Chapter Eleven
Forget Your Investigation
Leroy Jethro Gibbs stalks into the Forensics Lab at 0609, large coffee container in one hand and a larger 'Caf-Pow!' cup in the other. His alarm had gone off as usual at 0500 and his cell phone had yelled for him at 0500.25; it had been Abby with a liquid breakfast request and a more urgent request for him to hit Warp 9 in getting to the Navy Yard. "What've you got, Abs?"
He'd hit warp 10 but she gives him her characteristic 33.3 record on a 45 turntable. "A double earache, an over-curious roommate, a freaked-out new friend, I hope – not that she's freaked out but that she's a new friend; an invitation to a Members-only club and an exact, beautiful and precise match on a sample of AB Negative blood I've spent the entire morning matching. It's Carol Gerber's. And guess where I found it!"
"Abby."
Her shoulders slump heavily. "There really isn't any foreplay with you." She snatches the white and red container from him and takes a mighty draught. "Oh, I needed that."
"Where'd you find the blood?"
"In the ladies' room at Shangra-La. You know, they really ought to learn to spell."
This morning's going too fast. "What were you doing in the ladies' room?" He immediately regrets the question and doesn't appreciate Abby's smirk. "Why were you at Shangra-La?"
"I wanted to see the Crime Scene, and you're darn lucky I did. I'm thinking about doing a paper on optical cognition of dried blood in a red-shifted environment. Don't ask. But while everyone in Metro and NCIS was looking at the dance floor, the office and the blood on Ensign Cabrera's hands, none of you guys looked in the ladies' room. I found this," she holds up the stained and tested, bright red swab before he can protest, "dripped onto the side of the sink when Carol Gerber's killer washed her hands."
x
"There were a lot of people in the dance floor," he protests, never being one to take any evidence at first glance - it must prove it's evidence. "Could this be from someone who touched the body and then went running to the bathroom?"
"No, Gibbs, the mark was too big, and once Sammy and I knew what to–"
"Stop. You took Samantha Sky to a Crime Scene?"
"It's not her first one. In fact, counting the Hampton Arms, she's been to over a dozen since she became Ducky's Assistant."
"Temporary assistant."
"Give it time, Gibbs."
x
He doesn't want to pursue it; the young woman does know Forensic protocol, and besides, Abby was there to supervise. "Okay, what did you find?"
"Two other blood droplets on the somewhat disgustingly dirty bathroom floor, whereby I was able to determine our perpess–"
"Perpess?"
"Don't interrupt, I'm on a roll."
If anyone else in NCIS had dared to say that... "Okay."
"Anyhow, our perpett," she catches his look, though he says nothing. "It pays to broaden your vocabulary."
"Been hanging around DiNozzo too long."
"Tony is–"
"What did you find?"
"I found our perpeta was moving about four miles an hour – that's a fast walk – while dripping blood. They maybe mopped up outside but the ladies room hasn't seen a mop since the linoleum was laid and you couldn't pay me to go into the men's room; but the blood on the floor was Gerber's, as was that on the side of the sink."
"What about the perper?"
"You're not convinced it's a woman."
"Ladies room is closer."
"Good point. Okay, the perpetter washed hir hands and still high-tailed it before anyone had the wherewithal to shut the doors to the club."
He ignores the misused term, knowing she'd used it intentionally. "Guy at the door said the first bunch stampeded out before he knew anything was wrong, then it trickled down to a couple at a time, any one of which could've been our perp."
"Or perpess."
xxx
While there's no conclusive proof that the murderer of Carol Gerber was female, it does provide an interesting new direction for the case, perhaps the very one needed. The suspect list still includes Trieste but there are a whole lot of other possibilities.
The investigation of those possibilities takes Gibbs and his team the majority of the day - there are simply too many subjects to track when just consideration of Gerber's Identity Theft victims brings the number of subjects with motive to over 500. A five way split on those names alone left each agent with a Herculean task.
