Chapter Ten
Rule Number 31
The Interviews of the passengers and crew who'd been present in the Riviera Lounge when Dale Hannigan, late of the Hannigan Players traveling troupe of actors, had been murdered are complete. That process took over two hours but the large ballroom is now vacated save for five NCIS Agents. Gibbs considers his resources. Doctors Palmer and Benoit are in the Sick Bay doing as much of an Autopsy as the suite can accommodate, Abby strives to set up a Forensics Lab in whatever space the Captain allotted to her with whatever resources she can improvise and he doesn't care where Reverend McGee is.
"McGee, get on that Web thingy and tell us who these people are."
"Yes, boss."
"Looks pretty clear that Tate did it," DiNozzo says. "Open and shut case, boss?"
"How many have we had?"
"Three, but really two because the last fell apart."
"And the last before that was when Ducky got stabbed in the hand." That one had been the close of one case, the simultaneous opening of another and had been enough years ago.
"I don't think she could've done it," McGee protests.
"She knew exactly when the lights would go out," Tony points out. "She wrote it that way."
"No, she didn't."
x
Gibbs knows that tone. He's heard it too many times and never likes what it leads to. "What are you saying, McGee?"
"She didn't write, well, all of it. Not enough to plan a murder."
"What does that mean?"
"Boss, she came to me yesterday for help. Her script was pretty bad and she needed me to work out some problems. Her version didn't have the lights going off and on, so any plans to use them could only be concocted since yesterday."
Gibbs is about to devastate him but Tony is faster. "McWordsmith, our little Knight in shining typewriter ribbon."
"Tony, that didn't even make sense."
Gibbs' nose nearly touches his. "How much did you write, McGee?"
"Ummm, everything you saw. Except that final insult - you saw how it caught Tate off guard, and especially not that punch. That definitely wasn't put in by either of us."
"Considering Tate went Nova," DiNozzo says, "I'm inclined to agree."
Gibbs looks like he wants to walk out, but this isn't a play he can get a refund for. He does, however, want that script. "Who was the murderer in your version?"
"The character's name was Olga Melentnikov, but I don't know the name of the one who played her. She was supposed to slit Hannigan's throat while Hannigan was at her table and be back in her seat at the round table when the lights came back up. The murder weapon was supposed to be found where Ziva found it, under the table. I didn't think I should change too much of Tate's original plot. Besides, I only had two hours or so to discuss the details with Tate about what she would write after that first scene. Shav was waiting for me at the pool."
"Your wife was waiting for you." This is getting to be too much.
"She'd excused herself because there was no room in the cabin." Then he rallies. "But she's also the one who invoked Rule Number 31."
"Rule Number 31."
"Well, actually about the play. I was discussing the original script with her and the killer was obvious five minutes into the thing - obvious to everyone but the Detective, that is."
"Maybe you should've left it like that," Tony quips.
"You're both right," Gibbs announces. "I want to talk to her first. She a good writer, McGee?"
"I think she has potential. Why?"
"Because Rule Number 31 fits. No one intentionally sets herself up as the only possible suspect when she's two hundred miles and twelve hours from a getaway."
xxx
Lido Starboard 123, Ziva's cabin before her unscheduled move up one deck, across and one section forward to Coral Port 44, is where Meredith Tate is sequestered behind a guarded door, the crewman relieved of all other duties during his shift.
After briefly reviewing what McGee had downloaded and printed about the Players in the Business Office and reading the scripts they'd confiscated when they'd imprisoned the Players, the team enters Tate's rather comfortable cell. She hurries to Tim, but he takes her hands between his and seats her down on the foot of the bed and quietly advises her to answer Gibbs' questions as honestly as she can.
"But I didn't do anything!"
After Ziva had taken many photos, she'd been allowed to shower and to dress in some of the clothes Abby had delivered; fresh underwear, white shorts and blue tee shirt. More will be packed and traded later. Everything she'd worn had been bagged, then rebagged separately and labeled as evidence in Abby's makeshift and woefully stocked 'Crime Lab', an unused office on the Promenade deck.
Her hair, previously put up in an elegant coif, is now back in her loose shoulder stroking style.
She sits on the end of the bed, hands shaking and breath short as she faces the Inquisitor as Tim, Tony, Michelle and Ziva file into spaces by the head of the bed, the men on her right and women to her left. They stand out of sight of the trembling woman.
