Author's note: I don't own NCIS, or NCIS: LA, (or Number3s, or 007, or Laugh-In for that matter,) but I do owe special thanks to SilverSentinal21, and duskbutterfly
From: LeonVance
To: NCISAllHands
Subj: e-mail security, memo 43
Team,
This is a reminder about the security risk posed by personal e-mail accounts. In addition to the well-publicized phishing scams, (DODTecdoc 09-21943) hostile forces could identify NCIS personnel and exploit intercepted personal e-mails for threats against personal safety or to access DOD electronic resources to act against NCIS missions.
For that reason,
1: ensure that your personal email account name does NOT contain your personal name.
2: follow all standard procedures regarding classified documents.
Signed,
Leon Vance,DIRNCIS
From: LeonVance
To: DonaldMallard, AbbySciuto, TimMcGee, EricBeale, NellJones
Cc: JethroGibbs, HettyLange
Subj: Technical Specialist Retreat: GOATS
It is important to NCIS that our technical specialists share their knowledge across NCIS teams, so I am convening the Group of All Technical Specialists, GOATS, to develop and document best practices among our technical specialists. You will attend the first retreat at the Royal Governor Inn in Santa Fe, NM from Aug. 12 to Aug. 16. Your operations managers will arrange for substitutes to take your places during your absence.
Signed,
Leon Vance, DIRNCIS
From: BuzzLonghair
To: FamilyWound
Date: Aug. 11
Subj: Travel Update
Hello, Z:
So, Ducky, Abby and I just arrived in Santa Fe for this thing of Vance's. I think you'd like it here. It's kind of like what I imagine the Holy Land is like: It's very dry. But there's a shockingly blue sky and I think that has to do with the altitude. Ducky, however is not impressed. He muttered, "I fear our Creator had exhausted His supply of either inspiration or lucre by the time He got here."
Speaking of Ducky, he got us tickets for the Santa Fe Opera: Eric and Abby are going to Nixon in China tomorrow night and Ducky, Nell and I are going to La Boheme tonight. It's funny how that worked out:
Puccini is far too Classical for Abby, but she's very interested in John Adams, the composer of Nixon in China.
It turns out Eric is an unabashed theater geek, so as soon as Rent had come out, he'd overdosed on La Boheme, since that's what its based on: so Nixon for Eric, too.
The Admiral always played marches and the like when he was ashore, so I'm not real familiar with opera, so Ducky recommended I start with one of the classics.
Nell and Ducky are unrestrained classicists, so they pounced on the La Boheme tickets.
Like I said, I'm not at all familiar with opera, but I'll do the best I can to send you a review when I can. I remember how you like Puccini.
Hope things are well in DC. It's your job to keep safe the entire Navy and Marine Corps for the rest of the week.
Tim
Minutes: GOATS meeting Aug. 12
1: Dr. Mallard reported on advances in pathology and forensics. Pointed out unique features of cases with National Security and Homeland Security Implications. Advocated a medical examiner in each major field office.
2: Ms. Sciuto reported on advances in forensics. Pointed out the advantages of close interface with field agents.
3: Issues going forward:
Interface with local P.D.'s
Interface with federal agencies
From: OreoTwin
To: DarrinBeale
Hi, Bro:
Nell and I got into Santa Fe on Monday for that conference our boss's boss set up. The trip was basically uneventful, although I could do without the afternoon thermals lifting and dropping the plane every 30 seconds. We were both green all through the car trip from Albuquerque up here, and even after checking into our rooms.
After the meetings yesterday, Nell went to the Santa Fe Opera with some of the people from the Washington office, and I took the chance to look for souvenirs with Abby, another person from Washington. Turquoise and silver is one of the big things here, so I thought I'd get something for Nell. Abby recommended a triangular pin, but I thought it looked too much like the Star Trek badge, and besides it looked like something our boss would wear. So I ended up with a necklace inspired by the squash blossom design, but updated from it, and I suspect it's the one you'd choose for Sue.
After the meetings tonight Abby and I are going to the opera ourselves. Last night it was La Boheme, which was too classical for us, so we chose Nixon in China, instead. And before you get any ideas, it's just as friends. I think she's got "a thing" for the guy she came out here with, but if Nell and I have a "stage 4 thing-ship," I'd diagnose theirs as only at stage 2.
I'll send you another update later, but my phone's ringing.
Eric.
