There were only two employees at the tattoo parlor: a tall thin guy called Glenn who was wearing a bright orange "Mommas don't raise no fools" shirt with the sleeves ripped out, and a dumpy guy named Reynolds in a dirty white wifebeater who had a rather large neck tattoo that read "Sunshine and Daises" in giant purple bubble letters.
Neither man seemed overly bright.
Shocker, Tony thought as he considered insisting that some mommas, somewhere, must be raising fools.
Both of the men quickly provided alibis for the time of Collins' murder. DiNozzo would run them later, but they sounded solid. He wasn't getting bad guy vibes from these twerps anyway, and judging from Gibbs' expression neither was he.
Taking them down to the station seemed like a waste of everyone's time, so Gibbs questioned them in their shop while Tony poked around, half listening.
"Do you remember Keith Collins? Tattoo of Bill the Goat, just a couple weeks ago?" Gibbs held up a photo.
"Yeah, that's my work," Reynolds offered. "Good kid. Sat still, no bitching about the needles."
"Did he come in with anyone?"
"Nope, not that I saw."
Glenn was working on a client, filling in the color of a pink flamingo on roller skates on the lower back of a tiny blonde woman. She spotted Tony watching and flipped him a smile. "I'm gonna make a chain," she said, gesturing around her belly and back in a loop. "I got a hippo, spider, bear and now a flamingo. Got room for at least three more."
"A chain of roller-skating creatures?" he asked, eyebrows raised.
"Yep." She nodded firmly.
Though he thought she was nuts and the artwork dubious (the bear looked more like Alf), he smiled at her easy decisiveness. "So you're in here a lot? Or you go to different places?"
"I always come here. Once you find a tattoo artist you're comfortable with, it's better to stick with 'em than trying your luck with a new one. Kinda like a doctor, you know?"
Glenn nodded in agreement, then used his shirt to wipe his runny nose before returning to work.
"Yeah, I can see why you wouldn't want to lose this guy." At least the flamingo looked like a flamingo. Sorta. It looked more like a pink stork to him, but the only flamingoes he'd ever seen were plastic.
Behind him, Gibbs had the photos of the other victims Abby had linked to this shop out for Reynolds to peruse.
"Yep, I did this one too," Reynolds tapped one of the photos. "Standard rose thing. Nothing exciting. Think Glenn did this guy." He tapped another photo, but one of a victim's tattoo rather than his face.
Gibbs stepped over to Glenn, whose face lit up as he saw the photo. "Yeah! Last summer. I remember because the guy sold Tootsie Roll Pops in some store he had, and he brought us a box."
"You remember anyone in with him?"
"No, just the suckers. Real sad, though. That guy would've come back. He liked the ink."
"You get a lot of repeat customers?"
"Oh, yeah. We get a lot of one-timers for the standard rose, heart, butterfly, barbed wire, stuff like that. But a lot of them get hooked on the art, come back for more."
Tony took the pictures from Gibbs and held them out for the skater chick to see. "Any of these people look familiar? Maybe from your other trips here?"
She looked at each of them intently, but shook her head. "Sorry."
Gibbs grabbed the pictures back and stalked over to Reynolds. "Where is Max?"
"Max who?"
Gibbs closed his eyes for a second before proceeding. Tony was hoping for steam, but sadly none appeared out of the agent's ears.
"This place is called Max's. Does a guy named Max own it?"
"Nope, Glenn and me, we're the only owners. No other employees right now, either."
"Did you buy it from a guy named Max? Maybe in the past few years?"
"Nope. Bought it about five years ago. Guy named Phil. Weird guy, green feathered hair. Looked like a parakeet."
Tony changed directions, "How many regular customers do you have?"
"Regulars ain't the right term, more like repeats," Reynolds said. "Hard to say, exactly. Probably had a couple thousand repeats in the past year or two."
His sinking feeling now continuing to his feet, Tony continued his line of thought. "There's what, at least 10 tattoo shops around here?"
"Yeah, over twenty in Baltimore. But we got a better customer base than some, since we've passed all the health inspections. You wouldn't believe how dirty some of those other places are."
Ignoring that scary, unnecessary thought, DiNozzo prompted, "I don't suppose you know what percentage of people has tattoos?"
"A quarter. Maybe more around here. Higher population of military guys and younger people means it's probably higher here."
Maybe Reynolds wasn't entirely useless. At least he knew his own field.
But the information he gave them wasn't welcome.
Three people in a victim pool of over two dozen in one city sharing the same tattoo parlor over five years. If the national average of people with tattoos was really 25%...
Tony glanced at Gibbs. "How do you feel about coincidences when they seem to actually be coincidences?"
"Shut up, DiNozzo," Gibbs grumbled, but it lacked bite.
