One Less - Part 9
by joykatleen
Gibbs had Abby create some NCIS credentials for DiNozzo and a personnel file to go with them. If Fredrick discovered a member of one of the agency's premiere Major Case Teams was working a procedure audit, he would undoubtedly be suspicious. Once he had the newly minted ID card in hard, he told Abby to go home, then settled in to skim over the reports she'd pulled while he waited for McGee and DiNozzo to return. When they did, just past 2 a.m., DiNozzo reported that several people had remembered seeing Ferrara around occasionally, and one bartender had seen him the night he died, but didn't remember anyone bothering him. They could confirm Ferrara had been at The Fireplace that night, but that was all.
After filling them in about what Abby had found, he addressed DiNozzo.
"You're going undercover," Gibbs told him.
"Where?" DiNozzo said, instantly wary. Gibbs had sent him on some weird assignments, and considering what they'd been doing the last few hours…
"Aboard the Roosevelt," Gibbs said.
DiNozzo's eyes widened. "It's in port, right?"
"Yes," Gibbs answered the question he asked. A relieved look passed over DiNozzo's face.
"What's my story?"
"You're there at the request of me and Capt. McNally to audit reporting procedures. You think it's a waste of time. Fredrick hasn't done anything wrong. You're doing what you're told, reluctantly. You're definitely on his side."
"And what am I really doing?"
"Someone on board that carrier has caused career-ending injuries to at least 10 men, and this time went too far. It might be Fredrick, and if it's not, it's someone in the know. Find out who. Abby emailed you copies of the case files on the other assaults. And here." He flipped the ID card Abby had created over to DiNozzo, who caught it neatly. He glanced at it, and Gibbs could have sworn he paled just a little.
"You've still got the rest of the ID that goes with that name, right?" Gibbs asked. DiNozzo nodded slowly.
"Abby built you a personnel file. You're an administrative analyst, you work here, casual connection to major case. You can use your own badge."
DiNozzo glanced at the ID again. Anthony DiNardo. He thought that guy had blown up with his Mustang and the unexpected reappearance made him a little queasy.
"When do I report?" DiNozzo asked, clearing his throat slightly.
"Capt. McNally is expecting you in the morning. Fredrick isn't. I'll set it up on our end. Oh, and the ship sails on Saturday, so pack accordingly."
"Sails? For where?" DiNozzo asked, the pitch of his voice rising.
"She's headed for the Gulf."
"Of Mexico?" DiNozzo asked hopefully.
"Persian."
"Oh man, Boss, no, you've got to be kidding me," DiNozzo whined.
"Sooner you get this solved, sooner I'll send a transport for you. Work fast, you might not even make it to International waters."
Gibbs pulled into the driveway next to his house and shut off the sedan. It was almost 3 a.m., and his middle-class residential neighborhood was quiet. Gibbs still lived in the two-story plus accessible attic house he'd bought with his first wife Shannon more than 25 years before. He hadn't always lived in it: While he was in the Marines and assigned stateside, they'd lived as a family on several Marine bases. After his girls were killed, the house had sat empty for more than a year while Gibbs tried to get his life back together. Since then, he'd lived here whenever he was posted in Washington, at various times sharing it with two of his three subsequent wives. For the last seven years or so, he'd lived here alone, and had slowly removed from it all reminders of old relationships. He kept a few things from his first life in hidden places around the house, but for the most part, it was a bachelor's home. It suited him well, and coming home to the emptiness no longer broke his heart. He'd put it up for sale when he'd 'retired' to Mexico, but thankfully, it hadn't come close to selling.
Finding himself somewhere on the far side of whupped, Gibbs took a quick shower and went to bed, falling asleep almost immediately. But less than an hour later, he woke in a cold sweat, barely managing to choke back a scream. Sitting up in bed, blinking owlishly in the dimness, his heart pounding and his breath coming in gasps, he felt an almost overwhelming sense of impending doom. Like death was at the door. He pushed the heels of his hands against his forehead, grabbing handfuls of his hair and pulling hard to ground himself.
The house was quiet, his harsh gasps the only sound he could hear. With effort he managed to get his breathing under control and his heart down into the still fast but no longer critical range. He went to his bathroom and splashed water on his face.
Gibbs had had nightmares before. His habit of closing himself off from emotion, of not dealing with his feelings if the timing was inconvenient – which it always seemed to be – often resulted in his subconscious throwing it all back at him while he slept. So this was nothing new.
