McGee stuck his head into Tony's room to find the other agent sitting in a wheelchair, picking forlornly at some eggs on a wheeled tray in front of him.
"Hey, Tony, " he said, entering the room, "I brought you a breakfast burrito."
A grin lit up Tony's face. "Probie!" he said happily, "you're a life saver!" He accepted the burrito eagerly, closing his eyes and sniffing. "Manna from heaven," he said reverently.
McGee unwrapped his own breakfast and sat down to eat with Tony.
"When's your PT?" he asked.
"In about an hour," Tony replied between bites. "They'll come get me and wheel me down to the torture chamber where I'll be stretched and prodded and made completely miserable."
"But you're getting stronger, right?"
Tony nodded. "Things are going smoothly, not as fast as I'd like, but I'm regaining movement and strength in my arm."
"What about your legs?"
"That's where the 'not as fast as I'd like' part comes in," Tony replied. "I can't support myself well enough with just my right arm to do any walking, so we're doing stretching and flexing exercises in the meantime. I lost muscle tone while I had those damn casts on."
"It's only been a few weeks, Tony," McGee said sympathetically. "I know it feels like forever. Believe me, your presence is sorely missed. Gibbs has gone back to his pre-coma personality. I never realized how much we depend on your sense of humor."
"Aw, you miss me, Probie?" Tony said, grinning.
"Sure," McGee replied, "you take most of the heat from Gibbs."
"The case is getting to him." Tony nodded knowingly.
"It's getting to all of us. It's frustrating – we know Friberg's guilty, we just can't prove it."
Tony picked up his coffee mug and sat back. "What have you gotten since I was impaled?"
"I'm not supposed to discuss the case with you, Tony; Gibbs'll kill me," McGee protested.
"Oh, come on, McGee, I won't tell him. I'm dying of boredom here, let me help," Tony pleaded.
"Well, maybe you'll see something we can't, you've been away from it for a while," McGee said thoughtfully.
"That's right," Tony agreed, "a pair of fresh eyes."
McGee hesitated then dove right in. "Okay, we believe Friberg's responsible for more than the three recent murders the FBI have. We've done some digging and come up with two more unsolved murders with similar MO's. Those were committed two years ago, in areas near where Friberg was stationed. Just like the ones we already have, no one saw a connection between the murders, so they were handled by local LEOs as isolated cases. The victims were all young women, but that's their only similarity; they had different jobs, different economic status. One victim was a nurse, another a housewife, and one was a secretary, but she was also hooking on the side."
Tony shook his head. "No one pays their administrative help enough."
"We only have circumstantial evidence," McGee continued. "We can't positively link Friberg to any of the cases, and he knows it."
"Did Gibbs interrogate him?"
McGee nodded. "Yeah, but the guy's as tough as he is. It's turning into a contest of wills."
"Gibbs is tougher," Tony said confidently, "and smarter. He just needs that one piece of information that'll trip Friberg up."
"Yeah, but what is it?"
"That's what you've got to find, Probie," Tony said. "You have to think outside the box, try to get into Friberg's head."
"That's what Ducky does," McGee argued.
Tony shook his head. "We all do it; all good investigators should be able to anticipate the next step the perp will take based on what we know about him. Gibbs can't do all the thinking on this. Well, he can, but you should be helping him, you should be another pair of eyes and ears, another brain, not just a lackey who does what he tells you to do. Were there any other unsolved murders in the areas he lived before he was in the Marines?"
"No murders of young women using the same MO prior to the last two victims we uncovered," McGee replied.
"What about teenage girls?" Tony asked. "Maybe he started killing a long time ago and picked female victims close to his own age."
"I never thought of that," McGee said, looking thoughtful.
"And maybe he made a mistake on one of his early kills that you can catch him on," Tony said.
"Wow, Tony, I'm impressed," McGee said, "I guess we really do need you."
"I haven't been as involved in the case as you guys have," Tony said. "I'm looking at it from a different perspective."
McGee shook his head. "Something tells me you would have come up with that anyway." He stood up to leave. "I better go, Gibbs'll be looking for me."
McGee paused, then asked, "Tony, was the accident Ziva's fault?"
Tony shook his head, "No," he said, "Even though her past history would make it seem the likely cause. The truck in front of us slammed its brakes on suddenly, she did the best she could to avoid it. The results would have been the same if I were driving, except Ziva might be dead, she's smaller than I am."
McGee nodded, "She said the accident wasn't her fault, and I believed her. It's just that..."
"You've experienced her driving," Tony finished. "Yeah, I'd think the same thing if I weren't there. I managed to get hold of the police reports. Some guy in front of truck was trying to make a call on his cell phone and lost control of his car. That set up the whole chain reaction. You might want to let Ziva know that you know what happened."
"I will."
"Thanks for breakfast, Probie," Tony said.
"Thanks for the advice, Tony," McGee said sincerely. "I'll get right on it. Good luck with PT."
"Tell everyone I need visitors before I go stir crazy," Tony called out as McGee went down the hall.
"Will do."
oOoOoOo
No one was in the squad room when McGee arrived at work. He found Ziva down in Abby's lab.
"Where's Gibbs?"
"He and Fornell are meeting with the Director in her office," replied Ziva. "Where have you been?"
"I brought Tony some breakfast."
Abby grinned. "Something greasy?"
McGee nodded. "He was practically swooning."
"How's he doing?" asked Ziva.
"He looks good," McGee replied. "Well, better at least. He says his arm's getting stronger but he hasn't been able to do as much as he'd like to get his legs in shape."
