Title: He Won't Do It
Author: Jasmine
Universe: NCIS Season 5
Rated: PG-13
Warnings: Subject matter—child abuse (nothing graphic)
Date: December 15, 2011
Summary: The team becomes concerned when Tony is approached by the FBI and asked to do something.
Credit: Pat Benatar, the iconic 80's singer, is the inspiration for this fiction.
Disclaimer: I make no money off this. All credit goes to D. Bellisario and NCIS.
**********************************8
Ziva looked up at the black suits entering the bullpen. One was tall and skinny while the other was short and stocky, and neither looked particularly thrilled to be there. "May I help you?" she asked.
"Yes, at least I hope so," said the shorter man with the regulation cut hair and round muscular face. He held up his badge and said, "I'm Agent Maxwell, and this is Agent Neal; we're with the FBI. We're looking for Special Agent Anthony DiNozzo."
Ziva sized up the taller agent because he was almost as nice looking as her partner, "He is not here, but he will be returning soon. You are welcome to wait."
Maxwell nodded his appreciation, "Thank you. If you don't mind, I think we will."
Gibbs studied the two agents and then watched the interaction until his curiosity got the better of him, and he stood up and approached them, "I'm Special Agent Gibbs, his boss. Can I help you?"
Maxwell solemnly shook his head and said, "Thank you, but we'll wait and speak directly to Agent DiNozzo."
"Can I ask why you want to see him?"
"It's personal, Agent Gibbs. We'd rather discuss our business with him."
"What has he done?"
"He hasn't done anything."
"It's professional courtesy to share with the team leader any business you might have with one of his people."
"Like I said, Agent Gibbs, we just want to talk to him, nothing more."
Gibbs smiled, deferring to their authority, or at least allowing them to think that, "Special Agent DiNozzo is a member of my team, and when the FBI comes around, usually it's because they're investigating something. Are you investigating my agent, Agent Maxwell?"
"No, Sir," he replied, feeling his collar tightening around his neck, while remembering the stories he'd heard about Agent Gibbs. "It's like I said already. We're only here to talk to him. Maybe we should wait outside."
"So you're saying he's not a suspect in any investigation?"
"That's right."
Still smiling and sounding genial, Gibbs continued, "If that's the case, then you shouldn't mind telling me what it pertains to."
"No disrespect intended, Sir, but we'd really rather wait and speak directly to Agent DiNozzo."
"The least you can do is tell me what case you're working."
Maxwell and Neal exchanged glances; however awkward they may have felt, it was easy to tell that they were considering the request. Shifting nervously, Maxwell answered, "It's an old case that's being reopened. We just have a few questions for Agent DiNozzo, that's all."
"How old's the case?"
"A couple decades."
Gibbs furrowed his brow; there weren't too many departments that entertained cases that old. "What division are you with?"
There was silence now, not even an exchange of looks, and Gibbs knew they were done talking. He continued his friendly way and ticked his head towards the elevators. "Okay. Here he comes now. Don't keep him too long; he has work to do."
Ziva watched the conversation and thought for sure the FBI agent would be relieved when he saw Tony, if for no other reason than he didn't have to deal with Gibbs anymore, but he wasn't relieved at all. Awkward was more the word to describe the agents' demeanor, and Ziva furrowed her brow at their reaction.
"Special Agent Anthony DiNozzo?" Agent Maxwell said, greeting the well dressed man as he approached.
"That depends. You look like you're from the FBI. No offense, but my dealings with you boys don't usually end well—for me."
"I'm Agent Maxwell, and this is Agent Neal, and yes, we're with the FBI. Can we have a minute of your time? Privately?"
Tony cocked his head, "Why?"
"Please, if we could talk in private, I will explain everything."
Tony looked at his colleagues, wondering if they knew what this was about. Ziva and Gibbs were too hard to read, but McGee all but telepathically transmitted his thought… not a clue.
Gibbs said, "Take them to the conference room." With just his eyes, he followed the three men until they disappeared, and then he picked up his phone and dialed. "Fornell? This is Gibbs. I've got a question for you."
Attentively listening, Ziva only pretended to be working, while McGee just flat out eavesdropped.
"Agent Maxwell and Agent Neal… " Gibbs continued, "what division are they with?"
