- A Navy petty officer, who's the only witness in a civilian capital-murder trial, disappears; Gibbs and company investigate in response to a request by a commonwealth attorney. The gang puts all the pieces together, and justice prevails.
- A Navy petty officer, Jerry, who's the only witness in a civilian capital-murder trial, receives and plays an eerie DVD, then he disappears; a commonwealth attorney (a prosecutor in Virginia), Gail, seeks help from Gibbs; the gang investigate, and they find a turkey. Tony behaves differently, and Gail shows interest in Gibbs; Duck and Abby tell about the bird. Gibbs and Ziva find Jerry, who suggests a new twist. Gibbs persists, then he receives a visit; McGee and Ziva see a guy on a street, then Gibbs and Tony chat with the guy, who describes a strange deal. Jerry's mouthy comments annoy many people. Gibbs and Gail oppose each other on several points. Another man dies. Duckman receives several distracting e-mail messages. The team learn about the various facets of this case and figure them out, then all the loose ends work out. Tony reverts to his previous behavior.—DocRushing
- A man wakes up to his alarm clock and goes to get the morning paper. He finds a DVD on his doorstep that says "play me." He watches it.
It's video of his house, someone using a lock pick to come in his front door. The person walks over to the man as he sleeps and holds a knife to his throat. The man freaks out.
Ziva and McGee come into work all jolly and find a serious Tony doing old paperwork, very un-Tony-like.
Gibbs comes in to work with Deputy DA Gail Walsh (Annie Wersching) to report they're hitting the trail of missing petty officer Jerry Neisler -- the only witness in a capital murder trial that starts in two days. From photos we see the Jerry is the man from the open.
At the scene, Gail explains he was staying at his friend's house and he just came back from a hunting trip. Gail doesn't see how the trial put Jerry's life at risk.
Tony suggests checking the local take-out restaurants, whose boxes litter the living room. He gives credit to McGee for the idea.
Gail follows Ziva and asks about Gibbs and Tony, and if Tony is single. When she asks Ziva if she and Tony are an item, Ziva protests loudly.
Tony and McGee find a dead turkey from the hunting trip in the fridge. McGee is stunned when Tony passes up the opportunity for a joke.
Gail asks Tony if she wants to go with him to her office to help carry boxes, but he suggests McGee go instead.
Back at NCIS it's time for victim debrief: he served two tours in Iraq and had a lot of transfers. Gail arrives and explains it's nothing, but doesn't say why. (We sort of find out why later...)
Tony has prepared a power point with reasons why the witness might have disappeared and passes up all movie references.
Gail runs down the murder trial. The killer is Samuel Hayes, his wife is dead and his daughter is a ward of the state.
Gibbs puts Ziva on Jerry's hunting trip.
Gibbs joins Duckie and Palmer in the morgue, where Palmer is writing down Duckie's very long list of interests for Facebook. "Facebook? That's that thing that some people do things with," Gibbs says.
On to the body... of the turkey.
It was killed with a shotgun. Duckie is interested by the color of its tail feathers, which identify it as being from Kansas, Oklahoma or Texas. Jerry's CO ordered him not to leave the state before the trial.
Down in the lab, Abby practices her turkey trot. Abby ran the turkey's DNA through a turkey DNA database. There was a catch and release of those turkeys recently in Virginia from a state with too many.
Gibbs heads to the hunting grounds where the birds were released. Ziva mentions she's going skiing for Christmas with her friend from Miami. They show Jerry's picture to hunters. Then they see Jerry.
He tells them he got "badly worded emails" warning him not to testify. He shows them the DVD he got. He says Gail is the only one who knew where he was staying, so he thinks she's in on it. When she calls, Gibbs tells her they haven't found him.
Back at NCIS, they watch the DVD. Tony says it reminds him of something and McGee awaits the movie reference -- but it never comes.
Ziva has confirmed that Gail was the only one who knew where Jerry was staying. McGee thinks the answer is in the case files, which Tony has already researched.
Hayes worked as a business PI, but was a family man until his wife was killed in a car accident and he turned to drinking. He became muscle for hire and robbed a brother and sister in an alley and shot the sister -- Jerry saw it.
Gibbs meets with the brother, Matt, who says they were out for his birthday. His sister jumped in front of the gun and he doesn't remember what happened next. He couldn't ID the shooter. Gail told him the witness is missing.
In the lab, Abby measures Jerry's face to calculate the exact size of the knife held to his throat in the video. He mentions how protective McGee seems of her and all sorts of personal and intrusive observations, like he figures she wanted to keep it casual with McGee because she's married to her work.
When Gibbs comes, she asks him to take Jerry.
Abby found GSR on the alleged killer's shirt from Hayes trial. Hayes worked for a long list of bad guys, who might not want him to get convicted and talk to save his skin in hopes of a plea deal.
One of them was Smitty Brown, who visited Hayes a lot in prison, but has since gone missing.
Tony has already arranged for Gibbs to talk to Hayes. Even Gibbs asks if Tony is feeling OK. Abby warns Tony to stay away from Jerry.
