Cross & Crown (2 page)

Nick could think of nothing to say to that. He glanced at the nurse for confirmation.

“He took a glancing blow. It knocked him unconscious, but didn’t penetrate the skull. And I told you to stay in bed,” she said, forcing the witness to recline and covering him with a sheet.

Nick gaped at her. “Jesus.”

The witness cleared his throat and fiddled with the sheet, obviously uncomfortable.

“What’s your name, sir?” Nick asked him.

“I don’t know.” He looked back at Nick, his expression sincerely distressed.

Nick sniffed and scratched at his chin, not sure whether to be annoyed or concerned. Either the man was exceptionally good at stonewalling, or he had a serious case of traumatic amnesia. “All right. Can you tell me what happened this morning?”

“No, I’m sorry. I don’t remember. I don’t know.”

“What
do
you know?”

“I know I got shot in the head.”

“You don’t remember anything?”

The witness winced. “No.”

“You don’t remember your name.”

“No, Detective. I’m sorry.”

Nick nodded and carefully patted the man on the shoulder. He turned to his partner, who stood near the doorway. Hagan had both eyebrows raised, his jaw working
back and forth. Nick excused himself, and he and Hagan moved into the hallway, leaning their heads close to talk.

The officer on the door offered what little he knew. “He’s got no ID on him. Nothing; looks like whoever shot him thought he was dead and picked him clean.”

Hagan huffed. “So not only do we got a witness who’s got no idea what happened, he’s got no idea who he is?” He barely restrained an incredulous laugh. “That’s not a witness, it’s another motherfucking crime.”

Nick glanced over his shoulder through the door, to the man on the hospital bed. “No ID, no memory, shot in the head in the middle of a gunfight outside a robbery of a used bookstore. What. The. Fuck.”

“This ain’t a robbery,” Hagan said with a grunt. “You don’t shoot three people for an old book, I don’t care if it’s the Gutenberg Bible.”

Nick nodded. “You realize this guy could be the doer.”

“You think he’s faking?”

“He’s either a very lucky witness who lived through this, a perp who legit can’t remember, or he’s faking.” Nick shrugged.

“You were spec ops. You were trained to lie and shit. Can you tell if he’s lying?”

“Yeah, but if he’s faking, he’s damn good at it, ’cause I’m leaning toward believing him.”

They both turned to the witness again. He was once again sitting in bed with his head hanging and his eyes closed. His hands were trembling as they clenched at the blanket in his lap. The nurse had left him.

“What do we do?” Hagan asked.

Nick was at a loss. Did they treat the man as a witness or a suspect? “Either way, if he’s a perp or he’s a witness, he’ll need someone on him,” he finally said.

Hagan patted Nick’s shoulder. “Great. You go break the news to him, I’m going to get some coffee.”

Nick glared after his partner as the man lumbered off toward the nurses’ station. He took a deep breath to steady himself. It wasn’t his first case back since his surgery, but it was his first case back from behind a desk. He hadn’t been dealing with people lately so much as paperwork.

The witness looked up when Nick approached, and tried to straighten his shoulders, but they slumped again, probably under the weight of his injury and exhaustion.

Nick’s heart went out to him, and he had to fight to keep his attitude professional. “I’m going to have this officer stay with you in the hospital until they release you. Keep an eye on you. Then he’s going to bring you the station to talk with us a little more. That sound okay?”

The man nodded, then winced and brought his hand up to his bandage. “You think I’m in danger?”

Nick chewed on his lip for a second. “It’s a real possibility, I won’t lie.”

“It’s also a possibility I shot those people, isn’t it?”

Nick stared at him, shocked again by the man’s strange mix of perception and vulnerability. “That is also a possibility, yes.”

The witness rubbed a trembling hand over his face. Nick placed a hand on his shoulder in an attempt to offer comfort. The man reached up and gripped his fingers hard. He didn’t raise his head or say anything. He just seemed to need the contact.

“It’ll be okay,” Nick whispered. “We’ll figure this out.”

