The Price of Honesty: Chapter 21
Special Agent Todd Freiler walked into his office and frowning, came to a complete stop in the doorway. Agent Gibbs was still packing up Stan's belongings, but Kim was nowhere to be seen. He mentally shrugged at his partner's absence, figuring she was running down a lead or over at the analyst division to get the latest security briefs, and covered the remaining few feet to his desk. "Would you like a cookie?" he asked Agent Gibbs, holding out the Tupperware container his wife had sent him with. Gibbs glanced up from his work and frowned slightly at the junior agent before nodding his head once.
"Thanks," he said as he took one of the offered chocolate chip cookies. He took a bite and set the remainder of the cookie on Stan's desk, getting back to the packing as if the interruption hadn't happened.
"Uh," Freiler began, trying to get a feel for what was going on. "Did Kim say anything about what she wanted me to do? With our cases?"
"Nope," Gibbs replied simply.
"Well, then, do you know where she went? I can just track her down and—"
"Holding cell," Gibbs interrupted, not even looking up. Freiler frowned.
"Holding cell?" he echoed. "Do we have a suspect for Stan's murder? Or did something happen on base and now she's booking the perp..." His voice trailed off, aware that he was beginning to ramble, and asking an endless litany of questions probably wasn't the best way to get caught up to speed. He knew he shouldn't have swung by the house while he was 'getting something to drink'; clearly something had happened, and he completely missed it. Although Kim not calling him to give him an update or order him to get back to work was a bit unusual.
"Agent Tomblin's been booked for the murder of Stan Burley," Gibbs said, finally looking at Freiler. The younger man simply stared back, trying to figure out if Gibbs was speaking a different language, because what he just said made absolutely no sense.
"Say what now?" he finally asked, grimacing at the fact that he was phrasing questions the same way his seventeen-year-old sister did.
"She was arrested for killing your boss," Gibbs repeated, and Freiler had to conclude that Gibbs was still speaking English.
"But... What? Why would Kim... And why would you think..." He stopped talking, realizing that he should probably articulate at least one complete question. "Did she make a confession?" he finally asked.
"Nope," Gibbs replied. "Claimed she didn't do it."
"So why do you think she did?"
"Stan was killed with the same type of knife Tomblin carries, by someone shorter than five-three who knows anatomy, is comfortable with knives, and had access to his apartment."
"Oh." Well, that certainly didn't sound good for Kim. "But that's just circumstantial. It's a lot of circumstantial, but nothing..." He shook his head quickly. "But that still doesn't make any sense. Why would Kim want to kill Stan?"
Gibbs looked up again and studied Freiler long enough to make the junior agent begin to feel nervous. "So you didn't know they were having an affair," the MCRT leader finally stated. Freiler blinked and wondered what kind of strange dream this was.
"They were what?" he finally asked dumbly.
"Sleeping together. Having sex. Were engaged in—"
"I get the picture," Freiler interrupted hastily, really wishing he didn't. "Are you sure?"
Gibbs shrugged a shoulder. "That's what Tomblin said."
"Oh." Now that he had had time to process it, he guessed it wasn't too surprising. He was married and loved his wife very much, but he wasn't blind, and Kim was a pretty attractive woman. Both Stan and Kim were single, and their work did a good job of isolating them from the rest of the Americans on the island. "But why would Kim kill him just because they were... having an affair?"
Gibbs shrugged again. "I don't know, Freiler, you tell me," he said. "Things get bad between them recently?"
"Well, I didn't even know they were involved, so I really wouldn't know," he admitted with a shrug. "I don't think so. They were acting the same as they always do."
"Which was how?"
"I don't know," Freiler said again. "Like Stan and Kim. They joked around, teased each other, teased me. Well, Kim did most of the teasing, but Stan always played along." He frowned. "How long have they been... involved?"
"Why?"
Freiler began to get the sensation that he was being interrogated, and decided that he wasn't too fond of it. He didn't have much experience in the interrogation room, on either side of the conversation—Stan told him it was because he was too nice to be effective at questioning suspects. Kim told him he was a terrible liar, and his attempts at being threatening were more entertaining than scary.
He had seen her in the interrogation room—actually, the first time he had seen her, when Stan was giving him a tour of the building on his first day, had been from the other side of the glass, in the observation bay. Despite the fact that she looked like you could pick her up and break her in half, she was pretty intimidating. It took him a week of nervously sitting in the office with her before he realized that her Interrogation personality was an act and that, while intense about her job, she was really a nice person. Bryn still teased him about the fact that he had ever been scared of Kim, but he was pretty sure that if his wife ever saw her when she was in all-out work mode, she'd be pretty scared, too. Bryn occasionally forgot that Kim had been a Marine; Freiler didn't need any reminders.
Freiler cleared his throat, bringing himself back to the moment and the question at hand. "About six months ago, right after Stan got back from Afghanistan, I guess things were a little tense between them, for a week or so," he admitted. He hadn't really thought much about it until Gibbs brought it up. "They had always carpooled, since before I came to the office, but a couple of times that week, they arrived separately, and Kim looked pretty annoyed about it, although she didn't say anything." He frowned, trying to sort out the events of that week, and wondered if, in retrospect, he was reading more into things than actually existed. "At one point, she got a personal call at work—"
"Not that unusual," Gibbs interrupted.