Meredith, white faced, stares at her Interrogator in mounting terror, as though she expects him to pull a gun and put a bullet through her forehead.
x
Gibbs brings the chair from the bureau before her and sits down. If he wanted her frightened he'd have to admit that part came out excellently; the girl's trembling, wide eyed and panting, her breath chaotic. She holds her hands on her bare legs, fingers interlaced but she can't still her hands. If he said 'BOO' he thinks she might faint.
But while he wants her off balance and nervous, he doesn't want her consumed by terror - yet.
He sits back, his body language emphasizing comfort but the signal is lost on the small woman. Michelle, at 5'5" is the smallest on his team but he'd taken Tate, when he'd restrained her and now when they arrived for this Interview, to be 5'1", smaller even than Samantha Sky.
"You wrote 'Murder on the High Seas'?"
"Y - yes," she whispers, sounding like her mouth is dry. Gibbs signals to the women behind her, Michelle enters the Head and returns a moment later with a glass, which she gives to the trembling woman. "Thank you," she says, her voice having shrunk in just the few moments.
She takes a deep breath, holds it until it must hurt, lets it out slowly and turns to her right, looks over her shoulder at McGee and gradually manages to fight the fear down. "Yes," she says louder, drinks a sip of the water, turns back to Gibbs. "Kind of. Almost. Most of–. That is I kind of wrote it. I wrote most of it." She looks right, back to her collaborator. "Help," she pleads.
"You're doing fine."
"McGee." He says nothing more aloud but his message is explicit. "Tell me about it," Gibbs says, pulls her forward.
"Tell you what?" she whispers, voice stolen.
"Everything. The script. The rewrite. The play."
x
Barely audible but louder with each sip until her voice is almost normal, she takes them through the original idea, confesses her appeal to McGee, explains their collaboration on the story and his advice, the work they had done and how when McGee had gone she'd locked the door and spent the rest of the day rewriting everything and distributed the revised script just before going to bed.
As she tells the tale her fear gradually diminishes, or she gains control over it. It's too soon to determine this with an actress. Perhaps she recognizes these five people, four rather who are vouched for by Tim, aren't here to hurt her. At any rate, by the time the story ends she can speak normally. She still keeps her hands clenched about the glass on her lap, but seems to have focused her control on the tightness of her grip. The water quivers, betraying her still shaking hands.
"Everything was redone?"
"Practically."
"Who was the victim the first time?"
"I didn't change that. It was always to be the Duchess Von Bombast; Hannigan."
"You hated her."
"Y– No. Yes. But I didn't kill her."
"Why did you hate her?"
"No. I- I- I–." Her voice locks behind her open mouth.
x
"Tell me about what happened when you came aboard." It's a gamble. He'd heard there was an undefined incident with the troupe from some of the diners and, knowing Hannigan's personality, he's certain she'd been at the center of it.
"We weren't on board five minutes when she started in on me, humiliating me so loudly the entire deck could hear it."
"Over what?"
"We'd sent on ahead the poster boards I'm sure you saw?" Gibbs nods, "The Playbills and headshots of each of us. The Cruise Director put, along with Hannigan as the owner, my picture on the sign in the main lobby. She figured since I was the Author my picture belonged up there in the main room where everyone came in. It did. But I didn't have ten seconds to be flattered - my face on a billboard right where people boarded - when she started in on it. You'd think it was - well anyway she made them take my picture down. Charlie Maxwell's picture was put up instead."
"Nice woman."
"I worked hard on that script. I deserved a few seconds out of it."
"Must've made you pretty mad."
"It made me humiliated! Again! She always goes out of her way to humiliate me! Everyone coming aboard could see. She was making me like shit in front of dozens of passengers and officers; a Commander, a Lieutenant and the Cruise Director. It was all I could do not to break down crying then and there. Oh, she'd've had an orgasm over that."
x
"So what happened?"
She takes another sip, manages to steady her voice. "This morning Julie McCoy, the Cruise Director - have you met Julie?" He nods. "She's so sweet. She'd retrieved my picture and she had the ship's Photographer print fifty copies. She dropped them off this morning at my cabin upstairs and said I should use them to look for another job."
That hadn't been what he was leading to, he wanted the rest of that incident. Does it follow a pattern that's motive for murder? He'll come back to it.
