Disclaimer: NCIS as well as the NCIS characters do not belong to me. This is just for fun.
A/N: Rated PG-13 for violence.
I would like to thank my betas, Rinne and Tweeter. Rinne not only gave me good comments on the story and corrected my grammar, but also taught me some useful rules that seem to have already improved the way I write dialogue. She also saved me from a rather significant plot hole. Tweeter helped me decide between two versions of one of the chapters and made very useful comments that improved the text.

Any mistakes made are my own.


Chapter 3

Ziva stood in the observation room and looked onto the interrogation room, through the one sided mirror. Martin Short had been brought in from the holding cells about an hour ago and was getting impatient and agitated, which was exactly the way they wanted him. After hearing Ducky's news, Gibbs decided that it was better to leave the skinheads to simmer overnight before questioning them.
Ziva had spent most of the previous evening preparing for the interrogation. The remaining time, she spent arguing with Paul. The whole case was making her uneasy. Growing up in Israel, the one thing you didn't need to face was anti-Semitism. Seeing the swastikas covering the tree on which Charles Richards was found hanging, and all the Nazi paraphernalia at the warehouse was a bit of a shock. She didn't really think that such things still happened in America in the twenty-first century. Paul, whose mother was Jewish and father Nigerian, and who had grown up in Britain, seemed to be a bit baffled by Ziva's reaction to the case. He had suffered racism his entire life. The covert anti-Semitism he encountered growing up, was one of the main reasons he immigrated to Israel when he was 18. He loved his new country, but even there he had to suffer racist comments, due to the color of his skin. He couldn't believe that Ziva, who was usually extremely observant, hadn't noticed the way some people looked at them when they were together. Just because she seemed to be completely color blind didn't mean everybody was. The argument that ensued between them would have turned into an all out fight, had it been possible to fight with Paul. However, in the seven years she had known him, seven years of friendship and of on-again off-again romantic involvement, Ziva hadn't managed to have one decent fight with him, and not for lack of trying. He was just too calm. It drove Ziva insane.
Needless to say, Ziva wasn't in a particularly good mood when Gibbs finally entered the room and told her to start the interrogation.

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Meanwhile, in the adjacent interrogation room Tony and McGee were questioning Jeff White. White was about 20 years old and seemed not to have quite finished growing. He was tall and lanky and had wispy brown hair, which he kept playing with nervously. He looked like he was terrified out of his wits, which was exactly the way Tony wanted him
"Let me explain the situation to you again, Mr. White," said Tony. "We have your prints on the rope that was used to hang the victim and your blood on the victim himself. We don't really need your confession. The thing is, DAs like their cases wrapped up nicely, so there's still something to be gained by you, if you talk. On the other hand if you don't talk… Special Agent McGee, remind me again, what's the penalty for Mr. White's crime?"
McGee who was standing behind White leaned in and said, "This being a hate crime and given the heinous nature of the crime, I'd say he's looking at life, if he's lucky."
"If I'm lucky?" mumbled White.
"Or death if he isn't," McGee completed his sentence.
Jeff White was obviously very scared to begin with, but after hearing McGee's prognosis he became utterly terrified. He lowered his head onto the table, covered it with his hands and started to cry.

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Gibbs was watching Ziva interrogate Martin Short, through the one-way mirror. As she entered the room, Short, who seemed to have regained some of yesterday's cockiness, looked up and sneered at her. "Come to rough me up again, bitch?"
Ziva observed him calmly, pulled the chair that was opposite him away from the table and sat on it. "I won't lay a finger on you," she said, "unless you give me reason to."
The way she said the second part of the sentence made it clear that she would like nothing more than for Short to give her a reason to slap him around, and he seemed to get the message. He straightened himself up in the chair and started playing with the lapel of his jacket. "Why did you do it, Short? Why attack a war hero?"
Short mumbled something that Gibbs couldn't make out.
"What was that?" asked Ziva. "I didn't hear what you said. Couldn't have been a racial slur 'cause if it was you'd be flat on your back and howling in pain."
Short, who was starting to look rather worried, said, "I said we didn't kill him and he wasn't no hero."
"Let's just address that first bit. You claim that you and your friends didn't kill Sergeant Richards, yet we have your prints all over the rope and your blood on the Sergeant's body. Care to explain that?"
Gibbs was really interested to hear Short's answer and he leaned in and listened intently.
"We found him dead, we did. We just had some fun with him afterwards."
That was the answer Gibbs and Ziva were worried that Short might give them; unless one of the skinheads confessed there was really no way to disprove such a lie. Ziva, however, acted as if she was shocked and had never heard such an incredible response. "You think anyone is going to believe that a bunch of skinheads just happened to find the body of a black marine sergeant that had insulted one of them only a few days before?" asked Ziva, leaning closer to the skinhead in front of her. "The jury will never buy that. They will know you killed him." Ziva leaned back in her seat and continued, "Now, let's be reasonable. Four of you have your prints all over that rope and your blood all over the Sergeant's body. The first one to talk will have the chance to cut himself a nice deal. The others get nothing."
Short was becoming more agitated by the moment. He started to get up from his chair, but immediately sat back down again when Ziva told him to. "Look, I'm telling the fucking truth. We found him. We came to the warehouse two nights ago and he was there, completely dead. We were fucking drunk, decided to fuck him up so that his type will think twice before fucking with our women. But we didn't kill him."
"So you're saying that you arrived at your headquarters and he was just there?" asked Ziva skeptically.
"That's what I'm telling you. He was there dressed up in his fancy uniform."
Ziva was getting angrier by the minute and was really tempted to rough the little liar up a bit but, before she could contemplate the possibility further, Gibbs entered the room and asked her to come outside.

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Ziva closed the door of the interrogation room behind her and was met by Gibbs, Tony and McGee. She looked at Gibbs and asked, "You don't believe him? Do you?"
Gibbs didn't answer. Instead Tony informed her that Jeff White and the two remaining skinheads were all telling the same story: They had found Sergeant Richards, in front of their warehouse when they came back to it, drunk, the night before last. They then beat it up and took it to the river for what they considered a traditional hanging.
"Dress uniform," said Gibbs.
"What's that, boss?" asked Tony.
"He was wearing a dress uniform."
"So what?" asked Ziva. "He was still a soldier. He was about to be released, but he still went to physical therapy every day, and that's in a military base. Wouldn't he wear his uniform for that?"
"Not his dress uniform," said Tony. "That's only for ceremonies and stuff."
"We need to find out why he was wearing that uniform," said Gibbs. "Ziva, Tony, go talk to the Sergeant's friends. Maybe they'll know. McGee and I will go speak to his parents."
Ziva considered arguing, but decided against it. In the past few months of working for Gibbs at NCIS she had learned that when investigating a crime the obvious answer often didn't lead to the truth.

TBC