Author's Note: Though I date the beginning of this story as taking place around the same time as the Season 8 premier, as far as it's concerned this story has its own little place in continuity. I'm essentially trying to write "in the present" without having to worry about stuff like the Reynosa plotting, Hart's machinations, or anything else from the show canon that's specific to that timeframe.

And now for this additional note: this story was written for EleventhHour over at the NFA Community Forums for the Secret Santa Exchange, and thus is already finished. I'll be posting one chapter a day, making small fixes as I go.

Also, Happy New Year.

Disclaimer: I do not own the television NCIS or its characters and storylines. Original characters named here and the general plot are the only things I can claim, and they're not worth much.

George Washington Memorial Parkway/September 13, 2010, 1453 Romeo

As the sun beat down on the near-empty roadways, a white and black van that looked like a box on wheels with a cab attached sped toward what looked to be another long day of work. The sleek blue letters on the white half of the van's sides identified it as belonging to NCIS, the Naval Criminal Investigative Service out of Washington, DC. Below that in white letters on the black half: Major Case Response Team. Its occupants were possibly the single most overworked and underappreciated employees of the entire United States Federal Government.

"I hate Mondays," was the commonly expressed opinion that Special Agent Anthony DiNozzo voiced again as another sign flew by the window, informing any who saw it of the dwindling number of miles until arrival at McLean, Virginia. "Wouldn't it figure that we catch a case on the single longest, most God-forsaken day of the week."

"Could be worse, Tony," SA Timothy McGee replied to his team's Senior Field Agent as he continued to look out the window to his right. He was enjoying not riding in the back for once, very much so.

"And how's that, McHalf-Full?" As he asked, Tony adjusted his position in the center seat of the cab, his attempts to find a comfortable one proving as vain as they always did.

"It could be Friday, meaning you'd have to cancel whatever late night plans you have for Fridays."

"You're right, that would be worse."

"How much longer until we arrive at the scene, Gibbs?" Probationary Special Agent Ziva David asked, her face framed by the small square window that connected the cab to the large rear box area.

"Not soon enough," Supervisory SA Leroy Jethro Gibbs replied, his eyes never leaving the road as he continued to guide their vehicle. It was a roughly sixty-one minute drive from NCIS Headquarters in the Washington Navy Yard to McLean, with about forty minutes spent in traffic. Gibbs's signature driving style, combined with a notable lack of traffic, meant the drive would be made in a little less than ten.

"Have we ever been to McLean before?" Tony asked no one in particular. "You know, professionally?"

"Maybe," McGee said. "I don't remember any times off the top of my head."

"Might be all the slaps the Boss Man dishes out." Tony's quip was answered by Gibbs's right hand leaving the wheel and colliding palm-first with the back of his head, accompanied by an audible thwack.

"They would also explain more than a few things about Tony," Ziva replied with a sly smile. The only reply she got was Tony's grumbling about how old that joke was.

The house on Earnestine Street was flanked by a smaller, "normal" house on the left, when facing it from the street, and a larger, richer, and more similar looking "fancy" house on the right. In fact, the house in which a dead naval officer had been found was a balance of the two in many ways: it was the middle in terms of size, probable worth, and geography.

The driveway was large and wide ("Perfect for a good game of basketball," Tony had noted) and looked like it, and the garage it lead to, were meant for two or three vehicles. A cement walkway bridged the lawn between the front door and Earnestine itself. It also had a path that lead to the driveway, giving the whole walk a pattern similar to a cross missing the right horizontal arm.

The MCRT van was parked out front with various patrol cars from the McLean Police Department, who'd secured the scene when the body was found and had kept it that way since. As the team met at the back of the van to begin unloading their equipment, Gibbs turned to see an approaching officer.

"You Agent Gibbs?" the officer, who couldn't have been older than thirty-five, asked.

"Yeah." was the short and sweet reply he got in return. Gibbs had a reputation as a functional mute for a reason.

"Officer Dunn, I was the guy who first responded to the scene."

"Who called it in?"

"Those joggers," Dunn replied, pointing to two men in running clothes standing on the opposite side of the street with a few officers nearby. "They'd just come out to start their morning rounds when one of 'em noticed the victim's front door was open. He went to check and make sure everything was alright, saw that the lock had been broken, and called nine-one-one."

"He ever see the body?"

"No, he didn't even go into the house."

As the conversation continued, they made their way along the walk and toward the door, with the others right behind them.

