Page 44 of Coming Home to You
“Me too, Beck,” Finn says as we turn and walk into the station.
“Wanna grab a beer later on tonight?”I ask him.
Finn finally smiles as he says, “Yeah, that would be good.”
Finn and I spend the next two hours getting each other up to speed on what we’ve found out.The cameras come from a manufacturer out of Atlanta and when Finn calls to find out if they have a record of where they sent them, we finally get an address for where this fuckwit might be recording and watching them from.Just as we’re trying to work out a plan for what to do next, Ryan calls.
“Hey,” I say, as I answer my phone.“What’s happening?”
“Hey,” Ryan says.“Well, we went over this guy’s place and yeah, at first glance, it looks just like a regular apartment.”
“But?”I ask, knowing there’s more coming.
“Well, I can see how the guys would have missed it, and maybe it’s only because I know what this guy has been doing that I even thought to look for it in the first place.”
I exhale; this is not going to be good.“Tell me.”
I hear Ryan exhale too, almost as though he doesn’t want to say whatever it is that he’s found.“There were hidden cameras in his apartment too, Beck,” he says.“And this time we found the videos.”
“Fuck,” I breathe out.“What was on them?”
“You’re not gonna like this,” he says.
“Just tell me, Ryan,” I say.“Please.”
“Okay.I’ve only watched half of them, but so far I’ve seen nothing but him fucking other women.”
“Jesus christ,” I practically shout.
“Beck, that’s not all,” Ryan says and from the tone of his voice I can tell that that wasn’t the worst part.“They’re all time stamped,” he continues.“Some of them were during the time he was seeing Kelsey.”I exhale hard, my blood boiling as I think about that fucker screwing my girl and countless other women at the same time.“And…” he says.
Suddenly I want to punch something.“What, just tell me everything, Ryan.”
“These videos he had, they were pretty bad, Beck.The women didn’t exactly look like they were enjoying it.I mean some of them, you’d definitely classify as rape, maybe even torture.”
“Fucking hell!”I shout, gesturing for Finn to get his ass over here.
“I know, there were no videos of Kelsey though, okay?”
“Yeah, she said she never went to Boston and saw him; probably wanted to avoid running into me,” I say, furious at myself for leaving her all over again.
“One other thing,” Ryan says.
“What?”
“These videos were all hidden in a wall cavity, that’s why they were missed.The cameras were definitely professionally installed.When we opened up the wall though, we found a bunch of other things in with the videos,” Ryan says.“Knives, packing tape, rope.It looks like this fucker had more than just rough and non-consensual sex in mind.”
“Fuck,” I say again.“I wonder why none of these women have ever come forward and complained about him?”
“Yeah I know,” Ryan says.“I’m actually looking into that now, wondering if maybe these women didn’t just disappear altogether.The DA is very interested given everything we’ve found.They approved the expansion of the search warrant to include a storage locker this guy has.”
I take a deep breath as the full ramifications of what this guy has done hits me.I never expected it to be this bad or get this far.Just knowing Kelsey was once involved with him is bad enough, but to think it could’ve gone further.That Kelsey could have wound up on one of those tapes…or worse.I feel like I’m going to throw up.
“Ryan,” I say, exhaling hard as I run a hand through my hair and force myself to remain calm.“Thanks buddy, I really appreciate everything you’re doing for me down there.”
“Beck, please, it’s nothing.I’m just glad I can help out.”
“Keep me posted on what you find?”I ask him.