It's made infinitely harder, however, at 1400.
x
"BOSS!" McGee exclaims, but when Gibbs glances up from the paper before him he sees that his whole team is disconcerted, and in the same moment he sees that the several computer monitors on his own desk are black. McGee pushes his chair aside and crawls under his desk. Rising, Gibbs sees over the partition behind him that other teams throughout the huge Operations Division are similarly encumbered. Their own computer specialists are checking systems while the others wait impatiently for answers.
"Computers are on," McGee reports, projecting his voice to the other teams as well. "Drives are active but no output."
"Virus?" SA Ann Rogers speculates from the far end of the room, turning to the sound of McGee's voice. Though she can't see him she's ready to coordinate repair operations.
McGee comes up from behind his desk holding a laptop he's extracted from a drawer. He turns it on and fishes out some wires, using them to connect the small computer with the big one. "Running diagnostic," he says a few seconds later.
"I can save you the trouble, Agent McGee," Director Jennifer Shepherd announces as she makes the turn off the MTAC platform stairs, descending the last steps to the Operations level. All eyes track to her and the two dark suited men that follow her.
"Don't look now, folks," DiNozzo announces, "but the I's of F-B-exas are upon us."
"That'll be all, Agent DiNozzo," Shepherd warns, leading FBI Agents Rick Sachs and Thomas Malvasta into Operations. Sachs is too familiar to be remarkable; Malvasta is a tough looking man of 35 whose belligerent though unforgiving eyes say he's spent too much time Undercover on some Mafia Task Force. "Effective immediately," Shepherd announces, sounding more like she'd rather volunteer for an unnecessary root canal, "by order of the Department of Justice, all NCIS operations are suspended."
x
Gibbs is out of his seat immediately, ready to go toe-to-toe with the men but before he can reach them DiNozzo, in an effort to moderate the tension stuffing the room, addresses the black man. "Agent Sachs, my last and rearmost F.B.I-nemy."
"Now DiNozzo, not still nursing a grudge over a little jail time, are you?" It's been some time since Chip Sterling had tried to frame him for a sadistic murder, but neither man has forgotten the flavor of their first encounter.
"What are you doing here, Sachs?" Gibbs demands, virtually nose to nose with the dark agent. "We're in the middle of an investigation."
"Forget your investigation," Sachs tells him. "The Bureau is seizing all your records during our investigation into which of you took out Thomas Trovillot."
Gibbs' tone drops to a deadly monotone, one his team knows on hearing that it's a good idea to back away from. "What the hell are you talking about?"
Sachs, however, has no such self-preservation sense. "Someone shot Thomas Trovillot in front of his house, right in the middle of a live Press Con–"
"I know someone shot him!" Gibbs abandons the deadly monotone to release the fire searing him. "I saw the tape."
"Well, considering NCIS' investigation into all your female agents being photo-manipulated on the web with a couple hundred nude shots - and then your case going south when your Chief Suspect – who pretty much confessed, by the way – walked off on a free pass and then someone sniped him on live T.V., where were you yesterday at noon?"
"That's enough!" Shepherd cuts in viciously. She may not be able to operate effectively against this onslaught of officious pissing - yet - but she'll be damned if she'll let these men, and the 23 others invading her headquarters, insult her people. "You may have a 'job' to do," her tone says very clearly her opinion of that job, "but you will keep this on a professional level." 'Until I can muster enough backing from the Hill to throw you out on your ass.'
x
"All right," Sachs complies. "Director, we require that all your agents be sequestered during our Investigation. Have you facilities large enough?"
"The garage," she says tightly.
Sachs turns to his partner. "Escort these men and women to the garage." He doesn't believe anyone will be stupid enough to try to leave from there.
None of the agents move; those who stand and watch the drama sit down at their stations. Sachs turns to Shepherd. "With your permission, Director."
