Reading Time: 113 Minutes

Title: Pit of Arrogance
Author: SASundance
Fandom: NCIS
Genre: Angst, Crime Drama, Drama, Episode Related
Relationship(s): Gen, background pairings.
Content Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Canon typical violence, discussion of infertility issues, surrogacy and adoption, not MCRT friendly.
Word Count: 160,158
Summary: When the deputy manager of HR, Delores Bromstead, witnesses the MCRT’s junior agents’ insubordination of the Senior Field Agent, she decides she has had enough. If Gibbs refuses to enforce the chain of command on his team, then it is time for her to act. She might not be able to make Special Agent L.J. Gibbs follow agency rules and regulations, but she refuses to stand by and let the rookies continually get away with insubordination. Her actions will end up having far reaching repercussions for every member of NCIS, including Delores. Set during Forced Entry S02e09.
Artist: Kylia

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Chapter 16

Ever since James Reinbold had handed down his recommendations, Tony had been expecting the terror twins to return to the team. While he’d upheld the complaint of insubordination and placed a formal censure on their personnel file, he’d also outlined why neither agent could be terminated. Although the SFA (in name only), was still in a quandary about whether he should stay or go, he’d been leaning more toward leaving MCRT than staying. Even after learning that both agents had effectively gotten off relatively unscathed, Tony was still dithering about it. Every morning, as he made his way to work, he expected to be confronted by Agents Todd and McGee, sitting at their desks looking smug. Yet, day after day, their desks remained empty, and he couldn’t figure out what was going on. When neither agent turned up, he figured that maybe they’d been suspended by SECNAV or Director Morrow as a further disciplinary action.

Frankly, he didn’t have much time to contemplate what was going on with them, since the cases didn’t stop just because they were down two agents. The first case was not all that complicated, or it shouldn’t have been. A dead petty officer who was strangled had turned up stuffed into a porta-loo on a building site. Ducky estimated Petty Officer Keith Dillion had been dead approximately 12 to 14 hours ago. He also concluded that the porta-loo was not where Dillion was killed, which would have been a problem as they had no idea where the petty officer had been killed. Thus, they only had a secondary crime scene, but they get a break of sorts with Detective Floyd telling Gibbs that perhaps that hysterical female who claimed to have seen a sailor being strangled by an unknown assailant might have seen something after all.

Tony was sent to interview a woman witness who the cops found to not be credible. She turned out to be Ms Erin Kendall, employed by the Department of Defence, and a recent graduate of MIT. Hardly someone whom Tony would have characterised as being an overly hysterical eyewitness. Tony believed her account, even if she had tried and failed to video the assault and, he had her pick out of a photo array of service photos on his laptop the sailor who she saw being killed in the apartment across the street last night. She’d immediately zeroed in on PO Keith Dillion, and Tony realised she was going to make a highly credible witness when they caught the petty officer’s killer.

He recommended Kendall might want to find someplace else to stay until they caught the murderer, since she was an eyewitness, and the killer might have seen her attempting to film him. Relieved that he was taking her seriously, she’d agreed straightaway to go and stay with a former college roommate and started packing right after giving him her contact details. He’d also given the young DOD analyst, who was cute in a geeky-kinda-way his business card, telling her if she remembered anything else, even the smallest detail to call. He warned her that she might be required to help with an identikit photo of the killer, and Erin told him she was happy to help in any way she could. He got it, as an analyst at the DOD, military personnel were considered part of the Dept of Defence, and it was only natural she would want to help catch Keith Dillion’s killer.

Meanwhile, Tony had once again called in some of the floaters from the agent pool to help them process the apartment in the building across the street from Kendell’s. They discovered urine on the floor of the apartment where Erin said she saw PO Dillion die. Aside from the urine found near the window, which if it was human, would confirm forensically that this was the primary crime scene (since bladder and bowels were voided upon death), the apartment was remarkably clean. Depressingly so. According to the building manager, Robert J. Thorne was the occupant of the apartment, but he couldn’t tell them much about the guy, apart from the fact he was away a lot of the time. He was obviously obsessively careful though, since the only fingerprints Abby found were those of PO Dillion, which suggested this was not the first time he’d visited the apartment, and, that killer and victim had some type of relationship.

Still, they got lucky when Gibbs searched the pull-out sofa, finding two cases that were embedded in the foam mattress, cutouts reminding Tony of the secret hiding spot of books in old spy movies. Although one of the boxes was empty, Abby later determined by the minute traces on cocaine that the box probably was used to hide cash, the second case contained a Sig Saur and several silencers.

After investigating PO Dillion, who was thirty-two and single, they found he’d washed out of SEAL training. Then he’d been assigned to Pax River, where he worked as a driver in the motor pool, which was about as far from being a SEAL, as one could get. He had been dating a woman named Jill Myers for a couple of months, who was married to a Marine who’d been deployed to Iraq for eight months. She said he’d boasted that he was coming into a large sum of money soon and wanted Jill to leave her husband and move in with him. Myers didn’t seem too broken up about his death, asking that they not tell her husband she was cheating on him, and Tony thought back to Wendy Miller leaving him the night before their wedding, suddenly glad he wasn’t married.

Their investigation into Thorne proved frustrating since the information on his rental application – his driver’s licence and social security details had proved to be phony. He’d claimed to be a sales rep for a company that didn’t exist. They also learnt that the gun they’d recovered from Thorn’s apartment was one used in several unrelated murders during the past fifteen months, and Gibbs had theorised that the mysterious Robert J. Thorne was in all likelihood a hitman for hire.

Unable to locate Thorne, Jeremy Pryor, the DC manager of Thorne’s apartment building and Erin Kendall were called into NCIS to help compile identikit sketches of Thorne, who they believed to have murdered PO Dillion, it was striking how different the two sketches were. At first, Gibbs was inclined to give more weight to Pryor’s sketch since he’d talked to the guy up close, and Kendall had only seen him briefly from the window of her apartment across the street. But while she was at NCIS, she’d mentioned to Tony that she didn’t know if it was useful or not, but that PO Dillion’s killer had worn his watch on his right hand and might be left-handed.

Gibbs remembered that Jeremy Pryor also wore his watch on his right wrist, and that couldn’t be a coincidence since he didn’t believe in them. Plus, Erin’s identikit picture of the killer bore more than a passable resemblance to Pryor. After getting a search warrant they were able to match the fibres found on Dillion’s body and uniform to the fibres found in the building manager’s trunk of his car.

After they brought him in for questioning, a dive into Pryor’s finances showed a large sum of money deposited into his bank just before the petty officer’s death. He confessed to having stolen the money in Thorne’s apartment and told them that Robert J. Thorne and PO Keith Dillion were one and the same person. When snooping around in Thorne’s apartment, Pryor found the cash and took it, unfortunately, Thorne must have had surveillance in his apartment because he tricked Jeremy into coming into his apartment to try to recover his money.

And the rest, as the saying goes, was history. Jeremy Pryor was charged with Keith Dillion’s murder and Erin Kendall returned home to her apartment. Tony wished that all their witnesses were as reliable and accurate as she had been.

The next case was a fairly straightforward murder case in Shenandoah National Park. A married couple and their friend had gone camping together, which was immediately suspicious to Tony, right off the bat. Unless they were a threesome, he thought there was something decidedly hinky about a married couple and the victim’s best friend going on a camping trip together. One of the TAD agents, Mercy Jones, who they’d taken to the crime scene, questioned his assumption, saying that Roger Caine, Marine Sergeant Moore’s best friend, could also be friends with William’s wife, Judy Moore, Tony had laughed at her naivety. His intuition was telling him that Judy and Roger were a lot more than just good friends – the only question being – were they cheating on the victim, Sergeant Moore, or had they all been part of a consensual triad.

It hadn’t been all that difficult of a case to solve. The fact that the Sergeant had caught his murder on the digital camera had made it fairly straightforward. Although the camera tumbled into the creek when Moore was attacked, which had corrupted the tape, so it did require the forensic brilliance of the redoubtable Abby Sciuto to reveal its secrets. Mercy was dismayed to learn that Tony was right, Sergeant Moore’s wife was cheating on her husband with his ‘best friend’ and was pregnant and Roger was the baby daddy. Honestly, could it get any more cliched even if they are two horrible, selfish people, the most important point was that neither Moore’s wife nor his buddy killed him.

No, it was the pot-smoking trailer trash guy with anger issues – David Runyon – who was their murderer. He’d had an altercation with Caine and Moore over noise at their campsite the night before he killed Moore. Although he’d driven away from the campground after their fight, he hiked two miles from the new campsite he moved to, armed with a baseball bat to kill Moore as he filmed the sunrise. The irony was that Sergeant Moore captured his own death on his brand-new camera that he wanted to try out on his camping trip – it turned out to be his last. As to why Runyon decided to target William Moore rather than his buddy, that would remain one of the unanswerable questions they would never know since the scumbag decided to commit death by cop rather than go to prison.

Normally, that would trouble Tony that the family and friends of the victim wouldn’t get the closure they needed to move on from the tragedy but, in the case of Judy Moore and Roger Caine, he didn’t think he’d be losing any sleep over them. They didn’t deserve closure after betraying Moore.

Their next case assigned was one that had Tony harkening back to his time at Vice, and still, there was no sign of Todd and McGee returning. Scuttlebutt going around at the office and confirmed by Ric Balboa, was that both agents were handed a one-month suspension without pay. In addition, both had to redo some coursework at FLETC if they wished to return, so Tony had stopped expecting their return was imminent.

By the end of their investigation, Tony was kinda glad he’d never had siblings, although Ducky had likened McGee, Cate, and his relationship to that of siblings all trying to compete with each other for the attention of Gibbs – their substitute father figure. Superficially, Ducky’s observation might be right, but damn it, law enforcement wasn’t supposed to work that way. Gibbs forcing them to compete against each other was partly the reason why the pair had been cited for their insubordination. And that sort of shit they’d pulled, if it happened out in the field, was fucking dangerous – it could easily get one of them killed or some innocent civilian.

Ignoring the chain of command in favour of fostering competitiveness amongst agents, particularly experienced ones versus newbies, had no place in law enforcement. This was why, at the end of this case, Tony decided as soon as the terror twins returned, he was out of there. He’d start by requesting a transfer.

But then the investigation into the horrific death of PO Manda King intervened and swept aside any thoughts about the team and his future. They were quickly caught up in the seedy world of drugs, vice, and the exotic dancers at Tealz Nightclub, who were all deemed to be ‘owned’ by the nightclub owner Ian Hitch, aka Bulldog. Despite what they first thought, Manda King had been killed by her younger sister in a callous attempt to set up Bulldog, who’d signed Samantha to his club after tricking her into signing herself to him when he promised to make her a star. She had probably also killed her elder sister so that the inheritance from their father wouldn’t need to be shared, but also, Tony also suspected because Samantha King was jealous of her sister’s career success and her father’s obvious pride in her achievements.

Tony reflected that cases like these made him feel extremely grateful that he didn’t have siblings. The only good thing about the investigation was that with it taking place in Norfolk, he got a chance to reconnect with Chris Pacci’s former probie, Cassie Yates who was working undercover out of Norfolk. She’d started at NCIS a few months before he did and decided when Cate joined the team that she wanted to spend some time doing undercover work. She may have been inspired by some of his stories of the seedy world working in the Vice squad in Philly PD and his year undercover with the mafia.

Of course, catching up with Cass also meant that she’d wanted to know what the hell was going on with Gibbs. How had McGee, whom she’d run into at Norfolk, with Todd, whom she didn’t know, ended up facing charges of insubordination? He’d shrugged, knowing that Yates was thinking about the team Gibbs led back in the Blackadder and Dobbs days or earlier, where a real chain of command had existed.

He’d told her, “Don’t know Cass. After he hired Todd and the McGee, he took delight in telling them that they could ignore me, that he was the only one who got to tell them what to do.”

“But you were the senior field agent, Tony. Of course, you got to tell them what to do.”

“As he told me, HIS team, HIS rules,” he’d told her with a mournful expression.

“Damn. Whatcha gonna do, Dino?”

“Ah… I think that when they’re back, I’m gonna transfer teams. If I can find someone who’ll have me,” Tony said dispiritedly.

She’d given him a brief hug. “You kidding? I’ll bet plenty of people would welcome you on their team,” she’d assured him,” comfortingly.

Tony sure hoped that Cassie was right. If not, he could always get a job with Metro PD, he hoped.

As he considered the case, Tony thought about the coldly calculating way that her younger sister Samantha had killed Manda King and used the innocent if none-too-bright bartender, Willie Taylor, as her killer. She’d done it even as Manda and her own father Benjamin lay dying in a hospital from end-stage bone cancer. It took a particularly callous individual to murder the big sister who’d help raise her. But it also served to remind him that Gibbs’ method of forcing his team to compete with each other for his favour wasn’t a smart thing to do with people who were supposed to have your back in life-and-death situations.

He couldn’t deny that the case had also triggered some bad memories of a time when his mother lay dying in a hospital bed and her son, eight years old at the time, watched over her as she spent her last days on earth. Tony’s father was too busy, too gutless to be there for his dying wife. Clearly, the whole ‘in sickness and in health’ shit he’d vowed when they got married was not something he thought was important enough to follow through on. Besides, he’d said when his eight-year-old son tried to make him go see his wife, “It wasn’t as if she’s alone, you’re there with her, Junior.”

But it hadn’t been enough. Even though he was a child, Tony remembered her hopeful inquiry every day, when Tony was brought to the hospital by one of the hired help to be with his mother.

She’d say, “Is your father with you, Anthony?”

And he would shake his head, saying sadly, “No, Mummy. He’s busy today.”

He would watch her eyes fill with tears, and she would say, “Well, no matter. I’m sure he’ll be here soon,” even if she didn’t believe it.

Knowing how sad she seemed, he’d tried to cheer her up, in his own childish way. “But I’m here, and we can eat ice cream, just the two of us.”

At the time, he was too young to realise that she was ill to eat, Ice cream being one of the few things she still enjoyed, even if it was only a couple of mouthfuls fed to her by her son. He was too young to realise a lot of things at the time, like how Senior was too busy having an affair with the pretty young nanny that his mother hired after she was diagnosed with cancer.

Elouise – his nanny was British, like his mum. She hadn’t wanted him to lose touch with his English heritage after she died, and perhaps Elouise reminded Senior of his wife before she became ill. It wasn’t ‘til he was older – a cynical eleven or twelve years old, that Tony put all the disapproving comments from the staff about Elouise being a conniving little hussy together with a couple of times he saw her and Senior wrestling in his parent’s bed that he realised why his father was too busy to spend time with his dying wife.

Hell, at the tender age of eight, even if he was far more grown-up than the average eight-year-old child, despite living with two addicts, and helping his mother when she was ‘sick’ with hangovers, he hadn’t understood how ill she was. That she was dying!

He thought she was at the hospital because she was ill, and the doctors and nurses were making her better. He was happy that he could spend all day every day with her, and relieved that his nanny was too busy ‘helping’ Senior so that their cook, Camila, would pick out his clothes for him. The Cuban cook knew how much he despised the stupid sailor suits that his mother dressed him in. The motherly woman would pick out dress pants and button-down shirts for him to wear, which, even though they were ridiculously formal for an eight-year-old, were way more ‘normal’ than the hated sailor’s suits. More casual clothes such as jeans, chinos and t-shirts were eschewed as much too casual for the DiNozzo heir to wear in public.

After his mother died, which devastated him since he wasn’t prepared for it, for a long time afterwards, eight-year-old Anthony thought that it was his fault that his mummy died. He was convinced that God was punishing him for being a bad boy because he was so happy he didn’t have to wear the sailor suits that his mother adored to the hospital. He would go to sleep at night crying because if he’d worn the damned things, he thought that his mother would have gotten better and come home again.

It wasn’t until he was older that he learned that his mother had cancer, and what he wore to see her had nothing to do with why she died. By the time he figured that out and realised why Senior was too busy with his nanny to go to the hospital to see his dying wife, Tony went from being a sad, lost little boy into an isolated and angry adolescent, disowned by his miserable excuse for a father.

While Tony and Gibbs stood vigil at the deathbed of Benjamin King, waiting to take Samantha into custody, it was hard for Tony not to remember a similar scene. But instead of a dying mother and son, this one taking place now was a dying father who’d just lost a daughter and holding the hand of his youngest daughter who’d killed her sister… his eldest daughter. Not that Benjamin King knew that.

He and Gibbs had both agreed that he should be spared the terrible burden of that knowledge, but it meant that they had to wait by his bedside to ensure she didn’t try to escape. They’d been forced to watch the sick charade played out as Benjamin told Samantha that he’d always believed in her, even when Manda hadn’t. His last words to her were that he knew she was going to be a singing star, prompting Tony to recall the last words his mother said to him before she died.

“You’re father loves you so much, Sweetheart. Never forget that, my Anthony.”

Yeah right! As if Senior was capable of loving anyone but himself, he’d thought scornfully, watching Samantha deal with the realisation that she was never going to be a star, that she was going to prison for murder. Another person like Senior, who was a narcissist, only capable of feeling sorry for herself and what she’d lost.

As he got lost in the reverie of his mother’s death, Tony wondered what his childhood might have been like, if, the tables were turned and Senior died rather than his mother?

Would she have gotten her shit together and stopped drinking and abusing prescription meds?

Would there have been a rapprochement between his mother and the Paddington side of his family, who basically had washed their hands of little Anthony DiNozzo after her death, except for one summer when he was seventeen, which he’d spent with his Uncle Clive?

Still, as Ducky would no doubt say, if wishes were horses, beggars would ride.

