Chapter 4

Ducky went back into the house and saw Tim still sitting on the couch, staring up at the ceiling. This was when he could really see the darkness Tim carried inside him. What it was, he didn't know. He just knew that it was there.

"Timothy, I have a spare room."

"I'm fine out here," Tim said without moving.

"There's no reason to sleep on a couch when I have a spare bed. Are you sure?"

"Yes."

"Very well. I'll get you a blanket."

"I feel like when my mom died," Tim said softly. "No up. No down. No light. No dark. Nothing. It's just numb."

Ducky walked over to the couch and sat down by Tim.

"Timothy, what has happened here is wrong. I know very little about your life, but I know that you didn't deserve this. I'm sorry, and if there is any way I can help you..."

"No. Things have been wrong my whole life. That's not going to change, now. I've never felt that things were right...except with Mary. She made things feel right...or at least, less wrong. I've always felt wrong, strange. Everything is just not right."

Tim let out a long, slow sigh and then closed his eyes. Ducky felt only pity for the young man sitting beside him. What would it be like to live one's whole life feeling that things were always wrong? ...and what was the source of that feeling? Ducky wished that Tim trusted him enough to confide in him, but since he hadn't been willing up to this point, he didn't expect that to change. However, it was telling that it was only Mary who had helped him feel better. His mother hadn't done that.

Not for the first time, Ducky wondered what had brought Tim and his mother to Hazard. It certainly hadn't helped them rise on the social ladder. Was it Tim's obvious strangeness that had led Tim's mother to move here? Or had Tim's strangeness been a side effect of moving here? What was it?

Finally, Ducky patted Tim on the shoulder and then left him to the couch. He hoped that the SBI agents would discover something that would explain what had happened. Perhaps with knowledge, Tim might be able to overcome this situation and improve his life.

x.x.x.x.x.x.x

Abby was fairly giddy in her eagerness to share what she'd found.

"I figured you'd want to hear it all before you went home, Gibbs," she said.

"Won't it keep until tomorrow, Abbs?" Tony asked. "I'm tired."

Thwack!

"It's not that late yet, DiNozzo. Pay attention."

"Thank you, Gibbs," Abby said with a grin. "First of all, it's a real shame that Tim McGee never went to college. I mean, his report cards have some of the worst evaluations I've ever seen. No one in the entire school liked him, but man, he got good grades. He was only barely not the valedictorian. Guess what dropped him out of the running."

"I'm guessing it wasn't what would have dropped me out of the running," Tony said.

"Were you even in the running, Tony?" Abby asked.

"No, but that's beside the point."

"It was P.E. He failed."

"He failed P.E.? How in the world do you fail that?"

"Don't know, but the P.E. teacher wrote that he rarely came to class and that he was disruptive when he was there."

"Okay. That would do it."

"But he had straight As other than that, and he wasn't taking Mickey Mouse classes, either. I'm talking Physics, Calculus, Chemistry. He got straight As in spite of everyone hating him. Based on the evaluations, I think that he would have got low grades if there was any way the teachers could give them."

"And he didn't get a scholarship anywhere?"

"As far as I can tell, he didn't even apply for any. And it's not like they were rolling in the dough or anything. Maybe they didn't know that it was possible."

"How could you not know about something like that?" Tony asked. "It's not like scholarships are a new invention in the last ten years. They've been around for ages."

"I don't know, Tony. That's not in his file."

"So what is?" Gibbs asked.

"Well, like I said, lots of bad evaluations. Tim was considered a troublemaker, but he only had detention once."

"Then, what kind of trouble did he make?"

"Don't know that, either. It's not in his records. Whatever it was, it was never made official."

"What about before they moved to Hazard?"

"Well, this is where it does get a little hinky," Abby said. "First, his dad is dead. Lt. John McGee."

"Lieutenant?"

"Navy."

"Interesting."

"He and his girlfriend burned to death in a fire."

"Girlfriend? Not Tim's mother, then."

"Nope. Apparently, he filed for divorce, leaving Mom and young Tim McGee pretty much with nothing."

"That's pretty scummy, but what's hinky about it?" Tony asked.

