Chapter Four
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"What does this guy do?" Gibbs asks McGee, whom he'd assigned the background check on their prime suspect. "He's not a full time Priest like Father Donaldson or your wife. What's his story?"
"He's a Baggage Handler at Reagan."
Tony remembers his own undercover stint on that job, the less said about which the better. He had managed to make a quick $10 tip on the job, but he'd also simultaneously made the unintroduced acquaintance of Trent Kort.
"Load anything funny lately?"
"Not according to what I've been able to pull up," McGee says. "No red flags, no investigations, no missing bag complaints that can be traced back directly to his job performance, no unexpected or unexplained absences from the job. He spends as much as he makes, apparently as fast as he makes it which is probably why he still lives at home with his mother and father."
"I heard from Ziva," DiNozzo puts in, "that when she and Probie went there to collect his stuff it was like he died and went to electronic heaven."
"It wasn't like that, Tony," McGee protests.
"I did not say that, McGee." She also sounds like she doesn't want to be brought into this."
"I heard you were salivating, McGeekenstein."
Even Gibbs pauses at that one, though only for an instant. "What's his story?"
"He is building his own music studio in his basement," Ziva says.
"Way you tell it," DiNozzo puts in, "if he cranked that baby up we'd hear it here."
"Perhaps not literally."
xxx
Jimmy returns through the pneumatic steel and glass doors one level down in the Autopsy Suite and greets the woman with "Anti freeze."
"Ethylene glycol. No surprise." Maura Isles says. "Anti-freeze has been a popular choice for slow murder for years. I recall one particular case from July 7, 1989, when Patricia Starlings' three month old son Roger had trouble breathing and was vomiting uncontrollably. She took him to the Emergency Room at Cardinal Givens Children's Hospital where a toxicologist diagnosed Roger's symptoms as ethylene glycol poisoning."
"Really?" He's astounded she could just have this bit of trivia on the tip of her tongue. He'd been right in what he'd told Ruby Rae; it's like Ducky never left.
"Yes. The Authorities got suspicious and his physician got Roger placed in a Foster Home where his parents could only visit him. After one of those visits Roger became critically ill and died."
"Oh, no." Why can't a Pathology story ever have a happy ending?
"However, while the Investigators were trying to sort this out, one of the other Starling children also took ill and also died. The poison was traced back to the bottle Mrs. Starling used and she was charged with first-degree murder. She was sentenced to life in prison in January 1991."
"Well, at least she got what she deserved."
"No, she didn't. Subsequent testing showed there was no etholene glycol in the bottle or the milk, but that the children had a genetic disorder known as methylmalonic aciduria."
"I studied that."
"I would hope so. The symptoms of MA actually mimic EG deaths but have absolutely nothing to do with it. Propionate showed up in the older Gas Chromatographic testing as ethylene glycol. The equipment back then wasn't as sophisticated as we have now.
"Now methylmalonic aciduria, as you know, is a recessive metabolic disorder that's normally diagnosed in the early neonatal period but wasn't. The children died of this genetic disorder, there was no ethylene glycol at all; the tests were a false positive based on traces of propionate. Subsequent tests with newer equipment cleared Starling of the charges and she was released in 1992."
"Good."
"All of which goes to show that we can't simply go by what appears to be an answer, we have to dig deep until we prove that it is the answer."
"Yes, Doctor. But wait a moment; you 'recall' this case? You couldn't have been even 10 years old when that happened."
"Bless you. Now I know why you have half the women in NCIS fawning over you."
"Ab - ub - they do?" He fixes his glasses which had almost come off in his near spasmodic jump. "I mean they don't. I mean I do? I mean, do they?"
She'll only answer with a smile.
x
"I'd say our unsub was dosing him for at least a month," she says, switching back to SSA Rosa Arnell's case.
"I'm sorry? Unsub?"
"Don't you use unsubs here in NCIS?"
"Well, I would... if I knew what they are."
"Unknown subject."
"Oh. No. We use perp."
"Why?"
"I–" This halts him. "I'm not sure. I suppose Special Agent Gibbs doesn't go in for fancy words."
"He has quite an impact on everyone."
"He's like a force of nature."
She grins. "Say it."
"Say what?"
"What you're thinking. He's like a typhoon." She's already experienced being deluged by him.
"Nooooo. More like an earthquake."
"Oh? How so?"
"No one stands against him."
She grins again, looks past his left shoulder. "He's standing behind you."
x
Jimmy whirls so swiftly he nearly slips in his protective foot coverings and has to clutch the silver table, but he's seen they're alone. "Don't do that."
She has to work to hold in a laugh, but it was unfair. "I'm sorry. But I've noticed that about him. He tends to lurk. Not around me, however," she says, stepping over to the bank of coolers and reaching for the door to 101. "I don't think he likes me."
Jimmy knows what Gibbs doesn't like, that except for hair several shades lighter brown than Kate Todd's black, the women would've been identical - if Todd weren't dead. "He doesn't hate you."
