Chapter 3
When McGee walked into the bullpen after leaving Abby's lab, Tony and Josh were there with Dwayne, but there was no sign of Gibbs.
"Boss go for coffee?" he asked.
Tony shrugged, but in a rare moment, didn't comment.
"He walked back after he came down from Vance's office, but didn't stop," Dwayne said.
"Jimmy and Abby had an idea," McGee said. He motioned for Dwayne and Josh to join him over by Tony's desk.
"They have lots of ideas, McGiggles," Tony said. "Most of them aren't fit for delicate ears."
"But fine for yours, of course," McGee retorted, unable to resist a snicker. He lowered his voice. "No, this is about the cold case competition."
"Why are we whispering?" Tony asked.
"Because Jenkins is not happy that I'm over here. He's not crazy about Vance's competition, either," Dwayne said.
"Yeah, I've been wondering about that," Tony said. "What's with that?"
"Go ask him and see if he tells you," McGee said.
"Yes, because I have a death wish," Tony said. "So, what don't we want Jenkins to hear?"
"More like what we don't want Krone to hear," McGee said. "Abby and Jimmy had a really good thought about the competition." He outlined Abby's grouping of the cases in different categories. "We didn't solve Petty Officer Curtin's case until the cell phone records turned up."
"They never looked deeply enough the first time to find those," Tony said. "Remember Voss. Pacci followed the money, but it took Ducky and Abby catching the faked lab test to solve that one."
"Right, and what about that mummy case you guys caught a few weeks before the first time I met you guys," McGee said. "That was a sloppy investigation from everything Abby told me."
"Abby told you-" Tony cut himself off. "Right, curse of the mummy. Of course she told you."
"A curse?" Josh asked.
"Don't ask me," Dwayne replied. "They lost me at the petty officer and the cell phone records."
"Campfire!" Tony said, moving his chair so they could sit in a circle. "McGee, you're saying we should look for cases we're each uniquely suited to solve, based on whatever reasons they went cold in the first place."
"And if we see one that somebody else on the team might be able to crack, pass it off to them," McGee said.
"What does that mean?" Dwayne asked. "I mean, I know what kind of cases McGee, Abby and Jimmy are good at. But I'm just a regular agent."
"You were a Marine," Tony said. "NCIS is civilian. You might see something we would miss because of your experience."
"Like the Quantico bank robbery," Dwayne said.
"What about me?" Josh asked. "What should I be doing? Usually I shadow one of you, but I can't really do that if Vance says this has to be solo."
McGee saw Tony's eyes slowly unfocus and gave his husband a minute to see what the weird connections in his brain would spit out. Sure enough after about 30 seconds, Tony grinned and motioned for them to lean in closer.
"Look, we think Vance has an ulterior motive," he said.
"Doesn't he always?" McGee said.
"Don't be so McCynical, Tim," Tony replied. "Josh, remember the analysis thingys you were doing back when we were chasing the cartel?"
"Vectors and networks, yeah," Josh said.
"Get McGee to show you how to pull information on casefiles, and do that for those," Tony said. "Look for patterns."
McGee almost headslapped himself for not thinking of it. "Of course. The metadata has information on investigating agents, types of crimes, who's opened the files, all the types of things that might tell us if there's something about the cold cases overall that Vance is interested in."
Josh hesitated. "I can't get in trouble for this, can I?"
"No," Tony and McGee said at the same time as Dwayne said "Yes?"
"Josh, don't worry," McGee said. "You're covered under my get-out-of-jail-free card."
"It's the jail part of that I'm worried about," Josh said.
Tony waved a hand at the intern. "Vance and Gibbs have this wink-wink, nudge-nudge thing. We get results and what Vance doesn't officially know about him doesn't hurt him or us."
"Come on," McGee said. "Before Gibbs walks in and says 'Grab your gear.'" He looked around. "Weird. He usually walks just in time to actually say that."
After showing Josh how to access casefile metadata, McGee remembered Ziva's request earlier and texted Damon to see when he was free to meet them.
~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~
Normally Damon hated the days he was plowing through paperwork instead of meeting with returning troops who needed the Wounded Warriors' help, but today the paperwork was a good distraction from worrying about Ziva.
He'd never really gone to sleep after she went upstairs early this morning, but he hadn't wanted to make her uncomfortable either, so he'd stayed in his room until he heard her leave.
He checked the clock. Quarter past ten, and still no word. She could still be trying to get approval. The stacks of paperwork on his desk were evidence of how hard that could be.
The chirp of his phone interrupted his thoughts. Damon looked down to see a text … from McGee?
