Chapter 5

Mark sat on the Coffee table in front of Jesse, cleaning and dressing a sore looking graze on the young Doctors upper right arm, "OK, that should do it." Mark smiled.

Jesse looked at the dressing, "Thanks Doc."

Tony and Ziva took Jesse back to the Beach House once they'd finished looking around his apartment. They couldn't find any sign of forced entry, but the wardrobe had definitely been tampered with. All of the screws had either been loosened or removed, and the top was just balancing over the sides and doors below, having been separated from the wardrobe completely.

The two of them didn't need to do much investigating to find out how the culprit had managed to get into the apartment, it turned out Jesse kept a spare key under his doormat. Steve scolded the young Doctor about it, apparently he'd told him on a number of occasions that it was a bad idea to hide a key there.

Whilst Gibbs and his team went into the kitchen, along with Steve, to sort out the evidence Tony and Ziva had collected from Jesse's apartment, Mark filled Jesse in on what he and Amanda had found out, which wasn't really all that much. Amanda however was now convinced that the murderer had to be Dylan, based solely on how he had reacted at the grocery store. Mark however wasn't so sure.

"So, it seems you three have got a little investigation going on of your own." Gibbs stood in the doorway.

Mark laughed sheepishly, "Sorry, it's my fault, I wanted to do a little snooping around so I asked Amanda to give me a hand, I'm a bit of an amateur sleuth you see and..."

"You get used to it," Steve walked into the room, then gave Mark a sarcastic grin, "Never gets any less annoying though."

"Yeah, well I don't want to get used to it, and I don't want Civilians investigating my case."

Jesse chirped up, "But Dr Sloan's a consultant for the LAPD."

"I'm not LAPD, and neither is this case so I don't care if he's a consultant, I don't even care that he's good at it." Gibbs noticed their surprised looks and turned to Mark, "I read your file Doc."

"Believe me Agent Gibbs I know how frustrating it gets when they start snooping around, but it's not like they did any harm."

Gibbs pointed at Jesse, "You sure about that Lieutenant?"

"Am I sure..." Steve suddenly looked irritated, "Hey, I hope you're not implying that what happened to Jesse is my Dad and Amanda's fault!"

"All I know is that after they went off snooping around someone snuck into his apartment and tampered with his wardrobe."

Jesse and Mark watched as the two of them argued, it wasn't long before Tony, Ziva and McGee stopped what they were doing and curiously watched Gibbs and Steve from the doorway. Mark tried to cool the situation down but to no avail, he couldn't get a word in edge ways, and Jesse didn't have much luck either, all the young Doctor wanted to tell them was that he didn't blame Mark and Amanda for what happened. When it seemed that all else had failed, Mark did what he thought was the most useful thing, whistled. The two of them stopped arguing and looked at him.

"Thank you." Mark looked at them both, "Steve, Gibbs is right, I shouldn't have done any snooping around without telling him first."

"You shouldn't have done any 'snooping around' at all Doc."

Mark couldn't help but look a little disappointed when Gibbs said that, but it wouldn't deter him, he'd just have to be sneakier, a lot sneakier, "It won't happen again Agent Gibbs."

"You're damn right it won't."

"Hey what's you're problem, my Dad's solved more cases than..."

"You?" Gibbs challenged.

The argument rose up again, although Steve wasn't actually arguing with what Gibbs had just said, instead he continued with the argument from before. Gibbs' team seemed to find the whole thing more entertaining than anything else, the only thing they were missing was popcorn and soda. Mark didn't need to whistle this time as Steve stopped the argument for him, by storming out of the house, saying something about needing to 'get out of here for a while'.

Without even turning around to his team Gibbs called out, "McGee you're with me, once you've all finished gawking that is."

Tony, McGee and Ziva all stared at each other, trying to figure out how he knew they were there, they couldn't see any mirrors. When Gibbs looked around at them impatiently the three of them moved from the doorway, Tony and Ziva got back to putting the evidence into boxes and McGee rushed over to Gibbs' side.

As the two of them headed to the door Gibbs stopped and turned to Mark, "Oh, and Doc, when you're not snooping around I want you to let me know."

