A/N: Thank-you to everyone for their feedback and support of this series. This one is fairly short and sweet. Thanks to RCEpups for her technical advice. Hope you enjoy.

Series: There's Always Tom Morrow

Episode: My Other Left Foot

Title: Technicalities and Other Minor Details

Characters: Leroy Jethro Gibbs, Tom Morrow, Michelle Lee, Joe Landers (OC)

Tom Morrow read the case file again, frowning as he jotted down something additional before directing his attention to the report in front of him again. Finally, after sighing in anticipation of the painful interview to come, he reached for his intercom button.

"Cynthia, can you please ask Special Agent Gibbs to come up here when he's got a minute."

"Yes Director. Oh by the way, you asked me to remind you to call Mrs Morrow at 1400." His personal assistant Cynthia Summers reminded him conscientiously.

"Thanks Cynthia, I'll call her now."

As he was on the phone organising the details of their date tonight for a charity performance of the National Ballet National Ballet for a wounded returned vets, Gibbs wandered into his office and helped himself to a cup of Morrow's coffee after Tom waved him on in. After finishing up promising to get home early enough to change for tonight's black tie function, he ended the call with a casually affectionate endearment for his wife born of so many years of marriage. After more than two decades together, their marriage was rock solid.

As he hung up, Tom acknowledged his agent. "Gibbs, make yourself at home."

Eyeing the case file on the director's desk he frowned. "Problem?"

"You might say that. This latest case - I have a few questions."

Gibbs looked surprised. "Pretty straightforward. What do ya need to know?"

"First off, why didn't you know that Dr Chambers was the mother of Melissa Dorn, your chief suspect? That was sloppy work." Morrow observed bluntly.

Gibbs looked pissed at what he obviously considered interference in his team but visibly swallowed down his ire so he could respond. "Maybe…but in the end, no harm was done. These things happen."

"Pretty sure you wouldn't accept crap excuses like that from your agents, Jethro." The director observed dryly, sipping coffee and picturing how Gibbs would respond, particularly if Tony had dared offer that up as a defence. His imagination conjuring up images of Gibbs' boot knee deep in the luckless agent's nether regions. But then, Gibbs always had been good at the whole 'do as I say, not as I do' shtick.

"You didn't pick it up though. The question is, did you miss it because you were too busy flirting up a storm with the chief suspect?" Seeing the surprised expression, he elaborated. "According to accounts I've heard round the water-cooler; you were drooling all over the delectable Ms Melissa Dorn."

Scowling, the former Marine responded with clipped speech indicative of his temper. "Was trying to keep her busy so Todd could snoop."

"Can't blame me for asking why you dropped the ball, Jethro. After all, she's a redhead. And it was a pretty basic error not to do a comprehensive check on a suspect."

Gibbs was not at all happy that Cate had been gossiping about him and Melissa Dorn. He decided to have a 'little talk' with her later, perhaps while making her do some dumpster diving. He'd so far let her off all the crap probie duties since she bitched so much about only getting them because she had ovaries. That was obviously a mistake!

"That it, Tom?"

Morrow fixed him with an appraising look. "Not exactly, Gibbs. If you didn't have your mind in your pants, perhaps you can explain to me why you and Agent Todd entered the suspect's house to serve a warrant to search for evidence and failed to secure the premise?"

Gibbs looked at him blankly.

Tom scowled at his sudden obtuseness. "What if Agent DiNozzo hadn't come along and noticed you weren't alone in the house? What if the second person hiding upstairs had been dangerous and overpowered you? What if she'd been a murderer? Oh wait…my bad! She was dangerous; she was a damned murderer!"

Gibbs had the grace to look a little chagrined but he still tried to justify his lapse. "Maybe but she was just a little old lady."

"She might be a little old lady but she still killed two fit Marines; strapping, young guys in their twenties Gibbs, so don't try to convince me she was harmless. Let's face it, you aren't twenty anymore and Cate wouldn't have been expecting to be accosted. Especially if Dr Chambers had a syringe loaded with digitalis. Luckily she didn't – but the point is that she could have."

Tom fixed him with a stare he usually reserved for probies, cold and full of contempt. "You're supposed to be protecting the rookie agent's six, not to mention setting an example for her on how to effect a proper search. How the devil could such an experienced agent, a damned team leader, make such a boneheaded move as not clearing the premise?" He asked rhetorically since he knew Gibbs only too well. He wasn't about to apologise to anyone for screwing the pooch.

"And what was it that tipped off DiNozzo, since he had no way to know that you hadn't cleared the scene. In fact, I'd go so far as to suggest he'd assume that you had done so…since it's standard operating procedure. And for a damned good reason."

Gibbs, clearly unamused to be taken to task for such a rookie mistake, rolled his eyes. "Said he smelt the perfume Esmee Louder. I swear, he's got a nose like a god-damned bloodhound."