They had nothing.
Again.
And, they found as they trudged back to the car, it was snowing.
Again.
Gibbs drove them back to the police station, more out of a need to regroup somewhere than a real need to be there.
"I want Abby to go over all the old evidence on the previous victims."
DiNozzo shrugged, "Sure, if we can get Mallace to sign off on it. But Baltimore PD's lab geeks are backed up, not bad. I don't know if Abby's going to find anything we can use." The detective sounded defeated.
Don't quit on me now, Gibbs thought. Then he scowled at himself. He didn't need DiNozzo on this investigation. He was merely tolerating him since it had been his case first and he seemed competent.
He parked the car, then snapped, "You wanna call it a night, you can leave any time you want."
"I'd miss your sparkling conversational skill. Come on, time to get you coffee." Tony got out of the car with a muted squeak as he stretched his abused, lanky body out. Then he walked at an easy pace towards the building, not bothering to look back to see if Gibbs was following.
For a split second, Gibbs thought about leaving. Going back to NCIS, having someone from legal get all the evidence from Baltimore PD, and working the case on his own, as he was used to doing. As he was meant to do. He obviously wasn't meant to have probies. He didn't have the time to take care of them, to paper train them, to discipline them. He had a damn job to do.
"Didn't know you enjoyed wasting time second guessing yourself, Gibbs. I'll be inside working when you decide you're ready to play nice." All inflections of defeat had been banished from DiNozzo's voice. In fact, he sounded slightly accusatory.
Wasting time? He was wasting time?
Gibbs set off after DiNozzo with anger simmering. He caught up with the man just inside the door, but so did Leo.
The smaller man's body language screamed subordinate as he weaseled close to Tony quivering with nerves, but his voice was steady and his eyes were steely as he quietly reported. "Strauss and Prika have a guy in holding for using a copper pipe to bash in the head of a pizza delivery kid. Apparently after he killed the kid, he continued bashing parts with the pipe until someone found him."
DiNozzo nodded slightly, but continued walking as though nothing had changed.
Leo passed Gibbs and acknowledged him with a pleasant, "Agent Gibbs, good evening," that did not match the scared-rabbit movements he made as he scurried away.
One day he was going to corner that guy and get some answers from him.
At the moment, however, he chose to follow DiNozzo. The casual posture and easy greetings he tossed out to colleagues as he passed were every bit as much of a cover as Leo's cowardly lion act; Gibbs had been around Tony long enough now to recognize the split second difference in reaction times when the detective's mind was wholly absorbed with something.
Though he still wasn't entirely certain why DiNozzo felt the need to mask deep thought with more careless or carefree facades in his own precinct. It was downright strange.
Tony blinked back to full awareness when a passing uniform wolf-whistled at him. "That's one fine woman."
"Which one of the many fine women I have regular contact with would you be referring to?" came the cocky reply.
"The one passed out on your desk."
Intrigued, both Tony and Gibbs increased their pace.
As they entered the homicide room, they could see that there was indeed a tall woman lying on her back across the length of DiNozzo's desk, knees hanging over the side and feet kicking up into the air in time to a beat no one else could hear.
A woman wearing knee-high black boots with big, big heels that looked like they could stomp small buildings.
Tony stopped a few feet away, but Gibbs continued onward, pulling the earbuds out of Abby's ears and allowing his mouth to curl into a smile to match the one she beamed up at him, somehow recognizing him before she even opened her eyes.
"Gibbs!" She lunged forward and hugged him.
Tony backed up.
Gibbs straightened with Abby still attached, pulling her up into a sitting position on the edge of DiNozzo's desk. She reached into her purse – if one could call a big black bag embroidered with purple skulls and puppies a purse – and pulled out a basic cell phone.
"Here, Gibbs. I programmed it for you just like the last one. Same number, too."
He nodded and released her, slipping the phone into his jacket pocket.
She reached back in the bag and pulled out a larger, more complicated phone and held it out to Tony. "Even I couldn't save a phone from a prolonged dunking in paint thinner. I hope you've got a paper copy of your phone numbers, but I put us in there – Gibbs is speed dial #1, I'm #2, Ducky's #3 and NCIS dispatch is #4. Oh, and I put in Baltimore PD's main line as #5."
Tony reached out slowly and took the phone, still watching her.
Abby jumped off the desk and grabbed the phone back, pushing several buttons. "Look, see? It's got a camera. Isn't that neat?" She squeezed her face in next to Tony's and held the phone out like a point-and-shoot camera and hit a button.
Gibbs felt old.
DiNozzo turned the new toy around and around in his hands, admiringly. "This is an expensive phone, Abby," he said cautiously.
"I broke yours, NCIS can pay for a new one," Gibbs said gruffly.
