Twenty minutes later they passed through the academy gates without incident. As Gibbs parked the car, DiNozzo moved into a lazy stretch. He opened the car door and half-rolled out, continuing his stretch as he stood.
Gibbs took stock of the other man, and noted his movements were fluid again, and his eyes bright and sharp. Satisfied, Gibbs turned and stalked towards the administrative building.
Tony followed, hands in pockets. He looked younger here in the daylight, surrounded by college kids. He could fit right in if he chose to. But there was an underlying sense of wariness under the nonchalance, as if he were waiting for something unpleasant to occur.
They passed a group of students hurrying by, discussing a point from an engineering lecture they'd just attended. Three younger students ambled in the opposite direction, animatedly debating next year's potential football roster. A serious-looking young woman with a stack of books looking to weigh more than she did herself exited the admin building as they approached and cast a sly smile at both of them.
DiNozzo relaxed fractionally at each encounter.
Eyebrow raised, Gibbs was about to ask Tony what he'd expected when they were interrupted by a neat, fair-haired man of middling age.
"Special Agent Gibbs?" At Gibbs' nod, the man continued. "Commander Partant. PMP – linguistics, primarily. Superintendant Hotch asked me to walk you around. He'll make himself available if you need to speak with him, but he didn't know the Midshipman well, just by name and face."
DiNozzo spoke up without introducing himself. "Is that usual for a first classman?"
"Extremely. There are over four thousand students on campus, five hundred faculty and another several hundred staff members."
Gibbs interjected, "Why does the superintendant know Collins at all?"
"He was double majoring in Chinese and Arabic. Had a gift for languages."
DiNozzo clarified, "So he was a protégé of yours?"
"Yes, something like that. But he was already better than I am." The commander unbent enough to offer a small shrug. "Natural talent. I did spend more time with him than any other instructor."
"General impressions?"
Snapping straight again at Gibbs' commanding tone, the commander paused to think for a minute before replying. "Intellectual more than physical. Friendly, no beefs with other students that I knew about. Curious kid. Mostly happy – or at least not depressed. He often seemed absorbed, distracted, but in an academic kind of way, like he was always working a problem in his head."
The straighter Partant stood, the more Tony slouched. "So he was on leave this weekend?"
"Yes. I don't know what his plans were, or where he was headed. I believe most of his friends are on base. He doesn't have any family."
This wasn't new information; both men had read in Collins' file that the boy's father skipped out when he was little and was later killed in a motorcycle accident, and his mother died two years ago of cancer. No immediate relatives. No next of kin listed to notify.
"Log shows he signed out on his own?" Gibbs asked gruffly.
"Yes. He left solo in his own vehicle."
Tony had been inching closer to the man, and now stood well within his personal space. "You know his friends well? Who's his best pal?"
"I know his group of friends, more or less, but I'm not aware that he had any one friend closer than the others, or any romantic interests on or off campus."
DiNozzo scratched at the side of a scrape on his face, breaking off a small scab and letting it fall to the ground. He moved another half inch closer to their interviewee. "Hobbies? A boy has to have hobbies."
"He was very involved in his studies. Spent a lot of time in the library, reading popular literature in the languages he was learning to improve his skills. I…think he liked to go to the movies sometimes."
Either the Collins kid was an a-typical college student, or Partant was not a man with his finger on the pulse of the school. Or student, in this case. Apparently deciding the same, Tony wandered away to study a campus map posted on the side of the building.
Gibbs was also just about done with the bland commander for the moment. "Show us his room, then gather up the Midshipman's friends and any classmates or teachers who saw him the night he left. We'll interview them one by one once we're done in his room."
Partant snapped around at the order, and led them over several buildings to a brick dormitory. Collins' room was right inside the door on the first level.
DiNozzo went straight inside without waiting for an invitation. After arranging where to meet the commander and then dismissing the man, Gibbs stopped to note the layout – no neighbors to the east, similar room on the west side. Communal head across the hall. No cameras.
Entering the boy's room, he found DiNozzo taking photos with a small silver digital camera. As Collins had left campus Friday night and not returned according to security logs, it was unlikely this room was a crime scene. But Gibbs approved, especially when he saw Tony capturing images of the small ads, posters and leaflets pinned to the large bulletin board.
