Episode: 4.16, Dead Man Walking.
Air Date: February 20, 2007.
The Victim: Lt. Roy Sanders, USN.
Emotionally Traumatized, But Ultimately Irrelevant, Witness Who Finds the Body: Not applicable.
Plot Recap: Tony and Ziva are googling men’s jackets in order to figure out how much McGee paid for his extraordinarily soft new one. Gibbs doesn’t care who dresses how but wants to know where McGee is. Right on time, McGee steps off the elevator with a man who stops their progress into the squad room to double over coughing. The man says he’s OK (and compliments McGee on his soft jacket) but needs to talk to “Special Agent Gibbs.” The man introduces himself as Lt. Sanders and says he needs Gibbs to investigate a murder. Gibbs asks,” “Whose?” Lt. Sanders reaches up to his head and effortlessly pulls out a clump of hair.
“Mine,” he responds.
Cue the credits.
Ziva feels like she knows Lt. Sanders form somewhere. Gibbs returns and says that Ducky is still examining the lieutenant but says it may be radiation poisoning. Which makes sense given that Lt. Sanders is a member of the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Association). Ziva reiterates that she knows him and wonders if he has been to Israel. Gibbs shrugs and tells Tony to check Lt. Sanders’s travel. Tony wants to know if Lt. Sanders is contagious.
Down in Abby’s lab, McGee is wondering the same thing. Abby has forced him into a quarantine area that she has jury rigged in her ballistics lab and made him to strip naked (under protest) so she can test his clothing for radiation.
Meanwhile, Ducky is examining our guest. He takes some blood while small-talking the fact that his usual examinees tend to be deader. Palmer leaves to deliver Lt. Sanders’s blood to radiobiology and Gibbs takes his place. Ducky reports that, based on Abby’s findings, Lt. Sanders is sick from alpha particles and, unlike gamma particles, they can only be transferred by significant contact- fluid exchange, etc. So, the risk of contagion is minimal if the agents keep their distance.
Lt. Sanders reports that he thinks his radiation exposure was intentional because he inspected a Brazilian nuclear power plant and found irregularities. Based on his questions, the Brazilians, who, at least according to this episode, are known for cheating and trying to make nuclear weapons, knew Lt. Sanders was onto them. And Lt. Sanders’s radiation badge never registered that he was exposed to radioactivity, so when his hair started to fall out, he figured he was the victim of sabotage and foul play.
Gibbs wants access to Lt. Sanders’s office and files. Ducky wants to move him to AFRI in Bethesda, which studies radiation exposure. Lt. Sanders knows it well. He also knows he’s not coming back from his visit.
Tony and Ziva are still trying to jog Ziva’s memory (ETA: that ended up being an apropos turn of phrase). Sort of. Tony is making Ziva do stupid tricks, like close her eyes and jump up and down, under the guise of helping her memory. Until she gets wise and slugs him. Gibbs appears and asks if any progress has been made. Ziva reports that while Lt. Sanders has been to Israel, they were not in the same place at the same time. Gibbs says that Ducky is sending Lt. Sanders to AFRI and tells Ziva to go with him. Gibbs puts McGee on backgrounding Lt. Sanders and tells Tony to come with him.
Ducky is making Lt. Sanders comfortable in the ambulance. Ducky tells the lieutenant to try to conserve his energy as he’ll need it later, and “I don’t want to see you back on my table.” Ducky exits the ambulance, Ziva enters and introduces herself. Lt. Sanders offers to shake her hand, but, well, you know. She agrees it would be best if they had no form of contact and Lt. Sanders says Ziva sounds like his prom date. This morphs into a meet-cute as Ziva asks him to smile (presumably so she can place him), and then almost falls on him, her face into his face, when the ambulance starts. She catches herself, but we have now seen Hollywood shorthand for “These two people lurve each other.”
Pity.
Ziva asks if they know each other. But since she went to college in Israel, has never attended a conference (lucky), and has no idea what Burning Man is, it seems unlikely. The ambulance pulls out of the garage.
