One Less - Part 12
by joykatleen
National Naval Medical Center, formerly and still familiarly known as Bethesda Naval Hospital, was located about 12 miles from the Navy Yard. In mid-day traffic, it was the same half-hour to 45 minute drive whether he took surface streets or chose the 24-mile freeway route. So Gibbs grabbed lunch and a fresh coffee and set out across Washington. He drove out to M Street, turning west toward the Potomac River and around the Tidal Basin. Cutting north along 17th Street Southeast, he crossed the National Mall between the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial.
The circle of flags around Washington's concrete tower were snapping hard. The promise of snow had turned into something more sinister. Likely they were in for a storm. Probably before nightfall. He'd have McGee check the weather channel when he got back. Depending on what he found over the next few hours, maybe he'd send them all home early. He'd definitely send Abby and Ducky on their way, if it looked bad. It wouldn't hurt him to call it a short day either: the headache he'd first felt on the way back from Hutchinson's house had continued to build.
He glanced to his left at the new World War II Memorial, and as had become his habit whenever he passed memorials to fallen service members, he took a moment to silently acknowledge their sacrifice. Then it was past the White House, onto Connecticut Avenue, and five miles straight to the Maryland state line. Two miles after that, he arrived at the hospital's main gate.
Gibbs presented his ID and told the Navy guard what he was looking for. He was given an official visitor parking pass and directed to a building on the far east end of the base. There, he again presented ID at the medical school office and was told by a civilian receptionist that Master Chief Goetz was at lunch. Gibbs turned on the charm and she finally told him he'd probably find Chief Goetz in his office, then told him where to find it.
Gibbs hadn't called ahead. If the situation was what he feared, Goetz wasn't going to want to talk to him. And as a victim and not a suspect this time, that would be his choice. Gibbs was therefore not at all surprised that after he knocked on the closed office door he'd been directed to and was bade enter, Goetz was not happy to see him.
"You find another dead body at Norfolk?" was the first thing he said. He was sitting at an uncluttered desk, reading a thick book and eating a salad of some kind out of a plastic container. A large bottle of water was sweating in the warm room. He was wearing a set of NNMC scrubs in light green. A pair of metal arm-cuff crutches leaned against the wall next to him, and a standard hospital-issue wheelchair was folded up in the corner. Gibbs could not see the condition of Goetz's legs, hidden as they were under the desk.
Goetz had aged a lot in the years since Gibbs had last seen him. His short hair was more salt than pepper, his face thin and haggard. He'd lost a lot of weight: He couldn't have been carrying 160 lbs on his 6'2 frame. He'd grown a beard and moustache which were neatly and closely trimmed, but when added to the gauntness of his face made him look slightly scruffy nonetheless. A pair of reading glasses sat low on his nose.
"Good afternoon, Master Chief. Nice place you've got here," Gibbs said. And it was. The office was small, but it was furnished a step above government-issue, and had a large window with a view of a baseball diamond and the Chevy Chase Recreation Area beyond. The desk was perpendicular to the window, against the shorter wall of the office. A visitor's chair sat next to one end of the desk.
"More room than a compartment on a carrier," Goetz said. "What did I do to get noticed by NCIS this time?"
Gibbs glanced purposefully at the visitor's chair, and with a small sigh, Goetz closed his book, pulled off his glasses, and gestured for Gibbs to sit. He took a swig from the water bottle.
"I understand you were assaulted in Greece," Gibbs said by way of opener.
Goetz put the bottle down, a little harder than strictly necessary, Gibbs thought. "Last April. Attacked by unknown assailants, case unsolved despite the best efforts of local authorities and NCIS." Goetz was trying for casual, but he was barely making civil.
"My team is reopening your case," Gibbs said.
"Why?" Goetz asked. "It's not yours."
"A Petty Officer Third was killed in Washington over the weekend. Last seen alive Saturday night in the Dupont area, 1500 block of 17th Northwest."
Goetz's eyes widened momentarily, then he looked away from Gibbs, out the window. There was almost a minute of uncomfortable silence.
"What does that have to do with me?" Goetz finally asked without turning back to Gibbs. "I was attacked more than 5,000 miles from there."
"Did you know that since 9/11, you were the ninth Roosevelt crew member to be forcibly retired after falling victim to an aggravated assault while on shore leave?"
"Yes," Goetz said.
