A Year of NCIS, Day 49: Mind Games (Episode 3.3)

Episode: 3.3, Mind Games

Air Date: October 4, 2005.

The Victim: Lots of them, really.

Emotionally Traumatized, But Ultimately Irrelevant, Witness Who Finds the Body: So far, the formula is hiding in a crate with Ducky Tales this season.

Plot Summary: We’ve got a prisoner wearing orange chains.  The guards, lots of them, let him out of a van somewhere in the country.  The prisoner leads the group into a barn and directs them to the hayloft.  The Warden says that the prisoner promised them bodies, and the prisoner counsels patience.  First, he wants his souvenirs.  One of the uniforms finds something, but a rung of the ladder breaks on his way down, and the officer drops the object.  It shatters on the ground, and it’s a jar filled with tongues.  We figure out the grift.  This is a death row inmate who is using his knowledge of where he left the victims’ bodies to bargain with the authorities.  The Warden is sick of being played, though, and says to take this “animal” back to death row.  The prisoner manipulatively argues that the families need closure.  The Warden asks what the prisoner wants, and the prisoner says he wants the man who put him in cuffs: Special Agent Leroy Jethro Gibbs.

In the squad room, Special Agent Paula Cassidy and Tony are looking at a photo of the prisoner, a serial killer named Kyle Boone.  Paula remembers Gibbs catching Boone because she was a junior at Georgetown at the time and, for two years, every woman in DC was afraid to go out at night.  Tony and Paula move into their usual edgy flirtation routine, and she tells him he’s focused on the wrong thing, and hands him a compact (because of the mirror).  There’s birth control inside, so I don’t know whether Paula keeps it there so she’ll remember to take it, or if she accidentally handed Tony a birth control container that looks like a compact.  Either way, Tony takes the birth control from Paula and begins teasing her as to who she’s seeing so as to require birth control. Paula tries to get the pills back, and this ends with Paula putting Tony in an armlock and pinning him to his desk.  She tells him the guy’s name is Bob, he’s a lawyer, Paula hates lawyers, so it’s purely sexual.  Tony wants to know what that makes Tony (“A big mistake,” Paula retorts), and McGee arrives to enjoy the show.  Paula asks if he has been there long, and McGee says, “Long enough to say, ‘No ma’am, Agent Cassidy.’”  Paula approves this answer. 

McGee asks who Boone is and we get some expository dialogue.  Boone was a serial killer who terrorized DC.  Twenty-two women went missing and five bodies were found.  Then, Boone made the mistake of killing a female Petty Officer and Gibbs caught him.  Tony notes that Boone is set for a state-sanctioned dirt nap on Saturday, but Boone says he’ll say where the bodies are buried if Gibbs comes to talk to him.

Gibbs arrives and is not in a good mood that Boone’s face is on his screen.  Tony blames Paula, who Gibbs hates anyway, so it’s not a big loss.  Paula figured since Gibbs would be interviewing Boone, the team should get up to speed to back his play.  Gibbs says he isn’t interviewing shit, but Paula thinks he might want to tell the Virginia Governor that since he’s standing by in MTAC.  Gibbs grimaces and says, “Find her a desk.”  Paula tries to sit at Kate’s desk, but Gibbs tells her it’s taken.  Paula is looking at a whole week of TAD (Temporary Attached Duty, I think) with Gibbs and can smell the fun already.  McGee says it has been a tough month, and Tony notes that, “Right now he pretty much hates everyone, Paula.  Including himself.”

The Virginia Governor wants to know why Gibbs isn’t interviewing Boone.  Gibbs says the Director (who isn’t there. Lucky, I guess, for everyone, including Gibbs and herself) was misinformed and that talking to Boone would be a waste of time.  The Governor floats up some namby-pamby crap about how criminals facing death seek redemption.  Gibbs politely disagrees.  The Governor asks what he’s supposed to tell hundreds of family members.  Gibbs says to tell them that regardless of what Boone says or doesn’t say, he’s dead on Saturday anyway. The Governor expresses his appreciation to Gibbs for catching a maniac but picks up his phone and tells Gibbs he’s left with no choice.  Which means he’s about to call someone who can twist Gibbs’s arm.  The Governor hangs up, Gibb’s leaves, and makes it maybe 12 feet before the MTAC tech summons him back.  SecNav would like to speak with Gibbs.

