Warren took an arm from his chest, pointed at the mirror and said, “He’s watchin’ you right now, Ryan.”
“Oh fuck. Oh fuck,” Ryan was squirming in his chair, not certain if he was allowed to get up but definitely certain he wanted to flee.
“Calm down, Ryan. We said he was a good cop. You cooperate, you got no problems with the real Lieutenant Colton,” Nowakowski told both Ryan and Colt the way things would be. “Now, this has been goin’ on for how long?”
“Six months, a bit more I think. Awhile,” Ryan answered.
“Did Mr. Lowe ever come to watch the monitors?”
Ryan shook his head. “No, not ever. Just got the files.”
“What else did you send him?” Warren asked and Ryan looked at Warren, then at the mirror.
Then he turned to Nowakowski. “Will you ask him to leave? To stop watchin’ me?”
“Think he’s got a right to watch you a little while, Ryan, seein’ as you been watchin’ him and Ms. Owens. Don’t you?” Warren asked. “Turnabout bein’ fair play and all that shit.”
Colt decided he was beginning to like Warren.
Ryan shook his head. “He won’t… he won’t –”
“What’d you send?” Nowakowski asked.
“But, he’s watchin’,” Ryan said.
“Ryan, tell us what you sent,” Nowakowski pushed.
“He… you don’t understand. He said he was a cop.”
“Ryan, be smart now, all right? What did you send?” Nowakowski kept at him.
“I know it was weird!” Ryan flared, pushing his chair back several inches, enough to make Nowakowski sit back and go on alert and Warren to push from the wall. “But he said he was a cop! What do I know about cops?”
Warren took two steps forward and slapped a hand on the table, making Ryan jump before he barked, “What’d you send?”
“Her dressing!” Ryan shouted then shot to his feet, putting his hands to the sides of his head. “Dressing, undressing. That’s all he wanted.” Ryan’s eyes went to the mirror for less than a second then they went to Nowakowski and he dropped his hands only to flick them out to the sides, twitchy. “Yeah, all right, I thought it was freaky! I’m not that stupid. If he didn’t have the feeds from the coffee shop and the bar and want the footage of the big guy, I woulda known it was weird. But he wanted that too. I knew he was askin’ for the extra because he was gettin’ his rocks off but cops, they do that shit! Everyone knows that! And half the time he asked why there wasn’t more and I lied and told him she changed in her bathroom. He wanted a camera in there but I didn’t wanna see that shit and no reason for him to see it either, even if he was a cop. The big guy couldn’t fit through a vent and whack her in the bathroom, for fuck’s sake! So I put one in there but disconnected the feed and told him it malfunctioned. But sometimes he’d get very, fuckin’ perturbed when I lacked footage and he was a little bit freaky, dude. Seriously. So I’d send him some shit. Okay?” Ryan sat back down, elbows to the table, head back in his hands and he repeated. “I’d send him some shit. Fuck.”
“You get your rocks off, Ryan, like us cops, when you watched February Owens dress and undress?” Warren asked.
“No,” Ryan mumbled to his lap.
Warren slapped his palm on the table and shouted, “Don’t lie to me! You get your rocks off?”
Ryan bolted upright in his chair and yelled, “No!” Then his fists came down on the table. “Okay, at first, yeah, though I didn’t jack off or anything. But then, even without sound, you could tell she was nice! You could see by the way she treated her cat and worked the bar. She smiled and it was real. People gravitate toward her. She’s hot, sure, but after awhile it was like spyin’ on my big sister and it gave me the creeps.” Ryan’s gaze went back to the mirror and he said, “She’s nice and you seem cool too. You made her laugh, she doesn’t do that much. Glad you worked things out.”
Five seconds before, Colt was using everything he had not to walk into that room and tear the little fuck’s throat out. Just then, he started chuckling.
“Welp, you can sit easy, Colt, Ryan here’s glad you worked things out with Feb,” Chris muttered, laughter in his tone.
Before Colt could say anything, Nowakowski asked Ryan, “You see Mr. Lowe enter Ms. Owens’s apartment?”
Ryan nodded. “Yeah, sure, he’d go in there. Said he was checkin’ on things. Told me to shut down the cameras when he was in there.”
Of course he would, Colt thought. Denny didn’t mind Ryan watching Feb dress but he didn’t want the little fuck to watch him jack off on her bed.
“You shut them down like he asked?” Nowakowski questioned.
“Yeah,” Ryan answered.
Nowakowski tapped the pad with his finger. “Those files, Ryan, video files, those are big. Lieutenant Colton, he spend a long time in that bar?”
“Sometimes, sure,” Ryan said, calming down at the change of topic but still on the alert.
“That’s a lotta footage,” Nowakowski remarked. “Those files would be large. You zip them or something?”
That’s when Colt knew Nowakowski wasn’t just good, he was sheer talent. There was something deeper; Nowakowski saw it and Colt didn’t. Colt knew this because Ryan, already agitated, now was panicked clear as day.
“Sure,” Ryan said, now for some reason lying through his teeth, trying to appear calm and failing. “Zipped ‘em.”
“Didn’t burn DVDs? Hand ‘em off to Mr. Lowe?” Nowakowski asked.
Ryan shook his head. “Saw Mr. Whoever during the deal, coupla times after then when we put in the cameras. Just email from then.”
“So who’d you give the DVDs to?” Nowakowski asked and Ryan looked to the floor, the table, his hands, eye contact evaporated. “Ryan?” Nowakowski called.
“No DVDs, just emailed files.”
“Take a lotta time to send those big files, even zipped. Most computers would time out.”
“Got a high speed connection,” Ryan said to his hands.
“Sure, you do. What about him? He confirm receipt of these big files?” Nowakowski asked.