A Year of NCIS, Day 35: Doppelgänger (Episode 2.12)

Episode: 2.12, Doppelgänger

Air Date: January 18, 2005.

The Victim: Petty Officer Dion Lambert, an information systems tech at Bethesda Naval Hospital.

Emotionally Traumatized, But Ultimately Irrelevant, Witness Who Finds the Body:  Telemarkerter Roland Kesta.  We start at a telemarketing cubicle farm.  Roland is reading off a script, and Petty Officer Lambert is not in any way interested in changing long distance carriers.  Then things take a novel direction.  Petty Officer Lambert hears something.  It’s a break in.  Roland listens to a struggle, and some sounds, and a scream.  And then…credits.

Plot Summary: Kate is laying into Tony about invading her privacy.  He looked through her trash and figured out where she went to breakfast.  That’s not creepy or anything. 

Gibbs arrives, gear is ordered to be grabbed, and the team mobilizes. They arrive on a nice tree-lined street and Gibbs meets Lt. Cheney.  Lt. Cheney tells Gibbs that a kitchen door has been broken in and the amount of blood indicates it could be murder, but there’s no body.  Gibbs and Cheney drink the same coffee, and both hand their empty cups to Cheney’s underling, a tall, awkward eager to please fellow named Detective Miller.  The NCIS agents express shock at how casually Gibbs commandeers someone else’s do-boy.  Cheney apprises Gibbs that the police received a call about the incident from a telemarketer.  The call was traced to the residence, and the place is trashed.  It appears a big fight took place. 

Cheney has a female detective on the case, Detective Rapp, who tells him his ex-wife called.  Cheney wants to know which one, but even “the nasty one,” doesn’t narrow it down. Now Kate is looking in a funhouse mirror.  Mcge…er, I mean, Miller shows up with more coffee for both alphas, and Gibbs and Cheney toast and drink.  This is fun.  It will be a hard bit to write if they keep it up, but it’s fun.

Cheney hands the case off to Gibbs with a lack of shits given that is frankly inspiring.  Rapp is similarly indifferent to Tony’s efforts to have sex with her and blows him off.  Gibbs puts Tony on bag and tag, Kate on sketch and shoot, and McGee on the laptop and answering machine (heh).  Kate notes the odd situation with the team having parallel universe duplicates on the local police force.  Gibbs doesn’t get it. 

Kate heads outside to get her sketch pad and runs into the fourth member of our team of detectives, Detective Primo Monteleone (seriously), who promptly tells her that her eyes are the color of his Porsche.  Then he asks her out…at least until Lt. Cheney walks by, makes a pithy remark, and hits him in the back of the head.  Rapp edges Monteleone out for shotgun in Cheney’s sedan and Monteleone brusquely tells Miller to “Get in the car, Probie,” while Kate looks on with a “what the…?!” look on her face. 

Gibbs interviews Roland and listens to a recording of the call, while Kate unhelpfully punches down on the poor telemarketer who honestly is just doing his job.  Don’t hate the player, Kate.  Gibbs wants to know why Roland kept selling while something bad was clearly going on, and Roland says his boss is a dickhole.  Roland explains how Petty Officer Lambert might have gotten on the call list, and Kate honestly seems more interested in how the seedy world of telemarketing might screw up her life than in investigating the case. 

Gibbs sends McGee to help Abby process the evidence.  McGee looks excited about this, and it’s an even numbered episode, so I guess he and Abby are or are not a item in this one. 

Tony finds a second name on the property lease, George Mansur.  Gibbs sends Tony to find the roommate.  Kate leaves with Gibbs but leaves her phone on her desk for Tony to snoop at.  He gets busted, but just grins at her.

Abby informs Gibbs and Kate that the blood at the seen is O+, which matches Petty Officer Lambert.  Abby shipped a DNA sample to the Armed Forces DNA registry.  The fingerprints lifted belong to the Petty Officer.  McGee tells Gibbs that Petty Officer Lambert’s hard drive has been erased.  A DOD-approved systems wipe was used, and Petty Officer Lambert is a systems guy, so that baby ain’t coming back.  He did not wipe his answering machine, and one of the calls is from Thrifty Phone Services.  Gibbs wants to know why the telemarketers would have called him and then called him again.  Which isn’t that unusual, but seems important to the plot, so I’m noting it.

