Instead of my normally witty disclaimer, I will treat you to NCIS trivia: The origin of the headslap: Mark Harmon was acting in a scene and Michael Weatherly (Happy Late Birthday!) was standing off camera flirting with the props girl. He "felt a sharp pain and a bit of whiplash". He turned around to see Harmon standing behind him. "Not while we're filming," Harmon said. The producers liked it so much they added in permanently into the scripts and the Gibbs-slap was born! :)
"Call an ambulance," Ziva whispered to Tony.
As Tony did so, Ziva took another look into the house. It was a small house with one main room, which was no doubt intended for hosting parties. What it hosted today though was more funeral-like, judging by the five bodies. Ziva recognized Castle and Spencer as the two lying on the couch. Each had been shot once in the chest. There were two other men, one of whom was Sheridan, lying on the floor by the front door, guns in their hands, appearing to have made a stand before they were gunned down. The fifth was by the back door, no weapon in hand, apparently trying to outrun the shooter.
The two minutes were up. Tony kicked down the back door, entering with Ziva and clearing the two side rooms, while Gibbs and McGee entered through the front. After the whole house was cleared, Tony bent down beside the man closest to the back door. He could find no pulse.
"Castle's alive. So is Spencer. Just barely," Ziva called from the couch.
"Sheridan's alive, and the other is gone," McGee reported from the front door.
"Where is the ambulance?" Gibbs called, grabbing towels from the nearby bathroom to hold over the wounds.
"On its way. No sign of Kemps. This must be Darst's work. Tying up all the loose ends," Tony commented.
The team worked to keep the victims alive. Relief was tangible as sirens became louder and louder. The paramedics burst in and began taking over, ordering IV antibiotics and painkillers.
After the paramedics left and Ducky was called, McGee and Ziva began bagging and tagging, with Tony shooting crime scene photos. There were bullet casings appeared to all be the same, but from the footprints in the rug, there was at least two shooters.
To Gibbs' knowledge, extensive as it was, the men must have been relaxing. The shooter(s) took out Castle and Spencer through the window. The other three, alerted to the threat, tried to alter the situation. Sheridan and his partner tried to defend themselves, while the other thug ran for safety. The shooter(s) entered, taking out Sheridan, his partner and finally the escapee. The shooter(s) were clearly not professionals, otherwise Castle and Spencer would have been dead. The refraction of the bullet through the glass had saved their lives.
Ducky estimated the time of death to be around half an hour ago, meaning the surviving members were quickly running out of time.
"It's a miracle you came by when you did, or I'd have five corpses on my tables instead of two, and without Mr. Palmer's assistance, it would have taken me many hours to complete all five autopsies. That actually reminds me of the time—" Ducky monologued, at which point Gibbs stopped listening.
Once the crime scene cordoned off, brass collected, and evidence marked, Team Gibbs headed back to NCIS.
Gibbs sent McGee to give Abby the forensic evidence and to assist her in any way possible. He sent Tony and Ziva to work on the identities of the dead victims. Gibbs himself called Vance for agents to guard Castle, Sheridan and Spencer's hospital rooms until they woke and could give statements, assuming they lived.
They reconvened in the squad room, where Tony and Ziva had discovered the identities of the dead victims.
"Mark Roberts and William Chase. Both known criminals, did time for petty theft, construction workers for the Naval Base school systems. According to Kemps' financial records, Kemps had paid all five workers $5,000 the day before Meena went missing," Tony summarized.
"Other than that, neither is tied directly to Kemps or Berle. Or Darst, for that matter. They appear to be your typical thugs for hire," Ziva added as Gibbs' phone rang.
"Gibbs! This is really good. How soon can you come down here?" Abby bubbled.
"I'm on my way."
"Gibbs. This Berle was AMAZING! And I mean AMAZING! This stuff he was working on is absolutely unbelievable. His computer contained designs for an octa-core processor. You may not know what that means, but it's absolutely incredibly fast computer. For comparison, most computers now are a dual-core…Anyway, this design would be worth millions to a computer company."
"Like Darthmore Industries," Tony nodded his head in understanding.
"Yep. According to Berle's cell phone records, he called a burn phone—whose GPS showed it was in Darst's office—before Berle deployed. The call lasted five minutes, an hour before the CO saw them meet. Berle was also given an e-mail address from Darthmore, which he used to communicate his thoughts on potential designs. We found it when searching Darst's e-mail. Berle had e-mailed Darst some of his own designs. According to Darst's financials, he paid a small amount, $250—which is like nothing these days, to have someone else authenticate the designs. This is the real deal, Gibbs. This baby was worth a lot."
