.Lambert here caused a bit of a panic at the sex party.It seems that folks there thought the event was about to be raided, so everyone bailed.The whole club has cleared out, and most folks are either currently in town cars or about to be.”

Jessie sighed.

“Including potentially, our murderer,” she groaned.

Gregory Lambert’s head shot up.His expression was a mixture of shock and horror.

“Did you say murderer?”he exclaimed in horror.“You thought I killed someone?”

CHAPTER TWENTY SIX

He watched the action from across the street.A little while ago, he hadn’t been sure that he’d ever get the opportunity.

Initially, he’d just wanted to get away from the spa as quickly as possible.That’s why, when the kaleidoscopic disco ball lights in the club all turned red at once (the pre-determined warning signal from the organizers that a raid might be in progress and people should leave), he followed the rest of the crowd out of the place.

At first, the club staffers had people wait in the hallway behind the club, but concerns about police bursting in at any moment proved intense, and people poured out into the alley behind the building.

There was a backup of people waiting for the town cars and, deciding that he didn’t want to be a sitting duck if the authorities arrived and took everyone into custody, he left the alley and walked down the main road.He caught sight of his ride stuck in traffic halfway up the block and waved to the driver.He got in, and they were about to pull away when he had a change of heart.

“Actually, I’m going to get back out again.This traffic backup could take forever,” he lied.That wasn’t his real concern.“Just let me grab my phone and other stuff and I’ll be out of your hair.”

Once he collected his things and left the car, he headed across the street to a coffee shop.He bought a drink and settled in at a table with a clear view of the front entrance to Elite Spa.To his surprise, no army of squad cars appeared.After a while, he became suspicious that there hadn’t been a raid at all.

What if the cops were here for him?He hadn’t expected that the authorities would make the connection between the masquerade ball masks and the parties—referred to by the organizers as “Special Friends Events—so quickly, or even at all.After all, they’d been going on for nearly two years now without any issues.The organizers, whose real identities he was unaware of, had been masterful at keeping the parties secret.

But maybe he should have expected this attention.Finding naked dead bodies with masks on their faces was certainly unusual.And having three victims made him a serial killer of sorts, even though he hadn’t really viewed himself that way until this moment.Now that he thought about it from their perspective, of course, the cops would pour a ton of resources into this case.To have thought otherwise was naïve.

To that point, it was probably foolish of him to have gone to another party so soon after his kills.If the police had connected the masks to the parties, then it was logical, at least in retrospect, to assume that the killer might be found there.But he was new to all of this, and his brain didn’t work like a cop’s.It worked like a security software developer, which is what he was.

He’d have to change how he thought.Of course, he never went after a victim at the club.That would mean an end to the parties and to his supply of victims.So it’s not like the police would be able to catch him in the act while he was there.

But if they somehow got access to the parties’ guest list, they could conceivably go through everyone and backtrace their location at the time of the killings.They would discover that he’d been at the home of Richard and Cynthia Hartley on Saturday night and the apartment of Evelyn Channing last night.It would only be a matter of time, whether it be hours, days, or weeks, before they linked the killings to him.

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