Chapter 20 – I Love a Man in Uniform

In a third floor hallway, Vance came across the last (he hoped) Happy New Year! bunting that Abby had put up in honor of the fiscal new year (which had started last Friday)…as she had the year before, and the year before that. Carefully, he pulled it down, flattened it, and tucked it under his arm. It was just easier to put up with her exuberance, for the most part, than it was to fight it.

He arrived back at his office with his mind on the fact that performance reviews were due at the end of the month. "Leslie, send out the usual October memo to all supervisors," he said, and saw his secretary nod. No one liked the annual appraisals, but they had to be done.

The week ahead appeared to be rather dull. Vance pulled up his agency email. The weekly bulletin from the Navy Yard head office stated that a group of a dozen seamen would be touring the Barry on the 4th…that was today. This happened a couple times a month, during most of the year, Vance knew. Not that this had hardly any impact at all on NCIS. Just now and then. Despite the warnings given to them at the gate, there sometimes seemed to be a few sailors who would wander off from the group and into the more restricted areas of the yard…like NCIS, sometimes.

Usually, the guards at the front entrance turned them aside, politely. No harm, no foul. Go about your business, youngsters. You're Navy…walk the straight and narrow. Do your service proud.

The door to his office being open, Vance could hear a slight, troubled rise in Leslie's voice in the outer office. Sure enough, Leslie was quickly in his doorway. "Sir," Leslie gulped, "thought you'd want to know. A sailor just tried to get in…and he fell down, dead, at the guard station."

"Call Gibbs; call Ducky," Vance ordered, pushing past him. A death on his grounds, and the lord of the manor would have to be present.

Despite Vance's hope that the guards might be jumping to a conclusion about the sailor's state, Ducky quickly confirmed the death. "Stabbed in the back," the ME said. "By what, I don't know yet. A tragic loss of a young life."

Tony fumbled with the portable fingerprint reader, while Gibbs looked through the sailor's wallet. "Jacob Howard Grant," Tony announced.

"Ya sure about that?" said Gibbs, frowning at the wallet's content.

"Uh, I think so, boss. This piece of equipment is pretty easy to operate…"

"Then maybe we have an additional problem. The driver's license and his bank debit card say his name is Marc Pollard."

John Schmidt checked the dog tag at the sailor's neck. "This says Pollard, Marc A. also. We can run the Social Security number, see what that says."

"The services all fingerprint recruits," Vance put in. "If that's where AFIS is getting this information, then why the name mismatch?"

"Did Jacob Howard Grant assume Marc Pollard's identity?" Gibbs mused.

"And why did whoever he is get stabbed, and why did he come to NCIS?"

"First doorway he saw?" Schmidt remarked. It was true; save for the small chapel next door, NCIS was the building closest to the Barry. "My dad always says the obvious is often the most likely explanation."

Employees coming in and going out had to sidestep the scene with curious, even aghast looks. Most had never in their lives seen a dead body. Vance left Gibbs and his people to speculate and investigate while Ducky and Jimmy removed the body to Autopsy.

In his career, Vance had done many field investigations, and without further monitoring, could estimate how this one would go, and approximately how long each step would take. But without taking an active role, his hanging around might look like he was watching how Gibbs' team worked. That wouldn't help anything. There were times when, for show (for a visitor) it would be necessary. This wasn't one of those.

One of the guards caught him before he got in the elevator. "Director; there's someone…a Navy officer…he's heard that Seaman Pollard wandered over here. I don't think he knows…"

Dang. "Is Agent Gibbs still at the scene?"

"No, sir; his team just went inside. What do you want me to do?"

Vance grimaced. "I'll talk to him. Let's go."

As much as Vance didn't want to be part of an investigation, he found himself enveloped. The petty officer who had escorted the young sailors to the Yard was old enough to be a little world-weary, and while he was shocked at the news of Pollard's death, he got over it fairly quickly.

Vance pulled Gibbs away from the investigation long enough to come to his office and sit in on the meeting with Petty Officer Quinones. There was something about this case that made Vance feel it might be different than the ordinary criminal investigation…but then, weren't they all different?

Soon he knew why. Gibbs had sent Schmidt and a couple other agents he rounded up out to interrogate the other five sailors in the party, as well as any other witnesses, while Tony stayed inside to work the phone and his computer. One or more of the witnesses then apparently called the media, or called someone who called the media, resulting in two TV news crews at NCIS' front entrance, demanding access and answers. When Vance half-rose to deal with that (Gibbs could take care of Quinones), he saw Leslie signaling him from the doorway.

"Director, the SECNAV somehow got the word," Leslie murmured as Vance came up to him. "He's on line 2."

That was bad. Normally Kel Paulsen would phone Vance on his direct line if he wanted to talk to him. That he was calling on one of the administrative lines (which rang on Leslie's desk) meant that he sensed that Vance would probably be embroiled in the mess in his office. Maybe he didn't want to add to the explosive mix.

He lifted the phone receiver in some misery. "Vance here."

"Not one of your better days, Leon?"

"I've had worse."

"Oh? When?" Paulsen teased.