"I found a few newspaper articles about it. It seems that someone reported seeing Tim McGee there at the house just before it caught fire. They saw him running away."

"How old was he?"

"Seven."

"And they thought he started the fire?"

"Some people did. Kid just lost his dad, was suddenly really poor...and he was young enough not to realize what he was doing...or else he's one of those child killers."

"No charges?"

"None. There was no evidence. When Tim McGee was questioned, he said it wasn't him, got really upset about it. The record said he freaked out, started screaming, and his mother vouched for him, saying that he was home in bed, that she had even checked on him. No fingerprints in the house, and the gas line seems to have been the culprit. Seemed like just an accident. Then, his mother left the house they were renting, packed up and moved to Hazard."

"And from the beginning, apparently, people said he was strange."

Gibbs hadn't said much, but he was definitely listening.

"No counseling?" he asked.

"Nothing on record," Abby said. "Not even at school. All the reports are just about how strange he was. If he had any kind of mental health evaluation, it's not on record."

"Small town, not much funding for the schools, probably couldn't afford something like that," Tony said.

"Could be," Abby agreed. "Still, I mean, that kind of experience would be pretty awful, and nothing to help him work through it? Oh! I forgot!" She ran out of the room.

"This doesn't really make him look any more innocent, does it, Boss," Tony said.

Gibbs shook his head, but what it did do was explain why Tim McGee was seen as strange. Major life upheavals that left him without a father, without a home and impoverished. Who wouldn't be shaken by that?

Abby came running back in.

"I found this in the Hazard newspaper. They had a mini art exhibit at the elementary school two years after Tim moved in. You can't see it in detail because his drawing wasn't featured, but he's there behind the others. I blew it up as big as I could without losing the quality of the image."

She held up a picture of an unsmiling, nine-year-old Tim McGee, sitting beside a drawing.

"Whoa. What's that?" Tony asked.

"Looks like a fire-breathing monster," Abby said. "And look at what the monster is eating."

Gibbs and Tony both squinted.

"Two people, right in the middle of a house."

"And he wasn't there, huh?" Tony said.

"Well, if people were asking him about a fire that killed his dad, he might have been able to draw the right conclusion. He's smart enough."

"Did he know about his dad's girlfriend, though?"

"You'd have to ask him that," Abby said. "But there was a note in his school file about being kicked out of art class because of his disturbing drawings."

"If they're like this, I don't blame them. If he was drawing something like this at nine years old, what would he be drawing in high school?"

"Good question."

"Relatives?" Gibbs asked.

Abby shook her head. "No one on his mom's side. She came from poverty and didn't seem to move up much. Parents died fairly young. No siblings. His dad's family still has some alive, but I guess Tim McGee doesn't matter to them. Or else, he just got lost in the shuffle."

"After a divorce, that could happen."

"Maybe she wasn't so innocent, either. That's happened," Tony pointed out. "If so, his dad's family may not want her kid around."

"Anyway, you can try contacting his dad's brothers, but it doesn't really look like they'll have anything to say about this. They live across the country and there's no sign of any contact."

Tony furrowed his brow and looked at the display. "So...what do we have here? We have a guy who comes from a supremely messed up home life and has apparently been at least a little bit messed up himself his whole life. He's got no one right now, and while he has almost nothing on record, everyone says he's trouble."

"Except for the one person in the town who actually got to know him," Abby said.

"What about this Mary Fields?" Tony asked. "The sheriff says McGee was following her around, but the way Dr. Mallard described it, they were friends. She must have got to know him pretty well, too."

"And if they were friends, that means that the two people who bothered saw something different from what the rest of the town assumed...and one of those two is dead," Abby said. "Poor guy."

"But we still have the fact that it seems that Tim McGee really is a messed up guy," Tony said. "Nothing that we've found gets rid of the possibility that he's guilty. I feel bad for him, too, but we've seen cases where someone gets messed up in the head and commits a crime. The messed up part just gives a reason why they might have done it. It doesn't mean that they couldn't have."

"Are you going to believe what everyone else believes just because it'd be easier?" Abby asked in annoyance.