"Find anything interesting?"
"Nothing unusual yet." DiNozzo moved to take some shots of the closet before pulling on gloves he produced from his jacket, then starting to rifle through the pockets of Collins' clothes.
Gibbs stripped the bed, thoroughly searching between mattress and box spring, feeling the pillows for hidden objects, and searching underneath for anything stored or taped up to the bottom of the platform.
He found nothing, not even dust.
Moving to the desk, he glanced over at DiNozzo, who was now crawling around the closet floor, sticking his hands inside shoes and flipping them over to examine the bottoms.
Gibbs was itching to bark an order in the detective's direction, but he refrained – so far, Tony was showing solid skills.
The desk held nothing unexpected, nothing personal. Just school papers, many of which were partially in Chinese or Arabic. Gathering those into a separate pile to have someone else take a look at later, he eyed Collins' laptop distrustfully.
"You know anything about computers?"
Tony looked up from his investigation of the wall vent. "A little, but not a lot." He came over and opened the lid of the little black computer, then pressed one circular button.
Apparently it was the power button, as lights came on and the screen began to show an image.
Gibbs peered at the screen as Tony typed something, frowned, typed something else in, then picked up the machine, running his hands around each side.
"It's password-protected. I don't have the skills to crack it, and I don't see any handily-hidden paper reminders tucked away. Did you find anything that looked like a list of passwords in the desk?"
"Nope." Gibbs watched as DiNozzo checked the desk for hidden compartments. When the younger man finally gave up his search with an annoyed sigh, Gibbs rested a hand on his shoulder in solidarity. Technology sucked.
Tony went completely still.
Most people who didn't like to be touched unexpectedly jumped, or jerked back, or stiffened. Maybe slapped the offender away. Going completely still without tensing wasn't a natural reaction. It was trained, or learned.
With a growing sense of unease, Gibbs searched the other man's eyes. But he didn't see any fear or anger, not even any distrust. Just caution. DiNozzo was waiting to see what the gesture would turn into.
The kid had been watchful last night, and observant throughout the day. What was it about this place that made him cautious?
Gibbs clumsily turned his light squeeze into a shoulder pat, then offered, "We can pack it up and take it back to the Navy Yard. Abby's good with computers."
The instant Gibbs' hand was removed, Tony's face took on his previous easy expression. "Abby, of the famous Abby and Ducky you mentioned before?"
"Abby's my forensic scientist. Ducky's the medical examiner for NCIS. You'll meet them soon enough."
Tony brightened. "Yeah? We're going to your headquarters?"
"Yeah, DiNozzo, we're going to the Navy Yard after we leave here."
Tony grinned. "I've never been inside a fed's building before. We've worked with the FBI and ATF on cases, but they would show up at the station, or meet us on scene." He paused, "Or avoid us altogether, more often. Hey, will you give me a tour?"
"I look like a tour guide to you, DiNozzo?"
"No, not really. They usually have bad hats on."
Gibbs stared at the kid in disbelief for a full minute while he chattered on about some college trip to Venice. He and Ducky ought to get along just fine.
But Ducky's rambles were usually semi-logical progressions from a point at hand. He verbalized his free-association in the form of very long stories that often connected to other very, very long stories.
Tony, on the other hand, had just started talking and was jumping from point to point with no discernable connections. His mood, body language, tone of voice – all had changed rapidly in the last three minutes from intense investigator to paragon of stillness to annoying, excited kid.
"And the girls – oh, you should've seen the girls, Gibbs. Not an English speaker in the lot, but you don't always need language to communicate, you know what I mean?"
"Shut up, DiNozzo."
"Come on, Gibbs, you gotta live a little!" But after uttering this inane comment, the detective fell silent and continued his search. He had moved from exploring for loose carpeting and wall boards to removing the light fixture in the ceiling.
Tony hadn't been prone to excessive chattering before this. Was that just due to the blow to his throat messing with his voice, or was this display for a specific purpose? He had diffused the momentary tension almost instantly… And DiNozzo was no ditz, despite how he had sounded for a minute there.