"The day I first met my future in-laws."

"Do you have the press in your office now?"

"No; they're snarling at the main entrance. I've told the guards not to let them in. I've got the Navy in there now."

"You're hoping the press will just go away?" Paulsen said, chuckling.

"It would be nice. But they probably won't. I'll go down in a minute and give a statement." It was the safe way out of things; just giving the information that you wanted to give. We cannot speak about an ongoing investigation…

"You sound stressed, Leon. Not that I can blame you."

"I've gotta go, Kel," Vance abruptly hung up. The SECNAV knew him too well.

Pressure was part of his job, he knew. He figured he handled it better than most, but he had no illusions about his limits. Some days he felt pulled in too many directions, with too many people insisting on getting a piece of him. This was one of them. Now he really did wish for a secret exit from the building…

The case of the late Seaman Pollard was resolved fairly quickly. "Pollard" was his real name; it turned out that the name Grant was a pseudonym he'd adopted, briefly, when he'd applied for a summer lifeguarding job at the minimum age of 16…when he was really only 15. He'd been surprised, NCIS believed, when his town required him to be fingerprinted for the job. Somewhere, somehow, the AFIS database hadn't overwritten the Grant fingerprints with the Pollard name when he'd enlisted. Computer programs weren't foolproof.

Nor was crime necessarily complicated. Pollard hadn't gotten along with one of his shipmates. A fight over a woman lead to harsh words, and then a knife appeared. A sad end to one young life, and a prison term for another.

The only surprise came when the young woman herself asked to speak to NCIS…in defense of Levon Sharpe, the assailant. She turned up in late morning this day when Gibbs' team was out in the field. Vance's morning was surprisingly clear, for once, so he agreed to see her.

Renee Toynbee was a beautiful, soft-spoken, poised woman, dressed in stylish, flattering dark-colored clothes. "Perhaps I am partially to blame for this…" She twisted her mouth. "This tragedy. I knew Jacob when he was younger."

"Wait—Jacob was an assumed name. His real name was Marc."

"No, sir. You're wrong about that. He took on the name Marc Pollard when he joined the service. He was trying to start a new life, you see."

"And where does Levon Sharpe come in?" Vance was puzzled, but hoped that more information would clear things up.

"Well…I loved him, too. Like I loved Jacob."

"You were…in love with both men."

"Oh, yes," she said, her dark eyes wide, seeking understanding. "I love Navy men."

"I see."

"And Marines, too. NCIS works with the Marine Corps, too, doesn't it? Cliff—he's my boyfriend in the Marines—he looks so sharp in his uniform!"

"You have a boyfriend in the Marines, too?" Now she really had Vance's attention.

"Yes, but they're about to send him to Afghanistan. I'll miss him terribly. Just like I'll miss Levon and, of course, poor Jacob. But then I have Billy and Sergio…"

"Let me guess. They're in the Air Force?"

She laughed. "Oh, no! They're Army all the way! It's Sam who's in the Air Force."

"Ms. Toynbee…"

"What can I say? I just love a man in uniform!"

Vance sighed with relief and anticipation when an email popped up. It was from Lora Masterson, a long-time associate, now one of his high-ranking NCIS officials on the West coast. Lora was an exceptionally logical thinker, and the person to whom he'd entrusted a study of how NCIS' interns program worked, or didn't work. This was her preliminary report.

He scanned it. She'd found many weak points in it. Too much reliance on applications at face value; not enough on background checks. Willingness to accept applications until March 31…leaving not enough time to thoroughly screen applicants (cutoff recommended of January 1). Face-to-face interview suggested, even if this means the applicant has to travel a distance. Request recommendation from their high school as well as college.

It went on, but Vance closed it, deciding to finish it later. It was a bitter pill to swallow, given how disastrous this year's intern program had been.

The easy way out would be to just shelve the program altogether. Did having interns really make NCIS a better place? The time it took to monitor them pretty much offset any savings realized by having them do grunt work. Lora's figures showed that less than 1% of NCIS interns applied for jobs at NCIS after graduation. Was the agency not fulfilling enough to them? (Lora was studying that, with a survey; the results to be reported next year.) Why was NCIS doing this, year after year, then?

Was it because Congress occasionally threw money at them to do so? In part. Vance felt there was more to it than that, though. Even if their interns didn't come back to the NCIS fold, maybe an intern from another agency would. Remembering something, Vance called up Agent Schmidt's file. Yes. There it was. Vance had forgotten it until now. Schmidt had been an intern with the FBI in the summer of 2000. He'd wanted to intern with NCIS, he'd said, but the slots had filled up. The FBI had been his second choice.

Vance would ask Lora to screen for other NCIS employees who had interned at one of the other agencies. No doubt, too, some NCIS interns got work with one of the three-letter places. It all evened out, perhaps.

Maybe that was the way to think about it: not in terms of what interns could do for NCIS, but rather what they could do for the government as a whole.

At the end of the day, when Vance was feeling charitable, maybe that wasn't such a bad thing.

Friday, October 15

Wednesday, October 13

Monday, October 4