Chapter 17

Tom Morrow was contemplative when he received a job offer from the Department of Homeland Security. Analysing it on paper, it seemed at best like a sideways promotion from Director of NCIS to Assistant Director at DHS. Although, given the scope of DHS, which also was in charge of the Secret Service (both the protective services and the investigatory currency division ) and ICE in addition to its own investigative and counterterrorism activities, it was a pretty large enticement. Davenport was congratulatory, telling Tom he’d be an idiot not to leap at the career move, but then Philip was incredibly ambitious. For this reason alone, even discounting the timing of the offer, Morrow, being quite a cynic, had demurred, saying he needed time to think about it.

Not that he was lying, he needed to talk it over with his beloved wife Lynne before he would even think about making such a move. While the DHS director had told him to take his time, Davenport pointed out to him it was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and advised him to not take too long before accepting. Tom wondered why the SECNAV was so determined to push him out of the NCIS directorship. Of course, his suspicions probably had something to do with the timing of the job offer. It came not two weeks after Gibbs and DiNozzo had caught a case where a pair of eyes were delivered to the wrong mailbox instead of its intended recipient – a petty officer Benjamin Horlacher, who had been away on a 72-hour leave. Horlacher attended the Navy and Marine Intelligence Training Centre at Dam Neck and lived in the apartment complex for nine months. Their background check on his service record revealed that he had a clean record – as one would expect in someone selected to train in Intelligence.

The MCRT learnt that the package had been shipped through the mail two days ago from Ciudad de Este, Paraguay, which was in the Tri-Border Area of Paraguay, Argentina, and Brazil. It was used as a base of operations for smuggling, illegal organ trafficking, drug trafficking and Hezbollah and al Qaeda terrorist cells. A really nasty place, which begged the question – what the hell was Horlacher up to that someone would send him a pair of human eyes from Ciudad del Este?

According to Ducky, the eyeballs had been enucleated before they were perfectly preserved with the skill and care of a surgeon. Normally that type of surgical removal might point to corneal transplants, but these eyes were clearly not intended for such a use.

Della Robinson, the apartment manager of PO Horlacher’s residential building informed them he had a girlfriend who stayed there, although she wasn’t on the lease. Della told Gibbs and DiNozzo that she turned a blind eye to it because he was quiet and didn’t cause trouble. Della had readily agreed to let them into PO Horlacher’s apartment to look around. She admitted that what had arrived in the mail had thoroughly unsettled her, not that Tom could blame the woman. Hell, two eyeballs arriving by mail would freak Tom out, too.

DiNozzo had also shared that Della had taken quite a shine to Gibbs, propositioning him unashamedly. Gibbs hadn’t taken up her offer, and Morrow was relieved to hear it. The last time Jethro let ‘little Gibbs’ do the ‘thinking’ during a case, not so long ago, was when she turned out to be a killer. This time he’d kept his head firmly in the game. Of course, as DiNozzo pointed out, the fact that Della was more Gibbs’ vintage and frumpish, compared to the Bethesda Computer systems supervisor Karen Wilkerson, who was a stunner, might have also influenced him rather than Gibbs’ sudden due diligence. Gibbs’ infamous gut never seemed to work on his paramours – his taste in women sucked, Morrow thought mockingly, as he stared at a photograph of his wife Lynnie on his desk.

After searching his apartment, they’d confirmed reports that PO Horlacher had a woman living with him, although Tony had observed in his report that maybe the clothes belonged to his mother. He’d described them as matronly, not to mention belonging to someone statuesque and conservative, definitely nothing revealing or sexy. In addition, there were feminine cosmetics in the bathroom, and the décor, aside from some computer games, seemed decidedly feminine. As they were discussing how to ID who was Horlacher’s flatmate, the petty officer arrived home, demanding to know who they were and what they were doing searching his apartment. After showing their credentials, they informed the petty officer they were investigating a package he’d received but had been accidentally delivered to the wrong mailbox. The package was opened by the wrong party and reported to the authorities because it contained a pair of human eyes, addressed to him, sent from Ciudad del Este in Paraguay.

Although visibly repulsed, he claimed to have no knowledge of who or why someone would send him such a package. When questioned about his whereabouts, he’d claimed to have been visiting his folks in New Jersey. DiNozzo had asked him if his training at The Navy and Marine Intelligence Training Centre was as an intel analyst, which he confirmed. When pressed by Tony about what area he was covering, he informed them it was Central and South America, which seemed too much of a coincidence to both agents. Even though the petty officer denied ever going to Paraguay and denied knowing what was going on, he’d definitely been evasive.

If he’d been concealing anything before, once his girlfriend was brought up, Horlacher quickly became decidedly defensive, claiming not to have a girlfriend. Challenged by Gibbs about why there was women’s clothing in his bedroom closet, he admitted he had a girlfriend. The petty officer claimed they broke up a month ago, but she hasn’t picked up her stuff yet. Realising that they didn’t believe him, he reiterated that he didn’t know anything about a pair of eyes before asking if they needed a warrant to be in his apartment. Gibbs ignored the question, instead telling Horlacher to keep himself available as NCIS would have more questions for the Petty Officer, convinced he knew more than he was saying.

After Abby determined that the eyes belonged to a female, she told them she ran the DNA through AFDIL (Armed Forces DNA Identification Laboratory) but the Goth didn’t get a match. It led them to speculate if Horlacher’s mystery girlfriend might be the owner of the eyes. If that was the case, then according to Ducky, she was dead. After examining them, he determined that the owner of the eyes died of cardiac arrest caused by abnormally high levels of potassium that would have been fatal.

That was why Gibbs ordered DiNozzo to stake out Horlacher’s apartment, and he grabbed an agent from the pool, Special Agent Shane Brent, to accompany him. It had been cold, and Brent had bitched because Tony had refused to run the engine so they could turn up the heat. He had to explain to the inexperienced agent that the condensation from the tailpipe would be a dead giveaway that people were sitting in the car. While they were trying to think about warm sandy beaches, the lights went out in the petty officer’s apartment right before a single gunshot rang out in the night. Breaking down the door of his apartment, the agents discovered Horlacher lying dead on his bed, dressed in the women’s clothing they found in his closet earlier on. Apparently, he’d killed himself, although his motive was unclear. The note he left – Now I am free – was ambiguous.

The director thought about Agent DiNozzo’s reaction during the briefing he and Gibbs delivered when he requested a sitrep. Gibbs thought it was obvious that Agent Horlacher’s secret was that Horlacher was a he/she, like in the Commander Voss case last year. That he’d killed himself because he realised his secret was about to come out into the open. Tom could see from DiNozzo’s body language he disagreed.

“Your thoughts, Agent DiNozzo?”

I’m not sure that PO Horlacher killed himself because he was a cross-dresser, Director and thought his secret would get out. It is possible, but if so, why would he dress up and reveal his secret, only to kill himself. We wouldn’t have known about it, and after talking to his parents, they had no idea either. But he might have been keeping a bigger secret and decided to use his cross-dressing activities to deflect attention away from his MOAS,” he said.

Tom frowned. “MOAS?”

“Abby-speak for mother of all secrets, Sir.”

Gibbs snorted impatiently and was about to head-slap Tony when Tom glared at him.

“I see. And cross-dresser?”

“You would probably be more familiar with the term transvestite Director, but most people who practice cross-dressing find that to be a derogatory term. Besides, it’s often used interchangeably but incorrectly with the term tranny or if we’re being less derogatory, then male to female or female to male transgender individuals,” he said.

Although he knew that DiNozzo was much smarter than he presented, Tom rarely got to see this solemn side of his agent. Morrow was intrigued.

“So you’re saying that because PO Horlacher dressed up in women’s clothes, that doesn’t mean he is also transgender?”

“I’m saying that it is much more complex. Some males who are into cross-dressing are not transgender. Obviously male to female transgender individuals have a deep need to dress as females since it’s consistent with their gender identity. BUT… there are also men whose gender identity is male who are driven to dress for at least a part of their lives in female clothing and wear makeup. So it’s best not to assume that all cross-dressers are also transgender individuals.”

Seeing Gibbs’ scepticism, Tony grinned. “When I worked Vice in Philly, I had the misfortune to run into a member of the city council and another guy who was a state representative. They were into dressing up as infants in diapers, using pacifiers and drinking milk out of baby bottles. They also liked having their asses paddled, but that was a separate fetish, I think,” he mused, his brow wrinkling.

“To be honest. I was pretty grossed out by it, even if it is a recognised fetish. That doesn’t mean the individuals who dress up as babies want to become babies permanently or see themselves as infants. Those two politicians self-reported as cisgender and happily married although, I doubt that even their wives knew since they were pretty desperate for it to stay out of the media.”

Tom guessed that he was looking as sickened by what DiNozzo revealed as Gibbs, although seeing a calculated smirk on Jethro’s face flit across his face, perhaps he was wrong. It was quite disturbing and Morrow wondered if any of their federal counterparts liked wearing diapers, too. Considering how most of their constituents would regard their fetish, he doubted their voters would be forgiving if they knew. Which would make them very vulnerable to being blackmailed for their votes and or to leaking sensitive intel they were privy to.

Moving on, Tom frowned. “You also seem to be suggesting that cross-dressers are male, whereas transgender people are male or female?”

“Correct, but only because the term cross-dresser or transvestite essentially means a person who dresses in clothes typically associated with the other sex. Women in the 21st century, at least in many countries and cultures, can dress in male clothes without eyebrows being raised or people questioning whether they are transgender. There is no stigmatising unlike there is with men.”

“Perhaps in past centuries, women may been denounced to have dressed up in men’s clothing,” Tom observed. “Even in places where it is considered normal, there are cults and religious groups who forbid women wearing so-called male clothing,”

That’s true, even if it’s no longer the norm,” Tony said. “And even in times past, there might have been purely pragmatic reasons for females to dress in male clothing. Like impersonating men to take on male-prescribed roles that females were traditionally prohibited from doing. Like fighting in wars or the movie National Velvet starring a young Elizabeth Taylor where she pretended to be male to ride her horse in a steeplechase race…”

Seeing Gibbs was clenching his fist, obviously longing to head slap him, Tony moved on. “But even the most staunchly cisgender women have been known to rock up to high profile awards shows like the Oscars wearing a tuxedo, and no one bats an eyelid. Not like they would if Bruce Willis turned up in a slinky low-cut dress,” he pointed out. They may not have as much wealth or power as males, but they can dress in male clothing without turning heads.”

“Okay, so bottom line, we cannot assume that just because Horlacher liked dressing up in women’s clothing, that means he was also transgender?”

“Correct, just like trans people can be gay, straight, bisexual, or asexual. Gender identity and sexual orientation are not the same thing, and cross-dressing does not mean you have to be transgender either,” Tony told them. “I’m just saying that we can’t assume.”

Tom sighed. “I think you’re right. This is extremely complex. Perhaps we need to do some sensitivity training on the subject. Would I be correct in surmising that you’ve already been forced to educate Agent Brent?”

“He complained?”

“Whined about it to Agent Yates when she was here earlier and expressed the opinion that you might have been talking a heap of crap. She also set him straight about some of the stuff you just said, if not as patiently or colourfully,” Tom smirked.

“Yeah, well, Cassie’s been spending time with the Norfolk PD Vice unit,” Tony said with a shrug. “You get educated about this stuff pretty quick, or you fail miserably going undercover in Vice,” he said philosophically.

“Where are we regarding the eyes sent to Horlacher?” Tom asked, moving the discussion along. “Do we have an identity for the victim yet? Since we now know that Horlacher’s girlfriend doesn’t exist, then who do they belong to?”

Gibbs said, “According to Abby and Agent Lawrence who were analysing Horlacher’s laptop and found a lot of high-security stuff to stop anyone getting into his files…”

Looking at Morrow, Tony offered, “Next-level highly encrypted data that a student shouldn’t need unless they have something huge to hide.”

Tom nodded at Gibbs. “Proceed, Gibbs.”

Glaring at Tony to stop interrupting, he said. “They managed to find his personal blob.”

Tony exaggeratedly mouthed the word BLOG, seeing Morrow’s look of confusion, and the director nodded gratefully as Gibbs studiously ignored the byplay. Morrow knew that Gibbs hated to make a fool of himself, but he really brought it on himself. He made no attempt to keep up to date on current social trends or technology – Jethro was an outdated dinosaur.

“Agent Lawrence and Abby agreed that it is far more advanced security software than they’ve ever seen. They are still trying to get past the last level, but they determined that Horlacher accessed the photo of a female who looks to be of South American origin 22 times. Her eyes are the same shade of cobalt blue as the enucleated eyeballs.”

“Neither piece of information seems to justify having such high levels of encryption,” Morrow mused. “Was there anything else on the laptop?”

“Lawrence and Abby are still trying to crack the last level,” Gibbs said impatiently.

Tom nodded. “Do we know anything else?”

Tony took over as Gibbs nodded at him to speak. Obviously, the elective mute was done talking, at least for now.

“The petty officer’s family said he didn’t spend his 72-hour leave with them. They haven’t seen him in over a year, so we have no clue where he was or what he was doing before he returned while we were searching his place.” He paused to draw breath as they all thought about the implications.

“We still can’t connect the petty officer directly to Paraguay,” Tony remarked regretfully. “He was never deployed overseas, and the guy didn’t even have a passport. But we may have found an indirect link. Horlacher was on the phone with his faculty advisor at the Navy and Marine Intelligence Training Centre shortly before he killed himself. The advisor, Guyman Purcell, is a former Lt Commander in the Navy with a PhD in South American Studies. He was pretty sketchy when we talked to him.”

Gibbs nodded. “Fed us a bunch of BS about why Horlacher was calling Purcell. Said to request an extension on an assignment.”

“Why would someone who was suicidal want an extension? That doesn’t make sense.”

Tony smirked. “Exactly, Sir. And when we informed Purcell that Horlacher offed himself, he changed his tune, claimed to have given him a hard time, warning him he would fail him if he didn’t get his act together. But when we asked him about Horlacher initially, before he knew about the suicide, he said he was a good student.”

“Did you run background on Purcell?” Morrow asked.

Tony nodded, looking disapproving. “Yes, Director. Purcell has his own consulting business called Purcell Security Group. They’re a group which specialises in intelligence work, and PSG has several high-paying government contracts, the biggest one is with Southcom.”

“Yeah, Purcell’s travelled to Paraguay ten times in the last six months and surprise, surprise, Purcell’s been working in Ciudad del Este,” Gibbs said, looking extremely pissed off.

“I take it that you suspect Purcell is either a spook or working for spooks?” Tom concluded.

“Hell yeah!” Gibbs muttered.

“We did ask him if he covered Ciudad del Este in class, and he confirmed they did, and he wanted to know why? When we told him about the eyes delivered to Horlacher, he said, how it was horrible but denied any knowledge about it,” Tony reported. “Never mentioned his own business connections to the region.”

“Then, after we ran his background and discovered his association with the Tri-State border and Ciudad del Este, we returned to reinterview him, but he was already on his way to Paraguay. One of his students confirmed it was unscheduled,” he told Morrow grimly.

“So, gentlemen, do we know what spooked the spook?” he said, using a touch of flippancy to lighten the mood in the room.

“Well, yeah. Abby found out who the eyes belonged to. She was on Purcell’s promotional video on his website for PSG. Purcell was advertising his security course, telling people that taking the course could be the difference between success and failure, life, and death,” Gibbs said contemptuously.

Morrow suppressed a smile because of how gullible could anyone be to think online instruction would make a significant impact. Although, there must be some dupes who were taken in.

“Abby and Larry reckoned the course was about four hours of online instruction and the course was bookmarked on Petty Horlacher’s hard drive.

Four hours? Dupes indeed, Tom concluded. There were fools born every minute who ended up parting with their hard-earned cash for grifters like Purcell, unfortunately.

“Plus, Horlacher also accessed this JPEG file 22 times last week,” Tony informed Morrow, putting up a photo of a young brown-haired woman standing next to Purcell with cobalt blue eyes.”

Morrow looked ill. “Okay, but how certain is Abby that this girl belongs to our eyes?”

“Fairly sure, Tom. Abby claims that iris patterns are more distinctive than fingerprints,” Gibbs told his boss.

Tony agreed, “More accurate, too. Abby said it’s an eighty-percent match and believes we’ve got the right girl.

“I don’t understand how Horlacher is connected to the girl and the eyes?”

“Well, it’s speculation but Abby and Agent Lawrence found a series of highly encrypted emails between someone called Escopeta 794 to the petty officer. Abby traced the ISP of Escopeta 794 to determine they were sent from the Tri-Border Area in Argentina. And not that it is probably relevant,” Tony said, “but escopeta means rifle in Spanish.”

“And what were the emails about?” Tom asked impatiently.

“A series of negotiations that commenced three weeks ago. The emails all seem to be about kidnapping a girl and Horlacher saying his controller wanted proof before handing over the money. Escopeta 794 wanted $100,000, but Horlacher was attempting to negotiate a lesser amount of $60,000. Horlacher finally goes as high as $75,000, but there are a lot of threats and swearing. Then, the emails stopped right before the eyeballs were sent. The final email promised to send proof, and the $100,000 was non-negotiable.

Gibbs shakes his head, “Why send the eyes. That doesn’t constitute proof of life,” he argued.

Tom shrugged before suggesting, “If Escopeta 794 is running some sort of kidnapping ring, he might have gotten pissed off that Purcell and Horlacher were trying to bargain about the ransom demand. He might have decided that killing the victim would send a clear warning to other victims’ friends and family not to mess with him,” he said with a world-weary cynicism.

Gibbs nodded, and Tony suggested, “It could also explain why Horlacher killed himself right after talking to Purcell. Maybe the spook blamed the petty officer for getting the young woman killed…hell, Horlacher probably blamed himself too,” he said sympathetically.