“So, we got the shopkeeper’s daughter coming in to try to ID the body,” Hagan told Nick, returning from the station break room with two cups of coffee. They’d been partners for almost three years and Hagan still couldn’t remember that Nick didn’t drink coffee.

Hagan set the cup down in front of him, steaming and giving off a sickeningly strong smell.

“Throw that away,” Nick ordered.

“Whatever. You’re welcome.” Hagan sat and chucked his feet up on the desk opposite Nick’s. They were set up facing each other. Nick glared at the coffee cup, then his partner. Hagan gave him a toothy smile. “What else we got working?”

“Prints are going through the system for the other victim, and the amnesiac witness.” Nick held up a photograph from the crime scene. “Aside from the fact that the perps apparently riffled the bookshelves and made a damn mess of everything, the only things that seem to be missing were in this display cabinet.” He set it down and slid it across to Hagan. “Don’t get your coffee near that.”

“Yes, Mother.” Hagan picked it up, sipping his coffee as he studied the photo of the display case. The glass doors were intact, the wood unscathed. Whatever had been inside hadn’t been under lock and key. “I mean, what else does a bookstore display besides books?”

Nick shrugged. “I’ve seen some where they have antiques on show. They’re usually just for atmosphere, though, nothing worth a motherfucking
heist
.”

Hagan raised an eyebrow from behind the rim of his coffee cup.

“Yeah. Heist. Everything we have here is looking like a pro job. The security was disabled, there’s no sign of forced entry, and since the shopkeeper bled out where he fell on the
sidewalk, it’s probable he wasn’t supposed to be there and the robbers literally ran into him on their way out and panicked.”

“That’s a lot to infer from what little we have.”

Nick shrugged. He’d always had a knack for seeing crime scenes lay out. He never denied that he could be wrong, but he usually wasn’t.

“One more odd job for this one, one of the dead guys had a bag under him. They found it when they moved the body. It had four books in it.”

“From the shop?” Hagan asked.

“We can only assume until the daughter gets here to ID them. They’re all old, too.”

“Just old? Or old as balls?”

Nick barked a laugh before he could stop himself. “The latter, I assume. Three early nineteenth century, one dating to the Revolutionary War. We can probably assume they were in that display case along with whatever objects were taken because everything else was just trashed, not stolen.”

“So, you’re a bookshop owner and you have this display case set up with rare books,” Hagan mused.

“Uh huh?”

“The objects you’d put in there for atmosphere would be related to the books, right? Somehow?”

“In my world they would be,” Nick agreed. He pondered it briefly, then nodded and called over one of the uniformed officers working nearby. “Do me a favor, bud, put out some feelers to city pawnshops and dealers, stay on the lookout for artifacts dating from 1750 to 1820. They might be stolen.”

The officer nodded and headed off.

Hagan scowled at the photo again. “Was the case wiped clean? Why would they wipe it down if they were wearing gloves?”

“They didn’t. Get this. Best the Crime Lab can tell, they wiped the motherfucking dust off the case to ruin the outline of whatever objects were there.”

“Covering their tracks, or…?”

“I guess. At least slowing us down. Shouldn’t be hard to find out what was in there, though,” Nick said, still staring at the photos of the crime scene. He absently reached for the cup on his desk, taking a sip before remembering it was coffee.

He turned his head and spit it out into the trash can, coughing and gagging as Hagan laughed at him.

“Motherfucker,” Nick grumbled. He tossed the coffee cup into the trash and glared at his partner again.

“Detective O’Flaherty!” Captain Branson called from his office door. Nick turned in his chair and glanced over his shoulder. The captain waved him over.

“What’s up, sir?” he asked when he got closer.

“The witness from the bookshop?”

“Yes, sir?”

“He’s here. You need to get in on this one.”

“Sure thing.”

Branson handed him a file. It was labeled John Doe. Nick shook his head; all it contained was the report from the hospital. He made his way to one of the interview rooms and greeted the officer on the door with a pat on the shoulder. When he entered the room, the blond man met his eyes.