From: MensaGoth
To: KyleDavis
Hi, Bro (I can't believe how good it feels to be able to say that!)
So I'm out in Santa Fe for this thing for work, and woke up this morning with a splitting headache, like four-horsemen-of-the-apocalypse-galloping-across-your-brainstem headache, and I realized it was a caffeine headache so I tried to find my favorite Caf-Pow but I can't because this is a backwater in the cosmic flow of the universe, but that's not in a bad way because I really love the quiet peaceful of the sagebrush country, and the placid approach to life of the hippies and the locals, but it's just that I can't get my Caf-Pow so I had to drive almost halfway to Albuquerque to find a gas station that had some next to its ICEE machine, but now everything is okay because I just finished one and I have a spare because I knew how hard it was going to be to get them and I had a caffeine headache anyway and so now its really beautiful out here and I'd love to tell you more but Eric, one of the guys I met out here just got a phone call from our boss of bosses and I think it surprised him so much that he thinks World War III is starting and he's running up and down the hotel hallway with a referee's whistle, so: so long and thanks for listening.
Love,
Abby
From: LeonVance
To: DonaldMallard, AbbySciuto, TimMcGee, EricBeale, NellJones
Cc: JethroGibbs, HettyLange, SECNAV
Subj: Adm. William Johnson case
As Secretary Jarvis explained to Mr. Beale, Admiral Johnson was murdered in Santa Fe last night. Since he had Top Secret clearance and was involved in highly-classified projects it's been determined that NCIS will have jurisdiction. Of course it helped that you were in the area at the time. Agent McGee will have the lead on this case, with authority to delegate as he sees fit. Your contacts will be Detective Michael Ortega of the Santa Fe police department and Dr. Susan Chavez, Chief Medical Examiner. At our end, we will work with the FBI field office in Albuquerque to provide you with appropriate side arms.
There is a sense in which this should postpone the GOATS technical meeting that brought you together, but there is also the sense that working together on a real case will permit cross-fertilization in a way that technical meetings cannot. For that reason I do not foresee extending your stay in Santa Fe.
Signed,
Leon Vance, DIRNCIS
From: HettyLange
To: DavidSinclair at AlbuquerqueFBI
Subj: Adm. William Johnson case, jurisdiction # 31234
Agent Sinclair:
I'm writing you about the above-referenced case. By coincidence, NCIS had a group of specialists at a retreat in Santa Fe. Unfortunately, the agents among them, Timothy McGee and Nell Jones, did not bring their side arms to what they had expected to be a peaceful retreat. Both have completed FLETC basic agent training, and Agent McGee is an active NCIS field agent. In light of the circumstances, I'm requesting that the FBI provide them each with a pistol for the duration of this case.
Thank you,
Henrietta Lange, Operations Manager,
NCIS Office of Special Projects, Los Angeles
August 13, 5 pm
Autopsy Report, interim executive summary: Admiral William Johnson.
By: Dr. Donald Mallard
Admiral Johnson presented with a single gunshot wound to the medial abdomen. Preliminary inspection indicates the bullet is 0.38 caliber, and the absence of gunshot residue and the near-horizontal bullet trajectory indicate he was shot by someone standing at least 3 ft. distant from where he was standing. The bullet traveled beside the sternum and punctured the heart. Death was nearly instantaneous.
The body does show signs of a struggle, probably a fistfight.
Stomach contents normal,
Traces of blood alcohol,
No notable drugs.
Time of Death: 10-11 pm, August 12.
Biological evidence is currently in the custody of the Santa Fe medical examiner.
Dear Diary,
For a while now, I've been glad I started you during my unplugged weekends, and now I'm so glad I decided to bring you along: I need to take some time this evening to get my thoughts together from yesterday. Tonight Eric and Abby get a turn go to the opera, so I've got some time to myself.
The meeting on Tuesday was pretty boring. The worst part was taking notes for the minutes. I'd rather have been just chatting with Abby and Dr. Mallard (everybody calls him Ducky, which I think is kinda funny. Funnier still is that his first name is Donald: Donald Ducky, geddit?)
Tuesday Night, McGee, Ducky and I went to the Santa Fe Opera to see La Boheme. It wasn't my favorite Puccini, (I preferred Tosca) but it is now. It has a smaller scale than Tosca, which allows the poignancy to come through. The staging was amazing: it's an open-air theater on a hilltop about 15 minutes outside of town, so you can look out over the New Mexico foothills. The lighting worked well in this setting, transforming from a happy Paris evening to the cold of winter's night after midnight.
