Chapter 2

It was another Monday that Tony had not been looking forward to. It had taken quite a while to not only cope with Ziva but also with the fact that he would not get revenge for the unjustified killing. But after all, he had their beautiful daughter and tried to carry on. Kathleen was no five months old and although Tony had not wanted to, he had to give her to day care while he was working. Twice a week he visited a psychiatrist and only for the sake of his child and to honour Ziva, he tried to get his life back.

So it was early morning when he entered NCIS headquarters in Washington with three paper cups of coffee in his hands. Silently, he put down one on Gibbs' and one on McGee's desk and sat down behind his own computer. When he had started it and was checking his mail, McGee entered and greeted him, muttering something about having been stuck in a traffic jam. "Tony, this is slowly getting weird," he commented when he activated his computer.

"What is?"

"You, bringing us coffee every morning."

"It's a new start, McGee. I have to do some things differently than I did before," Tony only said and jumped up when Gibbs came in.

"Dead marine in the North. Looks like a drug trade that went wrong but local police wants us to check it nevertheless," he shortly explained and his two Special Agents ran after him to catch the lift.

It was a sunny afternoon and the crime scene was located outside of an abandoned petrol station. It smelled of old fuel and urine and the police had to shoo away some homeless persons already who had camped to sleep right next to the corpses. Tony started to make photos while McGee draw an outline of the station and the three bodies lying around. One of them was a marine on shore leave, 40-year old Commander Thomas.

When both agents started to bag and tag the crime scene evidence, Gibbs, after having talked to police and the homeless persons who were kept there for witness protocols, approached Ducky to get some news about the bodies.

"All three of them died between nine and one o'clock last night," Ducky said before the boss could ask any questions and pulled out the heat measuring device out of the corpse's backside. "As Tony pointed out, similar bullets have been found inside two of them, probably from the same gun. Our marine, however, was shot by a different one."

"So this was a drug trade gone wrong. The Commander comes here with friends, meets the other traders. They disagree and start shooting each other," Gibbs said.

"That means that the killer of our marine is still out there, probably with some friends. And at least one person had been accompanying Commander Thomas as the gun that was found on his body does not match the bullet cases we found around here and which match the ones that were through-and-through of these bodies," Tony states.

"Then let's find the other guys," Gibbs ordered.

"Why isn't Gibbs here?" Abby asked when Tony entered her lab.

"He was called to a video conference with the director who is currently on a diplomatic mission with the CIA boss in France," the agent explained and positioned himself behind Abby with a good view on the computer screen.

"How are you?"

"Fine. Fine...," Tony said and met Abby's dog-like gaze. "I cope," he added and nodded over to the screen to signify her to start her presentation. But she kept staring. "Kathleen is far too young and will never get to know her mother. I visit a psychiatrist twice a week. I need time. And I need distraction."

With that answer, Abby agreed and nodded her sympathy. "The bullets that were found in Commander Thomas' body match both guns of the other two men. As no other hulls were found, there were probably only two of their party. Due to fingerprints and dental recognition, I could identify the two drug traders as Les Markus and Steve Johnson. Markus is wanted for drugs traffic already and he has been on the run since a drug bust at his house three days ago. Johnson is also known to the police, he was arrested twice for physical abuse of his ex-wife."

"Can you give me the addresses of them?"

"I already sent them McGee five minutes ago. The bullets in Thomas' body match the two guns of Markus and Johnson and the bullets found in these two corpses match the 9mm of Thomas but also another half-automatic. It's an old model and hardly in use anymore. So it was easy to trace back. There're only fifty owners living at the East coast, five of them in the vicinity of one hundred miles around the crime scene. I could narrow it down to these two men, both possessing the half-automatic. It should be easy to find out which one fired the shot."

"Thanks, Abs."

"Hey, I'm not finished yet. You gave me plenty of evidence to sort out. So I did ballistics and identification of the people involved. You said that no drugs were left at the crime scene and that the only survivor of this shooting left with whatever they were trading."

"Yes, we assumed that because he did not seem to have been hurt during the shooting."

"There were foreign fibres inside the jacket of Johnson, also where I found some traces of Heroin. The fibres probably belong to a blue pullover. So if you can find one belonging to either of these suspects, I can prove him to have touched Johnson's jacket in a kind of way," Abby explained and pointed towards the tissue of the jacket's inner pocket lying next to the microscope. "In addition to that, Ducky sent me some samples of white powder he found inside the victim's stomach, along with rests of plastics. Markus had probably swallowed two to three small packages of Heroin which burst open after a while. If he hadn't been shot, he would have died anyway a few hours later. The white powder was Cocaine. So they were probably dealing with different types of drugs."

"Perhaps this was a test meeting. They brought different samples, Heroin, Cocaine and tested out which one was best to be sold," Tony said. Suddenly, he had an idea and ran upstairs to meet Gibbs and McGee standing in front of the plasma screen. He told them what he just learnt from Abby and added, "perhaps Thomson met these two dealers to test out which drugs to buy and sell on the next ship he was ordered to."

McGee had a quick look into some files. "He would sail off with the USS Chekov in two days. We should check out if there was indeed drug business going on that cruiser," he suggested.

Gibbs nodded. "I'll check the suspect's houses with backup and tell local police to do the house searches of the victims. You two go to the ship and have a look around."

It had become late evening when Tony and McGee returned to Washington DC and so they stopped at the Chinese to get some take-away food for the late evening work. While McGee ordered dinner, Tony drove to the daily care and picked up Kathleen and brought her with them to the headquarters. Kathleen was already asleep when they arrived at HQ.

"Now I know how all the single mums feel like," Tony complained when placing Kathleen safely in her cradle next to his desk on the floor.

McGee and Tony were only half-way through their meals when Fornell came in. "Working so late?" he asked.

"We're obviously not the only ones," Tony responded.

"Is Gibbs here?"

"No, he's still out. Why?" McGee wanted to know.

"I just received a report from local police. Caroline Montebello escaped from hospital in disguise as a police officer. She left the guy she stole the clothes from unconsciously in underpants in the hospital room."

"Quite her style. Where's she now?" Tony said not very surprised.

"That's the problem. She escaped yesterday morning and the FBI was able to follow her but finally lost track. Now, we don't have any idea. She's wanted for serious charges and we control both borders and the airway. There's hardly a chance for her to get out of the US. We're very confident to find her. She's not stable and needs medical attention."

"When she escaped one day ago, why tell us now?" McGee asked.

"For obvious reasons," Fornell said and nodded to Tony who only sighed in response. "I'm tired of arguing," he simply said and continued eating.

"I just wanted to let you know," Fornell said and left the building again.

You do know that I see how many people read this story? So if you don't want to review, would you at least tell me why you don't review? :)