"Yes?" Gibbs said, startled at the straight answer. Now, Goetz did look back at him.
"It's actually been 11. You've missed a couple." He took in Gibbs' startled look and continued. "I was wondering when someone would put it together and realize the attacks were connected. And why."
Gibbs stared openly at him. He couldn't get his mind around what he was hearing.
"Some reason you didn't bring this connection to anyone's attention?" he asked finally. There was a touch of anger in his voice that he couldn't quite conceal.
"You know the reason," Goetz said flatly.
"So you knew what was going on and said nothing, to protect yourself?" Gibbs said. "Not what I would expect from a Master Chief."
"Don't give me that, Gibbs," Goetz said sharply. "What would you have me do? Expose myself, get dishonorably discharged, and see the whole thing swept under the rug? Even before they picked me, there was nothing I could have done. If sacrificing myself would have helped catch whoever's doing this, I would have done it in a heartbeat. But the Navy doesn't care. It doesn't want us there, and it's more than happy to see us leave, no matter the circumstances."
"That's not true," Gibbs said, rather lamely.
"The hell it isn't. There've been 11 victims in six years, 12 if your homicide victim is one of them, and no one's done squat. Any reasonably competent investigator would have known after the first couple that something was up, but no one did a thing. No one cared."
"Until now."
"Maybe until now. And why the sudden interest? The dead sailor belong to someone important?" Gibbs heard echoes of the accusation flung by Lt. Hutchinson's partner and clenched his jaw.
"The cases never crossed my desk before now," Gibbs said. "Of the nine we know about before this homicide, eight were committed overseas. They were never forwarded to Major Case."
"And why do you suppose that was?" Goetz asked, sarcasm clear in his voice.
Gibbs shook his head. "No reason they would have been. They were seen as single events, and unless they happened in our area, there would be no reason for the cases to reach us."
"So you honestly think no one at NCIS headquarters noticed all these similar unsolved cases on one carrier – not just in one theatre of operation, but on the same damn ship? Tell me another tale, Special Agent Gibbs." Goetz virtually spat out the title.
Gibbs took a second to control his suddenly rising temper. He understood Goetz's bitterness, and Gibbs, too, was pissed what had been allowed to happen. But letting his anger out here and now wouldn't help.
"I can't tell you what happened before now. It's possible someone has been ignoring the connections. It's also possible that no one outside of this ever put it together. But we've put it together now, and my team is going to find the son-of-a-bitch responsible."
Goetz stared at him and Gibbs held his gaze, letting the Master Chief read him. If they were going to solve this thing, Gibbs was going to need all the help he could get. If Goetz had figured out the connections even before his own attack, he probably had insight that would be valuable. Gibbs would do whatever it took to convince this man of his sincerity.
"Let's take a walk," Goetz said suddenly, and pushed back his chair. He spun it around so he was facing the room and reached for the crutches, snapping his forearms into the cuffs. With a sudden straightening of his elbows, he stood upright. He swayed for a second, but stabilized even as Gibbs rose to help. Gibbs aborted the gesture.
Both of Goetz's legs were encased from toes to mid-thigh in braces made of steel, hard plastic and Velcro. The scrub pants were actually long shorts, ending just above his knees and hiding the tops of the braces. After doing something to both braces near his knees, he started out of the office, Gibbs following in his wake. In a process that looked downright arduous, Goetz swung both legs forward as a unit, then balanced on the braces as long as it took to move the crutches into place for the next step. He'd locked the knee joints when he stood, Gibbs realized, making it possible to balance on the braces without his legs folding under him.
The hallways were virtually empty, and they only passed a couple of people as they moved through the building. Gibbs wasn't sure where they were going or why, but he was willing to follow Goetz's lead. They crossed through a breezeway into a second building, then entered a large gymnasium. There, in small groupings here and there around the gym, individuals and small groups were exercising. No, Gibbs realized almost immediately, not exercising, doing physical therapy. Goetz started across the room toward the opposite side.
"I spent the first three weeks drugged pretty much out of my mind, first on the Roosevelt, then at Ramstein. When I was aware at all, the pain was intolerable. They broke my legs and beat the bottoms of my feet, just for fun as far as I've been able to tell. That alone wouldn't have ended my career. But then they cut my Achilles, tried to make sure I'd never walk unaided again."
Goetz stopped to greet a patient and therapist working between a set of parallel bars. He knew them both by name and made encouraging small talk with them for a moment before moving on.