"It was with Kim," Freiler countered. "Her family lives in Washington state, she began her NCIS career there, and she was at Pendleton when she was in the Marine Corps—that's an eleven hour time difference to most people who would be making social calls. She took the call to the stairwell," he gestured at the back door to the office, which Gibbs hadn't noticed; it was mostly hidden behind Burley's desk, "and she looked a little upset when she came back. Stan asked if it was someone—he gave a name, but I don't remember it—and she told him to mind his own business." Freiler blushed slightly; that wasn't exactly what Kim had said, but he didn't like to swear.
"About six months ago?" Gibbs asked. Freiler shrugged.
"Sometime around then," he replied. "It was right after Stan got back from Afghanistan, I know that." He had only been gone for a few days, but the fall-out from that had lasted a lot longer. At the time, he had assumed Kim was upset with Stan for leaving her to deal with the State Department representative who came to 'assist'—which was more like hampering—their investigation, but now he couldn't help but wonder if something had happened with Stan while he was gone that somehow affected this personal relationship he hadn't realized they had.
Realizing that he had been standing this whole time, he all but collapsed into his chair, supporting his head with his hands for a long minute. Surely this wasn't really happening—in the span of a few days, he had lost his boss, had his office taken over by the team from Headquarters, and now his partner had been arrested for the crime because they had been having an affair that had been occurring right under his nose without him realizing it.
He had no idea how much time had passed since he walked into the office, but he was now pretty sure that instead of regretting stopping by the house on the way back to the office, he was regretting leaving the house to go back to the office. Things were simple with Bryn and the kids; at home, he could pretend that people weren't being murdered, weren't being arrested, that nobody was having relationships they shouldn't be having.
"Where is Agent Tomblin?" He looked up in surprise to see Ziva David standing in the doorway, the expression on her face a mixture between curiosity and determination. "I need to speak to her about Yemen."
"Holding cell," Gibbs replied. There was something different in his voice when he informed his Mossad liaison of that fact than there had been when he was speaking to Freiler; she was clearly not being interrogated.
The Israeli frowned. "Holding cell?" she echoed. Her eyes went to Freiler before returning to her boss. "She has been arrested for Burley's murder." Freiler wasn't quite sure if that was a question or a statement, the Hebrew accent making it difficult to determine her inflections.
"Yup," Gibbs replied calmly, and for a second, Freiler despised him for not being bothered by this.
"Did she do it?" Gibbs didn't bother vocalizing a reply to Officer David's question, choosing to let his expression speak for him.
And apparently, that was all the Mossad officer needed on that particular topic. "Who is assuming the responsibilities of the Bahrain office?" As one, both Gibbs and David turned to Freiler, whose eyes widened in alarm.
"You've got to be kidding," he blurted out before he could think of something more eloquent to say. He flushed at the words, but didn't bother trying to retract him. The idea of him becoming the highest-ranking NCIS agent in the Middle East was beyond laughable. He had only been in the office for a year, having come directly there after finishing his probationary period in San Diego.
Apparently, Gibbs agreed with him. "Gonna have to speak to Vance about that," he said calmly, and Freiler suspected he'd be working for Agent DiNozzo even sooner than he expected.
Officer David glanced at the gold Rolex she wore on her wrist and frowned. "It is not even 0400 in DC yet," she pointed out. Freiler looked at his own watch in alarm; he hadn't realized how close to noon it was becoming.
Gibbs shrugged, and Freiler didn't know if that meant that he didn't care about waking the director of NCIS, or if he didn't care about running things by said director. "Dunham'll be in charge of the Yemen operation in the meantime," he declared. Officer David nodded and turned to leave the office, literally running into Agent DiNozzo, who was trying to enter.
"Hi," he said with a grin, his eyes only on the Mossad liaison and his hands on her shoulders. She rolled her eyes, but Freiler didn't miss the small smile that tugged at her lips before ducking around him to leave the office, likely to return to the Mossad office up the stairs, and DiNozzo turned his attention to the MCRT's supervisory field agent before that grin turned into a thoughtful frown. "Where's Tomblin?" he asked, and Gibbs gave the same answer for the third time.
"Holding cell."
DiNozzo's frown became even more pronounced. "She do it?" he finally asked, and that was just as much as Freiler could take.
He rose from his chair more abruptly than even he would have thought possible, turning toward the door before reaching back to his desk and picking up the Tupperware container of Bryn's cookies. "Where are you going?" Agent Gibbs asked with a frown.
"To talk to Kim," he said, more tersely than he anticipated the words coming out. Both Gibbs and DiNozzo frowned, but Freiler didn't give them an opportunity to protest before he continued. "She's my partner," he said emphatically. "She's my partner, and she just lost her best friend, and I know you think she did it. Maybe she did; I don't know, but I do know that I wouldn't be much of a partner, or a friend, if I didn't at least try to talk to her." His eyes went from one man to the other, seeing identically blank expressions on both faces. "You can't tell me you wouldn't do the same thing." He left the office before either man could stop him.