Chapter 9
The case moves slowly over the next two days. Ducky has to rule the death a homicide due to the conflicting evidence and the fact that once an incident has been labeled suicide, NCIS no longer has the authority to investigate it. Gibbs doesn't want to give up on the commander, and the lack of progress so obviously irritates him that even Abby has taken to limiting her contact with him.
The only bright spots for Tony during the time period are when Tim invites him to check out his favorite houses on the slowly narrowing list of places he's interested in. They manage to find a very understanding realtor who works with the unreasonably late hours they have to stay in the Yard. Of course, it doesn't hurt that she recognizes Tim from the back of her copy of the first Deep Six novel (which Tim obligingly signs when she brings it with her on the second day). Tony gives Tim a long suffering sigh at the completely unnecessary adoration, but by Wednesday evening, Tim's blushing starts getting pretty funny anyways, so Tony chalks it up to a win.
The homes' locations and their square footage in the master bedrooms and the studies are of the most concern to Tim, while Tony's still bucking for a yard and has to set Probie to rights on what he should and should not accept for his new kitchen. He's pretty sure he gets Tim to see the allure of the hot tub in the place on R Street, though he can tell Tim still prefers the townhouse with the enormous shower—which Tony can't help but to notice is definitely big enough for three people—near Folger Park. He knows he doesn't quite manage to sell Tim on the yard idea, but Tony's pretty sure he's wearing him down. In fact, by the second day, he's fairly certain Tim'll get the yard just to shut him up about it.
The break in the case doesn't come until Thursday. They put the house hunting on hold when Boss gets a hit from the woman living next door to the commander. When Gibbs and Tony re-interview her, she suddenly remembers Mitchell's little brother had been in town for the week but left in a hurry the day before the body was found. Gibbs leaves her house more pissed than when he came in, despite the fresh lead. Boss shakes his head over the wasted time, and his driving back to the Yard is almost as erratic as Ziva's usually is.
Tim finds the brother in short order. The younger Mitchell checked into a local Motel Six with his own credit card and has been there since the night Commander Mitchell died.
Once the brother's been located, the team gears up, but Boss stalls Tim when he goes for his gun, ordering Tim to stay and finish piecing together the phone records and financials for the Commander's wife—just in case the lead on the kid brother falls through. And the thing is, even though it's a little heavy handed of Gibbs to demand the information now, they do need the data to confirm the soon-to-be-ex-Mrs. Mitchell isn't hiding anything, but as Tim's face falls nearly flat of emotion watching the rest of the team scurry for the door, Tony knows that Tim only sees how marginal his task is, not how very much Gibbs wants an airtight case for the prosecutors.
Tony bites his lip, but there's no time to offer Tim a word about it. As it is, Tony practically has to run to keep up with Gibbs and Ziva. He takes a quick second to peek back at Tim just before they reach the elevator. He feels his shoulders pinch up as he watches the stiffness in Tim's posture, suddenly feeling Tim's exclusion as if it were his own.
Still, Tony shoves Tim to the back of his mind as the rest of the team drives to the motel, gets permission from the manager, and storms into Jared Mitchell's room. The kid, who's barely 22 according to his Virginia driver's license, freezes when they breach the entrance but doesn't try to run or resist in the slightest.
The younger Mitchell doesn't say a word of protest when Ziva secures his cuffs a little more tightly than necessary. Tony can understand her impulse after the week they've had with Gibbs riding their asses, but he can't help but see the sadness and defeat on the kid's face. It's not the expression of a killer. The death must have been an accident, Tony concludes, still watching the boy. If he's guilty at all, that is, Tony corrects himself with a frown.
He and Ziva take to the observation room as Gibbs leads Jared Mitchell to interrogation to cool his heels, not that the kid's heels need much in the way of cooling. Tony thinks it must be the pronounced sadness that seeps from the younger Mitchell and throughout the whole room that makes Gibbs change his mind, stop before reaching the door, and start the interview.
"Must have been hard," Gibbs throws out the first ball, waiting to see if he'll get a hit. When the kid doesn't bite, he continues, "Being the kid brother of a successful Navy officer like Commander Mitchell."
Jared just shrugs.
"Bet your parents were pretty proud of him."
The boy clears his throat, "Our dad was," he says. "We have different mothers."
Gibbs nods in understanding and takes a seat across from him. Despite the kid's defeated demeanor, Tony can't help but get a bit of a thrill as he watches Gibbs start the process of reeling him in.
"Didn't think you had much contact with your dad," Gibbs prods using Tim's earlier research—and there it is, the kid flinches—direct hit.
"I guess I didn't," he shrugs, hurt coming off of him in waves.
