She had arrived at the cemetery just minutes after the casket had been lowered and the dirt was being thrown in. She had stayed a discreet distance away, listening to the sound of the shovel in the dirt and then the dirt being thrown into the hole. The sound changed as the casket was finally covered and then it was dirt upon dirt. It took the men about fifteen minutes to completely bury Calvin Harris. Too bad Callie's feelings couldn't be just as easily covered up.
She had known exactly where the plot would be. While her father and her grandmother (his mother) had never seen eye to eye, Callie knew he wouldn't be buried too far away. It was Callie herself who had the bench added to the trees surrounding the area. From this location, she could see the final resting place of her fiery grandmother and, now, her S.O.B. of a sire.
She had commandeered the taxi from the church immediately after the service. Harris had seen Leesa corner Gibbs and she knew it wouldn't be too long before he would connect the dots. Once he did, there would be no stopping the confrontation. Cal made the taxi driver wait while she ran upstairs and changed. And then grabbing the bottle of tequila from the shelf, she had stuffed it in her bag along with her wallet and returned to the vehicle. Forty-five minutes later, she had paid off the driver and was walking in the nearly deserted cemetery.
Callie opened the bottle and started to drink.
Karl Hunter pulled the small limo into the cemetery parking lot. As he exited the vehicle, he was joined by the two agents. They looked at him questioningly.
"I know. Doesn't really seem like what she would do, does it?" Karl asked.
Gibbs shook his head, "I really don't know what she would do, right now, Karl. I'm totally at a loss with her."
Karl nodded, "I understand, Gibbs." The older man paused before adding in a tone that left no doubts. "But I think it's time you got to the bottom of this situation. Direct from the source, any way necessary."
Gibbs only smiled. This was warfare on his terms: down and dirty. Jethro gave Tony a brief glance before adding, "DiNozzo, don't argue with me and don't get in the way. I've handled Callie like this before."
"The Loflin case?" Tony asked.
Gibbs nodded, "Yeah. It's tough love."
"At its toughest," Karl supplied.
Giving Karl a nod of understanding, they followed the driver as he led the way to a waiting Callie.
As they approached the bench, the men could see Callie had dropped down in front of it, resting her back on the edge that formed the seat. Karl hung back, allowing Tony and Jethro to approach her, from either side. Both men closed with stealth, as if approaching an armed assailant. Which, if either one really cared to think about it, was exactly what they were doing.
Standing behind the bench, Gibbs spoke quietly, "Why did you get moved from the outfield to the infield, Callie?"
She jumped at the voice, cursing herself for not paying more attention. Glancing up and over her left shoulder, she made eye contact with her boss. "I don't want to do this." Was her quiet reply.
Sitting down beside her on the bench, he replied, "Frankly, I don't care any more what you do or don't want to do. I'm sick to death of seeing you so conflicted and distraught. I want it brought to an end. Right here. Right now."
Gibbs reply, while spoken quietly, left no doubt. Callie sighed heavily. What was one more beating compared to the ones she had already suffered over the last twenty years of her life?
"In answer to your question, I couldn't make the throw from center to home anymore."
"Why? You would have been around fifteen, right? Isn't that the age difference between you and Kyle?" Gibbs responded.
Callie shook her head, "Damn you. This is really why I didn't want you and Tony here. Neither of you can just let things rest. You can both see the bigger pictures."
"Especially when you don't want us to," Tony added. He had taken a position on the grass, leaning against the grove of trees, just behind the bench.
Callie turned at his voice, realizing he was on the ground, too. "Exactly."
"What happened?" Gibbs persisted.
Looking off into the distance, Callie began, "Leesa was very pregnant with Kyle when my father came home drunk. He'd been at some kind of board meeting and was feeling ten feet tall and bullet proof. He stormed into the house, yelling at the top of his lungs. Leesa was completely freaked out. Truth be told, I wasn't much better. We'd neither one of us ever seen him quite like that. She came running into my room, breathing hard. Too hard for a woman in her condition, I thought. I just reacted. I told her to call Karl to come to the ranch. In the mean time, I pulled my bedroom door shut and had her lock it. Next thing I know, I'm staring up at 6 foot 2 inches of mad and drunk. And, what do I know? I think I can reason with him? This is my father, for god's sake. He acted like he didn't even know who I was. I was just in between him and his disobedient wife." Callie paused, letting out a sigh, "Got my first concussion that night. He knocked me backwards into the door so hard, it knocked a hole in it. I was so stunned by that I didn't feel the blows to my chest. I do remember him grabbing my right arm to pull me up and throw me out of the way, though. The sound of the bone popping is something I don't think I'll ever forget. I think it was my screaming that brought him around."
From where he sat behind her, Tony flinched at the matter of fact way Callie retold the events.
"Cal, I'm your medical power of attorney. Have been since you came to work for NCIS. I've never seen anything about a broken shoulder or prior concussion." Gibbs voice held his concern.
"Money in the right places, Boss, make things go away," Tony answered for her.
"Remember when I said Blevins fixed whatever needed fixing? This was one of the first times he fixed an issue that involved me." Callie supplied.