“Right, well, where to now?” Morrow asked.

“We need to talk to Purcell. He lied to us. I’m sending DiNozzo down to Paraguay to find him and get answers. I’ll coordinate from MTAC with Colonel Bushnell, who’s in Southern Command.”

“DiNozzo’s not going down there without someone to watch his six, Jethro,” Tom said firmly, pulling out his cell phone and scrolling through his contact list.

“Yeah, well, Dir-ect-or, I only have one agent, in case it’s escaped your attention,” Gibbs replied snidely.

Snorting, Morrow responded, “Oh trust me, I’m well aware,” before he started conversing with someone.

“Good afternoon, Agent Yates. I know I told you to stand down for two weeks, but I wondered how you felt about taking a quick trip to Paraguay with Agent DiNozzo. He needs some backup.”

He listened before grinning at DiNozzo. “Excellent. I’ll make the flight arrangements. Report back here asap.”

After hanging up, he looked at DiNozzo. “Agent Yates will be going with you, Agent DiNozzo. Watch out for each other down there. Ciudad del Este is a dangerous place, and Purcell is clearly a spook. Probably CIA, so don’t let your guard down.”

“Yes, Sir,” Tony said, standing up. “Guess I better pack,” he said, getting ready to leave Tom’s office.

“And Agent DiNozzo, just so there is no confusion, as the senior field agent, you are the lead agent for this mission,” Morrow said firmly. “I’ll be emphasising that to Agent Yates so there’s no misunderstanding, not that I would expect anything less from such a fine agent as Cassie. Still, I’ve learnt over the years that having no ambiguity around the chain of command is crucial in the field,” he said with an exaggerated look at Gibbs, who was not impressed at all.

DiNozzo, with a million-watt grin, nodded his agreement before hastily departing.

Scowling at him, Gibbs retorted angrily. “Not very subtle, Tom!”

“When it comes to dealing with you, Jethro, I’ve learned through bitter experience that blunt works better,” he said unapologetically.

“You deliberately undermined my authority with DiNozzo,” Gibbs accused his boss.

Tom rolled his eyes. “Pot, meet kettle, Senior Supervisory Agent. Tell me, Jethro, how does it feel when the shoe is on the other foot, hmm?”

“My TEAM, my RULES, Director!”

“Ah yes, and how is that working out for you, Jethro?” he chucked as Gibbs stood up and stomped out of his office in a fit of pique. Sometimes, the man could act like such a child. It would be hilarious if it weren’t so fucking serious!

After Agents DiNozzo and Yates arrived in Ciudad del Este, things quickly began to heat up. They teamed up with their local contact, Joe Tabarez, a former Marine. He told them that while he’d worked with Guyman Purcell, who was CIA, and admitted that the man was a capable agent, he found him creepy. Joe soon identified the beautiful brunette on Purcell’s website as Anna Real, Guyman’s 17-year-old wife, whom he’d been with for three years.

Creepy indeed!

Despite Tabarez reporting Purcell’s paedophile behaviour to his superiors, nothing was ever done about it. Gibbs had been incensed by it – giving Bushnell shit for condoning it. The Marine colonel was angry, stating that he didn’t condone Purcell’s behaviour, nor did he know about it. Said he was going to start kicking ass, though, and get to the bottom of it.

Meanwhile, Agents Yates and DiNozzo had easily managed to track down Purcell by bugging one of his contacts with their satnav phone; some shady guy called Iggy, who then led them right to the spook. Purcell was about to kill his wife, Anna, aiming a silenced gun at her head when they burst into the room. Contrary to Abby’s belief that Anna had been killed and her eyes mailed to PO Horlacher, the teenager was still very much alive, although she wouldn’t have been if they hadn’t found her when they did. Unfortunately, Escopeta 794 had slipped up and killed her younger sister by mistake. Yates and DiNozzo were able to stop him from killing Anna and they’d taken the spook into custody.

Back at the Tactical Analysis Team headquarters, after interviewing Ann, they realised that there had never been a kidnapping ring. Escopeta 794 was an assassin for hire, and Horlacher had undertaken to act as Purcell’s agent, contracting him to kill Anna Purcell nee Real. Her ‘husband’ Purcell wanted her dead because she intended to rat him out to the Paraguay authorities regarding his illegal activities. She informed the NCIS agents that Purcell wasn’t just gathering intel from the criminal gangs in Ciudad del Este. He was running some of the drugs, organ harvesting, and child prostitution rings himself.

Disgusted by the man, they told him he would see out his days in Fort Leavenworth, but Purcell laughed at their naivete. He told them it was his job to infiltrate these criminal groups, and he was very good at it. It made him supremely confident that the people who employed him would see to it that he never faced any consequences for his actions. Guyman knew he was untouchable. Eventually, he would make Anna pay for thinking he could be brought down by a seventeen-year-old.

Gibbs heard back from his old Marine buddy, Colonel Bushnell, who informed him bitterly that some heavy hitters were ordering him to protect their asset, Guyman Purcell, at all costs. Since the commander of Southern Command was a grandfather as well as a Marine and couldn’t follow those orders and turn a blind eye to Purcell’s paedophilia, he had no other choice but to resign in protest. But Gibbs had a better idea, planning to blackmail Purcell’s handler, even if his identity was shrouded in secrecy. With the help of Colonel Bushnell, who’d managed to contact Purcell’s mysterious CIA handler, Derry Hume (a communications expert who worked in MTAC) successfully diverted the communication link to NCIS.

The CIA contact was male, but other than that, there is no way to identify him. The creepy fucker’s entire face and body were covered in shadow, contributing to his intimidatory air. However, as Tom knew, Gibbs had massive sized steel balls and wasn’t easily intimidated, especially when kids were hurt. He was also willing and able to bulldoze his way through anyone to get what he wanted – and he wanted Purcell desperately.

Jethro had identified himself as NCIS, making no attempt to hide his identity, going immediately on the offensive by blackmailing the anonymous creepy CIA operative. Either they gave him Purcell to throw in jail for the rest of his life, or Gibbs would compromise the true identity of a Mossad operative, Ari Haswari who was undercover as a terrorist. He demanded to know what was more important to the CIA: their link to Hamas or protecting a paedophile?

After essentially threatening the CIA operative by threatening to blow the cover of their mole in Hamas, he told Creepy CIA Guy it was his choice and hung up on him. Of course, hanging up on him was par for the course with Gibbs – he did it with people he worked with and even people he liked. But Tom was sure that Purcell’s handler probably didn’t know that and would have seen it as a statement of contempt (which it most certainly was), but also intended as an implicit message that he wouldn’t be trifled with.

Back in Ciudad del Este, per, DiNozzo’s report, Joe Tabarez interrupted the two NCIS agents’ interrogation of Purcell. He came in and uncuffed the piece of filthy scum, telling Tony he wished DiNozzo had killed Purcell when he had the opportunity. Cassie demanded to know what Joe was doing.

Tabarez replied angrily, “I’m following my orders.”

Purcell, wearing a look of smug triumph, then took his leave, telling the trio of disillusioned agents, “I have a job to do.”

Meanwhile, back in MTAC, Gibbs was waiting to see who would blink first in the dangerous high-stakes game he was playing with the anonymous spook. Derry Hume suddenly announced that there was another encrypted transmission incoming.

Gibbs told the comms analyst to put it through, only to see a smug Purcell up there on the big screen, walking down the street in Ciudad del Este, singing to himself. A split second before it happened, Gibbs realised he was witnessing Purcell’s hit as a sniper took him down cleanly with a single shot to the head. He would have DiNozzo confirm the prick was truly dead, but he didn’t think there was enough time to fake his assassination. Once confirmed, then he and Yates could come home. It probably wasn’t the safest place for them to be after what transpired.

Morrow had agreed with his assessment. He wanted them back home ASAP!

But what worried the director then, and still continued to do so, was that right after Purcell was taken out, the spook appeared, silently looking at Gibbs before going dark. Tom felt it was ominous and very probably intended to intimidate, although Gibbs wasn’t the sort to get spooked easily. Most people attributed his cavalier disregard for psychological mind games, like his mentor Mike Franks, Jethro kept a dirt file with all the dead bodies as an insurance policy that made him believe he was bulletproof.

That belief was what had stopped the CIA from doing unto him what they’d been forced to do to Purcell. It was why Tom was intensely cynical about this sudden ‘job offer’ that had appeared out of thin air. And he intended to do some digging to find out why it suddenly popped up just after Gibbs threatened to compromise Haswari’s cover. He was pretty sure that must have pissed off not just the CIA but Mossad too.

Time to do some sleuthing!

—

Notes

Enucleated – surgical removal e.g. of a tumour or gland, or the eyeball intact from its surrounding capsule. When an eyeball is enucleated, as much of the optic nerve as possible should be removed intact.

Chapter 18

After Tony and Cassie returned from Ciudad del Estes, life went back to normal. Well, whatever counted as normal in this new topsy-turvy world after ‘the incident’ that he and Gibbs never discussed. The one that resulted in Tim and Cate’s removal from the team and subsequent suspension.

Although the disciplinary action ‘finally’ imposed by SECNAV seemed fairly weak – a month’s suspension without pay and a formal censure in their personnel files, Tony expected that both would be back ASAP and as unbearably bumptious as ever. No, that wasn’t true. He expected they’d return, just be extremely pissed off at him for getting them into deep shit. Not that it was his fault that the deputy manager of HR was in the bullpen when they decided they were qualified to lecture him on how to investigate an attempted rape case.

Except, to his surprise, it now appeared that the pair had decided not to return to the MCRT. Tony had to admit, he did not see that one coming even if Cate had told him she was thinking about asking for a transfer. It looked like they’s both decided they liked being on their new teams more. No – that wouldn’t wash because neither had applied to stay with those teams – it was just Gibbs who insisted that four agents made up a team, so theoretically, there was no reason why Cate and Tim couldn’t have stayed on Mo or Shep’s teams. So, he’d done some digging and discovered that neither agent had been given an easy ride by the other agents, and it hadn’t just been the senior field agents or the senior supervisory agents who’d given them hell, either. It turned out that no one had been particularly impressed by their antics or Gibbs’ blatant ignoring of chain-of-command issues.

It made it even more incomprehensible that they hadn’t rushed back to the welcoming arms of Gibbs’ MCRT after serving out their suspensions. Tony was fairly certain that the Boss pulled strings for them to be let off so lightly. Which probably explained why Gibbs was so out of sorts. He could tell he was still angry with Tony about the scene in the bullpen during the Jeremy Davison case. He’d been steeling himself for his dressing down and the retribution Gibbs wanted to dole out ever since it happened, but it never came.

Intellectually, he knew that Gibbs was mindful that Tony might resign, which wasn’t too far from the truth. With Tony being the only agent who stood between Jethro keeping the MCRT up and running and maintaining their excellent solve rate or having to begin again from scratch, the Boss was trying very hard not to lose his temper. The only problem was that anger was Gibbs’ go-to emotion. Although Tony once accused him of being a functional mute, he would also be forced to admit that Leroy Jethro Gibbs had no difficulty expressing himself when communicating angry feelings. Everyone was used to him emoting his rage all over the bullpen.

Having to rein himself in was like waiting for a volcano to erupt but not knowing when it would. There was no IF it would happen – it was inevitable that sooner rather than later, Volcano Gibbs would blow. His anger was likely to consume anyone in its path. While dreading it, to be honest, Tony kind of wished he’d get it over and done with as the waiting was killing him.

Yet, for now, things had ostensibly returned to the days before Todd and McGee joined them at the MCRT. Cases kept coming, and the MCRT kept solving them. Everything was normal…and yet not!

Before, when they were a two-agent team, Tony had trusted Gibbs implicitly, and everyone commented on how seamless their partnership was. Now Tony knew that if the Boss could pester Todd or McGee into returning, their current fragile partnership would vanish like a puff of air, and he would once again be placed on the same footing as the rookies, even though he had almost ten years of experience in law enforcement. So the unerring trust between them wasn’t there anymore. It was why he’d decided to find a new team – hopefully at NCIS. If not, he had standing job offers at the FBI, DEA, and FTA, although the latter two agencies wanted him, mostly for his undercover work, and Tony was greedy. He liked doing undercover work but loved investigatory work, too.

Probably because he was good at it, with a brain that uniquely processed information, it made him a natural investigator. So, maybe he would settle for the FBI, even though Fornell worked there. But with just the two of them on the MCRT, he also felt it would be a low act to ask for a transfer when Gibbs didn’t have any other agents. What was desperately needed was to recruit some experienced agents and, then he could leave in good conscience – except he knew that Gibbs wouldn’t agree to do that without a gun to his head.

The Boss preferred to take on newbies to train them to follow his rules and ignore or skate around the regulations and procedures that other teams operated under. Any experienced/trained agents would have an ingrained respect for the chain of command, just like they would be well versed in laws that governed how evidence was collected. They’d know and respect that evidence obtained illegally was not admissible in a court of law: neither military hearings nor civilian law courts. Tony was the only experienced agent Gibbs had hired. He knew that his insistence that they followed the law, had warrants to search, informed suspects of their rights and respected them when they lawyered up, had pissed Gibbs off. He just didn’t seem to get that a high closure rate was meaningless if their conviction rate didn’t match it.

And really, Gibbs must have known that it mattered to Tony. He knew that Gibbs had asked Pacci to carry out a background check of his police and professional life before engineering his move to NCIS. It would have been in his jacket that Tony had lodged a complaint about dodgy forensic processing while he was a detective at Baltimore Homicide. He was obsessive about following procedure, so he wasn’t sure what Gibbs had been thinking when he decided Tony would be a good fit on his team. Maybe he had no clue that much of his clandestine nightly activities in the bullpen after midnight was not him trying to keep up with paperwork but looking for ways to make sure the crucial evidence needed to convict their perps wouldn’t get peremptorily thrown out of court.

Of course, Gibbs never thought that laws and rules applied to him and, by extension – his team, but ever since the debacle at the Bin Atwa bust in Spain a few months before the Air Force One case of the murdered football carrier, he’d been much worse.

So, while Cassie Yates returned to undercover work in Norfolk, Gibbs and Tony continued to work as partners on several cases. He’d tried to suggest that Cassie would be good for the MCRT after the successful mission to Ciudad del Este, but Gibbs rejected the idea, saying that Cate and McGee would be back, it just would take them a while to see they’d made a mistake. Cassie had been equally unequivocal when he’d suggested it.

“I loved working with you when Chris and I teamed up with you both, but I can’t work for Gibbs anymore, Tony. I’m sorry.”

Tony had hoped she would at least consider it. “Won’t you at least think about it, Cass?”

“Sorry, T. You know I’d love to work with you because you have so much undercover experience plus, you’re a natural investigator.”

“Thanks, Yates, you’re a boon to my ego,” he joked. “So what’s the problem?”

She sighed. “It’s Gibbs. He’s changed, and I’m not prepared to abandon what I believe in to work with him. Sooner or later, he’d want me to corrupt my ethics, and I refuse to do that,” she said with conviction.

Privately, he was disappointed but understood why Cassie didn’t want to work on the MCRT. When Cate and Tim were on the team, he had to fight tooth and nail to stop the team from stomping all over the law while investigating cases.

So while Gibbs was tilting at windmills, convinced that Cate or McGee, hopefully, both would come to their senses after their mandatory month’s suspension was up, he and Tony bumbled along. They worked cases together in tacit if uneasy détente where Tony was afforded more respect and acknowledgement of his skills than he’d received since the team took on its two rookie agents. But privately, Tony accepted that it was a surreal and transient state that couldn’t continue forever.

His sense of trust in Gibbs had been compromised, and there was no going back. In his mind, it was just a question of when he would finally ask for a transfer or if that was refused, then Tony would tender his resignation. At least he’d managed to last almost twice as long at NCIS as at Peoria, Philly, and Baltimore. That had to count for something!

~oOo~

The first couple of cases that the MCRT caught after the Guyman Purcell case were relatively straightforward. Case number one involved Petty Officer Tiffany Jordan, serving on the USS Monroe and she had just arrived back in Norfolk after 57 days at sea. Within a day of coming home, Jordan who was entered in a bikini competition at Virginia Beach, was dead, murdered before she could take part, and drowned in a public toilet. Initially, they thought she might have been killed by her stalker, a Jonathon Redding, who’d been charged with assault and battery of an ex-girlfriend in 2001. He also had two priors – violating a restraining order of another ex and possessing narcotics.

Jordan had previously posed nude for GSM magazine and was subsequently reprimanded by her superiors. While incarcerated, Redding’s former cellmate, Luke Walters, told them that Redding stared at her pictures in GSM for hours at a time, and wrote her fan letters while he was in jail. After he was released 13 days before she died, the parolee had sent flowers to her Norfolk apartment – indicating he’d learnt where she was living. When questioned, he admitted to delivering them in person but, Redding insisted he’d left them at her front door when she wasn’t home. His behaviour was certainly consistent with a stalker and, when they arrested him at a carwash where he worked after he tried to run away, it definitely did not help his case one little bit. Although denying he had anything to do with the petty officer’s death, he also admitted he was at Virginia Beach to watch Tiffany compete, although Redding swore that he never set eyes on her there.

After watching the footage of the competition, filmed by the Virginia cable television channel Volt Entertainment, Tony and Gibbs were disappointed to find that Jonathon Redding had been in clear sight of the stage the whole time, the cable program providing him with an alibi. He was definitely stalking the Petty Officer, his time in prison had done nothing to curb his predatorial behaviour towards women, but he didn’t kill her. Which left them back at square one.