"So that's why Darst had Berle killed," McGee clarified, "Even though we suspected that earlier, now we have proof. He wanted to make the millions by himself and not have to split them with Berle."
"But how did Kemps know about Darst?" Ziva asked.
"There are a series of phone calls from Berle's cell to a private number, which we only just found out was Kemps. We can assume he told his friend everything. And if you're not in the assuming mood, you can read the e-mails from Berle's super-secret work e-mail, which detailed some of his plans. He sent them to Kemps for advice on presentation and the works. Apparently our computer genius wasn't much of a public speaker. Darst's private firewall has been hacked recently, and the IP address traces back to an internet café. This café was frequented by Kemps according to his credit card receipts," McGee answered
"How did he know about Jimmy and Meena, oh great McOz?" Tony questioned.
"That I'm not sure about Tony, but I am fairly certain Palmer shot off his mouth about his privileges as employee of NCIS. Kemps may have been watching NCIS, looking for an 'in'. In fact, wasn't the day Meena disappeared the day after she came to visit Jimmy?"
"Now that you mention it, I believe you are correct," Ziva remarked thoughfully.
"What kind of car did Kemps drive?" Gibbs asked. Tony and Ziva began madly flipping through files, while McGee typed frantically on the computer.
"It's a 1999 Land Rover, red," Abby answered, after letting her teammates sweat for a moment. "And it drove by at exactly 5:30, which is 1730 your time, Gibbs. According to the video," she pulled said footage up on the plasma, "he saw Palmer and Meena leave in the same car… after a short make-out session."
"Now, on to the evidence from the shooting," Abby turned away from the computers, and headed to her lab table, "Most of this stuff was pretty regular. There were five shells, and five bullet holes according to your reports. That's pretty good shooting, considering two shots were through glass—they did hit the targets, but were non-lethal. Three of the shells are from one Wilson .45 Combat, the other two from a Glock. Now, here's the good stuff. The phone registered to Kellan Darst was at the crime scene next to Sheridan's body. Sheridan was the only one without a cell phone at the scene which is unusual these days. Except," she bounced over to her computer and typed madly for a moment, "he is paying a cell phone bill. His cell phone's still on. According to the GPS, it's in the same location as Kemps' cell phone."
"That's good work Abby," Gibbs turned to head out the door.
"Wait! I'm not done yet! Kemps sent a text message to Darst about two and a half hours ago, telling Darst to meet him at the J*Mart packing plant in Eastern D.C. Kemps said he had information about Darst's 'arrangements'—his words not mine. I'd've said 'scheme' or 'conspiracy', they're so much stronger words—as Kemps put it, and was willing to sell it back. Kemps' credit card record shows he purchased a wire at a local spy store. I think he's going to tape Darst's confession and turn it into you…probably after killing Darst and making it look like self-defense—those MI5 guys are good at that you know. I once dated a guy—"
"Where's the warehouse Abby?" Gibbs questioned, interrupting her rant about an old boyfriend. She rattled off the address.
"Gibbs! There's more, though you can leave if you want. You'll be back eventually," she waited. Seeing he wasn't leaving, she continued, "After Kemps' call to Darst, Darst made another call to a Mark Rhamsey," Abby pulled up his picture on the plasma, "who is a registered Wilson .45 Combat owner. He was suspected in an armed robbery of a Marine home a few years ago, so we have his bullets on file. They're a match to the three shells at the crime scene. His known associate was thought to be Jacob Cameron, who…" she paused, waiting for someone to guess.
"Is the registered owner of a Glock?" Tony guessed.
"Give the man a stuffed bear!" Abby celebrated, pulling up Cameron's photo as well.
"Why would Tony want a stuffed bear? Isn't that a children's toy here in America?" Ziva looked slightly confused until McGee explained the origin of the saying to her.
"The warehouse is about a fifteen minute drive from here," McGee said, plugging the packing plant's address into his iPhone's GPS.
Gibbs walked back into the lab and gave Abby a kiss on the cheek. "That's really good work Abs."
"What? No Caf-Pow?" Abby asked, a sad puppy-dog expression on her face.
"Check your desk," Gibbs replied mysteriously, as they left.
Abby peeked around the bank of computers to find a Caf-Pow! sitting by her personal computer.
"One of these days, I'm going to figure out how you do that, Gibbs," she promised, her face taking on a very determined expression.
Short chapter, but we've reached the climax of the story. Either these two were going to be combined into a super-long chapter or they'd be split up. I decided it'd be better to split them up. Don't worry. The next chapter will be posted tomorrow!
Thanks to all who reviewed! But seriously, NONE of you know what movies Mark Sheridan and Henry Jones are from? And you call yourselves avid NCIS fans.
