Episode: 4.12, Suspicion
Air Date: January 16, 2007. 2007 was a good year. I was in a couple of weddings. I bought my first house. I went to Europe for the first time. And I still wasn’t watching this show.
The Victim: Lt. Rhiama Shaheen, USMC.
Emotionally Traumatized, But Ultimately Irrelevant, Witness Who Finds the Body: We start at a motel. A guy in a towel leaves his room, walks out to his car, gets a small suitcase out of his trunk, and, oops, his motel room door locked behind him. Nobody is at the front desk to help him. He knocks on the door of a neighboring room. He gets no response, and then notices his feet are wet. Because he’s standing on a welcome mat saturated with blood.
Plot Recap: As they all come off the elevator, McGee tells his fellow agents that he’s not secretive. Of course, he wrote a novel (See Twisted Sister, Episode 2.9, Smoked, Episode 2.10), made a good chunk of change, bought a Porsche, and didn’t tell them any of that. McGee calls it self-preservation, and they would have laughed at him if they knew he was writing a novel. Plus, he figures they have secrets too. Tony exits the conversation in a hurry with a dismissive grunt. But, mission accomplished, McGee, because now Ziva is all over Tony.
In MTAC, we learn from the victim’s CO that the victim is named Lt. Rhiama Shaheen and she’s USMC intelligence. She was an interpreter, Kuwaiti-born and an immigrant. She was not working on anything sensitive since her unit returned form Iraq. She was on liberty to head to the country and her CO got the impression she was meeting someone.
As McGee and Tony stare at a map on the plasma, they have a hard time locating the place where the lieutenant’s body was found. They declare it the boondocks, and when Ziva asks what that means, they start alternating singing the Deliverance theme, while the show’s musical score accompanies them. This continues even as the NCIS-issue vehicle speeds down the highway. It’s a genuinely funny bit, and you have to wonder if they improv’d it.
The team gets to town and the sheriff, Sheriff Barrett is nervous-seeming. He is also a little unclear as to how this all works and doesn’t understand why the team would like to see the crime scene which he describes as “Room 8.” Ducky continues to press and…oh…we have a problem.
The scene shifts and Sheriff Barrett pulls Lt. Shaheen out of a freezer. Yeah, the scene has already been processed. Lt. Shaheen checked in to the motel under a false name, with no purse, no ID, no car, and she paid cash. The authorities found her three days ago and it took two days to get the prints to DC. The local ME, who is also the funeral director and owns a furniture store, had already done the autopsy by the time Sheriff Barrett realized the victim was a Marine. The room was turned back over to the motel and is probably occupied. There’s evidence, but the team will need to talk to Ruby.
Ruby is the forensic tech. She bagged and tagged everything that was loose. She took blood samples and made back-ups. It looks like a pretty professional job, but Ruby admits she couldn’t find a second shell casing to accompany the two shots fired into Lt. Shaeen.
Sheriff Barrett leads the team to an office they can use. Then he tells the team they have a suspect. Gibbs considers that to be burying the lede but he doesn’t say it that nicely. The victim made one call to a local- an Iraqi fella named Masoud Tariq who hasn’t lived in the area that long. But Tariq has vanished. The sheriff gives Gibbs the file they created on Tariq. They got a search warrant and found lipstick in Tariq’s living room that had Lt. Shaheen’s fingerprints on it. They put out a BOLO.
The team conferences. Ducky will take the body back to HQ, but they’re going to have to rely on the local autopsy report. He could re-autopsy if he needs to, but a lot of the original information is lost. Ziva speculates as to why Lt. Shaheen would go to such ends to keep a rendezvous secret. Neither she nor Tariq are married, according to their files. Although, he came over from Iraq around the same time she returned from deployment. Gibbs sends Tony back with Ducky and tells him to find out from Lt. Shaeen’s CO what she was working on. He tells McGee to go to the crime scene with Ruby and check her methodology. Gibbs and Ziva will track Tariq.
Sheriff Barrett leads Gibbs and Ziva to Tariq’s house. A nosy neighbor, Daryl Hardy, is checking out the scene. The sheriff doesn’t care for Hardy and says Hardy always thought Tariq was a terrorist, a theory the sheriff mocks. Hardy spread a lot of ill will, but no official complaints. And, per the sheriff, Tariq mostly stayed out of trouble before this incident.