They knew that one of her friends, a yoga teacher, Lisa Kerr (whose father ran a highly successful cupcake empire and who knew there was such a thing), had been called by Jordan roughly two hours before her death. Tony discovered that she had bought a home pregnancy test at Kings Bay, which indicated that she also knew she was having a baby. After interviewing Lisa, they learnt that she knew about the pregnancy. Furthermore, Tony discovered that she’d called someone. He presumed it was the baby-daddy from a public telephone, made to a burn phone, but the call hadn’t been answered. So, with Jonathon Redding’s unimpeachable alibi their suspicions turned to Tiffany’s boyfriend aka, the baby daddy.

Tracking him down wasn’t all that difficult – several slice-of-life photos in the GMS photospread that Tony believed were taken by her boyfriend proved vital in locating him. After learning that a freelance photographer, Jason Kaplan, had taken the nude photos, they went to interview the guy. He was doing a photo shoot with a trio of US Olympic athletes for the water polo team who were all wearing nothing apart from speedos and their water polo caps (to protect the players’ ears from the ball and to indicate the team and the player) and Tony couldn’t help grinning.

If Cate had still been on the team, he guaranteed she’d be drooling all over the guys and their muscles. Had it been the women’s US water polo team being photographed, she’d be sprouting off her deeply flawed opinion that the pictures were demeaning, claiming that women were treated as sex objects. However, she never objected to the objectification of males as sex objects, so it was clear to him that her version of feminism wasn’t about equality so much as it was getting even, or perhaps that sexual objectification was fine as long as it was just males.

Kaplan was very cooperative and kept good records, furnishing them with the photographer’s name who took the lingerie photos. Kevin Holt, Lisa Kerr’s fiancé, had taken the pictures and it turned out he was taking more than photos – he was the father of Tiffany’s baby. Just not her killer, as his fingerprints didn’t match the ones found at the crime scene. But his fiancé did! It seemed that Lisa Kerr, Tiffany’s ‘best friend’ had been keeping Kevin under close watch, reading his emails, and monitoring his phone calls, including his burn phone. Tony concluded that Holt had probably cheated on her before Tiffany, yet she’d decided to kill her friend to keep ‘her fiancé.’

While it didn’t seem logical, it wouldn’t be the first time a murderer acted illogically, and Tony was pretty sure it wouldn’t be the last. For what it was worth, their case was pretty solid, and aside from her trip up in interrogation, her fingerprints matched the ones they’d found at the crime scene. To add insult to injury, reviewing the Volt Entertainment footage, they caught Kerr’s car at the bikini competition and their sleazebag, Jonathon Redding picked Lisa out of a lineup, placing her as going into the women’s toilets around the time of Tiffany Jordan’s death.

Lisa Kerr would need all of her daddy’s cupcakes to hire a defence team, but it was doubtful they’d be able to obtain an acquittal. Plus, it was pretty likely that Kevin Holt would not be hanging around holding her hand or waiting until she got out of jail. He didn’t strike Tony as exactly the monogamous or celibate type!

The case after Jordan’s, although tragic for Petty Officer Jessica Smith, was also fairly straightforward. Although he couldn’t help wondering why was it always the female PO who were victims. He and Gibbs had worked the case part of the way through before Fornell joined them after they discovered that the Fibbies were investigating PO Smith’s commanding officer Captain Ross, who also worked at the Pentagon.

They’d learnt that Jessica had previously been admitted to a mental health facility, diagnosed with a brief reactive psychosis after her fiancé died in Iraq. After her discharge, Jessica called first the cops for help, insisting she was being threatened by someone, but she didn’t know who. Her psychiatrist turned up, insisting she was delusional, and Tony found it highly suspicious that Commander Witten just happened to know she reached out to the cops, who although they were rather dismissive, had called NCIS in to investigate.

How did Witten find out about the call-out? He’d been most insistent about Smith being readmitted to his facility, and he promptly sedated her, effectively making it impossible for Gibbs and Tony to interview her. Suspicious much?

Less than twelve hours later, Smith was dead, murdered in a clumsy attempt to make it look like she committed suicide when, in fact, Ducky ruled that she had been smothered, and her body was hung after her death to make it look like she killed herself. The ME was incredibly incensed by the negligence of Commander Witten and the staff for not having her monitored adequately, and he ripped the psychiatrist a new one, and that was even before determining that the suicide had been faked.

Once it was clear she’d been murdered and that it would have made enough noise to attract the attention of the staff, but didn’t, Ducky was even more scathing. His report to the relevant authorities was probably why Witten was removed as director of the facility. That and the fact that one of his staff was having an affair with one of their patients, which was why he wasn’t monitoring Jessica Smith the night she was brutally murdered.

That was before they learnt that the FBI was investigating Jessica Smith’s boss, Captain Vetter who worked at the Pentagon in the Department of Acquisitions. Vetter was suspected of taking kickbacks from contractors in exchange for them being awarded governmental contracts. Vetter had protested his innocence and had expressed his fondness for PO Smith, saying he regarded her like a daughter and was sorry for her psychotic break when her fiancé died.

Fornell admitted that PO Smith had been questioned, too. Not just questioned, it seemed. The FBI knew about the death of her fiancé and had pressured her, knowing she was psychologically vulnerable. They’d even coerced Jessica into wearing a wire for them to try to incriminate Vetter, an admission that had infuriated Gibbs. Not that it was exactly a big surprise, given he was already pissed off about the FBI secretly investigating Capt. Vetter and not informing NCIS.

Learning that the captain had served aboard USS Kennedy back in 1991 at the same time as Commander Witten, gave credence to the theory the commander was colluding with Vetter. By creating the illusion that Jessica Smith was suffering from hallucinations and was paranoid, anything she might have to say about her CO would not be admissible in a military tribunal, nor would it be taken seriously by the FBI. It also was logical to assume that if she had incriminating evidence of Vetter’s corruption, then he had an excellent motive to murder her and try to make it look like a suicide.

After learning from Catherine Reynolds (the hyper-sexed) patient at Bethesda whom Jessica had unfortunately confided in, along with Reynolds lover/partner in crime, former PO Lynn Symons, that she was having an affair with a married man who was also her commanding officer, it gave them further reason to interrogate the captain. While they hauled him into NCIS to ‘chat’ Gibbs took great delight in interviewing Audrey Vetter about her husband’s whereabouts the night that Jessica Smith was murdered. While initially hostile towards NCIS, who she viewed as trying to set up her husband, the revelation that her husband was having an affair with PO Smith and was intending to divorce Audrey had her recanting the alibi she’d provided for her husband the night of Jessica Smith’s death.

Not that he hadn’t seen it plenty enough times as a cop or an agent, but Tony wondered what motivated these women. Audrey Vetter hadn’t needed much convincing that her husband was cheating on her, so on some level, she must have already suspected it and was trying to pretend everything was peachy keen. And there was Jessica Smith, who was engaged to be married and yet chose to have an affair with her boss, who was also old enough to be her father. Did she honestly think that she could trust Vetter not to cheat on her if someone better came along? He was already cheating on his wife!

Still, with Audrey ready to rat out her husband, saying she had no idea where he was the night Smith was killed since he wasn’t at home, it gave Gibbs and Fornell a chance to interrogate Vetter pretty aggressively. After he claimed to have been at home with his wife, only to be informed she said he went out, he’d learnt that Gibbs told her he had been sleeping with Smith and realised he was in deep shit. Proclaiming his innocence of his lover’s death, he admitted that he had taken kickbacks – $800,000 worth and that Jessica had found out about it, so they were able to crack the case wide open. Vetter told them where the money was stashed, and they were able to set up surveillance, catching Lynn Simons and Catherine Reynolds, to whom Jessica had revealed where the money was hidden, possibly doing so while drugged up to the eyeballs by Witten.

Once arrested, Reynolds was quick to implicate Witten, whom she was also having an affair with, while also ‘knocking boots’ with corpsman Timothy Morgan and Lynn Simons. Tony reflected the term oversexed was the correct one to use in his report – having affairs with three people at once was pretty ballsy. She also revealed that Witten had owed Vetter a favour from his time aboard the Kennedy when the then XO Commander Vetter had caught him drunk on duty and covered it up. So, when Vetter called in his marker, wanting the FBI to lay off his girlfriend by making her seem crazy, Witten reluctantly agreed. He had no idea that Reynolds and Simons had managed to persuade Smith into spilling her guts about her affair or the money because she felt abandoned by her lover.

The only one DiNozzo had any real sympathy for was Audrey Vetter, and while he wondered if she had lied about Capt. Vetter’s alibi because she wanted revenge on him for being unfaithful, neither he nor Gibbs would ever ask her. That would be up to JAG, and there were times when plausible deniability kept you sane. She was the wronged party in all of this, she certainly didn’t deserve to be charged with lying in a federal investigation.

Meanwhile, Fornell was ecstatic that they’d closed the Captain Vetter case and recovered the money, while Ducky used his considerable pull to ensure that Witten faced his deserved punishment of losing his licence and was also given a BCD by the navy. Tony was sure that Catherine Reynolds would end up locked up on a murder-one charge and knocking boots with multiple prison guards but would feel no remorse. She was obviously a sociopath and understood the concept of right and wrong; Reynolds simply wasn’t capable of feeling empathy for others or remorse for her actions to others. It was a depressing case, if you looked at how inherently unlikeable most of those involved truly were. Even PO Jessica Smith was far from the innocent one in all of this, although she didn’t deserve to die violently or be in fear for her life…no one did.

The only innocents in all of this were Vetter’s three kids, all in their twenties (and of a similar age to PO Smith) and to a lesser extent Audrey his longsuffering and faithful spouse, who had been treated like dirt, even though she lied for him.

Chapter 19

Special Agent Cassie Yates was on a street corner in Norfolk’s small but very active red-light district. Even though she still had ten days leave between her trip to Paraguay with DiNozzo and her new UC gig – a joint mission with ATF investigating US guns ending up in the Middle East, she was undercover. There was a batch of Ecstasy on the streets that had caused the death of a young Marine private, Lieth Dawes and an ensign, Janie Carter, in the past two weeks. Cassie had volunteered to go in as her alter-ego Candi Stripes to try to pick up chatter on who was pushing the bad batch of Ecstasy, despite not being on duty. The Marine Amphibious strike group consisting of five ships were due back in Norfolk in one month and the toxic batch of drugs posed a real threat to the returning service personnel if they weren’t able to track them down and get rid of them.

They could be looking at who knew how many tragic deaths or disability of the young Marines and sailors looking to let off steam at dance venues after spending months at sea. You could warn them about the dangers posed by the toxic batch of E being on the streets but most of these youngsters believed they were bulletproof. They genuinely believed that nothing bad was going to happen to them…until it did. At this point, it was often too late to save them from their own poor judgement.

At least hanging around with the Norfolk sex workers wearing skin-tight clothes in April was a lot less likely to involve earning herself a case of frostbite than in November. She was grateful that the bad batch of drugs was circulating mid spring, but Cassie was still feeling less enamoured with the whole undercover gig at the moment. She supposed it was understandable though, having just returned from a mission to Ciudad del Estes with Tony DiNozzo a couple of weeks ago. It had been her first trip out of the country since becoming a federal agent more than five years ago.

She’d started out on Christopher Pacci’s team as the probie, fresh out of FLETC training, back in the day when his team investigated white-collar crimes. Her fine arts degree, along with her family’s proud legacy of her mother and two of her uncles being cops, made the decision to join NCIS when Associate Director Owen Granger recruited her following her college graduation a simple one. Her grandfather had been in the Navy, and she’d decided to start her career in the small agency, investigating crimes against Navy and Marine service personnel and enforcing the law when they broke it. Cassie figured if it wasn’t to her liking, she could always leave and apply to work for one of the civilian law enforcement agencies later on, no harm no foul.

After attending federal law enforcement training college, doing more than the standard investigative courses, eager to soak up as much training and knowledge as Cassie could, she soon enough found herself on Pacci’s team. Five years ago, he was the white-collar crimes team leader – his own background was a CPA before someone recruited the young mild-mannered accountant to become a Fed. With Cassie’s background and education, it made her a natural fit for his team and for several years it was a match made in heaven. Chris with his background in forensic accountancy and her fine arts knowledge, worked together admirably with Tess Jenkins, a tough-as-nails, take-no-prisoner kind of agent, skilled in getting the truth out of suspects. She was Pacci’s senior field agent and a former ATF agent, who had more field experience than the rest of the team put together.

And then there was their fourth team member – junior agent Wes Moreland. Despite his physique, six foot four with broad shoulders and bulging biceps, plus a nose that had been broken one too many times from his short-lived football career (several years in the minor leagues before realising he’d gone as far as he could) which made people give him a wide berth. Yet, as intimidating as he seemed, Wes was nothing but a teddy bear and fiercely protective of his team. Cassie had no doubt the guy would have taken a bullet for any of his team or fellow agents. So, it came as no surprise that when a toddler who was wandering the streets alone, strolled onto the road while they were out in the field, he’d rushed to save the little boy, pushing him out of the way but getting hit by a vehicle and severing his spine.

Despite becoming a paraplegic, Wes had retrained and became a FLETC instructor, but then their team shrunk even more when Tess had to leave six months later to care for her dad, who was dying. Cassie and Pacci found themselves assigned to cold cases as they tried to find replacements with the requirements needed to join the white-collar team. It was a task that wasn’t so easy since the FBI tended to snaffle up anyone with the unique set of skills they were looking for to balance out the team.

At first, Cassie had been restless, but settled in, realising that while cold cases weren’t exactly sexy by most people’s definition of law enforcement, it was giving her a chance to work on a variety of cases that she might never have been given an opportunity to otherwise. She worked on murder, espionage, robbery, and sex crimes, and because it was just her and Pacci, she also got a chance to work with the MCRT whenever their cold case turned hot, and they needed help to take someone down.

Given the reputation of the DC major case response team, that as often as not consisted of SSA Gibbs and his senior field agent Anthony DiNozzo along with however had been TAD or when it was just the two of them in between TADs, working with them, Cassie had viewed it as the opportunity of a lifetime. Gibbs was a former gunnery sergeant in the Marines – a sniper and Tony was a former cop – one of the youngest to ever earn a gold shield. He was a natural investigator and also one of the most talented undercover operatives in the US, who consistently received job offers from all the alphabets wanting to recruit him. Sometimes on stakeouts when she worked with him, he would while away the boring hours waiting for something to break by recounting stories of undercover Ops that whetted Cassie’s appetite for doing UC missions. Back at college, her minor had been drama – she was pretty good at acting and thought that undercover work might be something she could excel at, too.

Confiding in Tony, he encouraged her and started training her, borrowing her occasionally for simple ops where they needed a female agent. It made her even keener on doing more than short stints undercover. Tony’s tales of his time as a vice cop made Cassie determined to work undercover. But she had been reluctant to leave Chris since The Powers That Be hadn’t found him any other agents to replace Tess and Wes. Apparently, since 9/11 and the subsequent War on Terror, SECNAV’s appetite to form white-collar crime teams dwindled to non-existent. Financial resources were being redirected into intelligence and counterintelligence, and white-collar crimes were now being handled by MCRT and regular investigative teams on an ad hoc basis.

Chris understood that Cassie was getting restless, wanting more fieldwork than Cold Cases provided and ever the pragmatist, told her that as an SSA, he was likely to only get a team lead if someone left, otherwise he’d been stuck investigating cold cases until he retired. He encouraged her to apply for the position at Norfolk, where they were looking for someone to go undercover. He told her that he was almost certain that Gibbs and DiNozzo would give her recommendations, along with his own and he was right. But Tony’s recommendation had really clinched the job for Cassie.

At the time, although she was thrilled to be offered a position that would get her out into the field regularly, she had been disappointed that Gibbs never offered her a job on his team. Especially, after hearing from Pacci all about his latest pick, who had no investigative experience. He hired a Secret Service agent who had resigned in disgrace after breaking the fraternisation regulations with the POTUS’ football carrier, who was killed by the same terrorists who unsuccessfully tried to kill the president on her watch – the assassin was a journalist she’d vetted. Tony had also confided to Chris, that she questioned why he was bothering to do crime scene sketches of the body of the poisoned naval officer picked to carry the nuclear codes in place of her lover, who’d called in sick. She’d argued that since he’d already taken lots of photographs of the crime scene Commander Trapp’s body, he didn’t need sketches too. Cassie and Chris had a good chuckle over that anecdote – clearly, any theory of crime scene investigation she would have been exposed to at FLETC before joining the protective division of the Secret Service had gone in one ear and out the other.

When she wondered why Caitlin Todd had been hired, Pacci had grimaced, saying that she was quickly promoted for her psychological profiling skills and Jethro had decided she was what he was looking for. Wondering, at his grimace since Chris was a pretty non-judgemental guy, she asked him about it. He told her in confidence (since she was his probie and always would be), that when Gibbs had been thinking of hiring DiNozzo, he’d had Chris run a deep dive on the Baltimore cop. But when he hired Todd, he went with his gut. Chris had decided to run his own background check on the newest member of the MCRT and had not been exactly impressed with what he learnt.

Her FLETC scores for practical subjects like hand-to-hand combat, firearms training and terrorism had been excellent as one would expect in her role, but her theoretical investigative subjects were adequate but hardly brilliant. Most of her lecturers noted that Ms Todd was focused on working for the protective detail on the Secret Service and therefore wasn’t focused on the more specialised investigatory or forensic courses, choosing to focus her energy on subjects she felt would assist her in her chosen field.

“And I checked out her much-touted profiling skills, Probie,” Chris said scathingly. “It was not psychological profiling like we do, just a truncated course in threat assessment of potential terrorists or crazies in crowds. Her actual psychological knowledge was a couple of basic undergrad units at college.”