Gibbs and Tony arrive at Lt. Sanders’s office and meet Mark Sadowski, who looks like he’s in charge, Diane Russio, and Holly. Holly seems like an admin because she is booking travel. Sadowski says they swept the office when Lt. Sanders reported he began vomiting. Radiation levels are normal. However, Lt. Sanders’s co-workers are horrified to learn that Lt. Sanders is headed to AFRI. They all toured the Brazil facility together, however, and they’re not sick. They all stayed at the hotel, ate the same food, and Lt. Sanders jogged. There was one night before they all left where they went out to a bar and Russio and Lt. Sanders left early, but Sadowski stayed out. Gibbs requests their radiation badges.
Tony looks in Lt. Sanders’s desk drawer and finds a framed photo of a pretty woman with two dogs. But the photo is pointedly not on Lt. Sanders’s desk.
Gibbs visits Abby. She reports that his dosimeter (radiation badge) is hinky. But Abby thinks it’s a manufacturer defect. In other words, an accident.
They call Ducky on the monitor and Gibbs says he doesn’t think Lt. Sanders was poisoned at the Brazilian facility. But Ducky is way ahead of him. According to the radiobiology lab, the agent in question is thallium (versus uranium, which would be the most likely exposure at a reactor). Thallium happens to be colorless, odorless, tasteless, and water soluble. Ducky thinks the delivery method was ingestion, no more than 72 hours previous.
Dr. Hass is treating Lt. Sanders at AFRI and gives him some fluid concoction designed to lessen the potency of the thallium in Lt. Sanders’s body. The doctor wants to stick with oral nourishment as much as he can to maintain the integrity of the lieutenant’s gut. Lt. Sanders proudly informs Ziva that his gut has integrity. Her spleen does too. Or so she says. I’m not buying it. Dr. Hass says no drinking, no smoking, and, he pointedly looks at Ziva, no stress. Lt. Sanders asks about the investigation, but Ziva, seeing Gibbs, states she has to leave. Lt. Sanders asks about getting some air and Dr. Hass directs him to an open-air garden.
Gibbs asks Ziva if they caught the poisoning in time, but Ziva says it’s unclear and that the next 24 hours are key. Gibbs is more interested in the past. He shuts the door so that Lt. Sanders can’t hear him and tells Ziva that he wants to know every kiss, sip, bite, and trip to the bathroom the lieutenant has experienced in the past 72 hours. Ziva questions whether Gibbs thinks Lt. Sanders is hiding something. Gibbs wants to know if she has placed him yet. Ziva says she has not. Gibbs reminds her to place Lt. Sanders first and trust him later.
McGee is radiation free, but Abby’s testing cost him his super-soft jacket. Ah well. Abby is also examining the items Tony brought from Lt. Sanders’s office. Thoroughly- she’s even checking the protein bars for needle marks.
Ziva interviews Lt. Sanders. It’s not particularly exciting, but he ate pizza (he refuses to accuse “Papa Don” of poisoning him), brushed his teeth, got up at 0530 to run and had some tap water and an energy drink. Then he ran a route along the Potomac, and that’s how Ziva knows him. They run a similar course, but in opposite directions. She sees him every day and identifies him by his orange cap. She describes herself as wearing a yellow windbreaker and seems put out that he doesn’t recognize her. She even goes so far as to pull her hair back to give him a look at her running appearance, which is a little goofy and desperate. But he plays along and says he always turns after she passes to admire her technique. Her “cute, tight technique.” She laughs and returns to business. He continues to describe his day, office, protein bars, target practice at the range with Sadowski, then lunch with Sadowski.
Ziva asks if Lt. Sanders has a will, but then stops herself for being too blunt. Lt. Sanders can handle it, however, and she explains she is looking for motive. But Lt. Sanders doesn’t have a will.
In the evidence garage, Tony tells McGee that Sadowski is about to retire, which Tony thinks means he’ll be bumped off soon, per 70s cop flicks. There’s no indication that Sadowski and Lt. Sanders didn’t get along. According to Tony, however, Russio made Gibbs’s “spider-sense tingle.” McGee tests Lt. Sanders’s car for radiation, but all he finds is cigar smoke residue. Apparently, the car is quite pungent. Then he searches it and finds a gym bag with gym clothes inside.