"Your brother did, though," Boss leads, "Was raised by him, even, but you didn't even meet your father until you were 18, did you?"
Jared freezes. He sucks his bottom lip into his mouth, hesitates, then shakes his head.
"Must have made you mad," Gibbs tilts his head, and Tony can imagine that stare he's giving the kid. He's seen it, felt it, a thousand times or more.
Jared twists his neck to the side, "For a long time it did."
"I'd be really angry at my father if he ignored me the way your dad ignored you. I'd be pretty pissed at my brother, too."
The kid jerks his gaze back to look at Gibbs. "Mike was good to me after he found out who I was," Jared insists.
Gibbs shrugs, "Doesn't mean you weren't angry at him. For a while, at least."
Brow furrowed, the kid squints in confusion, "I don't know, I guess. Maybe until I met him or something."
Gibbs nods his understanding, and opens the file folder in front of Jared, tosses the photos of Mitchell's corpse into Jared's viewing. "That why you killed him?" Gibbs fires the first hardball. "Because you were angry?"
When the boy's not shocked by the pictures, it's obvious that he's seen the image of his dead brother before. Tony gets that flare of satisfaction that always bubbles up when they find the right guy. The feeling's contradicted by the quivering of the kid's lip, though, and the way his eyes fill with tears that he won't quite let fall down his cheeks. Jared traces the line of his brother's head in the photo, thumb grazing the likeness of his brother's forehead as if the commander were right there with him.
The kid doesn't so much as shake his head, but he quietly refuses Gibbs' interpretation of events when he claims, "Meeting Mike was the best thing that ever happened to me. He helped me straighten out my life. Made me get my GED. I was even looking at college classes." He sniffs, "None of that would have come about without him."
"He was up for promotion," Gibbs comes back with an apparent non sequitur. "Did he tell you?"
Jared swipes at his face and nods, "Yeah," a tear manages to escape from the corner of his eye.
"Was that it?" Gibbs stands and walks around the table, places his hand beside Jared's arm, which is now huddled around the photo as if protecting the very image. "Was that what changed?" Gibbs lowers his head, gets right next to the boy's ear. "What pissed you off? That no matter how much he helped you get your life in order, he'd always have it better?"
Tony barely catches the kid shake his head in denial because, next thing he knows, Probie slams into the observation room in a blur. "Has he said anything?" Tim demands.
Tony squints at Tim, "Boss is just about to break him," he points to the glass and the now sobbing kid on the other side of the two-way mirror.
Tim winces and digs for his phone on the inside pocket of his jacket. Tony doesn't have to see to know he's dialing Gibbs. On the other side of the glass, Boss lifts his hand to his waist to silence the vibration of his phone. His face pinches in irritation at the interruption, though the kid seems to remain unaware of it, but Gibbs doesn't acknowledge the call otherwise.
Tim takes a deep breath beside Tony and marches out of the room in a hurry.
"Wait, you're not going to interrupt him?" Tony takes a step for him and raises a hand towards Tim's back in disbelief.
Tony swings his head back around quickly, just catching Ziva's cringe at the grief Probie's setting himself up for by walking into interrogation right now.
Tim knocks on the door and opens it right away. Gibbs' wrath seems not that dissimilar from what Lot's wife must have see when she looked back on Sodom. Tony winces—hard. "Ooh, this is not good."
"Boss, I need a minute," Tim lifts his chin to the dressing down he has to know is coming.
Gibbs narrows his eyes at McGee, breath coming hard from his nose as anger actually makes his face redden. "Not a good time, McGee," Boss gives a heavy emphasis to the second syllable of Probie's name, which is never, never, never (seriously never) a good sign.
"It's urgent," Tim insists, then walks back into the hallway, leaving the door wide open and forcing Gibbs to get up and shut it or come out and talk to him, but making him walk over and away from the interview in either case .
Tony runs to the Observation Room's door the second Gibbs straightens up. He peeks out at the threshold, not willing to put himself into this line of fire despite his affection for Tim. Ziva's right behind Tony, fighting for real estate at the entry way.
Gibbs all but slams the door, shoving right into Tim's space, forcing McGee back until he's flat against the wall. "You never interrupt an interrogation," he sticks a finger into Tim's face. "I should never have had to tell you that twice," he points back toward the room. "That kid was inches away from confessing, and now he has time to regroup, to think of something plausible that might get him out of the hot water he's in," and Tony knows Gibbs is actually angrier than even he normally would be at these circumstances considering how long it's taken them to come to what should have been an easy conclusion to the case.
"Can I say something?" McGee asks, lips pursed, face inches away from Gibbs' but not giving into the urge Tim absolutely has to have to look away from Gibbs at his most pissed.
