Joint Investigations
Chapter 4: Home – 0, Guests – 2
Four hours and countless cups of coffee and Caf-Pow later the only conclusion the three could come to was that Airman Randall had been murdered by the librarian he failed to return a book to his junior year of high school.
Besides that minor blemish his records were squeaky clean. He had grown up in a low income family, enlisted into the Air Force right out of high school, and graduated from his Tech school at the top of his class. The twenty year old had never even gotten a parking ticket.
They were about to call it quits for the night when Tim's phone rang. Within seconds of hanging up he had said a hurried good bye to Abby and drug Tasha into the elevator.
"Tim what is going on?" she demanded as she straightened her uniform.
"That was Gibbs, he says there's been another murder." He explained as the elevator chimed to alter them they had reached their floor. "It was almost identical to the last one."
"The victim's name is Navy Lt. Dale Williams." Gibbs explained as his team assembled. "I want all of you to do a full check on this guy and compare it to Airman Randall. I want to know why they hell someone is killing these men!"
Two pages into Lieutenant Williams' service record Tasha found a connection
"Sea-Bat"
"What?" Gibbs asked looking at the Lieutenant like she had lost her mind.
"It was a low profile high security Navy sonar project and it's the common dominator between A1C Randall and Lt. Williams." She answered. "Its case name for the project was Sea-Bat."
"I get it! That's clever." laughed Tony until a look from Gibbs sobered him up.
"Good work Lt." Gibbs praised " McGee pull up a list of all personnel involved with this project on the plasma now."
"On it." He replied and less than thirty seconds later the names and faces of the listed personnel appeared on the screen.
"Eliminate the victims." The team leader ordered.
"That leaves us with four people." Tim reported. "The Navy was playing this one close and keeping the personnel numbers to a minimum, in their reports at least."
"Then how did the flyboy get in on the fun?" Tony questioned.
"The file says he was involved in adapting the technology to allow planes to detect subs."
"Who are the four remaining people and their locations?"
"Capt. Hughes was the commander; he was killed last month by an IED in Afghanistan." Tim said as he removed the man from the list. "Ensign Grafton was an engineer has since been transferred to Pearl Harbor."
"Shall I call and have him taken into protective custody?" Ziva suggested.
"Yeah and tell them not to let him out of their sight tell we catch whoever is doing this."
"The last two were Petty Officer 1st Class Wayne who works on base and 1st Lt.- "
Tim stopped reading and three head snapped I the direction of the blonde woman who looked equally as shocked.
"Why didn't you tell me you were involved with this project?" demanded a pissed off looking Agent Gibbs.
"I didn't know." Defended the Lieutenant, eyes still wide with shock.
"What do you mean you didn't know?" the Agent growled his voice rising in volume.
"Look agent Gibbs, I work for the military." She said fiercely. "Most of the time I get assignments to protect someone or something that I know nothing about. I just follow orders."
This seemed to convince Gibbs.
"Until we put whoever is doing this away you're under NCIS protective custody."
"This is unnecessary I can –"
"Protect yourself?" he questioned. "Are you bullet-proof? I'm not letting this wacko kill anyone else under my jurisdiction."
This time there were no protests.
"Tony and Ziva I want you to track down that Petty Officer. McGee you're taking care of Lt. Kelly. I want you to take her to get what she needs and then go to your apartment and stay there till I say otherwise."
"I wouldn't make yourself too memorable with McGeek there Natasha." Tony suggested as he stood to leave. "Or you just might end up in his next novel."
She looked at Tim who sigh and gave her a silent promise or a later explanation.
Good? Bad? Ugly? Let me know what you know what you think! I go back to school tomorrow so my updates way be spaced a bit more.
Thanks for reading!
*~*Semper*~*