She waits a measured ten seconds before saying generally "Shut down your operations and follow this ... gentleman."
xx
The garage is normally considered spacious, taking up a percentage of the building's footprint not devoted to Abby's labs, though it must share said space with the Evidence Holding cage; so when 21 Field Agents and a greater number of Headquarters staff are sequestered in the vehicle and evidence filled chamber by over a dozen FBI agents, space quickly becomes tight.
Certainly no one is permitted to expand the crowd into the Evidence Cage, a black suited FBI agent being positioned to enforce that restriction, so the Field Agents generally congregate in one sector and the other Headquarters staff gravitate by respective specialty into their respective zones.
Not even Ducky and Jimmy are excluded from the crowd. Pulled from Autopsy, the Examiners are not considered suspects in the precision shooting but are supposedly contained here to prevent any possible tampering with records.
Two anonymous black suited men guard the elevator; though with the requirement that an Agent submit first to a recorded Iris scan, their presence is so superfluous that everyone ignores them.
Expressions range from closed and masked to fiery, with frustrated rage most keenly expressed in the person of Abby Sciuto. Normally the most ebullient person in the building, she's capable of equally spectacular displays of outrage and now she withholds nothing. She hangs close to Gibbs, never moving far from where he stands, as though he were cool water to her fire.
It would be more effective if he too were not also burning with frustration. The FBI is making some grandstand play and interfering with too many man-hours of work.
The only person notably absent is Director Jennifer Shepherd. She's presently 'conferring' with Special Agent Rick Sachs in her fourth floor office.
x
"Abs, what've you got?" Gibbs asks the woman orbiting him like a comet with an erratically trailing fiery tail.
"I have who knows how many High School Science dropouts invading the sanctity of my lab, tinkering with–"
"Abby."
She swallows it down. It has an obviously rancid taste. "I'm sorry, Gibbs, I might have had something by now if I hadn't been invaded, but right this minute I don't have a thing new."
"We all feel the same way, Abs," he assures her, meeting the eyes of many of his colleagues.
"But what's going on? They can't think we did anything to Trovillot. They can't think I did. There's Forensic evidence and I wouldn't leave any."
"I don't know," he tells her, wishing she wouldn't say such things with eyes and ears on them. "FBI's playing a new version of 'turf war', but–" he cuts off as the elevator doors slide open and Rick Sachs leads two crisp black suits into the too-crowded chamber.
x
Gibbs stalks to within an inch of the trench-coated man. "Where's Fornell?" he demands, his glare hot enough to sear the dark agent.
"No, Gibbs, it doesn't work that way this time. We know how it is. You and Fornell get together, talk things over and deals get made that not even J. Edgar could swing and everything goes by the wayside with a simple handshake."
"You've got it wrong."
"Then enlighten me."
"We don't shake hands."
x
"Well, you'd better start shaking something, because this time one of you has stepped in it and it's damned deep."
"Come on, Sachs," DiNozzo admonishes from the knot of agents left behind, "not even you could think one of us shot Trovillot." He stalks up to his adversary, the move seeming a signal for all the teams to crowd about. Ducky and Jimmy take advantage of the mood to get in close as well, Ducky hoping he can interject some reason into the disorder.
Sachs turns, his opinion of the intruders crowding them plain on his face. "I don't know any such thing, DiNozzo. You all have histories that would've gotten you thrown out of the FBI."
"Only if there is a God."
"DiNozzo."
"Sorry, boss."
"Any of you could snap, like that," he illustrates too close to DiNozzo's face.
"You don't still think I'm cutting legs off corpses," DiNozzo challenges. That suspicion was always as unlikely as this blanket assumption that anyone here has something to do with Trovillot.
"A sniper and assassin on one team; a markswoman, who was also a victim, who has aspirations for Olympic Gold heading another team; another woman who came seconds away from blowing her own head off and that's just skimming the surface." He looks to his left, singling Jimmy out by the blue scrubs he and Ducky wear. "Won't be the first time for you."
x
"What do you mean by that?" Jimmy demands, outraged, closing on the dark man. Michelle, beside him, takes his arm in an effort to cool his anger.