"No," she halts, turns from the unopened door. "He hates what I remind him of. 'If I'd only been more alert.' 'If I'd only watched for more danger when I thought everyone was safe.' 'If I'd only had her stay down until everything was secure.'"
"Doctor Mallard says that 'If I'd only' is the direction sign on the journey to madness."
"He's right."
Seeing the haunted look in Isles' eyes - how much does she know? - Jimmy never wants her to know that Doctor Mallard had been talking about him.
xxx
Robert Hastings stabs the button on the television remote and CBS News goes off.
"You break it, you bought it," SA Tom Berger points out from the reclining chair angled out from the corner to face both the studio apartment's window and the only door.
"I'll leave you a dollar." He gets out of his chair, picks up and rifles through the Washington Post for two seconds, then throws it at the table top. "It's not fair."
"Life isn't fair."
"Oh, brilliant observation, Mr. Philosopher."
"Kid, when you're traipsed around as long as I have, you get to know that's the first lesson in life."
"But I didn't do anything. I had a freaking date with a girl. Suddenly I'm locked up in this stinkin' hell hole."
Berger looks around the studio apartment: single bed in the corner; easy chair recliner for him he plans to use thoroughly over the next 7 hours; eighteen inch TV with Cable; kitchenette with well stocked fridge and cupboards; bathroom with working fixtures - always a plus in a Safe Station. "I beg your pard'n, it's a very nice hell hole." Given the choice between shifts here or pounding the pavement, he'll put his feet up any day.
"But there's no Internet."
"No, I'll give you that. But since there's no computer and WiFi is screened off, it's no loss anyway."
"Shit. And I don't even have my smart phone."
Berger's surprised he has to remind this guy that "You're suppos' to be hiding. Think anyone's going to let you sign onto Facebook or Twitter and announce your position? You might not care, but you're not gettin' me killed."
"But it's not fair. I'm not the one who set that stupid bitch up."
"Now be nice. No name calling. 'Sides, I thought you were suppose' to be a man of God."
"I am."
"Then how'd you wind up in this mess?"
"I answered an email from a woman," he says miserably, sitting back down.
"That'll get'cha every time."
"How was I supposed to know it'd really turn out to be the date from hell?"
"Look, kid, half the dates with women turn out to be dates from hell. You gotta know the trick."
"Which is?"
"Pay for dinner, then run like hell."
xxx
Gibbs, DiNozzo and David emerge from his yellow/black Hemi in the Pentagon's vast parking facility. On the way - ten minutes out in fact - he'd had DiNozzo call ahead to get Clearance for their visit to the Counter-Intelligence Division. He knew that wouldn't be enough time, his intent was to limit the number of people who knew they were coming, the better to catch a potential suspect off guard.
Federal badges and a 'we're on the same side' attitude eventually get them to the office of Captain Sven Olavson, second level Chief of the Department. Gibbs concludes the initial pleasantries with "Someone tried to kill your Corporal Juliette Spencer last evening."
x
The reaction he's rewarded with to this 'sledgehammer between the eyes' announcement is just enough of a combined surprise and concern to convince him to take the chance and continue. "Do you have any idea why someone might want to harm her?"
This is usually a tricky part, for he won't tell Olavson - yet - how the proposed murder was negotiated. This part of the interview is normally the gauging phase, where he tests a subject's responses rather than the information he might elicit.
"No. No, I don't. Is she hurt?"
"What was she working on?" They already have her words and the information from her duty files. "Anything sensitive?"
"Everything this department handles is sensitive, Agent Gibbs. Everything means lives and battles lost or won." If Olavson is put out at Gibbs' ignoring his question, he doesn't show it. Then again, he's obviously used to dealing with military minds, where even casual conversation can encroach on 'Need to Know' constraints. "Corporal Spencer's work was, to the best of my knowledge, no more or less significant than any of her fellows'. If she's made any recent, important discovery, I haven't been informed of it."
x
Both Spencer and Hastings agree that this conspiracy started weeks ago, which prompts two questions: Did the information come out weeks ago and its significance get missed? Possible but unlikely. Or is there a new threat so severe that someone wants to disrupt this department so it'll be missed?
That's even less likely. While that had been the plan in the USS Eisenhower uranium theft, this is more than one ship or a confined group of people.
Altogether, there are few ways to pin a conspiracy down, and previous experiences aren't going to apply in these cases.
"What have you got in the works?"
"Agent Gibbs, I'm sure you can appreciate the sensitive nature of all our operations." Okay, Gibbs acknowledges; 'need-to-know' works both ways. "Truth is, I don't have the authority to read you into a lot of them."
"Who does?"
"Captain Stender. He's at Marine Barracks."
All the way back to the Navy Yard. If he'd but known... "Meantime, we'd like to talk to Corporal Spencer's co-workers."