Abby chuckled. "That's our Tony, he's like an impatient little kid. He was almost killed six weeks ago and he wants to be up and running around already. Remember when he had the plague?" she said. "He was back a week early, even after Gibbs told him to take the extra time. Lucky for us he didn't, or you and Kate would have been blown up. He gave Kate an extra day..." She paused, looking over at Ziva uncomfortably. "Sorry, Ziva," she said apologetically.
"Don't apologize," Ziva said. "You lost a good friend, I understand."
McGee broke the awkward silence. "Um, Ziva, Tony found out that the driver in front of the truck caused the accident."
Ziva looked surprised, "How did he find out, he's supposed to be concentrating on getting well?"
McGee looked puzzled, "You know, I have no idea. He said he got the police reports, but he didn't say how. I just wanted to say that I really did believe it wasn't your fault, and there's definite proof of that now. I bet Gibbs already knows that."
"Thank you, McGee," Ziva said, patting McGee's cheek.
McGee cleared his throat, "Anyway, I have an angle we can investigate – maybe we'll get lucky."
oOoOoOo
Gibbs and Fornell walked into the lab to find the remaining NCIS agents crowded around a computer screen with Abby.
"There had better be a good reason why my team is looking at old newspaper articles," he growled.
"Gibbs!" exclaimed Abby. "McGee had this great idea about looking for unsolved murders in the areas where Friberg lived as a child and we came up with six possible hits going back as far as twenty years."
"That would make him thirteen years old," Fornell said. "You think he started that early?"
McGee nodded. "It looks like it. Twenty years ago a classmate of his disappeared. Her body was discovered two weeks later in a gully outside of town. She was strangled the same way the other victims were."
"Five murders occurred either near where his family lived or where they vacationed," Ziva reported. "The other five girls were murdered the same way and were close in age to Friberg at the time of their deaths."
"We're sending for forensics evidence from as many cases as we can get, Boss," McGee said. "We're hoping he wasn't as good at hiding his tracks back then."
"That's good work, Tim. We might just catch a break," Gibbs said approvingly.
McGee blushed. "Um, actually, it wasn't me, Boss," he said, embarrassed. "Tony suggested we dig further and check Friberg's old haunts."
Gibbs glared at McGee. "You discussed the case with Tony?"
"I know you said not to," McGee said apologetically, "but he was bored and desperate for information. He's hard to say no to, sometimes."
"I say 'no' all the time," Ziva said, smiling.
"Does he really ask?" Abby said, arching an eyebrow. "Or is he just doing his usual flirting?"
"Flirting can be the same as asking," Ziva replied.
"Not with Tony," Abby shook her head. "He'll flirt with everything in a skirt, but he doesn't sleep with everyone he flirts with."
"What about kilts?" McGee asked.
"What?" Ziva looked at him, confused.
"A kilt is a skirt," McGee said reasonably, "but it's worn by men. Abby said Tony flirts with anything in a skirt, does that include men?"
"Tony's never shown a predilection for his own gender," Abby said thoughtfully, "but he can get pretty crazy..."
"Enough," Gibbs roared, causing the three agents to jump. "Just keep working on those earlier cases. You," he pointed at McGee, "stop distracting Tony from his physical therapy."
"Yes, Boss," McGee said contritely.
Gibbs and Fornell left the lab. "Do they always go off on tangents like that?" asked Fornell.
"That was nothing," Gibbs said as they entered the elevator. "You should hear Abby when she's had a few more Caf-Pows."
"That was smart thinking on DiNotzo's part," Fornell said, his voice showing his respect.
"He's one of the best," Gibbs said. "We could really use him on this case."
"But you told your people not to discuss the case with him."
Gibbs nodded. "He needs to concentrate on getting back on his feet," he said. "He's got a habit of ignoring his health during a case."
"Sounds like he takes a page from your book," Fornell observed wryly.
Gibbs chuckled. "He'd do that anyway. I need him back at work, fully recovered, as soon as possible."
"You trust him," Fornell stated.
"With my life," Gibbs confirmed.
"He'd walk through fire for you, Jethro," Fornell said. "It must be nice to have someone like that at your back."
"Yeah, he's a good man to have on your side," Gibbs agreed. "What about Sacks?"
Fornell snorted. "He's good, but he's not really 'my guy,' not like your agents are 'your people'. You've got a good team, Jethro, you're lucky."
"Luck has nothing to do with it," Gibbs replied. "The people on my team are there because they're the best. A lot of people have worked for me, but if they're not good at what they do, they don't last long. It's taken me awhile to assemble this team."
"What about David?" Fornell asked. "She was forced onto you."
"She's worked out," Gibbs said.
"That was luck," Fornell observed.
Gibbs laughed. "Okay, that was luck, but she's earned her place on the team. She's becoming a good investigator and she's excellent in a firefight. She keeps DiNozzo on his toes."
Fornell laughed. "Do you have a fraternization problem?"
"Nah," Gibbs said. "They're too much alike. They learn from each other, in between the teasing and flirting. There's some healthy competition there, it's good for both of them."
The two had arrived back at the squad room to find Agent Sacks waiting for them. Sacks and another agent had been assigned to follow Staff Sergeant Friberg around.
"What's going on with Friberg?" Fornell asked.
"The guy's an arrogant S.O.B," Sacks replied. "He goes to McMurphy's every chance he gets, flirts with every waitress and young customer he can, and sends the agents watching him beers."
"Why is he seeing the agents watching him?" Gibbs asked.
"I don't know," Sacks replied. "He just seems to spot them, but if he doesn't spot them, he still keeps doing what he's doing."
"Keep up the pressure," Fornell said. "He'll make a mistake sooner or later."
"Just try to keep out of sight," Gibbs added.
As Sacks left the squad room, Gibbs turned to Fornell and said, "If Tony weren't laid up, and hadn't been with me when we first questioned Friberg, I'd have him on surveillance and I guarantee you he'd never be spotted."