"So?" Morrow queried failing to see the significance and mentally correcting the Estée Laude malapropism. Surely after four wives Jethro should have heard of such an iconic perfume.

Shrugging Gibbs growled, "Says it's an old lady's scent. Noticed that the Doc was wearing it when they interviewed her."

"That's a pretty impressive sense of smell." Tom was amazed, since his own sense of smell was pretty poor. Freshly ground or brewed coffee and freshly mown grass were the extent of his ability to catalogue scents – certainly he couldn't recognise and identify individual perfumes.

"Yeah he brags he's like some damned stupid TV character called a 'sensual' because he's got 20/10 eyesight, ears like a bat and can recognise a perfume as soon as he walked through the door."

Tom Morrow chuckled. "I think you mean a sentinel, Gibbs." Shaking his head about the cluelessness of the man, his thoughts returned to the case. Becoming serious again, he resumed discussing what had transpired. "So you still haven't offered an explanation about your failure to follow the most basic of procedures when conducting a search. Do I need to send you back to FLETC?"

Gibbs glared at him – he hated to be criticised and it was clear that he couldn't see what all the fuss was about since it had all worked out. Tom sighed, feeling that incipient burning feeling rising up in his chest, signifying the heartburn that he often suffered from, usually after dealing with Leroy Jethro Gibbs.

"So let's get this straight? The three of you went to Melissa Dorn's home to serve the search warrant. Then you split up, after ordering DiNozzo to go and search the barn on his own while you and Todd went into the house. Apart from getting her finger prints on the glass, you didn't search, you didn't bother to clear the premise

"Not only did you fail to clear the premise, but it obviously never occurred to you that sending DiNozzo out to search the barn on his own was stupid, Jethro. What if there had been someone dangerous out there hiding…like the killer or an accomplice? Why didn't all three of you clear the house and then the barn together, before commencing the search?

"Alternatively, why the blazes didn't you borrow an extra agent; I'm sure Tony could have found another agent to help serve the search warrant."

Seriously, Tom sometimes wondered if Gibbs was subconsciously trying to get rid of DiNozzo by placing him in high risk situations since it happened so frequently. If he'd genuinely felt it necessary for anyone to work solo, then he as SSA should have been the one to do so. Of course in this situation, it hadn't been necessary because somebody could easily have helped out with their search or they should have cleared both locations together.

"Tell me Jethro, why do you insist on putting your SFA in harm's way at every turn? It's beginning to lend credence and fuel all the scuttlebutt that you have sexual interest in Todd and are trying to clear the way to make her your SFA regardless of the fact she isn't qualified."

As well as sending him back for some refresher courses he decided to send the SSA off to see the agency shrink. Explore why he found it necessary to put DiNozzo into dangerous situations when it wasn't essential. He smirked at how much Jethro would love that!

"DiNozzo does his best work without distraction," was Gibbs' brusque but inadequate response.

"Are you sure it wasn't so you could go back in and flirt with Melissa Dorn one last time or maybe to make Agent Todd jealous?" Tom goaded him, angry that Gibbs failed to understand the absolute seriousness of the situation. Agency protocols were there for a damned good reason.

He was team lead – he had a duty of care to his agents; not to needless risk the safety of his people. Law enforcement was already an extremely dangerous business; they often asked their agents to risk their lives and sometimes they paid the ultimate price. Sometimes there was no other way to save innocent lives but they had a responsibility to mitigate risk as much as possible. Certainly there was absolutely no excuse not to follow procedure when carrying out routine duties such as searching premises.

The director also knew, unlike Caitlyn Todd, that once Gibbs suspected Dorn's involvement that he wouldn't be attracted to her, or more to the point, he wouldn't act on any attraction. He took a very dim view of anyone killing Marines – like it was a personal slight. Still, Morrow also knew that Gibbs would have taken perverse pleasure out of toying with the flirtatious woman and trapping her into incriminating herself, since he got off on mind games. That desire to one-up others should never get in the way of him doing his job though and yet, clearly - it had!

Glowering at him, Gibbs responded sarcastically. "That it, Di-rec-tor?"

"Actually, no Gibbs, it isn't. Grab a coffee and cool your jets because this isn't over. Not by a long shot!" Picking up his phone, he made an internal call to someone in the building.

"Yes, this is Director Morrow. About that matter we discussed earlier? Can you both come up to my office now to discuss it with Gibbs? Yes, he's here. Excellent!"

Gibbs grabbed a cup of coffee, impatient to get back to the bullpen, even though there were no active cases pending. Tom knew full well that Gibbs didn't appreciate being taken to task or asked to justify his actions. Well that was tough – you screw the pooch and you get your ass kicked, no matter who you are.

