Chapter Text
It had been a long night already and Nightwing was only half way done with this case. The night dragged on pulling him with it, stretching through time and sapping his energy. His current case was draining his reserves and he still had so much left to do. Last week Nightwing received a coded communication from the Justice League filled with the information about Kryptonite smuggling in New York City. ‘It’s nothing urgent’ they’d said; ‘we just didn’t want to pass this to the Titans because of Superboy. You can do this one in your spare time.’
Spare time, that was a laugh. Between his day job and his night job there was no spare time.
But he was nothing if not a professional, so he’d put aside a couple of other things he was working on that weren’t really time sensitive and he started dismantling the ring. So far, he’d wound up pulling three all-nighters this week trying to track the stones when he finally managed to traced them to a jewelry shop in Midtown. Tonight, his typical night uniform remained at home this was no job for Nightwing. There was a reason why Neal Caffrey existed in the first place and that was so that Nightwing and the Justice League wouldn’t get caught breaking the rules. He didn’t anticipate getting caught but sure as hell wasn’t going to be caught breaking in a jewelry store as a Hero. Dick entered the shop and disabled the alarm system, secured the gems and replaced them all with synthetic emeralds. He didn’t waste much time looking around before he left the store, after all he didn’t want to get caught tonight. All in all, it was a good night’s work and he finished early enough that he might actually get four whole hours of sleep, ahh bliss.
The next day Peter had a new case and they were going out into the field “I’ll brief you on the way, Neal.” Once they got in the store it became pretty obvious to Neal what had happened. He knew exactly how these pieces had been stolen, every single movement and step, the whole process laid out before him, like he had just done it himself, last night. ‘How did they discover my fakes so soon?’ He and Red Robin had perfected the Kryptonite look without the damaging effects, ‘no one should have noticed the switch at all but definitely not this soon.’
“Do you have any pictures of the items you are missing?” Neal asked with his most charming smile. “Are there any others in the collection that didn’t get taken?”
‘Better make sure I got them all.’ As he flirted with the owner of the store, he looked around at the crime scene, looking for anything out of place. ‘Keep your breathing even don’t show any surprise or shock, don’t look too competent or too stupid, you weren’t here last night or ever. Peter can’t know that you stole all of the pieces.’
Dick’s breath caught in his throat, he had not anticipated this at all, it felt wrong coming here in the daylight to investigate the crime he committed just last night. But he couldn’t tell Peter that it was a side mission given to him but the Justice League to get the Kryptonite off the streets, there was no way he’d believe that, even if it was the truth.
‘Do I let Peter know its kryptonite or should I leave that a mystery?’
He had never actually had to investigate one of his own crimes before- ‘how close should he let them get?’ He couldn’t afford to let them solve this case. Dick knew that this was going to ruin his closure rates with Peter, and more importantly also tank his ongoing bets with his siblings. He was felt like he dancing a tightrope with no net, and this was too important to mess up.
After a very stressful day ‘helping’ Peter solve the case of Neal stealing all the gems, while simultaneously making sure that no one knew he stolen anything, the last thing he wanted was to go back out in his other uniform and work the case some more. But his job wasn’t finished just because the sun went down. The smugglers weren’t in jail yet so he still had stuff to do. After a quick bowl of cereal (its cream soup Alfred, promise) Nightwing hit the streets. He had found the Kryptonite stash at the jewelers a few nights ago but he hadn’t found out who was providing the influx of the dangerous stones or where they were going. He had put a tracker on the Owner when he was there with Peter earlier today, hopefully it would lead to more intel.
He followed the man around town for a while trying to see if he should be counting this man as a suspect or not. It was about the fifth stop on his way home that anything unusual happened. Right as the man turned to leave the Bodega, he’d picked up some wine from, a couple of punk looking gang members pulled him into a nearby alley.
Nightwing prepared to drop from above and help, but as soon as they were all out of sight the three men walked into a hidden door halfway down the alley.
‘Typical mugging, right? Nope, nothing is that simple in my life.’ Nightwing thought as he dropped from the roof and entered the door like a shadow.
The recon went well, Nightwing crept along the hallways in total silence, occasionally springing to the ceiling to let other people pass by. Listening intently outside of the room the men were meeting with someone in.
“You were supposed to have those jewels for me tonight Mr. Ross.” The steel hard voice of the other man, rang like shots in the silent room.
“Well, it looks like there was more interest than we thought because it appears someone broke in to my shop and stole them sometime in the last two days.” Mr. Ross replied to his buyer. “The FBI has been crawling all over my shop today stirring up trouble.”
“Why did you involve the FBI at all?” the harsh voice growled out. “We don’t want them paying any attention to us. Besides we need that Kryptonite before the trade-off happens next Tuesday.”
“I know, I wouldn’t have involved the feds at all except my assistant had already called them as soon as the evaluator discovered the fake emeralds.” Mr. Ross explained exasperated at his proactive assistant. “They at least think it was only emeralds and diamonds that were replaced but I still have to play the part of robbed shop owner.”
“Make sure they don’t suspect a thing; we’ve come too close to blow this now.” Threatened the mysterious man.
“I know this isn’t my first-time doing this you know, just because you don’t think I can handle this kind of operation doesn’t mean I don’t know what I’m doing.” The burgled jewelry shop owner replied in a huff.
