Special Agent Tony DiNozzo flashed a quick grin to his partner over the desks, who returned it with a smile of her own before returning her gaze to her computer screen, pretending to intently monitor whatever was displayed there.
"What've you got?" Special Agent Jethro Gibbs demanded as he strode toward them, his ever-present coffee in hand and Lt. Colonel Hollis Mann close on his heels.
"Where's Kelly?" DiNozzo blurted out before he could stop himself. Gibbs reached over and slapped the back of his head.
"Unlike some people, the government doesn't pay her to sit around gossiping all day. The case?"
"Staff Sergeant Jonathon McLaughlin," Officer David jumped in, rising from her chair to activate the plasma screen. A picture of McLaughlin's ID appeared.
"Jack," DiNozzo interjected. "Everyone called him 'Jack'. Of course, you knew that already, Boss," he hastily added to Gibbs' glare.
"Born and raised in Fairfax, Virginia, parents are—." David cut herself off at the impatient look on Gibbs' face. "I should start with what you do not know," she corrected herself.
"You think, Officer David?" Gibbs asked sarcastically.
"He enlisted in the Army immediately following high school graduation and completed his Basic Combat Training at Fort Jackson, South Carolina, graduating at the top of his class. He then attended Advanced Individual Training as an Infantryman, given the MOS 11-Bravo, and again graduating at the top of his class. Then it was to Fort Benning, Georgia for Airborne School. He was then assigned to the 82nd Airborne Division," she glanced sideways at Colonel Mann, knowing that she had been deployed with the 82nd Airborne, but the CID officer's face was carefully neutral. "He deployed to Afghanistan with the 3rd Brigade in 2002, and then to Iraq in 2003, returning to the States in the spring of 2004."
"He then applied for Special Forces training," DiNozzo smoothly took over. "He was accepted and made it through all five phases of training and was reclassed as an 18-Bravo, Special Forces Weapons Sergeant. He's been assigned to the 1st Special Forces Group, 3rd Battalion at Fort Lewis, Washington since. He's been on several missions, none of which we have the clearance for."
"I'll look into it," Colonel Mann said, her first words since she arrived at NCIS. "What was he doing in Bethesda?"
"His team just got back from a mission," DiNozzo explained. "They had two weeks of block leave. It started Wednesday. His mother still lives in Fairfax; he was staying with her."
"She does not know what he was doing Saturday night when he was killed," David filled in. "He had been spending most of his time at home, sleeping. He left the house around 1630 that afternoon and did not give a time when she should expect his return."
"Did she say anything about him speaking to Ensign Gibbs?" Mann asked, ignoring Gibbs' glare.
"No, ma'am," David said, shaking her head. "She said that her son had not spoken to Ensign Gibbs since they graduated from high school."
"She hasn't," Agent Gibbs confirmed, moving to his own desk.
"Children do not always tell their parents everything they do, Gibbs," David pointed out. "Your daughter is twenty-four years old. That is old enough to speak to people without asking permission."
He rolled his eyes. "Rule nine," he said without elaborating. DiNozzo frowned.
"Never go anywhere without a knife?" he asked.
"Kelly's rule nine," Gibbs elaborated. "There's no need to talk to your ex-boyfriend when you have a current boyfriend."
"Is this rule thing a Gibbs family tradition or something?" DiNozzo asked. Everyone else ignored him. "Doesn't anybody else care?"
"No, Tony," David replied. She turned her attention to Gibbs and Mann. "McGee is checking into Sergeant McLaughlin's email. Maybe that will tell us why he was at Bethesda."
"It already did," Mann said. "Kelly sent him an email asking him to meet her there Saturday night after work."
"Kelly didn't send the email," Gibbs said. Mann sighed, and Ziva guessed that this wasn't the first time they had had this argument.
"Kelly didn't work Saturday," DiNozzo pointed out with a frown, seemingly oblivious to the tension between Gibbs and Mann. "She was on a flight from Hawaii to D.C."
"I know that, DiNozzo," Gibbs said, sounding irritated. "That's just one of the reasons why she didn't write that email. Where's McGee?"
"Subbasement," Ziva said. "He said the computers there are better for this work. I think he was annoyed with Tony."
"Call him and tell him to look into Kelly's Navy account," he ordered, rising from his desk and heading for the elevator without an explanation. "Someone hacked into her email to send that to McLaughlin, and I want to know who."
"I don't like this," Special Agent McGee said for the fourth time in the last twenty minutes.
"It is not your first time chopping into somebody's email," Officer David pointed out.
"Hacking," DiNozzo corrected automatically, not even looking up from his own computer screen. "Not chopping."
"Whatever," David replied, waving him off.
"Yeah, but this is Kelly Gibbs," McGee replied, ignoring the interplay between the other agents. "I don't usually hack into the emails of people I bought graduation gifts for."
"Speaking of which, what did you get her for graduation?" DiNozzo asked, his head tilted as he studied the younger agent. "I got her an officer's sword. Personalized stainless steel blade, acid-etched with the Navy design, hand polished, with a gold-plated guard, ornate wire-wrapped grip, and genuine calf-leather scabbard. It's the traditional gift for USNA graduates."
"If you got her the 'traditional gift for USNA graduates', what did her father give her?" David asked.
"Custom made left-handed M40A3 sniper rifle," Special Agent Gibbs answered, appearing without any warning. "Figured it would be a lot more useful than a dull sword. McGee?"
"A Tablet PC," the agent answered absently. "I figured that with all the notes she would be taking in med school—." He stopped abruptly at the slap to the back of the head. "Oh," he said. "You were talking about the email. I didn't find anything."
"What do you mean, you didn't find anything?"