“So Gibbs’ gut isn’t so all fire perfect after all,” Cass had observed wryly.

She was even more surprised when she learned that the very green case agent assigned to the Norfolk Naval Base was according to Chris’s intuition probably going to be recruited to his team after Cate Todd’s probationary period was completed. Gibbs meanwhile was calling McGee in as TAD even though he was a three-hour drive away at the Norfolk office, and there were plenty of spare TADs in the pool, right there in DC.

Cassie had heard he was reputedly a whizz when it came to IT and computers in general but was also extremely nervous, almost wetting himself if he had to interact with the base commandant and stuttered noticeably under pressure. Although she liked the young agent and was happy to encourage his dreams of one day being on a field team, realistically, Cassie thought he could be waiting for a while before he got a chance, if Cyber Crimes didn’t snap him up in the meantime.

When she heard that despite having NO investigative experience, Gibbs started using him TAD and was going to give him a much-prized spot on the MCRT, Cassie admitted to Chris she was struck dumb and more than a little bit jealous. She’d worked with Gibbs and Tony on maybe thirty cases over her years at the DC office, and Tony had coached her in undercover work. Gibbs knew she was looking to get away from cold cases and had Chris’ blessing to find a new team and yet he hadn’t offered her a shot on his team. While everyone still referred to Cass as Pacci’s probie, she was way more experienced as a field agent and investigator than Todd or McGee was.

Chris never got to see that his prediction had been proved right, Cassie thought sadly on a visit to the DC office just after Tim was appointed to the MCRT last October. She’d just finished up an undercover mission and, was in DC for the hens’ night of Rosa Espinoza, a female Agent she was friendly with when she worked on Chris’ team. She’d called in to say hi to some of her old colleagues plus, she also intended to pick Tony’s brain about an upcoming undercover mission between the Norfolk PD and NCIS as he was generous in helping her out. McGee was looking right at home in the fourth desk in the MCRT bullpen even though Agent Todd was only a couple of weeks out of her probation period. Chris had called it correctly when he said Gibbs had only been waiting for her to become a full agent before he appointed Tim to the team but even though she was a fully-fledged agent, as an investigator, she was still a neophyte. Poor Dino now had two rookies to train and keep Gibbs happy.

She smiled wistfully to see McGee looking at home in the bullpen as she stood there remembering the times she and Pacci had teamed up with Gibbs and Dino. No one seemed to notice her arrival, and she watched in disbelief, scarcely able to believe what happened next. In the absence of Gibbs, probably out on one of his multiple daily coffee runs or in MTAC, the former Secret Service agent was holding forth, issuing orders about what the three agents should be doing.

An agent who was barely out of her own probationary period was giving orders to her senior field agent and the team’s newest agent, who was also a probationary agent while berating DiNozzo about being a male chauvinist pig and a predator of women. When Tony tried to get McGee to redo his mission report, telling him his language was too ambiguous and needed to be clearer, you could have knocked her down with a feather when he sneered.

“Gibbs said that he’s the only one who gives me orders, Tony. You’re not Gibbs and I think my report’s fine the way it is. What would a Phys Ed major from OSU know about it anyway,” he told the SFA rudely.

What the Hell! Cass wondered what the hell had happened to the unassuming puppy-like-wanting-to-please mien of the agent she’d encountered in Norfolk. Seems like he’d gone awol!

Meanwhile, Tim was compounding his assholery by saying, “I have two degrees in academic areas from Johns Hopkins and MIT, so I think I know a great deal more about how to write reports that a washed-up aging jock. Gibbs said that the first time you submitted a report you had to rewrite it five times,” he goaded his SFA arrogantly.

What really shocked Cassie was Tony. She was expecting him to get all up in Tim’s face since it was absolutely within his rights as an SFA to check over their reports and call them on them if they were deficient. While DiNozzo was a fairly easy-going guy, back when she worked for Pacci, she’d seen him get up in Gibbs’ face when he did something dumbass or dangerous. He never hesitated to call him on his shit when he went too far and surprisingly, Gibbs would sometimes back down. The first time he’d done it, everyone thought Tony would be fired, but oddly, Gibbs seemed to respect him for having the conjones to call him out when he went too far. So when Tony sighed and proceeded to carry out the revisions to McGee’s report himself after he left the bullpen, she was shocked beyond words.

Dragging Rick Balboa away for a coffee a few hours later, Cassie demanded to know what was happening on the MCRT. She knew that Chris had a soft spot for DiNozzo, and she knew why that was. Having run a comprehensive background check on him when Gibbs was working with him on a case, while he was a cop in Baltimore, Chris learnt things while investigating that had him protective of a young cop who became a federal agent. Cassie also knew that Chris co-opted Balboa to take over DiNozzo’s duties if anything happened to him. With that in mind, plus, Ric’s bullpen was right next to the MCRT, Cassie knew that Ric would have unique insight into the dramatic changes that had occurred to the team since her departure.

Several coffees later, Yates was still having difficulty coming to grips with what she’d seen with her own eyes. The SFA of the major case response team being openly disrespected by two probies – okay so technically, Todd was now no longer a probie…barely, but in practical terms, after just one year on the job, she was still very much a rookie. Yet she was ordering him around like she was the SFA, and he was the rookie and McGee. Had Gibbs demoted Tony for some reason and given Todd the SFA position? Tim was so far out of line refusing to follow orders but according to Rick, this was just a typical day for Gibbs’ new team.

“I don’t know Todd, but I do know McGee. I’ve worked with him occasionally when I needed intel undercover. He always seemed properly respectful, polite, and helpful. If I had to identify a flaw, I’d have said his timidity (no pun intended) and his desire to avoid dealing with alpha males,” she said shaking her head. “What HAPPENED to him?”

“Gibbs,” Rick said succinctly. “As you know, he’d always been a hard ass, not above pulling pranks on his people but his idea of pranks is more like…” he paused looking for the right words to express himself.

“PsyOps,” Cassie finished. “He’s always loved mind fucking people, which is why I thought that Tim would be a giant mass of insecurities piled upon insecurities by now,” she replied.

“Instead, McGee is outright insubordinate, acting like an arrogant asshole. Plus, he was sounding like an insufferable know-it-all, obnoxiously boasting about his own degrees by openly disparaging Dino’s OSU degree in Physical Education. Evidently, the probie hadn’t bothered to acquaint himself with agency regs that stated it was mandatory for NCIS agents who held supervisory roles (including SFAs) to have a higher degree relevant to law enforcement. Tim’s undergrad and post-grad degrees were paid for by McGee’s parents so he could study full time, Tony had done his masters part-time while he worked as a cop. His undergrad degree that McGee mocked had been done on a scholarship and Tony worked a part-time job because DiNozzo’s asshole of a parent refused to pay for it.

Rick choked a little on his coffee at Cassie’s bluntness over Gibbs. “Yeah… err PsyOps, works,” he said a little awkwardly.

“After Todd was hired on, Gibbs suddenly decided that chain of command only applied to himself, not DiNozzo. Before then, he never had a problem with Tony supervising junior agents,” he said, looking bemused. “And he still expects him to do all the admin stuff attached to being a senior field agent, but he won’t let him carry out the practical part of his job.”

“So, how did that come about,” she asked Rick

“It was Todd’s second investigation, I believe. After Tony gave her a task at a crime scene before Gibbs arrived because the victim was on a beach and the tide was coming in…”

“So the evidence was in danger of being destroyed,” Cass said, filling in the blanks easily enough.

“Yep. That,” he growled. “Gibbs turns up and he immediately countermanded DiNozzo’s order and gave her some other job. She responded with the, ‘But Tony told me to do it,’ rejoinder and Gibbs told her that the only person who told her what to do was himself. In front of that Diane Fontaine from ZNN,” he growled.

“So, she took that to mean that she was Tony’s equal?”

“She was with the Secret Service for almost seven years. She knows he’s only been a federal agent for a little over three years,” he shrugged.

“And he has almost six years before that as a cop and homicide detective,” she snarked. “Seriously, Gibbs undercut Dino in front of that bitch from ZNN?” Fontaine tried to get Cassie to give her an interview despite knowing Cassie was an undercover agent and appearing on camera could blow her cover and or endanger her life.

Rick scowled. “Like way too many feds, Todd has an ingrained disrespect for cops. She believes her years in the Secret Service are more valuable than his; Gibbs undercutting his authority and not enforcing the chain of command merely reinforces her prejudices,” he said irately.

“So, by the time McGee joined the team, Tony’s position was well and truly undercut and the message is coming from both Todd and Gibbs,” Cassie finished.

“That’s about the size of it,” Balboa had said, stirring his second cup of coffee aimlessly.

“But even if Cate is completely inexperienced as an investigator, she was a federal agent and a profiler. Tim had barely finished a year working at Norfolk and had little if any field or investigative skills, so how can he possibly think that it beats Tony’s three-plus years working for Gibb, even if he ignores six years of previous law enforcement experience?”

“Because, with all the time he spent hanging around the MCRT bullpen during Todd’s probie year, he saw that she wasn’t treated like a probie, more like Tony’s equal. He witnessed all her disparaging remarks to DiNozzo, plus Gibbs’ head slapping Tony and verbal put-downs, he learnt as a TAD, that Tony had no real authority or respect.”

“I’m sorry, did you just say that Gibbs slaps Tony’s head? Since when?”

“Started happening on the regular after Agent Todd came aboard. Although DiNozzo told Pacci he did it once before he joined NCIS and Tony him not to,” Ric said

“So why hasn’t Gibbs been disciplined for such egregious behaviour,” she demanded heatedly. He certainly never pulled that crap while she and Chris worked with them.

“C’mon Cass. Ya think Chris never tried to stop it. He did, we all did, and nothing happened except maybe the head slaps increased in severity and occurrence. Scuttlebutt has it that Gibbs has something career-ending that SECNAV doesn’t want to see the light of day. There’s a pool going on about what the hell it might be,” he said with a touch of malicious glee.

“What’s your bet?” Cassie asked curiously.

“That he’s got six toes,” he said with a shrug. “Matt reckons it’s a hit and run, Charlie has that he’s a bigamist and Em reckons he has a DUI in drag,” he said, referring to the rest of the team.

Cassie shook her head. She missed these guys although she wasn’t familiar with Ric’s two newest team members.

Ric became serious. “And unfortunately, Todd is emulating Gibbs. Not head slaps, but she uses elbow jabs in the solar plexus, mostly on Tony but occasionally on Tim too and, Sciuto, has started punching people in the bicep or the shoulder,” he told her furiously.

“Wow! Talk about toxic workplaces,” she’d said disgustedly. Before I went to Norfolk, I had hopes Gibbs might give me a shot on the MCRT. I was so pissed when he recruited two total newbs when I had all that experience working for Pacci,” she said, remembering how humiliated she felt by his refusal to even give her a chance.

Although she hadn’t said so out loud, Rick seemed to read her mind.

“Look, Cassie. I reckon you were more than up to the task of joining the MCRT as a junior agent and they would have been damned lucky to have ya.”

Damn, Chris must have told Ric!

“But I honestly believe that he didn’t want you because you already had skills and investigative experience. Chris had drilled you on regulations and procedures, and I’ll bet that was precisely why Gibbs didn’t want you. He wanted inexperienced agents who he could bend and shape to his will, unlike DiNozzo who wouldn’t look the other way when he tried to ignore the law. I can see how it frustrates him when Tony calls him out on it.”

Yates had looked at him, poleaxed. “What happened to him, Rick? I know he was always a bastard, and he had his rules…but this is a whole other level of crazy!”

“Yeah, I know. Something changed, you’re right. After the MCRT caught Bin Atwa, he came back different…more intense. More bastard. Those mind fucks of his became more cruel, vindictive even. He started hoarding information on cases to one-up the rest of the team and he was even more driven to solve cases. He had crossed the line from being a hard ass to being abusive, but because they kept closing cases, everyone looked the other way or the agents who tried to sound a warning got slapped down.”

Cassie has been appalled and saddened by what she was hearing. She thought about Chris and what he’d think if he was here to see the young agent he’d taken under his wing when he came from Baltimore acting so beaten down. He’d been the first to see that Gibbs demanding perfection from his new agent was ultimately the wrong way to manage him. He was so eager to please and so hard on himself. Gibbs’ impossible-to-live-up-to standards of perfection only exacerbated his own tendency to work himself into the ground. He refused to take time off when he was sick or injured, even if he was prevented from going out in the field, which wasn’t a given when Gibbs was his boss. If forced out of the field by HR, he’d crawl in and make sure he worked phones and utilised his contacts to solve the case.

Chris had managed to persuade him to have a life outside of the office, especially after his fiancé dumped him on his ass the night before their wedding. He signed them all up, even Gibbs to play on the NCIS baseball team and encouraged Tony to join a law enforcement mural basketball league in DC, Virginia, and Maryland, knowing how much he loved playing.

Standing on the street corner hoping to get a lead on the toxic Ecstasy, Cassie decided that she’d try and get tickets to a game, baseball or basketball and drag Dino off to watch it and decompress. It must be difficult to work as a two-man team with Gibbs again. He had to be pissed off at the loss of both of his probies, and he was still insisting that sooner or later, they’d be back. Ric wasn’t as sanguine, though in the email he sent her though. Maybe she’d try and get tickets to a game for him and Matt, too. It would be fun to catch up with them again.

Cassie Yates had no way of knowing that she would catch up with them sooner than she planned, and it wouldn’t be as fun as she anticipated. Right now, her attention returned to the reason she was out here trying to get information about the killer batch of Ecstasy as a CI of hers turned up to start working. Hopefully, Fann Tazy would know something about who was selling this shit. Time to get to work!

Chapter 20

Tony arrived at work late, after being forced to take the bus to the Navy Yard because initially, he thought his car must have been impounded. He’d spent the night at a friend’s place not because he was tomcatting around as Cate would have accused him of doing had she been present, but because the friend had needed a shoulder to cry on. Viv had had a shitty day, lost one of her teammates and he’d gone over to support her, knowing how hard it was to see someone you worked with die and not be able to stop them from bleeding out. It had gotten late, and he ended up falling asleep on her couch, along with the FBI agent after a marathon crying session that may have involved a few too many scotches – another reason why he fell asleep when he was supposed to be offering comfort and support.

That said, he didn’t want Gibbs to know that Vivian Blackadder and he still socialised, despite Gibbs getting pissed off and firing her off the team. Tony liked his former partner. He’d never had siblings or a proper family if it came to that, but he knew that Viv was close to her big brother Rex from the stories she’d told him and knew his death on the U.S.S. Cole had a profound effect on her. It was why she’d transferred from the FBI to NCIS. She wanted to be a part of the hunt to bring down the terrorist Hussan Mohammed, who claimed responsibility for the attack on the U.S.S Cole, killing nineteen including, Rex Blackadder and wounding scores of others.

During their takedown of Hussan Mohammed, she messed up and almost caused the terrorist to get away.  Gibbs had been pissed him off at her and demanded her gone, despite Tony trying to argue mitigating circumstances for her freezing up and tipping off Mohammed, to no avail. The boss had been as obdurate as a granite wall, but at least Blackadder managed to get her old job back at the FBI and she and Tony had stayed in touch. It was good to have a friend, especially after Cassie left DC and who understood when dinner or movie plans had to be put on hold because of a case heated up. Particularly when Viv knew what it was like to have Gibbs for a boss, who worked his agents into the ground until the case was solved or they’d exhausted every lead, and it went cold (and woe betide the team should that happen), and Tony was equally understanding when Viv had to cancel.

When he’d dragged himself home last night, after tying up the odds and ends associated with the Sergeant Leeka murder case to JAG’s exacting standards, Tony was ready for a microwaved dinner, a quick shower, and a blissful eight hours of uninterrupted slumber. Gibbs who had disappeared already, dragged to the hospital by Ducky to have his injuries documented for the case, had still been at the ER when he finally left the Navy Yard and Tony headed home. But after listening to his landline messages, he’d turned around and headed back out to Viv’s place - 3400 Dumbarton, near Georgetown where he ended up spending the night although that hadn’t been his intention.

Now, this morning, having flattened his cell phone battery being placed on hold about his car three times as he had to catch the bus to the Navy Yard in the same clothes he wore yesterday, he was not in an upbeat mood. All he wanted was a couple of hours at the office to sort out where his car was, but Gibbs grabbed him and told him they were on their way to Norfolk – a three-hour drive – although Gibbs would knock roughly thirty minutes of the drive by driving like an utter lunatic. It was bad enough when he’d had a full night’s sleep, but today he was frustrated, sleep-deprived and not in the mood for spending several hours with Gibbs driving. He was still pretty pissed off with Gibbs over his blatant attempt to manipulate him in their last case at Waverly College with the dead NROTC midshipman and gunny, not to mention Steve Urkel.

The truth was that Tony was pretty sure if Gibbs had pulled that devious shit while Agents Todd and McGee were still on the team, he’d have probably been over the moon about it. But they weren’t, and he saw it for what it was – blatant manipulation but then Gibbs was always good at mind fucks!

Yep, he would have been so thrilled to finally getting some long overdue acknowledgement of his rank, albeit for Gibbs’ own cynical reasons after treating Tony like a damned probie ever since Cate had joined the team, which had only intensified tenfold when the McProbie joined the ranks. It would have undoubtedly bolstered his batter almost non-existent self-esteem. Unfortunately for Gibbs, with neither of Tony’s former teammates around so he could rub their noses in it, proving to them (and himself) that his almost decade of law enforcement mattered, somehow it was exactly the motivator he was guessing that Gibbs hoped it would be.

