CHAPTER THREE.

At his desk, Tony chewed on a massive deli bagel as he pored over the photographs and layout sketches of the crime scene. When he felt hot breath tickle the hairs on his neck, he startled, swung around, and almost dropped the bagel. He scowled when he found it was Abby lurking behind him.

Her eyes busily scrutinized one sketch in particular.

"You normally make more noise than that, Abs," Tony said darkly. He took another bite of the bagel and chewed with his mouth open. Some cream cheese stuck stubbornly to his lip.

"Your lines are angry," she declared, still looking at the paper.

Tony screwed up his face in a look of profound confusion as he said, "My what are what?"

"Your lines." She leaned into his space with her arm and pointed at the pencil marks in question. "They're all dark and forceful. Angry." Her eyes narrowed as she focused on his face. "They indicate a deeply tumultuous emotional state."

"I don't know what you're talking about, Abs," Tony said, "but please, we're busy up here trying to solve a murder, so—"

"Then maybe you'll be interested to know that I pulled a couple prints off that wallet. And I got a hit. Next up are the shell casings…"

"I'd be more interested to know who they match." He shoved the rest of the bagel in his mouth and kept chewing, loudly. He licked his fingers.

"I'm sure you would, but first you have to tell me if you're okay." She crossed her arms and waited. "So go on. Start talking, mister."

Tony, in return, also crossed his arms and leaned back in his chair, simply giving Abby "the look" while he finished chewing and swallowing.

"I'm waiting," Abby said.

"Everybody is asking if I'm okay, and it's making me worried," Tony said. "I'm beginning to think I have some sort of terminal illness I'm not aware of."

"You do have an illness. It's called terminal obstinance."

"Oooh, that sounds serious." Tony smirked. "Is there a cure?"

"No," she said. "It's terminal."

"Well, that would make sense... So nothing I can do about it?" He allowed himself a flirtatious grin.

Abby met his flirtatious grin and raised the stakes: "Maybe. What would you suggest?"

"I'd suggest you all tell me what you got," Gibbs deadpanned as he suddenly rounded the corner. He stood in front of the plasma in expectation, watching it and waiting for it to show him something.

"You're no fun," Abby pouted. "I'm helping Tony through a difficult time."

"The only difficult time DiNozzo's gonna have," Gibbs threatened, "is pulling my boot out of his ass if he doesn't get up off of it."

At that, Tony immediately sprang to his feet and dug around McGee's desk for the clicker. "Uh… I think we're missing Bishop and McGee." He looked briefly at Abby. "Boss."

"Where's Bishop?" Gibbs asked Abby.

"The restroom?" she supplied.

"McGee?"

"Uh…" Abby guessed. "The restroom?"

That was when Tony's phone dinged loudly, alerting him of a new text message. Call me when you get a chance. We need to talk about this.

Without thinking, Tony grabbed it and tapped in reply: Now you want to talk?

The answer came quickly. I want to talk, not fight. Call me.

"You done?" Gibbs asked. He pinned Tony with a glare that promised the imminent boot up his ass plus nothing else good, and Tony almost felt the need to shrink away from it.

Tony slipped the phone into his pocket while Abby looked on in worry. "Yeah, I'm done."

McGee, followed closely by Ellie, picked the perfect moment to show up and announce, "Sorry, Boss. I was helping Ellie with something down in the evidence garage. Did we miss something?" He looked from Gibbs to Abby to Tony. When he caught Tony's eye, he motioned to his own face as subtly as he could.

Tony took the hint and wiped quickly at his lip with a hand. He scowled at Abby while mouthing, "Why didn't you tell me?"

"Details. C'mon people," Gibbs prompted. "What do we got?"

McGee jumped in first, and soon the plasma lit up with the picture of a young man with an earnest, serious face. "Our victim is Petty Officer First Class Joshua Carver, 32 years old and based out of Norfolk. He's married to a Rebecca Carver, and they have a home in Brookland, here in the District. They have a six month old baby girl named Lily. According to Ducky, cause of death was a gunshot wound to the chest, but he also sustained gunshot wounds to the lower abdomen and right thigh."