Returning to the bed, Gibbs sat on the edge and put his head in his hands, elbows braced on his knees. He'd been dreaming of one particularly bad night he'd spent in Lebanon late in 1983. A mission of mercy had ended badly, with Gibbs the least-injured member of a six-man helicopter crew, lost in hostile territory. It had been one of the longest nights of his life. He'd suffered a head injury in the chopper crash that made him keep drifting away. All he wanted to do was sleep. But it was up to him to keep everyone alive and hidden from passing enemy troops. He'd had to engage them only once when a unit of six Lebanese militiamen had arrived in an oversize Jeep-type vehicle to inspect the wreckage of the Huey. The Navy medic – the broken end of his femur jutting out through the skin at his knee – had been coming in and out of consciousness, and he picked the wrong moment to wake up and start screaming. The Lebanese had started their way and Gibbs had been forced to defend their position. He took one shot hard in the vest and another graze to the arm before all six of the enemy were lying dead. A team of Force Recon Marines found them just after first light, but not before a young Lieutenant who had survived the initial crash died in Gibbs' arms.
Loss of blood and exhaustion made him hallucinate that night, and all his demons had come out to play. Those demons and all his new ones still haunted him sometimes, on nights when his defenses were weak and his emotions threatened to overwhelm. This time, it was the young Lieutenant he'd seen right before he woke, begging for Gibbs to end the pain.
But why tonight? Gibbs wondered silently as he scrubbed his hand over his face. Nothing particularly stressful had happened today. There'd been no personal hits. No heavy emotion. Nothing that should have sparked this.
With a heavy sigh, Gibbs got out of bed and pulled on sweat pants and a t-shirt. He went down to the kitchen and started coffee. While it brewed he stepped out onto his covered front porch and looked up the street. It was still and quiet. The snow was drifting slowly down, sticking to the signs and cars, but not to the still too-warm ground. The temperature was in the low 30s. Cold, but not biting.
Gibbs knew most of his neighbors. The elderly couple two doors east of him were the only residents who had been there longer than he. Gibbs wondered sometimes what they thought of him: a thrice-divorced widower who came and went at all hours. They knew what he did for a living, but he still wondered. The woman, Joan, had tried to fix him up a couple times. Between his marriages and since. He'd always politely declined. The last thing he needed was another woman mothering him.
Returning to the kitchen, he drew a mug of coffee, slipped his feet into a pair of old deck shoes, and descended the wooden stairs to his basement. A single work light shone over the shell of the wheelhouse of a boat. He'd been building the boat by hand for about six years now. The hull was already done, and the wheelhouse was getting there.
Working with his hands was one of the few things in life that made Gibbs truly happy. He could lose himself in the repetition of cutting, planing, sanding, and finishing. It gave him a chance to think, or not. He'd come up with solutions to many problems while here in the basement.
Setting the coffee on the workbench, he picked up a wood block wrapped in sandpaper. The boat was almost finished, and Gibbs had started to suspect he was dragging it out on purpose. Three prior versions had been started and never finished, burned at the end of each of his marriages. This one was likely to see the ocean, and if he searched deep inside himself – something he was loath to do most of the time – he could admit he was scared. If he finished her, what would he do next?
Gibbs ran his hands over the shell of the wheelhouse until he found a spot less smooth than the rest. He moved the light to best illuminate that place and sat on a stool to work. He was soon lost in the motion, his thoughts nowhere, the coffee cooling on the bench behind him.
Something woke him. Gibbs blinked a couple times, disoriented, looking around himself for clues. Filtered sunlight. Strong smell of sawdust and Jim Beam. The underside of the wheelhouse above him.
Gibbs sat up suddenly, barely remembering at the last second to swerve so as not to hit his head on the boat. He squeezed his eyes shut tight for a second, trying to orient himself. He remembered the nightmare, coming down to work. He remembered being unable to keep his thoughts on what he was doing, unable to stop them from returning over and over to that night in Lebanon. He remembered finishing his coffee and refilling the cup with a shot of bourbon. And another, and another.
Gibbs groaned and rolled up onto his knees, crawling out from under the boat. He'd fallen asleep – passed out was probably closer to the truth – under the boat sometime after 5 a.m. His coffee mug was lying on its side on the floor next to him, alcohol spilled out and soaked into the sawdust. That accounted for the smell.
Feeling more hung over than a couple shots of Tennessee's finest brew ought to make him, Gibbs stumbled upstairs to the kitchen. He glanced at the clock on the microwave. 8:30. Damnit. He was already late. He dumped the remaining cold coffee from the night before and started a new pot, then hit the shower. When the warm water failed to clear the cobwebs from his brain, he turned it to cold and let that do its work.
When he arrived on the third floor, fresh mug of coffee in hand, Gibbs found both McGee and David waiting for him. It only emphasized how late he was. He had to stop sleeping in the basement.
"Ziva. Call Lt. Hutchinson and set up an interview," Gibbs instructed as he rounded his desk.
"Here?" Ziva asked, reaching for Hutchinson's case file. She'd obviously read it this morning.