“Hello, Detective.”

“How you doing?” Nick asked as he sat opposite him.

“I would say I’ve been better, but… I don’t really know if that’s true,” the man said with a wry laugh.

Nick snorted. “Still got your sense of humor at least. That’s something.” He opened the file again. It was paltry at best. Useless. “They been calling you John Doe?”

“Yeah, it’s… it’s a name, I guess.”

“Yeah, I can see that getting old fast. Listen, all the John Does I ever knew were already dead, so how about I call you JD? That work for you?”

He nodded and gave Nick a tired smile. “Yeah. Yeah, that works.”

Nick was silent for a moment, studying the man. He looked even more worn than he had at the crime scene yesterday. Under that, Nick could see the fear. “Has anyone offered you coffee? Something to eat?”

“I had a bagel. Don’t have much appetite.”

“Okay.” Nick put both elbows on the table. “You remember anything new? Anything at all?”

“No, Detective, I’m sorry. The doctors said I have amnesia caused by the trauma. Physical or mental, they couldn’t say. They also couldn’t say when or if my memory would return. They said amnesia was a very case-by-case type of thing, so… it might all come rushing back, or it might come back in pieces. Or it might not at all. Ever.”

“Wow. That’s rough.”

JD laughed bitterly. He twisted his fingers and nodded.

Nick was having a hard time reading him, something he was usually pretty good at. JD’s exhaustion was masking everything else. Nick gave it a minute or so of silence, waiting to see if the man would begin to fidget or talk. But JD merely sat there, watching his hands, occasionally glancing up to meet Nick’s eyes.

Nick finally gave up on that tactic. He tapped the file in front of him. “Even though you don’t remember anything, we’re going to treat you as a witness and put you under protection. Ballistics are telling us there were at least two shooters. One was standing behind you, clipped you in the
head.” Nick tapped his own head in the area where JD was bandaged. “Killed at least one of those two victims.”

“Just one?”

“The other bullet hasn’t been recovered yet. We’ll know more soon. But until we get to the bottom of this, you need to be safe. Whoever did this won’t know you can’t ID them when they find out you aren’t dead.”

JD nodded. He glanced up at Nick, his blue eyes piercing. “You don’t have to dance around it, Detective.”

“Pardon?”

“I know I’m a suspect. It’s okay. You don’t have to mince words.”

Nick met his eyes for several seconds, letting JD see what suspects usually saw: a hardened, intelligent cop who would put them behind bars if they made even the tiniest of slips. “All right then. You
are
a suspect. Our only suspect, right now.”

Despite his show of bravado, JD blanched. Nick couldn’t help but feel sorry for the guy. Not knowing who he was or what kind of man he was, it had to be terrifying. Add to that the fact that he was facing a potential murder charge? He had to be reeling.

Nick took his notepad and a pen from his pocket and placed it on the table, then slid it toward JD. “I’m going to go arrange for somewhere for you to stay tonight. While I’m gone, try to write down anything about yourself you can think of.”

JD frowned. “Like what? I already told you I don’t remember anything.”

Nick shrugged. “Anything. Anything you’ve noticed. Your feelings, your thoughts, tattoos or scars, your shoe size, do you have contacts, are you wearing underwear? Anything.”

JD laughed and reached for Nick’s notepad. “Okay.”

Nick smiled and left him there, hoping the exercise would at least keep JD’s mind off his troubles while Nick tried to find somewhere to stick him for the night.

It took him nearly half an hour to arrange for a hotel and an officer for the door. He and Hagan played a quick three out of five roshambo to decide who had to stay with him, and Nick won. Which was good, because he had plans this weekend.

When he returned to the interview room, Captain Branson was standing at the window, watching JD.

“Sir,” Nick said as he approached.

The captain turned. “You’re good with him, O’Flaherty. That’s the most he’s responded all night.”

“He’s just scared, sir. Anyone would be.”