"A month in a wheelchair followed that," he continued when they were out of earshot of the pair. "Couldn't have borne weight on my feet even if they hadn't cut my tendons. The nerve damage made every step feel like walking on hot coals. Two surgeries to try and reattach the tendons, eventually a replacement of the right one. The bones healed enough to replace casts with braces. Then I started PT. I thought I knew pain before then. But nothing had prepared me for that."
Gibbs merely nodded. He could relate. He'd been there himself, after the artillery attack that had ended his own military career.
"It's gotten better. I still go three days a week, home exercises the other days. With short braces at the beginning of the day, I can walk 50 meters or so without crutches. With no braces at all, a few steps at the most whether I'm tired or not. Getting across campus requires the chair. The nerves are still tender, and the tendons are still stiff. It's taking longer than it should."
"Longer than it should? Or just longer than you want it to?" Gibbs couldn't help but ask. Goetz looked at him with a wry expression.
"You've had the pleasure?"
"At this hospital," Gibbs said simply. This was Goetz's time for stories, and he wouldn't share his own now, even if he might have under other circumstances.
They again stopped to talk to another pair, this one a young sailor throwing a beach ball back and forth with a female therapist. Both his arms were gone below the elbow, and he was working hard to catch and return the ball with prosthetic arms, each try showing effort and concentration. Goetz joked with the sailor, flirted with the therapist, then lead Gibbs out through the opposite side of the gym.
A few doors down they entered the medical school's chapel. It was small, with three short rows of pews on each side of a center aisle, an altar the size of a school teacher's desk, and a small rack of candles off to one side. Some effort had been made to make it inter-denominational, but the major influence was clearly Catholic. Goetz leaned a hip against the rear-most pew and quickly crossed himself, the crutch dangling from his forearm. He planted the crutches slightly in front of himself, then bent his elbows to dip his head and shoulders in a kind of bow. The best he could do for a genuflect, Gibbs realized. He followed Goetz to the front row left. Goetz unlocked the knee joints in his braces, and they sat. The two men spent a minute looking at the altar and the cross on the wall behind it.
"I like to come here sometimes, think about things," Goetz said quietly. His voice had softened, almost hushed in the small room. There were no windows, and only the candles and a few recessed low-wattage wall sconces lit the space. Gibbs waited. He knew Goetz would get to it in his own time.
"There's got to be at least two of them, maybe three or four," Goetz said after awhile. "They would have to have been aboard since we sailed in January 2003 at the latest. And at least one of them has to be an O-4, E-7 or better."
"Why?" Gibbs asked. He, too, pitched his voice low in deference to their location.
"There's an early curfew for junior officers and all but most senior enlisted when TR's in foreign ports. Makes accountability easier. Everyone doesn't arrive back at once. I was on track to just make it back in time for the later curfew when I got hit. If at least one of them's a mid-level officer, he could sign in the rest of them regardless of rank."
"Could be someone doctoring the logs. Covering for them. Or maybe they had permission."
"TR's on her third command in the last six years. The executive staffs of three administrations couldn't all have been involved."
"Makes sense. Why at least two?" Gibbs asked. Nicky had reported seeing three, but he wondered why Goetz thought that way.
"Would have taken at least two to take down Brisbin. The kid is 6'7, weighs nearly 300 lbs."
"One well-placed hit to the base of the skull would have knocked him unconscious. Isn't that what happened to you?"
"I'm not exactly sure what happened to me. I was pretty drunk. It would have been easy to sneak up on me. And Brisbin had no head injury. He was conscious when they shoved a sharp instrument into his ears and tore up his eardrums."
Gibbs flinched involuntarily. He hadn't read the medical reports yet and the brutality of that was startling.
"Any thoughts on who it might be?" Gibbs asked.
"Thoughts. Nothing concrete." He paused, turning away from Gibbs to look at the rack of candles. "The Agent Afloat would be a likely candidate."
"Already working on it," Gibbs said, making Goetz turn back and look at him with surprise. "But how would he find out about sailor's orientation?"
"Some guys aren't careful. On a ship, once one person knows, everyone knows."
"Who knew about you?" Gibbs asked.
"As far as I know, other than my partner you're the only person in the Navy that knew. So who'd you tell?"
"No one."
"No one?" Goetz challenged.
"Not even my team. It was no one's business then, and it's no one's business now."