"I showed up and called for back-up while I cleared the house. I found the victim in the back hallway leading to the master bedroom with three GSWs: two in the chest, one on the forehead."

"You touch the body?"

"No, I just made sure the house was clear and made sure it stayed that way. We questioned the witnesses and found out the house belonged to Gordon Callaway. They didn't know what he did exactly, but they knew he was active duty Navy, so we called you."

"Is the vic the owner?" Gibbs asked as they entered the greeting area. To the left was a wall with a door in it leading to the garage. To the right was an arched entryway leading to the living room.

"Dunno, didn't wanna risk contaminating the body by searching it for ID, so we left it for you guys," Dunn replied as he lead the four federal agents into the living room toward another wide, arched entryway. Through here they moved through the kitchen, where they found the hallway in question. Lying on the floor there, just outside of what appeared to be a study, was a body of a man in his early fifties wearing nothing but a white crew neck shirt and a pair of boxers. The shirt was marred by a large red splotch of blood surrounding two near black holes at its center. A matching hole marked the center of the dead man's forehead, a small and mostly coagulated pool of blood puddled under his head. Beside his right hand was a small handgun.

"At the least," Dunn continued. "Even if this guy ain't Callaway his house is still a crime scene."

"Yeah, it is," Gibbs agreed as he observed the body and the small handgun lying near its right hand. He didn't even look to his team as he dished out assignments. "McGee, shoot 'n' sketch, Ziva, bag 'n' tag. DiNozzo, you got the witnesses. Keep an eye out for Ducky."

And so they set to work, DiNozzo's task taking him outside while Ziva and McGee would normally work in tandem, Ziva placing numbered tags beside points of evidence which McGee would then photograph for posterity's sake. The thing was, however, that there wasn't much to document at this particular scene. Photos were taken of the body and the wounds it suffered, and there appeared to be one (very) partial shoeprint, but otherwise they weren't finding anything.

"This shooter was a professional," Ziva said as McGee snapped one last photo of the footprint located a few feet away from the body.

"What makes you say that?" he asked as he walked over the body and into the study that Callaway's left shoulder pointed toward.

"This pattern," she replied, pointing to the three holes in succession: chest, chest, head. "A double tap to the chest followed by a headshot. It's called the Mozambique Drill. It practically guarantees a kill, since the most important systems are hit. And look at this grouping on the chest shots: tight and mere millimeters apart. He knows how to handle a weapon."

McGee nodded as he looked at the body before turning back to glance down the hall, toward where the shooter had seemingly been standing. "Policed his brass, too."

"My next point," Ziva said with a raised finger. "He knows how to clean up after himself. I am thinking this man either has extensive military service or some other form of great experience with a firearm." After bagging what was most likely the victim's personal defense sidearm, she then set to work dusting the house for fingerprints, a task that only turned up on small partial on the doorway to the study.

"It's smudged," McGee noted after snapping a picture of the print. Ziva then set to work, sticking on and then peeling off the print-taking film.

"There is also heavy smudging below it," Ziva noted as she tucked the print away in an evidence bag. "I believe that our killer realized he had left a partial and tired to wipe it away, but rubbed the wrong part of the doorframe."

"How do you know that?"

"It is what I would have done…only I would not have missed the print," Ziva said this last part with her coy smile that only she seemed to be able to do.

"Which is why I'm glad you're on our side of the law, Ziva," the Scottish brogue of Dr. "Ducky" Mallard declared as the medical examiner himself entered the hallway, his assistant Jimmy Palmer behind him. The two crouched beside the body, the older doctor slower than the young and spry ME-in-training, where Ducky placed his first two fingers against Callaway's neck.

"Oh he's quite dead alright," he said, thus releasing the body to be moved and further documented. As Jimmy inserted the liver probe into the corpse's torso, Ducky held up one of the man's hands for McGee to scan with the portable fingerprint scanner.

"The advancement of criminal forensics technology never ceases to amaze me," Ducky commented as the scanner worked its magic. "I can still remember when AFIS was the next leap forward in our war on crime. I recall a case where it would've been quite useful, in 1980 a sheriff and his deputy entered the home of a missing man who'd supposedly found-"

"Something that helps me catch our killer, Duck?" Gibbs interrupted, as he usually did. Often times it was better that he did, otherwise Ducky's story would be liable to lead into another, which would only be the beginning of a never-ending chain.

"No, actually, a large sum of drug money he decided to take for himself and start a new life with. Unfortunately for him, there was a contract killer hired to-"

"Ducky," Gibbs interjected.

