It ended up being a long night all around, but the following morning a very exhausted Jethro got up and went into work. Even though it was a Saturday, he and his team had a job to do. Still had a case to solve.
It was abundantly clear that his team was worried about him though as he'd shown up quite late for work; a notable rarity in and of itself. Not to mention, he failed to return any of DiNozzo's calls the night before. He wasn't in the mood to have that particular conversation with anyone just yet. Jethro simply wanted to focus on the case at hand and to get home before the entire weekend was gone.
That morning at work was rather slow, in any case, due to a lack of leads. As annoying as that could be, Jethro was actually a bit grateful for it. With the slight downtime, he managed to get some of his case reports as well as some other paperwork done before the MCRT team grabbed themselves some burgers for lunch.
To that end, McGee's time spent sifting through mountains surveillance footage ended up paying off late that afternoon. McGee pulled up some video footage on the plasma that afternoon from one of Homeland Security's street surveillance cameras, trying to track Boxer's route and managed to catch a glimpse of the killer. It showed a scrawny motorcyclist following their victim, but he was wearing a helmet and despite McGee's best efforts, they couldn't seem to get even a half-decent look at the rider's face. Kris Taylor happened to have a Class-M motorcycle license, as it turned out, so Jethro had DiNozzo go grab the young man from lockup for further questioning.
His Senior Field Agent walked into the interrogation room first. "Hey, Kris."
"My father told me not to talk to anyone without him present," Kris stated. Apparently, the young man had no intentions of being any more cooperative than he had been the day prior during his little chat with DiNozzo.
He stormed into the room, slamming the case file down onto the interrogation table in front of the suspect. "Okay, then, just listen."
DiNozzo introduced him a tad smugly. "This is Special Agent Leroy Jethro Gibbs."
"We know you have a Class-M motorcycle license," Jethro stated as he leaned into the boy slightly. He had already settled on how he was going to play off this interrogation. Truth by Intimidation, as his Senior Field Agent liked to call it. "You got on your bike, you followed Petty Officer Boxer, and you shot him."
"I have a license," Kris replied, "but I don't have a bike."
He pointed to the photo. "That's not you?"
Kris leaned into the photo. "That's my roommate Alec's motorcycle."
He eyed the boy. "Is that him?"
The boy seemed uncertain. "It's his helmet and his jacket."
"Did he know you had the gun in your car?" DiNozzo asked.
"Yeah," Kris admitted.
DiNozzo moved to the door. "Picking up the roommate, Boss." Opening it, the younger agent stopped in his tracks. "Oh, hey, McGee."
"Hey," McGee said before turning to Jethro. "Uh, boss, you have a visitor."
Feeling fairly certain about who the visitor was, he closed the door to the interrogation room behind him and made his way up to the conference room.
Jethro's suspicions were quickly confirmed when he opened the door to the conference room to see his namesake sitting there.
Wanting to hear LJ's side of the story, Jethro closed the door and sat down across from the older man so that they could talk with a measure of privacy.
This time, LJ was more than willing to chat. "I don't dispute what your father told you, Jethro. I did know that your mother was going to take her own life, and I didn't... stop her." Jethro hadn't thought his father was lying but it was different hearing it from the other man's mouth. "She couldn't bear the thought of her husband and her young son seeing her go through months of debilitating agony. I saw so much suffering and death during the war. I understood. So, yes... I looked the other way."
"And my dad found out about it?" he asked.
"He suspected she told me," the older man replied, fidgeting with his hands slightly. "I didn't lie when he confronted me. We haven't spoken since."
"So why do you think he was upset?" he questioned. "Because you didn't stop her or... because she confided in you?"
"Probably both," LJ replied matter-of-factly. The man's expression softened. "You have to understand something. Your parents and I were very close. In high school... I was as much in love with her as your father."
He tilted his head slightly but didn't speak. He didn't want to interrupt.
LJ continued his train of thought unperturbed. "In that day, an interracial romance was out of the question in Stillwater and... most everywhere else." As always, LJ's being far too polite about the systematic racism of the time. We still have a long way to go, but things have definitely changed. "When I got back from the war, I had to watch my best friend marry the girl I loved."
"Did Dad know how you felt about Mom?" he asked.
"We never talked about it," his namesake stated. "But he knew." LJ's gaze fell down to the conference table. "Your mother and I maintained a special relationship till the day she died." LJ played with his face some, clearly still hurting from the situation. "With her gone... and him feeling the way he did about me... I packed up… left the store... and Stillwater... behind."
Wrapping up the conversation with his namesake, Jethro thought of a plan and pitched it to LJ who clearly wanted to mend fences with his father. With any luck, it would end up being just enough to get that friendship on the mend.
Jethro had a couple of more things that he had to do around the office before leaving, so did that, ordered his team some Chinese food for diner, and then left them to finish their back-check on Alec Dell. He wasn't in his dorm and the motorcycle was gone. All of which meant that they were now even more certain that Dell was their perp.
Pulling up to the house in Arlington just after 1830, Jethro and LJ both got out of their respective vehicles and made their way inside the house.
"Down here in the basement, Jethro!" His father called out. The older man had started calling him that more frequently lately. "Where'd you get the Shopsmith?"
After quiet introductions for both LJ and Shannon's sake, he and LJ made their way to the basement stairs as his old man was apparently down there doing something.
Jethro followed behind but let his namesake go down to the basement first.
His namesake, ever the Marine, swiftly took control of the discussion. "Jackson."
His gaze flickered between both elderly men. "Time to end the feud."
"Why?" his father demanded. "Nothing's changed."
LJ didn't miss a beat. "Well, I know one thing for certain. Ann wouldn't appreciate the way we've been behaving."
"All of us have one thing in common," he pointed out. "We all loved the same woman." He shot both men a look. "You're not getting any younger. Figure it out." He started to make his way back over to the stairs. "I'm gonna help Shannon with dinner."
From the top of the staircase, Jethro could still make out his father's latest dig against LJ. This time, though, there wasn't much bite. "My God, you've gotten old."
Closing the door to the basement, he headed to the kitchen to give his wife a hand.
Putting everything in her hands down on the counter for a moment, she turned to him. "You think those two can work it out, Babe?"
"They'll be fine," he replied confidently. "They're both stubborn but you can also see that they both missed each other." Jethro smirked. "Did you know, my dad never once took down the photo of him and LJ that's hanging up at the General Store?"
She tilted her head slightly. "Oh?"
He nodded. "Yeah. It's Dad and LJ in that large black and white photo taken in front of the store." He gave Shannon a peck on the cheek. "So, what are we making?"
"A Tuscan chicken pasta bake," she stated. "Making a salad and some roasted potatoes to go with it, if you wanted to get started on the potatoes."
"Sure," he said contentedly. "So, how was your day?"
The downside of working weekends was just how much less time he had to spend with his wife. Cooking wasn't Jethro's favourite past-time, but he would do it with a smile if it gave him a chance to see Shannon for more than a second.
Sometimes finding a balance between his work and home lives seemed impossible. He really couldn't see himself doing anything else, and yet it was an extremely demanding career. It was a juggling act and one that Jethro often felt he was failing at.
He had a lot of lost time accrued, so maybe he'd use that once this case was over.