“Just have your part done by Tuesday or we’re all screwed! We don’t want any supers crashing our operations.”
“I know, I got a backup plan don’t worry. You’ll have the gems by then no problem anyways.”
It sounded like the meeting was breaking up so Nightwing made sure he was well hidden in case someone came his way and checked that his mask was recording everything he saw. The men from the alley escorted Mr. Ross back to the entrance, Nightwing waited a moment before he slipped inside the room they came out of.
He looked around checking to see if the men had left anything important laying around or you know clues to what they were planning for next Tuesday. So many things cluttered up the room it took way too long for him to search through it all, and he still didn’t find anything useful. He didn’t see any signs of the other person’s name or any plans left contently laying around. Nightwing checked the images captured by his mask that he forwarded to both Oracle and Red Robin before he went to bed hoping they could find a lead for him to follow up with later.
By the time that Dick had woke up and got ready to join Peter at the office again, his encrypted bat-puter had messages from the others.
Red Robin had found the basics on all of them except the mysterious voice and sent the basic profiles over already. He said that he could probably have the rest done by the end of the night. Oracle had replied that she ‘had three cases running simultaneously with the birds and the bats and if no one was going to die could he please do his own research,’ or wait a day or two. Dick sighed; he had no idea what he had done to piss her off this time so it looked like he was going to have to pull a fifth all-nighter this week in an attempt to crack this case. Filling his Tim sized travel mug with Tim’s patented death by caffeine, Dick just hoped he could make it thru his day.
Once he and Peter made it to the office, they joined Diana and Jones in the conference room to go over the information they had found so far. Now Dick knew that they needed to focus on the Owner but how to use the info they had to help the others come to that conclusion too?
“Neal! Hey are you with us?” Peter sounded worried, he must have realized by now that that Neal hadn't been acting like himself lately.
“Yeah, Peter I’m fine I just think somethings off about this whole case.”
“Like what, it seems like simple case of theft?” Jones said.
“One- why did we get called for simple theft,
Two- why did they bother with fakes,
Three- where did they come from,
Four- somethings wrong in that shop.” Neal said. “I’m pretty sure I can come up with a few more points but that is enough to start with.”
“Ok, Neal, what do you think is so fishy?” Peter reasoned with his CI.
“Their security system is outstanding.”
“That is usually not a reason for a store to be fishy, Neal. Is your inner thief showing again?” Diana teased.
“Well, I mean yes and no. My alleged inner thief is saying something is hinky about the fact that an average little shop in midtown has such topnotch security,” Neal replied. “It’s like putting a Steranko on a public library instead of Wayne Enterprises or such. There just doesn’t appear to be any reason for such harsh security.” There maybe that will get them thinking.
“Jones pull the financials and records of the upper management at the store, and the owner Mr. Ross too. Diana, head to the lab, check out the fakes and see if they left anything we can trace in those. Neal, you’re coming with me we need to follow-up with the manager and re-interview the associates to see if they ‘remembered’ anything.” Peter took charge.
“On it, boss” Jones replied, as he and Diana head out to their respective tasks.
Neal gathered his hat and coat so that they could go back to midtown to interview the shop’s employees. Once they had made it back to the shop, Mr. Ross wasn’t in but they did find his assistant there. She seemed even more jittery than the day before. Neal scanned the area to see if anything had changed since their visit yesterday. Peter had started talking to the young lady, but didn’t seem to be getting anything new from her today.
“So, Ms. Hartman, how are you doing today?” Neal flashed his charming smile at her.
“Umm, I’m Ok. I guess, I just… feeling nervous I suppose.” She managed to say.
“It must be difficult for you, coming into the store after you know it has been broken into.” He nodded sympathetically trying to get her to start talking.
“No, well yes, but I’ve been more worried about Mr. Ross.” She said.
“Is he not taking it well?” ‘Come on give me something to work with, you’ve got to know something,’ he thought.
“No, this robbery has sent his stress levels so high he’s been yelling at everybody for no reason. Did you know he even yelled at me for an hour yesterday because I called in the robbery to you guys!? I know, I know it must be stress but he’s been so mean lately, always double checking our work and he even laid off Joey because he mis-placed an order the other day. And if you even try and go in the office or touch his appointment book, he has a conniption.”
Peter glanced over at Neal this sounded important. It didn’t take much longer before the two men had all the information, they needed from her. They had even gotten a glimpse inside the guarded office. Neal quickly took photos of the appointment book while Ms. Hartman showed Peter around.
It provided just the breakthrough they needed on the case. Mr. Ross had put down a location and a time on the all-important Tuesday, so now all Neal had to do was convince the Team that this was significant.
“Peter, I think this is going to be something we need to look into.” Neal said once they had gotten back in the office and met up with Jones and Diana. He had been flipping through the photos on his phone that he’d managed to take of Mr. Ross’ desk, he pulled up the one for the Tuesday and showed it to the others. “Who gets shipments of valuable gems at 8 o’clock at night, and why at a warehouse that is half a city away from his jewelry shop?”
“We need to be there when this happens.” Diana stated with a small frown. “Your right Neal, that’s pretty suspicions.”