Jeff Abbott - No Rest for the Dead

“Jon Nunn.”

Bob stared down coldly at him but Nunn held his eyes without a problem. In fact he was looking back in a funny way, studying him, it seemed. With the shower hat, the bootees, the face mask, and the jumpsuit, there was no chance of getting a description. But Bob had an odd feeling that this Nunn was committing some kind of a description to memory, looking for attributes that could later be used in an investigation or at trial: how Bob walked, how he stood, left hand versus right hand, height, weight.

Time to kill this prick .

He lifted the gun. Started to pull the trigger.

Then the elevator door opened and the paramedics walked into the room.

Bob frowned. Shit, hadn’t they gotten the instructions right? They were supposed to bring the carts in to haul out the art. Time was at a premium; as it was, they’d still have to load the artwork into the ambulance and fake crime scene van.

He started, “We need the carts-” but his voice froze.

These weren’t the men he’d hired! And they were clearly wearing body armor under their uniforms.

Police! Shit!

With a slam in his gut he understood that he’d been outsmarted. Somebody had figured out that a robbery was going down and called the police. The cops had arrived silently, found the phony paramedics outside, overpowered them, then dressed two officers in medic overalls as point men for a takedown team.

Which would of course be sprinting up the stairs right now.

The two cops crouched, weapons drawn.

“Shoot, shoot, shoot!” Bob cried to his partner, who started firing toward the two officers, the ring of brass on the stone floor nearly as loud as the silenced report of his Beretta.

Bob’s strategy was to wound as many in the crowd as he could, forcing the tactical team to stop and give them aid. He could get out through the back, via an emergency route he’d planned earlier. Frank too, if he was able, but that was up to him.

The cop closest to him had his back turned, aiming at Frank. Bob lifted his gun to shoot the cop in the spine, but as he did, he heard a slap of feet behind him. And thought, Oh, hell…

An instant later he was tumbling to the floor after a shoulder caught him low and hard, right in the kidneys. A flash of yellow light burst in his eyes, an explosion of pain. Bob gasped, breath completely knocked out of him.

Nunn-of course it was Nunn-ripped the pistol from his hand. As Bob, writhing on the floor, reached desperately for the weapon, Nunn delivered an elbow to his nose. He collapsed, stunned and groaning in pain, blood spewing from his nose. Frank noticed him and spun around, shooting, but his aim was wild and he missed his target, instead shooting his partner, Bob, in the chest.

Nunn stood his ground, drew a target, and dropped Frank with three well-placed rounds. Then he immediately spun back to cover Bob, but Bob was already dead.

Being a copis more about talking than shooting or chasing down criminals.

Well, not just talking: asking questions.

The next day, Jon Nunn was at the museum again. Captain Harvey Meyer, who was leading the investigation into the previous night’s attempted robbery, had called him earlier in the afternoon. The two men had known each other back when Nunn was still at the SFPD, and when Meyer heard Nunn had been there last night during the attempted robbery, he asked Nunn to be present while he questioned Justine Olegard at her office in the museum. Nunn knew from his time on the force that Meyer had a reputation for the unconventional and didn’t bother to question why Meyer would want an ex-cop there, he just showed up.

Justine, it seemed, had called both Tony Olsen and, to Nunn’s surprise and dismay, Stan Ballard to her meeting with Meyer. Justine explained Ballard’s presence by saying he was the only lawyer she knew. She hadn’t been accused of anything per se, but the number of felonies that had gone down in the tower yesterday meant that there were plenty of penal-code violations to go around for everyone. Nunn hadn’t even been aware that Justine and Ballard knew each other and realized it must have been from her time with Christopher Thomas. Still it was odd that Ballard, an estate lawyer, would agree to be there and not refer her to someone else. But Nunn suspected Ballard was there for Ballard only.

Justine was going out of her way to be cooperative, but there didn’t seem to be anything she could add to what Meyer already knew.

“I’m sorry,” Justine said. “I spent all night looking through security tapes and poring over reports about, you know, people casing out the museum over the past few months. I couldn’t find any pictures or descriptions of them.” Her voice was soft, eyes distant, and Nunn knew it was because she’d had to use as references the pictures shot last night of the dead thieves. Her boss, Alex Hultgren, had also been killed.

“Who called the police?” she asked Meyer.

Meyer pointed to Nunn.

Nunn explained how he’d been near the staircase after Haile had been hurt and looked down into the lobby and thought it was odd to have crime scene officers there. Then he heard the screams in the tower room and realized the museum was being hit.

Meyer asked Justine, “Are you sure you’ve never seen those men before?”

“I don’t think so. I’ve looked at those pictures so many times I can’t be sure of anything anymore.”

Meyer looked at Nunn questioningly, but Nunn’s mind was elsewhere. He kept thinking about the text message he’d received earlier in the day. It didn’t seem possible.

His BlackBerry buzzed, Nunn picked it up, then he looked at Meyer. “Can I talk to you outside for a second?”

They stepped out into the hallway. “Look, on my way over here I got a text from a friend which gave me a new theory about what happened here last night.”

“And?” Meyer asked.

“You’re going to think I’m nuts, Harvey.”

“Tell me.”

“My friend’s down in the lobby. I’m going to have him come up here. I’ll let him tell you. It’s quite a story.”

Staccato footsteps clicked across marble.

Everyone’s eyes swung toward a figure framing up in the door.

The man wore a Duke sweatshirt and cargo pants tucked into platform boots. His left hand gripped a leather briefcase that looked as if it left Spain before the civil war.

Nunn made introductions. “Gentlemen, Justine-may I present Dr. Ignatius McGee.”

McGee was leading-man handsome, with a square jaw, blue eyes, and hair that left Brosnan in the styling-gel dust. Only one unfortunate base-pair sequence barred him from a star on the Hollywood walk. If he stood ramrod straight, which he was, Ignatius McGee was no more than four foot six. Two of those inches belonged to the boots.

Palms were pressed, then the group sat. McGee too, left ankle crossed onto opposite knee, right foot not quite touching the floor.

Everyone dragged chairs into a semicircle, grad-seminar style, except for Stan Ballard, who was leaning against the wall, stone-faced.

Nunn got right to the point.

“Dr. McGee is a forensic anthropologist. Everyone clear on what that is?”

“Bones,” Justine Olegard said. “But not old ones.”

Nunn swept an upturned palm in McGee’s direction. “Take it away.”

“The answer’s spot-on,” said McGee. “I’m a specialist in the human skeleton.” The accent was blue-collar Boston, the voice surprisingly deep for a man McGee’s size. “I work the dead too far gone for a Y incision-the burned, mummified, decomposed, dismembered, mutilated, and skeletonized. I dig ’em up, ID ’em, determine how they bought it and when.”