Ziva is photographing a garage work bench where she found dismembered cell phones. The sheriff deputy, Tyler Barrett, hits on her. She blows him off, and it’s easy to see why since he made a racist-seeming comment earlier where he assumed Lt. Shaheen and Tariq were both from Iraq. Ziva photographs a spot on the floor and begins testing it. It’s diesel fuel plus nitrates. That plus the cell phone (for triggering) causes Ziva to tell Gibbs she thinks they’ve found a bomb factory.
Gibbs wanders over to chat with Hardy. Hardy thinks Tariq was part of “one those sleeper cells they warn you about on the news.” Hardy walks inside and then hands Gibbs a surveillance file he kept, saying it would have been a waste of time to give it to Sheriff Barrett. It has photos of Tariq meeting with other Arab-looking men, so Gibbs tells Ziva to send it to Abby.
Back at Abby’s lab, Tony is complaining about McGee being secretive. Abby calls McGee’s secret life as an author a MOAS (mother of all secrets). Tony wonders how you live with one of those. Abby says you don’t. It eats you alive. She walks him through the stages and then asks which one he’s in. Tony scoffs and Abby labels it guilt. The final progression is finally telling someone because you can’t take it anymore and then, depending on how big or bad the MOAS is, losing everything you care about. “Great,” Tony responds.
Abby’s computer search determines that Tariq has another name: Wasim al Fulani. He was in the Iraqi Republican Guard before the U.S. invasion.
Tony calls Gibbs and tells him Tariq disappeared two years ago. Gibbs tells him about the photos Ziva sent over and to collaborate with Abby on identifying the men.
Ruby finds out about the explosive residue in Tariq’s garage and she is annoyed she missed it while dusting for fingerprints. She tells McGee this is her first murder. She’s also a little hard on herself, so McGee gives her a pep talk about teamwork, and the other team members catching thins one person misses.
Tony has gone bowling with Jeanne. He’s pumped about breaking 100, which is sad. But he beat her and that’s all that matters. He wants to take her for dinner, but she can’t sneak off for too long because people at work called in sick. So, he sets up an outdoor sidewalk picnic for them. Very romantic. The main course is his special homemade Penne a la DiNardo.
Wait…what?
Jeanne’s impressed because the picnic like a scene from an old movie. Then she remembers to ask if it IS a scene from an old movie. It is. But since she has never seen said movie, Tony declares the dinner his original idea.
Abby is testing bullets. She looks at a comparison and says, “It’s not even close, Abigail.”
Ziva meets up with Gibbs. They have an interesting discussion about motel coffee, and then Ziva asks if Gibbs has heard from Tony. Ziva called last night to update him and Tony didn’t pick up. The same thing happened this morning. Gibbs figures Tony and Ziva must have gone off and gotten married and forgotten to tell him. Ziva laughs and then says she is sure Gibbs sent Tony back for something other than interviewing a CO. Gibbs guesses he must have missed the announcement, and Ziva has no time for that bullshit and steps on his dad joke by admitting that no, nobody made her the Director of NCIS. But Gibbs was thinking SecNav, because Shepard would know not to ask him such a stupid question. Tony thinks that Tony, a man who can’t even keep his breakfast menu secret, has nonetheless been keeping secrets. She asks for additional assurances that the only reason Gibbs sent Tony back was…Gibbs throws the car into reverse and floors it and she slams into the dashboard with a scream.
Abby enters autopsy. Ducky tells her about the first bullet, which punctured Lt. Shaheen’s skin and stopped. Bullet #2 was more destructive and killed Lt. Shaheen. So…how were they both fired from the same weapon? There are no indicators of a ricochet. The weight and lead composition of the bullets are the same. If the other weapon was a revolver, it might explain the absence of a second shell casing, but two weapons means two shooters.
Gibbs and Ziva meet Sheriff Barrett at Tariq’s. The sheriff wonders if maybe the FBI shouldn’t take over since we may have a terrorist cell. I guess he doesn’t think NCIS is up to the job if Tariq goes after a local mall. He needn’t have worried though, because Tariq drives right up in a truck. And that would be fine. Except Sheriff Barrett and Deputy Barrett draw their guns and Tariq slams the truck into reverse. We see he has a deer in back, but they can’t see that, so the LEOs fill the truck with lead despite Gibbs telling them, “Cease fire!” Somehow, Tariq doesn’t take any headshots, but when the agents open the car door, he looks bloody and rough.