Z asked us to get whole story from you. Coffee after work?
Coffee? This conversation needed more than that. Damon replied Your place? I'll bring beer.
I am not telling Tony you think this conversation needs beer arrived almost immediately, followed by Cold cases today, at least so far. 6:30?
Once the arrangements were set, Damon gladly turned back to his paperwork. Anything to delay figuring out how exactly to tell Tony and McGee what Ziva had told him when it hurt just remembering the look on her face as she told him everything that happened in Somalia.
At least it would be an excuse to delay going home to the house he was sharing with Ziva and Sarah. Maybe by then, Ziva would be asleep, or at least upstairs. Sarah almost certainly would be, even if it was on the couch because she drifted off watching TV.
Oh, shit. Sarah would be there. That was… Damon cursed. After last night, knowing everything, that was going to be a problem. Ziva wouldn't say anything, not after everything Sarah had gone through to this point, but their Island of Traumatized Toys now seemed less like a good solution to Gibbs' Mexico problem and more like a recipe for disaster.
For now, one thing at a time. Figure out how to tell Tony and McGee, then worry about where everybody would live.
~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~
"Dwayne, with me," Tony said, heading for the back elevator.
"Evidence locker?" Dwayne asked as the doors closed.
"Abby's lab."
"Because she and Jimmy might have some cases already for us?" Dwayne asked.
Tony smiled. Good, the kid was getting it. "Our Mistress of the Dark probably already has them sorted into mail bins." He looked at Dwayne. "So, why aren't we going to the evidence locker?"
Dwayne was silent for a few seconds. "Because Abby might already have cases we can start on?"
"And?" Tony hoped the training from the kid's first stint on Team Gibbs had held.
"Because if we think there's a bigger something, we don't want to start pulling cases and show our hand too early, maybe tip somebody off."
"Precisely," Tony said. "Not that we could tip them off since we don't know what the director's fishing for, but I also don't want us to be chum if we pull the wrong case."
They got off the elevator as Dwayne said, "Pulling the wrong case implies there's a right case to pull."
"Days like today, it feels more like strings are getting pulled, and I'd like to make sure they're not ours." Tony snagged Abby's remote from the top of the file cabinet and lowered the music volume, and the forensic scientist spun around to face them.
"Abbs, McGee filled us in."
"On what?" she said. "I've got like nine different tests running on various kinds of evidence, but I haven't gotten a single—" She broke off.
"What is it?" Dwayne asked.
"I don't hear a ding," Tony replied.
"Yes, and that's weird," Abby said. "Usually you guys come in here right as my babies ding."
"Even on cold cases?" Dwayne said.
"Well, no," Abby frowned. "So, why are you here?"
"Cold cases," Tony said, and managed not to flinch when she punched him in the shoulder. "Hey!"
"Why are you here?"
"Well, it was to see if you had ID'd any cold cases we might want to look at, but that was before you got mad," Tony said. "Abby, what's wrong?"
"Ziva's on leave, we have cold cases that Leon wants us to make hot ones, and Gibbs still hasn't brought me a Caf-Pow, which only happens on days things go really, really wrong," Abby said. "What aren't you telling me?"
Tony stood in front of Abby and put his hands on her shoulders. "Abby, nothing's wrong. Well, nothing that we didn't know about before today." He looked her in the eye and waited for her to nod. "Gibbs and Jenkins got called to the principal's office and then Gibbs left, probably to get his coffee and your-"
"Gibbs!" Abby pulled away.
Sure enough, the Boss was walking in, Caf-Pow in one hand, coffee in the other.
"We're just down here checking on cold cases, Boss," Tony said. "Unless we have a hot one?" When Gibbs didn't reply, Tony nodded. "No hot cases. Back to the bullpen to work on cold ones then." He headed for the door, Dwayne on his heels.
Once they were in the elevator, Dwayne asked, "So what was the point of that trip? We still don't have any cases from Abby."
"Then let's see if Josh and McGeek have something," Tony said.
As they walked in the bullpen, McGee looked up. "Abby just emailed us a bunch of files, organized the way we talked about," he said.
"Then let's start looking," Tony said.
He dropped into his chair and logged on to his email. Nine new emails. No, ten. The newest one was a master list of the cases. Four for McGee, three for him, two for Dwayne, plus another eight Abby had tagged for either her, Jimmy or Ducky to look at.
"Gibbs is in the lab," Tony said. "Let's see if we can find something before he shows up wanting to know why we're goofing off."
"Speak for yourself," Tim said. "I'm already running searches."
