“His lawyer’s going to fix it,” Peabody added. “He can afford a damn platoon of high-priced lawyers.”
Now Eve shrugged. “That’s not our problem. We did our job. I just like hearing how anybody could plan all this out, time after time. The precision, the planning, the smallest details. Well, it’s exquisite actually. Did you really decide on the woman at that gala? The ah, yeah, here it is. The Celebrate Art Gala? What pulled that trigger?”
“They couldn’t stop talking about wedding plans. Rosa and Neville going on and on and fucking on about them. Everybody we know who comes by the table starts up on the wedding. Can’t wait, how perfect they are together, what a beautiful bride she’s going to be. Made me sick to my stomach. Made me want to puke.”
“So you looked around, milled around, and began to see all the women you could have. All the married women. Women you’d show, men you’d punish. Did you already have the cameras in Neville’s place?”
“I did him a favor. He’s got the nerve to ask me if I can hang out at his place, wait for a delivery while they’re moving in together? The asshole doesn’t even notice.”
“You watched them whenever you wanted. Watched them in bed together.”
“So what? All it did was prove to me how much better I was at it.”
“Your timing was—bears repeating—exquisite. Right after their honeymoon. Just as they’re really starting the whole married gig together.”
“Now she’ll know, for the rest of her life, she settled. He’ll know she had the best sex of her life with another man.”
“And Lori, Lori Brinkman.” She pulled out the photo. “How did you pick her?”
“Ah, Lori. That face, that body, the laugh. It was her laugh that got me. The laugh said sex. Pulled one of her scripts out of the vault—not bad.”
“Astra’s a screenwriter, too, isn’t she?”
“It’s more a hobby, just like with Lori. And they wouldn’t need a hobby, would they, if they weren’t married to losers. If a man keeps a woman satisfied, she doesn’t need anything but him.”
“You could see Lori wasn’t satisfied, sexually.”
“Stuck with that boring fuck? Give me a break. Lori was really the one who inspired it all. Why stop at Rosa, that’s what I thought. I thought, right here, in this room there are a dozen women like that. Stuck in that rut, trapped in the rules. I picked them out, and saw how it could be. And after Rosa, I knew how it could feel.”
“You planted the cameras.”
“You’re a cop, right? I don’t have to tell you people think they’re secure in their own homes, and they’re not. You just have to be observant, take the time, be smart. I could’ve made a living with e-work. Everyone said so.”
He shook back his hair, obviously comfortable now, completely in the groove of his own arrogance.
“But, Jesus, how many electronics experts get covered by the media, have stars coming to them? Do on-screen interviews? E’s just a hobby. And watching all those lives, those small lives on screen? Hell, I almost ran out of popcorn.”
He laughed, finished off the tube of ginger ale.
“Watching, you got to know their routines, and their secrets.” Eve’s hand flowed over Lori’s photo. “It made it easy for you to time when to break into Lori’s house, set everything up, wait for them to get home from vacation. Hell of a welcome back, right?”
“She was excited. You were right, I wasn’t in such a hurry this time, so I had her strip. She was so ready for it, trying to pretend, pulling out the tears when I went for that loser she married, but so ready. I gave her a break, told her to beg for more. And I gave her more. That asshole she married—what’s his name?”
“Ira.”
“Right, old Ira won’t be able to satisfy her now.”
“Why did you wait so long between Rosa and Lori, then for Daphne?”
“I believe in rehearsals. If you want a performance to shine, and I do, you rehearse.”
“You had the droid for that?”
“The droid, LCs. And Daphne? She was going to be special.”
“Why is that?”
“She likes it rough. That rich doctor she hooked knocked her around plenty, and she’d come back for more. He’d tie her up, blindfold her, and bang the shit out of her. Choked her, too, just enough. Then he’d get out his med bag, fix her up. She’d cry and cry, but she did what the hell she was told. He knew how to run that house. I had to respect that.”
“He was stronger than the others.”