Gibbs wasn't surprised when he walked into the squad room and saw that DiNozzo had beaten him in. He also wasn't surprised to see that Tony was throwing paper balls across the room and sinking them into Ziva's trash can with practiced ease. He wasn't surprised that Tony was also needling McGee into spilling the details of his date Saturday night. He wasn't surprised that McGee and Ziva were letting Tony hide even though they both would definitely have heard about the tragedy. It was a smallish agency, but those agents still talked.
So while Gibbs wasn't surprised by any of it, he was definitely worried.
"DiNozzo," he barked, setting his coffee on his desk and eyeing his senior agent, who snapped upright with a slight wince. "What'd Ducky say about your x-ray?"
The forced smile slipped a tiny bit as both Ziva and McGee shot surprised looks at their teammate, both obviously trying to find the injury Gibbs knew Tony hadn't mentioned. Getting shot in the chest was, after all, not exactly a paper cut. Gibbs also knew it was a low blow, but even if Ducky cleared him for field work, the team needed to know Tony wasn't going to be one hundred percent out there.
"I'm fine," Tony said, ignoring the inquisitive looks and not offering an explanation.
Gibbs gave him a look. "You know I can check to make sure you actually went to see him."
"Which is why," Tony said, turning up the smile to near-blinding brightness, "I actually went."
Gibbs grunted his approval as he sank into his chair, wondering why he felt like crap and DiNozzo looked completely unfazed. He could guess who had gotten more sleep, but it didn't seem to matter to Tony, who was back to guessing McGee's date's cup size from a photo on his phone while Tim pretended to be annoyed and Ziva pretended to be uninterested.
When the phone on his desk rang, informing them of yet another dead body, Gibbs actually asked for details for once, not wanting Tony anywhere near another young body. He would never admit that it was for his own bruised emotions, too, or that he had been hoping for a boring day of copying and collating rather than corpses.
He flipped the keys at Ziva. "Meet you downstairs. I need to see Ducky."
Tony's groan had nothing to do with physical pain. "I really did go, Boss."
Gibbs surprised them all by saying, "I know you did, Tony." They all blinked at the first name and the gentleness in his tone. Their jaws about dropped when he continued, "You can go home if you don't feel up to this."
The smile dropped off Tony's face for good and there was an edge of anger in his voice as he said, "I'm fine."
Gibbs made his way to the elevator, imagining what Tony might have said if they had been alone.
"You didn't save anyone last night, Gibbs, so why are you trying to protect me now?"
Ducky looked up from the guts of the petty officer on his table and gave Gibbs a nod. "If you are here to inquire about Anthony, yes, he came to see me, and no, nothing is broken. He has some nasty bruising, and he is likely quite sore, but he refused anything for the pain. I cleared him, Jethro, because there was no medical reason not to."
Gibbs leaned back against an unoccupied table and rubbed a hand over his face.
Ducky nodded again. "Ah," he said, making a notation on a clipboard. "I take it you are not down here for my medical advice."
A tight frown was Gibbs' only response, and Ducky continued, "From the short time he was down here with me, I can tell you that he's badly shaken and doing his damnedest not to show it. Typical Tony behavior for a situation like this, I'm afraid."
"Last night was anything but typical, Duck," Gibbs said tiredly.
The doctor slid a glance toward the bank of drawers, his eyes zeroing in on what Gibbs guessed was the one holding Kevin Harris' broken little body. "I cannot argue with that," Ducky said, sounding equally tired. "It would be a blessing if I never had to autopsy another child so young."
Gibbs closed his eyes, remembering the boy clinging to Tony in the cold night air.
"I am sorry, Jethro," Ducky said with a wince. "I sometimes forget that while my job is never easy, at least I rarely have contact with the victims as living, breathing people."
Gibbs opened his eyes and shook his head. "Don't worry about it."
Ducky set aside the clipboard and stepped away from the body, eyes narrowed in concern as he studied his longtime friend. "What is it? What else is bothering you?"
The wry smile came against Gibbs' will, but he let it stay there. "No psychological autopsies, Duck. I'm not dead yet."
The doctor waited.
Gibbs shook his head again, drawing a slow breath. "I screwed up, Duck," he admitted softly to the dead man on the table.
"Gibbs," Ducky admonished, "I might not have been there, but I can say with certainty that you and Anthony did everything you possibly could have to save that boy. You are both outstanding agents—both good men—and if the two of you could not save young Kevin, then I am willing to bet that the boy just could not be saved." He paused, his hand twitching to reach out to the agent, but he knew the gesture of comfort would not be welcome. "You simply cannot save them all, Jethro."
