Chapter 11

Ellie Bishop had been tracking the movements of Tazeem Hamdani ever since they'd made the connection between him and the murders. He'd been in the country when all three of the initial murders had taken place. Then, shortly after the third marine was killed, he'd moved to Canada, where he'd resided ever since. Now, he'd come back to the US three weeks ago, purportedly in Norfolk, and while he was there, another murder, with the exact same M.O., had materialized. It was a very striking coincidence. Too striking to be coincidence, perhaps.

Gibbs didn't believe in coincidences, a fact Ellie Bishop had learned very early on. Everything was connected, everything had a reason for being. Tazeem had motive. He'd had opportunity, in all four murders. All they needed was a murder weapon, or a confession, or preferably both. They needed to bring Tazeem in for questioning. They needed to grill him, they needed to get a confession out of him, and they needed to nail him to the wall.

That was the thought process on Bishop's mind when Gibbs returned to the bullpen and yelled "Grab your gear, Bishop, we're goin' to Norfolk."

Tazeem was supposedly staying with friends for a few days, so the customs official had noted. The bolo had come up empty, but inquiries and monitoring cell phone calls had led them to an upscale home in the Highland Park area. As they pulled into the driveway, they saw a face in the window, drawing the curtain aside. There was conversation with someone else in the room, then the face disappeared.

Gibbs and Bishop approached the front door and knocked. A middle-aged woman opened to them. They flashed their badges and introduced themselves. Almost immediately, they heard a door slam.

They bolted around to the back of the house, and caught a faint glimpse of a red bomber jacket flying over a neighbour's fence. Bishop continued the pursuit on foot, while Gibbs ran back to the car and rushed around the corner, cutting off Tazeem as he tried to scamper down the back alley one street over. He turned around to flee in the opposite direction, coming face to face with the barrel of Ellie's gun. He stopped dead in his tracks, and Bishop yelled, "Federal Agents! Tazeem Hamdani, on the ground, now!" He dropped to his knees, and she quickly jumped behind him and slapped on the handcuffs. Gibbs looked on proudly.

"Good work, Bishop!" he praised.

"I've done nothing wrong!" Tazeem protested.

"Then why'd you run?" Gibbs asked.

"Because of what your government did to Maher Arar. I'm a Canadian Citizen. I have rights!" he screamed.

Gibbs looked bemused. "We just wanna talk to ya, Ta-zeem" he drawled coolly.

"Then why am I in handcuffs?" Tazeem protested.

"Well, that'd be the running away part," Gibbs was enjoying this immensely. It never ceased to amaze him when suspects fled and then expressed genuine surprise at being taken into custody. "When ya run, it naturally tells us you're guilty of something. If ya weren't, ya wouldn't need to run, would ya?"

Tazeem's face was wild with fury. But Gibbs also detected genuine fear there. "You zero in on people with coloured skin. You do not accord basic human rights to anyone who was not born in your country. I want to speak to someone from my embassy. Tell my friends where you are taking me," he insisted.

"We just wanna talk to ya," Gibbs repeated. "We coulda had a conversation in your friends' living room, but now it's gonna have to be down at the Navy Yard." They led him back to the vehicle and pushed him into the back seat, leaving the handcuffs in place. His three friends stood on the front lawn watching as they drove away, mouths agape.

Tazeem protested his innocence of any wrong-doing all the way back to NCIS Headquarters.

"I would've believed you, if you hadn't taken off the moment we arrived at the door. You answer all our questions, and we might consider not laying charges."

Bishop led him to Interrogation, and Gibbs decided to let him sit and stew for a good long while. He headed out for coffee, then decided it was about time he checked in with Abby once again.


Abby was pleased to see Gibbs. "Science conquers all, Gibbs," she asserted proudly.

"Got something for me, Abs?" Gibbs asked, peering over her shoulder at the computer screen. She had brought up an image of the knife Tim and Ellie had brought back from the Hartmann residence.

"There were several different blood stains on Lt. Colonel Hartmann's knife… BUT, I didn't find any traces of HIS blood on it. And I've ruled it out in the other three murders too."

"How?" Gibbs asked. "I thought you couldn't get any DNA off that old evidence?"