A smile suddenly appeared on Marks face and he nodded.

Gibbs gave a nod in return and left with McGee.

"Boss I don't understand," McGee followed Gibbs to the car, "Why are you letting Dr Sloan investigate, I thought you didn't want him to."

Gibbs stopped and faced McGee.

McGee thought about his own question for a moment, "Because you know he'll just do it anyway."

Gibbs gave a quick smile and raised an eyebrow.

"Which is better because...because if knows he doesn't need to sneak around, and he knows he can tell us then it'll be safer for him."

Gibbs smiled, then turned and walked the rest of the way to the car.

Ziva stood outside of Jesse's room; about a half hour after the three men had left the young Doctor decided he would call it a night. A question had been eating at Tony for days now and he walked over to Mark hoping to find the answer.

"Doc, can I ask you something?" Tony sat next to Mark on the couch.

"Of course."

"How did you know I was using the cup to get Jesse's fingerprints?"

Mark smiled, "Well firstly you didn't really need to use both hands to take out a notepad and pen, plus if you wanted to impress Amanda like it seemed then you wouldn't have asked for help."

"Yeah, too bad she's married with a baby boy," Tony suddenly looked uncomfortable, "What I meant to say is... I'm very happy for her, obviously." He laughed awkwardly, then turned to Mark, "So, what's the secondly?"

"You held the cup at the bottom."

"So you got the whole fingerprints thing just from that?"

Mark nodded and Tony couldn't help but feel impressed by the Doctors observational skills. Their conversation had left the Special Agent feeling a lot better, knowing that the reason Mark had caught onto him was because the Doctor was so good, not because Tony messed up.

After Gibbs and McGee left the Beach House they went straight to Jesse's apartment and asked around to find out if anyone had seen anything. It turned out the Janitor saw 'the Docs girlfriend' walking away from the apartment at about four thirty pm, an hour or so before the wardrobe incident had happened. After they'd talked to the Janitor the two of them went to Shelly's apartment and told her they needed to take her in for questioning.

Steve was at the Police Station when they got there so Gibbs said that he could stay in the interrogation room whilst Shelly was being questioned providing he let McGee do all the talking. Steve agreed, knowing it would make Jesse feel better him being there. Gibbs and Steve's earlier dispute seemed to be behind them now. Gibbs knew Steve was just defending his father. And Mark had called Steve to tell him what Gibbs had said after he left, which surprised Steve, especially since Gibbs seemed so adamant that his father and friends weren't to do any investigating. It seemed that the more time he spent with Gibbs the less he could figure him out, he appeared to be doing everything he could to help Jesse though, which was all that mattered as far as Steve was concerned.

Gibbs stood in the observation room, coffee cup in hand and watched through the two way mirror as Steve and McGee entered the interrogation room where Shelly Samuals was waiting. She was sat on the same chair Jesse had been sat on the night before.

Shelly stood up as soon as she saw the two men, "Lt. Sloan, I don't understand, what am I..."

"I'm not even here, talk to Agent McGee." Steve cut her off and stood casually against the wall that was facing the door.

She turned her attention to McGee, "What am I doing here?"

McGee sat in the seat opposite hers and started to fill Shelly in on what had happened with the wardrobe.

Her hand flew to her mouth, "Oh my...is Jesse OK?"

McGee nodded, "We also discovered that the wardrobe had been tampered with, and we believe that whoever tampered with the wardrobe is somehow involved in your husbands murder."

Shelly frowned at McGee, "And you think that someone is me?"

"We have a witness who saw you walking from Jesse Travis' apartment late this afternoon, just hours before the wardrobe collapsed." McGee told her, "What were you doing there Mrs Samuals?"

"Dr Sloan told me Jesse had been released, I just wanted to make sure he was OK so I went over to his apartment, when I got there he wasn't home so I left."

"So you didn't enter his apartment at all this afternoon?" Steve moved closer to them, she shook her head in response, "And you don't know about the key Jesse hides under his doormat?"

"Oh I know about the key, Jesse said you don't like him keeping it there," She looked at Steve, "Lt. Sloan I would never do anything to hurt Jesse, not intentionally, please, you've gotta believe that."

