Chapter 2- A really unpleasant meeting
"You say you didn't kill the marine?" Gibbs asked Sismond for the 10th time.
"That's what I said before."
"He owed you money, though. A lot of money. And that was a good reason to kill, right?"
"Look, agent Gibbs, I haven't killed Clark. We weren't exactly what you'd call best friends, but I'd never kill someone. Believe it or not, I'm not that kind of person."
The two men looked at each other for some seconds, as though they wanted to prove to each other that they weren't going to back off. Gibbs's glare didn't have the effect it had on other people. Under normal circumstances, this glare would be more than enough to get a confession. On the other hand, Sismond had been trained to make other people be afraid of him, but this time it was different. Gibbs wasn't a normal opponent.
Suddenly, the door opened with a loud noise and they saw a tall woman standing there, wearing a black suit and an expressionless stare. It was the exact same look on her face that Gibbs remembered from the last time he saw her. It was nothing. No expression, no feeling, nothing. She was just standing there, looking at him, and he immediately knew that this was going to be one of the worst days of his life, one that he was definitely not going to forget.
"Gibbs! I demand that you tell me what's going on here."
"Reese? I suppose you know you don't have the right to break into the interrogation room any time you want and interrupt me."
"Rule number 22, isn't it? Never ever bother Gibbs in interrogation? Well, you don't have the right to arrest my agents without informing me. There's rule number 16, in case you forgot."
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw McGee and Dinozzo look at each other with strange looks and whisper to each other. They were wondering how she knew Gibbs's rules. Most importantly, however, they noticed the threat that was hidden in her last words. She thought she had the upper hand, and threatened to break Gibbs's hand. That was serious. Nobody they knew had ever tried to challenge their boss in such a way.
"I actually think I do have the upper hand, considering he's suspected for the murder of a marine."
"What the hell are you talking about?"
He dragged her by the arm, outside the room, and closed the door behind him. He avoided making eye contact with her, which made her wonder, considering he wasn't afraid of anything and anyone.
"The dead marine, George Clark, owed Sismond quite a lot of money, and had even asked for more. Sismond was also seen exiting Clark's house around the time of death yesterday. That's enough for arresting him, I believe."
She thought about this for a while. To her, that was an unbelievable story, and she had heard a lot of unbelievable stories in her carreer. "Sismond is not a killer. I know him, and trust him with my life." She stopped talking, wanting to leave some time for her words to sink in. "But since you think otherwise, we'll investigate the case together to find out."
"Why would I let you join the case?"
"First of all, you have one of my people here, therefore I have the right to join. Not to mention that I can make your life very difficult, and you know it."
Not responding to that last threat, he opened the door and went back to the interrogation room, leaving it up to her to assume that he could make her life difficult, too. Gibbs gave Sismond another one of his death glares. Reese wanted to kill him for treating one of her best agents like that, but she held it back.
"Tell me what happened, again."
"I already told you twice! I met Clark because he wanted to tell me that he'd be able to give me the money he owed within the next month. Then I left. I don't know what happened to him after that."
"Oh, you really don't?"
"I'm telling you the truth."
"You've been trained to make me believe you're telling the truth even when you're not, though. Why would I believe you?"
"Just shut up, Gibbs." Reese interrupted him. "For one thing, you can see that he's not going to admit commiting the crime, whether he did or not. You're also breaking rule number 16, bend the line, don't break it. Well, sure thing you've long ago broken it."
Since interrogation didn't pay off, their next step towards finding the killer was assigning McGee to look up the dead man's phone records. There was one person that Clark talked to almost every day, and that man was Charles Smith. They found the man's address and went straight there.
"Who is she?" Dinozzo asked Gibbs on their way to the house.
"She's Sara Reese, the director of the CIA." he answered as though he didn't want to discuss it any further.
"Do you know her from somewhere?"
"Why don't you go ask her, Dinozzo?" his boss replied, putting an end to this conversation.
The house was quite large, in the middle of a garden. There were a lot of different flowers and plants, but they looked like they hadn't been taken care of for a long time. Generally, it looked like nobody cared for the house.
Nobody answered when they knocked the door, so they had to break it. They called out the owner's name but they got no response.
"Reese, Dinozzo, check downstairs. McGee, follow me!" Gibbs ordered.
"Do you know Gibbs from somewhere?" Dinozzo asked as soon as he had the chance.
"It's a long story, agent Dinozzo. Why don't you ask your boss?"
"I already did, and he told me to ask you."
"Well, then tell him to look at rule number 45."
