I had found a apartment pretty fast. I had a lot of money saved up so I hired some movers for the day so we got it done in one day. I spent the rest of the next three days getting everything where I needed it. Most people had pictures of there family around, I had one of my mother. The rest were of the team back at NCIS! Abby was good at sneaking pictures of people and she had given me copies. There was one of Kate and Abby that I loved, that I had had blown up and framed. Then there was one of Gibbs that she had taken when he didn’t know it, so I had that one framed too. There was one of me and Tim, that was a good one, I had rabbit ears on him. I framed that one as well. There was one of Ducky, me and Abby that I had framed. Those were the pictures of my family! They were there to make me remember what a good family I had had.
I turned up at the CSI building a few days early. I headed up to Mac Taylor’s office, where I was taken by some guard. I sat down to wait. When he came in, he handed me a cup of coffee. The funny thing was he had the look of a Marine, like Gibbs did.
“So you’re ready to start work?”
I smiled at him and replied, “Yes sir! I am here and willing to start as soon as you will have me.”
He looked at me before saying, “Don’t call me sir, I work for a living, Anthony, or do you prefer DiNozzo? The name is Mac.”
Oh great! The first thing he says to me is what Gibbs said to me! I looked at him. “Tony is fine, Mac.”
He nodded to me he as handed me a badge and a gun. “I do have a question, you were an agent for NCIS. That’s a good job and good pay. Why chose to come here where the pay is less? And leaving a federal job for just a CSI?”
I looked at him. Great, he wanted to know why I quit. That was a question but I would give him the basics. “Well, Mac, it was time for me to move on from that place. I lost a partner, a very close friend as well. I was sent a letter that had white powder in it, I ended up in the hospital with the pneumonic plague.”
He looked at me. “No joke, Mac. I was pretty sick but I survived.” I had to ask this, “I guess you’re a retired Marine, right? Or Military?” He looked at me strangely, “Ex-Marine, why?” I smirked slightly, “You look like Gibbs, my boss at NCIS!”
He looked at me sharply, “Leroy Jethro Gibbs?”
I looked to him and nodded, not sure what to say to the fact that he knew Gibbs.
Mac said “We were in the same unit in Desert Storm. He was a good Gunny.”
I looked at him and nodded. “He’s still good. He’s the one that hired me after Baltimore PD. He pushed me to my limits and made me better for it.”
Mac looked to me and nodded. “Well, if Gibbs trained you, I can see I got me a good CSI.” He looked over my file. “Well, you have a good training for CSI work, bagging and tagging evidence. That’s good, I won’t have to train you in those area‘s”
I nodded to him. Just then his phone rang so he answered it.
As he hung up the phone, he stood up and said, “Well, you are with me? Let’s get to work, Tony.”
Mac watched over me like a hawk bit I had expected it. Gibbs was the same way when I started working for him. I met Detective Flack and we got along right off the bat, which was a good thing. When we got the evidence back to the lab, I met Stella. I had decided that I wasn’t going to flirt with my co workers, something that was new to me. Truth be told, Stella looked like she wouldn’t be one to put up with my flirting. Lindsey, on the other hand, might be but I wasn’t going to try. She seemed to have eyes for Danny Messer. I liked Messer, he was giving me pointers and so far he was on the mark. They bagged and tagged evidence the same we did. The only thing difference was that they didn’t send the medical examiner automatically. They put paper bags on the hands and sent the bodies to the morgue, after collecting any loose evidence from the body.
We were working a case of a young woman who had been raped and murdered. She was only about twenty three. We had been working about eight hours and didn’t look to be stopping but I was used to that. The only thing I knew I had to get used to was the machinery. I was used to Abby running all the equipment. We didn’t do the leg work as much, that was left to the detectives.
Mac walked up to me and said quietly, “Just got a call from Gibbs.” I froze and looked over to him. “He was quite mad that you quit with out any notice. In his exact words, he said he was going to come and get you the instant they finished a case.”
I grunted something and just went back to work. Mac didn’t say anything else. He just started to show me how to work the machine and run the evidence. During the lesson, I had gained a greater respect for Abby - this shit was hard!
The next three days we worked to cases and Gibbs hadn’t showed up. It seems the case they were working was big. I wasn’t allowed to work on the evidence alone until I had learned how and Mac said he was going to teach me personally. He said that if he couldn’t be present, that Stella or one of the other team would let me observe. This was a good idea, I would most likely screw up otherwise. After our second case, things slowed down a little. It had been three days and Mac took me aside started to give me fake evidence to practice on. I was learning fast although I still needed more training, but I was getting the hang of it.
Mac took me to one side, looked at me and said, “Gibbs called again. He wanted to know how you were doing. I told him he had trained you well. I think he has cooled off since you left. He said he was going to give you some time but he wants you to call someone called Abby and Ducky.”
I smirked and then nodded. “Yeah, Abby is the one that runs all our evidence and Ducky is our medical examiner.”
He nodded and then we started to do some more work. He was teaching me another new machine. I had got to grips with the DNA one wuickly - that one I could work okay now. I hadn’t been the rookie on a team in a long time. Danny had talked me in to playing hoops on Saturday with him and Don. We got along and we played all morning then at lunch we all went for Pizza.
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