Gibbs leers over everyone’s shoulder and paces as Abby does spatter analysis, and McGee runs acoustics on the phone call with Roland in which the struggle took place.  They finish, and Abby and McGee fight over who gets to deliver “unbelievable” news to Gibbs first.  Kate arrives and joins the fight too.  Abby goes first.  The blood trail is passive, meaning that somebody dripped some blood, took a step, dripped some blood, and so on.  McGee says that the fight sounds were unidirectional, meaning they were sound effects from Petty Officer Lambert’s computer.  Kate reports that she spoke to a guy at the telemarketer company, and the lead on Petty Officer Lambert was given to Roland because the initial caller got sick.  Meaning, Petty Officer Lambert asked the telemarketer to call him back, and Kate says that Petty Officer Lambert even provided a time to call.  Staged crime scene.

Kate flags Petty Officer Lambert’s financial accounts just in case.  Tony is still looking for the roommate, Mansur.  He’s a freelance IT specialist.  And a well-paid one.

Gibbs and McGee go to talk to Petty Officer Lambert’s co-workers at the Bethesda Hospital IT center.  Petty Officer Lambert was working on overhauling the overall computer system.  The technobabble is interesting simply because the terms have become so commonplace in the last 15 years that even a Luddite like me can mostly translate it.  Gibbs still needs McGee’s help, though.  The co-workers say that Petty Officer Lambert is just a normal guy, and they’re mystified as to why NCIS would be involved over a one-day UA.  Petty Officer Wilson allows that Petty Officer Lambert seemed jumpy a couple of days ago. 

Petty Officer Wilson’s supervisor, Ms. Wilkerson stops by to meet the agents.  Gibbs does that weird thing where he sometimes macs on witnesses like he’s a subtle Joey from Friends who can convey the “How you doin’?” with just body language.  He sends McGee off to do stuff and takes Ms. Wilkerson’s arm as they walk out of the room.  Ms. Wilkerson describes Petty Officer Lambert as a hard worker, the type who is first to arrive, last to leave, and works on weekends (hate those guys!).  They flirt some more, Mrs. Wilkerson pretty much asks Gibbs out, and that’s the end of it.  She doesn’t have red hair, so it has no mileage, but you sort of thought they were gonna do it in the hall there for a minute.  Gibbs watches her walk away and even says, “Wow.”

Kate tells Gibbs that Mansur withdrew $6,000.00 from his bank account the week before he moved out.  He has also moved three times in the last several years, and didn’t change his address with the post office this last time.  None of that is particularly strange in a vacuum, but Gibbs thinks Mansur and Petty Officer Lambert are in cahoots with whatever they’re doing.  Kate suggests that Petty Officer Lambert faked his death to get out of the Navy and make bank in the private sector like his roommate.  Gibbs points out that Petty Officer Lambert’s enlistment was up in five months, so why bother? 

McGee checks in with Abby, and he brings the Caf-Pow this time.  She is bored.  He and Abby compare their worst jobs.  Abby has been examining lines of code, and then something beeps.  Abby triumphantly declares three lines of highlighted code to be the reason Petty Officer Lambert faked his own murder.

McGee gets Gibbs, who comes to Abby bearing his usual impatience.  Abby and McGee explain that Petty Officer Lambert embedded code in the hospital’s programs that would send him a unit of prescription pain killers for every x prescriptions ordered by the hospital.  Given the amount obtained and the street value of the drugs, Petty Officer Lambert made over $1 million, and Gibbs declares him, “long gone.”

Back to Bethesda, and the sexy lady coming on to Gibbs. Nobody suspected Petty Officer Lambert of being shady, and Petty Officer Wilson is impressed with Abby’s sleuthing, as detailed to him by McGee.  Gibbs tells Ms. Wilkerson about the faked murder, and McGee again brags on Abby for finding the blood trail and blowing up the whole ruse.  He grimaces when Petty Officer Wilson starts vying to meet Abby.  McGee tries to talk Petty Officer Wilson down by describing Abby’s gothitude, but that just turns him on.

Gibbs wants to know why Petty Officer Lambert bailed on his scheme now.  Ms. Wikerson mentions that the new hospital software system was going live in five days and they would have caught him.  I guess he was using the old software to work his scam?  Either way, they locate the address of the opioid deliveries, and it’s a nearby PO Box.  Gibbs calls Lt. Cheney, his police detective doppelgänger, asks if Petty Officer Lambert’s M.O. rings any bells, and sets up a meet.  He also sets up a meet with Ms. Wilkerson to come read the paper while he works on his boat, like the redheaded lady does.  It’s genuinely funny to watch Gibbs adjust Ms. Wilkerson’s expectations downward from going sailing to hanging out in Gibbs’s basement, but she doesn’t say, “No.”

Boy, I really hope she’s not in on it.