Paula is playing with the swivel chair at the loser desk behind McGee but can’t make it work right.  She wants to know why she can’t sit at Kate’s desk.  Tony says, “Because it’s still Kate’s desk.”  Paula says Kate was a great agent and asks how Tony is handling her death.  Tony says the same way he handles everything: by trying not to think about it.  Or by eating junk food.  Paula says it’s not healthy, but Tony says it beats building a boat in his basement.  This goes over Paula’s head.  She does say that she’s here for Tony if he wants to talk.  Tony looks like he’s going to take her up on it, but then just asks what her current partner is like in bed.  Paula says that Kate was right: Tony is pathetic. 

McGee pops his head around and says Gibbs is coming and looks pissed.  Paula wonders if Gibbs caved to the governor.  Tony and McGee say there’s no way.  But then Gibbs grabs his gun and announces he’s off to interview Boone.  Paula chuckles.

The Warden gives Gibbs a mini-update.  Apparently, Boone is the first inmate to choose the chair over lethal injection.  Gibbs says he deserves worse.  Boone’s attorney, Adam O’Neill, greets Gibbs warmly.  If Gibbs could incinerate a man with just his stare there would be nothing but a pile of ash.  This feeling intensifies when O’Neill says he’s trying to get Boone a deal for life in prison even though he claims his client wants to die in the chair.  Gibbs isn’t much interested in cooperating with the lawyer, and why would he be?  O’Neill, like Boone, mentions closure for the victims, and Gibbs figures they can get that on Saturday when Boone cooks.  O’Neill apprises the Warden that, against his lawyer’s advice, Boone will meet with Gibbs alone. 

Boone also greets Gibbs (faux) warmly, and Gibbs checks his watch and gives him two minutes.  Boone wants to engage in niceties, but Gibbs asks where the bodies are.  Boone mentions his souvenirs and Gibbs says there weren’t twenty tongues in the jar and that he always thought Boone was padding his count.  Boone dismisses this as Gibbs baiting him and denigrating his rep and says this tactic has never worked before.  Boone asks how Gibbs’s wife is doing and guesses she left him.  He says women “can’t understand men like us.”  Gibbs asks how it feels to have three days left.  Boone says he’s sort of terrified, which even he thinks is weird.  Gibbs notes that it can take up to four minutes to die in the chair, but that he’s hoping it takes Boone a lot longer.  Boone says that Gibbs has changed.  Gibbs says Boone has one minute left.  Boone asks about Kate and says he saw her picture in the Washington Post and an article saying she was shot by a terrorist.  Gibbs just stares, says, “See you Saturday,” and turns to leave.  Boone tells Gibbs he can’t leave because he’s here following orders.  And also, because there are a lot more than 22 bodies. 

Ducky makes a rare visit to the squad room looking for Gibbs.  He’s short with McGee and takes pizza out of Tony’s hand and throws it in the trash, replacing it with a lecture on cholesterol (which you cannot eat, and which is not tasty).  Ducky is quite concerned that Gibbs is being pulled back into Boone’s orbit and asks if the boys have any idea what effect Boone had on Gibbs ten years ago.  Tony points out that Gibbs isn’t super chummy with them regarding his feelings, so, no.  Ducky is particularly mad that Gibbs went to the prison alone

Gibbs calls and sends the agents, including Paula, to the Boone family farm.  Tony tells Ducky that the difference between now and then is that the team has Gibbs’s back.  Ducky says Gibbs was different ten years ago.  “Meaner?” wonders Tony, but Ducky says Gibbs was a lot like Tony.

The van arrives at the farm and meets Gibbs.  Gibbs starts measuring Paula with a tape measure.  Obvious banter ensues, but none from Gibbs.  He gives Paula a filter mask, like people wear when painting.  Gibbs tells McGee he might want to wear knee pads.  McGee asks Tony if they even have knee pads, and Tony (too) quickly responds, “Equipment inventory’s Kate’s job, you might want to ask…” then he trails off. 