Sure it had gotten him fired up and his brain had made connections it might not have otherwise, he also saw it for the blatantly misanthropic stunt that Gibbs used on the regular to extract maximum mileage out of him. Gibbs knew that he was desperate for an acknowledgement after a childhood being ignored unless he’d done something wrong. His boss knew that as much as Tony revelled in attention and praise – having never experienced it as a child – he also had no idea how to handle it when he did receive it. And as someone who mistrusted the whole world, attention usually made him wonder why someone was giving him any. He knew he was messed up, but knowing he was and trying to rectify it were two entirely different matters.

Especially when, in this case, he was firmly convinced that Gibbs’ acknowledgement of his rank was purely exploitive and completely transactional. His boss knew better than anyone, which of Tony’s buttons to push. And push them, he did. Except that this time Tony recognised his manipulation for what it was…in real time, not several hours later. Plus, he was tired of Gibbs being the puppet master.

Tony was done being his faithful marionette. He deserved better!

Of course, this realisation that Gibbs was playing him was long overdue. It probably had a lot to do with Tony’s decision that for his own mental health, he needed to find someone else to work with, before his self-worth was completely eaten up in the lost cause of pleasing his boss. Tony had belatedly come to realise that Gibbs was simply incapable of being satisfied by his efforts.

Thus, with this newfound realisation filling his head, he concluded this was going to be a very long, very uncomfortable trip to Norfolk!

Of course, any normal boss or partner would have been sympathetic to his plight about his car, even if only because without it, he couldn’t drive to work outside of the bus’s scheduled hours. Yet Gibbs made it plain he didn’t give a flying fuck about what happened, expecting him to be solely focused on the job because that was all that mattered. TO HIM at least!

Hell… even if he didn’t give a damn about his agent, a normal human being would at least fake it but that would require Gibb to invest energy into their relationship. Energy that he saw as a waste of time when the case awaited.

The job, always the job!

Funny how his coffee runs were never called out by anyone for the travesty they were. If taking time out to put calories into flagging bodies or grab a few hours of rest was seen as interfering with the job, then surely his coffee addiction was just as gross a dereliction of duty.

Well, Tony needed more than the job – he was MORE than his job and finally, on the wild drive to Norfolk, he reached his limit after this case, he was done. He would hand in his resignation. Yes, he knew he was leaving the MCRT in the lurch, but he’d reached his limit. He couldn’t do it anymore. He just wasn’t tough enough to cope with Gibbs, who was superhuman.

Maybe it had been the dead FBI colleague of Viv’s that slapped him in the head with the realisation, that in their line of work, later might never come.

Time to effect a tactical withdrawal while there was still a part of him intact.

By the time he’d reached his decision to leave, they arrived at the self-storage unit where human remains had been discovered in the bed of a truck, stored in the unit that had been rented by a deceased member of the navy, Petty Officer Justin Dobbs. The decomposed body was wrapped in a tarp, which hopefully would yield evidence about who the victim was and where and how they were killed. Except, that process would never happen quickly enough for Gibbs to let them know he was satisfied by their work product, Tony concluded cynically.

At least one good thing about their trip to Norfolk, Tony had recharged his phone battery and was finally able to get confirmation that no one had towed his car after it had been parked for too long outside Viv’s apartment building. It had been stolen!

Although, that wasn’t such good news, he concluded grumpily. The thought of someone he didn’t know driving his 1991 ZR1 Corvette, his pride and joy, physically sickened him and made him feel feral at the same time. She was powerful, fast, and gorgeous and he found her one day at a police auction while he was still in the Peoria PD. She’d been banged up after being in a chase when the drug dealer who owned her tried to escape arrest after running a red light. Of course, the fact that said drug dealer had several kilos of cocaine hidden in the front seat had probably had a lot to do with him trying to outrun the cops. It also resulted in a pincer movement by two squad cars that caused superficial damage to the Corvette, which was then seized under the proceeds-of-crime law and subsequently, sold off to one very proud Officer DiNozzo.

After buying her, he’d had her bodywork done by an old guy in Peoria who shared Tony’s love of muscle cars and the fully restored Corvette (a thing of beauty and the love of his life) accompanied him when he went to Philadelphia, Baltimore and finally to DC. No one else ever drove her and he babied her shamelessly. After Wendy dumped him, he realised that he’d spent more time with his car than any biological female – including his mother. Now someone had taken her away from him. Granted the victim in the truck had a worse tale, but still, they were dead and had been for quite some time by the skeletonized remains. Tony spending a little time mourning his Corvette’s disappearance wouldn’t change that.

Unfortunately, Gibbs had chosen exactly the wrong time to confront him, demanding a Sitrep. Almost as if he had a sixth sense about when Tony dared to shift his focus from the all-encompassing case de jour. His exhausted mind slipped back into doormat mode, telling Gibbs his car hadn’t been towed, it was stolen.

Of course, Gibbs swiftly disabused him of his assumption that he gave a fuck about his personal problems by barking, “I meant the case, DiNozzo. If you weren’t running around sticking your dick into any available female, then you r car wouldn’t have been stolen. Ever heard of karma – and don’t try to deny it, you’re wearing the same clothes you were yesterday, and last I checked, you don’t live on Dumbarton Street.”

Trying to stay professional and wondering mentally, what Gibbs would do if he’d learnt that Tony was with Vivian Blackadder last night, he reported what he’d learned – that Justin Dobbs had rented the storage unit just before he was deployed to Fallujah for a year, with two months remaining of his deployment when he’d been killed in action. Each client was given a personal code so they could come and go, entering via the main gate.

“It’s not exactly secret, Gibbs. A locker number, plus the last four digits of their Social Security number, so if you know someone’s social security number – like an employer and you rented a locker or a garage unit, it would be pretty easy to get into PO Dobbs unit,” he reported shortly.

Find out if anyone accessed his unit, DiNozzo,” Gibbs ordered as Tony did a mental eye roll.

“Already on it,” he said brusquely. He was no newbie and was fed up with Gibbs treating him as if he was. “The manager’s checking the computer as we speak, to see if anyone accessed Dobbs’ locker. But I’m going to get Cyber or Abby to check in case someone accessed it and got around Hager’s rather limited security measures,” he replied.

When they got back to DC with the body and the crime scene evidence, they soon realised that this case was going to be a lot less straightforward than it seemed. Apart from the fact that the executor of PO Dobbs’ estate, a friend of his, Emmy Poole revealed that the remains in the truck could be that of a childhood friend of herself and Justin Dobbs who disappeared, presumed murdered not long before Dobbs enlisted. She told Tony that the cops had always suspected Justin killed Nora Webb but could never prove it. But something about the young woman didn’t sit right with Tony, she was holding back – maybe protecting someone. Her friend Justin, perhaps?

He’d like to get her to give a formal statement so he could study her language choices more closely than just concluding she was withholding information. Unfortunately, at this stage of the investigation, the preliminary evidence-gathering stage, that wasn’t going to happen.

But after talking to the PO’s commanding officer in Fallujah, they discovered that Justin had been fast-tracked to be posthumously awarded the Silver Star for his bravery in saving two Marines when they came under attack. His military conduct – his outstanding valour under fire seemed on the surface to be at odds with a young man who could kill his best friend because according to the cops’ theory, he’d made a move on her, and she rejected him. However, their last case, resulting in the arrest of Marine Gunnery Sergeant Leeka proved a career Marine, a highly decorated NCO could serve with great courage and dedication and still be a murdering scumbag and a sexual predator.

So Tony wasn’t going to rule out the possibility that Dobbs might have killed Nora Webb – if that was who was in Dobbs’ truck, but clearly the body had been buried for long enough for the remains to become skeletonised, so why would the Petty officer dig them up and hide them in his truck? It didn’t smell right to him.

Dobbs must have known that if he was killed, then the body would be discovered by his best friend Emmy Poole. Who would do that to a friend?

If his conscience was troubled because he was guilty, then why didn’t he confess posthumously? He could have done it via his will and saved Emmy from making the gruesome discovery. It seemed a terribly cruel thing to do. Given Poole’s weird behaviour and her flat effect, Tony wondered if someone was trying to set the dead petty officer up as a scapegoat.

While he was trying to find out about his car and the insurance agent was organising for a rental, Gibbs appeared and hot on his heels, JAG lawyer Commander Faith Coleman appeared in the bullpen, demanding an interview with Gibbs. Seems that SECNAV had decided that they (NCIS) had 24 hours, to either clear PO Dobbs of murder or he would rescind the petty officer’s Silver Star because heaven forbid he should endure any negative publicity.

To be honest, Tony was getting heartily sick of SECNAV’s arbitrary deadlines that had no realistic appreciation of how long it took to solve a murder, especially one that was a damned cold case! The last time they butted heads with Faith, she’d been hell-bent on locking up a Medal of Honour awardee from WWII on SECNAV’s order after the former Corporal Ernie Yost, during a depressive episode after losing his spouse of forty years, become confused about how his best mate died during the battle of Iwo Jima. Ernie somehow came to believe he murdered his buddy Corporal Wade Keane because they were fighting over Ernie’s wife, Dorothea.

Gibbs had pulled a fast one, using a Japanese WWII veteran who was a sushi chef in one of the top DC restaurants to challenge Ernie’s recollections and SECNAV had called off his legal Rottweiler. Tony had no idea if Commander Coleman knew that Hitoshi Yoshida wasn’t even on Iwo Jima, but he groaned at the prospect of having her hanging around for the next 24 hours. The lawyer had a textbook case of OCD and NO sense of humour. Gibbs, meantime, was going to be even more unbearable than usual, faced with such an impossible deadline and the prospect of a Silver Star awarded to a Marine being rescinded, riding on the outcome. To put it simply, his normal unreasonable expectations and bad temper would be dialled up exponentially from what counted as normal for him. Quite simply, it would be without doubt like what he’d always imagined entering Dante’s Ninth Circle of Hell must have been like.

Contrary to his initial response to seeing her, Tony was so happy that Commander Coleman did hang around. She was even goaded by Gibbs into helping out after Gibbs told her during a diatribe, ‘to either piss or get off the pot.’ She’d taken him at his word, but it was her constant presence and throwing in her two cents worth that took some of the pressure off Tony and won her points with him. Even if he preferred to work with Bud Roberts or Sarah McKenzie, if given his druthers, as Ducky often said, Faith was a lifesaver.

During this case, in addition to a feral Gibbs, plus the whole Jethro and Faith dog and pony show, he had to contend with a pouty Abby who had a weekend at a swanky DC spa planned with Caitlin Todd that was ruined when Gibbs cancelled their weekend off. Apparently, the place was so exclusive that they’d had to book six months in advance, and by cancelling at the last minute Abby wouldn’t get a raincheck. So… not a happy camper was the Goth forensic scientist. Nor was she averse to taking her ire out on Tony.

But apparently, it was more than just Abby losing her hefty deposit for the weekend that had made her unusually cranky. It seemed that Abby had been planning on using their get-together to persuade (umm intimidate) Cate into returning to the MCRT. He knew Abby hated change…okay she hadn’t minded it so much when McGee joined the team, even if they stopped spending their nights together in her coffin, which she’d somehow convinced him was her pull-out sofa. Man, talk about naïve and clueless, especially for a wannabe investigator!

But generally, she did not like change, not when she was happy with the status quo. Anyhoo, she had a rose-coloured glasses view of the team as one big ole happy family that Tony called her Pollyanna Spectacles, and nothing could budge her from her fantasy. From past experience, he didn’t even bother trying but having to work with her as they raced the clock, trying to close the case was a nightmare. Not how he wanted to remember their last case together.

At the end of their 24-hour window of opportunity to prevent Davenport from rescinding PO Dobbs’ Silver Star, a mentally, emotionally, and physically exhausted Tony DiNozzo was left to contemplate their findings in the bullpen on his lonesome. Coleman set forth to brief SECNAV and stop him from cancelling a young and courageous sailor’s posthumous award, and Gibbs had headed up to give Director Morrow a briefing. Norah Webb’s stepfather had killed her when she confronted him about having an affair with her friend Emmy Poole, the scum sucker!

Learning that Director Morrow had given the MCRT the next forty-eight hours off instead of their cancelled weekend, he bolted home before Gibbs could disagree, desperate to sleep in his bed tonight. He’d invite Viv over tomorrow and cook for them, but tonight he was going to order a pizza and sleep. Not only was he exhausted, Tony was frazzled by what would be his last case before he resigned next week, and Gibbs’ demeanour had become unbearable. He’d thought it was extremely amusing that Tony got to watch his car, involved in another police chase, totally live on ZNN and he wanted to throttle him.

As he slipped into the shower to wash away the case and his frustrations his thought turned to Nora Webb. He was glad that Justin Dobbs had finally been cleared of the suspicion that he’d killed Nora. They’d been able to prove she’d been killed by her own stepfather after she found out that he was having an inappropriate sexual relationship with Emmy Poole, and Nora, had threatened to rat him out. The scumbag predator had buried his stepdaughter in the garden beds of their garden centre, which he owned and ran with Nora’s mother. Destroyed by her daughter’s disappearance and the failure to find her, Kathy Webb wanted to sell the garden centre, and Bruce Webb aka the sex predator and killer had panicked, worried that the new owners would eventually discover Nora’s body, so he dug her up and sneaked her into Justin Dobbs storage unit.

Nora had gotten Justin a summer job at her family’s garden centre while they were still in high school, so Bruce had a record of his social security number making it easy to sneak Nora’s body into Justin’s unit late at night and set Dobb up. After all, Justin had been the cop’s only suspect, Bruce Webb had never once been on their radar. After Emmy had lived with the suspicion that Bruce had hurt Nora, who was her best friend, her life had been effectively ruined. Finally, with confirmation that Nora was dead because she knew about their affair, Emmy, already on antidepressants, couldn’t live with her role in her friend’s death and committed suicide before Tony ever had a chance to question her formally.

He couldn’t help wondering if he had followed up with her as soon as he’d noticed her flat affect and evasiveness if she might have shared her suspicions with him. Would it have made a difference for her? Sadly, she would never get a chance to put what Bruce Webb did to her behind her and have a life – in fact, all three friends’ lives were destroyed by that predator. And Kathy Webb was the other victim here, too.

Now that she knew the truth, did she think about all the times she’d been so close to her daughter’s remains and had no clue that she was there? Did she feel physically ill knowing she slept night after night in the same bed as her daughter’s killer? All because she unknowingly married a sexually deviant creep who liked young girls. He couldn’t imagine how Kathy could pick up the pieces of her life and move on.

As Tony finally stepped out of the shower, he realised he’d scrubbed himself a little too vigorously while under the water, unconsciously wanting to erase all of the filth that they’d encountered today. Well at least Webb hadn’t been able to prevent Justin Dobbs’ name from being cleared or him being recognised as the hero that he’d been. He wasn’t particularly religious, but if there was really an afterlife, Tony hoped that Nora and Justin had been waiting there for their friend Emmy and she found peace, poor kid.

He thought about Cate’s rigid beliefs about those people who commit suicide, but Emmy was just a kid who’d been taken advantage of. She was in pain and couldn’t see any way out and if there was a God, then surely, he wouldn’t be so cruel as to make her suffer even more than she had.

By the time Viv came over the next day, both were still feeling fragile. Viv, like the remainder of her team, had been taken off active duty until she’d finished mandatory trauma counselling. So with no cases to work, she turned up early and helped him cook. After they broiled some salmon and made a simple green salad to go with it, the two former teammates settled in on the sofa and switched on Tony’s big-screen television to watch the news.

This was how Tony came to see his beloved ZR1 Corvette caught on the nightly news and its destruction all over again. Some smart-ass reporter decided it would make a good human interest story about how ironic it was the car had been owned by a federal agent and then after being stolen, had been used in a series of armed robberies. Thankfully, they hadn’t released his name or his photo, which would have made going undercover much more dangerous, although he wasn’t able to be grateful for that small mercy at the time. At least Viv was far more sympathetic than Gibbs had been the first time he saw this 24 hours ago, giving him a hug and telling him she was sorry, and it was a beautiful set of wheels.

Later, after he managed to speak, he remarked rather bitterly that his car was no doubt emblematic of his impending departure from the MCRT. He expected all hell to break loose, and while he was right about the chaos and destruction that awaited him, it was nothing like what he anticipated.

Chapter 21

Director Morrow had never really placed much credence in the notion of presentience, even though he knew that half of NCIS believed in it – hence the whole magical thinking regarding Gibbs’ gut. By his reckoning, Jethro’s ‘gut’ was wrong or more importantly, AWOL as much of the time as it was when he appeared presentient. Yet all of the times his gut was wrong (or else stubbornly silent, when a heads up would have made a huge difference) were ignored by all the ‘Gibbs has mystical powers’ adherents. It was something Tom found more than a little concerning, given that they were supposed to be a federal law enforcement agency, grounded in physical evidence-based methods. They were not some New Age bookshop peddling Tarot Card Readings or Chakra realigning.

Yet he doubted that anyone who could interpret non-verbal communications or was the slightest bit intuitive could ignore the tension that seemed to be building in the bullpen of the MCRT. Granted, the team had undergone some fairly dramatic changes this year, which one could argue would disrupt the team’s dynamics. That it was to be expected, and to some degree, Morrow agreed that this could be attributed to all of those changes happening in a short amount of time – that eventually things would settle down and everything would get back on an even keel again.

After all, Gibbs appointing agent Tim McGee to the team so soon after hiring Agent Todd had attracted lots of attention amongst the rest of their fellow agents. Many of them felt they were far more qualified to be on the team than he was, considering their years of experience as investigators, and grumbled that they should have been given the honour of being on the premier criminal investigation team. The fact that Gibbs last two picks had no experience in investigating crime certainly didn’t escape notice, and it didn’t go down well when far more deserving candidates were passed over in favour of a couple of newbies. But Gibbs choosing complete neophytes as opposed to a seasoned investigator wasn’t without precedent. Jethro’s former senior field agent, Stan Burley, had arrived fresh from FLETC after serving as a US senator’s aide, and Gibbs had snapped him up for his team.

