Chapter 17
Fornell gazed at the photograph that McGee had e-mailed to his phone. "You've got to be kidding," he muttered.
"What?" Sacks asked.
"Apparently, DiNutso was abducted by Larry Fleinhardt from NUMB3RS." He showed the phone to Sacks, who laughed. "What's so funny?" Fornell asked.
"DiNozzo is going to be humiliated if that's the guy who grabbed him," the younger agent said.
Fornell shook his head, a little irritated by this sign of the rivalry Sacks had conceived with DiNozzo during that insane investigation for murder. "If that's the guy who grabbed him, that's also the guy who killed Rimbauer, Alkire and Thornburg," he pointed out, and Sacks raised his eyebrows. "Don't underestimate a guy just because he's not huge."
Sacks shrugged. "Regardless, if I know DiNozzo, he's going to be embarrassed by getting caught by a little squirt."
Fornell rolled his eyes. If DiNozzo really felt that way, he was going to be disappointed in him. The next stop on their canvas was a little diner that looked like it had come straight out of the fifties, down to the mini-jukeboxes on each table. There was a line, so he idled briefly, looking around at the occupants. Most of them looked like locals. It wasn't like Waynesborough was on a big thoroughfare. That was one of the things that made the dump so odd. He had the computer weenies researching abandoned or recently sold properties in the area, and they'd spent much of the morning visiting the ones that had popped up first. So far, zip.
"Can I help you, boys?" asked the hostess, a woman in her fifties with short hair and a grandmotherly figure. Her name tag said Doris. "You don't look like you're here for dinner."
The scent from the kitchen wafted towards them and it smelled heavenly, in a greasy spoon sort of way.
"We might stop back," Fornell said, "but no, we're not here for dinner. I'm Special Agent Tobias Fornell of the FBI, and this is Agent Sacks."
"You here about that boy who got dumped at the hospital?" Doris asked, and Fornell nodded. "Wasn't that just the strangest thing?"
"What do you know about it?"
"Just the gossip that's gone around town." Fornell raised his eyebrows. "Some federal agent – not FBI, but no one seems to know what else – anyway, he got dumped off naked and half-dead from pneumonia in the emergency room by a woman who disappeared before anyone could get her name. You gotta admit, that's weird."
And Doris couldn't really know how weird. He was glad to note that the whole town didn't apparently already know about the dead man in the trunk of the car. "Yeah," he said with a shrug. "So, I've got some questions. I'd like to start with you, then I'll ask the other folks in here."
"Sure." Doris turned away from the desk. "Heather!" A waitress popped her head out of the kitchen. "Watch the front, would you? I gotta talk to these cops." Fornell could honestly have done without the broadcast announcement that they were 'cops,' but he didn't respond to it in any way as Doris led them to an empty booth. "Want some coffee?"
"Sure," Fornell said, and Sacks refused. Doris gestured towards Heather and then turned to Fornell expectantly. Fornell held out a photograph of Aaron Thornburg. "Have you ever seen this man before?"
"Can't say I have," Doris said. Fornell dropped a photo of Rimbauer in front of her. "Nope, not her either." Next was the composite of the woman they knew only as Sarah that McGee had located in a case connected to the gun used to kill Rimbauer and Alkire. They couldn't firmly connect her to this case, but it was worth a shot, especially when they had so damned little to go on. Doris snorted and gestured as Heather walked up with the coffee. "Heather looks a lot like this one, but I can assure you, she's never done nothing wrong."
Fornell looked up at the girl, and she did bear a superficial resemblance to the composite, but she had a very ordinary face. Pretty, but without any exceptional features. Fornell opened his phone and called up the photo. "I know this is –"
Heather was leaning over and pouring his coffee. "Hey, that's that guy from NUMB3RS and Dragonslayer, isn't it?" she said before he could finish speaking.
"It is, but –"
"That is so weird!" Heather said. Doris made a little shooing motion with her hand, and Heather started to move away. Fornell was about to dismiss her from his attention when he realized that there might be some significance to her reaction.
"Why is it weird?" he asked. Sacks looked up, his attention caught.
Heather turned back and shrugged. "I saw a guy who looks just like him a couple of days ago, when I was out jogging."
"Where was this?"
She shrugged, coming back to the table, the coffeepot held in a practiced hand. "A couple blocks from the hospital. Main, around Fifth or Sixth, I think." She tilted her head, eyes distant. "Sixth," she amended firmly. "He was out in front of Lively's Crafts."
"Doing what?"
"He sitting in the passenger seat of a car. I was out jogging, and it was after ten, but I was headed south on Main and the car was facing north."