Blue eyes flashed angrily, but Ducky knew the ire wasn't directed at him. "I didn't do anything," Gibbs said, frustration evident in his voice. "Tony did everything right. Absolutely everything. And it still didn't matter. Harris still killed the boy."
Ducky simply waited, sensing there was more to be said and knowing Gibbs well enough to know that it wouldn't come all at once.
"I was in the house while he was out there, freezing his ass off trying to save the kid, and there were microphones on them, but I wasn't listening."
The doctor frowned. "You may not be the best conversationalist, Jethro, but I know you are quite the good listener. I highly doubt you weren't listening to Anthony."
"Oh, I was listening," Gibbs said, still sounding angry—with himself. "But I wasn't hearing him."
Again Ducky waited.
Gibbs huffed out a breath and realized he needed to hurry this up before his team came looking for him. "He was using a code, and I misunderstood him." He paused, looking away. "I failed him, and now I don't think he trusts me. And even if he does, he's still pissed at me, and I don't know how to bring it up without dredging up last night and hurting him all over again."
"Perhaps it wouldn't be so bad for him to talk about it," Ducky offered after a moment of thought. "Anthony is extremely resilient, but a tragedy like this boy's death takes time to process. My best advice is to give him that time and then try to talk to him. It might not be such a bad idea to make him talk about it. I imagine he is putting on the same cheerful façade with you as he did with me this morning?"
Gibbs nodded. "And with McGee and Ziva." He rubbed a hand over his face again. "He's just been through so much—Kate and Paula, that mess with Jeanne, and then with Jenny. He's been framed for murder, drugged and dragged through the sewers, and beaten during an undercover assignment. I just don't know how much more he can take."
There was a mixture of surprise and concern in Ducky's eyes at the speech, a long one for Gibbs. The doctor paused, allowing for the gravity of his soft question. "Do you think he would hurt himself?"
"No," Gibbs said simply, meaning it.
Ducky waited.
Gibbs sighed with all the weariness of everything that had happened. "But I do think he might start itching to move on."
The team filed into the alley in silence, mimicking the tense ride over. Gibbs knew Tony was pissed at him for asking about his injury in front of the team, but he stood by that decision. More confusing, though, was whether he should bring up the misread code.
Gibbs abandoned the thoughts and focused on the crime scene, the body slumped against a brick wall. The dead man had a festive Santa hat on his head and bloody hole in his chest, his empty wallet discarded beside his lifeless body.
Gibbs glanced to the side and caught DiNozzo as he lifted his camera and froze as he focused on the bloody scene. Gibbs was close enough that even his poor eyesight couldn't miss the tremors in Tony's hands.
"McGee," he barked, watching his senior agent jump along with the probie. "Photos. DiNozzo, you talk to the witness." He simply nodded at Ziva, who was stepping carefully over the pool of blood, taking measurements of the scene.
If anyone wondered at the assignments, no one spoke. But from DiNozzo, Gibbs got rolled eyes and an angry stare as he brushed past to go interview the witness. Gibbs ignored the open hostility even though he was fairly certain DiNozzo wanted him to push back. But it wasn't the place or the time; he knew Tony was still upset over Kevin's violent death, no matter how hard he was trying to ignore it around Ziva and McGee or mask it with him.
He just watched Tony touch a hand to his chest as he ducked under the crime scene tape, and then Gibbs turned back to the scene, wondering why the dead man was wearing no coat on this subfreezing morning.
Tony approached the woman and realized he might rather be photographing the blood. But then he shuddered hard, remembering the sudden warmth of Kevin's coating his chilled face and neck. He swiped at his skin, wincing when he brushed the cut at his throat and wondering for the thousandth time if it was from Harris' bullet or Kevin's broken skull—and wondering why it mattered.
Either way, the boy was still dead.
But still the urge to ask Ducky his opinion had been nearly overwhelming as he had sat on a shiny autopsy table that morning, wondering why he was trying to smile and joke when Kevin's cold body rested in a drawer not twenty feet away. It made him wonder what was wrong with him—and how he could ever fix himself when new cracks were appearing, seemingly by the day.