"Clean up the mess that you make? That's one of the emergency rules, in case you don't know it."
"I know. Relationships with Gibbs have always been emergency situations."
Before Dinozzo had the time to say anything, they saw a person lying on the floor of the living room, severely wounded. They got closer and found out that he was Charles Smith, and he was still breathing.
"Call an ambulance!" Reese shouted at Tony while she tried to stop the bleeding and save Smith, the only person that could help them solve the case. They couldn't afford to lose their only suspect.
After the ambulance arrived and took the injured man to the hospital, Gibbs told them all to go upstairs to see something he had discovered. Under Smith's bed there was a large supply of drugs.
"Looks like our marine was in much more trouble than we thought." Dinozzo commented.
They needed all the information Smith could give them, because this case was getting more and more complicated, but right now he was unable to talk to them. They wanted to see what the evidence from the crime scene could tell them. Abby was not done with analyzing them yet, so they went home for the night and visited her lab the next morning.
Before heading to her hotel for the night, Reese visited the morgue to see the dead marine for herself. She had seen the photos from the crime scene, so there was no actual need for her to see the body up close. However, there was someone else she wanted to see, and that someone was alive, fortunately.
"Hello, Sara!" Ducky greeted with a smile, a smile that always made Gibbs wonder what exactly is there that makes him happy about seing her. To Gibbs, that woman was just an annoyance. To Ducky, she was something more.
"Hello Ducky!"
"So, what brings you down here?"
"I wanted to see the body of the marine for myself."
"Ok then…" he said and showed George Clark's body to her. "But I think there's something else. Tell me, what's going on? I can see that you and Jethro can't stand being around each other for long."
"You know the story, you know how we broke up! What do you expect me to do?"
"One of you has to break rule number 6, and you know he won't ever make the first step."
"Really? Just so you know, neither will I. I'm not young and reckless anymore, Ducky. I'm tired of begging him."
With those words, she stormed out of the room, not being angry with Ducky, but rather with herself.
When Gibbs went home after work, he saw Ducky waiting for him there. The two men had a drink and the medical examiner could clearly see that something was bothering his friend.
"What happened Jethro?" he asked after a while.
Gibbs took a large sip of his drink. "Sara Reese has thousands of agents that she could have sent here, and she could just make some phone calls and have her agent released. She came here herself, however, and I know she just wanted to cause me trouble."
"She cares about Sismond. They're good partners."
"Still she could take care of things without having to leave her office. And Dinozzo started asking questions about our relationship."
"Yes, Anthony can be a little bit curious. What did you tell him?"
"I told him to go ask her. I don't know what she said."
"I don't thing she wanted to discuss it, either. When I saw her, she seemed cold to me. She's not the twenty year old agent she was the last time, and she's much harder to handle."
"I can do it, I assure you."
"Are you sure? Because I see that you can barely stop yourself from shooting her."
"I won't kill her, Ducky. I want it, but I won't. I'll just finish with this case and send her home. This is no different than any other case."
Gibbs wanted to show no emotion, but Ducky wasn't quite convinced by his friend's last words. Ducky had known him for years, and he knew Sara Reese, too. None of them was willing to make peace. If they weren't going to be friends ever again, Ducky felt it was his job to at least prevent a war.
Gibbs and Reese walked into the elevator the next morning and stayed in the same small space for two minutes without killing each other, even though they really wanted to. It seemed that their discussions with Ducky the previous night hadn't changed anything.
When Abby saw them together, she smiled. Unlike McGee and Dinozzo, she and Ducky knew the whole story.
"Nice! I see you two are…"
"We're nothing, Abby." Reese cut in. "Not any more."
"Tell us about the evidence." Gibbs said, wanting to stop a conversation that would surely end in a very awkward way.
"Ok, then. Well, the poison that was used to kill the marine was not a common one. It's a special chemical substance that's exclusively used by a single factory in the world." Abby reported.
"Where is this factory?"
"You're lucky, it's nearby. I can give you the address."
They thanked her for the information, took McGee and Dinozzo and headed straight to the factory. They demanded to see the owner, and after half an hour of negotiating with his secretary, they were finally allowed to meet him.
"Good evening, mr Johnson. We are from the NCIS and we want to talk to you."
"Tell me. I don't have much time."
"First of all, do you know George Clark?"
"No, I have no idea who he is."
"He's a marine, and he's dead. He was killed with a substance that's used exclusively by your factory."
"I have nothing to do with this."
"Nobody said you do." Reese said. "Can we see your scientists now?"