At the hospital, the sheriff’s deputies are out in force. Tariq is alive and in a hospital bed. Ziva is guarding him when McGee arrives. Gibbs pulls the agents aside and says they’re moving Tariq back to DC in a couple of hours. He tells McGee to check Tariq’s clothes and truck for explosive residue.
Gibbs and Ziva interview Tariq. He wants to know if they shot him, and they say no. Gibbs wants to know why Tariq ran. Tariq replies that, in Baghdad, when you see men with guns, you leave. Sensible. And the law enforcement people seemed very eager to shoot him. He claims he was deer hunting and makes a point about fear and prejudice in his shitty small town. When Tariq hears about Lt. Shaheen and the explosive residue, he wonders what other crimes they’ll want to pin on the al Qaeda boogieman. Tariq isn’t wrong but he’s still a suspect and Gibbs is already over the pity party. So he uses Tariq’s real name and shuts him up.
Abby and Gibbs talk on the phone. Abby isn’t able to match the dudes in the photos with Tariq. She tells Gibbs about the two weapons conundrum. It’s not the kind of conversation Gibbs likes because he learned nothing.
Tony is chatting with Major Raines, Lt. Shaheen’s CO in MTAC. It’s testy because Lt. Shaheen had a lot of autonomy and her Major Raines can only identify the name of her op and pronounce it classified. Major Raines tells Tony that the Lieutenant was one of his best Marines and he needs to find who killed her. And then he hangs up on Tony.
McGee is running explosive residue tests with Ruby in the room. Per Gibbs, she’s not allowed to help him. She continues to be really sensitive and self-conscious and it’s a boring subplot. Ruby reminds McGee to check the pants pockets since people put their hands in their pockets. She leaves and McGee brushes his gloves with some kind of brush and looks curiously after her. We’ll learn more later, I guess.
Tony calls Gibbs and tells him that Lt. Shaheen worked on a program to relocate Iraqis who gave up intel to the U.S. Lt. Shaheen was a case officer for Tariq. Also, two other guys relocated at the same time, but their files are missing. The computer copies have been deleted, and the hard copies were signed out by Lt. Shaheen the day she left for the countryside.
Back at the hospital, Tariq notices Ziva’s Star of David. He intuits that she is Mossad, and he’s now as suspicious of her as she is of him. They agree that it will be a state of affairs that persists between their people for a lifetime.
Or maybe not, because here comes a redneck sheriff’s deputy to unite the foreign-born adversaries against his bumpkin ass. Deputy Barrett starts mocking Tariq’s religion by saying that if the sheriffs had aimed better, Tariq could be with his virgins in paradise. The deputy makes fun of a religion that requires one to blow up oneself to “get lucky.” Then Deputy Barrett gets decidedly unlucky when Ziva turns his thumb near sideways and points out that sneering at Tariq’s religion does a disservice to Ziva’s religion and the deputy’s religion. She leans on the thumb until Deputy Barrett apologizes. Then she makes him apologize louder. The she rubs her nose against his face to tease him for his earlier advances. If you didn’t love Ziva before this scene, you love her now. Deputy Barrett backs up and into Gibbs, and now he’s dealing with the two most intimidating people on network TV. Gibbs quietly asks if there’s a problem and the deputy beats a hasty retreat.
Gibbs tells Tariq he knows about Lt. Shaheen’s op, and Tariq is happy that Gibbs knows he’s not in the country illegally. Tariq says he was forbidden to have contact with Lt. Shaheen and her visit to his home was not at his request. Tariq denies killing Lt. Shaheen and he denies involvement with any bombs and insists that anything found in his garage was planted. Unknowingly, he plays a good card with Gibbs and says that he left Iraq because his wife and daughter in Iraq were killed buying fruit and that he has had enough of bombs.
McGee interrupts and wants to speak to Gibbs. He found Ruby’s fingerprint dust on the back of the cell phone they found in Tariq’s garage. NCIS doesn’t use red dust, so the only way it could have gotten on the cell phone is if someone planted the phone after she dusted for prints. Meaning someone is setting up Tariq.