"Have you been jogging at night again?" Doris demanded.
"Yeah, Doris, it's not like this is LA, jogging at night here is safe as houses."
"Can you talk to this girl?" Doris exclaimed. "She moved here from California last year with her dad, and she seems to think nothing bad can happen in a town like this one."
Fornell blinked. "Heather, when did you see him?" he asked. "What day?"
She considered it for a moment. "It must have been . . . yeah, Wednesday night."
Fornell took a deep breath. "The night a man was left in the emergency room of your hospital here?"
"Yeah," she said, shrugging.
"Can you describe the car?"
"It was dark. I don't know. Four doors, dark, not cool. Much more than that, I'm really not sure."
"If it was dark, how can you be sure who you saw in the car?" Sacks asked, his tone revealing his irritation at her less than useful answers.
She shrugged again. "Somebody drove by from behind me. Their headlights shined right in."
"Do you know who that was?" Fornell asked on the off chance that whoever had driven by had noticed more detail about the car.
"Sure, it was Louie. He's always out late."
"Louis Freeburg," Doris supplied. "He works the evening shift at the hospital, so it was probably after ten thirty."
"Thank you," Fornell said. "How did he seem?"
"Like he was waiting for someone. I don't know. He didn't look at me."
"That's probably a good thing," Fornell replied.
"Why?"
"If he's the man I think he is, he's wanted for murder."
"Cool," Heather said. Doris glowered at her. Rolling his eyes, Fornell continued the interview, but the girl didn't know anything else of use.
McGee sat uncomfortably by Tony's bedside. He didn't particularly like hospitals, and he found Tony's condition disturbing enough from outside the window that being in the room with him was distressing in the extreme. A man as full throttle as Tony usually was shouldn't be lying pallid in a hospital bed, hooked up to half a dozen monitors and nearly as many IV bags, sleeping at five past ten in the morning.
He'd been called in by Gibbs when he, Dr. Pitt and Mr. DiNozzo had left the room to have their argument where Tony couldn't hear them. He thought they were trying to decide who should ride in the ambulance with Tony, a matter McGee didn't think needed discussion. Which man appeared at Tony's bedside after his bout with the plague? McGee knew his parents wouldn't have been able to stay away, even if ordered to. The fact that he'd heard Kate informing Tony's father and yet the man had never shown up at any point was mind-boggling to McGee.
The man in the bed muttered something unintelligible. McGee wasn't sure if he should respond or ignore it. It sounded like Tony was talking in his sleep. Surely that wasn't something he needed to . . .
"Gibbs!" Tony said, his eyes opening.
"It's me, Tony," McGee said, sitting forward, but he didn't get the impression that Tony saw him.
"Gibbs?" Tony's voice was hoarse but clearly understandable. McGee reached over and waved his hand in front of Tony's face, but the other man's eyes didn't track. In fact, he started looking around, his eyes open but not seeing anything. "Gibbs?" He'd begun to sound desperate.
McGee stood up and went to the door. The doorway to this room was recessed slightly from the main hall. Leaning around the corner to where Gibbs, DiNozzo and Dr. Pitt stood talking, he said, "He's asking for Gibbs, and I think –"
Gibbs pushed past him into the room, and McGee, relieved to be off bed watch, closed the door behind him. Mr. DiNozzo started to go past him, but Dr. Pitt held him back. "Sir, yesterday you asked me how well I really knew your son," he said in a low voice.
"Yeah?" DiNozzo senior asked, turning back. They were now blocking the exit to the recessed doorway. McGee considered fleeing, but with them blocking the other end of the small entryway, the only direction he really had was back into the room. Opening the door at this moment struck him as a bad idea. DiNozzo senior raised his chin. "What of it?"
Dr. Pitt shrugged. Keeping his voice low, he said, "I may not be aware of how anxiety and medication affect his loquacity, but I do know one thing." DiNozzo senior raised an eyebrow. "Agent Gibbs visited Tony every day while I had him confined to the hospital. I never met you until the helicopter ride over here."
DiNozzo senior bridled slightly. "I resent the implication," he snapped. "My relationship to my son is none of your concern."
"Maybe not," Dr. Pitt said. "But my patient's health is, and I genuinely believe that Agent Gibbs is partially responsible for Tony's survival after his bout with the plague." McGee blinked. He wasn't sure where this was coming from.
Tony's father glowered at the doctor. "Oh, and how is that?"
"Corny as it sounds, he was there, and he believed in him," Dr. Pitt replied. "Survival rate for that version of the plague is fifteen percent without antibiotic intervention. Those aren't great odds, Mr. DiNozzo. I honestly wasn't sure he'd make it."
