Page 22 of The Perfect Deception
Kat couldn’t help but wonder if this was the same knife Ash had used to remove Camille Overton’s fingertips and teeth.“You just asked for help the one time?”
“Yeah, I found my knife the next morning so I was okay after that, but I have to say she seemed pretty normal to me.What did she do?”
“She’s a hitwoman who has killed at least a dozen people that I know of,” Kat said matter-of-factly.“She also kidnapped me and brought me out to a desert not unlike this one, where she tortured me within an inch of my life until I was rescued.”
The couples’ jaws dropped open simultaneously.Kat realized she might have been blunter than necessary.But her capacity for diplomacy when it came to Pierce had long since fizzled out.
After striking out in Joshua Tree, Kat’s most recent adventure was in Vegas.Unlike most of the other places she’d crashed in, Pierce used a hotel there, the Commodore.That’s where the footage that Jamil sent Kat three days ago came from.Once she hightailed it there, driving through the middle of the night, she understood why.
Despite its impressive-sounding name, the Commodore was a seedy motel that accepted cash payment weekly, nightly, and even hourly.It was off the strip but within walking distance, in an industrial area near the freeway.After doing some research, Kat learned that all the hostels in the city were on populated streets with traffic cameras and businesses nearby that likely recorded everything too.That explained why Pierce hadn’t used one of them.
The head manager hadn’t been much help, probably because he worried that Kat was interested in what happened in the rooms that offered hourly rates.But the overnight manager wasn’t as discerning.For some cash of his own, he agreed to check the hotel cameras to determine when exactly Pierce had arrived and left.He even agreed to let Kat watch the footage with him.
Unfortunately he had to wait until he was working alone, which meant the overnight shift.Sticking around for that would have meant Kat missing Jessie’s arrival back in town.Not even Ash Pierce could get in the way of that.So she’d left town.
It turned out not to matter whether she’d stuck around or not.When the manager informed her that she’d missed Pierce by two days, she wasn’t shocked.Just missing Ash Pierce was almost becoming Kat’s second job.
She allowed herself a bitter chuckle as she stared more closely at the map on her wall.Pushpins marked everywhere she knew the killer had been: Long Beach, then San Diego for two weeks, Phoenix for ten days, Joshua Tree for ten more, and Las Vegas for a week.All her stops, with the exception of the isolated campground, were in large cities where she could stay anonymous.And her stays were getting shorter.
Kat also couldn’t help but note that each of Pierce’s stops was still in the general region of L.A.Even Phoenix, the farthest away, was only half a day’s drive.It was clear that the woman didn’t want to get too far away from her targets.But equally important, she didn’t seem to want to actually return to L.A.yet, where she was more likely to be recognized.Law enforcement throughout the region was well aware of her.
Kat suspected that Pierce wouldn’t return to town until she was ready to take decisive action.The concern was that after being back in the country for six weeks, she might be getting closer to doing that.
Kat’s hope was to turn the tables on the killer and find her first.That meant figuring out where she was hiding now.But that was easier said than done.The number of good-sized cities in the western states was overwhelming.
Pierce could return to any of the places she'd already gone, but there were multiple other options.She could be as far away as Tucson, Arizona, or much closer, in Riverside, Palm Springs, Santa Barbara, Lancaster, Bakersfield, or a dozen other large towns, all of which were less than three hours from where Kat now sat.
She was sure of one thing at least.Whether she found Ash Pierce first or the assassin came to her, the clock was ticking.They’d be seeing each other again soon
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Jessie would have been impressed if she wasn’t so irritated.
Elise Prager seemed perfectly at ease as she sat in the hard metal chair in interrogation room 2.Ryan had offered to conduct their interview in the conference room, which annoyed Jessie.She wanted the woman to be a little uncomfortable.But Prager seemed to be intrigued by the idea of chatting in the room where cops “busted heads and forced confessions,” as she snarkily put it.
Jessie, despite all her time away working on her anger, had a fleeting desire to grant Prager's wish and bust her head, but decided to hold off for now.Instead, she decided to focus on the most pressing question at hand: who exactly was Elise Prager, and how did she know Michael Dominik?
Jessie already knew part of the answer to the first question.On the way back here from the Cordelia Hotel, she’d texted Jamil, asking for everything he could get them on the woman.By the time they arrived at the station, he’d created a whole file.
It seemed that Elise Prager was a rich socialite who spent most of her time and energy organizing and hosting big-ticket charity events attended by the city’s elite.She divorced her oil executive husband nearly a decade ago and never looked back.According to Jamil, the settlement and alimony together put her net worth in the $30 million range, certainly enough for her to both lead the good lifeandcosplay as Mother Teresa.
Beth and Hannah had helped dig up the connections between her and the dead women.Not only did she live just a few neighborhoods over from both the Maplewoods and the Dominiks, in the Wilton Historic District, but each of those couples had also donated generously to multiple charities that Prager was involved with.Hannah found photos showing the pairs at multiple gala fundraisers in recent years.
But none of that explained why Michael Dominik had been engaged in an animated, borderline-heated conversation with the woman.It was hard to imagine that in the immediate wake of his wife’s murder, he’d be fixated on an issue involving a donation.Jessie and Ryan agreed that there had to be more to it.
That’s what she intended to determine as she settled into one of the interrogation room chairs opposite Prager.Ryan took the other.Just before they’d entered, he made one request of her.
“Please don’t go at her so hard this time.Until we know more, let’s try to treat this as an informational conversation rather than a flat-out grilling.”
Jessie wasn’t inclined to heed the request.She got the distinct feeling that unless Prager was knocked off her pedestal a little, the woman would be a tough nut to crack.But this wasn’t just her partner—and technically, her immediate supervisor—asking, it was also her husband.And after over eight weeks separated by an ocean, she didn’t want their first 24 hours back together to get overly contentious.
“I’ll do my best,” she promised.
Now, seated across from Prager, she decided the best way to live up to the promise was to let him take the lead.She gave him her standard “this is your show” look and he took it from there.
“Thanks for taking the time, Ms.Prager,” he said.
“I didn’t get the sense that I had much choice.”
