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.

The team went out to Tanner and Salvador's residence to search for the last key piece of evidence that would link either of them to the shooting of Zimmerman. It was well before dawn, they were tired, on edge, and yearning for that last piece. However, they also knew that in the several hours since their speaking to them, they could have destroyed any evidence.

Gibbs's cellphone vibrated. He knew it who it was when he touched the green button, "Yes, boss?"

"Do you mind telling me why I had to wake up a Federal judge in the middle of the night to have him sign search warrants?" Shepard growled into her phone while rubbing her tired eyes, "Is this about the Zimmerman shooting?"

"Yes. It is" Gibbs replied.

Shepard paused for a moment, "Gibbs, are you searching a house right now?"

Gibbs flicked his eyes towards Ziva who was rooting through the sofa cushions with gloves on and holding her breath, "No" he replied. Technically he wasn't lying because he wasn't searching, Ziva was. Semantics. Smirking her half pursed lips, Shepard said, "Well, when you DO search the houses, make sure you pin the warrants to the door. I'm sending you the papers via a runner."

"Thank you, Jenny" Gibbs said before ending the call.

Ziva was growling, upset. The place was horrible, a real bachelor's pad, and there were things found under the furniture that appeared to have a mind of their own. At the same time, Tony and McGee were searching Tanner's home. It was clean and orderly, but there was a stench of lingering mint in the air that he used to perfume the air. The searches took two hours. The runners arrived with the search warrants, but it didn't appear to be necessary as they were unable to find any of the evidence. They must have destroyed them.

"You think we'll get in trouble if we searched the homes before we got the warrants?" Ziva asked.

"We found nothing," Gibbs said, "So, there's nothing to worry about."

That is to say that whole event is not a total loss. Halfway through their search Abby called Gibbs with some good news, "Hey, Gibbs, I was able to run the bullet recovered from Zimmerman from what you recovered from the magazine. It's broken up, yeah, but I was able to put it together. It's a solid match. The lands and grooves and everything match. Also. I found a partial finger print that matches the shooter's. Also, I found small amounts of blood on the shooter's pants. It's a match for Zimmerman."

"He's our guy" Gibbs almost smirked in delight. "Good work, Abby. Send us the paperwork. We're going to need it."

"Already sitting on your desk" Abby smiled.

Tony called Gibbs as they were leaving Tanner's house, "We got zilch, boss. The computers were empty, no money, no mail, no letters, or anything. The only thing that we did find are a bunch of commendations and awards for Zimmerman that Tanner was stuffing in his cabinet back at his office".

"Okay. Get back to the house and we'll meet you there. Abby confirmed that the pistol is our weapon and Zimmerman's DNA was on the shooter's clothes. We're going to interview Tanner and Salvador until one of them breaks" Gibbs said as they were leaving Salvador's place with Ziva peeling off her gloves and throwing them away and curling back her lips.

"But we don't have any real evidence against them for this" Tony pointed out.

"But they don't know that," Gibbs replied. "We have the money, the gun, the shooter, and they had the most to lose. All we need is to do is poke them and watch what happens."

Inside the morgue Ducky and Palmer were already at work on their autopsy of the shooter. His clothes and possessions have already been removed and sent to Abby. With his scrubs, gloves, and mask on Ducky was carefully walking around the cold body as it lay on the slab naked. Looking at the arms and hands of their new arrival there were dozens of scabbed over or healing injection points and black marks on the skin, "Oh my. How much pain were you in?" Ducky asked. He had a habit of talking to his patients.

"Doctor?" Palmer asked as he looked at the weight scale beside him and noted it down on the clipboard.

"One common way for people treat themselves with mental problems, such as schizophrenia, is for them to use powerful drugs or alcohol to kill the pain," Ducky said as he looked at the wounds up close. Some of them were fresh, less than a day old. "It would appear that he shot our victim and then injected himself with heroin afterwards."

"You don't think that he would have shot the victim after he injected himself?" Palmer asked.

"Well, see, heroin works in many ways, it also clouds the mind. I doubt that our friend here would have been able to coherently approach, shoot a person, and escape without difficulty. By then the 'rush' of the drug would wear off and their heads would be a thick fog that he would be essentially blind and dumb" Ducky said drawing in a breath, letting it out slowly as he continued to look at the still corpse. "No. I feel that he was sober when he shot the victim. If what the other evidence recovered is accurate, I would say as a reward for himself-he spent some of that money on drugs and injected himself afterwards."

"That would explain the portion that was missing" Palmer replied.

