Disclaimer: I do not own the characters to NCIS. They are owned by CBS. It's been a long time since I've seen that season, please forgive me if I've overlooked anything and point them out in a review. I hope to make a few more chapters to make this feel like an entire episode. Enjoy.

It was 3 in the morning and the team was still at the office. Having not slept in 24 hours they were becoming rather irritated not only from the lack of sleep, but from the characters they had to deal with. Gibbs ordered that everyone in Zimmerman's unit come in for questioning-no exceptions. There were many complaints about having to come in so early, leaving their family and loved ones to come to NCIS, but the agents didn't care. The agents were on a mission and they laid it on them about Zimmerman. "Were you his friend?" they asked.

"Oh sure" they would say, "He was a good guy. We were friends". That's when the trap was sprung, and they lay it into them. From Zimmerman's diary they found that when he needed help the most, everyone turned their backs on him. They would lie through their teeth if it meant to save their own skin. Though they hadn't committed any criminal offense, the agents were going to shame them. Shame them into doing what they were suppose to do as a unit; look after one another.

Tony had an argument with one sailor over this. "The man you say was a friend, came to you for help, and you turn your back on him?" The suave Italian had the guy on the ropes, grilling him relentlessly. The sailor was pale faced, trembling. He thought he was doomed. Knowing this, able to read his face, Tony smirked, turn on his heels and walked carefully towards the one way mirror where the sailor, on the brink of tears and carefully walked away from the table where the sailor, on the brink of tears, finally exploded, "What do you want from me?!" the sailor cried.

With his fist clenched tight and arm bent with the fist pointing towards the sailor, Tony spun around shouting, "I WANT THE TRUTH!"

The sailor looked at him completely befuddled then finally broke down in tears.

Walking out of the interview room Tony continued to carry that smirk of satisfaction on his lips. At the same time just down the hall, Ziva left another interview room where a Petty Officer was sobbing into his hands. She had a smug though tired look on her face as she sauntered to her desk to find a hot cup of coffee waiting for her courtesy of DiNozzo whom was sitting now at his desk, his jacket and tie off and rubbing his eyes with his palms. "How'd it go?" he asked tired.

"Same thing as the others" she replied leaning her frame against her desk and taking a sip of her coffee, "He claimed to be a friend, but couldn't even recall Zimmerman's birthday" then she paused to think now that she had caffeine flowing through her, "Tony, is this right? I mean, doing this to these people?"

"Well, normally I wouldn't drag people here for questioning at 3 in the morning" Tony said standing up, "Unless it was dire, but what the boss says goes."

"Yeah," tilting her head slowly to the side allowing her long black hair to fall towards that shoulder, "We can't force them to care about Zimmerman. It's tragic that he got shot..."

"Ziva" Tony interjected taking a few steps towards her, "You read his diary. You saw the state he was in. He saved two people when under fire, and his boss doesn't care. He gets pushed down a flight of stairs and breaks his arm, and no one even cares to even drive him to the hospital. His pride and work gets destroyed by his own boss. The man was a mental wreck. A unit is suppose to be a family. They're supposed to look after each other, but here...no one cares anymore."

The Mossad agent was left to ponder that. She was raised to be tough. To be hard. She had to be. Staring at a blank computer screen Ziva reached for the remote and pulled up Zimmerman's face and stared at it. She studied his face. He looked like a strong man, but having read his diary knew he was a man in internal conflict. She pulled up his records again and read them. Twice saved men under fire. No medal. No recognition. In her field of work that was the norm. Her missions were black ops, no recognition, no rewards, just memories that she couldn't talk about. But then she looked away from the screen, and looking down at her desk where Zimmerman's diary and picked it up and began reading his words.

"4 January. Finished a TBF Avenger for Lt (Jg) Herman Vincent of the USS Langley (CVL-27) and he absolutely loved it. That is the third piece I've finished this week. Thank God that Tanner is on leave or else I wouldn't have been able to finish them without his harassment. Brannan came by and gave me lunch. It's always great to see her. It's like a ray of light in an overcast sky."

Then Ziva flipped through several weeks and found an entry after he broke his arm.

"My arm is giving me such pain. I can't move it at all. Can't take pain killers because they make me constipated and I can't drive home. The doctor put me on a strict medical profile, and I thought I could spend that time catching up on my work, but Tanner said he didn't care about profiles and ordered me to start doing push ups. I told him I couldn't and showed him my papers and my arm, but he punched me. He actually punched me in the arm!"

"Poor kid" she whispered. Just one scene after the other; abuse in every description. She had read them before, but reading them again Ziva couldn't believe that someone of authority could be so cruel to their subordinates.

A sudden voice jerked her attention away from her reading, "How you doing, DiNozzo?" Gibbs asked as he stepped in. Tony stood up and dusted himself off, feeling a sudden spurt in energy.

"I'm good, boss" he smiled.

"Good" Gibbs nodded, "Take McGee and go to Tanner's office and search it."