"No! But just because this guy's had a crappy life does not mean that he gets a free pass. If we're going to do this right, we need to acknowledge that, for all we know right now, he could be guilty."

"Or he could be innocent," Abby insisted.

"Exactly, but right now, we just don't know that. The sheriff was right about one thing. We aren't from that town and we don't know this guy. We have information, but we don't know him. ...oh, and I just realized that we never checked his car, Boss. Got distracted by the sheriff."

"Okay. Tomorrow morning, we head back," Gibbs said. "First to his car and then, to him."

x.x.x.x.x.x.x

Tim woke up with a start. It was dark and quiet in Ducky's living room. He pulled the family photo out of his pocket and stared at it for a while. Then, he shoved it down in between the cushions of the couch. Not really understanding why, he got up and headed for the door. He didn't try to be quiet. He just needed to go. Right now, the destination wasn't conscious, but he started walking, his brain buzzing with indefinable emotion, thoughts that swirled around inside his head, leaving him confused, upset...angry. The wrong feeling that filled so much of his life.

He started to run.

He ran faster and faster until his destination finally became a conscious thought.

The river.

He stumbled to a stop on the bank and stared at it. In the darkness, it was just a faint, shimmery space. The river was quiet and unhurried. Except for during the spring thaw, the river was just a wide expanse of water, slowly flowing downstream where it eventually joined the Platte River and then to the Missouri. Calm, quiet, gentle.

Mary had died in there.

Tim crouched down in the mud by the river and began digging up rocks from the bank. Then, he threw them as hard as he could at the water, wanting to hurt it, knowing that he couldn't.

It didn't change anything. As soon as he stopped throwing the rocks, the river returned to its calm, silent state.

He knelt in the mud and covered his head with his muddy hands. All those oppressive emotions that would surge up inside of him at unexpected moments took over his brain. He wanted to scream, but he didn't. Instead, he got up and started to walk away. Then, he saw a car stop by the river. He didn't know who it was, but he turned around and ran back to the river. People never made things better. He didn't stop at the bank. He just started to go out into it. Halfway out, he tripped and fell, submerging himself, briefly.

For an eternal moment, he was completely submerged. It wasn't silent under the water. There was a roaring sound and strange sparkling things. And cold. It was cold under the water. No fire down here. It was wet and cold. He stayed where he was, wondering if the cold could purge the fire from his brain.

Then, there were hands on him, lifting him up, pulling him back away from the water. He couldn't fight it. He didn't bother trying.

Tim started to cry. Loud, full, gasping sobs, full of emotions he couldn't explain. It went so far beyond grief that the word meant almost nothing to how he felt.

"Timothy. Timothy, it's all right. It's all right, lad. I've got you. It's all right. Just let it out."

Tim tried to explain the unexplainable, but all that he managed to get out around his cries were garbled words that meant nothing.

"Fire," he gasped, finally. "Put...out the fire... fire..."

Arms around him, rocking him like his mother had done when he was young and the things that didn't make sense had been too much.

...but his mother didn't make the wrong feelings go away, either. She never had.

He kept crying, wishing that something would get rid of the strangeness he always felt inside him, wishing that he could feel something so simple as grief, wishing that there was some way to escape this life.

After a few minutes, the emotions didn't feel so much like they were consuming him and he stopped crying. He sat up, pulling away from the arms and he turned to see who it was.

"What are you doing here?" he asked softly.

Ducky squeezed his shoulder.

"I heard you leave. When I saw you start to run, I was worried about what you were doing. So I followed you here. What were you doing?"

"I don't know," Tim said. "I don't..." He took a deep breath and got to his feet. "I hate this place."

"Come, Timothy. Let's go back to my house and you can sleep."

Tim nodded and let Ducky drive him back.

When they got to the house, Tim was soaking wet; so Ducky got some old sweats, cut them into shorts and let Tim wear those while his clothes dried. Tim watched dispassionately, not caring what he wore or didn't wear. After that, Ducky gave him a couple of extra blankets for warmth and Tim lay down on the couch again, hoping that he'd feel better in the morning.

...but he doubted he would. He never felt better.