“What did Liz think of him?”
“He creeped Liz out. He'd have his hands in his pockets all the time. Confront him on it, and he'd actually say his hands were cold, like that was going to fool anybody. I mean you could see his hands moving around in there. He was a damn nuisance, and I told Horst that, but Horst said we had to humor him. One time, Hector even asked Horst how much it would cost to be with Liz himself. Horst gave him a flat no. Liz wasn't into him at all. Like I said, he creeped her out.”
“Why did Ian kill him and his wife?”
Yuri gave me a puzzled face, trying to figure out how I knew so much. “Hector paid him to do it.”
“Hector wanted to die?”
“No. He paid Ian to kill his wife. She wanted a divorce. She was going to take him for all he was worth. He used to complain about it all the time. He'd tell anybody who would listen that she was a whore. He'd go on and on about how she cheated on him, and how now she thought she was entitled to his money. The guy was bitter.”
“I'd imagine so,” I said, finally picturing it in its entirety. I could imagine what it was like for Hector, your typical middle-aged guy with your typical once-a-week humdrum sex life, waking up from his suburban slumber the moment he found out one of his cameramen was shooting late-night porn in his news studios. Instead of being outraged like any respectable businessman, his dick took control and started tickling his brain with these funny feelings. He decided that there would be no harm in doing a little spectating, just to see what it was all about. And then there he was, in a dark studio, watching “Liz Lagarto” go to work on Raj Gupta, watching their bodies writhing and grinding, bumping and bouncing. He was hooked. It was all he could think about. I could see him sitting in his office, trying to get his work done but suddenly finding his hand in his pants, reaching though the holes in his pockets and wishing he was wearing a loincloth. He tried to get with Liz, but when he was rebuffed, he did the next best thing by talking his wife into doing little reenactments with jungle-boy Raj. And that got him off, got him off big time, until it all fell apart when she dumped the schmuck for the jungle boy and decided to take all his money. It was fucking beautiful the way it worked out for him.
“Why didn't Hector do his wife in himself?” I asked
“I don't know. I guess he was a coward. He went to Ian to see if Ian could put him in touch with somebody who did that kind of work.”
“And Ian volunteered to do himself.”
“Right. Hector paid Ian to do it. Ian just about cleaned him out, he charged so much. Hector was so stupid. I mean, what's the point of killing her to keep her from getting your money when you have to break the bank to do it?”
“I guess it wasn't about the money.”
Yuri fingered the fold in his pants with averted eyes.
“You still haven't told me why Ian killed Hector” I said.
Yuri took a deep breath. “It was the family photo that did it.”
“What family photo?”
“Hector gave Ian a copy of the holo-pic he kept on his desk so Ian would know what his wife looked like. Hector was very specific about how he wanted it done. He wanted Ian to do it at the hotel where she'd go to meet her boyfriend. He wanted him to walk in on them together and do them both in. But when Ian saw that picture of the Juarez family, he decided to take Hector out along with his wife.”
“Why?”
“The prices Horst was getting on the executions were dropping. The first five or six paydays were huge, but the auctions were getting smaller and so were the bids. Horst was good at getting first timers hooked into bidding wars, but when the repeat customers started outnumbering the first timers, the price started to fall. The repeat customers were looking for bargains, you see what I mean? They'd bid up to their limit, and if that wasn't enough, it wasn't enough. No big deal, there'd be another auction coming up soon enough. So when Ian saw Hector's daughter in that picture, he saw an opportunity. You know what she looks like, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Then you know how gorgeous she is, or was. Ian took one look at her and thought she could bring some excitement back into the bidding. He said her execution could bring in a record price, and he was right. There aren't many women on death row, and none of them look like her. Ian juiced it up by selling her to the press as a spoiled brat who killed her parents because she couldn't get her way. The rags played right into it. Did you see their headlines? They ran that one that said, ‘Kitten Turned Killer.’ And then there was the one that went, ‘Prep School Princess Pares Parents.’ The bidding went crazy. Those offworlders were all dying to be the one to teach the little bitch a lesson.”
“So he decided to kill both parents and let her take the fall.”
“Right. Had he just killed the wife and tried to frame Adela, Hector might've confessed in order to save his daughter. If it was going to work, he had to kill both the parents. Ian ran the idea by Horst, and Horst signed off on it. Hector was a pain in the ass anyway. And besides, by that time, I was doing almost all holo work, so we didn't really need the studios anymore.”
That was some cold shit Ian pulled off-killing Hector and his wife and getting Hector to pay for it. And all that spoiled-brat crap was nothing more than a sales ploy. And I fell for it. I'd made her cry. I closed my eyes and rubbed my face with my good hand in an effort to keep from screaming. I wanted to smash something, like Yuri's face. I wanted to drive my fist into it until it went pulpy. I forced out a calm tone. “Did they frame any of the others?”
“No. Adela Juarez was the first. The others all came from death row. That was the only way Horst could sell it. His slogan was, ‘The thrill of the kill without the pain or the shame.’ They were all going to die anyway. He'd tell his customers they didn't have to worry about feeling guilty. You can't kill what's already dead. Besides, these people all deserved it. These were the worst of the worst. Rapists. Murderers. Horst's customers were just meting out justice. They were performing a public service.”
I hadn't opened Adela's body bag. I was afraid of what I might find, but I still had to know. “How did they kill her?”
“The high bidder plagued her while the others watched.”
“He used a needle?”
“No.” He doubled up his fidgeting.
“What did he use, Yuri?”
“His semen was infected.”
Just when I thought it couldn't get any worse… I looked down the corridor, taking some satisfaction in the hideous deaths of the six offworlders, their bodies reduced to nothing more than jelly, bubonic balls and all.
It was hard to fathom what that poor girl went through. First, finding her slaughtered parents. Then, getting convicted for their murders and sentenced to death. And as if that wasn't enough, she died a day early, raped in front of spectators, infected with accelerated plague, her skin breaking out in red blotches that quickly turned black, her lymph nodes swelling to the point of bursting-and innocent all the while. I didn't want to face it. I just sent her down into that same hollow in my gut with Niki and tried to ignore her.
I was looking at Yuri, running it through my head one more time, getting a feel for how to play it. I was hardly in a position to take the moral high ground with anybody, but I wasn't about to let that stop me from doing what I had to do. “How could you go along with all this, Yuri?”
“I had no choice.”
“Don't lie to me, Yuri. You made Adela's fake confession. You made the fake execution vids they use at the Zoo. And you filmed all the real executions so those sick bastards would have little keepsakes.”