Our detective friends arrive at HQ and McGee and Miller try to out-yuppy-coffee each other to the muted horror of their bosses.  Cheney is aware of a a lobbyist/dealer, Aaron Wright, that he hasn’t busted because he wants the whole illegal pipeline.  Gibbs wants to bring the guy in for interrogation based on what they know now.  McGee and Miller geek out over a Blackberry (hah).

Gibbs interrogates Wright, who, unlike most dummies on this show, brings his lawyer.  Tony and Monteleone admire the lawyer’s watch from the observation room, while Kate and Rapp shake their heads in horror at how shallow their co-workers are.  Wright denies knowing Lambert.  Gibbs and Cheney not-entirely-subtly threaten Wright with rapey prison, but offer to cut a deal if he leads them to Petty Officer Lambert.  The lawyer, wisely, tells Wright that they ain’t got no evidence or this deal would not be on the table.  Gibbs tries the ole’ prisoner’s dilemma and tells Wright that Petty Officer Lambert will absolutely roll over on him when they find him.  He even pokes Wright in the face, which is a bold play in front of the lawyer.  Cheney ups the ante on rape prison and the attorney ends the interview.  Then Gibbs and Cheney make a $5 bet in front of Wright as to how long Wright will last in rape prison.  I’m not sure how often this sort of thing happens in real life, but it should probably happen more.

Tony and Monteleone are certainly amused, although that just causes Gibbs and Cheney to yell at them through the glass (they just assume they’re laughing).  Gibbs makes clear they didn’t break Wright so there’s nothing to laugh about.  But Cheney notes they made him piss his pants, and they do laugh at that.

Wright leaves and there’s a gratuitous scene of him lighting up a cigarette in the NCIS elevator and blowing the smoke into the room before the doors shut.  This is all against the advice of his attorney and is probably a federal misdemeanor.  Although, probably not the type of crime that gets one sent to rape prison. 

Tony strikes out again with Rapp because Kate gave away his playbook.

Abby tells Gibbs that Mansur is on-line and she back-traced him to a cybercafe in Georgetown.  Gibbs takes Tony and McGee.  He puts Kate on phones and Abby on monitoring Mansur on-line which forces Kate to cry foul over “boys’ night out.”  Abby sees the silver lining and tells Kate to transfer her phones to the lab and come down for “girls’ night in.”

Not sure whether you need a warrant to check a guy’s activity on a cybercafe computer while he’s logged in on it, but it’s NCIS, and they didn’t need a warrant anyway.  So McGee does his thing while Gibbs and Tony drag Mansur outside.  Haha- Tony acknowledges that they’re at least in a gray area legally, and Gibbs smiles and says they’ll keep asking questions anyway.  Mansur yells for help, but Gibbs clamping a hand over his mouth and Tony dispersing the bystanders with his badge is sufficient in that day and age to ensure privacy.  Mansur claims he doesn’t know where Petty Officer Lambert is, and says he moved because Petty Officer Lambert bought the house and didn’t want a roommate anymore.  Gibbs takes a call. Mansur thinks Petty Officer Lambert got all his money from day-trading, of the insider variety.  He claims he didn’t know about any drugs.  Gibbs tells Tony to get Abby and McGee looking at more computer stuff, and then tells him to arrest Mansur.  Turns out Lt. Cheney found Petty Officer Lambert, dead in a ravine in Rock Creek Park.

Ducky finally comes to work and checks out the petty officer’s body.  He was shot in the head at close range.

Abby and McGee examine Mansur’s day trading.  He has had some good hits.  They fight over something dumb, but Gibbs calls to interrupt.  Between Ducky’s time of death and Abby’s on-line analysis, Mansur is cleared of killing Petty Officer Lambert.  Gibbs tells McGee to cut him loose. 

Oh God.  Kate and Monteleone are talking about the time Monteleone’s cousin paid a girl to have sex with them in his teens.  Kate finds some cigarettes.  Which is enough for Gibbs and Cheney to bring Wright back in for another of Gibbs’s patented autopsy interrogations.  Ducky explains to Wright how the bullet caused death, with lots of poking at the body, until Wright vomits.  Then he says he didn’t kill “Dion,” so there is a connection.  Wright asks for a deal, Gibbs says no.  Wright says he’ll reveal the killer for a deal.  Gibbs says no deal “if it was you.”  Wright says that’s fine.  He describes the scheme, but says it wasn’t worth as much money as Gibbs and Cheney thought.  The last shipment was only worth $50k, which, if nobody has made $1 million, is still plenty of motive for a killing.  Wright says Petty Officer Lambert had a partner, but he doesn’t know who, and Gibbs yanks him in the direction of a cell.  Wright says the partner is a computer geek at Petty Officer Lambert’s assignment, who picked up on the scam and threatened to report him unless he got a cut.  Wright thinks the partner is the killer. 

