Tony left the layout room as soon as he had Ryan's keys. Damn that case look all too familiar to him. He had worked on a serial killer case in Philly just before he quit there. The guy was never caught. The positioning of the bodies. The letter carved into the chest of the victim. The Waterford crystal toasting flute. The expensive champagne. He needed to call abby and have her dig through his file folders for him…Hey it could be worse it could be an old unsolved NCIS case and then Gibbs would bring the whole team down here… Oh what fun… NOT! He seriously needed a break from Kate and McGee. Gibbs, well normally he wouldn't mind having the older man somewhere that would force him to show off his body… But he would really rather not have Gibbs meet any of his family. When Ryan came to NCIS he was introduced as a friend. Plus it was too close to where his daughter and her grandparents lived. Gibbs had met the older couple one time and didn't know they were in any way related to Tony and he planned to keep it that way.
Tony returned his visitors pass to the receptionist with a flirtatious smile. And walked out the door of the crime lab headed towards Ryan's car He called Abby on the way and aksked her to look for the file on the serial killer that he kept with all of the other files he worked on in the wee hours of the morning. Abby was one of the few people along with the night staff security personnel who knew of Tony's nocturnal habits. He had been asking her lately for some help on hacking into some data bases. She knew where his files were kept and she promised to scan so it so she could email it to him and she was going to overnight the file to him care of the crime lab.
He noticed all of Ryan's coworkers were busy and knew this would be the perfect time to take care of one thing that he wanted no one to be aware of. The perfect time to slip away and visit the cemetery. By the time he was finished, Abby would have scanned and emailed all of the documents to him. Then he could approach Ryan about why he was so spooked.
Tony was not familiar with Miami luckily he had thought ahead and mapquest4ed directions while he was still in DC. He utilized these to go to the cemetery and didn't get lost.
Tony had last been to Tim's grave on the day he was buried lending support to his cousin along with as many of the rest of his "family" that could make it. He was lucky Gibbs had felt generous and gave him a day off once he told his boss he needed to attend the funeral of a friend who worked in law enforcement and was killed in the line of duty. His boss even going so far as to arrange military transport. He wished he would have had more time to spend with Ryan and support him in his grief, but Tony had learned early in his career you don't "out" a cop even to your own gay lover, so he didn't tell Gibbs that this particular death was of a family member, the gay male lover of the only blood relation he remained in close contact with.
He left Ryan in the care of Mary and Mel and the rest and went back to DC, back to NCIS. Initially, he didn't want to look into the case that caused Tim's death. It was a closed case a solved one, unlike the one that took the life of Ezra's wife. The case he had been working on in his spare time for nearly 5 years. In time however, he became curious and through his sources in the Miami Dade PD asked for a copy of the report. They were unable to obtain it for him. Apparently the FBI had become involved and the file had been turned over to them. This was not a well known piece of information. It shocked Tony's contact. It made Tony even more curious as to why the FBI was so interested in the case of a cop shot in a jewelry store. The FBI's involvement had been kept very quiet. It took several months but eventually Tony was able to obtain a copy of the FBI report with huge portions of it redacted and blacked out, even with his level of security clearance. He was lucky that he had kept in contact with Martin Fitzgerald of the FBI office in NY. Martin used his father's contacts as a deputy Director to get Tony the file. Otherwise he doubted he would have ever seen the file. There was also a video tape of the security camera footage from the jewelry store sent too.
One night after work, when he knew Gibbs wouldn't be coming over, he sat down with a beer to read the file. There wasn't much information in it. Most of it was blacked out. Then he inserted the video tape in the player and returned to his seat to watch his friend be gunned down. He saw Tim and his boss enter the store and speak to a man, a man who Tony instantly recognized. He knew immediately why the FBI was so involved in this case. If he had Fornell in front of him right now he wouldn't be responsible for his own actions.
"SON OF A BITCH!" the beer flew from his hand and through the screen of his expensive plasma screen TV. Tony was not normally prone to fits of rage but that was the only thing you could call what happened next. He literally tore his apartment apart, destroying many things in his wake.
When he was finished he sat on the floor in the corner of his living room crying and apologizing, "I'm sorry Tim. I didn't know, please forgive me." Rocking himself and repeating it over and over again.
Eventually he came back to himself and removed the tape from the remnants of the VCR luckily the tape had not been damaged. He took the file and locked it in a safe place with the tape until he could place it in a safety deposit box in the morning.
Now he was here at Tim's grave site to apologize in person for being responsible for his death. He knew it was his fault because he didn't warn Tim and Ryan about the danger they faced through knowing Tony. He thought that his connection to Ryan was distant enough to keep him safe. Tony was wrong about that and Ryan and Tim paid the ultimate price.
So Tony slowly walked to Tim's grave and sat on the moist earth and started talking to his dead friend.
"Tim I am so sorry. It's my fault buddy… all my fault that Ari killed you…" Tony sat there crying and apologizing to his friend.
Author's Chapter Notes:
I bow before the casting gods who planted this bunny once i saw Lost Son, Bete Noir and Reveille.