Sheriff Barrett is not loving what Gibbs is insinuating about his fellow townfolk, but he has to acknowledge that they were scared of Tariq and wanted him gone. Gibbs wants to know who had access to the home. Tariq leased, but from an 84-year-old woman. The only other person who had access to the home…
…and now we’re interviewing Deputy Barrett. But he was radio officer the night Lt. Shaheen died, so he can’t have done that. He spins a theory that we’ve heard already- Tariq was building bombs and Lt. Shaheen caught him and got killed for it. Then he segues into a speech about how the country is at war and the authorities need to be on the lookout for suspicious people. Deputy Barrett, knowingly or not, equates this with profiling. He was “just doing my job” and tells the Sheriff that he “shoulda kept a better eye on that Iraqi.” Gibbs switches tactics and asks if that’s why Deputy Barrett planted the explosives. When he denies it, Gibbs passes the baton to McGee. McGee tells Deputy Barrett to take off his pants. The deputy says, “Screw you,” but Sheriff Barrett doesn’t back his play. And then Gibbs offers to let Ziva take the deputy’s pants off for him.
Deputy Barrett stands there in his trousers while McGee tests his pockets for bomb residue. Busted. The deputy says, “I was just getting him before he got us,” and Gibbs notes that it’s too bad he wasn’t doing anything to catch Lt. Shaheen’s killer.
Ziva reports that the doctors released Tariq and he’s in the car. The team makes ready to leave. McGee tells Ruby goodbye and thanks her. She poo-poos her help, but he says her telling him to test pants pockets was a great tip. Now she can continue to live in this terrible town with the armed and trained former law enforcement officer her tip helped put…well, probably on probation.
Tony is talking to Jeanne on the cell phone when his teammates return. He tells Gibbs that Tariq did a really good job providing intel to U.S. forces and deserves a medal. Instead, military intelligence sent his ass to the sticks so he could drown in prejudice, but maybe they had good intentions. And it’s not like rural Virginia is worse than Iraq. As to the other two Iraqi gentlemen, they had lower level contributions, but got passports out of the deal anyway.
Gibbs gives Tony a set of plates to run, but we’re not sure why or where he got them. Ziva wants to know why Tony didn’t answer her calls. He gives her a lame excuse that she doesn’t accept. She stalks off instead. McGee is reading Ruby’s evidence report. He calls her and tells her to come to DC.
In interrogation, Tariq tells Gibbs that Lt. Shaheen was investigating the other two Iraqi men. Tariq didn’t meet them until the flight over from Iraq, but he last saw them at his home two weeks ago, per the pictures we have seen already. Tariq says they were nervous and wanted to know what Tariq told the Marines in Baghdad. Tariq lied and said he passed on bad information. The two men said they did the same thing. Tariq tells Gibbs he lied because he trusts know one. He doesn’t know why Lt. Shaheen was investigating the men. He doesn’t know their names either.
Tony gets the names of our two suspects from Major Raines: Asad Al Qutaji and Youseff Zidan. They live in DC.
Abby calls and the team heads down to the lab. En route, McGee explains that the finding in question was in Ruby’s report, but nobody read it. Ruby is in Abby’s lab. She reports that the shell casing she found at the scene had an abnormal amount of powder in it. Ballistics-babble ensues, but, the first round got lodged in the barrel and the second round struck the first round on the way out of the gun and into Lt. Shaheen. Which is why bullet number one struck with less velocity. This event may have ruptured the barrel as well.
Major Raines comes to visit NCIS. He can’t find the files on the two Iraqi suspects, but Gibbs says they’re in Lt. Shaheen’s briefcase, wherever it is. But Gibbs doesn’t care about the Iraqis. Because Lt. Shaheen wasn’t investigating them. She was investigating Major Raines. Who sold passports to the two Iraqis even though they didn’t provide him with any actionable intel. Major Raines denies it. Ziva makes fun of him for not being very bright. And, sure enough, he checked out a Pentagon ride to tail Lt. Shaheen and got his plates taken down by Hardy, Tariq’s nosy neighbor on the lookout for suspicious activity. Major Raines says he followed Lt. Shaheen because he was investigating her for getting paid off, but he didn’t want to drag her name through the mud after she died, and didn’t say anything. Gibbs asks the Major to remove his gloves. Ziva asks much less nicely, as she hovers menacingly. He does so and, yup. His left hand is ripped to pieces from the explosion of a misfired gun. Major Raines makes an excuse, but Gibbs knows the story. And while the Major tossed his gun, he didn’t toss the ammo. Pursuant to a search warrant served on the Major’s wife, McGee found the ammo in his garage. It should make for a good match. Gibbs asks “how much?” Then he screams it and hits the table because there is little Gibbs hates worse than a bad Marine. Major Raines got half a million, but swears he made sure the two Iraqi men weren’t security risks. Just a couple of rich kids.
