Colt closed the door and walked in, watching Nowakowski sliding a pad toward the boy, putting a pen on top.
Colt stopped beside Sully and saw Nowakowski was seated not across from the kid, beside him. The kid was at the middle of the table, Nowakowski at the side. Friendly, approachable, non-threatening. Warren was standing, shoulders against the wall by the door, head up, eyes looking down his nose at the boy, arms crossed on his chest. Unfriendly, official, a threat.
“I swear I didn’t know,” the kid said, his voice hitching, about to unman himself and trying like hell to stop it. “He said he was a cop. Had a badge and everything.”
“We understand,” Nowakowski told him though Colt knew he didn’t. He thought the kid was a dumb fuck which he probably was. Though for the life of him, Colt couldn’t read that in anything Nowakowski was sending the kid. The guy was good.
“He said I was deputized, an official part of the operation,” the kid said, his eyes on Nowakowski, disbelief at being duped on his face. “Said we needed to keep an eye on her all the time so we could keep her safe. She was under threat.”
Yep, a dumb fuck, Colt thought as he watched Nowakowski nod with understanding and the kid picked up the pen and bent over the pad.
“Um, bad news, man,” Sully mumbled to him, leaning close, “Lowe had eyes in Feb’s apartment. We didn’t find ‘em. Feds did about an hour ago after we saw what all the monitors were picking up. Those were put in professional by Ryan here. Whiz kid, works at an electronic shop, does this shit as a hobby but also part side-business. Nanny cams. Shit like that. He’s good, idiot savant. Chris did the sweep and he didn’t pick them up. Feds said they’d have trouble findin’ ‘em if they didn’t have the angles and a shitload more equipment and experience than a small town PD.”
Rodman’s eyes came to him and Colt kept his reaction to the news that Lowe and his lackey watched Feb in her apartment under control. It cost him but he didn’t even bite his lip.
“He got cameras in my house I didn’t find?” Colt asked.
“Nope. Just on the street.”
“Where else?”
“Meems’s. Boys are there now, yankin’ ‘em out.”
Mimi was going to flip. Al was going to flip a fair bit harder.
“Someone sent to contain Al?”
“Did that myself before comin’ in,” Sully hesitated, his meaning clear before he said, “he’s okay.”
Which meant he wasn’t at first until Sully talked him into being that way. Sully could work for the United Nations he was that good of a diplomat which was the reason why Colt didn’t do bodily harm to Craig Lansdon the day before.
“How’s he gettin’ around the security systems?” Colt asked.
Sully jerked his head toward the mirror. “Ryan here, dab hand at a lotta things, the little fuck. Unfortunately, he taught Lowe along the way.”
“Why the fuck did he do that?” Colt asked.
“Lowe told him he was you. Had a badge and looked official. Lowe told him he’d be helpin’ out the law if Ryan gave him some tutorin’.”
“He half-idiot or something?”
“My experience, the smarter they are at one thing, the dumber they are with everything else. Ryan’s the example that proves the rule.”
“Will I get into trouble for this?” Ryan asked, calling their attention back to him and shoving the pad away, the email written on it, his eyes on the pad like it would come alive, jump up and take a bite out of him.
“Cooperate, Ryan, and we’ll see what we can do,” Nowakowski said and Colt’s eyes shifted to the video equipment recording the interview, assessing if it was turned on and recording. Likely it was if the Feds, Sully or Chris set it up. Likely it wasn’t if Marty had been there and done it. Colt figured Sully wouldn’t let Marty anywhere near the equipment. They had learned that lesson the hard way.
“So,” Nowakowski said, “just wanna go over what you said, make sure I got this right. Mr. Lowe hired you to disarm the alarms, assist in setting up the cameras and the feed. And he paid you to monitor them and email him recorded files.”
“Yeah,” Ryan replied. “He told me what he wanted and I set up face recognition software to get some of it. Most of the other stuff, I had to scan fast forward to get it.”
“What’d he want?”
Ryan shifted uncomfortably in his chair.
Nowakowski read his discomfort and broke it down for him. “Let’s start with the face recognition. Who was he watching?”
“The bar. The blonde and that guy when they were there together. The big guy. The other cop. He came in all the time. Sometimes to the coffee shop. Lieutenant Colt… I mean your guy, Mr. Lowe, said he was dirty.”
Colt bit his lip then, he didn’t give a fuck if Rodman saw it. Not only was Lowe impersonating him, he was also telling folks he was a dirty cop. That happened to him, fucking Rodman would bite his lip too. At least.
“Tall, dark hair, athletic build?” Nowakowski asked and Warren’s head turned toward the mirror. He knew Colt was watching.
“Yeah, him.” Ryan nodded. “I didn’t get it. What your guy wanted. They knew each other, the blonde and the big guy. You could see they knew each other. And he watched her ass but fuck, anyone’d watch her ass. I watched her ass. She has a nice ass. Other than that, nothin’. Until recently.”
“Recently?” Nowakowski asked.
“They’d disappear together in the office. We didn’t put cameras there. Then they seemed unfriendly. Then real friendly. You know what I mean?” Ryan answered.
“You were watching February Owens and Lieutenant Alexander Colton, the real one, Ryan. He is a cop but he isn’t dirty,” Warren put in. “You were surveilling a clean cop and his girlfriend.”
Ryan wasn’t such a dumb fuck as to be sitting in a room with two cops and find out he’d been watching another one and not know he was fucked. His face got even paler, the pimples coming out in bold relief and his hands clenched and unclenched on the table in front of him.
“I didn’t know,” Ryan said. “They barely used to speak.”