"We'll go to him. Today. McGee." Gibbs took off his overcoat and stashed his weapon in his desk drawer before sitting down.
McGee spoke from his desk. "I ran Petty Officer Ferrara's cell phone records since they returned to Norfolk. Calls to his brother, his family back in L.A., taxi companies, a couple of local stores and restaurants. No calls to friends, nothing that stands out. His email over the same period showed nothing unusual. He chatted with friends at various bases across the country and overseas. People he used to work with. Looks like he was emailing instead of calling. Their conversations were all of the 'hey how's it going' variety, plus a lot of jokes and viral videos flying back and forth. Lots of holiday greetings, including one each from the families of Capt. McNally's son and the Radar Intercept Officer he saved. There were a few emails from Ben that stopped about when his brother said Ferrara stopped talking about him, but there was no sign they were anything other than buddies. They just tapered off and then stopped. Nothing in any of his emails that even vaguely hinted at his orientation, or at anyone having a problem with him."
"What do you have on the other victims?"
At that, McGee stood and grabbed the remote for the plasma. He pushed a few buttons and two rows of military ID photos appeared. Five on the top, four on the bottom. As Abby had said, eight sailors, one Marine Major. Four white, two Hispanic, two African-American, one Asian. The youngest appeared to be in his early twenties, the oldest mid forties. Gibbs had managed to get through only four of the nine reports the night before, and hoped McGee had gotten further.
"Six officers, three enlisted, each attacked while on shore leave from the Roosevelt," McGee said. "Other than Lt. Hutchinson, all incidents occurred while the ship was overseas. Two occurred in Spain three years apart, the others were in France, Italy, Slovenia, Greece, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, and Jamaica."
"Jamaica?" Gibbs repeated. "What was she doing there?"
McGee leaned over his own computer and tapped a few keys. "February 2003, the ship spent a month on a training cruise in the Caribbean right before being unexpectedly ordered to the Persian Gulf to initiate Operation Iraqi Freedom."
Gibbs nodded his understanding and bid him to continue.
"The injuries were all severe enough to end a Naval career, but for the most part not serious enough to permanently disable. There were two exceptions before Petty Officer Ferrara: Lt. Hutchinson, and Marine Major Raymond Ortiz." The picture changed to zero in on the sole Marine. A serious-looking Hispanic man in Class A Dress blues, the US flag behind him. Not one of the files Gibbs had made it through.
"Major Ortiz, age 32, was attacked in Dubai, United Arab Emirates in October of 2005. Severely beaten and sodomized. He spent six weeks in intensive care at Ramstein Air Base before being evacuated to Naval Medical Center San Diego. He spent another four months there before he was discharged from the Marine Corps, then he was transferred to the VA Hospital in San Diego. He lived there for almost a year before his death." McGee stopped, returned to check something on the computer, then looked up at Gibbs.
"Cause of death unknown."
"Unknown?" Gibbs said in surprise.
"That's all the death certificate says. Unknown."
"That is odd," Ziva commented, getting up from her desk to join the conversation. She looked at Gibbs. "Lt. Hutchinson has agreed to meet with us at his home as soon as we can get there." Gibbs acknowledged the message and refocused on McGee.
"What were his injuries?" Gibbs asked.
"The crime report says head trauma, multiple fractures and internal injuries. The only information we have is from the initial interviews with the doctors at the evac hospital. The rest of his records were sealed.
"So unseal them," Gibbs said.
"It's not that simple, Boss. We don't have probable cause for a warrant yet, and with the new HIPAA privacy laws…"
"Yeah, alright," Gibbs interrupted. "What does our report say?"
McGee shuffled some papers. "The crewmates he went ashore with said they lost him in the crowd at an urban nightclub frequented by U.S. military forces, and when he didn't reappear, assumed he'd gotten lucky and would return to the ship on his own. When he missed curfew, local authorities were notified. He turned up five days later at a government health clinic, two days after the Roosevelt sailed. He was brought in by a group of teens who claimed to have found him dumped in an oil field. A piece of notebook paper with the words "One Less" written on it was found in the pocket of his shirt, the only clothing he was wearing when he was found. The teens were interviewed by both the UAE Army and the NCIS Resident Agent in Dubai and their story checked out."
"Who interviewed them first?" Gibbs asked.
McGee consulted his notes. "Doesn't say." Gibbs nodded again. No help there. If the kids who'd found Ortiz had been coached, there'd be no way in hell the NCIS investigator would have gotten the whole truth, even if he was looking for it.
"Further investigation brought no new leads. The case went cold and was never solved."
"The other victims?"
McGee clicked buttons. Hutchinson's and Ortiz's photos disappeared, leaving seven.