Abby laughed. "Maybe, but they didn't. Gibbs slipped me the cash for this."
Gibbs considered killing her, but a police station didn't seem like the best place to do it.
DiNozzo got that damn look on his face again, the one where happiness warred with wariness, as though he didn't trust the first. Overall, he looked like he wanted to run away.
Abby broke through that moment of awkwardness. "I have a bone to pick with you, detective."
Now wariness won over Tony's face as he awaited Abby's next words.
"Did you maybe forget to tell me something important?"
Confusion stole over the wariness handily.
Abby had that effect sometimes.
"Like something really important?"
DiNozzo glanced at Gibbs, questioning.
Gibbs shrugged. Abby wasn't always predictable, even for him. He had no clue where this was going.
Tony gave it a shot. "Thank you for the phone?"
"That's very sweet, but wrong. Try again."
Brow furrowed, DiNozzo obviously racked his brain. Suddenly, he stilled, a pained look crossing his face. "I lost Gibbs his probies. He doesn't have a team anymore."
Abby smacked him on the back of the head much as Gibbs had earlier. Briefly, a rebellious expression crossed Tony's face before he settled down to take it like a man.
"Wrong on both counts. You didn't lose Gibbs his team, they screwed up. And he still has a team, just a better one. Try again."
Now confusion danced with annoyance across the detective's face as he searched his memory again. "You might have to help me out here, Abby."
"Think guns."
He paled. "I almost got Gibbs shot."
This was painful to watch. Did he truly not see where this was going?
"Wrong! You kept Gibbs from getting shot. But who did get shot, Tony?"
"Ricky's thug?"
Abby turned to Gibbs. "Really? This isn't a joke?"
He gave her a small negative head shake. He'd rather it were a joke, but knew it wasn't.
Abby turned back to Tony. "You, DiNozzo. You got shot! When exactly were you going to tell me?" Her voice got higher and louder, and Tony tried to shush her as the other detectives looked over in amusement.
"I didn't get shot, just grazed. It's no big deal. Like a skinned knee."
She nodded, but Gibbs knew this game already. He was staying away from her.
"It's no big deal, you didn't really get shot," she repeated.
"Exactly! You wanna grab some dinner?" DiNozzo sounded a little desperate, but it was hard to blame him.
"I want to understand this," she barked, causing Tony to jump.
Gibbs suspected he'd overemphasized the jump to give the suddenly very commanding Abby more satisfaction, but he wasn't sure.
"A bullet was fired. It touched your body. But you weren't really shot."
"Getting shot's when you get stuck in the hospital for days and days and they remove pieces of metal from your body with long pointy tweezers or have to pack big holes with gauze to keep you from losing too much blood. I just basically got a big band-aid. They let me go in less than two hours."
Deciding he could one day be in this position himself, Gibbs neglected to mention that the doctors had wanted to keep DiNozzo overnight.
Abby stuck one long finger in Tony's face. "You will tell me when a bullet or projectile of any kind touches your person. You will tell me if you get stabbed, sliced, or otherwise bleed due to sharp metal blades. You will tell me if someone hits you, either with their bare hands or brass knuckles or a pipe or club of any nature. You will tell me if you are in a car accident, or are hit by a moving car. You will tell me if you fall and hit your head – if anything ever hits your head. Or if you hit anything with your big stupid head. Do you understand?"
After a beat, Tony said loudly, "No! I do not understand, scary Abby."
"I am not asking if you understand my motivations. I am asking if you understand what I am requiring you to do in the future, starting now."
Nose-to-nose, DiNozzo still had a couple of inches on Abby, even in her boots. But scary Abby, as Tony had aptly named her, always seemed much bigger than anyone in the room.
"I understand," Tony snapped, looking like he had no idea why he was angry.
"Good! Now I'm all mad at you. I hate being mad. Gibbs!" Abby turned to him. "Let's go get caffeinated so I can cool down."
Gibbs nodded and gestured towards the door. "Back in ten. Think you can find out about that case by then?"
"Of course I can!" Tony retorted, plopping down in his chair as the other two took off towards the tiny cafeteria.
Gibbs reached for Abby's arm as they exited the room, but she tugged away and held up a finger. "One sec, forgot something." He held the door open while she dashed back to Tony.
The detective glared at her, belligerent now.
Linking her hands behind her back, Abby leaned down and kissed him on the cheek. "I'm glad you're okay, Tony. Don't scare me like that." She waited until he met her serious eyes, then darted back to Gibbs, leaving Tony looking adrift.
"Bring me a cookie!" The detective commanded loudly to her retreating back, trying futilely to bring some control to the situation.
Gibbs didn't care for the look of mystification on DiNozzo's face.
Was it possible he still didn't get it?