"What are we looking for?"

"Anything that we can use to trace his connection to Zimmerman's shooting. Get on his computer and trace any mail or letters" Gibbs said. Normally he wasn't keen on electronics, but Tony snapped at the chance. Among the people waiting to go in for questioning was Tanner himself, in one of the back rooms, and he didn't know that Salvador was already in custody.

"On it, boss" Tony said grabbing his coat and rushing by the yawning McGee. "C'mon, Probie. We got ourselves a mystery" smiling from ear to ear.

Left with Gibbs, Ziva placed the diary aside and sipped her coffee again, but summoned the courage to ask, "Gibbs, you've been in the service. If I can ask, have you ever met someone like Commander Tanner?"

"I've met a lot of hard men. They're hard because they have to be. In the Marines we're geared to be hard because in our line of work we have to be ready to react to the situation. And in many situations Marines die. We have to learn to accept that. But, there's a difference between 'being hard' and 'being mean'. Commander Tanner has proven that he's no officer. He's just abusing his rank. I don't know and I don't care if his mother didn't hug him enough when he was a kid. I want him put away along with Salvador."

"Do you think we can pin this on him?" Ziva asked. "If Abby can confirm that the gun we collected is the right weapon, then where do we go from there?"

With a sigh Gibbs said, "We still have to find out if it was Tanner, Salvador, or both that hired the shooter. Abby says she found that Tanner made 'money back' deductions mounting up to $5,000 over the course of several months."

"And that's near the amount we found in the shooter's bag" Ziva pointed out.

"Yes, but that doesn't confirm his involvement. If we take it to court his lawyer will be able to explain that he spent it in a strip club. If Abby can confirm it's the gun then the only evidence we have is that the crazy man shot Zimmerman. That's it" Gibbs said.

"But a crazy man doesn't run around with nearly $5,000 in a bag and just shoot a guy in a park in broad daylight. He had to have been ordered to do it" Ziva said pointing with the finger of the hand holding her coffee at the screen with Zimmerman's face.

"That's the hard part of this," Gibbs confessed. "That's why I sent DiNozzo and McGee to search Tanner's office"

"But Tanner could have destroyed any evidence already once he heard of Zimmerman's shooting. Same thing for Salvador."

"I know. But, we're going to Salvador's place to search it while he's under arrest". With his piece clipped to his belt Gibbs went for the elevator with a smiling Ziva right behind him. The other sailors waiting to be questioned would have to wait even longer.

"The password...is password?" McGee said staring at the glowing screen. He couldn't believe it, but there it was. Using the mouse he opened up the documents and began searching as well as pulling up his internet history and email. To his shock, the password for all of them was 'password'. Around him Tony was opening and searching drawers. In one there were challenge coins, and in another there were stacks of paperwork that he combed through, but what he found in the filing cabinet made him pause.

"Hey, Probie. Check this out" Tony said holding a thick pale white Manila envelope.

"What?" McGee turned his head towards his counterpart.

Standing up while still reading Tony said aloud, "These are commendations from other units made for the victim. Check it out. There has to be fifty of them or more" handing the heavy file over. McGee flipped through them quickly. There were recommendations and commendations from squadron commanders, and ship captains, and even from private individuals all praising Zimmerman's artistic talent and recommending him for awards."

"Tanner was holding out on him" McGee said with a frustrated sigh,

"Looks like he was" Tony said. "Find anything on his computer?"

Putting the envelope aside McGee slid back towards the screen and continued searching. It would appear that Tanner was careful in cleaning up after himself. "His history was deleted and his computer has been defragmented-several times" becoming more bitter when he was unable to find any evidence. Behind him DiNozzo was searching, behind picture frames and even under the desk and under the seat cushions. "Just orders. Official e-mail. Nothing to Salvador or to any hit man."

"Yeah. Look up an email address named, "Crazy guy with a gun" Tony said sarcastically.

Closing his eyes and shaking his tired head ever so slightly, McGee knew that it wouldn't be listed under that. If the computer had been cleaned then the only way to do a search would be to get it to Abby who had the equipment to do it. So they swiped the tower and the envelope and headed back to the office with Tony phoning Gibbs of their progress just as they were arriving at Salvador's apartment.

They didn't have a key and it was dark out. The place was quiet, no one was tracing about. Gibbs tried to phone the manager, but never picked up. That left Ziva to work her magic and picked the lock. It wasn't hard at all, but once they stepped in-she wanted to step back out.

The place wreaked to high heaven. It was the complete opposite of what Zimmerman's place was. There was uneaten food on the coffee table, a few mystery stains on the sky blue-short haired carpet, and a pile of garbage in the kitchen waiting to be taken out. "How can anyone live like this?" Ziva snarled as she pinched her nose and held her breath.

"You get use to it" Gibbs said stepping inside and closing the door. Together, the two donned their gloves and began their search as Ziva fought back the urge to vomit.