Paula seems a little put out that the boys just follow Gibbs’s lead without knowing what he’s going for.  McGee says you get used to it, and Paula is concerned about that very thing.

Boone was raised at this farm by his uncle after his prostitute mother left town when he was twelve.  Gibbs isn’t at the farm looking for bodies.  He’s looking for proof- something Boone says is there.  And since the only place the team didn’t scour ten years ago is the chimney, Paula has to stand on McGee’s back and root around up there.  Tony ribs McGee about not signing up for being knee deep in soot when he joined NCIS and Gibbs sort of smiles at their banter.  McGee gruntingly tells Tony’s he’s wrong about Paula only weighing 120 pounds, and she drops rocks on his head.  As he probably should have expected. 

Paula finds a package and makes sure to knee McGee in the head on the way out of the chimney.  It’s a scrapbook filled with Polaroids of bound, terrified, and dead girls, many with hearts carved into their backs, which is Boone’s calling card.

Back at the prison, Boone is marking up the manuscript written by his biographer, John Briggs.  Gibbs appears, and he and the Warden toss the biographer, despite his protests about “access.” Gibbs asks where the dumping ground is, but Boone wants to see his scrapbook.  They’re at impasse, and Gibbs concludes the interview by saying that he has seen Boone’s world, and now Boone gets to spend what’s left of his life in Gibbs’s world.  Boone smiles like someone who has gotten exactly what he wants.

At HQ, Tony addresses a team of agents to let them know that they had better keep this prisoner secure.  Paula asks about bringing Boone in at 10PM but doesn’t notice Gibbs standing behind her as she questions his methodology.  She asks what’s different from ten years ago that Gibbs thinks messing with the guy’s head by transferring him at night will work.  Gibbs says, “I am.” 

The transport arrives.  Boone exits the van and says he knew he could count on Gibbs and that it’s good to be home. 

Gibbs isolates Boone the entire night, and Boone doesn’t sit or move a muscle.  Paula wonders if Gibbs is ever going to get on with the interrogation but is smart enough to decline when Tony tells her to ask Gibbs.  Then they banter about Paula’s boyfriend or whatever “Bob” is, and she’s trying to make Tony feel threatened. The guy is probably not real, because unless he’s a Plaintiff’s lawyer, any lawyer with a skybox at RFK and a Ferrari is older than dirt and likely married.  And I don’t see Paula going for a Plaintiff’s lawyer. 

Gibbs interrupts, sends Paula to check out the security detail, holds Tony off from following her, and then smacks the hell out of the back of his head.  For letting Paula get to him.  He hands Tony a Caf-Pow, tells him it’s for Abby and says for Tony to go check and see if she has ID’d anyone from the scrapbook.

Abby has found 27 women in the scrapbook.  Boone has admitted to 22.  But the delta here isn’t five.  McGee isn’t listening though, so Abby starts saying things like she’s pregnant.  With twins.  And they’re Gibbs’s.  Because his silver hair gets her hot.  Tony is present in the doorway for this and nearly hurls.  He figures a less painful way to get McGee’s attention is to just smack him.  McGee comes out of it and has a plan to find the victims, using the distinctive geographical and manmade features in the photos.  Technobabble ensues.  Tony asks the question he came to ask, and they’ve ID’d all but four of the pics in the scrapbook.  Abby also has determined that Boone’s mother didn’t abandon him.  She was his first kill.

Gibbs is watching Boone through the glass when Ducky enters the observation room.  Ducky is trying to make sure Gibbs keeps perspective.  He tries to remind Gibbs that even though Gibbs couldn’t break Boone, he still put him away, and now Boone is about to die.  But then he talks about how Gibbs doesn’t want to repeat the past since his last encounter with Boone cost him a marriage.  Bad play, because now Gibbs is mad and points out that this wife left him.  Ducky yells after him that she left because Gibbs made it impossible to stay.

Paula is sitting at Tony’s desk, so he pushes her in the chair back to her own.  She says that Boone’s lawyer is here and pissed about not being notified about the transfer.  Tony knows better than to interrupt Gibbs during an interrogation, so he sends Paula to do it instead.

