In the morning, the team assembled in Abby's lab. She has Denny's belongings from his parents' house laid out on the worktable. It wasn't all that much. Tim was sure there were more in their attic, things like Denny's first pair of shoes and his baby toys and other nostalgic things their mother had collected, but the things his mother had been asked to bring were the things that Denny had been using at the time of the murders.
"Let me tell you," Tony said, surveying the loot. "I don't see anything here worth breaking out of prison for."
Tim had to agree. School books, yearbooks, a baseball cap and glove, pop magazines, a rolled up poster, a Frisbee with dogteeth marks on it… There was nothing here that didn't come a dime a dozen in any normal teenager's room. "I don't get it, either," he confessed. "It must be something else. Something we didn't keep. Maybe we didn't realize it was important."
"So what happened to his things?" Ziva asked.
McGee shrugged. "It ended up all over the place. First the police and NIS went through all of it, collecting everything that might relate to the case. The rest we packed up when we had to move. It was pretty quick… Dad didn't want to keep anything that had been Denny's, and Mom was about to agree when my grandmother Penny stepped in, said that we had to keep some mementoes, that we would regret it if we didn't. So Mom, Penny and I packed up his room. Most of it went to charity or were thrown out, we were moving to a much smaller place, so we couldn't keep all that much."
"Yes, but what did you keep?" Ziva asked.
"I don't remember," McGee said with a pained expression and gestured at the table. "Things like these I guess. It was a long time ago and I had other things on my mind. I know that I kept his comic books, his baseball cards and a couple of his books. Mom mostly kept photos and things like these."
"He didn't come back for some baseball cards or a high school edition of Huckleberry Finn," Gibbs said. "It has to be something really important. Think, McGee. Think!"
"Something related to the murders, perhaps?" Abby suggested.
"But the police ransacked our house to find anything that might be considered evidence," McGee protested.
"Something he kept hidden, then?" Tony suggested. "Something the police didn't find."
"Like what?" McGee asked. "If we had found anything when we were packing up, we would've handed it over."
"We know Denny had access to all of the case files, so he would know every scrap of evidence that was collected," Ziva said. "So we know it's not something that the police found. It has to be something that he believes was so important to you that you would keep it."
"Look at the things that were collected as evidence," Gibbs said. "And look at the things you and your mother has. What is missing? What isn't mentioned anywhere?"
McGee went to pull up the appropriate file on Abby's computer screen, so everyone could read it, but as he was scrolling through the file directory, his eye caught another document and he froze, a long forgotten memory begging for his attention. At first he couldn't figure out why the testimony of the forensic psychiatrist would evoke such a reaction so he sat staring blankly ahead of him as he waited for his brain to make the proper connection. The others watched him quietly until he whispered, "Trophies…"
"What?" Abby asked.
"Trophies," McGee said a little louder, turning around excitedly. "The psychiatrist said that it was strange that Denny didn't keep trophies or souvenirs of the murders, it didn't fit with the profile of a serial killer. Nothing was ever found and Denny never said a word about it. But…" he hesitated. "Oliver said – before we found out it was Denny, while he was still talking to me – he claimed that one of Elena's stuffed animals had disappeared and he swore that it had disappeared the night she was murdered. But none of the other families reported anything missing."
"He could have taken small things that no one would notice was missing," Ziva said.
"But where would he have kept them?" McGee mused.
"He would've wanted to keep them very hidden," Tony said. "And considering that he's been asking for his stuff he had to have kept them in his room, not buried in the garden. A loose floorboard, a ventilation shaft, something like that?"
"Then he would be heading for the old house," McGee protested. "Not trying to find his old belongings. We never searched under the floorboards when we moved."
"Then think, McGee," Gibbs said sternly. "Think! He came to you! He thinks you're the one with the answer, so you have to know it. Somewhere in that noggin of your," he tapped McGee on the side of the head with his knuckles, "is the answer. Concentrate."
McGee looked crestfallen. "I can't remember."
"Yes, you can," Gibbs said. "Take a walk, clear you head and really think about it. You know this!"
"Okay." McGee reached for his jacket and headed for the elevator. Gibbs nodded to Tony to go with him, but McGee shook his head.
"I won't go outside the security perimeters, I promise."
Tony sat back behind his desk again.
xxx
McGee sat on a cold park bench within sight of the main entrance of their building, a now cold cup of coffee clasped between his hands, the slowly setting sun shining sporadically at him through red and orange maple leaves. In his mind's eye he was back in his childhood home, moving between the ghostly wisps of memories. Some parts stood out so clearly, others were only shadows in the corners. His brother's room. He'd spent so much time in there until Denny became a surly teenager and started shutting and locking the door behind him.