“They’ve been havin’ some problems,” Warren shared. “They worked ‘em out.”
Ryan swung his head between Warren and Nowakowski. “He won’t know, ‘bout this, ‘bout me? Will he? Witness safety and all that?”
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.
Ryan shook his head. “No.”
“So he wants this footage and he’s cool with it bein’ timed out? Seems weird, seein’ as he’d get perturbed, you not sendin’ enough of Ms. Owens,” Nowakowski remarked.
“Maybe he has high speed too. He didn’t complain about file crash.”
Nowakowski turned the conversation. “You hear from him the last week or so?”
“Coupla times, yeah, after the big guy and the girl started to, you know, work things out, I guess. He was real interested in that and the street footage. Emailed, wanted me to make certain I rescanned the tapes, make sure I didn’t miss anything. Her and him entering, leaving his house, when she’d chat with him at the bar, shit like that.”
“So he’s been in contact how many times in the last week?” Nowakowski pressed.
“Don’t know, four, five, didn’t hear from him a lot but started to hear from him more when the footage changed.”
“You keep those emails?”
Ryan’s head came up and a bit of belligerent swept into his face. “Yeah, they’re on my machine that you seized.”
Nowakowski, completely unperturbed, nodded. “Good. Now, who’d you hand the DVDs to?”
Belligerence gone, Ryan instantly was back to eye avoidance. “No DVDs.”
“Who’re you protectin’, Ryan?” Warren, back at the wall, entered the interrogation.
“There aren’t any DVDs,” Ryan lied.
“All right,” Nowakowski sat back, rested his elbows in his stomach and steepled his fingers, “Ryan, I want you to look at me.” Nowakowski waited patiently as Ryan plucked up the courage to lift his gaze and this took awhile. He delivered the blow when he had Ryan’s full attention. “Mr. Dennis Lowe is wanted for the murders of four people. He hacked them up with a hatchet, the first victim, his wife, was almost unidentifiable, left a finger intact, the wedding ring he put on it telling us who she was. The other three he started at the groin and hacked up to the heart, near to splitting them in two. You gotta know about one of them since you had to see February Owens call the discovery of the body into the police and you watched Lieutenant Colton question her in the bar. Now, you can sit there, Ryan, and protect whoever you’re protecting and become an accessory to multiple murders or you can tell us who you handed those DVDs.”
Ryan’s mouth was hanging open, jaw completely slack, so much Colt was surprised drool didn’t slide from his lip.
Then he snapped it shut and rolled over immediately. “Candy Sheckle.”
Nowakowski’s eyes went to Warren but Warren was already leaving the room.
Then Nowakowski looked back at Ryan. “You know Candy?” Ryan nodded. “Tell me, Ryan.”
“She’s a girl.”
“Guessin’, with the name of Candy, she would be.”
“She’s a kind of… friend.”
“Girlfriend?”
Ryan shook his head, heat hitting his face, making the pimples now nearly red. He wanted her to be, whoever Candy fucking Sheckle was, but he couldn’t have her.
“No, just a friend.”
“What kind of friend?”
“I help her out.”
Nowakowski took his elbows from his stomach, unsteepled his fingers and sat forward.
“Ryan, I got all the time in the world. The problem is, Mr. Lowe has shared with us he’s intending to kill two more people and their time is runnin’ out. I’d appreciate it if you’d stop making this so hard so we can get on with our job and, maybe, save a couple of lives.”
Ryan stared for a second then nodded. “She’s a st
ripper. At Girls X.” He put up his hand and offered information Nowakowski didn’t ask for but Ryan felt necessary to give. “She’s not like that. A lotta strippers, well, I don’t know anyone other than Candy, and her real name isn’t Candy, it’s Cheryl, but anyway… people think strippers are skanks but she’s not. She’s real nice. She’s got a kid and she wants him to grow up in a good neighborhood so she works real hard. She’s um… she brought this Lowe guy to me. See, I used to help her out, go to the club, give her good tips and maybe a little on the side. But then she got hooked up with Lowe and, seein’ as she’s sweet, she told me to keep my money, she’s got a boyfriend who takes care of her now and he’s a good guy, a cop. So, you know, I was gonna talk to her when you let me go, but um… I’m thinkin’ you should probably do it now.”
“We should,” Nowakowski affirmed, straight-faced and how he didn’t laugh or even crack a smile Colt would never know. “So you gave her the DVDs?”
Ryan nodded then sat forward, eye contact back, earnest now. “Candy, she’s gonna freak. She likes him, thinks he’s a good guy, thinks we’re doin’ right. And really, stripper or not, she’s nice. Seriously. Maybe you could be… um, gentle with her. Okay?”
“We’ll take care of Candy, Ryan.”
Colt looked at Sully and they both walked from the room.
“Bet you a thousand dollars Candy Sheckle’s the spittin’ image of Feb,” Sully said as they headed down the hall to the bullpen.
“I’m puttin’ a security system in today, Sul, not gonna take a foolish bet,” Colt replied and caught Warren’s eye as they got to the bullpen. “Name’s Cheryl, not Candy,” he told Warren who was on the phone.
“That would be Cheryl Sheckle,” Warren said into the phone.
“Cheryl Sheckle, shit, her parents musta hated her,” Sully muttered.
Colt stopped by his desk and leaned a hip against it. Sully stopped with him.
“Okay, Sully, breakin’ this shit down, where the fuck are we now?” Colt asked. “Months before the murders, he’s got a whole operation set up to spy on Feb and me. He’s impersonating me, insinuated himself into two lives, both of which cost him big money. When did the withdrawals start?”
For You Page 33