Gibbs and Ziva are in the car. She tries to make up for questioning Gibbs earlier. She says she is worried about Tony, and explains his two cell phones, his furtive behavior, his disappearances and the fact that he doesn’t talk about women anymore. Ziva thinks that his being horribly sick is the only explanation. Gibbs says, “That’s not the only explanation,” but he doesn’t elaborate.
The agents exit the car and walk up the drive. They’re checking on the two Iraqis that Major Raines allowed to buy their way into the country. But, for a couple of rich kids, they don’t live large. And, well, Gibbs and Ziva find both men acting suspicious in a garage. One of them freaks on seeing federal agents. Ziva subdues the first man and Gibbs ends up beating the shit out of the second one when he tries to get tough. As they complete the arrest, they see a garage full of barrels and cell phones and C4 and a nice jihad banner.
Nice vetting, Major Raines. Hopefully they’ll indict him as an accessory to terrorism.
We end yet another episode with Tony and Jeanne in bed. He tells a story about a riding accident as a kid. She gets paged. He tosses her pager away. And, as they make out, a camera clicks outside the window, photographing them.
Quotables:
McGee: Ziva, I am not secretive.
Ziva: Did you hear that, Tony? McGee just said he’s not secretive.
Tony: Hmm, let’s see. Wrote a novel.
Ziva: Didn’t tell us.
Tony: Got it published.
Ziva: Didn’t tell us.
Tony: Made substantial amounts of money from said novel.
Ziva: Hmm, didn’t tell us.
Tony: Anything else?
Ziva: Bought a Porsche.
Tony: Didn’t tell us. Can you see how people might begin to think there was a pattern of secretive behavior emerging here, probie?
Ziva-propisms: McGee wants to know if Ziva wants a spell. She starts spelling the last word that came out of her mouth. But McGee meant rest.
Tony Awards: Tony and McGee sing the theme from Deliverance (1972). Tony rips off his date with Jeanne from Strangers in the Night (1944).
Abby Road: Abby goes off on a tangent about not being pregnant and not wanting to be pregnant but loving kids and there’s not anybody right now with whom she’d want to have kids. If you’re tired from reading that, think how Gibbs feels.
McNicknames: Just Probie, I think.
Ducky Tales: Nothing.
The Rest of the Story:
-Abby’s conversation with Tony about having a MOAS is what people in the trade call foreshadowing.
-Wait. Tony gives Jeanne a helping of penne a la DiNardo? Who’s…DiNardo?
-Wow. We learn that Gibbs brings his own coffee grinds and grinder on overnight investigations.
Casting Call: Tariq is played by Cas Anvar. It took me a few minutes to cut through 12 years, but he also plays Alex on The Expanse, a show my wife and I just finished binging.
Man, This Show Is Old: Once again, we get a reference ot the old DHS color-code alert system.
The paranoia about people of Arab descent being terrorists still exists, but it has been superseded by a different, more generalized form of xenophobia in the late teens.
MVP: Gibbs and Ziva, for accidentally catching real terrorists.
Rating: This one is nothing to write home about. And the message was weird. On the one hand, the show tries hard to portray Tariq as a hero and someone underserving of prejudice, and not as a crazy sleeper terrorist building bombs in his garage. On the other hand, the show then casually ends with Gibbs and Ziva almost comically busting a couple of other Iraqi guys who are terrorists and who are building bombs in their garage. Basically, not every Iraqi is a terrorist, but every Iraqi might be a terrorist. It’s a very odd choice to make for a throwaway, almost screwball, scene at the end of the episode.
Five Palmers.
Next Time: Remember Sharif from a few episodes ago? Well, he’s back. And I’m not spoiling anything because they titled the episode Sharif Returns.
A Year of NCIS 