Chapter Twenty-Five
“Calm down, Tony. Take some deep breaths and slow down your breathing,” Gibbs said, whilst reeling with shock at Tony’s admission that he recognised the man who raped him from one of Ziva’s sketches. Once he had Tony calm he was going to fax the picture to NCIS HQ and get them to add it to the BOLO and also run facial recognition software on it over any active and closed cases that Tony had dealt with recently.
“It’s him, Gibbs,” Tony said, again, trying to slow his breathing. The nurse that had been alerted by Tony’s increasing heartbeat stood back and let the older man calm his friend. The only thing she could do was sedate him and she sensed that that wouldn’t be appropriate at that moment in time.
“I know, Tony and I will catch him, but right now you have to concentrate on calming down,” Gibbs told him, taking the drawing from between Tony’s fingers and setting it to one side to be dealt with later.
It took ten minutes for Tony to calm down enough for his heart rate to be back within the safe range; Gibbs spent the time, rubbing his thumb over the back of Tony’s hand to let him know he was there with him. Tony struggled to slow his breathing, but eventually got to a place where he could breathe slower and his heart rate came down accordingly.
Once he was sure that Tony was out of danger, Gibbs sat down in the chair by Tony’s bed and grabbed the sketch that had started it all.
“Are you sure this is him?” Gibbs asked, wanting to get as much information out of Tony as possible before sending the picture and any information he could gather by fax to NCIS HQ where he knew Ziva and McGee would deal with it accordingly. They needed to put a name to the face and to do that they would have to add it to the BOLO as well as running it through the facial recognition program that might tell them how he knew Tony, if he knew Tony and would explain how he’d known which shoulder to press on to keep Tony still.
“I’m sure, I recognise the eyes, and they’ll haunt me till the day I die. I’m sure, Gibbs,” Tony replied.
“Okay, Tony, I believe you. Look, I need to get this faxed over to Ziva and McGee and make a phone call, are you going to be alright if I leave you for a few minutes to do that?” Gibbs asked, not wanting to leave Tony if he was only going to get worked up again.
Tony nodded and settled back on his pillows, closing his eyes. It looked to Gibbs that maybe he would get the sleep he’d been planning on having before he looked at the sketches. He waited a few moments until Tony’s breathing had evened out and he was sure that Tony was asleep before grabbing the sketch and heading out to find a fax machine he could use.
He ended up at the nurses’ station, where there were two nurses talking about a patient, he waited for them to finish their conversation - not wanting to appear rude by interrupting them ��" even though, he was desperate to get the ball rolling with tracking down the suspect.
“How can I help, Agent Gibbs?” one of the nurses asked once she’d finished talking with her colleague who had disappeared to deal with the patient they had been discussing.
“I wondered if it would be possible for me to use your fax machine and your phone to send something to my team. I wouldn’t ask, but it is of utmost importance,” Gibbs said.
“You can use the fax machine, but only for a local call. Is it a local call?”
“Yes, I need to send something to NCIS HQ in the Navy Yard.”
“That’s fine then. What do you need sent?”
“This,” Gibbs said, holding out the sketch, he’d written some notes on the bottom, which he wasn’t sure would go through which was why he planned to call McGee and tell him what to do.
The nurse took the piece of paper and put it in the fax machine, asked for the number, which Gibbs gave and she dialed before pressing the send button. So the fax was on its way.
“Can I use your phone to call my people about that fax?” Gibbs asked.
“Sure, just dial ‘9’ for an outside line.” Gibbs obeyed and dialed the number for McGee’s phone, hoping that despite it not being long since they left the hospital that they were back already. He wanted the sketch on the BOLO as soon as physically possible, as well as them working on giving a name to the face on the sketch. They finally had something they could work with and there was no way he was waiting on this.
“McGee?” Gibbs said when the phone was answered.
“Yes, boss,” McGee replied. He sounded out of breath, probably because he’d run from the elevator to his desk to pick up the ringing phone.
“I just sent you a fax. It’s a copy of one of the sketches Ziva left for Tony to go through. It’s our guy. I want his face on the BOLO, I want you to get together with Abby and run it through facial recognition software to see if it matches anyone who Tony has come into contact with recently. I want Ziva to go through recent cases and find anyone with a grudge against Tony and I want it all done now,” Gibbs told him.
“Of course, boss,” McGee said. “I’ll get on it now.” Gibbs said nothing more and hung up on the still talking agent. He didn’t need to know what else they had to say unless it pertained to Tony’s case. They were finally getting somewhere and soon the son of a bitch who’d attacked and raped Tony was going to be in their custody and boy, was he going to wish he’d never crossed one of Gibbs’ people.
Gibbs went back to Tony’s room and found the young agent still sleeping, with the beep of the monitors lulling him into a sense of security. He took his normal seat and looked at the sketch of the man who’d raped Tony.
“I’m going to get you and I will make you pay for what you did to my agent, I promise you that,” he said to the sketch, before putting it behind him, leaning back and closing his eyes to catch a nap whilst Tony slept.
~*~
McGee grabbed the fax from the machine and headed over to Ziva’s desk. “Gibbs just called and sent though this. It’s one of the sketches you left with Tony, he recognised him as the guy who attacked him. He wants us to put it on the BOLO, which I’ll do in a moment, as well as run it through facial recognition software to try and put a name to the face. He wants you to go through all of Tony’s recent cases and see if there is anyone with a grudge that matches this description and stands out. Gibbs is working on the assumption that whoever attacked Tony knew he had an injured shoulder and used that knowledge to get Tony on the ground. I’ll be in Abby’s lab if you need me,” he told her, passing on all the information he had gotten from Gibbs.
He took a photocopy of the sketch before heading to Abby’s lab and gave it to Ziva for her so that she had an idea of who they were looking for. Once he updated the BOLO, he went down to Abby’s lab and explained everything to her.
“This is great, we finally have a break in Tony’s case,” Abby said, booting up her facial recognition program. “If we narrow this down to a suspect we can run his DNA against what we found in Tony’s rape kit. Then we’ll have the sucker!”
“We’ve still got a long way to go until we have a suspect, Abs.”
“I reckon we should bring in anyone who matches this sketch, even if the software brings up several different matches.”
“I think that’s what Gibbs’ plan was. Though, if he plans to do the interviews he’s going to have to leave Tony alone at the hospital and I don’t think he wants to do that - especially after what happened this morning.”
“What happened?”
“They tried to take Tony off the pacemaker, but his heart was too damaged, he nearly had a full blown heart attack and now he’s awaiting surgery to have a permanent one fitted.”
Abby slapped McGee around the back of the head. “And you didn’t tell me? I should have been there, I could have gone with you!” she exclaimed.
“I’m sorry, Abs, I didn’t think.”
“No, you didn’t. Now, enough of that, I can check on Tony later. First I have to work my magic on this sketch. Watch and learn, McGee, watch and learn.” Abby scanned the sketch into the computer and started to format it so that it would be recognised by the software and then she set about highlighting the features so that they would get the best match from the system. Lord knows, they needed all the help they could get.
Author's Chapter Notes:
Who will catch DiNozzo when he falls?