"Are you going to? Now that there's no more group?" There is no Hannigan in the Hannigan Players anymore, so he expects seven actors - excluding the one who's going to jail - will need headshots.
Tate looks at him with the best blank face he's seen in a while and he wonders how much of it is artifice and how much is that this is the first time she's realizing that she's out of work. "I don't know."
"Something to think about."
"Yes. Presuming I'm not going to prison."
"That's something to think about too."
x
"How did you get involved with the Hannigan Players."
"Why?"
"Seems to me it was a rough life. You could've had an easier time with someone else. At least you'd have some respect."
"Oh, the others are fine. Most of them, I mean. You know, I auditioned with them because they were small. They'd just lost a member and I was just out of College."
"Acting School?"
"No, that was my Minor. I Majored in Business Management; I have a Master's Degree. I figured I could use my Acting to get in the door, then when I was in I'd use what I knew to do more and more of the Business side. I wanted a Career in Theatrical Management, figured I could work my way in, then up. Fat Chance."
"What happened?"
"As soon as she found out I was interested in the Business side - like an idiot I went to her before I fully knew what she was - I'd suggested some Management ideas, ways to help the business, you know? She started treating me as the lowest dunce in a class of morons. Nothing I said, nothing I did or could do was good. Not only did she shoot down everything I did or said, she sabotaged the things I did manage to do."
"Anyone else in the group know about your Degree?"
"Of course. She loved to belittle me about it in front of everyone. Her favorite line was that I earned my Degree in managing a Brothel."
"'I am not a Madam'," Tim says.
She turns to him, fear forgotten but long building outrage hitting a peak. "You know, a story she spread around came back around to me through a friend - 'Off-Broadway' isn't isolated, we have friends we Network with - that she 'rescued' me out of a whore house and gave me a job where my legs would be closed at least once in a while, but she couldn't break me of loving that life so much."
"Nice lady," Gibbs says, pulling her forward. If anyone tried that with someone he cared about...
"'Lady' and 'Hannigan' are never used in the same sentence."
"Why did you put up with it?" DiNozzo really wants this answer.
She turns back. "Because two parts of that lie are true. I love the Theater life - and she was not going to break me."
x
"All right." Gibbs says, pulling her forward once again. "Let's start with who's who." 'And with calmer things.' "How long have you been with them?"
"Since last August. A little more than two more weeks make a year. The tenth."
He and his team have already studied everything available on the group, but there wasn't a significant amount about the Players themselves. Most of their press was on their plays, most of that having been compiled from Bing and Google and printed out in the Business Office. The Players' website goes into everyone a bit deeper, accomplishments and so forth, but he finds it significant that she says she's been with the Troupe for a year and the site doesn't even mention her.
He hates the fact that they can't access the kind of information they would from DC, but Judges with jurisdiction are thousands of miles distant.
Still, he'll have his people work their magic later. For now they'll see how closely reality matches hype. "Tell me who the others are."
"Yes, sir." Again another drink. She visibly forces her shoulders down. "Pete Finch was the Maître d'. He loves to do the stuffy roles, the British Gentleman's Gentleman sort of thing." Gibbs recalls Abby and Michelle had each compared the white haired man to Alan Napier, 'Alfred Pennyworth' from the 60's Batman series, though not as tall. It's one of the few references he got; Kelly had doted on reruns of that show.
x
"Charlie Maxwell was the Detective. I don't know a lot about writing a detective so I took everything Tim said and used it." She tries to cast a grateful smile back to him but it falls under the weight of suspicion of murder.
"At the head of the table, consider it closest to where the Captain was sitting because all the action was at the foot so he'd be facing them, was Mike Simmons. He didn't have a lot to do tonight because he was furthest away, but I was going to switch him and Harry up in the Wednesday performance."
Simmons is closer to Tate's age, they're the two youngest in the group and Finch the oldest.
"Anyway, to his left was Erika King. To her left was Judy Paulsen. Now she was supposed to be the actual murderess. Her character was Olga Melentnikov and this was a political hit against the Duchess Von Bombast."
"I loved that one, by the way," Tony says from behind, obliging her to look back over her right shoulder to him. "You had her down. She didn't even have to act."
"No, she didn't," is all Tate says before turning back to Gibbs.
x
Tony had been hoping for a 'she was a bitch, I'm glad she's dead', but there's time. Hardly anyone implicates herself in the first hour, but the night is young - or would be if it weren't 2307, nearly four hours since the murder.