McGee clicked, and the plasma now showed a photograph of Joshua Carver, Rebecca, and baby Lily, as well as another young man with shaggy brown hair and a reticent smile.

"Who's the other guy?" Gibbs asked.

"That's Sunny Carver, 25 years old and Joshua's younger brother," answered Ellie. "He reportedly lives on and off at the Carver residence. He works as a gas station clerk."

"Criminal record?"

McGee clicked forward.

"Somewhat lengthy, but nothing extremely noteworthy or violent," Ellie said. "DUI, paraphernalia, possession. Nothing for the past three years. He apparently went through a drug and alcohol program and cleaned up his act."

Gibbs nodded. "Joshua Carver have any problems at work? Any enemies?"

Tony answered, "The XO we got ahold of verifies that he was currently on leave time for the holidays, but his ship was set to leave port on the fifth of January for a six month tour in the South Pacific. XO mentioned no problems whatsoever. Carver was on point, a hard-worker, on the fast track to become Chief Petty Officer. Great commendations all around."

The plasma switched to pictures of Carver dead on the cold ground of the crime scene and in autopsy.

"Everybody loved this guy, Boss," Tony finished.

Gibbs glanced his way. "Somebody didn't."

McGee added, "One of his former crewmates did mention that Joshua was often worried about his younger brother. He even took extended leave three years ago to help him out a bit."

"And Abby," Tony said, looking back toward where she waited in surprising silence, "said she got a hit on some prints from the wallet."

She stepped toward McGee's computer and did some typing and clicking. Yet another new picture popped up on the plasma, this time of a completely different man.

Tony cocked his head at it. There was something awfully familiar about those features.

"Lieutenant Commander Charles Petrone, former Navy SEAL," Abby said. "And I mean, very former. He was part of a platoon that performed several ops in South Vietnam. Honorable discharge and several positive commendations. His present whereabouts are unknown."

"Hey, now I know!" Tony said. "That's Chuck."

"Who's Chuck?" Ellie asked.

But Gibbs, too, was experiencing a bit of deja-vu.

"The homeless guy out at Rock Creek Park," Tony answered.

"You think he took all of the stuff out of the wallet?" Tim asked.

"There were a lot of prints, Gibbs," Abby said. "But I mean, that doesn't tell us much."

Gibbs said gruffly, "Tells me he lied to both me and DiNozzo." Immediately, he looked to Tony, who still studied the photo. "You're big buddies with him now. Go back out there, ask him some more questions."

"No disrespect, Boss," Tony ventured to say, "but the brother is a much more viable lead. Let me follow-up on that."

Everybody went quiet.

Gibbs turned to stand directly in front of Tony, pinning him with yet another lethal glare. To Tony's credit, he didn't back down or break eye contact. Several tense moments passed, during which even Abby held her breath.

In a carefully controlled tone, Tony added, "Clean or not, Sunny Carver might still have ties to his former or not-so-former life. A homeless guy rifling through a dropped wallet is not exactly a smoking gun."

Gibbs looked his Senior Field Agent up and down and then up again, his hard stare ultimately landing on Tony's calm face and steady hazel eyes. Finally, Gibbs' face broke into a rare smile as he nodded and said, "I agree." He moved away, relieving the pressure.

Tony let out a breath.

"But you're still goin' to talk to him, Tony," Gibbs said. "Ellie, Tim — you two are on the brother. Be thorough. Let's get to the bottom of this."

He stood in the small alcove by the stairway while he argued back and forth with Zoe through the cell phone. With his backpack slung over a shoulder and car keys in hand, he was ready to go back to the park to track down Chuck. But first he had to smooth over this lingering issue, or at least attempt it.

"We're not fighting; we're discussing. And right now I'm discussing—" Tony whispered somewhat heatedly into the phone.

He paused.

"I'm going to lose the deposit. Maybe if you'd've told me."

He paused again.

"I know. I know. It is a great opportunity. I understand."

And again.

"Okay. I gotta go."

And yet again.

"The usual… Uh-hm… Love you, too. Buh-bye."

Tony ended the call and stood there for a bit, staring at both the wall and at nothing. Finally, he moved out into the hall, where he ran into something that was solid and warm and looked a lot like Jimmy Palmer.