Gibbs arrives and hands McGee Ziva’s list of Lt. Sanders’s activities. He sends McGee to track down any items that might have delivered the thallium. Tony asks if Ziva figured out how she knew Lt. Sanders and Gibbs simply says, “Personal connection.” “Ziva has personal connections?” Tony asks.
Ziva finds Lt. Sanders meditating in the open-air garden. He still can’t think of any reason anyone would want to kill him. Ziva, perhaps non-professionally, asks if Lt. Sanders has a girlfriend. He does not date at work and has yet to meet a woman who would understand what he does. Ziva gets it “the focus, the risk, the sacrifices.” Lt. Sanders says they always want him to teach or go to law school (yuck- he’s better off with radiation poisoning). Lt. Sanders loves what he does and thinks good guys need protecting and bad guys need monitoring. Ziva agrees, “It’s a mission, not a job.” Then Lt. Sanders quotes Edmund Burke about evil succeeding when good men do nothing and Ziva says it’s her favorite quote ever. Which makes her the equivalent of a freshman philosophy seminar student, but I’m not gonna tell her that. And maybe Lt. Sanders was just trolling Ziva, because he collapses in despair when she reveals her Burke affinity. Ziva catches him, and he says he’s got a little dizzy, so maybe it’s the sickness. Anyway, Ziva tells Lt. Sanders she has to get him into bed and predictable embarrassment ensues because, you see, she meant it literally, but it sounded like she…
Bah.
Anyway, they laugh, and she leads him away.
Sadowski and Russio are in the lobby of AFRI when Ziva and Lt. Sanders return. Russio runs over to hug him, but Ziva is having none of this blonde mess getting up on her poisoned hunk. She sticks out her arm and says, “I’m sorry, no contact.” Russio seems put out but recovers. She asks if Lt. Sanders will be alright and he says he hopes so.
Ziva leaves Lt. Sanders to chat with his co-workers and heads off to beat up a vending machine. That sounds like I’m channeling Ziva and misstating some idiom, but no. She stares at the junk food in a vending machine, and then beats the hell out of the machine before leaning up against it, seemingly exhausted. Since she didn’t put in any money, there’s no argument that her snack cake got hung up. So, I guess she’s mad about the guy she just met being poisoned.
Sadowski and Russio talk to Lt. Sanders about an upcoming trip to countries with “stan” in their names. Lt. Sanders suggests a substitute. He’s in rough shape and can barely drink water without spilling it. Eventually he taps out and they leave. Ziva meets the co-workers and asks about Lt. Sanders’s personal life. Perhaps not liking the readings she’s getting, she politely dismisses Sadowski and interviews Russio alone. Ziva follows up on Gibbs’s interview about the two of them returning to the hotel together in Brazil. After some light grilling, Russio admits she was hammered and tried to get Lt. Sanders to let her into his room for sexy time. Lt. Sanders didn’t go for it but was a perfect gentleman. Ziva wonders if Lt. Sanders is gay, but Russio says he is not, offering as evidence the way he looks at Ziva.
Abby is telling Gibbs that the extra radiation in Lt. Sanders’s gym clothes is from his sweat. So, he irradiated the clothes and not vice versa. Abby did find a computer chip, though- the kind like marathon runners use- and she was able to use it to check out the log of his workouts. He runs eight miles every day, in under an hour. Which is a sustained seven-minute mile. He also got close to the same times after he was poisoned. Which tells Gibbs that Lt. Sanders “would have made a damn good Marine.”
Ziva talks to Dr. Hass, who, because it’s TV, is fine violating HIPAA to talk to an armed assassin with Florence Nightingale syndrome about the condition of his patient. Dr. Hass, however, says that the radiation levels have increased. Which only makes sense if Lt. Sanders is still being poisoned.
Ziva reports to Gibbs. She admits that, despite being Lt. Sanders’s security detail, she left Lt. Sanders alone with two people who might well be suspects in his poisoning. For whatever reason, Gibbs doesn’t scream at her. Maybe he has become accustomed to how lousy his agents are at dedicated protection duty (See in no particular order, Terminal Leave episode 2.6, The Meat Puzzle, Episode 2.13, Witness, Episode 2.14, UnSEALed, Episode 1.18). In any event, there are numerous people with access to Lt. Sanders’s food and water and this is starting to seem targeted at him personally. Ziva hasn’t told Lt. Sanders that he’s still being poisoned, and Gibbs leaves it up to her.