Again, Goetz seemed to weigh him.
"I'm not in the Navy anymore," Goetz said. "Bill and I broke up after I was injured; we'd been together six years. We were having some trouble, but we were working through it. I'd been talking to an old friend, getting some advice on how to make it work. We would have been fine. But he couldn't take the risk of being connected to me if the motive for the attacks ever came out. It was the final straw." Goetz paused to control his emotion. "I've already lost just about everything I could lose if it became public knowledge."
"Doesn't matter. It's still your choice to make it public or not."
Goetz heaved a sigh. "What does my choice of who I fall in love with have to do with my ability – my right – to serve my country?"
"It doesn't," Gibbs said.
"Someone thought it did," Goetz said. He punched his right thigh above the brace. "Someone sure as hell thought it did."
Gibbs had nothing to say to that, really.
"As far as I know, no one else knew" Goetz repeated after a minute. "I'd been in the Navy almost 18 years. Five Good Conduct meals, two Purple Hearts, a Bronze Star. As a medic, I helped save the lives of more sailors and Marines than I can remember. There was never a day of that time when I wasn't gay. So why, on that day in Crete, did I suddenly become unworthy of the uniform?"
Gibbs reached over and put a hand on Goetz's arm. "You didn't, Master Chief. You weren't unworthy then, and you're not now. You've lived a life of honor and been a tribute to your country. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise."
Goetz covered Gibbs' hand with his own. He took a deep breath and let it out.
"Thank you. How can I help?"
They talked for another 30 minutes. As the most senior member of the enlisted medical staff, Goetz had been called every time a significant injury occurred. He'd seen the injuries, heard the stories, and started to wonder. He told Gibbs he knew Lt. JG Brisbin was gay, because the young sailor had come to him for some antibiotics after a one-night-stand had injured him. Goetz was quick to explain that Brisbin hadn't come to him because he thought Goetz was gay, but because as an enlisted man, he'd figured Goetz was a better bet than the ship's doctor for getting him the treatment he needed and not turning him in if the cause of his injury was obvious. Not that he'd admitted anything. Goetz had figured that out himself.
Goetz had also had his suspicions about Major Ortiz, he said. The Major had spent several weeks in the ship's infirmary recovering from a wicked case of salmonella poisoning he'd picked up at a foreign eatery. Several times while Goetz was on duty in the infirmary, he'd caught Ortiz looking at him with hunger in his eyes. Like maybe he had a crush on Goetz. But neither of them had ever said anything about it.
Lt. Hutchinson, if he was actually gay, was a surprise, Goetz said. He passed very well.
When Gibbs asked Goetz how he'd finally made the connection, Goetz told him he'd read the reports. Which ones? All of them. Medical, local investigation, NCIS investigation, personnel. Medical staff at his level could access pretty much anything they could justify. He'd found the similarities between the attacks, between the victims, and had gone looking for more commonalities. He told Gibbs what he'd found, adding several new things to the victim profile they were building: All of the victims had been on at least their second cruise with the Big Stick. All were rated highly proficient on their FITREPS, had received good conduct medals, and had at least one letter of commendation from a superior in their files. Each had finished in the top ten of any training they'd taken, right back to boot camp. They were all planning on a military career. They were all Catholic.
That fact had stopped Gibbs. The rest of the similarities could be said of thousands of members of all of the armed services. Good performance bred good reviews and officers usually weren't shy about making sure their subordinates got noticed: Subordinates who exceed expectations made officers look good. But to have them all come from the same religious group, that was too much coincidence. They'd ranged from highly devout to barely observant, Goetz said, but every one of them had listed Catholic as their preferred religion. And every one of them was wearing a crucifix or Saint's medal when they were attacked.
Since he'd mentioned reading the medical reports, Gibbs played a long shot and asked if Goetz had accessed Ortiz's records. He said he had.
"Do you still have them? Gibbs asked.
"I didn't make copies, just notes on what I found. I have those at home. The records were sealed pretty tight, and it's no wonder. Once I got a look at his history… the Department of Defense couldn't wash their hands of him quickly enough."
"What was his cause of death?" Gibbs asked.
"Officially, cause unknown. In fact, he was septic and died of multiple system failure." When Gibbs' expression showed lack of understanding, Goetz elaborated. "It was a massive infection."
Gibbs frowned. "Why keep that secret?"
