"I sent a blood and tissue sample up to Abby, but I have my suspicions, Jethro. I don't believe this was an accident." Ducky looked up from the lifeless body of Paul Decker into the blue eyes of his friend.
"Why is that?"
"This man's liver shows some sign of having recently been exposed to a high dose of some toxin. I can't be sure of the nature of the toxin without a lab test, but it's possible that he may have been either drugged or poisoned shortly before his death."
"So what you're telling me, Duck, is that this man isn't an accident victim," Gibbs said steadily. "He's a murder victim."
"I'm telling you to check with Abby. Her tests will either corroborate or refute my suspicions. Regardless of her findings, though, I don't like the way it looks." Ducky glanced at Palmer and then shifted his gaze back to Gibbs, who nodded then turned and left Autopsy.
MTAC seemed filled to bursting with agents from both sies of the Atlantic. Gibbs and Walter were on a conference call with Wilson and Ziva at MI-5 headquarters in London. Tony and Rhian had arrived with their stacks of proof from Helena. The only ones missing were Edward and McGee, who were off to conduct the interviews at O'Donnell's.
"John Kinsey is one of Paul Decker's other aliases, according to this list from Abby," Walter said, flipping through the pages. "Or is it the other way round?"
"Oh, whatever, Walter!" Rhian snapped at him. "Either way he's dead. We can't question him."
"We may not have to," Gibbs said. "According to Abby's tox reports, he was drugged. Well over five times the normal dosage of Seconal. Somebody was counting on him to have a nasty accident."
"So all we have to do is wait for McGee and Edward to get back with their witness interviews and see what they turn up, eh, Boss?" Tony looked around the room. "He had to have been drugged when he was at that bar."
"Abby agrees with you. Seconal doesn't take that long to kick in. I think his killer was hoping that we'd find Decker or Kinsey or whatever his name is, dead with the laptop on him and not look any further."
Tony chuckled while Ziva chimed in from the plasma screen. "With Gibbs, nothing's ever an accident. It's always murder until proven otherwise."
Gibbs continued, "All I want to know is who murdered your agent and my naval officer? Kinsey, or Kinsey's killer? Was Kinsey offed because he slipped up or was it to throw us off the trail?"
They were all silent for a moment as they pondered the questions. Then Walter ventured a quiet question of his own.
"Were we able to decipher that ten-digit number?"
"Abby's exhausted the phone number option. Her next thought was banking," Gibbs replied sharply.
"Could it be a Swiss account?" Ziva interjected, glancing at Wilson.
Wilson murmured, "Swiss bank account… mm… yes… Rodgers does have holdings in a Swiss banking company, doesn't he?" while he started shuffling through the pages in front of him.
"Now that would be a coincidence," Rhian muttered darkly, as she leafed through her own reports.
"I don't believe in coincidences," Gibbs growled while half the MTAC staff tried to smother snickers at Tony's lip-synching of his boss' oft-used expression.
"Ah! Here it is!" Wilson separated a page from his stack. "I'll bet anything that if it is an account, it's held at this bank and, more than likely, it's controlled by Rodgers. Tell Abby to use these authorization codes. She should be able to get the all information she needs in no time." Wilson fed the page into a fax machine set up with a secure line straight to MTAC.
As soon as it printed, Walter took the page straight down to Abby. Gibbs looked to Tony and Rhian. "Do we have anything else that we can use to tie this whole thing together?
Rhian shook her head. "The best I can do is tie Rodgers to Kinsey, Decker, whoever he is. I have that solidly. If we speculate and say that Kinsey did indeed murder Helena, or contract her murder, I still need a way to prove that and tie it back to Rodgers."
"Wouldn't the bank account do that?" Ziva asked.
"Possibly. It depends on whose account it is and what it's being used for." Rhian sighed. What I need is one solid piece of evidence that ties Rodgers' to Kinsey and then Kinsey to Helena and Haggerty's room."
"This shouldn't be that difficult. We have the captain's laptop, now, correct?" Wilson commented.
"Yes, but you could make the argument that Kinsey just found the computer." Tony replied. "We need someone who saw him with that laptop in the hotel that night. Or to hope Probie and Edward get lucky and find us something."
"I don't believe in luck either, DiNozzo."