Gibbs interjected, "But who notified Blevins?"
"When Leesa called Karl, he called Blevins. Figured it was the right thing to do. Turns out, in the long run, it wasn't. Because, once Calvin Harris knew J. would do things like this, he used him for every thing. I woke up the next morning in some clinic with my shoulder immobilized and little to no memory of what occurred. And with a nice sized contribution to the clinic and the charity of the doctor's choice, the whole situation disappeared, or so they thought. Unfortunately for them, the memories came back over time." Callie said bitterly.
"And the softball?"
"Like I said, couldn't make the throw from center to home. But I could make it from first to third."
"Must have hurt like hell every time you threw the ball," Tony supplied.
"Yeah, but I could still swing a bat with the best of them. So I sucked it up and learned to just ice it down real good after every game and practice." Callie continued.
Gibbs went on, "So, then, what happened your senior year? You would have been seventeen when you started back to school?"
Callie just shook her head, "I never thought Amy would have that annual at the bar, let alone show it to you."
"Doesn't matter. Still wouldn't have kept us from being where we are now," Jethro explained.
"So everything rocked along fine for two years. He never laid another finger on me or Leesa. Then, the unexpected happened and she got pregnant with Kayla. And, it was not a happy time. He didn't want another child. Business wasn't good. Pressures inside and out, I think, got my dad off on to another tirade. He'd been irritable for awhile but one week into summer vacation before my senior year, he came home totally wasted. She and I heard him when he came in. This time, Leesa had enough sense to lock the doors and stay in her own bedroom. I was the one who put myself in the middle of it." Callie paused, shaking her head at her own stupidity as the events tumbled out, "I may have only been 5'2, but I was solid muscle, built like your typical female softball player. And, this time, I figured I could hold my own against him. He's banging and kicking on the door, screaming at the top of his lungs. The whole household is cowering…watching. And, I stepped into him. Tried to pull him off. I underestimated his strength, combined with the rage and the alcohol. He rounded on me with a fist to the jaw that snapped it like a toothpick. I'm trying to get up and out of the way and can't move fast enough to avoid his stomping on my left wrist and kicking me in the ribs. He hit me so hard, he flipped me. And then, he pulled me up and threw me down the stairs like a rag doll. I don't remember anything after that."
Tony knew that telling the events and reliving them had to be rough on Callie because it was hard on him just to listen. Gibbs watched Tony and Callie. How parents, fathers to be exact, could treat their children the way these two had been treated was beyond him. He would give any amount of money to have the time with Kelly that these men had squandered with their kids. That they were both good agents and better people spoke to the determination that DiNozzo and Harris both possessed.
"My father called good ole' Blevins to right the wrong again. This time, when I came to, I was in a private rehab facility, with my jaw wired shut. I couldn't eat solid foods. I couldn't work out. They did the only thing they could think of…"
Callie was interrupted by Tony, "They pumped you full of steroids."
She glanced back at him, "And no way to control the effects it had on my body. I bulked up, just in the wrong way. But, that wasn't the worst of it." Harris sighed, tears slowly rolling down her cheeks. Her voice cracked as she said, "My father told Blevins I was drunk and totaled my car; that's how I'd gotten hurt. J. believed him. And doing his duty to protect the Harris name, Blevins told my coaches. They said the only way they would let me play was if I completed rehab. So, the facility I was in was for addiction. When I went back to school, not only did I have to get in playing shape, but I was randomly drug tested, just to make sure there would be no relapses."
Gibbs suddenly had a thought. "Were you recruited?"
Callie smiled ruefully, "Yeah, I had offers from Pepperdine, U.T., L.S.U., and Tennessee. Coupled with my grades, I was a blue chip."
"And you passed it up?" The disbelief in Tony's voice spoke volumes. He'd had to scrape for every penny to put himself through college, playing both football and basketball. Then when the injury had sidelined his athletic career, his grades hadn't been strong enough.
Callie turned on Tony, "To accept what was being offered meant accepting a lifestyle that had put me in the hospital twice. And, not just that, it would have meant living a lifestyle that I despised. I hated the business. I had heard my grandmother and my father argue about it night after night after night until it killed her. There were better things out there. And you, Anthony DiNozzo, know that just as well as I do."
Tony turned red at the admonishment. She was right. The words Callie spoke echoed sentiments that DiNozzo himself had expressed, countless times, to the Senior Agent sitting on the bench. It was why Tony had pursued law enforcement…anything that differentiated him with his own father.
"But it didn't end there, did it, Callie?" Gibbs steered the agent back on track.
Callie just shook her head, "No. I graduated high school Friday night and Leesa took me to meet the recruiter Monday morning headed for Navy Boot. When she walked back into the house, my father beat her black and blue. There was nothing I could do because I was on my way to Chicago. Besides, she signed a waiver refusing to press charges and Blevins made sure she was paid off."
Gibbs sat in silence, words Leesa Harris had told him at the church filtering through his head. While Callie wanted him to think that was the last of it, Gibbs had a strong feeling there was more.