"You were unaccounted for when Trovillot got shot."
"'Unaccounted for'? I was home with a virus."
"Convenient."
"No, it wasn't!" Michelle exclaims, the comforting hand on his arm changing to a warning grip.
"As a Deputy ME you can make sure the right information is found. Your wife was one of the faking victims - and you have a history of murdering suspects who threaten your wi–"
The punch is so swift most Agents miss it but Sachs is staggered, driven back to the wall under a brutal rain. In the first instant everyone's shocked, then they rush the pair, everyone talking at once, converging to break up the one-sided battle.
Gibbs is there first. He grabs Jimmy by the collar, yanks the furious man back hard enough to rip most of the blue scrubs top from his shoulders and turns him sharply. "You're under arrest!"
He shoves Jimmy away from Sachs and to DiNozzo. "Cuff him! Read him his rights."
Michelle, appalled, grabs Gibbs' arm. "Special A–"
"Shut up."
"You have the right to remain silent," DiNozzo says, snapping handcuffs on the astounded man's wrists. Jimmy's top hangs from his body, sagging from his bare shoulders. Tony continues the recitation as Sachs, blood flowing from his nose and lip, is blocked by Gibbs.
x
"He's under–"
"He's already busted," Gibbs says levelly.
"He assaulted a Federal Agent–"
"On NCIS property as an NCIS employee. He's our prisoner."
Sachs pulls a handkerchief, swabs at the blood. For a long moment the air burns between the two men, but Sachs blinks first. "You make sure he stays." He stalks out, followed by the two agents who'd come in with him. A step from the door he turns, looks back to the following agents, then to the crowd. "Bring her." He stabs a finger at Supervisory Special Agent Melanie Kelman and the agents go to her, not making the mistake of touching her as they 'guide' her after their boss.
x
When the elevator doors close Gibbs turns on the cuffed man. "Since when do you start thinking with your fists?"
"I'm sorry, I–"
"Special Agent Palmer."
"Yes, sir?" Michelle asks, shaken by the uncharacteristic fury of her husband and the sheer insanity of the situation.
"Take him to Holding and sit on him." He's too angry to second guess himself.
"Sir–" Jimmy tries.
Gibbs fixes him with a deadly glare. "The right to remain silent. Use it."
Michelle tugs Jimmy's arm, uses her other hand to boost the remnant of his blue scrubs top back up his bare chest to his shoulders, a useless effort for it collapses immediately. But when she escorts him out of the throng of agents and toward the guarded elevator, they pass Ducky and his hand comes up fast and hard to the back of his Deputy's head.
x
"You don't think he..." DiNozzo, put in the - for him - strange position of defending the 'Autopsy Gremlin', backs down under Gibbs' stare.
"Mister Palmer cannot have done this," Ducky insists, distracting Gibbs' ire. "He went home with a–"
"I know, Duck, you told me. So did Palmer II."
"Palmer deux?" DiNozzo asks and comes back into Gibbs' sights. "Shutting up, boss."
"Not soon enough."
Seeing the questions in the eyes of the surrounding Agents, recalling that the details of the conclusion of the Wiccan incident months ago hadn't become generally known and seeing no need to remain discreet and allow speculation, Gibbs explains that: "Ever since he shot George Franklin last year trying to protect Michelle Lee, he can't touch a gun without having panic attacks. Trovillot was killed with a precision shot and the one time, two years ago, that Palmer tried out on the range, he got a direct heart shot on the target."
DiNozzo wonders if Gibbs is trying to talk Palmer out of or into handcuffs. "Decided to quit while he was ahead?"
Ken Templeton tells him that "The hit was on my target."
"Oh."
