“I stayed awhile longer so she could go to her son’s track meet.”
“Nice, but don’t let people take advantage of you,” Nate advised, heading to the cart to pour himself a cup. “Seems like you pull extra hours more often than not.”
He shrugged, smiled. “They have families, I don’t. And I can use the cash. The ladies these days have high standards.”
As he backed out of the door, they heard him greet a passing detective. “Barnes, I sent some flowers in your name to your girlfriend. Florist will be sending you the bill.”
“What? I didn’t order any flowers.”
“I know. You should have.”
Morales reached out to swing the door closed, an abashed grin on his face. “Don’t tell Flo, but it’s not only coffee he’s better at. Reminded me of Renee’s birthday last month, too. She would have killed me if I’d forgotten.”
Risa raised a brow. “You did forget.”
“Only until Darrell reminded me. As far as she knows, I remembered. And that’s all that counts.”
“Ah, the complexities of the male brain,” she mocked, as she joined them to refill her cup. “A miracle of nature.”
“Tell it to Renee.” Eduardo hooked a chair leg with his foot and dragged it over. He looked at Nate. “Captain Steiner in Vice is very interested in that information you called in with on Javon Emmons. He’s going to have Crowley picked up, see what sort of other details they can get from him. If they use him to set up a sting, how reliable will he be?”
“Depends on what’s in it for him,” Risa answered bluntly before Nate could fashion an answer. “He’s scared to death of Emmons, and helping build a case against him is going to dry up a nice little revenue stream Crowley’s got coming in.”
“It might take a combination of cash, protection, and immunity to get him to cooperate.” Nate leaned his hips on the front of his desk, facing the two of them, and sipped from his steaming cup. “They’ll want to make it clear he goes down for his activities if he doesn’t help them get Emmons. He’ll cooperate. He’s pretty motivated by self-interest.”
Morales nodded, set his cup on the edge of the cart, and opened the envelope. “Then he’s exactly like ninety-nine percent of the people we get coming through here. Let’s see what IT came up with.” Risa and Nate moved to flank the captain, and he fanned out the top three of the five-by-seven photos.
Risa leaned down to study them more closely. As the IT tech had warned, the pictures were grainy, with some of the resolution lost. Two of the pictures depicted the speaker on the video. Johnny. One was of the man Nate thought was Roland Parker.
“Need to get this photo over to Parker’s widow for a positive ID.”
Nate glanced at his watch. “I’ll run it by there on my way to work tomorrow morning. While I’m there, I’ll ask her about any hobbies her husband had.”
“And anyone he might have known by the name of Johnny.”
Seeing Morales’s quizzical look, Nate quickly filled him in on the information they’d received from Bonnie Christiansen. When he’d finished, the captain looked thoughtful. “Interesting. I wouldn’t pin too much hope on the two Johnny’s being one and the same, though.”
Risa exchanged a quick glance with Nate. “We can presume the offender may be one of the men sitting at that table or the person recording their meeting. If it’s one of the men at the table, the tape was likely supposed to do exactly what we first supposed. Record the crime for the offender to relive later. But if it was left deliberately, the likelihood increases that the offender is the person recording, or someone close to that person. It would help to get a rundown on the location of that scene.”
Morales shuffled the photos until they were looking at a close-up of the corner of the room’s window. There was definitely a street scene outside it, although it was fuzzy. They all surveyed it silently for a moment.
“Well . . .” Risa said doubtfully, cocking her head a bit. “Those two letters still look like a z and a p.”
Nate stabbed a finger at another partial letter. “That could be b. Or maybe an l.”
“Or the tall part of an h, f, or t,” she retorted. “At least this one looks like an e.” She stopped. Squinted. “Possibly a c in that font.”