"No," Gibbs tightens his lip again, his body already backing away from the conversation even as his face remains all but against McGee's, "and if you ever interrupt an interrogation again, I will have your ass."
"Jared Mitchell is innocent," Tim speaks as soon as Boss' body is turned enough to lay a hand on the doorknob. "After Mrs. Mitchell's phone records and financials came up clean, I dug a little deeper into the commander's computer activity. It was hidden, but the path to the data was there: I found the commander's suicide note," he continues. "It's a video that shows Jared Mitchell walking into his brother's study while the commander's telling his webcam why he wants to die." Tim tilts his head and gets a bitter slant to his lips that Tony's barely ever seen. "Jared Mitchell interrupted the attempt and tried to wrestle the gun away from him. He couldn't save him, but he tried damn hard to do it," it was a rare curse from Tim, and rarer still for it to be directed to Gibbs. "Thought you might like to know before you coaxed a confession out of an innocent man."
Gibbs shuts his eyes, hand still on the doorknob. He doesn't move a millimeter when Tim turns away from him and walks in silence past Tony and Ziva towards the bullpen. Gibbs only looks up when Tim's rounded the corner. Then he follows Tim's path, Tony and Ziva trailing right after him.
They get back to their cubicle just as Tim cues up the video on the plasma.
A deep wrinkle appears between Gibbs' eyes, and when he speaks, his voice is soft in what passes for an apology from him. "What d'ya got?"
Tim tilts his head in their direction but doesn't look at any of them. "Commander Mitchell's browsing history was clean, and the activity associated with his IP address didn't show anything, but his brother has to be a hacker because somebody masked the data stream shortly after a large file had been sent out at the commander's approximate time of death," Tim purses his lips, and Tony can tell his partner's fighting to keep his face as blank as possible. "The commander was streaming when he died," Tim concludes, hitting 'play' as he does, and there it is, Commander Michael Mitchell offering his last words in what is easily recognizable as the computer chair where he died. The gun is clearly visible and is as noteworthy as the shocked voice of his brother, arriving just as Commander Mitchell is talking about how he's unfit to be a husband and father, unfit for command. The subsequent struggle for the gun moves on and off the screen, but when it's over, Mitchell's dead, and his brother is crying.
"I knew you wouldn't want to wait for a warrant," Tim continues, almost completely without inflection, "so I hacked into the server that hosts the feed at Frontend Industries. I had to use cross-site scripting because I couldn't fuzz it," Tim goes into his technobabble, and Tony knows he's doing it on purpose, prodding Boss into irritation because Tim's angry enough himself to actually want to piss Gibbs off.
Gibbs runs his tongue over his teeth, keeps his eyes on the plasma, his head level when he says, "This is good work, Tim."
"Thank you," Tim narrows his eyes as he acknowledges the praise, his words entirely flat now. There's no gratitude or pride in his voice at the rare compliment, and if Tony didn't know better, he would think Tim didn't care at all. But Tony does know better, and he can see right through to the hurt fueling Tim's studied indifference. Tim moves around Ziva and Tony where they stand in the middle of the aisle. He calmly and deliberately places the plasma remote on Gibbs' desk next to his lamp, then walks back to his own workstation where he slowly sits down at his computer and continues to work in that same achingly methodical way.
"I just got started on the warrant for the video," Tim continues without looking up. "It should be ready within the hour so Ducky can reclassify Commander Mitchell's death."
Gibbs rubs at his mouth and turns back to interrogation, probably to collect the crime scene photos of Commander Mitchell's dead body and to give a few kind words to the kid before they're able to get the warrant that will officially let them dismiss Jared Mitchell as a suspect in the death of his brother. Hopefully, the Navy will cut him a break on the whole tampering with evidence thing, and the kid can leave with a clean record.
Meanwhile, Tony exchanges a look with Ziva. They make a game plan without words. She quietly follows Gibbs into interrogation, knowing as well as Tony does that her recent irritation with McGee will make Tim completely unreachable to her. Even when Tony and McGee are left alone together in the team's cubicle, though, Tim remains stiff, his posture making him untouchable even to Tony.
Tony doesn't say a word, just walks over to his workstation and grabs the Nutter Butter he'd been saving for a bad day from his middle drawer. He gently places it on the corner of Tim's desk, not waiting to see if Tim so much as acknowledges it, instead, turning right back around to get started on the case's closing paperwork at his own computer. Tony very carefully keeps his eyes on his own screen. He doesn't even look over when he hears the loud crunch Tim makes as he bites into his candy bar, but Tony smiles at the sound, grateful for the slight connection between them, and for the hope that this will all blow over.