McGee caught the slightest change in his boss' demeanor, and it wasn't a good change either.
"What do they want with DiNozzo?"
A second later, he dropped the phone in its cradle and rubbed his chin.
Ziva whispered to herself, "That didn't sound good."
"What'd he say?" McGee asked.
"Nothing. Claims he can't talk about it. Can you access the FBI's database?"
McGee's eyes widened; he hated these sorts of requests: he never knew how to answer. Should he give the answer that will keep him employed, or give the answer his boss wanted to hear? "Well, I can try to go in through D-O-D…" He noticed Gibbs' look and sucked up the courage and said, "It'll take some time, but I think I can probably…." Once again, the not so subtle glare from Gibbs forced him to further change his answer, "Sorry…, it'll take me a few minutes, but I will do it."
"Good. Get on it and keep it quiet."
Returning to his desk Gibbs tried to concentrate on his latest case, but this new development kept interfering with his concentration. Why was the FBI re-opening an old case? Not a cold case, which he could understand, but this is an old case, and very few divisions had the ability to re-open that kind of case. And why the secrecy? If they really had wanted to, they could have just picked him up at home. Why wait until he came into the office?
"I'm in, Boss. What do you want to know?"
He slid in behind the computer geek and said, "Pull up Agent Maxwell's current assignments."
McGee punched some keys and then read his screen, "Boss, Maxwell's with the division that investigates crimes against children."
"—I can see that. What case is he working?"
Ziva sauntered over and looked on, saying, "They can't possibly think that Tony is capable of such an act."
"C'mon," Gibbs prodded the young agent who seemed frozen in a state of disbelief, "keep looking."
But McGee's mouth stayed open at the thought of Ziva's comment. "There's no way Tony's involved with anything like this, Boss."
"You want me to head slap you?"
Rapidly turning his attention back to his screen, McGee began typing again, "These cases are hard to open, Boss. Any file in the children's division gets double and triple encryption. They use the same firewalls and security that they use for their witness protection program."
"McGee!"
Typing as fast as he could, he brought up a list of case files. "These are the current, open FBI cases, but there's no way of telling which one Maxwell is assigned to. Unless…." He clicked a few more keys, "unless I can…"
Gibbs shifted, watching his monitor flash screen after screen.
"Yes! I'm in. Here's the Director's list of assignments!"
Gibbs furrowed his brow, "You hacked into the FBI Director's files?"
Confused, Tim stumbled, "Well, I… it was… this is the only place I thought to go."
"Good job, McGee. There's hope for you yet. What's it say?"
"Agents Maxwell and Neal have been given six cases to solve."
"Which have the oldest dates?"
"If I'm reading the nomenclature correctly, there are three cases which date back to the seventies and eighties. To be exact: 1973, 1980, and 1989."
"Put them up on the screen."
McGee pushed the file names to the plasma: CAC197313-128, CAC198050-987, and CAC198943-984. They studied the screen a minute before Gibbs pointed to the first entry, "Can you open this one?"
He clicked on the keys until he finally displayed the first page. In silence they read about a man who had been accused of sexually assaulting minors. According to one of the victims, the first incident happened in June of 1973. The man was a counselor at a youth camp for boys with significant disciplinary problems.
"Flip to the victims' page."
McGee scrolled through the file until he landed on the page titled "Potential Victims" typed neatly across the top in old style Courier lettering. The list of names was long, and as he read, it felt like a vise was closing in around his lungs. There was no one named Anthony DiNozzo on the list, and the vise lessened its grip.
"What happened to the case? Did it go to trial?"
McGee continued to scroll through the pages, one by one, reading the witness testimonies, the investigators' notes, and the evidence pages, following along as a case was built against this counselor. According to the reports, the man was brought up on six counts of having sexual relations with a minor, eight counts of rape against a minor, and 24 other various and sundry charges related to sexual abuse of a minor.
Ziva slapped McGee hard.
"Hey!" he responded until he caught her meaning. Coming towards him were Tony and the FBI agents. He quickly minimized his screen while Gibbs walked out from behind and picked up his coffee cup and took a sip, waiting for them to approach. Instead, they stopped by the windows and Maxwell said, "Thank you for your time, Agent DiNozzo. If you change your mind, you have my card."