Ziva tries to cheer up Lt. Sanders by saying that Tony and McGee found no radiation in the pizza in Lt. Sanders’s refrigerator, thus exonerating “Papa Don.” Lt. Sanders is psyched but still wants to make sure they catch his murderer before he dies. As Ziva walks away, Lt. Sanders asks her to find him a lawyer so that he can write his will.
Tony and McGee are at the shooting range where Lt. Sanders and Sadowski practice. The older woman who runs the joint is hitting on Tony. It’s awkward. But she has security footage of Lt. Sanders and Sadowski that the team can review. Preferably back at the office, Tony decides. But McGee’s Geiger counter picks up a hot zone.
McGee and Tony arrive at the hospital and McGee and Ziva beef over who gets a cup of coffee (is the machine otherwise out?). Tony and Ziva talk. Tony is needlessly in her face about her growing attachment to Lt. Sanders and accuses her of “falling in love with a dying man.” Yes, he is right to be concerned; no, her behavior doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. But here, he comes off territorial. Not that she comes off much better. She makes the standard hound dog accusations and then gets triumphal when he sort of blanches. I’m uncertain as to how much of a low blow this is or whether it’s indicative of genuine concern, but Tony mentions the photo of the woman, the husky, and the kid (kid? I thought it was another dog) in Lt. Sanders’s desk.
Gibbs arrives before Tony and Ziva come to blows, and the boys report that the radiation is highest where Lt. Sanders and Sadowski ate their lunch at the shooting range. The cameras can’t see anything, though, and the dumpster, the kitchen, and the food prep workers all turned up clean. Still, Sadowski is present at both contamination sites, so Gibbs says to being him in.
Gibbs asks why Ziva isn’t with Lt. Sanders and she says he is with Agent Lee, preparing his will. Ziva is still hopeful Lt. Sanders will pull through.
Lee needs Ziva to witness the will. Lt. Sanders says he left everything to his sister. Ziva asks if she has a husky, and she does. So, our lieutenant is unattached. Lee leaves but points out that Abby had her bring back some of Lt. Sanders’s things. Ziva walks over to the gym bag and pulls out Lt. Sanders’s hat. And sniffs it?
Gibbs has Sadowski in interrogation and just straight accuses him of poisoning his co-worker. Tony and McGee are watching in observation, and Tony says his favorite part is the part right before Gibbs breaks the suspect. When the suspect still thinks he has a chance.
Gibbs asks why. Sadowski denies it, and even stands up and gets angry. Gibbs tells him to sit down. Sadowski says Lt. Sanders is his friend. They’ve traveled the world together and Lt. Sanders was the first person Sadowski called when he thought he had prostate cancer.
Abby analyzed the debris in the gravel from the shooting range. She discusses her findings with Ducky over the monitor. Oddly, none of the larger items, like french fries, were contaminated, but the micro-debris is through the roof with rad count. Ducky asks if Abby was able to break down the micro-debris into components. She lists a number of random items- lint, tobacco, pollen, etc. Ducky abruptly leaves. Palmer walks over and tells Abby, “He’s gone.” Then he looks up as Agent Lee walks in and says, “I’ve gotta go too” as he turns off the monitor. Palmer and Lee, per usual, start making out and pulling off each other’s clothes. Which is quite bold given that Ducky left in an unannounced fashion and may not be gone very long.
Ducky reports to Gibbs that Abby isolated radioactive ash from the shooting range. Ducky believes the thallium was in Lt. Sanders’s cigar. That causes McGee to pause and he leads everyone into the observation room where he has video from the shooting range queued up. It shows Lt. Sanders smoking and Sadowski talking to him while smoke is blowing in Sadowski’s face. McGee notes that if you laced a man’s cigar with thallium, you would not hang around to breathe in the smoke. And, just like that, Sadowski keels over and starts coughing. Ducky tells everyone to remain, pulls a mask from his pocket and heads in to administer to Sadowski.