On the drive back, Ducky launched into a dissertation about carpe diem as a theme in La Boheme. At first, I thought he was just exercising the prerogatives of old age and being a know-it-all, but then he and Tim started interrogating me about my relationship with Eric, and the moon-eyes they say they caught each of us giving the other. They were both giving me unwanted advice until I turned the tables on Tim and started asking him about Abby: time to carpe some diem yourself, Mister!
I know this entry sounds like a standard high school melodrama, and that's where I thought things were headed, but then we got a case. As soon as Ducky left for the ME's office, the rest of us started piecing the parts together and assembling the elements of an office for the investigation—we were able to connect to the OSP ops centers through the connections at the Santa Fe police department. About the time I was ready to boot the cryptanalysis programs with Eric, an FBI agent arrived with pistols: the one for Tim was what I'd expected, since he's a field agent, but then he gave me one. Gradually the implications sank in: since Tim was the only NCIS field agent on the team, I'd be his partner. Suddenly, shockingly, I was being put into the field.
As if that wasn't disorienting enough, I also had the disturbing experience of getting jealous about Eric. Here's how it happened: we found a bronze buckle at the scene, and it wasn't clear where it was made, but Eric had read an article about Stable Isotope Ratio Analysis and suggested working at an accelerator at Los Alamos to figure where it came from. When he suggested it, Abby was excited about a chance to play on a bigger, cooler toy than ever, so she threw her arms around Eric. As I watched, the bilious acid of jealousy rose from my stomach into my throat. I've since realized that was just Abby's demonstrative personality bubbling to the surface, but that doesn't mean I wasn't surprised by how jealous I felt the time.
I also got to try my hand at interrogating, and that was interesting. First, Tim and I had to question Sara, the admiral's daughter. She's my age, her mother passed away eight years ago, and now her father is murdered. Worse still, her boyfriend Bob was the last to see him alive. It was hard for me to treat her as a suspect or accomplice, but I didn't have to for long: While I was talking to her, Abby called to say that they learned that the buckle had been made in Hungary and the other suspect is Austrian, so it basically exonerated Sara and Bob.
It turns out that Sara knew one of the guys backstage at the opera, Helmut Scheiber. He goes to school with her, but had been traveling as assistant to one of the opera stars: Last summer, Helmut was at the opera in Vienna. In fact, it had been at Sara's instigation that Bob and William came to spend their summer vacation here. Bob, Sara, and her dad all seemed to be getting along fine.
So, we had to interrogate Helmut. I'd thought Tim was too nice to be able to pull off the Bad-Cop part of a Good-Cop/Bad-Cop routine, but it worked—but only because I decided to use Kensi as a role model: What Would Kensi Do? We didn't have quite enough to arrest him at that point, but it feels like we're getting close. And now I know how much I'd need to learn about interrogation.
I may have more thoughts in a bit.
Nell.
From: BuzzLonghair
To: EdithAnnGoneGrey
Dear Penny,
Greetings from Santa Fe! I hope all is well there.
The retreat took a turn toward the strange yesterday. Things had been going well: Abby and your friend Dr. Mallard gave their talks on Tuesday, and on Wednesday we were expecting talks from Eric and Nell, who are our counterparts from Los Angeles. But instead, that morning we got a call about a case here, and I was tasked to lead the team that investigated. Even though it's been just a year since DiNozzo stopped calling me "probie," I was the one with the most field experience. Nell's a technical analyst, and while she had been undercover a few times, this was the first time she'd gone out behind a badge. Actually, I was a little nervous about her.
The case turned out to be minor, but it was strange yesterday setting up an office from scratch, and even stranger leading the team. I was worried about what kind of a leader I'd be: irritable and uncompromising like the Dadmiral is, or just brusque but sympathetic like Gibbs. I hope I did okay. I think everyone pitched in amazingly well, and soon we were brainstorming and following up on each other's ideas like we do under Gibbs. I'm rather proud that I got Abby and Eric to go to the opera last night. We were in the midst of an investigation, they were obsessing about it, and I was spitting bricks about how it was going, but we'd hit dead ends for the night.