McGee closed his eyes and bent his head towards the ground. He was standing in the middle of his brother's room, turning slowly, seeing the familiar yet distant walls and things. The baseball posters and the John Wayne poster Denny kept on the wall just to annoy his little brother. Denny's white cowboy hat hanging above it. An unmade bed with rumpled striped sheets, crumpled clothes sticking out from under the bed. A desk, a normal IKEA desk without any chance of any secret compartments. School books and note books. A USN coffee mug with
pens and pencils in it. A cactus in the window, next to a lava lamp. Cowboy figurines on the windowsill. A baseball bat leaning against the desk, a catcher's glove and three balls on the floor next to it. A red armchair hidden under a mound of clothes. A bookshelf with a row of books. No chance of any of them being hollowed out to use for a hiding spot, Tim knew, he had borrowed and read all of them. Two signed baseballs in protective casings. A cute little porcelain dog – not Denny's style at all, it had been a birthday present from Sarah. Sport trophies, team photographs, a photo of Denny, Tim and Sarah. The binders with the baseball cards. And on the bottom shelf…
McGee sat up abruptly, cold coffee spilling over his fingers. He couldn't believe he had forgotten! He tossed the coffee cup in a close by thrash bin and fished out his cell phone, waiting impatiently for the recipient to pick up.
"Tony! Meet me at the car. I know what he wants and where it is."
xxx
McGee fished his lock picking kit out of his pocket even while they were walking up the garden path.
Tony protested. "It's your grandmother's house. You could at least try knocking before you start picking her lock."
"She won't mind," Tim assured him as he hunched over and peered at the lock in the dim porch light.
"Really?" Tony said. "It seems so sacrilegious, somehow, breaking into a grandmother's house."
"Trust me, Tony, if you'd ever met my grandmother, you would understand. If I tell her I picked her lock she will thrilled. And then she will not rest until I have taught her how to do it too. Besides, she's not home."
"Oh, where is she?" Tony asked, looking around, keeping a watchful eye on their surroundings.
"Kathmandu."
Tony blinked in surprise. "Kathmandu?"
"Yes."
"I just can't picture a grandmother in Kathmandu."
"Well, Penny isn't your typical grandmother." McGee said as his administrations were successful and he opened the door.
"Did you call her?" Tony said. "Can she tell us where she's keeping this thing?"
"No need," McGee said, shutting the door behind them. "I already know."
"So what is this thing again?" Tony asked as he flipped the light switch in the foyer.
"It was a Christmas gift from Penny and grandpa John. He was stationed abroad, somewhere in Asia, but Penny flew back to spend Christmas with us. I was maybe eight, so Denny would've been around fourteen. I don't even remember what I got, but Denny got a box. It was built like a solid log cabin, but by manipulating the logs in a rather complicated manner, a lock would open and you could lift up the roof and hide things in it. It was a puzzle, a kid's game. Denny gave it a try or two, but he lost interest pretty quickly when he didn't get it right."
"But you didn't," Tony guessed.
"No, I loved it," McGee confirmed. "Took me about two weeks to figure it out. I showed it to Denny and he said 'cool' and then it ended up on his bookshelf. Then, a couple of years later, just about when the murders started, Denny came and asked me to teach him how to open the box, so I did. I didn't think twice about it, and I didn't think about it when everything was discovered."
"So how did it end up with your grandmother?" Tony asked as McGee led the way through the house.
"She was helping me and Mom pack up the house. We were getting rid of so much. She asked if I wanted it, she remembered how much I loved it when Denny first got it, but I didn't, not then. Too many memories. So she said she'd keep it for me, in case I changed my mind."
"And you know where it is?"
McGee nodded. "She's got a trunk in one of the spare bedrooms with keepsakes. It'll be there if she still has it. And I very much doubt that she would've gotten rid of it."
"All right," Tony said, looking around him. "Lead the way."
Quite at home, McGee cut through the kitchen and guided them up the backstairs. Penny's house was large, much larger than she really needed – which she would often say– but she kept it anyway, because of the garden. The guest bedroom he was heading for, which he usually thought of as Sarah's room as it were where she always had stayed when they stayed over, was just at the top of the backstairs.
Tony looked into the gloom down the hall. "What's down there?"
"More bedrooms mostly," McGee said as he opened the door to Sarah's room and turned on the lights. He knew his own guest bedroom was there, ready and waiting for him, even though he hadn't spent the night since his college days. Denny's room had been turned into craft room in the middle of the '90s, when Penny had briefly picked up the hobby of macramé.
Sarah's room was uncluttered and well ordered, as it wasn't in regular use, but the cleaning lady obviously still went over it with a toothbrush as there wasn't a speck of dust in there. His grandfather had expected a militaristically disciplined home, but Penny had only really relented as far as the cleaning aspect.
The chest, which was essentially Penny's hope chest, stood under the window. Tim rounded the big, four-poster bed and knelt in front of it. Tony lagged behind, still peering out into the corridor.
"It will be in here," McGee said confidently to him as he opened the chest and reverently started emptying it of his grandmother's treasures. Soon he had a little mound next to him, made up of children's drawings, ballet slippers, dried flowers with faded ribbons, the family christening gown, baby shoes, a bridal veil, travel memories, postcards, a wind-up music box which started playing slowly and out of tune when he moved it and other knickknacks. He saw the puzzle box he was looking for sitting at the bottom of the chest, and for a moment he smiled in triumph at being right, before he remembered why he was looking for it in the first place.
"It's here," he said before picking it up. It wasn't very big, perhaps 12 by 8 inches, but surprisingly heavy. He stood up and turned around… and immediately dropped the box on the floor and kicked it behind him, simultaneously drawing his gun and aiming it at his brother.
Denny was standing just inside the door with his arm wrapped in a tight chokehold around Tony's neck and a gun pressed into his cheek.
xxx
TBC…