"Well, Boss, I don't think she uses this email address much," the agent replied. "All of the emails were related to official business, most of them from school, with one or two from DTS about travel issues. There aren't any personal emails in this account at all, even in the deleted files." He paused. "Does she have another email address that she uses? How does she email you?"
"She doesn't email me, McGee," Gibbs replied, heading out of the bullpen. "She knows better than that. Find me something."
The three watched him walk away silently. "I hate it when he does that," McGee muttered. He sighed, his attention back on the computer. "It's probably a G-mail account," he mused. "Everyone has a G-mail account. That's the problem. There are millions of accounts, and I can't check all of them to see if they happen to belong to Kelly." He stopped talking, his fingers poised above the keyboard. "I bet it's on her Facebook page," he declared, again typing rapidly. Meanwhile, DiNozzo looked over at David.
"Did you follow any of that?" he asked.
"Nope," she replied. "I figured McGee would explain once he found something."
"I found something," he informed them. He turned on the plasma screen, showing a webpage with a picture of Kelly Gibbs in sunglasses and camo, holding an assault rifle, standing next to a similarly attired man. Across the top, under the word "Facebook", it said, "Kelly Gibbs is back in D.C. Dinner, anyone?"
"It's Facebook," he explained at the blank looks on his partners' faces. "I think everyone in any sort of college has a Facebook account. I figured Kelly would have one, too."
"But what does this have to do with Sergeant McLaughlin?" David asked.
"It's the primary mode of communication for teenagers and those in their early twenties," McGee explained. "Just look at her status—she's letting everyone know she's back in town at once. Saves her the trouble of calling or emailing everyone who might care." He caught the amused glance that passed between DiNozzo and David. "My sister's still in college," he said defensively.
"Sure, McGeek," DiNozzo replied. "Care to tell us what this has to do with our case?"
"If Kelly's had any contact with Sergeant McLaughlin in the last couple of years, it'll probably be on here. We just need to find it."
"You mean you need to find it," DiNozzo corrected.
"Right," McGee replied with a sigh.
"This thing has pictures?" DiNozzo said suddenly, pointing at the screen. "Let's see what the Giblet was doing in Hawaii."
"Tony, I don't think this has anything to do with our case—," McGee interjected, but DiNozzo was faster. A picture of Kelly Gibbs wearing a bikini while operating a small sailboat filled the screen, and DiNozzo gave a low wolf-whistle, which was interrupted by a slap to the back of the head.
"What was that for?" he asked, turning to face his boss, who had reappeared without warning.
"You mean looking at pictures of my twenty-four-year-daughter wasn't enough?" Gibbs asked, annoyed. "What are you knuckleheads doing?"
"It's Facebook, Boss," McGee jumped in, closing the picture from Hawaii to reveal Kelly's Facebook profile again. "It's a social network, mostly college kids, although there are a lot of other people—,"
"You have a profile, don't you, McGeek?" DiNozzo asked suddenly with a laugh. "What a McDweeby thing to do." McGee flushed, but didn't say anything.
"I can find out if Kelly had any contact with Sergeant McLaughlin, Boss," McGee said quickly.
"What are you guys doing?" a new voice asked from the elevator. All four turned to see Ensign Kelly Gibbs standing there, a black trenchcoat over her service uniform, her garrison cap in her hand. Seeing the look of confusion on the younger agents' faces, she said, "Dad and I are going out to dinner as soon as I can drag him away from this place. Why are you looking at my Facebook page?"
"Is there something there we shouldn't see?" her father asked pointedly.
"I don't think I need Tony looking at my pictures from Hawaii," she shot back, not missing a beat.
"Too late," Ziva muttered. Kelly turned her glare at DiNozzo, who just grinned.
"Is this a picture of Lt. Dillon in Hawaii?" Gibbs asked suddenly, studying a picture on the screen.
"Well, I guess that secret's out," Kelly muttered. She sighed. "His squadron was doing training exercises in the Pacific for a week."
"You could have told me."
"You didn't ask," she shot back. "I didn't bring it up because I didn't want you to think I was shirking my duties at the hospital to screw my boyfriend."
"Too much information, Kell," Gibbs muttered.
"Kelly, when did you start talking to Sergeant McLaughlin again?" McGee asked, seemingly out of the blue. The medical student frowned.
"I haven't talked to him since high school graduation," she said. "Not that it was a bad break-up, it was just that he was enlisting in the Army and I was heading off to USNA, and we both agreed we weren't in the same place any more. There's not much of a need to talk after that decision."
"Well, it says here that you became friends on Facebook last Wednesday," McGee explained. Ensign Gibbs looked confused for a minute, then laughed.
"Yeah, I guess," she said. "I was on-call at the hospital Tuesday night, which was one of the worst nights of my life. When I got back to the hotel around noon on Wednesday, I just ran through my emails, confirmed a couple of friends requests on Facebook, and passed out until Caiden called me a couple of hours later and woke me up. Then I studied for a couple of hours, and went to bed again at nine so I could wake up at four and be at the hospital at time for rounds at five. I was planning on getting caught up on everything over the weekend, but then with the long flight, spending time with Caiden, and sticking around NCIS while my father's team investigated my ex-boyfriend's murder, it must have slipped my mind." She shrugged. "I'm 'Facebook friends' with a lot of people from high school. Jack being one of them isn't a big deal."
"Did you email him?" Agent Gibbs asked after a pause.
"Email? No," she said, shaking her head. "If I was going to say anything to him, or he anything to me, it would have happened over Facebook, not email." She shrugged. "I don't even know if he knows my G-mail account. I didn't open it until college."
"What about your Navy account?" McGee asked. She shrugged again.
"I only use that for Navy business and school. My G-mail account is for social correspondence, and I use a Yahoo! account for junk mail. Dad, are you ready, or should I just go home and heat a microwave dinner while reading Harrison's Internal Medicine?"