This afternoon we didn't get the summer rain that the locals are so accustomed to: Ten minutes of rain, then the sunshine gets on with its life. Instead, we got cooler, dryer weather and the sky turned even bluer. So after we closed the case, my team (What a concept!) was sitting on the patio at one of the bars near the hotel. Nell and Eric, who have been nervously flirting all the time they were here, sat on one bench, and Abby and I on the other. The good Doctor got the chair.
I'm sure the waitress thought we made a funny bunch: Abby ordered grappa, Ducky a single-malt I'd never heard of, I ordered gin and tonic, and Eric got the local microbrew. I expected something like a Sauterne for Nell, but she asked for a dry martini, "Stirred, not shaken." Eric gave Nell a puzzled look, and then I could see it change to a smile that matched hers as he realized something. He asked, "So is it Hetty or Nate with whom I should discuss your new taste in drinks, Agent Double-Oh-Nell?"
"It's just a drink, Eric, don't make a federal case out of it."
"Whatever you say, Secret Agent, Ma'am."
I liked Nell's idea, and by the time the waitress left our table, the order was five martinis.
And that's the truuuthhh.
Timothy.
Dear Diary:
Well, we were able to close the case today (actually, it's yesterday, since it's now 3 in the morning, and a martini's worth of sleep has become a martini's worth of hangover.) I can't wait to tell the team about it, especially Kensi. That's the good news. The bad news is that I shot and injured a man. A living human being is in the hospital because I pulled the trigger. I know he's confessed to the murder, and I know he would have shot Eric if I hadn't shot him, and I know the rest of the team handles shootings well, but this was my first.
Here's how it happened. We'd figured out that Bob had just talked to Adm. Johnson and asked for permission to marry Sara. We'd learned that Helmut, Sara's ex-boyfriend, hadn't taken that well and had tracked down the Admiral. We arrived at the opera house to arrest Helmut, but a chase broke out. Eric tried to hit the guy with a sandbag on a rope while he ran across the stage. The sandbag missed, but it alerted the suspect to where Eric was, so he drew his gun on Eric. I was running down the aisle, and had just split seconds to shoot. I was aiming for his wrist, but I missed. He turned to face me, so I took another shot, this time aiming for his thigh, and it hit.
Intellectually, I know it was a clean shoot. I think I even saved Eric. Intellectually, I'm glad I got his thigh, rather than his chest. But that doesn't take away the look of pain I saw on Helmut's face, and it doesn't hide the pool of blood that he was lying in by the time the ambulance came him. I hope Kensi and Eric can understand, and get me over this. I think they will.
Talk to you later. I'm sure I'll have more to say.
Nell
p.s.: What if Nate's called in to get my head hooked back on straight? Nate's a nice guy and a good shrink, but with the way things stand with Eric (whatever that is…) that would be awful. I've gotta be strong so Hetty doesn't resort to that.
From: AbbySciuto
To: EricBeale
Eric:
It was nice to meet you and work with you in Santa Fe. Thanks, too, for the idea about the accelerator. It worked well, and the guys I worked with at Los Alamos are pressuring me to write a paper about it.
I had to pass one thing on to you: as I was briefing Gibbs about the case, his focus seemed to be on how McGee did leading the team, and how Nell did on her first assignment as a field investigator. I'm glad for this, because they're both good people and there are only good things to say about either of them, but I thought you should know the chain of command is taking lots of interest in their work on this case.
Abby
From: EricBeale
To: AbbySciuto
Abby,
Thanks for your note. Your words were well-timed and matched what happened at my debriefing.
A couple other notes: I think I'm going to ask Hetty to set up a forensics analytical lab, based on your model: Does Major Mass Spec run a basic training?
I say go for it on publishing with the guys from Los Alamos. The case didn't involve anything classified, they need the paper, and we're telling Vance that we need to reach out to law enforcement, anyhow. If you get the green light on it, let me know how I can help.
You said you'd met Hetty, so I thought I'd tell you what happened when we got back. I'd just finished telling her about the case, and Tim and Nell's awesome role in it, and in parting I mentioned was that you and I had seen Nixon in China. As I left the office, I'm sure I heard her say, to her cup of estate-grown Darjeeling, "I wonder whom they got to play me."
Eric
AN: Hoped you liked it. One explanatory note: In the early 70's, Lily Tomlin appeared on Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In: a comedy show whose closest analogue today is probably Saturday Night Live. One of her recurring characters was Edith Ann, a four-year old in a giant rocking chair. She even had a tag line, "and that's the truthhhhhh."