"Because they could have fixed it," Goetz said. "He died because the medical care he was receiving at the VA was sub-standard. Basically, no one cared enough to treat the infection. When he left the ICU at Ramstein, he was well on the way to recovery. He'd suffered a significant brain injury, but his recovery potential was high: he could have regained some of his independence eventually. But once he got to San Diego, his rehabilitation ground to a halt. He spent the next year slowly dying. And no one cared. They just warehoused him, did the minimum to keep him alive. Eventually they even stopped that."
"Didn't he have family?"
"His family was embarrassed by him. He had severe injuries that were clearly sexually-motivated, and they were ashamed they had a gay son. They signed a 'Do Not Resuscitate' order shortly after he arrived in San Diego. Staff at the VA interpreted that to mean 'Do Not Treat.' He was a decorated Marine officer, and they just let him die." Goetz's voice showed his disgust over that.
Gibbs took a breath. He understood prejudice, and shame. But he found it hard to believe that a family would intentionally choose to let their son die when he could have just as well lived.
"They didn't even bury him," Goetz said after a minute. Gibbs frowned.
"What?" he asked.
"His family never collected his body. They signed him over to AFIP, which did whatever the hell it is they do over there, and then he was cremated. I haven't been able to find out what they did with the ashes. For all I know, they used them to de-ice the sidewalks."
Gibbs felt his anger tick up one more notch, and made a mental note to have Ducky call the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology and find out what had happened to the Major's remains. That, at least, they could do.
"You know, I always figured something else was going on with his case, especially after I found the others," Goetz said.
"How so?" Gibbs asked, trying to refocus on the matter at hand.
"He was brutally raped. Intentionally torn up inside. None of the others were sexually assaulted. Plus the severity of the head injury. Whoever got to him was carrying a lot of rage. That one might have had a more personal motive. Besides, he's been the only Marine."
"You think it might have been someone he hooked up with on board?" Gibbs asked. "A domestic violence thing?"
"Or someone he met while he was out. Maybe he hit on the wrong Arab." Goetz shrugged. "The severity of his injuries didn't fit the pattern they'd established up to that time. They'd never gone so far before."
"And yet they have twice since."
"I know. It doesn't make any sense. Ortiz was brutalized, then Hutchinson was paralyzed, then Brisbin was virtually deafened but not otherwise hurt. Then me – painful as hell, but likely not permanently debilitating – and now they kill someone? What was his cause of death?"
Gibbs understood they were talking about Ferrara. "Blunt force trauma leading to brain and spinal injuries," he supplied.
"Like Ortiz. Any sexual trauma?"
"No."
Goetz sighed. "It doesn't make any sense," he repeated.
Gibbs agreed. They talked for a few more minutes, Gibbs asking if Goetz knew anything about Ferrara. Goetz did. He'd been involved in Ferrara's initial emergency treatment after the deck accident aboard the Roosevelt, and had seen him in the infirmary a couple of times since his return to the carrier. Nothing significant, he said. Just the usual minor ailments that every sailor experienced from time to time, plus check-ups on the amputation. They'd chatted from time to time but Goetz told Gibbs he hadn't gotten any hint that Ferrara was gay. Gibbs asked and got the names of the two cases Goetz thought fit the pattern that Abby hadn't included. One of them had been closed when the victim changed his story a week after his attack, telling investigators that he'd actually gotten into a barroom brawl with several locals over a woman. He'd received several serious gashes to the face and head – initially he'd said a knife, but it the new story it became a broken bottle – and ended up blind in one eye. Goetz knew that sailor was gay, had actually seen him once in a gay nightclub while overseas. Goetz suspected the brawl story was a cover-up provided when local investigators asked the sailor to provide evidence of where he'd been that night. Since he couldn't prove he'd been somewhere he hadn't, it was easier to admit lying, do a few days penalty at Captain's Mast – if he ever recovered enough to return to the Navy – and let the case close.
The other case was the one that most interested Gibbs. Late in 2005, a Petty Officer Second had fought his attackers and gotten away before any permanent damage was done. A badly broken arm had required surgery to repair, but his job in the Navy – as a culinary specialist – didn't require his arm be 100 percent, so he'd been able to return to service. Contacting that sailor was definitely next on his list.
Gibbs thanked Goetz, promised to keep him in the loop as much as he could, then left him in the chapel and headed back to the Navy Yard.
to be continued...
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