There was a knock on the door and a stockily built man with a receding hairline and a petite Eurasian woman with long black hair entered, carrying files. Tom shook hands with them before addressing Gibbs. "Special Agent Gibbs, I'm sure you know Joe Landers, Head of Legal and this is one of his young guns, Michelle Lee."

Gibbs nodded at them somewhat sullenly, since he was well known for his dislike of lawyers and Tom ordered them all to sit down together at his large conference table. The senior supervisory agent looked supremely irritated, complying impatiently.

"We have a problem with the search warrant." Michelle Lee stated baldly getting straight to the crux of the matter.

Tom grinned surreptitiously. Obviously she'd been well briefed on Gibbs' lack of appreciation for people beating around the bush. He'd heard good things about Lee, but she was still young and nervous. She'd season with time of course.

Gibbs gave the young lawyer the dreaded evil eye. "What problem?"

"Well for starters, Special Agent DiNozzo never mentioned the secondary sample for the sycamore seed in the paperwork he submitted when he requested the search warrant for Melissa Dorn's house. I didn't find out about it, not until I received Dr Sciuto's final forensic report on the DNA of the sample at the crime scene. It was the match to the one from outside Melissa Dorn's house which convinced Judge Wilks there was sufficient probable cause to issue the search warrant."

Three sets of eyes stared at Gibbs who shrugged. "Probably because he didn't know about it. Todd was with me when I collected the different samples to test against the trace we found in the victim's boot. Why is that a problem with the warrant?"

Michelle ignored the question. "Tell me Special Agent, are you in the habit of collecting multiple samples to conduct blind studies for your forensic scientist?"

"What? No of course not. So what is this about," he growled angry at what he obviously considered a minor detail.

Lee looked flustered. She was a fine young lawyer, Harvard educated, but anxious, flighty and still quite inexperienced. Frankly Gibbs was perfectly capable of intimidating even seasoned lawyers so Tom wasn't surprised to see her struggling to maintain her composure.

Joe was also closely watching his protégé and decided to step in. "So just to be clear, in a shooting, when you locate a bullet that might be part of the crime scene, you don't collect a second bullet that wasn't connected to the crime, do you? You don't then give both of the bullets to the forensic lab technician to test? When you find tyre tracks at a crime scene and you find a vehicle that you think might have been at the crime scene - when you collect mud from the tyre tread do you also take a trace mud sample from a vehicle that is not suspected of being involved? You know…for a blind test."

Gibbs stared at the head of the legal department, huffing in annoyance. "No, why would I? It would slow down processing of the evidence and send expenses through the roof, obviously. But what does that have to do with anything?"

"Then why the devil would you collect a second sample in this case, Gibbs?" Landers demanded.

"Because I thought the whole idea of DNA for trees was…hinky. I didn't believe it…okay? Is all this crap of multiple samples, just because Abby was pissed off at me?"

It was Landers turn to scowled. "No Agent. It's about you deviating from standard operating procedure when collecting evidence on this case. It's about the fact that you have doubts about the efficacy of the evidence. It's about the fact that the defence will argue that having more than one sample could have resulting in them being mixed up. I'm talking about the real possibility that the judge will toss out the warrant as being obtained with flawed evidence, which is what the defence will argue.

"If the judge hearing the case against Melissa Dorn and her mother Dr Chalmers declares that you didn't have probable cause to search, then the whole case falls apart. You won't have Melissa Dorn's fingerprints, or the forensic evidence that Special Agent DiNozzo collected in the barn showing that a body was dismembered there. Plus, any admissions they made could be withdrawn as being obtained under duress by a halfway competent attorney. We could lose this case."

Michelle had earned a second wind and she chipped in, "Not to mention that it could cause all prior cases to be reopened to scrutiny to determine if you've deviated from procedure when collecting evidence or requesting warrants."

"Over a piddling little seed sample? C'mon." Gibbs scorn had left many a probie needing to change their underwear.

Michelle Lee plucked up her courage to respond. "It isn't the sycamore seed per se, Special Agent Gibbs. It is the departure from SOP which is the problem. It will be the fact that when the defence ask you why you deviated and you have to tell the court under oath that you wanted a blind test because you didn't believe the results of the test. Then they'll ask, if you didn't believe in the efficacy of the forensic test, then why should the court.

"Plus, they'll no doubt ask you if you can guarantee that there is no way that the samples didn't get mixed up - either during your collection or back at the lab. Which, by the way is a loaded question because if you say no there's no way it could have, then you look like either a fool or a liar because there is always a chance, even if it is infinitesimal. If you say yes but it's highly unlikely, then it still helps them to cast doubt about the positive result of the test. The test that you used to gain the search warrant in the first place but didn't have faith in – hence the blind test."