Tony finished checking the opening into the ceiling for hidden treasure, and checking the fixture itself. He replaced it, stepped back down off of the desk chair, and brushed flakes of ceiling tile off of his shirt. "I'm done, unless you've got something specific you want me to go through."
Gibbs took another look around the room, but couldn't see anything they'd missed. Just seemed strange there was so little here. After four years, the Collins kid ought to have accumulated some amount of shit to sort through.
DiNozzo's gazed followed' Gibbs'. "Seem strange to you how few personal belongings he has?"
Gibbs lost an internal battle and let a small smile show on his face. "Yep. Come on, DiNozzo, we're done here."
He led the way to a classroom two buildings away where Partant stood stiffly at the front of the room and twenty students sat clustered together in the back, all talking at once in hushed tones. Their harsh whispers faded to silence as Gibbs looked them over. "I'm Special Agent Gibbs with NCIS, this is Detective DiNozzo of the Baltimore PD. We'll be taking you to the classroom next door one at a time to ask a few standard questions. Starting with…you." He pointed to one of the four girls in the pack, a petite thing with a cap of white-blonde hair.
She rose willingly and quietly followed them to the next room. Gibbs gestured her to a chair, flipping another one around so he could sit facing her. Tony settled himself off to the side, a few feet away.
Consciously gentling his voice, Gibbs asked, "Name?"
"Jennifer Seward, sir."
"You don't have to sir me, Ms. Seward." Gibbs saw Tony raise an eyebrow at that. Apparently the detective hadn't believed him earlier.
"You don't have to Ms. Seward me, Agent Gibbs," the girl said with a straight face.
"Jennifer, what was your connection to Keith Collins?"
"He was a friend, and a classmate. I'd known him for four years."
"And?"
"And…he was a good student. Friendly, not shy but not a strutting ass like some of the guys our age. He had trouble with science courses sometimes, but he'd trade tutoring in any language for help. He must have spoken at least six languages. I didn't spend a lot of time with him one on one, but he was always around, always out with the group, you know? He was a really good guy." She looked sad, but nowhere near tears, thank god. Gibbs hated a crying female.
"Was he close to anyone in particular?"
"He had a lot of friends across campus…I don't think he had a best friend, at least not that I knew about. He dated a girl named Emily two years ago, but they broke it off when Emily graduated. Nothing dramatic."
"Do you know where he was headed on Friday?"
"No, I don't. There was a group of guys that went to play laser tag the same night, but he didn't go with them."
"Did he go into the city often?"
"I think he did…at least, he was usually gone Friday nights."
Tony spoke up. "Do you know where he spent his holidays? Who he stayed with when he wasn't on campus?"
"I assume with his family, or other friends? He grew up around Balitmore."
Neither man chose to inform her that Collins had no family.
The interview continued, with Gibbs controlling most of the questions, but DiNozzo freely inserting his own on occasion.
After Jennifer, there was Patrick Givens. Then Robert Riddick, Sean Falston, Sasha Deltina…it took far less time than it should have to interview a round twenty students.
Their answers were all along the same lines. Keith was a good friend, but not a close friend. He was reliable, well-liked, intelligent. They picked up small details on where he liked to eat, what kinds of movies he liked, how much he hated reality television.
No one had a good idea where he went Friday nights. No one knew he had no family left, where he spent his vacations and holidays, who he spoke with on a regular basis outside of the academy.
With each interview, DiNozzo's face drew further and further shut. He still fronted an easygoing, open expression, but Gibbs could see the shutters closing behind the green eyes, bit by bit.
It was an odd reaction to a series of uneventful interviews.
When the last student had left the room, Gibbs waited for Tony to speak. Finally, after a long silence, DiNozzo said, "I don't think he was being secretive. I get the feeling he just didn't talk about himself much."
Gibbs continued his noncommittal look in the detective's direction. He was inclined to agree, but wanted to see what else the other man would offer up.
"I don't like any of them for it. No motive."
"Might just not have found the motive yet."
"Yeah…just doesn't feel right. I don't think any of them are responsible." Tony looked like he was bracing for something.
Gibbs stood. "I agree."
A startled DiNozzo followed several paces behind as Gibbs headed back to the car.