"Oh, yes," Ducky conceded as he returned his gaze to the body. "Well cause of death seems fairly obvious, but we've all seen enough odd cases to learn not to assume."

"ID confirmed," McGee said as he read the information on the scanner's screen. "This is, in fact, Captain Gordon Callaway, US Navy."

"And how long has the captain been deceased, Mr. Palmer?" Ducky asked his assistant as the younger man extracted the liver probe and examined the reading.

"Approximately eleven hours, Doctor."

"Puts time of death around oh-four-hundred," Gibbs said.

"Yes, well, at any rate Mr. Palmer and I shall take our guest back home, and see what information he has to share."

NCIS Headquarters/ September 13, 2010, 1823 Romeo

Click

The squadroom plasma screen between McGee and DiNozzo's desks displayed an image captured by McGee's camera during the crime scene processing. It was a wall in the study before which Captain Gordon Callaway had been shot to death, specifically the one to a person's left when they walked through the door. On it were framed certificates of promotion and graduation from Naval training programs.

"Pretty average Wall for a captain," McGee commented from his seat, where he was waiting for a scan on his computer to finish. Ziva came to stand beside Tony, who was rooted before the plasma with the remote in his hand.

"It does not look any different from the other walls," she said.

"He's not talking about the actual wall," Tony explained, his eyes still on the image. "He means the I Love Me Wall."

"I Love Me Wall?"

"A wall of certificates, degrees, plaques, pictures, and stuff that commemorates someone's various academic and occupational achievements," McGee explained. "You're most likely to see 'em in the offices or studies of lawyers, doctors, politicians-"

"And military officers," Tony finished. "But what'd you mean by 'pretty average?'"

McGee shrugged. "My dad started out enlisted and made officer after about five years. He retired after twenty years as an O-4, and his Wall had more stuff than that." A nostalgic smile then crossed his face. "Whenever we moved to a new house, we might rearrange every single possession we owned differently than how we had it in the last house, but dad would always put his Wall up the exact same way he had it in all the other ones."

"What's fancy paper got to do with our dead captain, McGee?" Gibbs asked as he strolled into the bullpen, coffee in hand, before dropping the empty cup into the trash.

"Uh, well," McGee stumbled, sitting up as quickly as he could. "It just looks to me like he didn't work as hard in advancing his career as a captain normally would."

"And someone killed him for being a slacker?" Tony asked incredulously.

"Seems like a good idea to me, sometimes," Gibbs said as he joined the small huddle before the screen.

"Perhaps he received a posting someone else thought they deserved?" Ziva offered, ignoring the concerned look on Tony's face. "Especially if they put in far more work than Callaway to earn it."

"Well, he did have a pretty nice posting," Tony commented before clicking the remote, prompting Callaway's service record to appear. "Captain Gordon Callaway worked in the Pentagon, serving as a liaison between the Joint Chiefs and Fort Bragg, where he was responsible for force deployment in the Middle East in JSOC until about a year ago."

"Jay sock?" Ziva asked.

"Joint Special Operations Command," McGee explained. "It focuses on interoperability between various SOCOM components and also handles deployments of Special Mission Units. It's also the parent command of the Army Intelligence Support Activity."

"The only three publicly recognized SMUs to date," Tony added. "Are Delta Force, the Air Force's 24th Special Tactics Squadron, and DEVGRU."

"And what is 'deav-groo?'" Ziva inquired.

"Naval Special Warfare Development Group," Gibbs answered. "Used to be called SEAL Team Six."

"Ah." There was a light of recognition in Ziva's eyes. "So he was responsible for putting the country's most dangerous warriors where they needed to be in the Middle Eastern theater?"

"Yep," Tony answered. "Means he also knows a lot about any black ops they ran in the past…eight years."

"Think someone was looking for classified intel?" McGee asked.

"If the killer wanted info out of Callaway, he wouldn't have put three bullets in him," Gibbs replied.

"So what we've got so far," Tony started. "Is a professional killer breaking in the front door around four AM-ish. Callaway hears him, heads out with his gun to confront the intruder, and gets tagged in the hallway."

"Looks that way," Gibbs said. "Now to figure out why. David, call up his office, figure out if he'd been acting strange lately. DiNozzo, contact the family, find out if he'd taken an interest in settling his estate."

"You thinkin' he might've known someone was after him?" McGee asked as the search on his computer finished.

"Don't hurt to find out," Gibbs replied before heading off to Abby's.