Gibbs enters the interrogation room.  Boone thinks they’re going to parlay, but Gibbs knows he’s not getting anything out of Boone.  Gibbs brought Boone to NCIS to get him out of the system where he can’t get attention and has to sit alone until he fries.  Paula pipes in over the intercom to summon Gibbs.  Boone says it sounds like Gibbs has replaced his dead female and he hopes he’ll get a chance to meet the new one. 

Gibbs walks outside and says “What?” the way he usually talks to Paula.  But she makes the good point that denying Boone access to counsel gives his lawyer an in to find a sympathetic judge and delay the execution. The lawyer appears with an armed agent escort and asks for a privileged conversation with his client.  Gibbs shrugs and tells Tony to set it up.  Tony laughs and tells the armed agents escorting the lawyer to search him thoroughly.  And he hands them rubber gloves.

Abby and McGee have created a technothingie that might find where these bodies are located.  Or at least where the photos were taken.

O’Neill the lawyer tells Gibbs that if his client is injured, he’ll hold Gibbs personally responsible.  Gibbs says Boone will be in perfect health for the execution, and then has Paula escort the lawyer out of the building.

Gibbs heads to Abby’s lab.  It looks like they’ve found the dumping ground in a wilderness preserve.  Gibbs tells Tony to lead the team.  Gibbs is going back to interrogation because, after ten years, he finally has something on Boone that Boone doesn’t already know about. 

Gibbs walks into interrogation and tells Boone he’s headed back to prison.  Boone wants to know what has changed, and figures Gibbs found something.  But Gibbs leaves.

The agents are exploring in the woods.  Hopefully McGee doesn’t get poison ivy this time (Caught on Tape, Episode 2.15).  Hah- actually Tony mentions the poison ivy but tells McGee not to warn Paula.  They find the spot from the photos and we’re treated to a horror movie montage of women super-imposed over the geographic features, while the soundtrack plays women’s screams.  It’s a little cheesy, but effective. 

McGee finds a skull.  The team wants to report back, but there’s no reception.  So, Tony says to spread out and tape off the scene and they’ll hike back to the van and call Gibbs.

Boone is in the interrogation room.  Gibbs is watching from observation.  Abby comes in to check out the monster.

Back at the site, Tony gives McGee a rare compliment on finding the dumping ground. Rare enough for McGee to question when the other show is going to drop. But Tony seems sincere. Paula cries out.  The agents pull their guns and converge on Paula’s position…and find a fresh body.  Tied to a tree and sporting Boone’s mark.  Paula has no reception, so she heads back to the van to see if she can call Gibbs.  She gets a fuzzy signal midway back and gives him the update, including the fresh body and the idea that they’re dealing with a copycat killer.  Paula’s reception begins to crackle and we see that someone is watching her through binoculars.

Back at the dumping ground, McGee determines that he knows the girl.  She was the last entry in the scrapbook.  Which means not just that there’s a copycat, but that the copycat is working with Boone. 

Gibbs re-enters interrogation.  He congratulates Boone.  Gibbs said he did his best, but Boone got him to play the game anyway.  Boone laughs and said there’s someone else out there and only he can stop them, so, stay of execution?  Gibbs chuckles and says he can wait to open a new investigation on Sunday after Boone is dead. 

Back at the van, Paula hears something and pulls her gun, then she takes it in the head from a shovel.  When McGee and Tony get back to the truck, they find a Polaroid showing Paula unconscious and bound in a trunk. 

Back at the squad room, Gibbs tells McGee to get a list of all of Boone’s visitors.  Tony feels terrible that he let Paula run off on her own.  Abby feels terrible that she didn’t run the four extra Jane Does against the database of missing persons since Boone went to prison and determine that someone other than Boone had committed the murders.  Abby says they can’t lose another agent.

Gibbs keeps the team moving so they won’t dwell.  There are no prints on the Polaroid, so Gibbs tells McGee to focus on Boone’s visitors for the last three years since that’s when the Jane Does vanished.  The most hits are from Boone’s biographer, Briggs.  He has a dishonorable discharge and a criminal record.  And a GPS locator on his cell.  The team leaves to hunt down Briggs.

