“You know. You meet people. Like in the neighborhood. Doin’ stuff.”

“And what stuff does Mr. Kalfus do?”

“I don’t know. This and that.”

Joe’s face turned serious. “Careful, Trevor. Let’s not start lying again. You have a lot at stake.”

“And you can believe us,” Fred added, “that you won’t be throwing Don under the bus.”

That did the trick. “He’s a thief,” Buttner said shortly.

“Interesting,” Joe challenged him. “If I asked you what you did, would you say a pervert?”

“Fuck you.”

Joe chuckled. “Of course you wouldn’t. That would be outrageous. It’s not all you do, after all.”

Buttner’s brows knitted with concentration, not following. “No.”

“But by accusing Don of being a thief, it implies he stole from you, personally. What was that, Trevor? What did he steal?”

It was clearly becoming too complicated for Buttner to keep straight in his head. “Nothin’. Just some junk. Pissed me off. That’s why I said that.”

“Was it this?” Joe held up another photograph, of Trevor’s smartphone.

“No.”

“Because we found it in his possession,” Joe continued. “In fact, it led us directly to you. It even had your fingerprints on it, along with some contents I bet you wish we hadn’t found.”

Buttner had apparently reached a mental corner he couldn’t escape. He lay before them, stumped into silence.

Joe eased him out of it. “We’ve pieced most of this together, Trevor, like I told you. We tapped into the computer of the car Don was using, you know we got the CCTV footage from your apartment building, we downloaded everything from your phone, from dirty pictures to texts to emails to phone logs to geo-locations, contacts lists, and more. The whole kit and caboodle, including the last time you used the thing yourself. We probably know better than you when it was Don saw that phone at your place and thought it might make a good piece of leverage against you in the future. What had you done, Trevor? Had you shown him one of those pictures? We also know the shots of Angie were brand new on the market. You’d just put them up for sale. Did you brag to him about that?”

“You’re full of shit,” Buttner said halfheartedly.

“You must’ve been wicked pissed when you noticed it missing, after he left. What did you do about that?”

“Don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Did you reach out to everyone you know in common, trying to find him? You had to’ve been kicking yourself that you had no pass code on that thing. But it never leaves your side, right? And you had it registered to the make-believe Lisa Rowell. Why worry about it?”

Buttner’s lips were pressed tightly together.

Joe leaned in again, so the two of them were inches apart. “Trevor, do you remember how I described my job when we met a few minutes ago?”

Buttner tried to avoid looking at him.

“Tell the man,” Fred urged him softly, supportively.