More than half an hour later, it was a warm hand gently squeezing his shoulder that woke him from his power nap.
"You sure he's not dead? You checked his pulse? He still isn't moving."
"No, he's alright. Just tired, like the rest of us. Give him a second."
It took his mind a moment to process what had happened, and once it did, Steve sat up straight, mortified at the thought that he'd fallen asleep at his desk. Blinking his eyes sheepishly, he waited until his vision adjusted, to glance over to his left side, where a smiling Mike and Forester greeted him.
"I ehm…I was…I am sorry.", he stammered, much to the amusement of his audience.
"We have a pretty good idea what you were ehm…was…doing, Barney."
With one last amicable squeeze, Mike let go of him, before gesturing toward the coffee machine.
"You need something to keep you awake?"
"I don't know. The last three cups didn't do it.", Steve admitted, running a hand across his face to shake off the last of the drowsiness, then pointing at the files.
"Paul, Dillon and I narrowed down our group of suspects to eight. Still not much, but better than where we started. Between the physical similarities, all of them are either registered gun owners, or were in an environment that exposed them to the use of semi-automatic weapons. According to friends and neighbors, all of them are very conservative, downright radicals. Three of them have a history of violence, bar brawls, domestic disputes and we got one for attacking a peace officer."
"Nice job, Barney.", Forester cheered enthusiastically and pulled the old wrinkled suspect list out of his dark blue windbreaker, "We've got Carigio to help us narrow down our list to four guys he believes may be capable of stealing his weapon. Want to compare names and see what we got?"
An unmistakable enthusiasm filled the otherwise empty bullpen, a distant hope that progress on the case was finally imminent, as the three detectives put their heads together.
When Steve nodded faintly, Forester pulled the sheet of paper close to his face, and began reading.
"Henry Robertson?"
"Yep, he's on my R&I list too."
"Beautiful. What about Leon Sawyer?"
"Got him right here."
"Stephan Levonkowsky?"
"No, not on my list. He didn't fit our initial search criteria because he's a polish immigrant and we had only sketchy results on his past history. Nothing indicated that he was involved in a war or had any access to semi-automatic weapons."
"Alright, how about the last one…Kurt Grabinski?"
"Yep, got him."
"Alright, three out of four isn't bad at all.", Mike cheered, then checked his wristwatch, "It's just after seven, the guys down in records are gone for the day. But I could still get somebody to help us pull some more information on Levonkowsky, we could even get immigrations involved first thing in the morning."
"I've got an even better idea."
The sparkle in Foresters eyes was followed by a wily smile, as the Captain reached across the desk for Steve's phone, then hesitated briefly.
"How much do they charge you guys for long distance calling around here?"
"Long distance? Who are you trying to call at this hour?"
"An old friend of mine in Mannheim, Germany. He used to work for the secret service. He's going to have a far easier time digging up anything we can on our polish friend. East European immigrations can be tricky, especially if we go in there waving that American flag around. It will make for a long night but it might save us valuable time in the end."
"In the meantime, I can grab us some dinner from the deli down on 4th.", Steve suggested, only to watch Mike shake his head.
"How about you call it a night. You've been dragging all day. Tomorrow is going to be a difficult day, definitely overtime. Get some sleep while you can, we're going to need you on top of your game. I will stay here with the Captain and handle any information coming in. I'll give you a call if I need anything."
Raising his eyebrows hesitantly, Steve glanced back and forth between his partner and Forester, only to watch the Captain shrug.
"Don't look at me Barney, he's the boss. Do as he says. You don't want to end up with wrinkles and bags under your eyes like us old folks, do you?"