"Of course. Maybe they know something that could help you."
He told them where to go and left them on their own. On their way to the lab, the four agents talked about the case.
"I don't like him." Reese commented. "When we walked in, he seemed pretty relaxed, and two minutes later he told us he didn't have much time."
"Not to mention that he tried to protect himself by saying he didn't do anything when, in fact, we never accused him of anything." Dinozzo added. "Yes, he's suspicious, boss."
The head scientist offered them a far warmer welcome than his boss. He was one of those people that are very pleasant to be around, always smiling with his charming smile but not to the point that it gets annoying. He seemed to get along pretty well with all the other people that worked in his lab, and they respected him while a friendly atmosphere was also present. It was almost like the ideal workplace.
"It's true that a small amount of this substance was missing when I came here three days ago, but it was so small that it wasn't worth mentioning. I didn't want to report it, I wanted to find the thief myself and have a discussion with him without anyone else knowing." the scientist said when they told him what they wanted.
"Did you find out who took it?" McGee asked.
"No, but I tried. Two people in the lab were talking about your dead marine, George Clark, in a way that meant they didn't like him at all. I talked to them because I thought a murder might have something to do with the stolen substance, but they denied having anything to do with the case."
The agents thanked the scientist for the information and went to have a conversation with the two men.
"Hello, agents. Can we help?" one of the men asked casually, like everything was fine.
"Yes. Your boss said he heard you talking about George Clark, and two days later the marine was found dead."
"We have nothing to do with this. Clark owed us money, and all we wanted was to have our money back. We'd never kill him."
They left after that, having no actual reason to stay at the factory. The two men seemed strange, but not enough to be arrested.
"Clark was in deep trouble if he owed money to so many people." Dinozzo said when they went back to headquarters. "What did he want to do with the money?"
"I did some research and he hasn't bought anything expensive recently." Reese answered. "He hasn't bought a house, or a car, and he doesn't have a family to take care of. I think that he took money from all those different people because he wanted to give it all to someone else. Maybe it has to do with the drugs at Smith's house."
"So you suggest that there was blackmailing?" Dinozzo asked.
"Yes, I think so. As you said, he was in deep trouble."
"If Smith wakes up, maybe he'll be able to tell us something useful." Gibbs said.
"I'll call the doctor and ask if we can visit Smith now." McGee offered. Five minutes later, he hung up the phone and looked at the rest of the team. "The doctor said we'd better wait, he's still a little bit weak."
Gibbs started walking towrds the elevator without saying anything.
"The doctor said he's still weak, boss!" McGee shouted, even though he knew that his boss had clearly heard what he had just said.
"I heard you, McGee, but we have a case to solve. If the dead man was so desparate to give the money back, whoever he owed to must be scary. We may have to do with dangerous people. We can't wait."
The young agent didn't say anything else, understanding that his boss was right.
When Reese started walking toward Gibbs' direction, he really wanted to shout at her. He wanted to get rid of her but she never seemed willing to just leave him alone. He could go to the hospital alone, and that's why he didn't ask for someone to go with him. As she had decided she was going to go, though, he couldn't do anything else. She was just an annoying co-worker that was going to be around only for that case. He was supposed to never get personally involved in a case, and that also meant to not get personally involved with fighting his annoying co-worker.
Smith was awake when they arrived at the hospital and didn't protest when two agents walked into his room and started asking questions, which was unusual for a guy who had such a dirty past.
"George Clark was murdered and you had been talking to him frequently before his death. Give us a really good explanation for that." Reese demanded.
"I don't know anything!"
"You say that you're innocent?"
"I am!"
"Then why did you have drugs under your bed?"
"I'm not saying anything else without my lawyer."
"Oh, yes you are…"
They looked at him for a while without talking, waiting for him to admit that he was lying. He looked back at them, obviously aware of the fact that they knew he was lying, but he kept his arms folded and didn't say a word.
Reese went closer to him and whispered something in his ear. In half a minute, he had confessed and told them everything they needed to know.
"What did you say to him?" Gibbs asked her once they were done.
"Probably the exact same thing you were about to say." She said and got in her car without saying anything else.
She said we were thinking about the same thing. Gibbs thought to himself. No, we aren't the same. Her way of thinking is completely different than mine. I hate her. I really, really do hate her.
This was the second chapter, finally! I hope you like it!
To answer the review I received, I'm still not sure if I'm going to use Ziva in this story, but I think I'll just have her appear in the next chapter and help the team in their investigation.