McGee arrived at the hospital not long after the ambulance carrying the wounded man from the crime scene. How had the guy survived as long as he did, McGee wondered, tossed like garbage into a dumpster, laying there for hours before they found him? From what McGee had seen before he had been loaded into the ambulance, the wound to the man's head did not look hopeful for his recovery.

As he waited for the doctors to talk with him about the man's condition, McGee briefly examined the personal effects collected from the John Doe in the emergency room.

There wasn't much. His clothes were not particularly distinctive: blue jeans; a dark colored T-shirt (now severely disfigured) emblazoned with an interlocking T M L logo of some sort; plus socks and fairly heavy-duty shoes. No cell phone, wallet, or watch. Had he been mugged, or had he not wanted to be identified? Was he a criminal or a victim?

"Special Agent McGee?" the ER doctor interrupted his thoughts as he walked over and shook his hand.

"That's me," McGee replied, setting the items down on the table. "What can you tell me?"

"Your John Doe's injuries are consistent with him being involved in a fight- mostly bruises and scratches to his arms. The only serious injury is the head wound. If he'd been brought in sooner, I might've been able to give you a better prognosis. It's touch and go right now - he's got some major cerebral edema, swelling of the brain. He's currently being treated with medication to reduce the swelling, but I'm concerned that if he needs surgical decompression, he might contract a serious or fatal infection. Basically, if the swelling starts to go down, I'm cautiously hopeful that he might be able to recover. He has his youth and excellent physical condition otherwise working in his favor."

"Did he say anything at all when he was brought in?"

"Nothing coherent; his level of awareness was very minimal. He wasn't really fully conscious in the first place. Frankly, I'm surprised he came to at any level," the physician marveled, shaking his head. "He has either one hell of a thick skull or unbelievable willpower."

"Okay, I'll need to take photos of him, and I'd like you to notify me as soon as he regains consciousness," McGee informed the doctor, handing him his card.

"Of course," the doctor nodded. "He's in the ICU now. You need someone to show you?"

"No, I know the way. Thanks anyway." McGee bagged the effects and grabbed his camera.

Flash.

McGee photographed the man's stitched head wound from several angles, the shaved scalp livid with dark bruising. The (barely) less gruesome black and blue on his arms looked like defensive wounds from blocking heavy blows.

Then he examined the John Doe's hands, which were scraped at the knuckles. Looking closely, he saw the man's fingertips were scarred, many times over. The scars were faint and nothing too major, but remarkable upon close inspection, especially for the sheer number. More photos were taken of these.

The man's hands were callused in a strangely familiar way, but McGee couldn't quite place it. A tan line on his left wrist marked where he usually wore a watch, and a rather large, bulky one at that, but he showed no similar sign of a wedding ring.

Gently moving down the blanket, McGee then photographed the man's chest and torso, which told a very interesting story. More scars, these ones very faint and obviously old. Burn scars.

Who was this guy?

McGee snapped several shots of the distinctive face, framed by short brown hair made darker by contrast with his ashen skin. Aside from the stitched scalp, his head was relatively unscathed. What was this man like before this attack, McGee wondered? Even as he was, he was clearly a good-looking fellow, and appeared to be surprisingly muscular under all the bruises and scars. Whoever this man was, he had a story to tell.

With a slight frown, McGee finished up with with the photographs and pulled out his handheld scanner to take the man's fingerprints. Hopefully, he was in the system somewhere.

"Our original victim is Seaman Julio Ramirez, a computer technician stationed at Naval Weapons Station Seal Beach in California. According to his CO, he was in D.C. for the convention while on leave. Kid wanted to be a cop when he finished his hitch. Apparently he'd already talked with a few local departments." DiNozzo frowned at the face on the plasma screen.

In his file photo, Ramirez's face sparkled with life; the corners of his eyes were upturned with a barely-controlled smile. For a moment, however Gibbs could only see the clouded, blankly-staring eyes of the corpse back at the crime scene.

