Lethal Fractures: Chapter 17
Gibbs could see the reflection of CID Special Agent Wang in the two-way mirror as they silently stood side-by-side in the small observation chamber of the CID interrogation room. After Gibbs' team tracked down former Staff Sergeant Emerson, the two senior special agents argued about who would get to do the interrogation. Wang had tried to claim seniority, Gibbs replied that it was his team who found and brought in Emerson. Finally, Hollis Mann stepped in and said that it was females—and specifically female officers—who Emerson had a problem with. She should be the one doing the interrogation. Knowing how good the former lieutenant colonel was at getting information out of suspects—and elderly Scottish medical examiners—Gibbs had agreed. Realizing he was outnumbered, Wang reluctantly gave his consent as well.
Emerson had been waiting alone in Interrogation for almost half an hour, which for a guy who had lived his entire adult life under very strict schedules and punctuality, was practically a lifetime, and Gibbs could see his impatience in the set of his jaw and the way he sat. He was exactly as one could expect from a former Army sergeant: his hair was still buzzed short, a tight tee-shirt advertised that he still kept his tall figure lean and muscular, a tattoo of the 10th Mountain Division insignia on his right arm told anyone who cared to know what he had done and seen.
He looked up expectantly as the door to Interrogation opened. "Good afternoon, Sergeant," Mann said calmly.
"Ma'am," Emerson replied with a nod. Gibbs frowned; he expected a bit more anger. "Could you tell me what this is about, ma'am? The agents who brought me here identified themselves as NCIS. I've never had anything to do with the Navy."
"The terms of your parole state that you can be brought in for question at any time."
"Yes, ma'am, I'm aware." He was being far more polite than Gibbs expected from a murder suspect. He could tell by Wang's expression that he was thinking the same thing. "But I would have expected that to be with Fairfax PD, not NCIS and CID." He glanced around as if looking for someone else in the room before his eyes returned to Mann.
Mann nodded slightly; she knew that, of course. "Have you been living in Fairfax long?"
"Since early 2002, ma'am. I was working in the CENTCOM office at the Pentagon prior to my last deployment to Afghanistan. I ETS'ed on April 7, 2004, about eight months after I returned." He shook his head slowly. "Leaving the Army when I did, that was a mistake. I spent my entire adult life in uniform and I wasn't ready for the outside. But that deployment, ma'am, I saw some shit I didn't ever want to see again, pardon my language. I couldn't risk getting sent back over there."
"This isn't right," Wang muttered. "He's being too nice."
"He doesn't know Holly was an officer yet," Gibbs pointed out. "Maybe it'll change."
"Tenth Mountain," Mann was saying. "You guys covered a lot of new ground in Afghanistan."
"Yes, ma'am," Emerson said, a touch of pride in his voice. "We didn't have the infrastructure there that they have now. A lot of it was pretty rough going for us, but rough is how 10th Mountain does it." He eyed her critically for a second. "You served, ma'am?"
She nodded. "Eighty-second Airborne."
"Hooah," Emerson with a approval. "Airborne we like. They're almost as tough as they think they are." He gave her a grin. "Been deployed?"
"Two tours, Panama and Iraq." Panama had been fairly early in her career, Iraq near the end. Two completely different experiences, two completely different jobs. She hadn't joined CID until a few years after she made captain, when she realized there wasn't much further a female intelligence officer could go in an infantry division. "I worked as an intelligence officer and spent most of my time studying maps and analyzing troop movements." Well, that was true for the first deployment, at least.
"Good," Gibbs said with a nod of approval. "She worked in that she was an officer and that she was given what a combat soldier would consider to be soft work—a POG position."
"POG?" Wang echoed with a frown.
"People other than grunts," Gibbs explained. "People who aren't normally shot it in their day-to-day jobs. It's an insult—implies that they don't know what combat is really like." It was mostly a Marine term, but he had heard some soldiers use it. The last time he had heard it was in a quiet corner of a morgue of an Army combat hospital half a world away.
To their surprise, Emerson was nodding his approval. "There wasn't much we could have done without combat support. Your people kept us alive more times than I'd care to think about."
"That's not right," Wang muttered. "He's not acting right." Gibbs could tell by Mann's body language that she was thinking the same thing. She abruptly changed the topic.
"Did you happen to know a Captain Irene Macintosh?" she asked.