Ziva angrily arrives in Lt. Sanders’s room demanding the cigars. He smiles and admits he has taken some puffs in the open-air garden since arriving at the hospital, because who cares when you’re dying of radiation poisoning. He’s not smiling when she reveals what’s in them, though. He says he bought them at a duty-free shop in San Paolo. He says they were in his desk until he stuck them in his bag, so anyone with access to his office could have gotten to them. Obviously, this revelation upsets Lt. Sanders and stress is not good for him. His vitals start to fluctuate. Doctor Hass comes to help, and we shift scenes away from this tragic man who smoked away his already low-probability chance of survival.
At HQ, McGee thinks this case now involves someone targeting the agency. Although, Sadowski’s sickness was incidental, so that seems like a bit of speculation. Gibbs assigns Tony to guard Sadowski and tells McGee to get Russio to NCIS.
Gibbs interviews Russio in the conference room. She can’t really narrow down who might hate or fear their inspections enough to poison them. Gibbs asks where they’re headed next for inspection, but Russio says it’s classified. Gibbs convinces her they need to know, and she IDs Russia, Pakistan and Uzbekistan. McGee asks her to write down the facilities, while Gibbs calls and demands satellite time.
In MTAC, Gibbs and McGee look at a reactor in Uzbekistan. There’s a lot of activity that looks like a plant trying to reintegrate its old Soviet-era weapons processing capabilities back into its existing structure. Gibbs wants a look from earlier in the week. It’s even more compromising, so Gibbs tells McGee to get the footage to DOD and IAEA. Gibbs calls Tony and tells him that someone tipped the Uzbeks about the inspection, but Sadowski has been sedated, so there’s no way to find out from him who knew about the inspection. So, Gibbs tells Tony to talk to Lt. Sanders. He tells McGee to go search bank records for anyone in the office to see if anybody recently got a wire transfer of a substantial sum of money.
Lt. Sanders and Ziva are bonding over their fathers. He called his parents about his condition and they’re coming. He wants Ziva to meet them and asks if that’s weird. She says it’s not and that she would like to meet them. Tony arrives and wakes Lt. Sanders and asks who knew about the trip. Lt. Sanders is sleepy but says Sadowski and Russio are the only people who knew.
McGee has learned that Lt. Sanders was at six previous Uzbek site visits. He’s an expert and would know if things changed. That’s why they targeted him. Gibbs isn’t so sure and asks Ducky to check something for him.
Tony and Ziva sit by the vending machine and discuss. They’re still having tension. But Ziva at least admits she is horrified that she has gotten this emotionally involved with a dead guy and a case. Lt. Sanders calls her name and asks her to take him for a walk in the garden. Dr. Hass intervenes, and Tony does that thing only Tony can do where he pushes his teammates to the limits of their friendship but then backs their play when they need him most. He pretends to be stricken by radiation poisoning and summons Dr. Hass over. Ziva smiles and escapes with Lt. Sanders in the confusion.
Ducky reviewed the results of the tests carried out on the agency staff after Lt. Sanders took ill. He found what Gibbs is looking for. Someone was taking the thallium antidote preventatively. And he points to the screen and identifies a name we can’t see and says, “Her.”
Gibbs grabs McGee who reports that our mystery lady (it became pretty obvious who “she” is when the team started talking about who knew about the Uzbekistan trip) received $50k and has since closed her account and transferred the money offshore. She’s about to make a run for it.
The show gives us one last pump fake as Gibbs and McGee get to IAEA HQ and find Russio making international travel arrangements. But she ain’t the perp. Gibbs asks after Holly Stegman, the admin, and Russio says she just left and now Russio is stuck booking travel arrangements herself. She points Gibbs and McGee in the proper direction (after some angry prompting).
Gibbs and McGee make the parking garage as Stegman takes off in a silver Mustang. McGee chases the car from behind on foot while yelling, “Stop!” (which is funny). Gibbs cuts between the cars and stands in front of Stegman’s car with his gun out. She blinks. And stops the car. To Stegman’s credit, she says she couldn’t any more kill Lt. Sanders than she could run over Gibbs (which explains why she didn’t make the high percentage play of stepping on the gas). She was just trying to make Lt. Sanders sick, and his badge should have alerted him there was an issue. She seems genuinely distraught to learn that Lt. Sanders is as good as dead. McGee isn’t happy either. “She could have killed you boss,” he says, annoyed, as Gibbs impassively holsters his weapon.