Tony didn't bother walking them to the elevator, and instead opted to return to his desk as if nothing was unusual about being interviewed by the FBI.
Gibbs asked, "Everything okay?"
"Yeah."
Gibbs studied him a beat, expecting more of an explanation, but it became obvious nothing more was coming.
Ziva watched Gibbs shuffle through some papers, and then leave the bullpen. She turned her attention to her partner, thinking he was perhaps a little too focused on his work. "Are you okay?"
"Yeah, why wouldn't it be?"
"I don't know. You just seem intent on researching Sebring's records," she said hoping he'd see that she really wanted to know what the FBI wanted.
"Well, he is our current case."
She shrugged, accepting his answer but keeping an eye on him as he worked. Between her watching him and McGee glancing his way, she was sure he was going to notice them, but if he did, he chose to ignore them, opting instead to type intently on his computer.
Gibbs heard the music from the elevator. Even still, he wasn't prepared for the blast of noise that assaulted his auditory senses when the door to the lab slid open. "ABBY! TURN IT DOWN!" A second later, he could think again and said, "What'd you have?"
"I have good news! The fingerprint you lifted belongs to Petty Officer Mark Stone."
Gibbs knew that Stone had killed Sebring, but it was collecting the evidence that was proving a challenge, and one piece of evidence alone was never enough for him. He stared at the fingerprint match but said nothing.
"I thought that was good news?" she said.
"I have something for you to do right now. Bring up the bullpen on your camera thingy."
She smiled at his technological vocabulary before turning and clicking on the screen. Coming into focus were Tim, Tony, and Ziva, each working diligently at their desks. "Okay… now what?"
"Just watch him," he said, pointing to the screen.
"Tony? Why?" The request wasn't something he was going to elaborate on, but she needed a little more information. "If you're not going to tell me why, at least tell me what I'm looking for?"
"Anything and everything. Just observe him today."
Before she could ask another question, he disappeared. Looking back at the monitor, she wondered what this was all about and figured it must have had something to do with the FBI visit. She studied the screen and soon realized that she wasn't the only one watching the senior field agent.
********************************************8
Ziva wondered if anyone was leaving for lunch. It was almost one o'clock and not a soul had so much as intimated about being hungry. Her own stomach was growling and she wasn't sure how much longer she could wait. "Anyone up for lunch?"
McGee nodded, "I am. What'd you have in mind?"
Deferring to Tony's senses, she said, "I was thinking about a Bar-B-Que sandwich from Roy's Tavern. How does that sound?"
"Sounds good to me," Gibbs said.
"Me, too," Tim added.
Ziva waited the obligatory second for Tony's response and when none was forthcoming, she asked, "How about you, Tony. Would you like a sandwich from Roy's?"
"No, thank you. I'll pass today."
"What?" she asked, incredulously.
"You heard me."
"Why?"
"Because I'm watching my waistline."
"Since when?"
Tony squared up across from her and said, "Okay. I'm not hungry. I don't feel like Bar-B-Que. I brought my lunch. Pick an excuse." He regretted saying it as soon as the last word left his lips, but he wasn't in any mood to socialize today.
"Tony?"
"Yeah, Boss?"
"What'd you find out about Sebring's accounts?"
"There was a large deposit made three weeks ago. It was withdrawn two weeks later. Bank manager says he has the tapes of the lobby on both the day of the deposit and the day of withdrawal and we can pick them up whenever."
Gibbs tossed him the keys and said, "Good. Pick up the tape and get us some lunch."
"But, I don't want any lunch."
Gibbs stared at him.
"Getting lunch and the tapes, Boss."
The elevator doors had barely closed when Abby trotted into the room, declaring, "I want something from Roy's!"
"You're a Vegan. What can you possibly eat from that place?"
"You are right, McGee! I am a Vegan. But Roy's caved to pressure and they're now serving tofu burgers."
"Wait," he countered, "how'd you know we were going to Roy's?"
She froze, then looked at Gibbs, who seemed to be asking the same question. He just stared back at her, not bothering to help her out in any way. "I thought I heard you talking about it this morning," she lied.
Ziva narrowed her eyes, "No you didn't. You have been spying on us!"
"Well, Gibbs told me to!"
The team leader smiled, "Abby, you'd never make a spy. What'd you observe?"