Tom understood why Gibbs consistently overlooked experienced and well-trained agents such as Cassie Yates for his team and instead chose neophytes. He did so because then those agents owed their sole allegiance to him for scoring such a prestigious position on the elite investigative team. He could inculcate them in his own rules and methods, which explained why they were willing to completely ignore fundamental law enforcement rules and procedures. Crucial things like failure to respect the chain of command or acquiring evidence in investigations without gaining appropriate warrants or having adequate exigent circumstances that would negate it. The NCIS director didn’t like it, but he understood it. Unfortunately, he was impotent to prevent it while Gibbs possessed the unwavering support of Philip Davenport.

So there had been tension following McGee’s assignment to the MCRT and then after barely two months of his probationary period as a field agent, he and Agent Todd were suspended from the MCRT, after the deputy head of human resources observed their insubordinate behaviour and flouting the chain of command. Gibbs had thrown a hissy fit, and SEC NAV had caved to the pressure, giving both little more than a slap on the wrists and allowing them to return to the MCRT. Tom would love to know what Jethro had on SECNAV for him to become such a servile toady to Gibbs. Whatever the compromising intel was, it must be massive to allow Gibbs to lead him around like some prize bull with a nose ring to keep him docile.

However, while Gibbs still had Davenport most assuredly under his thumb or his boot, the CIA was another matter. They had been ramping up the pressure ever since the Guyman Purcell case, where Gibbs unabashedly forced them to choose between their asset, Purcell, who was a paedophile and Mossad’s undercover mole, Ari Haswari. Since Haswari was the son of Eli David, Deputy Director of Mossad, Gibbs had boxed them into a corner by threatening to blow Haswari’s cover, effectively forcing them to sacrifice Purcell to protect Haswari. That said they were obviously fuming to have been put into that position and now the CIA was on a crusade to nobble Gibbs. The pressure on Tom to accept the sideways promotion as deputy director of the Department of Homeland Security was growing stronger by the day as the CIA garnered increasing support for their efforts to declaw Gibbs.

Tom had reached out to his own contact, Ambrose Edwards, an old spymaster who, three decades ago, had a group of young proteges that included Owen Granger, Henrietta Lange, A.J. Chegwidden, and himself. Ambrose, well into his eighties now, learned that The Powers That Be were very alarmed about Gibbs’ overt extortion of a CIA big wig by using a Mossad mole. It was the opinion of the CIA that Gibbs had gone too far, and they needed to contain him. Since the consensus was that with Mike Franks as his mentor, Gibbs would have made certain to protect himself and he would have potentially damaging material so that if anything happened to him, as in killed, disappeared or in a coma hooked up to life support, the explosive information he possessed on too many people in power would be released to the press.

Langley had determined they needed another way to neutralise him, and they were confident they’d discovered a method. They knew his weakness for redheads and had learnt that Gibbs and his former Probie had been having a tempestuous affair while undercover in Europe. Their plan involved appointing Special Agent Jennifer Shepard as the new NCIS director and having Shepard control Gibbs via his dick since they couldn’t put out a hit on him. But to do that, Tom had to go. Hetty had also warned him that she’d heard chatter that if he refused to leave, the CIA didn’t have a problem in taking him out, so they got Shepard in a position to neuter the threat Gibbs posed to their operations.

Tom didn’t like being forced into leaving the agency, but if the intel Hetty had passed on was correct, then he’d be a fool to resist. Even Ambrose was advising extreme caution and he’d started taking extra precautions while letting people know he was warming to the idea of taking the DHS offer but needed a bit more time. He wasn’t sure why he was holding out, it wasn’t as if the situation would drastically change in the next few weeks. He guessed he just didn’t like the thought that the CIA could pull his strings and watch him react when going to the DHS was the last place he wanted to work.

Jenny Shepard would make a terrible director, and she was far too friendly with Eli David and his offspring, which was a grave concern to Tom. What quid pro quo did the CIA have on her that made them think she was prepared to seduce Gibbs after she left him to further her career. Anyway, scuttlebutt doing the traps was that she was in an intimate relationship already, although who it was remained unconfirmed, but he’d heard various rumours that it was one of the Davids or Philip Davenport. If that were so, they would have to be offering her one hell of an inducement for her to take up with Gibbs again. After all, Jenny Shepard was a born politician, very skilled at kissing ass, and Jethro was… well neither of those things and never would be.

Tom hated the thought of Jenny getting the directorship just so that the CIA could render Leroy Jethro Gibbs harmless, although Tom wasn’t so sure it would work, even with his proclivity for redheads. So perhaps all these internecine machinations and bullshit posturing were affecting Tom even more than he realised. It could be that the sense of impending doom had less to do with the dynamics of the now shrunken MCRT and more about his fear that his reluctance to dance to the CIA’s drumbeat would end in his own death.

Granted that he was more than a little bit preoccupied and, also concerned about his beloved wife Lynn, however, Morrow still felt something was brewing with the MCRT – what was left of it. He was expecting some sort of power play from Jethro who didn’t take defeat lying down. He’d successfully forced SECNAV into ignoring most of the recommendations of the head of the DoD’s human resources department, giving the two agents a fairly minor punishment, and ruling they could return to the agency’s premier investigative team.

Gibbs had been elated and swaggered around, unable to contain his satisfaction with the outcome. Of course, he’d been totally blindsided when both chose not to come back, although he was sure that Tim McGee had little to no choice in the matter. His father, Admiral John McGee had maneuverer Davenport into sending his son to the west coast, as far away from Jethro’s influence as was possible, while still remaining in the US. Caitlin Todd had had her own Road to Damascus moment, before deciding that a fresh start at a different office was a wise choice for her future career prospects. Gibbs was fit to be tied because, after all his posturing, manipulation and manoeuvring, neither agent had returned to his team!

Delores had truly set the cat amongst the pigeons when she sent those two to serve on other teams. Did she know that Craig Sheppard had served under Admiral McGee back when he was Captain McGee? While she would probably never admit it, Tom thought it was a strong possibility. Nothing much got past the deputy head of HR. She and her boss, Marla Sweeten, were a formidable pair and had managed to do an end run around Jethro and then they’d gotten the last laugh, when Gibbs obviously called in a marker with Davenport to save their asses, had ended up with little to show for it.

Nicely played by the pair, he thought smugly.

But if Tom was reading the signs right, he was expecting that Gibbs was going to head to San Diego trying to convince McGee to come back onto the team and get himself arrested for ignoring a restraining order that Tom heard was about to be served on Gibbs ordering him not to contact McGee. He’d be extremely pissed when he learnt that SECNAV had played him – given McGee and Todd the okay to return if they wanted to, but not realising that that John McGee was squeezing Davenport’s balls too, to make sure Jethro never got his mitts on McGee again. The director knew that Admiral McGee was highly ambitious and was a born politician. Scuttlebutt around the Capitol was that he was destined for higher office and Davenport had his own eyes firmly fixed on a higher position than his current one, which was why he was loathe to offend someone with the Admiral’s backers.

If Gibbs confronted Agent McGee, despite the presence of the rumoured restraining order the shit was definitely going to hit the proverbial fan. Was it juvenile of the director of NCIS to feel schadenfreude at SECNAV’s plight if that occurred? Seeing as the man was colluding with the spooks at Langley to get rid of himself, Morrow he was entitled to take comfort in Philip’s torment. After all, as the maxim went, misery loves company!

However, he was surprised when Ducky requested an early morning meeting for today, coincidentally the same day that Gibbs and DiNozzo were due to return after having a well-earned two days off. They’d managed to exonerate PO Justin Dobbs of any involvement in the death of Nora Webb, thereby removing any impediment to the young Marine’s posthumous awarding of the Silver Star. Not only that, but the pair of agents had also managed to catch Nora’s real killer and make a jackass out of the local Sherriff who’d been stonewalling their investigation, inadvertently protecting the real killer. That had to hurt!

They’d earned the break, but now, today was Tuesday and Ducky had seen fit to fill him in on a situation that had arisen on the investigation before the Dobbs case. It involved the gunnery sergeant who raped a young cadet at Waverly College and also murdered two male NROTC cadets – a gunnery sergeant and a midshipman – who discovered what he’d done. Tom was very aware of the case. Indeed, he’d decided to turn the subsequent follow-up investigation of the ROTC program during Gunnery Sergeant Leeka’s time at Waverly to Mo Cabot’s team. As Agent DiNozzo had argued, raping Cadet Simons was unlikely to be the first time Leeka abused his position. The Family and Sexual Violence Unit would try to find out if any other female cadets had also been raped so that they could receive appropriate support, justice, and counselling.

Somewhat surprisingly, Gibbs hadn’t really fought Tom on the turning over of the follow-up of the case investigating Leeka’s conduct towards female cadets and indeed all of the other enlisted females who’d served under him in his almost twenty years with the Corps. Jethro was happy enough to have found the evidence to charge him with two counts of first-degree murder plus multiple counts of rape against Cadet Simons, which had precipitated the killings of Sgt Turner and Midshipman Blake.

As an experienced investigator, Gibbs was also smart enough to know that there were likely more victims, possibly even hundreds. However, he probably also recognised that it would be a massive investigation and the MCRT needed to be able to swing right into action when another major crime occurred. He didn’t like it but, in this regard, he recognised that current cases trumped what in some instances amounted to cold cases that might go all the way back two decades. Gibbs just didn’t have the patience or resources to do that. Also, the director suspected that with the culprit already caught, the follow up investigation just didn’t hold that much allure to the man who lived for the thrill of the chase.

After Ducky entered Tom’s office and had made himself comfortable, sitting down on the other side of Tom’s desk because it felt a tad silly for both of them to adjourn to the conference table, Morrow got their meeting underway.

“Cup of tea, Ducky?”

The medical examiner and Tom went way back, and he knew not to offer his colleague coffee. Ducky may have become a naturalised US citizen some years ago, but when it came to hot beverages, he would always favour a cup of English Breakfast tea in the mornings and if it was afternoon, probably a cup of Earl Grey or Orange Pekoe, occasionally opting a strong brew of Assam, but never coffee. He knew the medical examiner only drank coffee after eating Italian and, then he would invariably drink a single cup of expresso.

Beaming at his boss, Ducky responded as expected. “That would be lovely Tom, English Breakfast if you have it,” he said gratefully, as Morrow reached for his intercom.

“I keep it on hand just for you, my friend,” Morrow assured before requesting his executive assistant that she see to the refreshments.

He wondered what had prompted Ducky to request this early morning tete-e-tete; there were currently no outstanding cases in Autopsy, and his somewhat cryptic comments about discussing something that happened during the Sgt Leeka case left him far from clear on what the issue was. However, Tom decided to restrain his curiosity until after Ms Somers brought in their refreshments.

They engaged in chit-chat until Somers arrived with a tray bearing Tom’s Italian Roast black coffee in a mug and a fine-bone cup and saucer for Ducky, along with a teapot of tea brewed with real tea leaves, a second pot of hot water and a small jug of milk. Also knowing ahead of time that her boss had an early morning meeting scheduled with the dapper medical examiner, she’d stopped off on her way in to procure a treat to go with his tea. Producing the plate with a flourish and setting it down in front of him, she smiled.

“And Devonshire scones for two, Ducky,” she said, going out and returning with a pot of cream and strawberry jelly.

“Oh my,” Ducky exclaimed in glee. “Those look like proper English scones, my dear,” he said, pronouncing the word as scones with a short O that rhymed with johns.

“Well, that’s probably because they are scones,” she said, “since I know how disappointed you are with our version of scones,” she told him, pronouncing the word with a long O as in Jones. “I couldn’t find any clotted cream, but this is authentic imported strawberry jam, Ducky.”

“You spoil me, Cynthia. While I should decline them due to my cardiovascular health, I’m afraid that the prospect of an almost authentic Devonshire tea has me salivating in expectation. You are much too kind to an old man, my dear girl.”

Cynthia wouldn’t permit many people to address her as ‘my dear girl’ (after all, she was the executive assistant to the director of a federal law enforcement agency, not a girl) though it was hard to be offended by the cultured British medical examiner. He was from a different generation and didn’t mean to be patronising, so she smiled.

“Everyone deserves a little spoiling now and again, Dr Mallard. I hope you enjoy the scones. Now, I’ll leave you to get on with your meeting,” she said, turning to the Director. “SECNAV requested a briefing on the situation in Bahrain at 1100,” she informed her boss in her typically efficient but understated manner, as he nodded his thanks.

As the pair polished off their early morning tea, Ducky told him of a situation he and Jimmy Palmer had witnessed between Agents Gibbs and DiNozzo during the Sergeant Leeka investigation.

“It was not long after their secret informant had deliberately sent Jethro and Anthony off on a wild goose chase, ending up in a sorority with a bunch of crying young females, which as you can imagine, was Jethro’s bête noire. All of those emotional young things…crying,” he said, with a twinkle in his blue eyes.

Of course, Tom already knew the bare bones of the goat rope fiasco when cyber agent Randall Hopwood, who had a very healthy ego, was now considering his future at NCIS. Gibbs was ready to gut Hopwood with a dessert spoon and feed his entrails to his hogs. Well, that’s if Jethro actually owned any…which thankfully for Randall, he didn’t. But the point was that the former retcon sniper had been majorly pissed off with Hopwood, and the man was still a nervous wreck and now taking anti-anxiety medication.

“I was aware, Ducky. I’m afraid that Agent Hopwood is still terrified that Gibbs might exact revenge,” Tom said, trying not to grin. “So, what happened that you wished to discuss, Donald?”

“Have you ever experienced an epiphany, Tom?”

He shrugged. “Probably. Can’t say I remember anything specific,” he said, wondering where Ducky was going with this conversation.

“Well I have, and I have to say that it was not exactly an edifying experience. In fact, it was rather deleterious to my state of smug complacency,” he confessed regretfully.

“Why? What happened,” Morrow asked, trying to keep the conversation on point.

Ducky was not just famous for his verbosity, but his mental meandering could be quite exhausting, and frustrating. He usually preferred to take the ‘scenic route’ to arrive at the destination while Gibbs favoured the ‘as the crow flies’ route, which led to some amusing conversations between the pair.

Ducky sighed and gave him a quick rundown, setting the scene for Tom. “Jethro and Anthony had come down to hear the results of my autopsy on Midshipman Finnegan Blake. I informed them that he was killed in an identical way to his friend and colleague, Sgt Turner. I was going to demonstrate how both men had their necks snapped, using great force when Jethro volunteered to demonstrate with young Anthony, who was less than enthused by the prospect. After the demonstration, it became clear someone who had been taught this technique, like a midshipman had killed both men and that they were facing their killer when he killed them. It also indicated they probably knew their killer,” Ducky summed up the situation, surprisingly succinctly.

Tom knew all this, having read the reports, but he kept his impatience in check – just.

Then Jethro demanded to know if Anthony had found their hacker yet, which I believe he was referring to their anonymous informant who sent them on the ill-fated and malicious wild goose chase to the sorority house that raised his ire so much.”

Sipping his tea delicately, he continued. “Anthony assured him that he had Agent Lawrence standing by the next time they heard from the informant and that Abby would do her bit to keep them engaged when they called. Still visibly smarting from what Jethro clearly believed to have been a loss of face at the hands of the hacker, he rounded on young Anthony, berating him.”

“Did he head slap him, “Morrow wondered out loud.

“No, Tom, although I believe he wanted to. Instead, he yelled about not asking what Abby or Agent Lawrence were doing to find that SOB taunting them. Jethro said he asked his senior field agent what HE was doing to find our mystery informant, not waiting around to see if the dirtbag made contact again.”

Tom couldn’t see anything amounting to lightbulb moments so far but held his tongue. Ducky was long-winded but perspicacious.

“My take on the comment was rather mild, I’ll admit. I suspect that Jethro knew that his reference to DiNozzo’s rank would have his loyal Saint Bernard thrilled by what for him, amounted to rare praise indeed and have Anthony rushing to prove himself. I’m sure Jethro also intended it to be a threat that he wouldn’t be SFA much longer, should he be unable to locate the person who was messing with them,” he concluded gravely.

The director nodded. “I concur. It is entirely consistent with Gibbs’ warped modus operandi when dealing with DiNozzo. A variation of the carrot and the stick method. Not very subtle, but it is Gibbs we’re talking about,” he observed wryly, aware that Duck and Gibbs were good friends.

“Too true, Tom, but I fear that Jethro was entirely unprepared for the effect of his words on our young agent,” he said painfully.

“Why, what happened?” Tom asked anxiously.

“Anthony seemed visibly enraged by Jethro’s comments, but somehow he managed to compose himself before he told Jethro that he believed the grenade explosion in Rota must have caused him to forget Anthony was his 2IC because he treated him like a probie most of the time. That he undermined his position on the team with the real probies who were neophyte investigators.”

Looking pained, Ducky continued. “Then he snarled at Jethro, ‘Colour me shocked to learn you do remember. At least when it suits your agenda,” before storming out.”

Well damn it! Perhaps Agent Todd wasn’t the only one to have experienced a Road to Damascus moment!

Chapter 22

Tom admitted Ducky had blind-sighted him. Was DiNozzo about to shock everyone and walk away from the MCRT? He definitely didn’t see that one coming. Maybe if Tom went to DHS he could persuade Anthony DiNozzo Jr. to follow him too.

“Sounds like Agent DiNozzo was the one experiencing an epiphany, Donald!”

“Yes, in hindsight, you could be right about that, Tom.”