"...though, come on. Who flies across the country to go to a convention while on leave?" DiNozzo was asking rhetorically, "Besides McKnow-it-all, of course."

Ignoring her partner's irrelevant statement, Ziva picked up the narrative. "No immediate family, parents died in a car accident just after he joined the Navy. Since then, he's had good performance reviews from his commanding officers and he's never been in trouble or had any reprimands in his file." She grimaced, then blew her nose noisily.

"Basically," concluded DiNozzo, "he was a model sailor."

Gibbs gazed steadily at the face of the victim on the plasma. "Any word on the John Doe?" he asked.

"No ID yet; McGee uploaded his face and prints from the hospital. Abby's running them now," Ziva sniffled as DiNozzo used the remote to flip to the photos that McGee took of the John Doe. The stitches in his scalp were at least clean and neat, a definite improvement over the caked blood and filth.

"White male, 30s. Blunt force trauma to the head - docs say it could go either way at this point," Tony elaborated, wincing in sympathetic pain. He'd been there himself before. "No word on when he'll wake up, or if he even will."

Gibbs stared closely at the old scars of the unconscious man on the screen. The ring of his phone interrupted his silent interrogation of the images. "Gibbs," he said into the receiver. "Alright, Abs, I'll be right down. You two," he turned to DiNozzo and Ziva, "go check out wherever Ramirez was staying."

"Gibbs, Gibbs!" Abby Sciuto, forensic scientist extraordinaire, bounced up and down in excitement.

"What do you have for me, Abby?" he asked patiently as he walked across her lab to the table that contained the evidence from the alleyway.

"I've got a name!" she exclaimed, holding up a familiar object. It was the wrist band Ducky had discovered clutched in Seaman Ramirez's hand, now carefully cleaned of blood and grime. The gold plate practically gleamed, and the bold black letters clearly read:

L. YOUNG
BADGE 1902

"A cop." Gibbs sighed. He hated getting involved with local LEOs; the squabbling, the credit-grabbing, and the withholding of information all made his job ten times harder. Especially if a cop were the victim or the perpetrator.

"Yeah, but I can't find any record of an 'L. Young' with badge number 1902 in D.C. or the tri-state area. I also checked with the local police agencies near Seal Beach NWS, in case our victim brought it with him from California, but no luck there, either. But since we had that big convention all last week, 'L. Young' could be from anywhere. California, South Dakota, Australia, Britain, Canada, South Africa, Langley-"

"Abs, if he were from Langley, they'd already be down here denying any knowledge of his existence," Gibbs gently interrupted her. "Keep at it. Anything else?"

Abby flashed him a huge grin. "I took a look the photos McGee uploaded from the hospital." She tapped several keys, pulling up the almost painfully vivid images on her plasma screen. "I'd say your John Doe handles bombs."

"What makes you say that?" Gibbs asked with a disturbed frown.

She helpfully enlarged the photos McGee took of the man's midsection. "These old scars on his torso are what you get from a bad mix blowing up. And when I say old, I mean old. I'd say more than a decade, maybe even two, which means he was probably blowing things up as a kid. But the ones on his fingertips-" She switched to the relevant pictures. "-these are the kind that you get from handling things like acid and circuit boards repeatedly over a long period of time. I already asked McGee to get me a swab from his hands to see if he's been handling explosives recently."

Gibbs smiled and kissed her on the forehead. "Good work, Abs."

"I'm not done yet!" she chimed gleefully. "This pipe Tony and Ziva found in the dumpster was definitely used to smack the John Doe. It corresponds to the wound on his head, and I found blood and hair consistent with him." She directed Gibb's attention to the metal object on her table. "Unfortunately, the prints are all smudged. I'm still working on getting something usable off it. Oh, and the cell phone from the alley definitely belonged to Seaman Ramirez - I was able to salvage his SIM card. Nothing useful on his phone to point us anywhere, though. Though there were a few calls to some rather naughty numbers-"

Abby whirled around, but Gibbs had already vanished.