Emerson looked confused for a second. "The nurse? The one who was murdered some years back?"
"Ah-ha!" Wang said. "He just admitted to knowing Macintosh. We can use that."
"We already knew that Macintosh knew his wife," Gibbs reminded him. "This doesn't tell us anything."
"So you knew her," Mann stated. Emerson half shook his head in an indecisive gesture.
"Not really, ma'am. I only met her once. She worked with my wife."
"Ex-wife."
"Yes, ma'am. Susan. Captain Macintosh told Susan that she should have left me."
"That must have made you angry."
"At the time, yes, ma'am, but looking back, I wish she had done it. I was in a bad place when I got back from Afghanistan. I was angry and drinking and took a lot out on Susan. Captain Macintosh told her that there wasn't anything she could do until I was ready to get some help and get better, but Susan's a fighter. She wasn't ready to give up on me, even though I sure as hell had given up on myself already. I wish I could say that things got better after Susan told me what Captain Macintosh had said, but I had to reach rock-bottom before that could happen."
"Aww, shit," Gibbs muttered darkly. "He's not our guy." Wang frowned.
"He just admitted to having been angry at Macintosh."
"He didn't do it, Wang. Not unless God told him to kill Jasper and Rodriguez. He went off to jail and found religion." The disgust in his voice wasn't from the idea of finding religion—he was sure it would help a good number of troops coming back from war—but at the realization that he had gotten his hopes up about Emerson. Wang, apparently, wasn't ready to quit.
"He fits the pattern," he argued. "The Army service, his anger toward women, toward Macintosh. Hell, Gibbs, even the arrest fits."
"Everything except for the fact that he didn't do it."
Mann had apparently reached the same conclusion. "Where were you on Wednesday night?"
"Anger management group," Emerson said automatically. "It's court ordered, but I would go anyway. I'm in a better place now, ma'am, and if me being there to tell my story and to tell how low I had gotten helps even one other man realize that he can't solve his problems with a fist or a gun, I'll keep going for the rest of my life. Group is from 1900 to 2100. After group each week, three of us stay late for a prayer group, to recommit our actions to God and ask for His help in our struggle. We were there until 2230, and then it's a half hour drive to my apartment. I got home a little after 2300. You can confirm that with my neighbor, Mrs. Wittgenstein. She watches my every movement pretty closely. She doesn't trust me much."
"Drs. Gracy and Mallard estimated time of death between 1900 and 2300," Wang commented, defeat finally in his voice. "Emerson was in Virginia that whole time."
Just then, Gibbs' cell phone rang. He checked the display before answering. "What is it, DiNozzo?"
There was a pause, and then: "It is Ziva, Gibbs."
"Well, then call me from your own damned phone. What is it?"
"I do not believe that Sergeant Emerson killed Captain Rodriguez and Sergeant Jasper and the others. Prior to his arrest, he worked for a security consulting firm in Virginia. We have just spoken to his former boss. He was at a conference in Seattle, Washington from September 28 to October 5, 2005, when Lt. Hamilton was killed."
"We just realized that," he said with a sigh. "Emerson found jailhouse religion."
Another pause. "I do not know if I am familiar with that term, Gibbs."
"He went to jail and found God, Ziva. He'll probably start talking about making amends and whatever the other eleven steps are."
She didn't bother with that one. "We will continue our search into the remaining soldiers recently released from prison." She hung up the phone before he had a chance to.
"Another alibi?" Wang asked with another sigh of defeat.
"Security conference in Seattle while Hamilton was killed," Gibbs summed up. "You want to pull Holly out?"
"I think she's pulled herself out," Wang said, nodding through the glass. Sure enough, the former lieutenant colonel was rising from the table. She gave the mirror an almost imperceptible shake of her head before leaving the interrogation room.
"He didn't do it," she said sourly. Like Gibbs, her disgust was not at that fact, but the realization that they had gotten so close, only to find that they had followed the wrong trail.
"We know," Gibbs informed her. He didn't bother telling her about the alibi to Hamilton's murder than Ziva and the others had found. "My team is checking through recent releases from jail again."
She nodded, her jaw still set in anger as she turned away. "We're no damned closer to solving this case than we were eight years ago," she muttered darkly. There was nothing either Gibbs or Wang could say to console her; neither bothered to try.