“And that exchange was what prompted your own epiphany, Ducky.”

“Alas, I’m afraid not. Yes, I was surprised by Anthony’s outburst. He rarely shows his true feelings, which is no doubt why he is such a good undercover operative,” Ducky mused. “No, it was actually a conversation with Mr Palmer that was the catalyst of my epiphany, Tom.”

“Why, what did Palmer do?”

Ducky chuckled, although it came off as sounder rather bitter and cynical. An oddity in itself for the eternally optimistic, young-at-heart medical examiner.

“After Gibbs left Autopsy, or so we believed at the time, Jimmy wanted to know why Jethro promoting him to senior field agent on this case would cause Anthony to go… I believe the term is postal,” Ducky said. “It seems that my assistant did not realise that Anthony is, and has been the senior field agent for the MCRT since early on in his tenure here. And before you ask, it was because of how Gibbs and the previous team members treated him. Mocking him constantly and undermining his insights and attempts to train Caitlin and Timothy,” he said frowning.

Jimmy may not have been working here all that long, but he has observed repeatedly that Anthony is not afforded the respect his rank and experience has earned.”

“Head slaps?”

Ducky pursed his lips. “Yes, of course, the head slaps. Jethro may believe that a slap to the face is humiliating, but a slap to the back of the head is a wake-up call. However, that is not how Jimmy perceives them, I’m afraid.”

“Yes… well as you know, Donald, I’m with Jimmy on this one. Both are humiliating, a blow to the back of the head is also dangerous, and both constitute an assault, even if the legal term is battery. Unfortunately, Philip chooses to turn a blind eye to them, despite my disapproval,” Tom said flatly.

To Morrow’s keen eye, Ducky looked ashamed. Maybe the ME was embarrassed he’d never spoken out against them. If that was the case, then so he should! From a purely medical perspective, hitting someone on the head, especially the back of the head was potentially extremely dangerous, especially when done in anger which was often Jethro’s permanent state of being. No one should understand the risks more than a medical examiner.

“Did you know that one of the reasons he believed that Anthony was just a probie is because he is constantly here in the middle of the night doing paperwork? Mr Palmer thought he was trying to redo his case reports because Gibbs made him do them over when they weren’t up to standard?” Ducky told Tom angrily.

“I trust you disabused him of that misconception, Donald,” Tom said through gritted teeth.

“Most certainly, I did,” Ducky said determinedly. “Would you believe that my young assistant has been keeping track of all of the profiling work Agent Todd did during her sojourn on the MCRT, and he concluded that it would be more reliable to consult Tarot cards. Or else to just reverse everything she said. The next day he showed me his spreadsheet and to my surprise, he was correct – she is an appalling profiler,” he said almost guiltily.

“Ducky, you said, ‘after Gibbs left Autopsy, or so we believed at the time.’ Did you mean to imply that he didn’t leave autopsy?”

“Not exactly. We believed he left but later we discovered that he was just outside, eavesdropping,” Ducky said grimly.

“Well they say that those who listen in to private conversations never hear good about themselves,” Tom said dryly. “What made you realise he was eavesdropping?”

Just before Mr Palmer made an observant remark,” he must have thought we were done, or he was too peeved to stay. He heard his normally silent steps, stomping down the hallway, which was probably rather fortunate for all concerned,” Ducky concluded philosophically.

“And pray tell, why was that? What did Palmer say?”

“He said, ‘If Tony is doing Gibbs administrative duties, then aside from going out for coffee six or more times a day, and head slapping Agent DiNozzo, yelling at his agents, and threatening to fire them, and sneaking up on them, what does Agent Gibbs actually do all day?”

Tom started choking – he had not seen that coming and Palmer would absolutely have made himself an enemy of Gibbs, even if it was a damned good question and one he asked a time or two himself, if only mentally.

After catching his breath, he dared inquire, “And did you answer him, Donald?”

“I did, once I was assured that Jethro had indeed entered the elevator,” Ducky said a mite reluctantly. I told Jimmy with my tongue firmly in cheek, ‘That he also comes down to Autopsy and to Abby’s Labby to hear about our findings.’”

The Scotsman frown hinted to the director that his assistant’s query may have created a case of cognitive dissonance in the ME, as he faced the deconstruction of the Gibbs mystique, courtesy of a humble autopsy assistant perspective. The truth was that it was not so hard to solve crimes when you didn’t have to play by the rules that everyone was forced to work under.

“I’ve heard Jethro defend his head slaps so much, that I’m afraid that I started to believe his balderdash. I know all about how delicate that area of the brain is. The visual processing of what we see takes place there and if that is damaged then even if the eyes and their surrounding structures are perfectly sound, a person will still become blind.”

“And damage to the pons can in extreme situations cause locked-in syndrome, where the only voluntary movement possible is the eyes,” Tom commented gravely.

“Too true, my friend, “Ducky nodded. “And in less severe cases, it may result in balance problems, double vision, vertigo, dizziness, difficulties with speech, numbness, difficulty swallowing, and coordination difficulties.”

“Plus the fact that a blow to the head can cause injury to the other side of the brain or skull,” Tom stated, knowing that Ducky saw that a lot in many of his ‘guests’ whom he autopsied.

“Indeed, they are referred to as contrecoup injuries. It means getting hit upside the head as Jethro calls it, if done with sufficient force, could result in damage occurring in the frontal lobe of the brain or even a fractured skull,” Ducky looked grave. Perhaps most concerning is that even a minor blow to the head causing minimal damage can and does result in contrecoup injuries of far greater damage than the original hit.”

“Which is why blows to the head, even so-called ‘wake up calls’ should be avoided,” Tom concluded somewhat irately.

“ Why yes, that is a fair summation of the facts,” Ducky nodded, “given the real risk of injury and long-term ramifications that we are only now starting to comprehend, due to sports injuries and neuropathology in later life.”

“As is the case with boxers like Mohommed Ali and NFL players in contact sports where head trauma, even minor injuries occur,” Tom said, making his point.

“Quite!” Ducky demurred looking downcast.

“Then tell me, for the love of Mike, why wouldn’t you try to stop Gibbs head slapping his agents, Donald?” he asked.

He was genuinely trying to understand how Ducky had just stood by and tacitly condoned it. Lord knows, Tom had certainly tried to stop it, as had HR but been slapped down every time by Davenport who was obviously listening to Gibbs’ propaganda on the subject. That it was harmless – just a simple wake-up call.

Shaking his head, Ducky finally responded. “When you lay the case out like that Tom, it does seem quite unfathomable and inexcusable from someone in my position who has his hands in individual’s brains daily. I’m most certainly in a position to know better than most how fragile the brain can be at times. How even one unintentional blow to the head can result in death. So it makes no sense that I have remained silent as Gibbs continues to assault his agents,” he confessed sounding quite distressed.

Tom sensing that the ME needed to ponder this matter out verbally, remained silent.

“It is not a defence of my failure to act, for there is no defence, though I offer this plea merely to try to come to terms with why it occurred. I can only conclude that as Joseph Goebbels was wont to say, ‘if you tell a lie big enough, and keep repeating it, people will come to believe it,’” he concluded looking crushed.

“I get that, to a degree, Donald, but…a doctor and a medical examiner? That is extremely scary that someone who determines how people die, often due to blunt force trauma to the head, could be persuaded that a blow to the head that was referred to as a head slap or a wake-up call was perfectly safe and appropriate behaviour,” he said sceptically.

“I agree, but Gibbs’ charismatic personality does make him highly persuasive and believable. But like I said, there can be no excuses for my lapse. I’m ashamed to admit that on occasion, I’ve joked with Jethro about using it to control Mr Palmer,” he said looking rather ill. “Not that I have done so, and I hope that I never would. Yet in all honestly, I can’t put my hand on a bible and swear to that, although I wish that I could.”

“What about if Gibbs ordered you to give Agent DiNozzo a proxy head slap, Donald? Do you think you might have head-slapped him, even if you drew the line at not hitting Palmer upside the head?”

Ducky opened his mouth to respond but nothing came out, After more than a minute, he finally answered. “I would like to think I would have refused but in all honesty, sometimes I can get rather irritated by his constant and inane logorrhoea. So, I’ll have to say that under the wrong circumstances, it might have happened,” he conceded with great reluctance.

Suddenly, Ducky seemed close to anger, leaning forward in his chair as he asked his old friend and boss, “Is there any particular reason why you would ask me such a hypothetical question Director?”

Tom fixed him with a steely look. “ A little birdy may have mentioned that you’d taken Jethro to task the first time he head-slapped Agent McGee. Something about his neurons being too precious to kill off, he responded conversationally. “Was my intel not correct, Donald?”

All traces of anger were now gone, but looking very uncomfortable, Ducky shook his head. “Do you know, I’d quite forgotten about that. No, it did occur, but Tom, Timothy is a genius, his ability with computers is an asset that can’t be quantified. And Jethro was irritated at the time and quite forceful with the probationary agent. Not that he listened,” he conceded.

So, it is not worth the risk because Timothy McGee is smart, but because it’s DiNozzo, a dumb jock, it doesn’t matter,” Tom summed up Ducky’s rationale laconically.

“Put like that, it sounded really bad,” Ducky conceded.

“Put like that, it is really BAD!” Morrow said angrily. “Not to mention that the head slaps even if they were perfectly safe, are demeaning and they undermine his authority among the rest of the agents.”

Ducky looked abashed but Tom wasn’t about to backtrack on this, even for their friendship.

“But here’s the thing, Donald… Dr Sciuto and Agent McGee’s IQ scores put both of them into the so-called genius category, and yes both are assets, he conceded.

“However you’ll probably be shocked that Agent DiNozzo tested five points higher than either of them on both the Wexler and the Stanford Binet standardised IQ tests,” he said calmly.

Looking at Ducky who looked like someone had slapped him with a cold dead fish, Tom smiled inwardly, feeling petty satisfaction at dynamiting Ducky’s assumptions.

“Several experts on gifted children have observed that his particular strengths lay in being extremely skilled in musical notation and ability, and in pattern recognition and analogical reasoning, but that his types of intelligence are still poorly understood by so-called ‘linear thinkers’ and so it tends to be discounted by most normal people,” he said mildly.

Looking quite ill, Ducky stated looking horrified, “And every time Gibbs head slapped him because his thought seemed scattered…”

“He was more than likely analysing data analogically,” Tom finished smugly. “Which is why he is such a gifted investigator,” he said pointedly.

“And his logorrhoea is also a part of him processing information,” he said, realising that Tom had just delivered yet another painful epiphany.

As if he could read his mind, Tom glanced at the clock, mindful of the MTAC meeting at 11OO.

“So, before we took a detour down Dope Slapping Lane, you were going to tell me of your epiphany courtesy, of Mr Palmer,” he said, letting the whole head slapping issue rest…at least for now.

Ducky picked up half of his scone, proceeded to slather imported strawberry jam on it, and then loaded it up with whipped cream before nibbling on it absentmindedly. His uncharacteristic piling on of two food items he would normally wield with Puritan self-restraint (due to their high sugar and fat contents respectively) was a clear tell for Director Morrow, that the ME was deeply conflicted. If that had been Agent DiNozzo loading up his scone in such a fashion, he was fairly sure Ducky would snatch it off him and consign it to the trash, admonishing him for his reckless nutritional choices.

In fact, he’d witnessed him do so on several occasions when the much-maligned agent was trying to eat while working non-stop on cases. One of these days, he was going to ask Ducky why he felt he had the right to interfere with DiNozzo’s food consumption. Surely as a doctor, he’d be better served, trying to convince Gibbs that agents needed adequate time off, even during investigations to refuel and recharge and help to prevent accidents or errors from occurring.

Now though, he wanted to learn what it was that had the medical examiner so off-kilter.

Reluctantly, Ducky began to speak. “I’m sure you’re acquainted with the declaration – ‘Do not do evil that good may come?’ It seeks to remind us that we should not knowingly commit bad or evil acts, hoping that good will result,” he said with surprising conciseness considering his customary verbiage.

“Yes, it is a variation of the whole philosophical debate that in seeking to defeat evil, the end justifies the means,” Morrow said promptly. “And it isn’t something that I ascribe to. Rules, regulations, and laws are usually created for a very good reason,” he said forebodingly as he glanced at Ducky.

“If we begin to cherry-pick which rules and laws we follow, which ones we agree with and are willing to follow and which we will ignore because they impede us in arresting individuals, that is indeed a slippery slope. The truth is that in rationalising it as being justified for a greater good, then ultimately we’ll destroy ourselves and the whole system of justice,” Morrow declared fervently.

“It sounds so straightforward when you express it like that, Tom. But it can be far too easy to lose sight of the fact that the greater good is ultimately served by having a separation of the justice system into equal but separate branches that should never overlap. An investigator should never become judge, jury, and executor,” Ducky observed.

“Donald, what does this have to do with your epiphany? Having served as an ME for years, you above all people understand the importance of the distinct separation of the branches of justice. Failure to do otherwise ultimately leads to anarchy and systemic collapse of justice, harming the victims, who are the very same individuals most in need of it.”

“Alas, while it isn’t a perfect system,” Ducky lamented,” it is still better than any alternatives. Sadly, while it should be easy enough to adhere to those rules of law in a theoretical sense, it is much harder to uphold them in a practical setting. When you are up to your elbows in a dead friend and colleague’s innards. Or when you are cradling the brain of dead the Marine or sailor in the palm of your hands – some deemed old enough to fight and die for their country, yet not considered old enough to consume alcohol.” he said sorrowfully.

“The lines can get blurred,” Tom stated quietly. “I understand that my friend, but that’s why it’s even more imperative that we do not lose sight of the rule of law. It is too easy to decide to ignore them, or even to choose which ones to follow. Sooner or later those choices lead one done a path of judge, jury, and executioner.”

“And we become a part of the evil that we chose to defeat,” Ducky replied wistfully. Looking at the NCIS director, he confessed, “I realised after Mr Palmer was under the misconception that Anthony was just a junior agent because of the disrespect from his team, that I was guilty of doing evil that good could come.”

Morrow had certainly not seen that declaration coming. He was genuinely lost for words as thoughts skittered around his head a zillion miles an hour. What exactly was Ducky saying?

In the end, that’s what Tom ended up going with. “I’m not sure I understand what you’re saying, Donald.”

“I’m saying that even though I was aware that Gibbs was not observing the chain of command, probably because young Anthony’s ethics were a threat to his laissez-faire model of law enforcement, I went along with it. I saw him blatantly encouraging the two inexperienced agents not to follow his orders, which was inexcusable and could have cost lives. I never called Jethro on it however because I rationalised that his extraordinary closure statistics, justified his failure to observe rules.”

Tom was on firmer ground here. “Granted that his closure rates are exceptional, I can sort of see how you justified it, but Ducky, those closure rates weren’t Gibbs, they were a joint effort of the team, particularly of the former homicide detective. Perhaps it might interest you to learn that after Agent DiNozzo joined the MCRT the conviction rates steadily rose to mirror the closure rates. That was down to DiNozzo’s insistence on observing the rules of law during their cases which meant that cases weren’t getting thrown out of court due to technicalities.”

Ducky looked shocked. “No, Director, I did not know that,” he admitted regretfully. “I assumed, wrongly it would seem that Jethro’s closure and conviction rate would be fairly similar.

“Then you probably don’t know that as he added Agents Todd and McGee and undermined his authority so they wouldn’t listen to him, the closure rate held steady, and their conviction rate nosedived as cases got thrown out of military tribunals and civilian courts by judges on technicalities again.”

Looking pale and shaken, Ducky replied. “No, obviously I wasn’t aware of that fact either, but I probably should have been. Anthony has always been something of a moral compass when it comes to observing the rule of law,” he admitted reluctantly.

“You fell into the trap of believing the ‘Gibbs is infallible’ narrative because of his high closure rates,” Morrow observed sardonically.

“I did, and after hearing Mr Palmer’s opinions of Anthony, based on his observations of how the three others treated him, I realised I was guilty of doing so too. I mocked and belittled him…”

“And threw away meals that he managed to snatch during marathon investigations,” Tom observed. “Like he was a child.”

Ducky winced. “Well perhaps…but he always picks godawful choices…” he said, trailing off as he realised he was trying to excuse the inexcusable.

“Yet you never berated agents Todd, McGee or Gibbs nor did you throw away the food they’d paid for, then walked away leaving him without any other option but to raid the snack machines to get through the case,” Tom said, not holding any punches. “It might not have been the healthiest option, but it was better than the soda and power bar that he had to settle for.”

“I was trying to look out for his health, encourage him to develop healthy eating habits,” he said, stung by Tom’s criticism.

“Yes, well perhaps that would have been more effective my friend, had you berated Gibbs for not observing mandated regulation meal breaks and rest periods,” Morrow told him cynically. “His ignoring rules developed to increase productivity, reduce workplace injuries and protect the health and welfare of agents was viewed by Gibbs as interfering in his ability to provide justice for victims and their loved ones.”

“And I bought into that. Yes, Tom. It is a slippery slope,” he bewailed his arrogance. “Sadly my turning a blind eye to wrongs didn’t end with condoning Jethro’s abuse of young Anthony’s position on the team. I’m ashamed to admit I personally crossed the line. Most notably, betraying my deep abhorrence of torture as a tool of interrogation,” he confessed.

Now it was Tom’s turn to be shaken, he was not expecting that. Just as Morrow opened his mouth to ask Ducky for more details, an emergency klaxon went off, interrupting Ducky’s confession. At least temporarily.

Reaching for his office intercom, he asked Cynthia if she knew why all hell was breaking loose. Was it a drill that someone had forgotten to notify him about? Was it a false alarm or a prank- and by God, it better not be a prank.

He was stunned by her answer.

 

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