The dude in the dumpster

Chapter ten.

A/N: In the Netherlands (where I live) we're celebrating Carnaval right now, (only in the part of the country where I live (: ) wich means I have a early holiday :D. I don't have to go to school for the entire week, so the next chapter will probaby be posted this week. BTW thanks a lot (and I really mean a lot) to SheWillBeLoved013 for beta-ing this chapter very fast even though she still has school and stuff. Thank you!

Disclaimer: Disclaimed. (is that a word?)

Wow. This was… different. Usually the observation room was occupied by some of Gibbs' agents, or sometimes, though very rarely, a local cop. The MCRT had a lot of cases, so this interrogation room was used almost solely by them. But not today. No, today the room was crowded with agents and, strangely enough, doctors. Mitchell didn't know that much about solving crimes –after all, he was just a sound tech- but he was certain doctors weren't usually involved in catching bad guys. They did things like… looking at bugs and dirt and boring things or perform surgeries on people, right? Not helping the FBI and definitely not interrogating murder suspects. Well, even though his job consisted of making sure interrogations were being recorded and for the biggest part being invisible, it was never boring.

He looked around once more at the unusual collection of people in front of him. There was Gibbs, McGee, Ziva and Tony, who he knew of course, but also a man with brown hair and similar brown eyes that reminded him of his daughter's.

The woman standing next to him was a doctor, Dr. Temperance Brennan. His ex-wife was a big fan of her books, and he had endured endless ramblings about the cases they included. Mitchell had always told her that it was fiction, pure fiction, but after seeing her here, in the NCIS building he was starting to doubt that.

This might had something to do with the fact that the guy standing next to her was looking exactly like the entomologist described in Dr. Brennan's book –according to his ex-wife. Curly hair and beard, blue eyes and pretty short.

Next to him was a woman, who was kind of hot. 'You signed your divorce two months ago and you're already thinking about dating other women?' A voice inside his head scolded, but he couldn't help it. Actually, hot was kind of condescending, she was beautiful. Just as he was about to take another look at her, he heard someone enter the interrogation room. To his surprise, Gibbs wasn't alone in there. The FBI guy followed him in, and Dr. Brennan also entered the room. Adjusting the volume and putting on the earphones, he turned his attention to the screen.

Gibbs was staring intently at the man who was sitting in the middle of the room, nervously fiddling with his hands. The FBI agent, who had identified himself as Booth while entering the room, was standing in the corner, while Dr. Brennan was sitting on a chair next to Booth.

After letting the guy sweat for a while –that was just Gibbs' interrogation style- he began asking questions.

"Did you kill Petty Officer O'Connell?"

"No!" He reacted a little too fast, and Gibbs had a feeling this interrogation was going to be easy. He was still staring at Smith, who looked more nervous by the minute.

"Why do you think I would kill him? He was my friend! I have no reason to kill him. I mean, maybe because he was stalking Sheila, but he was my friend! He was a good man, and I didn't kill him. I don't even know how to kill a man. I mean, come on, I don't have a gun. And, you searched me when I was brought in. I don't have a knife or something, I don't even like violence." Hearing this statement, Brennan was about to object, when Booth gently squeezed her shoulder, telling her it wasn't the right time for her to cut in.

"Really now? Because your record doesn't say so, big guy. What did ya do? Just hit him in the head, kick him in the ribs, and smash him in the face?" Wow, this guy's technique looks a lot like DiNozzo's. Now that he looked closer, they actually really acted alike.

"No, I told you, I didn't kill him. And as for my charge, I was innocent! My friend did that!" Yeah, right. That was one of the worst excuses he had ever heard, and as a sound tech who listens to interrogations all day, he had heard a lot of them.

Gibbs just kept glaring at the guy, and just as Mitchell began to wonder why Dr. Brennan was even in the room, she spoke up.

"We have found the murder weapon. The thing that killed Petty Officer O'Connell was being pushed into a closet. Your closet."

Booth's turn: "We found blood on it. Not only David O'Connell's blood, but also yours. You see, when you're in a fight, people tend to get hurt. Can you just roll up your sleeve for me?" It sounded like an order, and Mitchell was pretty sure that if an agent that mad tells you to roll up your sleeve, you obey.

The suspect rolled up his sleeves, and on his arms were long scratches, some bandaged but not all of them. They seemed very deep and quite frankly that was what would be expected if you tried to kill a man the size of P.O. O'Connell.

"YOU KILLED HIM!" Gibbs, who had spoken but one sentence in the entire interrogation suddenly shouted. To others, he might have seemed out of control but Mitchell knew that he had this all planned out, and it would work.

"I... It was an accident! I swear I tried to save him, but he just kept bleeding and he died!"

"No. It wasn't. He didn't die immediately, it took him twenty minutes. Twenty minutes of him screaming and begging for help and finally he just fell limp. You let him die. You hid his body in a dumpster, with another man's dog tags around his neck. You didn't call for help. You murdered him, Michael." Tears were now streaming down Smith's cheeks, and he finally gave in.

"That bastard deserved it! He stalked her, he hurt her! He hurt her and for that he deserved to die!" They always say that. He knew half of the time they probably even believed it themselves, but it wasn't the truth. The truth was they all took someone's life, and destroyed even more of them.

"Why don't you start from the beginning?" Booth's voice was a little softer, but he still had a hardened look on his face, and was staring intently at Smith.

"We… We were in a fight. About Sheila. David told me he was going to apologize to Sheila, that they were going to start over again, but I couldn't let him. He wasn't good enough for Sheila; he would only hurt her again." He took a deep breath and continued, the tears still racing down his face. "I love her; she just needed to see that. I was better for her, good for her. He couldn't ruin everything, not now. So, I told him and he attacked me. Said I was crazy. So, I fought back. He fell against the closet, it wasn't on purpose!"

"Why did you put P.O. Evans' dog tags around his neck?" Brennan asked.

"I found them in David's room, he had found them the day before that and was going to return them to him when he had the time to. I guessed you would think he was someone else…" Gibbs had heard enough. He nodded to Booth who handed a piece of paper to Smith.

"Sign this, and you confess to the murder of Petty Officer First Class David O'Connell." Slowly, the man wrote his signature on the paper, and Mitchell turned down the volume and took his headphones off. His work was done.

A/N: Yeah! the case part is over! I think there's going to be two more chapters, but I'm not really sure. It isn't finished yet, of that I am sure. And the beautiful woman Mitchell (who is the sound tech, if you hadn't gotten that part yet) was talking about was Cam, not Angela. Review!