"Harry McCabe was at the foot of the table and I was next to him. I was supposed to be the suspect because I confronted her."
"Bet that felt really good," Tony cuts in again, intent upon distracting her. It's a tried method, have her answer questions from behind and ahead to keep her off balance. They don't often get to do it in Interrogation, but here they'll make the best of it.
She looks back. "You have no idea."
"Tell me," he invites. 'I welcome all the self-incrimination I can get.'
"She deserved a thousand times more than I could say in a few lines. There's no way I could give her what she deserved in one script. Tim told you about the trunks I always have to deal with? That's the tip of the iceberg in what that bi–!" She looks more closely at the two Agents' faces, turns about to see the other two, then looks back to Tony. "I don't think I want to say any more."
"Might be a good idea," Gibbs grants, pulling her attention up front. "But that's only seven. Who was between you and Simmons?"
"Ann Stern. I wanted her to sit where Erika was."
To those trained to read expressions, body language and voices, Tate might as well have launched a rocket.
"Tell me about her."
Eyes, position, the rocket's still climbing. Tate's hesitation is brief, but compared to how she spoke of the others it's very telling. "She's one of the Players, Hannigan's protégé, thinks she's in charge."
Tate's voice says far more than her words do, but Gibbs knows he must temper his perception with the sustained awareness that this woman is an actress. She's trained, and paid, to project what she wants to project. Time to put perceptions into words that can't be hidden behind.
"You don't like her."
She takes another sip of the water. "Far as I'm concerned, she's a mini-Hannigan, or wanna-be. She sabotages all my efforts as much as Hannigan does, throws her weight around with the others like she's in charge whenever Hannigan leaves the room. But she gets her way since Hannigan rubber stamps everything she does. I've always suspected the trunks were her idea."
"What's in those trunks?" A very effective technique he doesn't often use, so this is good practice, is distraction in subject; to not let a subject grow comfortable on any path without unexpectedly changing course.
"Every prop, every stitch of clothing, everything we need to go on and I have to take care of it."
"Big burden."
"Everything that bitch did to me was a big burd–"
She shuts herself up, then looks back to McGee, her only... whatever... in the room. "You know," she returns to Gibbs, "I don't think I want to say any more until I talk to a lawyer."
x
Gibbs stands up, leads the others to the door at the left bulkhead. "I'm innocent." No one answers her. Gibbs knocks on the cabin door. She sets the glass down on the deck. "I can prove it." The door unlocks, he opens it and she virtually leaps next to him. "Don't you want to know how?"
"Law's specific and clear," he tells her. "You asked for a Lawyer; we can't ask you anything more or even talk to you until you have one."
"We're in the water outside Mexico!"
"Doesn't matter. You asked for one."
"Suppose I take it back!"
He presses the door, the Seaman closes and relocks it. "Palmer?"
Michelle comes up to them. "You can withdraw your request for a Lawyer. You can even waive your right to one and speak freely. But as a Lawyer I advise you to be very careful. As Ziva told you, anything you say can and will be used against you in Court. We're not going to gang up on you or railroad you, but whatever you say we're free to use."
"You're a Lawyer, you say?"
"Yes, which is why I advise you to get a good one who'll look after your interests."
"Would you represent me?"
x
It's too frequent a thing, Michelle will admit only to herself, when something in this life they lead leaves her at a loss for words. NCIS is a demanding and occasionally cruel life, but nothing she's encountered lately has left her as stupefied as these four words and the utter naiveté that prompted them.
She's a Lawyer and could legally work the other side, the Defense side, but she's not a Lawyer who's a Federal Agent, she's a Federal Agent who's a Lawyer.
"No. I can't. I can advise you on how to access a Lawyer, even way out here, but that's the limit."
She turns to McGee, looks up the distance into his eyes - even the Lawyer's taller than she is and among three towering people she's really feeling it. "Tim, you helped me-"
"I helped you with a script, and I was happy to do it. You were getting the short end of a thorny stick. But as to this–"
"Can I choose which questions I answer?"
"Absolutely," Michelle tells her.
"That's the famous Fifth Amendment," Tim says. "You don't have to answer anything you feel will hurt or will self-incriminate you."
She turns back and up to Gibbs. "Then I want to cooperate."