"I'll have someone escort you."
xxx
The Analyst Center is eight cubicles set in the middle of the room, four three-quarter enclosed workstations to a side, six square feet of space for each man and woman. Though the stations face one another, each person is trapped in the illusion of solitude by the high partitions and must stand to converse with his or her fellows. Headphones complete the isolation; each person compartmentalized into a world of foreign languages and intrigue.
Gibbs considers this arrangement satisfactory. So long as they're so isolated, Rule 1 is still in force. The cubicle at the near right is vacant. He points DiNozzo and David to the two far end interpreters while he takes the one at the near left. With fortune, they can pull the three into far corners and might even begin a second set of interviews of the inmost Analysts before the remaining men and women are aware they're here.
x
Gibbs has selected a man who, by his pale coloring, may not get out into the world very often. The uniforms of the seven are from all five branches of the Service. Spencer is a Marine, the two who have only one representative are Air Force and Coast Guard. Gibbs will consult later with Abby Boren of CGIS to see what she may know.
His target Marine looks to be about twenty five and needs to get away from his cubicle more often if he wants to see a good forty.
"Corporal Gautam," he says, reading the man's ID card clipped to his uniform pocket, "how well do you know Corporal Spencer?"
"Why? She in some kind of trouble?"
Usually when someone asks that question it's with a measure of concern, not pleased anticipation.
"Should she be in trouble?"
"She has a big mouth. She doesn't belong in a sensitive position like this."
"How so?"
"She talks to Harper about her duties." His gaze shifts to the far right corner and the female Chief Petty Officer Gibbs is hardly surprised that DiNozzo has chosen. Ziva's interviewing an Army Sergeant in the far left corner.
"Shouldn't Analysts consult with their peers, Corporal?"
"Just because it's encouraged doesn't mean it's a good idea... sir. And she's too open."
"About what?"
"She's too open, she engages everyone. I've warned her."
x
Gibbs decides to get DiNozzo's input as soon as possible, and the man had better have picked up on this. "She discuss the details of what she hears with you, Corporal?"
"That's only proper."
"She learn anything particularly sensitive?" The question elicits nothing. "Say within the past two months?"
"Only bit thing I know that panned out was movement, a unit massing three kilometers north of Pol-e Khomri. Our boys hit a munitions bunker with some Smart missiles. Killed eighteen, including a mid-level Taliban leader."
He'd watched that strike on MTAC during a 'chat' with Jennifer Shepherd about the Wetzel / Presit / Hudson and so on case. Artillery and couple thousand pounds of bombs had made an impressive display on MTAC's big screen.
"Which of you uncovered the information?"
Gautam gives him a disgusted look. "What does it matter?" Gibbs leaves him to answer the question himself. Eventually he admits that "Boniberger did. Either way, we're the unsung heroes. Credit went to some Colonel somewhere because he ordered the strike. Army Idiots wouldn't know where to hit if we didn't tell them."
xx
CPO Karen Harper thinks carefully, it seems to DiNozzo, about every answer before she gives it. He's not sure if this is from a career of withholding Classified information or from a distrust of this civilian, himself, who comes up to her asking for said information with only the assurance that Olavson cleared him to receive it. Why couldn't the good Captain have sent someone along with the directive to talk?
Anyway, talking to the attractive officer is taking a long time.
"When did you meet the Corporal?"
Consider. Search the memory. "When we were assigned here."
x
How would she answer a question like 'where does the sun set?'. She'd probably say '…in the …west' but would it be because it's a secret or because she'd given all due consideration to the possibility that it might set in the south?
"Do you two talk much?"
Pause. Consider. "Define 'much'."
"Do you talk?
Pause. Consider. "We do."
"When?" He's immediately sorry when the question makes her pause - and consider.
"When we speak to each other."
"Okay, listen Chief Harper, because I don't know if you're playing or serious and right now, I don't give a damn. Do you know why? Because someone just tried to kill a Marine Corporal - Juliette Spencer if you have any uncertainty - and you're working your way up the ladder from information source to Chief Person of Interest. Now what do you know about this?" Silence. Just an occasional blink. Is she running through every conversation she ever had with Spencer? The image of Tom Wilson from the 'Back to the Future' movies flashes into his head. "Hello? Anybody home?"
"I know nothing about this."
'Maybe I should have used my knuckles.' "All right, Chief, you can go back to your work. I'll call on you if I need you." 'Which, considering my continuing streak of bad luck, will be soon.'
xx
When Gibbs calls a halt to this endeavor, all seven men and women have been interviewed with a discouraging lack of success. No one's lying and no one knows a thing.
DiNozzo's surprised when Gibbs, rather than leading the way back to Captain Stender's office, heads toward the nearest exit "Boss?"
"We're wasting our time here."
"How so?" Gibbs turns back and DiNozzo feels a particularly staggering head slap in his future. He also doesn't care for the anticipatory gleam in Ziva's eyes.
"If al Qaeda had something going that they wanted to keep silent they'd have to take out eight people who don't even leave the building together, and they wouldn't use such an elaborate plot for a couple of weeks."