Chapter 3
Interrogating

Gibbs turned around and walked over to the other room. "Oh, this should be good," Tony said. "Too bad we don't have any popcorn!" In the other room Gibbs sat down in the other chair and watched the man in front of him. Sherlock looked back, unconcerned.

"No one can stand the Gibbs-stare," McGee whispered. Nothing happened. After two minutes of ultimate silence Sherlock raised his hands to his favourite thinking position, against each other under his chin. He just looked at Gibbs, didn't even blink, his blue eyes moving from point to point at Gibbs face, noticing small things and deducing. The silence endured, none of them moving an inch.
Sherlock started tapping his fingers against each other and looked away. After looking through the whole room once more, he focussed on his mirror image.

"Unbelievable, he can stand it!" Tony whispered, his face read amazement. After a total of nineteen minutes, Gibbs decided this didn't work and started to talk himself.

"So, mister Holmes, you are from England, when have you come to America?"
"Idiots," Gibbs could just hear the man mutter, "Three days ago."
"Why?"
"I could say vacation, but it wasn't that. Some case my brother made me go to. It was just a four, but they wouldn't let me do it by webcam and I was a little in debt to my brother, since the business of Baskerville. So I could not get out and was forced to fly here."
"A case?"
"Yes, secret above your clearance, I can't tell you anything. Mister president apparently can't even trust his own secret problemsolvers to keep their mouth shut. Although John wouldn't say so, I can be very discreet, and so my brother knows, unfortunately."
In observation mouths dropped open at this explanation.

"So the president asked you, a foreigner, to solve a case for him?" Gibbs asked, taken aback.
"Yeah, idiot," Sherlock said.
"I'm not an idiot!" Gibbs yelled, getting angry with this arrogant man.
"Oh, but you are, if your own president doesn't trust you to be able to work out his little problem, which was totally not interesting!"
"Ok, enough about that!" Gibbs took a deep breath. "So what were you doing at navy ground this morning?"
"Taking a walk. After we solved that pretty little case, John and I thought to make a little vacation from it. At least John tried to convince me to take a small vacation. So we decided on an early morning walk to discuss what our plans are."
"And what happened then?"

Sherlock sighted. God, what were those simple minds annoying with their questions. This would probably be over sooner if he just told him what he wanted to know. "We saw that small house standing there, with the door open, and walked past it. Then I noticed the man lying there, of course John didn't see anything in the twilight. I walked over and he came after me. I checked if he was indeed dead, although there was not much to suggest he might still be alive. John insisted upon calling the police, while I took a look around. The police send some marines to secure the area, who tried to get us away from the body, until I flashed Lestrade's badge. I continued looking around and then you guys came."
"So you admit to have been tampering with the evidence?"
"If you can call it that. I didn't move anything, I didn't change anything, didn't take anything. I only touched some stuff with gloves on."
"How can we be sure you didn't do anything?"
"Look. Observe. Ask John."

"I know enough for now," Gibbs said, while getting up. Sherlock already didn't look at him anymore when the door closed. His mind was spinning around the discovery he had made.

Ducky led Dr. John Watson to the conference room. Then he made a short trip down to get this teapot. Coming back in, he started making tea. Dr. Watson was standing in front of the window, staring at the yard downstairs.

"Ah, thanks," he said when Ducky handed him a cup.
"No problem, as an British man in America you don't often get the chance to drink tea with someone. And of course it is always delighting to talk to a fellow countryman," Ducky said.
John nodded. "I can understand that. So how did you end up here, with NCIS, I think it was?"
"Well, I didn't go here at once, after I graduated from the University of Edinburgh, I've been some time in the military…"
"Yeah? An army doctor then?"
"Yes, well…"
"Me too!"
"Really? Now you mention it, I remember…

Gibbs had set his team to find out as much as possible about this Sherlock Holmes, asking McGee and Ziva to trace down their journey from them entering the airport. Tony was trying to find out where this Michael Riddle had come from and how he ended up on this Navy ground, dead as a pig. Meanwhile Gibbs went down to Ducky.

"Talk to me, Duck," he said as soon as he entered the cold white room.
"Ah, Jethro, I knew you would turn up soon. Interesting man, this Doctor Watson. In fact…"
"Later, Duck. What you got for me on Michael Riddle?"
"Ah, yes. He has been telling me some interesting things," he said while walking to the body. "The bullet was still in his body, Abby has it now. It was stuck in one of the bones of his back. The bulled entered here, on the front, as you can see. He has suffered several blows to the head and chest, and his arms are covered with cuts. He has almost no defensive wounds. Gibbs, those wounds you don't get from a simple fight or an accident."
"The man was tortured," Gibbs concluded.
"I'm afraid so."

A/N: Hi everyone! My new year's present to all of you! My posting is far slower than I had imagined in the beginning, and it will probably stay this way, busy life. However, I'm going to keep on writing on this story, because it has to go on. I thank all the amazing people who started following this story, and special thanks to AllThatIWant for beta-reading once more. Happy new year!