"Correct, El Jeffe. But the one thing we do know is that our victims were human." She hit a key on her keyboard, and the image of a deer filled the screen. "This is Hartmann's victim." She scowled. "A poor little innocent deer. How can anybody kill such a beautiful creature, for sport? It's inhumane!"

Gibbs chuckled.

"It's not funny, Gibbs!"

"All right, Abs. Thank you." He kissed her cheek, and turned back towards the elevator.

"Did I say you could leave, Gibbs?" she asked petulantly. One corner of his mouth turned up in mild amusement. Only Abby could get away with speaking to him in this way, but he found it rather adorable. He returned to her side, and with a few strokes of her keyboard, the large plasma screen behind the computer filled with images of the four bodies, revealing the Chi-Rho symbols in each case. They moved in front of it.

"You see these symbols that were carved into the bodies?" she pointed at the photos. Gibbs nodded. "Well, I was able to generate a 3D image of the wounds in the cold case by analyzing the old autopsy photos. They all have a distinct pattern and depth to them. The P symbol was made first, then the X was superimposed afterwards - the wound is less deep in the X than the P. But the last one…" she blew up the photo of Hartmann's body, "… was made differently. The X in this case was drawn first, followed by the P. And look - the loop of the P in the first three was made as a triangle, where the last one is more rounded." Gibbs peered at the four photos, and saw what Abby was getting at.

"Gibbs, I'd bet money that whoever killed those first three men, isn't the same person that killed Hartmann. You've got a copycat on your hands."

"Thanks Abs!" Gibbs kissed her cheek. She smiled sweetly.

As he left her lab, Abby struck a fist up in the air triumphantly. "YES! You can't defeat me, cold case. I will solve this mystery. SCIENCE will solve this mystery!"

Gibbs, on the other hand, was not as happy to receive this new information. If Tazeem could not be tied to all four murders, they wouldn't be able to wrap this case up just yet. And they were running out of leads. On his way up to Interrogation, he decided to keep the copycat theory under wraps. If Tazeem was their cold case killer, he might trip himself up and admit that, in the process of denying killing Hartmann, or vice versa.


Tazeem Hamdani sat still as a stone in his chair in Interrogation. His hands were folded in front of him; his eyes closed, as if in prayer. Not a muscle twitched. Tony stood on the other side of the glass with Bishop, trying to get a read on the guy. Usually his instincts were almost as good as Gibbs', but he wasn't getting anything from this one. And that bothered him. All the evidence pointed to Tazeem as the killer. But it was all circumstantial. Without a confession, or some new piece of information they could extract from him that might lead to more concrete evidence in the case, he wasn't sure they'd be able to make anything stick to this guy. If he got back across the border into Canada, it would be extremely difficult to get him back. The Canadians didn't like extraditing people, especially if they were up on murder charges. They didn't like the way the Americans handled these cases.

Why had the guy bolted as soon as Gibbs and Bishop had introduced themselves? Why was he comparing himself with Maher Arar? Was he involved in terrorist activities they knew nothing about? Or was he just unnecessarily afraid of any law enforcement officials? They would have to be careful with this guy, Tony realized - he was obviously the type who might try to create an international incident, merely by the fact of having been handcuffed. It stood to reason that if he hadn't run, they could have had a perfectly normal conversation, in his friends' living room, instead of sitting at a table in a 10 x 15 room with a camera trained on him. Some people just didn't think logically.

The door opened, and Gibbs stepped into the room, shutting it quietly behind him. He put a bottle of water in front of Tazeem, then took off his jacket, carefully hanging it on the back of the chair. He placed a file on the table and sat down across from him. He opened the file and began to read silently. Tony smiled, recognizing the approach. Gibbs was a master; not that DiNozzo himself didn't have a few tricks up his sleeve, but he'd seen Gibbs reduce a suspect to a puddle of piss using this very technique. Tazeem blinked. Gibbs kept his head down, slowly lifting each page of the file and turning it over as he read. Tazeem was straining to see what was on the pages, but couldn't quite make them out, Tony realized.

It was psychological warfare at its finest. "Watch and learn, Bishop," he said.

