9 This is personal

It's late afternoon when they reach the school. The principal has already given a statement, but she gives it again to Gibbs. The DiNozzos are always late, she says, always; she had seen the red car pull up and had decided to have a word. But when she got outside she saw the car speeding away, no Rebecca, and Mr. DiNozzo lying in the street. No, she had noticed nothing unusual about the car, no damage, no missing license plate.

"You're sure the child was in the car?"

"No, not sure. But I didn't see her anywhere else, and why would Mr. DiNozzo be here without Rebecca?"

Gibbs turns to Allen. "You've searched the woods and the area? There's always the chance she was already out of the car and ran away."

"We searched. Becks knows everyone in the office and some of the MPs. However frightened she was, she'd have come out if she was hiding around here."

Gibbs asks the principal: "Could she have tried to walk home?"

"It's a long walk. Her father always drops her off in the morning. Her mother usually picks her up. Sometimes the nanny, but in the car or in a cab. I don't think Rebecca could find her way home alone."

Allen says, "He was dragged by the car. If he knew Becks was out he would have let go."

"He could have been caught on the car somehow."

"His clothes weren't torn. Only the knees. He was holding on."

Gibbs gives up, though it had been a more cheering prospect to think of the little girl hiding under a bush, waiting for a familiar face or voice to come out. Now he focuses on the scene. "Nice place for an ambush."

"Yes. The school's the only building on this side of the street."

"What's that back there?"

"Private golf course. Trees and hedges on both sides of the driveway here. Good places to hide."

"No businesses around? No cameras?"

"All residential back here, except for the school and the golf course. It's a very nice neighborhood. This isn't like Buenos Ares, Agent Gibbs. The houses don't have gates or security cameras."

More rotten luck. But it's getting a little clearer. "They were always late," Gibbs says. "Other parents would already have been gone. Small chance of any witnesses. Someone's been watching."

"Seems like it."

"I don't think you'd watch that hard for a five-year-old four-door Smart Car, do you, Agent Allen?"

"I wouldn't, no."

He walks down the street. A little blood by the driveway. Vague smears that begin a few feet north. A larger blot, dried and dark now, perhaps a hundred feet north. A long time to hang on for a man with a killing blow to his gut. Yes, the girl had been in the car.

"Where's the road go?"

"Half a mile in that direction and a left turn takes you into downtown Rota. Turn right and you're on the highway in a few minutes, northeast to Jerez."

"The chop shop?"

"Not the most direct route. But you could be there in 15 minutes. Maybe less."

"You only rousted that chop shop on Monday. It's Thursday. Not much time to set up an ambush."

"But we caught the first carjacker nearly three weeks ago. Enough time for them to get nervous and start planning something. The local cops aren't serious about this stuff. We are."

"But that carjacker didn't give you much."

"They don't know that."

Gibbs's gut is rumbling a little. The carjacking angle still just feels wrong. This, he knows, is personal somehow. Someone had stood in those trees by the driveway, watching the DiNozzos miss the morning bell day after day.

There's nothing more to see here, he realizes. Now for the hard part.