Indeed it would. The evidence was there, thick and heavy. Thus far every portion of the team has done their job, now they had to finish it. With Abby's documents on his desk, Gibbs scooped them up and went to the room with the one-way mirror on either side of them. Tanner was placed in one room by himself and Salvador in the other. They were tired and cranky to have been brought out here in the pre-dawn hours, but knew that if they were here then it had to be about the Zimmerman shooting.

Looking at the twitchy Salvador, Tony couldn't help but smile, "Look at him. He looks like he's about to pop without any help." He had him figured for hiring the shooter, but they couldn't figure out how he got $5,000. Abby was able to calculate that Tanner made "cash back" transactions that amounted to $5,000, but they needed that last piece, a confession or a solid proof that either of them hired the gunman.

"Lean on them" Gibbs told his team, "Hard."

Tony smiled and left the room after straightening his tie. "Probie, i'm going to need print outs of waivers."

In a flash the Italian entered the room and slammed the door making Salvador leap up. "Long time, no see!" Tony smiled as he rapidly approached the desk and slammed the palm of his hand against the cold surface. He got Salvador scared. "I bet you're wondering why you're here" before Salvador could answer, McGee entered with the papers. "I'm sure you've seen a lot of cop shows. You know your Miranda Rights?"

The sailor tediously sat down with wide eyes. His fat cheeks were already glistening with sweat. "I-I, uh, yeah" slowly composing himself, "I have the right to remain silent. Anything I say can and will be used against me in the court of law?" tilting his fat head sideways.

"Are you asking me, or telling me?" Tony replied.

"Yeah"

Shaking his head and feeling the veins in his forehead tighten, Tony took the printouts and placed them before Salvador. "In the service we have something similar to Miranda Rights. This is from the UCMJ's Article 31; you have the right against self incrimination, had to be informed of the complaint against them, the right to council, and the right to remain silent."

"But-but...I haven't been accused of anything."

"Oh. Yes you have" Tony replied. "Salvador. We found the shooter. We found the money. We found the gun. We ran the prints. We ran the DNA".

Knowing where he was going, McGee ran out of the room and entered the room where Gibbs was waiting patiently and watching. He gave McGee Abby's DNA testing and ran back into the room and handed it to DiNozzo whom, in turn, placed it before Salvador and both of them watched as his dark eyes turned wide and his skin became pale. "We have everything, Salvador" carefully walking around the table as the scared sailor looked at the report, his eyes were going left to right as if reading it, but nothing was forming in his head and he was jolted awake by the cold hand of Tony who shook his chair.

"You're being accused of hiring a hit-man to kill Petty Officer Robert Zimmerman. Now, before we go any further, I need for you to sign this waiver about your rights,"
sliding the respective papers before him. "You look like the kind of guy that wants to get something off of his chest, and I want to help you do it. But, I can't do it unless you sign this."

To his surprise, Salvador took a pen and signed it. "You understand what you're doing?" McGee questioned.

"I-I do" Salvador nodded.

McGee began saying, "You do understand you can have council here..."

"It was me! Okay? It was me! I hired the guy"

"Whatever" Tony scoffed, "You hired a guy?" His ploy was to draw out as much as he could with little effort. By denying Salvador he was forcing him to come forth with more evidence of his guilt.

"No! It was me" the sailor said looking up, "I-I can prove it. The man was a friend of my neighbors. He was crashing at his house. He was a junkie going through rehab, and he said that he was good with a gun. So, I got five-grand, and paid him to shoot Zimmerman."

"Why?"

"Because-because he went to CID and told them what we were doing. Commander Tanner and all of us. He told them what we were doing there-to him. When Tanner found out, he tried to get Brannan and Amaya to recant. They refused, so he got rid of them. He'd figure they were "too pretty". If anything happened to them, like what we did to Zimmerman, then it would only bring CID or you guys on us immediately. But, Zimmerman..."

"Oh. I see" Tony said taking a few steps closer to his man, leaning forward and placing both hands on the surface of the cold table, "You'd figure that if anything happened to those pretty little officers, it would immediately point back you guys, but if anything happened to that little sailor boy-the nobody, then it wouldn't be noticeable."

"Yeah" nearly breaking down in tears.

"This is sick" Ziva said, her amusement now gone.

"So, you subjected him to terror, huh? You stole his gear, you stole his supplies, you burned them, and then you pushed him down the stairs!" tony was now fuming, stabbing a finger at Salvador, "You tried to destroy him in every way you could."

"He wouldn't break!" Salvador screamed. "We tried everything we could think of, but he just wouldn't break."

"Perhaps that 'nobody' was stronger than you" McGee tacked on.