McGee tried to regain her attention by asking if she'd told anyone else about the key, she said she may have mentioned it to her friends but she wasn't sure. Shelly also pointed out that even if she hadn't it wouldn't be that hard for someone to find the key, echoing the reason Steve disliked Jesse's 'hiding place'. Gibbs observed the whole thing carefully, whilst slowly taking sips of his coffee, Steve's contribution hadn't surprised him, in fact he was more surprised the Lieutenant hadn't asked more questions. Shelly was free to go after they were done questioning her.

Tony strode into the kitchen the next morning and went to take a pancake from Ziva's plate before noticing the fork in her hand and deciding against it. Instead he took a pancake from Jesse's plate, "Hey these are great Doc." He complimented Mark, with a mouthful of pancake and headed towards the Deck.

"I wouldn't know." Jesse mumbled, looking down at his half empty plate.

Ziva turned around on her stool curiously, "Tony, where are you going?"

"To the beach, where else?"

"And Gibbs?" Ziva questioned.

"Gibbs doesn't need to...' Tony suddenly stopped talking and went very still, "He's right behind me isn't he?"

The three just watched.

"Hey boss, I was just telling Ziva that she didn't need to tell you about having pancake for ow!" Tony's eye's widened as Gibbs gave him a head-slap, "Thank you boss."

"You know Hitting people on the head has been known to cause brain damage." Mark informed.

"It shouldn't affect DiNozzo then." Gibbs replied, Mark couldn't help but smile at his reply.

Tony looked bewildered by what he meant by the comment, "Boss?"

Gibbs, along with Steve and McGee filled the four of them in on what they'd found out. Jesse didn't like the way the conversation was heading when Shelly's name was mentioned, and he certainly didn't like it when he found out they took her to the Police Station for questioning.

"You took Shelly in for questioning without even telling me?"

Jesse's tone grated on Gibbs, "I wasn't aware I needed to ask your permission, for some reason I was under the impression that this was my investigation."

Mark quickly tried to cool the situation down, and asked for McGee to continue.

"And don't worry, I was in the interrogation room the whole time." Steve told him once McGee had finished telling them what had been said.

"And you being there is supposed to make it better?"

"Well, that was the idea Jess." Steve replied.

"You know something like this happened to me once." Everyone turned to Tony as he spoke, "Yeah, you see I was working undercover, obviously I can't tell you all the details, but anyway we were after this guy and I needed to pretend to date his daughter in order for us to get to him, well anyway after a while and I actually fell in love with her, but when she found out who I was she..."

"How is this anything like what's happening here?" Jesse interrupted.

Tony thought about it for a moment, "I don't know, but it's opened up a lot of bad memories though," He frowned, " Will you excuse me?" He started to walk off gingerly towards the deck.

"DiNozzo, get away from the beach!" Gibbs shouted over his shoulder.

Tony lowered his shoulders and slumped into the nearest deck chair, his plan of escape being thwarted.

Jesse was carrying a medical book in his hand, as well as some notes as he walked sheepishly up to Gibbs who was sat on the couch, "Hey, I've just been doing some studying."

"I see that." Gibbs replied.

Jesse sat down next to him and started to ramble, "Listen about before, I shouldn't have reacted the way I did, I know you're all just trying to help, and I really do appreciate it. It's just that, I guess I'm scared Shelly might actually be behind all this, and if she is then that means she was just using me to get rid of her husband. And, and if that's true then everything about our relationship was a lie, she never cared about me, she just picked me because I'm so gullible...I don't even know what to think anymore."

"What does you're gut say?"

Jesse looked at him, "My gut?"

"Yeah," Gibbs nodded, "Gut instinct, what does it tell you?"

"That she's innocent," Jesse answered, fidgeting with his dark green t-shirt, "But the evidence says it's Shelly."

"The evidence also points at you too." Gibbs pointed out.

Jesse hadn't thought of it that way, "So what do you think Agent Gibbs?"

"I think we're missing...something."

"Like what?" The young Doctor asked curiously.

"If I knew that then we wouldn't be missing it."