Gibbs returns to Bethesda and tells Ms. Wilkerson that Petty Officer Wilson caught on to Petty Officer Lambert’s scam and joined up.  Gibbs tries to assure Ms. Wilkerson that she’s not to blame for two of her people running this scam.  McGee finds a trojan program on Petty Officer Wilson’s computer which gave him access to everything Petty Officer Lambert was doing.  Petty Officer Wilson denies it.  Tony frisks him and finds a pack of cigarettes in his sock.  McGee is sad because, for the second episode in a row, the guest-star he bonded with is the criminal.  He’s doubting his judgment now.  But Abby kisses the back of his head and makes him feel better.

Gibbs is in his basement teaching Ms. Wilkerson how to sand wood.  As awesome as that sounds, it’s not a euphemism.  They’re working together on his boat and it sort of looks like the clay scene from Ghost and now I can’t stop chuckling.  And then he says, “Can you feel the wood?” and I’m done.  Is Tony about to jump out from behind a box of discarded liquor bottles and yell, “Yeah she can!”?

Ahem.

What I meant to say, is there’s five minutes of runtime left. Still plenty of time for Ms. Wilkerson to be the bad guy. 

And back to Abby, where something is “hinky.”  She takes more time than necessary to get there, but the cigarettes at the crime scene are not the same brand as smoked by either Wright or Petty Officer Wilson.  McGee says he has to call Gibbs, although, Abby admits all she has done is proven that someone smoked a certain brand of cigarettes at Rock Creek Park. 

Gibbs is initially too busy making out with Ms. Wilkerson to answer his phone.  But he doesn’t have any friends (except Fornell), and presumably that used VW snafu from Chained (Episode 2.10) is all done.  So, it must be work.  And Gibbs is too duty-bound to ignore work, even to get his wood sanded. Gibbs tells McGee this had better be the most important phone call he has ever made.  Which I mention only because McGee then tries to hand the phone to Abby and Pauley Perrette jumps so far away from him that she leaves the camera shot.  We see the scene from Gibbs’s basement as Ms. Wilkerson pours them both some bourbon.  According to the music, she is definitely the killer.  She asks what wrong.  He plays it off as Petty Officer Wilson not admitting to the crime.  Gibbs smiles and asks for a smoke, and his body sells it as a guy who just needs the stress release.  Ms. Wilkerson says she’s surprised by this but pulls a pack of the exact brand the team found at the crime scene.  While they smoke, Gibbs tells a story about a Mafia don in Sicily who got busted for killing a prosecutor because he left cigarettes at the crime scene and they matched his DNA from the saliva on the filters.  Gibbs says it’s the first time DNA was ever used to successfully prosecute a killer.  He puts on rubber gloves, and she looks excited.  But he’s not hard wood Gibbs anymore.  He’s send a gal to rape prison Gibbs, and he takes her cigarette, bags it while she’s waiting for a kiss, and says he really hopes the DNA doesn’t match the crime scene.  “Oh, I really do.”  Then he kisses her again while she stands there with her eyes open soiling herself, and the episode ends. 

Quotables:

(1) “Last time I’m gonna tell you, Tony.  Don’t answer my phone, use my computer, read my mail, look through my purse, scan my PDA, or touch my cell phone EVER!” -Kate makes clear, in front of at least one witness, that Tony’s behavior in unwelcome.  Unwelcome behavior is a key element in a sexual harassment claim under federal law.   

(2) “Any time you write your name down, it’s going in somebody’s database, and then being sold to somebody else.” -telemarketer Roland Kesta gives the American viewing public an early warning about big data collection.  We didn’t listen, and, instead, collectively said “Hold my beer!”

Time Until Sexual Harassment: Immediately.  At least actionable invasion of privacy. We don’t see it, but we see Kate standing at Tony’s desk, yelling at him about invading her privacy while McGee looks on.  McGee will be a key witness in Kate’s harassment lawsuit and is in for an uncomfortable deposition.  Actually, at this point in the show, he kinda hates Tony, so maybe he’ll have fun.

Ducky Tales:  Ducky tells us what anatomists thought of the corpus callosum in the 18^th Century, and then how scientists eventually discovered its true purpose.

The Rest of the Story:

-During the team’s initial interview with Roland the telemarketer, Roland explains how supermarket value cards are used to collect data on consumers, whose information is then sold to marketers.  Kate acts scandalized. And maybe she should be, but things get a lot worse in ensuing years.  It’s very forward-thinking of the show to run dialogue/commentary on the consumer privacy issue at least 8 years before people really started talking about it.