"Hey, Tony," Jimmy said, as if he'd been expecting all along for this to happen. "When are we doing the 'It's a Wonderful Life' movie night this year up in MTAC? Breena and I want to know so we can find a sitter for Victoria, and-"

"Not doing it this year," Tony said darkly. "Christmas is cancelled."

"What? Why?" Jimmy frowned. His glasses slid comically to the end of his nose. He pushed them back up with a finger. "We were looking forward to it…"

"Well, if you wanna do it with Abby and the others, that's fine. But I won't be there." Tony repositioned the backpack on his shoulder and started walking, signaling an abrupt end to the conversation.

But Jimmy kept on following him, his mouth gaped open.

Tony stopped and then slowly turned around to stare hard at the scarecrow version of Palmer. "Can I help you with something?"

"No, I, uh—" Jimmy seemed confused by Tony's frigid mood. Tony was usually warm and friendly with him, and over the years they'd become unlikely confidantes.

Enunciating his words carefully, Tony explained, "Unless that corpse downstairs suffered a Christmas miracle and is now alive and talking and can tell us who shot him to death and why, I'd really prefer if you went back downstairs. Thank you. Now I gotta go."

In her lab, Abby was absorbed in her analysis of the ignition points of various gun powder samples for another team's case. She hadn't seemed to notice Ellie step inside and take her customary perch on the stool until she turned around and saw her there. She jumped and clutched her chest.

"Oh come on," Ellie said. "You knew I was here."

"You're right." Abby turned to grin at her, eyes covered by a pair of red rimmed safety glasses. "Where's Tim?"

"Speaking with Mrs. Carver in a conference room. She's devastated."

Abby's grin melted into a deep frown. "I don't envy that task."

"No." Ellie watched Abby finish writing something in a notebook. "So… What do you have so far?"

Abby's smile returned full force and then some. She said, "I thought you'd never ask." She removed the safety glasses, spun around, and reached for a manila folder tucked between two fat binders. She opened it and shoved it under Ellie's nose. "Everybody's tasks are listed here."

"Operation Eggnog?" Ellie read with a raised brow.

"Every good op needs a good codename. And Operation Let's Cheer Tony Up seems way too specific. So what do you think?" Abby wrung her hands as she waited.

Ellie's eyes continued to scan the page. "You're going to lure him into MTAC for a movie night?"

"We do it every year. Well, I mean the movie night, not luring people into MTAC. That's sort of, like, impossible, what with the retina scanner thingy. You kind of have to have a reason to be there, so it's not like you could just—"

"Abby…" Ellie verbally nudged her.

"So yeah, Tony hasn't said anything about the movie night yet. And then Jimmy came to me earlier babbling about Christmas being cancelled and how Tony nearly bit his head off and was downright awful about it. Our Tony isn't like that, Ellie! He's an ooey-gooey marshmallow with a solid steel core, all sweet and sticky and tough at the same time... He's our marshmallow."

Abby paused to breathe, letting that fully sink in.

Ellie seemed afraid to venture further into the marshmallow analogy.

"It's a tradition," Abby went on. "I won't let Zoe ruin our tradition; she's already ruining our Tony. So what do you think about the second part? Do you think we can get it done in time?"

Ellie closed the folder and handed it back to Abby. "I think we can certainly try."

"He's a wonderful man."

Rebecca Carver kept interjecting this same sentence over and over again after her responses.

"He's a wonderful man."

And McGee, more patient than many, gently eased into the questions with considerable tact. The answers he managed to get from her were hard-earned. "Do you have any idea why your husband would be in Rock Creek Park at that time of night?"

"No," she choked out. "None at all." She was a pretty woman, and she had tear streaks down her face, and she wore a sweatshirt now that hung off her body. "No idea. He's a wonderful man."

"What about his brother?"

"Sunny?" Rebecca asked rhetorically.

"Has he been around at all?" Tim asked.

She shook her head slowly. "I haven't seen him in a couple days. Josh was getting worried, although I think he was calling him… or somebody. I don't know; I'm not one to pry. Josh and Sunny are close. Very close. Are we almost done? I have Lily with a sitter."

Afterward, in the hallway, Tim leaned against the wall and rubbed at his chin and bottom lip in worried thought.