Gibbs visits Jerry and shows him a picture of Smitty. Hayes says he does collections for him. Gibbs shows Hayes photos of the woman he allegedly killed, but Hayes isn't talking.
Gibbs takes Jerry home to stay with him. He offers him a can of beans for dinner. Jerry says he saw Hayes once at a hearing and he reminds him of Gibbs, sad and lonely.
He asks to call his CO, who he also called earlier. This is news to Gibbs. Then Gibbs notices headlights outside and sends Jerry to the basement.
Gail busts in. She's mad at Gibbs for hiding Jerry and visiting Hayes. She tells him there was an attempt on Hayes' life after he left and the trial has been postponed. She tells Gibbs he's ruining her trial.
Back at NCIS, Gibbs tells Gail what Jerry said about her. Tony shows her a photo of Smitty Brown. She thinks her office can find him, but she demands to be kept in the loop.
Abby reports she has new info and Gibbs pays a lab visit. She noticed two dead pixels on the video and used that to compare to old videos on-line. She got four matches. By measuring the hands in the video she got a match to a guy named Joe Casey, who is in the county morgue but who was transfered to NCIS.
In Duckie's morgue, we learn Casey was a gun for hire. The local ME thought Casey died from an animal mauling, but Duckie found Casey's liver "inflated" and other organs with freezer burn. Duckie gets distracted, Palmer informs us, because his new Facebook page has lead to racy emails from lady friends.
Palmer explains that Casey had a brand new tattoo and they think if they find the parlor, they might find a witness.
Ziva and McGee go to the dumpster where Casey's body was found. There's only one tattoo parlor nearby. Tony prepared photos of Casey and updated all the BOLOs on Smitty Brown. Ziva and McGee are seriously concerned about him.
As they're standing outside the tattoo parlor, Smitty walks out.
In interrogation, Gibbs talks to Smitty. Tony shows him the knife they found in his car that's used for hunting and injects frozen gas into internal organs.
They lay out their scenario for him, but he says Casey tried to kill him, not the other way around. He heard someone was trying to kill Hayes and he looked into it. He confronted Casey and Casey attacked him. He says it was self-defense.
He explains that he wanted Hayes in prison to help him with "a little side business" he had going. Smitty's original contact was executed. In exchange, Smitty made deposits to Hayes' life insurance policy.
Upstairs, Gibbs shows Jerry a photo of Smitty. He says he doesn't recognize him. But they've been able to confirm Smitty was making insurance deposits for Hayes.
Duckie announces that he just spoke with the prison ME and learned that the attempt on Hayes was actually him trying to kill himself. They don't get why Hayes would try to kill himself if he was going to walk with Jerry MIA.
Know-it-all Jerry says it seems obvious: Hayes doesn't want to beat the murder wrap, he just wants to leave money for his daughter.
McGee finds several calls on Smitty's burn phone from Gail's number.
Ziva and Tony watch Gibbs talk to Gail, who is indignant and claims to have a date in two hours. Ziva asks about the "new Tony" who hasn't made a joke in the past two days.
He says he can't be responsible for everyone's feelings, like hers and McGee's and the Brenda Bittners of the world. That's the girl who posted online that they were in a committed relationship. (From the episode "Obsession" S7) Ziva remembers it was a one night stand. Tony just found out she checked herself into a depression treatment facility after she wrecked her car.
Ziva tells him it makes sense that he'd be bothered by not noticing she was off-kilter since his job is to notice things, but he shouldn't worry too much about it.
He's surprised it's gotten to him. She takes him by the shoulders and tells him he's just growing up. She says he should treat people more respectfully, especially when it comes to matters of the heart, but he needs to be who he is: "Tony DiNozzo, class clown. And that is why we love you."
Gibbs sits down with Gail, confronting her with Smitty's cell phone. She says Smitty was an informant for her office and then she got involved with him. She tells him he doesn't have to tell the judge, but he says he does.
Later, Gibbs reports from a hearing that the judge threw the case out. He mentions the victim's brother wasn't there, which McGee finds odd since he was at every hearing.
Hayes gets out of a cab on a snowy street. The victim's brother (Matt) jumps him with a gun. But Hayes is calm and tells him they know what he did. Tony and Gibbs come around the corner, guns drawn. They found the wire transfer he sent to Casey to scare Jerry off. He didn't want to wait for the trial and death penalty appeals to run their course.
Hayes says he'd buy him the bullets if he thought it'd make him feel better, but it won't. He says he'll sign a confession now if they can pretend none of this ever happened. McGee says they can settle for pretending some of it never happened. Gibbs says he'll talk to the DA.
At the office, Ziva and McGee come in to find Palmer bawling. He got Jerry'd. (Jerry probably was transfered a lot due to his 'intrusive' observations of his COs.)
Tony reports that Gibbs talked to the DA and the victim's brother can plead to a weapons charge only and not get any time. He's still serious Tony, leading McGee to tell Ziva she needs to have another talk with him. Then suddenly, explosions go off everywhere, red and green lights start flashing and confetti rains from the ceiling.
Christmas carols blare and the display screen reads Merry Christmas.
Ziva looks at Tony. "Too much?" he asks.
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