Mr. DiNozzo had the stone mask down almost as well as Tony did, but McGee was beginning to see a few cracks. "I believe my son will recover," he said, his tone unsteady. "Agent Gibbs is merely his boss."
Dr. Pitt pursed his lips. "As a doctor, I've seen a lot of how people's relationships affect their health," he said. "Boss or not, Agent Gibbs has a profound effect on your son."
"In what way?"
Dr. Pitt almost snorted. "He ordered him to live. He handed him a cell phone, leaned down and ordered him to live. I'll tell you, we couldn't get him to give up that cell phone. He hung onto it like it was a talisman of good health throughout his recovery."
"I remember that moment." Ducky's voice made them all jump slightly. He'd walked up silently and evidently overheard the conversation, and since he must just have arrived back from DC, his presence was startling. "The rest of us who were there had largely given up," Ducky went on. "Timothy was back at the office, I believe, with Abigail," he added, nodding towards McGee. "I was there in the isolation ward with Caitlin, and she was weeping on my shoulder because Anthony was dying." That was an image McGee found surprising, though he probably shouldn't. "Gibbs simply strode past us, refusing to consider the possibility." Ducky sighed. "It's ironic, really."
"What's ironic?" DiNozzo senior asked, and McGee bit his lip. He knew exactly what Ducky meant, and those events hadn't been so long ago that he'd had time to build up calluses.
"Caitlin mourning for Anthony," Ducky replied. "After all, within a month it was she who had died."
Mr. DiNozzo blinked at him. "Of the plague?" he asked dryly.
"No, she was shot," Ducky said flatly.
The monosyllables hit like marbles on a hardwood floor, bringing silence for a moment. "I . . ." started Mr. DiNozzo, looking uncomfortable. "Joyce said he stopped talking about her at all, but I'm quite certain he never told her that she was dead. We assumed she'd just been reassigned."
McGee blinked. How very like Tony to just never bring it up. "He was there," he said, and then he couldn't believe he'd spoken when everyone turned to look at him. "He and Gibbs were both . . . she was standing in between them when it happened. Tony had . . ." He gestured at his face and then managed to force himself to stop talking. What had it been, six months at most? Seven? The rain had washed the blood off Tony's face while they had searched for Ari's brass.
Gibbs settled Tony down and sat beside him. Several times he'd had moments like this, where he'd needed to be reassured, and it seldom failed to recur a few moments later. For the first time since they'd arrived here, apart from occasional bathroom breaks, he was alone in the room with Tony. He wasn't sure why Mr. DiNozzo hadn't followed him in. He'd never failed to before. Regardless, Gibbs wasn't arguing.
Sure enough, within a very few moments, Tony started fretting again. Gibbs quieted him, uncertain why a few words from him could silence whatever dreams were disturbing the younger man's rest, but glad that something could. When Tony had been calm for several minutes, Gibbs rose and went back to the door. Upon opening it, he found four men in very close quarters. They'd clearly been having some sort of intense conversation. "McGee?" he said, and gestured with his head. McGee nodded and slipped past him, appearing flustered and grateful to escape.
Gibbs stepped outside and shut the door. Disregarding Dr. Pitt and Mr. DiNozzo for the moment, he said, "Ducky, I didn't expect you back."
Ducky shrugged. "I didn't get the message that you would be returning today until I was more than halfway here, Jethro. It seemed foolish to turn back at that point." Gibbs nodded and tried to marshal his arguments for Mr. DiNozzo again.
Before he could gather his words, Tony's father said, "I believe the helicopter Joyce chartered will hold five. With Joyce and me, that will leave three seats. Dr. Pitt?"
"I'll be glad to accept a lift," Dr. Pitt said with a nod. "Unless someone has questions, I'd like to go check the preparations." When no one moved to ask him to stay, he left.
Gibbs wasn't sure he'd heard right. "You're going in the helicopter?" he asked DiNozzo.
Tony's father shrugged. "It will undoubtedly be a more comfortable ride. Let me know if there's anyone else you'd like to send back with us." He glanced down the hallway. "I think I'll join Joyce and Officer David in the cafeteria."
Gibbs nodded wordlessly, and DiNozzo walked down the hall and out of sight around a corner. "What just happened?" Gibbs asked.
"I'm sure you don't want to know, Jethro," Ducky said with a small smile. "Suffice it to say, wind was taken out of sails."
Gibbs decided to take Ducky at his word and not ask further. "You want to take a look at him since you're here?"
"Certainly, Jethro," Ducky said.