But Tony can tell that, though Templeton's attention seems on the here-and-now, his focus is on his Team Leader and whatever she's enduring in the hands of the FBI. Tony doesn't blame him; for all Fornell's idiosyncrasies that make him so reminiscent of Gibbs, or maybe because of them, he'd be a better lead on this case than Sachs.
xx
"I'm sorry," Jimmy says as he bursts into the Holding Cell, talking into the bare room as Michelle closes and locks the door. Jimmy turns back to his wife, acutely aware of the handcuffs that restrain him and the scrubs top hanging halfway off his bare torso. "I mean he made me so mad I couldn't think. It wasn't just about Franklin - I still have the nightmares and Doctor Gyves hasn't helped me deal with that - but it was that I'm supposed to be the one protecting you. I'm your husband and I couldn't protect you from Trovillot, I couldn't protect you from Mawher, I couldn't protect you from Gebran, I couldn't protect you from Whitney and Klein and Kimmel and Sullivan. I mean I'm your husband - I'm supposed to be there for you. Okay, you're the Special Agent, you're the one with the gun, you're the 'Girl from U.N.C.L.E.' where I'm a nothing–"
She yanks the ripped scrubs hard enough to almost rend the fragments from his body, drags him down to her lips.
She'd intended to confront him about the nightmares and seeing Gyves and this outrageous incident but she's changed her mind. Maybe they won't need Reverend McGee's 'Couple's Counseling' after all, if she can get him talking later,
She'd hope the camera is off if she gave a damn. They can't do anything intimate when others have keys - though she considers it could be a major beneficial distraction and 'therapy' for what ails him - but before she's done her husband is going to know his place in her life and in her heart.
She might even let him out of the handcuffs.
xx
"I don't want Sachs or any of the others to catch him walking around," Gibbs tells Ducky in low tones when they secure a measure of privacy in the crowded garage, "so they stay together in Holding until you need him or I need her."
"Well, with our entire staff on lockdown, that does not seem likely."
"FBI can't shut down NCIS, OSI, CID and CGIS; we're only here until Jenny can get hold of the SECNAV and the other Directors call in their bosses on the Joint Chiefs." He raises his voice to say generally, "In the meantime, enjoy your vacations."
"Because we're going to have twice as much work to do when we get out," SSA Kevin Lamb predicts.
"Right."
x
Gibbs doesn't care if Sachs does follow up on Palmer as his lead suspect. As far as he's concerned, the FBI agent is welcome to that waste-of-time path. Ducky had sent him home, so there's no doubt that the man was actually sick. Further, not only is Jimmy a competent Examiner-in-training but he's also been, for all the years Gibbs has known him, honest to a very annoying fault.
Let Sachs chase his wild goose while NCIS investigates this murder.
x
"Meantime," Gibbs addresses his own team, "there's nothing for the FBI to find to tie any of us to Trovillot, so let's do what we can. McGee, can you link your pocket thingy to your computer?"
"I can try, boss," the computer expert assures him, pulling out his BlackBerry. "I may be locked out of direct access, but they have to keep the Server running and I know a lot of back doors."
"So glad you're on our side," Gibbs says as he pulls out his own cell phone, steps away from the crowd. A few rings in his ear and then a woman's voice comes through the tiny speaker. /Colonel Mann./
"Holly, Jethro. You have any unpleasant visitors today?"
/Funny you should mention that./
"Not a bit. What's your Sit?"
/Stuck on fly paper. The Bi descended on us about half an hour ago with warrants so comprehensive I haven't seen the likes of some of them in years./
"What do you figure's behind it?"
/C.Y.A./
"Yeah, that's what I think. They have no clue who took out Trovillot, this is a knee jerk investigation." More than covering their asses, the F.B.I. is making a grandstand play, perhaps hoping they can find the real killer while their Investigative competitors sit on their hands. "Sit tight, it won't be long. Joint Chiefs will be leaning on Justice."
/Meantime we waste the day./