"Of the others, there's one Petty Officer Second, one Petty Officer First, one Master Chief. Two lieutenants junior grade, two lieutenants. The youngest was Lt. Hutchinson, in the Navy about two years, the oldest was Master Chief Hospital Corpsman Ian Goetz, almost 18 years."
"Why do I know that name?" Gibbs asked. McGee made another adjustment and the picture grouping on the plasma changed to a single large photo. The photo rang a bell. Not a very loud one.
"He was on the Roosevelt from 1993 through 1997, then spent seven years on the Abraham Lincoln before moving back to the Roosevelt in 2004."
"He had any contact with us?" Gibbs asked. McGee looked it up.
"Twice. He…" McGee scanned the information in front of him, then nodded rapidly several times. "Oh, I remember him. He discovered the body of a female Lieutenant on Norfolk Station in 1994, eliminated as a suspect after a full investigation. Four years ago, you interviewed him again when Petty Officer Cluxton murdered her lover and tried to sell it as a repeat by the same killer." McGee had worked with Cluxton at Norfolk, and was both saddened and disturbed when she turned out to be the killer.
"Lt. Jane Doe," Gibbs said, nodding to himself. He remembered Goetz now, but he was certain it was for different reasons than McGee. When Gibbs had interviewed him about the second murder, Goetz had initially balked at telling Gibbs where he'd been at the time. When Gibbs had threatened to arrest him, then-Chief Petty Officer Goetz had asked if they could speak off the record. Gibbs agreed and Goetz reluctantly offered Gibbs an alibi so startling and so against his own self-interest that Gibbs had instantly believed him.
McGee's doubtful voice brought Gibbs back from his ruminations over what he knew about Chief Goetz and what it might mean to their present investigation. "No, actually the victim was a civilian, Janice Santos."
Gibbs shook his head. "The first victim. Ducky called her Lt. Jane Doe. She was never identified. Goetz was cleared in both cases. What happened to him?"
More shuffling papers. "He was the most recent in Abby's grouping, attacked in Greece last April. Blitz attack by unknown assailant or assailants while he was returning to ship alone. Single blow to the head knocked him unconscious. When he regained consciousness, he was alone in an alley and bleeding badly from severe lacerations on both ankles. He managed to crawl out to the street where a passer-by called for an ambulance. Both legs broken, the bottoms of both feet beaten, and both his Achilles tendons severed." McGee winced as he finished the rundown.
"I have seen that before in torture cases," Ziva spoke up. "Beating the feet is a very effective means of eliciting information."
"Made less effective if the subject is unconscious at the time," Gibbs said, and gave her a look.
"True," Ziva conceded. "But the recovery is still very painful and can take months."
"His recovery has been slow," McGee agreed. "Even after the bones healed, the damage to his nerves and tendons had been severe and there were concerns that he would never walk again. Navy doctors decided that even if his recovery was best case, he would never return to his former duties. He was offered an early retirement with full pension benefits, which he took. He's currently teaching at Bethesda while he continues his rehabilitation. A similar note was found in his pocket when the MPs collected his clothes from the local hospital he'd been initially taken to."
Gibbs frowned, considering something that didn't add up.
"Show me date of attack compared to severity of injury," Gibbs instructed. McGee went to work and a few minutes later, a graph appeared on the plasma.
"That's not right," Gibbs said when it was up. McGee frowned, rechecking his data.
"Uh, I gave each injury a number from one to ten, with Lt. Hutchinson's permanent disability being the 10, and that's what it looks like," McGee said hesitantly.
"No," Gibbs said. "That's not what I mean. Look at it." McGee studied the chart for a moment, then shook his head.
"I, uh, I don't see what you're getting at, Boss," he said.
"I do," Ziva said. "When a criminal starts committing crimes, he usually starts out small and the crimes get worse over time. Lt. Hutchinson's fractured spine should not have been followed up with Master Chief Goetz's broken legs, regardless of how painful."
"Correct," Gibbs said to her.
"And the attack in 2002 was more severe than the ones in 2003 and 2004," McGee said. "Then, Major Ortiz and Lt. Hutchinson, both permanently disabled before the most recent two, which were lesser injuries. Then Petty Officer Ferrara was killed."
"But what does it mean?" Ziva asked.
Gibbs shook his head. "We're going to find out. McGee: get all the medical records to Ducky, find out where they stored the forensics and get it to Abby, and locate the rest of the victims. We're going to need them."
"On it," McGee said.
"Set up an interview with the victim in the other case that's still within the statute. January two years ago, I think Abby said?"
"What about Master Chief Goetz?" McGee asked.
"Leave him to me," Gibbs replied.
When McGee nodded, Gibbs turned to Ziva.
"Officer David, you're with me." He grabbed his coat and gun and headed out, Ziva on his heels.
to be continued...
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