Chapter 1

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Tim puts himself between Sheila and the body, not letting her get too close

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Tim sat on the grass of the riverbank and watched as Ducky and Jimmy carefully looked over the body, which now rested nearby. That pristine white of the sailor's wet crackerjack uniform had quickly picked up trace sand and dust from its new surroundings. It seemed like an affront to its dignity.

Watching was about all that any of them could do without their field equipment. Ziva and Tony had already snapped dozens of pictures with their cell phones, but until the pair of agents that Gibbs had summoned arrived from DC, driving the MCRT truck and the Autopsy van, their investigative training wasn't worth much.

"I am soooooooo thrilled to be at a crime scene! It almost never happens to me!" Abby trilled for the third time, over Gibbs' shaking head.

"Abbs—you might as well go back to the rafting company site, get in your car and head back home. Not going to finish the rafting trip today."

"Aw, Gibbs! I can be of help! I can analyze evidence!"

He gave her a sideways look. "You got a master mass spec in your pocket?"

"Well, no, but I can bag and tag…I've always wanted to do that! Fresh at the crime scene! Apprentice Agent Abby!" She saluted.

"Can't do that. We might lose points in court if the evidence is first handled by someone other than an agent." Gibbs turned to Ducky. "Time of death?"

Ducky looked up at him, from his crouched position. "Jethro, I no more carry a liver probe in my pocket than Abigail carries a mass spectrometer in hers. From the discoloration and bloating of the skin, I would guess…24 to 48 hours. Perhaps. So many factors involved, however: the water temperature, the salinity of the water…"

Tim noticed that Sheila Flynn, the guide, was stealing yet another nervous glance at the body, while keeping a fair distance. Once again Gibbs told her, patiently, that it was okay for her to go back to the rafting company's building; she really didn't need to hang around. Once again she replied that it wasn't right for her to leave her customers. She was a cute thing, Tim thought; curly blonde hair and a sweet, girl-next-door personality. She'd probably never seen a dead body. Good thing it wasn't freaking her out.

Tony flopped down beside Tim then, interrupting his thoughts of a kayaking experience, just him and Sheila. Tim sighed, but Tony wanted to chat. "Man, I hate this," Tony said, wringing a last few drops of water from his polo shirt. "I want to be doing something. Other than just snapping 50 pictures on my phone because I can."

"Helping me haul a body from the bottom of the river, after freeing it from weighted stones, wasn't enough excitement for you?"

"That part's done. I want to be poking at things; getting a look at what else is down there on the river bottom. Give me a scuba tank and I won't even complain about getting wet again."

Only nodding, Tim had to admit that he felt the same way. Gibbs, however, wasn't in a hurry. The underwater stuff, he said, was best left to the experts. An NCIS forensic dive team was on its way there from Norfolk. All Gibbs' team could do was wait…and eye the dive buoy marking the spot that had been placed there by the rafting company.

But there was more…more that Tim was reluctant to give voice to, since Gibbs had ordered them all to stay away from the spot until the dive team came. Tony hadn't said anything about it. This meant either that Tony hadn't noticed it, or…Tim had imagined it.

'It' had been something fantastic; almost a vision, or a spectacular special effect. It was that which had caught Tim's eye when he went overboard and his head went underwater. Without it, he might not have even seen the sailor, despite his being clothed in the white uniform. No, it was the pile of something…iridescent that he had seen. It had outlined the body, as if shining a light upon it. The lightest pastel colors; yellows and pinks and blues and greens, glowing, shimmering…

And then when he had torn off his life vest, and dived, the lights were still there…but a little fainter. His churning motion in the water seemed to make them lose their luster. There had been no time to think about it, no time to do anything but free the body from the rocks pinning it, since they only had as much air as was in their lungs. Tony had made for shore, towing the body. Tim didn't argue, even though his first instinct would have been to take it to the raft, as unlikely a fit as that would have been. From there, Group Gibbs fell into expected work mode…as well as they could, without equipment.

Ziva sat down on Tim's other side. "I had not realized how quickly I had become used to having the portable fingerprint scanner," she remarked with a touch of sadness. "Without it…that man might as well be nameless."

"He's wearing dog tags," Tim pointed out. "Seaman Robert A. Kinsky. You saw them."

"Yes, but we cannot be sure that that is his name. He may have been using a false identity. Or his killer may have been trying to throw us off the track. We are suspicious; it is our job to rely on evidence; not on what we see."