"OK, McBrownnoser," Tony replied.
An IM window popped up.
Elflord: Damon's coming over at 6:30 to fill us in. Ziva said he could tell us, she didn't want to go through it again.
MovieBuff: Fantastic
Elflord: It's not his fault.
MovieBuff: It's not yours, either.
Elflord: Ziva already said that.
MovieBuff: We both know whose fault it is.
Elflord: You are not going to Israel again.
MovieBuff: Doesn't mean I can't think about it.
Elflord: Focus. On the case. Cases. How many cases?
MovieBuff: Now who needs to focus? Cases first, then Damon. Then we figure out how to fix this.
Tony decided to take his own advice and waded into the cases files Abby had sent them. One embezzlement at Dam Neck, money never recovered. Serial robberies in the base housing at Norfolk, four suspects, none with solid alibis, but also no evidence. Three deaths, all suspicious, one suspect, but the case agent had never gotten either enough evidence or a confession and so never charged the sailor.
Murder was always more fun than robbery. Tony started reading through the evidence logs, looking for something the case agents might have missed.
"Tony, if you don't stop with the pencil, it's going to be a race to see who takes it and breaks it first."
Tony looked up to see McCranky scowling at him. "What?"
"You're tapping your pencil and I don't care, but Gibbs just glared at you and left, so if you value your life-"
Tony cut off McGee. "Or the life of my pencil, yes, I'll stop."
"Thank you," Dwayne said. "If Gibbs glared any harder he would have vaporized you."
Tony scoffed. "That's not his superpower. Sure, he'll terrorize a dirtbag with that flinty stare, but he can't actually hurt you by looking at you." Tony stopped. "You're right behind me, aren't you, Boss?"
"Looking at you," Gibbs said. He walked back into the bullpen. "So, what have we got?"
"Possible multiple murderer," Tony said, sending his screen to the plasma. "Three dead, all female dependents, all in their late teens. Initial rulings were suicide, but Pacci flagged them because they all had a connection to the same sailor, Seaman Richard Dawes. He ran down some leads, but then he got the call about Amanda Reeve buying the Voss townhouse."
McGee started tapping on his computer. "Dawes is still in the Navy, a petty officer stationed in Anacostia. Clean record."
"Maybe he's just never been caught," Tony said.
"I thought I was clear," Vance interrupted from his position on the landing behind the bullpen. "If you're bringing the rest of your team in on a cold case, I need to be notified."
"You're notified," Gibbs said. "DiNozzo-"
"Look at Dawes' record before the Navy, find friends and family, see if there were any other cases before he joined." Tony sat and picked up the phone.
"McGee-"
"Run a search for similar cases in all the areas around Dawes' different postings during the time he was there, see if there are other cases out there we can link to him." McGee started typing hard enough Tony could practically feel it.
"Wilson, with me," Gibbs said. "Cooper-"
"Boss, I've got Josh working on something already," McGee said.
"Cooper, stay," Gibbs said.
~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~
After both team leaders left his office, Vance put David's paperwork through, and flagged it as a high priority. Wilson was coming along as an agent, but his skill set mirrored DiNozzo's. That was his justification if anybody asked. The MCRT needed David back on the team for the good of the agency.
Vance looked to his roster of agents to see who he could pull into headquarters long term. Between David's leave and Jenkins' upcoming retirement, he needed another experienced agent, somebody who could fill in for now and be induced to stay after all the changes he expected in the next few months.
Vance started looking down the list of Agent Afloat postings. One name jumped out, but he knew that wasn't going to be an easy sell. Burley didn't have any interest in headquarters.
San Diego? Seattle? No, Hetty had already culled the best West Coast agents for OSP, and backfilling that gap was just bearing fruit.
Europe? If he needed a team leader, he could make changes in Rota, but that wasn't what he needed. Yet.
Midwest? There was that one agent out of Chicago, but something about her... No, more seasoning, maybe on one of the regional teams.
South? No, most of those agents were there by choice and would resist orders to headquarters.
Burley was the best choice, but he'd already pushed back the last time he'd been in town for McGee's training course.
Vance set the problem aside and focused on the case files that needed approval before being sent on to JAG.
Still, Burley's name kept returning to the forefront. Maybe he needed to think about this differently. What would it take to get Burley to agree to six months in DC?
That puzzle kept him occupied until a text message broke his concentration. Vance looked at it, just three words, and made his choice. Definitely Burley. Willingly if possible, under order if that was the only way. He needed agents he could depend on to keep the ship on course amid rocky seas.