-Abby ships DNA from Petty Officer Lambert’s house to the Armed Forces DNA registry.  Depending on the plot, that may or may not work.  In Sub Rosa (Episode 1.7), the registry was too backed up to be of any use.   

-It’s not clear if “Always expect the unexpected” is a numbered rule, but Gibbs claims that he says it.  

-We last saw Gibbs use his sexy to work a witness in My Other Left Foot (Episode 1.12).  She was the bad guy too, but at least in that episode, Gibbs knew the difference.

-McGee trying to discourage Petty Officer Wilson’s interest in Abby is reminiscent of Tony’s efforts to do the same with McGee in Sub Rosa.

-Gibbs hits McGee in the head for the first time.  Just to preserve the natural order of things, Tony gets one too later in the episode.

-In three of the last four episodes, (including Chained and Forced Entry (Episode 2.9), criminals turn on each other, one gets killed, and Ducky wanders into the latter half of the episode to check things out for two minutes.  Was David MaCallum on some kind of health leave during this period?  At least here he sticks around for an autopsy interrogation.

-And that’s three NCIS agents who have had romantic or semi-romantic entanglements with criminals.  Gibbs here.  Kate in Bête Noire (Episode 1.16), Tony in Dead Man Talking (Episode 1.19).  Sloppy.  Only Tony has an excuse. 

-It’s a shame the doppelgängers never appear again. It’s not a joke with crazy mileage, but it had another verse left. Even just Lt. Cheney re-appearing would have been fine.

Casting Call: Kimberly Oja is Karen Wilkerson.  She was on The OC (hah, remember The OC?)  Her CV caught my eye because she also played Ice in the 1997 low-budget Justice League of America made-for-TV movie.  I’ve only seen stills and read summaries of this atrocity, and even those are disturbing.  But Oja has charisma.  I’m a little surprised she hasn’t done more. 

Man, This Show Is Old: Telemarketers haven’t stopped bothering us.  But they no longer bother us about changing long distance carriers.  In fact, say “long-distance carrier” to a high school kid and observe his or her blank stare.

Kate’s PDA is always a hit.  As is the idea of people, here Petty Officer Lambert, having answering machines.  And the idea of that answering machine containing a messages from Blockbuster about Petty Officer Lambert being late to return Happy Gilmore. 

Abby and Kate have a side discussion about which super-hero Abby would be.  Wonder Woman and Supergirl are relatively timeless references, and Isis is only going to resonate with people who remember obscure TV from the 1970s.  But the Power Puff Girls and Xena Warrior Princess are fairly contemporaneous pop culture references for the early 21^st Century.

While we’re only just now calling it a “crisis,” this episode makes clear that prescription opioid abuse has been going on a loooooong time.

Ooooo…Detective Miller has a Blackberry.  I got a similar model about four months after this episode aired.  I remember the date because I needed it to keep track of work emails while I went to NYC to stand in line for the opening of Revenge of the Sith, and oh my God, I’m a dork.

Nowadays, you can’t aggressively interrogate a man on the street without getting filmed.  Even if you’re a large, intimidating federal agent. 

Day trading is still very much a popular activity, but it was more a part of the cultural zeitgeist before the economy blew up like the Death Star in 2008.

MVP:  I don’t know why I was calling it VIP.  Maybe I’ll go back and change it in the previous posts, but that seems like a lot of work.  Just know that I comprehend it was an error.

Anyhow, it sure ain’t Gibbs the sucker. And matching cigarettes is the kind of basic forensics that doesn’t even require a lab. Give it to Kate for finding the cigarettes despite Monteleone making her work environment doubly hostile.

Rating: Look at the brass on Karen Wilkerson.  She cozies up to the lead investigator of her crime, frames her co-worker for said crime, kills her partner, and then goes over to the investigator’s house to have sex with him before the corpse is cold.  NCIS would have busted her anyway, but that’s a bold play.

I liked this episode.  It was no less convoluted a scheme than prior episodes that haven’t fared as well, but its internal consistency held together better.  And, in 2005, a novice killer leaving DNA at the scene is probably believable.  Certainly, real life criminals do dumber things, and this wasn’t an ex-cop or a mob member or a hitman.  This was good: good characterization, a lot of cute moments, Gibbs looks human and fallible, a fun scheme, and I got to make dick jokes in the write-up.  What’s not to love?

Seven Palmers.

Next Time:  FINALLY.  We return to the jigsaw people that Ducky and Palmer were reassembling earlier in the season.  Maybe that’s why Ducky has been hiding in the reeds.