We end on Lt. Sanders. He’s sitting in the hospital garden. Ziva joins. It’s very green and spring-like and birds are chirping. He says it’s a perfect day for a run. She puts his orange hat on him. “All those mornings I ran right past you,” he says mournfully. “Blasted past me,” she corrects, and he acknowledges that he puts on a little extra kick to impress the ladies. He’s sorry they never got to run together. She is too. He wonders if she thinks she would have noticed if he wasn’t there anymore. She is confident she would have missed seeing him. But eventually, he says, “You would have forgotten me.” She’s honest and agrees. “I won’t forget you now,” she adds, and they clasp hands.
And scene.
Quotables:
Lt. Sanders: Would you think you’d have noticed… that I was no longer there? That I’d stopped running?
Ziva: Yes. I would’ve noticed… I would have missed seeing you.
Lt. Sanders: But eventually you’d have forgotten me.
Ziva: Yes…
[clasps Roy’s hand]
Ziva: I won’t forget you now.
Ziva-propisms: Ziva offers to get Lt. Sanders into bed, but she means take him there literally. Because he is sick.
Tony Awards: Tony mentions DOA (1950).
Abby Road: Abby reminisces about defective Happy Meal toys.
McNicknames: We’re McNickname free today.
Ducky Tales: No Ducky tales.
The Rest of the Story:
-McGee has money to burn now that he’s a best-selling novelist. See Twisted Sister, Episode 4.9.
-Gibbs slaps Tony on the head.
-Thallium poisoning or go to law school. Go to law school or get thallium poisoning. They both suck.
-This show is not above recycling its own jokes. When Tony was sick with Y. pestis, Kate also made a poorly considered remark about getting him into bed. SWAK, Episode 2.22.
-This team is renowned for getting emotionally involved with people they just met. See, e.g., McGee in Witness, Episode 2.12, Gibbs in Doppelganger, Episode 2.14, Kate in Bête Noire, Episode 1.16. There are other examples.
-Tony in particular is out of line getting in Ziva’s face for letting work get personal. More later.
-Ah, the TV lawyer. Agent Lee can apply for warrants. Agent Lee can make wills. If pressed, Agent Lee can probably litigate Gibbs’s next divorce. Despite that these are all very different kinds of practice.
-As regular readers of this blog know, Palmer and Agent Lee have been forming the beast with two backs all season.
-Who goes on the run with $50k? How long would that last? 18 months? Two years if you maintained a sub-20k lifestyle? And Holly Stegman can’t, based on that Mustang.
-Maybe there’s something to Gibbs’s death wish…per Lt. Col. Mann’s CID profile of him in Sandblast, Episode 4.7.
-It would have expanded the focus of the episode too much, but it’s a little strange that there’s no resolution with respect to the Uzbeks who planned and financed the slow boil assassination of Lt. Sanders. Gibbs usually wants payback for that sort of thing, and Ziva would certainly be on board.
-Interestingly, we already had an episode called Dead Man Talking, Episode 1.19. Perhaps later seasons will give us Dead Man Balking? Dead Man Caulking?
Casting Call: Nobody I recognize from anything.
Man, This Show Is Old: Lt. Sanders used an exercise chip in his shoe to log his workouts. Now, he would just use an app on his smartphone.
Tony makes a joke at Ziva’s expense that mocks her for internet dating. She takes offense as if it’s beneath her, even threatening to murder him. Is there any other kind of dating now? Certainly the stigma is gone.
MVP: Ducky figured out the cigar angle. Everything fell into place from there.
Rating: I don’t love this episode as much as other fans do. It requires too big a leap to get Ziva to where she ends up emotionally. It’s not bad and the end scene is quite poignant, but it takes too much suspension of disbelief to get there.
Six Palmers.
Next Time: Exploding corpses. Again. This time in a mausoleum.
A Year of NCIS 