"Ma'am?" All other thoughts were relegated to their dark corners as he stopped in front of a woman who looked like she had seen too many years of too much pain of her own. Her mostly gray hair had obviously once been blonde, and Tony imagined her skinny figure had once been lovely. But now her cheeks were sunken, eyes shadowed and haunted. "I'm Special Agent Anthony DiNozzo, NCIS."
A pale, shaking hand was extended and he shook it gently, afraid the frail bones would shatter in his grip. "Samantha Jordan," she said, her voice trembling as badly as the rest of her.
Tony eyed her thin coat and looked around for shelter against the brutal wind that was more than a match for the threadbare orange wool. He took Samantha by the elbow and winced again, this time at the fragility of the bones, and he loosened his grasp. He made his tone as gentle as his grip and said, "Ms. Jordan, let's go over there. Get out of the cold."
She glanced from the bus shelter he had nodded to and then back at the body. "Okay," she whispered, letting him lead her. But her eyes stayed on the dead man.
Tony felt a ripple of unease and would have sworn he saw guilt in her otherwise vacant blue eyes. The color was that of old denim, faded and worn—just like the rest of her. He watched her perch on the seat inside the graffiti-covered shelter, oddly afraid she might break as she started to bend.
"Samantha," she whispered.
"Ma'am?" he asked, not quite having heard her.
She looked up at him, a wistfulness passing through her eyes as they studied his handsome face. "You can call me Samantha."
He smiled at her, wondering again what she had looked like in the prime of her life—and what hardships in that life had stolen the beauty straight off her face. "Samantha," he said, nodding. "You told the Metro officers you saw the murder?"
She nodded as she tried to see through the thick plexiglass shelter walls. All Tony saw were black blurs, his team running the crime scene. He ignored the blob of red at the bottom of that scene. One senseless murder after another, he thought wearily, willing sudden moisture from his eyes and wanting to blame the brutal wind. It never ends.
"I saw the killer grab that poor man by his jacket," she said, her voice low and shaking. "He had gloves on but he wasn't wearing a coat himself and tried to take the other man's. It was a nice jacket. Leather with what seemed like a nice, thick liner. I bet it was real warm."
She paused, and Tony waited, knowing witnesses focused on different things, that they could often cite details about the smallest things but couldn't tell whether the assailant was black or white. Tony watched Samantha close her eyes, and he stayed silent, biting down on his questions and letting her just remember.
"The killer tried to drag that poor man into the alley there," she continued, her eyes still closed. "The man punched—" She paused, drawing an unsteady breath. "He punched the killer in the arm, and he fought to get away. But the killer was just not about to give up." She stopped again, opening her eyes only to have them take on a faraway look. "The poor boy must have been so cold in this godawful weather out here."
Tony frowned, noting the pause and the change in the descriptive from "the killer" to "the poor boy." He leaned forward, taking her bare hand in his gloved ones. "Samantha," he said, waiting until her eyes met his. "Do you know the boy who committed this crime?"
"He just must have been so cold," she repeated, looking away.
Tony ground his teeth, not feeling a whole lot of sympathy for a killer—not when his own memory was supplying images of Kevin's violent murder. "Ma'am—"
Samantha cut him off, turning anguished eyes to bore into his green ones. "You don't understand. It's just so cold out here. And the boy was only wearing a thin T-shirt. It must be below freezing out here. And he just must have wanted that man's coat. Why didn't he just give it to him?" she asked, her words coming faster as her breathing picked up. "He should have just given him the coat. And then he wouldn't have had to shoot him like that. Oh god. He just shot him. Just pulled out this big black gun and shot him. And then there was all that blood—"
"Samantha." Tony spoke her name firmly and sandwiched her shaking hands in his.
She looked back at his face, blinking as if just awakening—from a terrible, terrible dream.
"I need you to tell me about the boy," Tony said gently, grateful when she seemed to shake off the bloody images. He did the same and continued, "Can you describe him? Height, race, hair color? Anything you can tell me about him would be a big help."
She blinked a few more times, her eyes darting from his face to the blurry red blob outside the bus shelter. A heavy sigh torn straight from her soul shook her thin frame so hard Tony imagined hearing her bones rattle. She reached into her purse and pulled out her wallet, tremulous fingers sliding over the cheap imitation leather.
"I can do better," she said, looking him in the eyes as she turned the wallet toward him, showing him a photo of a man with blond hair, likely in his mid-twenties. "This is my son, Ryan."
Tony frowned, waiting.
She drew a fortifying breath that did little to steady her. With a shaking voice, she answered his silent question.
"Yes. I watched my son kill that man."