Tazeem cleared his throat. Still Gibbs did not look up. Seconds turned to minutes. Tazeem's upper lip began to quiver; Tony couldn't tell whether it was out of fear, or fury. He cleared his throat again.

Gibbs looked up and nodded towards the unopened bottle of water. "Take a drink." Tazeem did so.

The suspect looked confused. "Why am I here, Agent Gibbs?"

Gibbs cocked his head. "I think I already explained that one to you, Ta-zeem. You got a short attention span or something?"

"I know my rights. I want legal representation."

Gibbs tossed his head back and smiled. "Never said you were under arrest. Whaddya need a lawyer for?" He went back to his papers.

There was another long silence. Then…

"If you are not going to ask me any questions, then I say again… why am I here?"

"Oh, I've got plenty of questions, Ta-zeem." Gibbs slowly and carefully placed three photos down in front of him - the bodies of the three marines from the cold case. "Any of these look familiar?"

Tazeem glanced at the photos, and recoiled in horror, pushing them away from him. "No! What is this?"

Gibbs leaned forward and spoke softly but deliberately. "These are the men who killed your parents. And your little sister. That help refresh your memory? Don't tell me you didn't want revenge after that?"


Just then, Leon Vance stepped into Observation and positioned himself between Ellie and Tony, watching the proceedings. His face was full of concern, and he was chewing a toothpick - a habit he'd gotten away from over the last few years. Tony gave him a sidelong glance. "Not sure how to read this guy, Director."

"We need to tread carefully here, Agent DiNozzo. I've already had a call from the Canadian Ambassador. It seems Mr. Hamdani has friends in high places. He's a public servant with the Canadian Federal Government. Gibbs had better have concrete evidence of his involvement in this case, otherwise we're going to have to let him go."

"He took off as soon as he saw our badges, Director. He must be hiding something," Ellie reasoned.

Vance didn't respond. He pulled out his toothpick and tossed it in the trash can in the corner.


"You play golf, Ta-zeem?" Gibbs leaned back in his chair, and flipped through the file to retrieve the most recent crime scene photo.

"Yes. What does that have to do with anything?" Tazeem responded defensively.

"In fact, you played Cypress Point just the other day, didn't ya?" Gibbs asked. He placed the photo of Hartmann's body in front of Tazeem, next to the other three. "How'd you get in? One of your buddies invite ya? Nice secluded spot to hide a body. That 14th hole's a killer." He looked up at Tazeem and smiled. "Four down, one to go, right?"

Tazeem sucked in air. "I'm not saying another word. I know nothing about any of this. I want a lawyer. NOW. I know how this works. You have no idea what happened, so you automatically play the 'racially motivated crime' game. Blame the Iraqi, a jury will buy that." He licked his lips and folded his arms across his chest. "I should have known better than to come back here."

"All right, let's take a different approach. Where were you between 19:00 Wednesday evening and 08:00 Thursday morning?"

Tazeem raised his chin defiantly. "I told you. No more questions until I have a lawyer present."

Gibbs gathered up the photos and closed up the file. He stood, grabbing the bottle of water from in front of Tazeem. "Have it your way. You wanna spend the night in a cell, that's up to you."

Vance banged on the glass. Gibbs glanced in that direction and scowled. He pulled out his cell phone and tossed it at Tazeem. "Call your lawyer," he huffed. Vance noticed him heading for the door, and headed out to meet him in the hallway, followed by Tony and Bishop.

"Gibbs! A word." Vance knew Gibbs wasn't going to like what he had to say. He didn't like it much himself; but protocol had to be followed when international relations were at stake. "I don't want to be getting an angry phone call from the Canadian Minister of Justice, Gibbs. If you've got something on this guy, you'd better produce it, pronto. I'm being pressured to let him go."

"Leon, this guy should've been a prime suspect in the original murder investigation. The murders stopped when he left the country. He comes back… we get another body. That's one hell of a coincidence, and I don't believe in them, as you know. I got a fresh DNA sample." He held up the water bottle, a cheeky grin on his face. "Now we've got something for Abby to test against."

Vance chuckled and nodded approvingly. "You've got twelve hours. I can't hold off the dogs any longer than that."