"I saw that I wasn't the only one watching him."
"You were watching Tony?" Ziva asked.
"Yup. And so were you." Then she turned and pointed to McGee and said, "And you too. It seems we're all keeping an eye on him. Why?"
"Did he do anything unusual?"
"Nope. He wrote notes and talked on the phone. I caught him once staring into space, but that was short lived."
Gibbs ignored her previous question and said, "If you want something to eat, you'd better call DiNozzo. McGee, I want to know if that guy was ever convicted."
"Right." It took him awhile to re-enter the FBI's database and pull up the file again, but he scrolled to the court papers and read, "It says here the case went to court against Hank Eugene Miller, it lasted two weeks. Here it is. It looks like the guy walked, Boss. He was convicted of two counts of taking indecent liberties with a minor, sentenced to twelve months, served six, and was released."
"How does a guy go from 20 counts of sexual abuse down to two?" Ziva asked.
McGee read further and attempted an answer, "It looks like the defense was able to impugn the credibility of the witnesses."
"They were boys. How could they do that?"
"From the looks of it, they were able to convince the jury that the boys couldn't be trusted to tell the truth, so their testimony was questioned from the start."
Gibbs rubbed his chin and thought. There had to be a connection between this case and Tony, but where was it? This case was in 1973 and Tony would have only been four or five, too young to be at that camp, especially one for boys in trouble. "This counselor, Miller, where'd he go after he was released from prison?"
McGee started another search, "According to his tax records, he moved from Kansas to Connecticut in 1976, and was hired at Camp Haven as the Camp Director and put in charge of a program called Summer's Path for Boys. Like the other one, this camp was specifically for boys who had run-ins with the law."
"How could he do that after his conviction," she asked.
Staring intently at his screen, McGee answered, "This was before background checks. If he filled out the application as H. E. Miller, nobody would know the difference."
"Ziva, get me a list of all boys attending that camp in 1976."
"On it."
"McGee, pull up the local newspapers for crime reports in Connecticut in 1976—."
"—Boss, I think I have something," he interrupted. "I accessed Maxwell's notes on the case. It seems that a man has come forward accusing Miller of sexually abusing him while attending that program."
Abby said, "That's double jeopardy—he can't be tried again for the same crime."
"Actually, it's not the same crime. This accusation is from his time as a counselor in Connecticut, not Kansas, and in 1976."
"Ziva, expand your search to include '77."
Abby sat down at Gibbs' computer and started a search on newspapers. A minute later, she said, "I found an article in The Connecticut Gazette about a summer camp being shut down because of accusations being levied against the camp coordinator. They don't mention the camp coordinator's name, but it does refer to a Camp Haven and a program called Summer's Path for Boys."
"McGee."
"On it. Searching for the camp name in the FBI files. Here it is! The State of Connecticut vs. Hank Eugene Miller. Looks like they're building another case against him. After the first victim came forward, two more followed."
"Who are the victims?"
Ziva said, "I've found a list of campers from 1976 through 1978. There are hundreds of names here."
Gibbs stood behind her and together they perused the list. They both saw the name at the same time: Anthony DiNozzo, Jr. He was among the campers who spent his summer at Summer's Path in 1977.
"Boss, I have names. The first person accusing Miller of sexually assaulting him is Robert Brown. David O'Hara and Peter Conner came forward later."
"Where are they now?"
McGee, Ziva, and Abby each took a different victim and started searching. McGee found his man first, "Brown is in Texas, serving time in a federal penitentiary for two convictions of rape."
Ziva found her man next, "David O'Hara is considered homeless and lives with his brother when he isn't in a mental institution. No employment records."
Abby found her man last, "Peter Conner is in and out of rehab facilities. Seems alcohol is the drug of preference but he spent some time kicking a heroin habit."
Gibbs surmised, "Their testimony would be suspect from the beginning, just like in the first case. That's why they want Tony to come forward."
"Testimony from a federal agent would put him away for life."
There was a momentary pause as the realization of what this all meant slowly sunk in. Abby finally said, "There's no proof that Tony was… you know, abused by this man."
"Why else would the FBI want to talk to him?" Ziva stated.
Gibbs picked up his coffee and left, leaving the three to ponder their colleague's past.
TBC