Brown walked over to three other officers, comparing their notes. “Hey Murphy,” he said looking at a brunette woman wearing a dark blue suit jacket and jeans, “have you started collecting the surveillance video?”

Murphy turned to Brown, “Yeah we’ve requested it from the bank, both inside and out. We also noticed a couple of other small businesses that have cameras and Peterson is getting that. Plus there are a few traffic cams that we’ll get video from, as well.”

“Good,” said Brown, “Let’s review that as soon as possible. A lot of weird shit went down here and we need to know what it was. What have we pieced together so far?”

A young detective, looking at a notepad, started rattling off some facts. “Two guys robbed the bank, grabbing about ten thousand. The other perp was waiting just down the street in this red car. They ran out of the bank and the car stopped to pick them up, but a uni spotted it all going down, told them to stop and he was shot. These guys sprayed the crowd with bullets knocking everyone down and keeping the other officers back. But as they started to get into the car, one of them was struck by this garbage lid. Knocked him out. The other guy started shooting again.”

“Then, this thing hit the car.” The cop pointed at the concrete block planted in the engine compartment. “And then, some guy confronted the other guy, grabbing the gun and knocking him out with it.”

“Wait a minute,” Brown said, “they didn’t hit this thing getting away, it struck them? How?”

“No one knows for sure. It just kind of dropped on them.”

“Dropped? From what? A truck? There’s no construction going on. Where’d it come from?” Brown said, looking around. Brown yelled over to one of the uniformed cops, “Do you guys know where this came from?”

One replied, “No sir.”

“Look around, ask around. We need to track it down,” Brown said.

The uniformed cops looked closely at the chunk of concrete, then walked away.

Brown said to the detective “I spoke to the guy who threw the trash can lid. He said he was just trying to distract them and got lucky. So did you guys ID the guy who knocked this other guy out with his own gun? Must be a real badass, with a set of huge cojones.”

“What do you mean, sir?” asked the detective, “You interviewed him.”

“What?” said Brown.

“The shirtless guy, he was identified as the guy who took down the second shooter. Only he was wearing a white, button-down shirt. That lady over there ID’d him as the guy. I thought that’s why you were talking to him.”

“No, he was ID’d as the guy that threw the lid. Hey, Carter,” he pointed to another suited detective, “you saw the guy I was talking to — right?”

“Yeah,” Carter replied.

“He was headed that way. He’s in jeans and no shirt, should be fairly easy to spot and he can’t have gotten far. If you don’t see him, go this address and bring him in.” Brown handed him a note with the address.

“Got it,” Carter said. He tagged one of the uniformed officers on the back, “Come with me, please.” The two started jogging down the street.

Brown yelled over to a detective near the smoking car, “What’s the status of the thugs?”

The detective walked over, “The two shooters are both still unconscious, one has no wounds other than abrasion to his forehead. Looks like the one hit by the garbage can may have lost an eye, but we won’t know until they can get into the ER. The driver is pretty busted up. The steering column and dashboard crushed his legs pretty bad. He was unconscious, too.”

“Okay,” said Brown, “get their stories as soon as they wake up. I almost wouldn’t care, but there are a lot of questions here. We need to understand this scene, ’cause the press is going to be all over it.”

“Yep,” said Murphy, “they’re already insisting to speak with the officer in charge. You gonna talk to them?”

“Not now, we gotta have a few more answers first.”