Snorting Gibbs rolled his eyes. "You've got to be kidding me! This is ridiculous."

Tom decided it was time for him to earn his pay check. "Ms Lee, you can return to whatever you were doing when I asked you to up here. I appreciate your time and assistance on this matter. Joe, if you and Gibbs could stay behind, please."

Michelle nodded and gathered her legal files deftly, rising and departed from the office discreetly. Tom, unlike Gibbs was not a fan of delivering a dressing down in the presence of subordinates, which Michelle Lee most certainly was. Joe Landers on the other hand was a departmental head, so it wasn't against protocol for him to be present while he ripped into Gibbs. While he usually chose to address disciplinary issues without others present to avoid loss of face, in this case he felt that a little humiliation was definitely well deserved.

Steeling himself for a bruising stoush, he faced down his senior supervisory agent. "I'm sorry Special Agent Gibbs, I was not aware that you possessed qualifications in the field of forensic science."

"Damn it, Tom. You know I don't." Gibbs grunted.

"My bad… I guess I assumed that you must have some degrees I wasn't aware of since you obviously felt competent to make judgements about what tests had empirical efficacy. Forget the fact that those forensic tests have been developed by professionally trained forensic scientists and are subject to rigorous peer review by experts in the field of forensics. Far greater oversight than the picayune test that you decided was necessary to convince you that plants had DNA and individual seeds could be traced back to the tree of origin by comparing their DNA."

Joe interposed, "Perhaps Agent Gibbs has never heard of Google but surely he is aware there is such a thing as a library where he could have researched the topic of plant DNA, or even sought out a subject matter expert from testifying in court. Any of which would have been preferable to his 'blind test' and not threatened the case."

I realise in your own mind Special Agent Gibbs, your opinion is of utmost important, however in the grand scheme of things you're simply a pissant little federal agent with an overly inflated sense of your self-worth. A dime a dozen, especially to the judges who make judgements on cases based on the rule of law. You know, your inability to understand something so fundamental to the tenets of investigation begs the question – how the hell are you leading the MCRT?" Tom retorted.

Joe decided to throw in his two cents worth. "That is the laws of the United States of American and not the 'Rules of Leroy Jethro Gibbs', just to be perfectly clear here. They won't cut in a court of law."

"I don't care if you thought it was hinky, Gibbs – you're not the arbiter of what is or is not acceptable. We actually have statutory authorities to certify our forensic facilities and oversee our processes. So you can stand down and let them do their job." Tom growled, frustrated that such a simple case could be thrown out on a technicality.

"Your job is to investigate crimes and to that end, to gather evidence while following SOP that doesn't contaminate the evidence or impede the pursuit of justice. Do you think I understand every little detail about everything that goes on within the agency? I don't need to; don't need to micro-manage every single aspect of the day to day running of this place. It's not my job."

He contemplated his agent gravely. This was not going to be pretty but that's why he got paid the big bucks. "The mistakes that you made on this case, which wasn't exactly the most complicated of investigations, either, are extremely serious, Jethro. It concerns me greatly that such a simple case should see you struggling to follow not just agency protocols and procedures, but basic law enforcement statutes too. Which makes me extremely concerned about you and your team's comportment on more complex cases."

It made Tom question the wisdom of having a MCRT where only one member of the team had a true law enforcement experience.

"You are, after all, the major case response team and that means you get assigned the major cases, which, shock horror, are highly complex and often very high profile. I cannot afford to have you screw them up. Closing a case is all well and good, but unless we can make the charges stick and get a conviction, it doesn't mean diddly squat. One lapse on this case…maybe I might have been able to overlook it or resorted to a formal reprimand but I can't ignore this; I won't ignore this.

"This will not happen again. Special Agent Leroy Jethro Gibbs, I'm sending you back to FLETC to retake some specific courses since you seem to have forgotten what the responsibilities of your job are. And since, in your infinite wisdom you chose to hire an agent for the major case response team with no investigative experience or training, Probationary Agent Todd can accompany you and take some basic courses too."

When Gibbs started protesting about the team, he waved away the objection.

"DiNozzo and Pacci can cover for the MCRT in your absence and if they need more manpower, I have every confidence in them that they'll have the good sense to ask for it."

Gibbs was clearly furious and Morrow knew the loss of face would be intolerable for the alpha male but that was too damned bad. You do the crime you do the time. Yet Tom was not an unreasonable man, either. "This is not punishment – I'm rectifying a problem that has been identified which threatens the agency. This IS happening whether you like it or not, so suck it up Marine.

"After you have successfully completed those courses to your instructors' satisfaction you will then report to the NCIS psychologist to determine the reason why you seem compelled to keep placing your SFA in imminent jeopardy without good reason. Until I'm satisfied that you have resolved this issue to Dr Haskin's satisfaction, you're banned from field duties."