It was true. Gathering that evidence relied on technology, and technology had become too much a part of their job. Fifteen years ago, Gibbs said, he would have phoned NCIS and had someone there find out where Seaman Kinsky was stationed. Then, he would have phoned Kinsky's CO to ask if he was missing. Nowadays, though, NCIS wouldn't contact the Navy without some evidence that this body matched the name on the tags. Painful past experience showed there was nothing to be gained by erroneously alarming survivors. They could wait a few hours to match fingerprints.

"Truck and van are here," Gibbs announced at the sound of the motors. "Let's get to work."

With their equipment at hand, the affair fast became like any other case. Tim usually brought along the portable fingerprint scanner with his gear to a crime scene, but somewhere along the line Gibbs had convinced Vance to spring for another, one that was always carried in the van. Tim was cheered by that.

AIFIS confirmed that the fingerprints did indeed belong to a Seaman Kinsky, although the news seemed anticlimactic now. Ducky guessed the time of death to be around 36 hours ago, but wasn't willing to speculate on a cause of death. "Too many variables," he mumbled. "When we get this hapless young man back to NCIS…then we shall see what he has to tell us."

Soon the Autopsy van was loaded with the body of the seamen, and Ducky and Jimmy started off for DC. In the back of the van were also the two agents who'd driven the MCRT truck and the Autopsy van to the river site. The agents, who didn't see much field work, did not look pleased to be privileged to ride next to a body for a couple of hours. Their bad luck. Abby had managed to avoid being sent back, somehow, and now sat with Tony and Ziva playing some sort of guessing game.

They were back to hurry up and wait mode. The forensic dive team was still nearly an hour away. Until the divers had retrieved anything of the remotest interest from the river bottom, the MCRT was going nowhere, Gibbs said.

Tim watched as the body-marking buoy bobbed in the gentle current, his eyes lining it up with a tall white pine tree on the opposite bank, much like the one he was leaning against now. He wasn't sure why it seemed so important to him to mark it in his mind, other than some vague, silly notion that I saw the body first; I have responsibility for it.

Then Sheila-the-guide interrupted his thoughts. "Goodness; you people really are thorough, aren't you?" she said.

"We have to be. Successfully building a case for an arrest and conviction depends on it."

"That's fascinating," she murmured.

"You really don't have to stick around, you know," he said to her, as Gibbs and Ziva had said to her before.

"I know. I just feel…pulled in by it."

"Well, don't get too close," he said with a smile. "This is a crime scene, and normally we don't allow civilians where we're working."

"You think it's a crime?" she asked, wide-eyed. "I thought the poor man simply…drowned."

"He was weighted down with stones," Tim said. "It would be hard for him to do that to himself, accidentally."

The leader of the two-man NCIS forensics dive team, Agent Southland, scowled at Gibbs as he examined the scene on the river bank and started pitting on his diving gear. "You couldn't wait for us? You had to jump the gun and retrieve the body? That comes under our jurisdiction."

"Didn't know if he might not still be alive," Gibbs said in a mild tone. Southland harrumphed and, with his partner, dived.

When the divers were finished, about an hour later, the results were mildly disappointing. The only things found on the river bottom were a tarp, weighted in one corner by a rock, and a cellphone.

"There's nothing else?" Tim asked in surprise. "Nothing at all? You didn't see—" He stopped himself in time.

"Didn't see what?" asked Southland.

"Uh, anything…unusual."

"McGee!" Gibbs snapped. "When you become a certified diver, maybe then I'll let you question their methods."

"Yes, boss. Sorry, boss. Sorry," he added to the divers, his face red.

"It's okay," the other diver smiled. "I would have liked to have found something exciting, like a crate of weapons. But it doesn't always work out that way."

"Well, thanks for coming," said Gibbs, shaking their hands. "Appreciate the help."

"We'll be off, then, if you don't need us," said Southland, pointedly turned away from Tim. "It's a long drive back to Norfolk, and it'll be dark soon." Indeed, the sun was headed down behind the western hills.

"Let's load up, too," Gibbs said to his people. "Nothing more to see here."

Tim wasn't so sure about that. There was nothing to be gained, however, in relating his strange vision. With reluctance, he got in a rafting company jeep for the ride back to their building, where his car was parked.

Tony had carpooled with Tim to West Virginia; now he would be driving the MCRT truck back. They all would meet up at HQ. What had started out as a fun Saturday outing had morphed into something potentially sinister.