Paula is trapped in a trunk as the team tracks Briggs.  Gibbs uses his creative dirt road driving and cuts off Briggs.  Briggs starts saying he has every right to be wherever he is because he heard from a guard that NCIS found bodies.  Gibbs opens Briggs’s trunk, and its Paula.

Whoops.  The show faked us.  Gibbs is opening Brigg’s trunk.  Presumably there’s nothing in there (maybe some panties he stole from his neighbor’s laundry hamper to sniff when he’s sad).  The trunk Paula occupies is elsewhere and opened by…Boone’s lawyer, Adam O’Neill.

O’Neill drags Paula onto the hay in a barn in the middle of nowhere.  He admits to killing the girl in the woods and says Paula will make five victims.  Paula asks how Boone turned O’Neill into his underling, but O’Neill scoffs.  He keeps taking pictures of Paula lying on the ground and fingering various knives.  He tells Paula he sought out Boone and became his lawyer to learn from him.  Paula is O’Neill’s graduation present because Boone wants Gibbs to remember Boone long after the execution.  O’Neill slashes at Paula and cuts her shoulder and, confession obtained, she gets to her feet, hands still tied and makes ready to fight.  O’Neill is not impressed and lunges with the knife…

…and we cut to the interrogation room where Boone refuses to reveal Paula’s location.  Gibbs makes a big show of trying to light Boone’s scrapbook on fire.  Boone makes a big show of being upset about it.  Then he laughs and tells Gibbs that everyone knows Gibbs can’t burn evidence.  Boone starts talking about the things that his protégé is probably doing to Paula, and Gibbs finally snaps, throws Boone against the wall and puts a revolver to his head (that should be your first clue).  Gibbs lets the tension rise.  Then he pulls the trigger and the chamber clicks empty.  Boone starts yelling about how Gibbs was supposed to murder him.  Gibbs rolls his eyes and mocks Boone for taking ten years to come up with a plan where he tries to goad Gibbs into ruining his own life by murdering Boone. 

Gibbs tells the armed agents to take Boone back to death row.  Boone is getting desperate now, but he still has his trump card.  He asks Gibbs if he thinks Paula will scream when they cut out her tongue.  Gibbs shrugs and says, “Ask her yourself.”  Paula, her arm in a sling, steps out from around the corner with Tony and McGee and breaks the news to Boone that his lawyer is going to miss Boone’s execution tomorrow.  Tony laughs and says, “He’s kinda dead.”  Boone screams and tries to wrestle away from the agents, but they drag him around the corner and back to death row as the team looks on.                 

Quotables:

(1) Boone: Do you think [Agent Cassidy] screamed when he cut out her tongue, Jethro?

Gibbs: I dunno.  Why don’t you ask her yourself.

[Paula appears from around the corner with Tony and McGee]

Paula: I’m afraid your lawyer’s gonna miss your execution tomorrow.

Tony [grins]: He’s kinda dead.

Gibbs [as Boone is led away screaming]: Enjoy Hell.

Time Until Sexual Harassment:  Iffy.  Tony comes onto Paula at 2:43, but since they’ve hooked up, the “unwelcome” bar is a bit higher.  Aaaand, stealing her birth control seconds later probably meets that bar.  Also, later blatantly looking down her shirt and announcing it.

Ducky Tales: Dammit, Ducky.  We’re three episodes in.  Do your job.

The Rest of the Story:

-The team is still mourning Kate, who was KIA in Twilight, Episode 2.23.  So much that Gibbs won’t even let Paula use Kate’s desk.

-Which wouldn’t be surprising anyway.  While Paula seemed to earn some of Gibbs’s trust by the end of her first appearance in Minimum Security, Episode 1.8, he was back to being irritated with what he perceives to be her sloppiness by Heart Break, Episode 2.8.

-If you were wondering if and what Tony and Paula did together, when he gets her measurements right, Paula asks if he weighed and measured her in her sleep.

-Paula’s alleged boyfriend drives a red Ferrari.  “Like Magnum,” Tony breathes, referencing the 1980s drama Magnum, P.I

-Tony gets smacked.

-Ducky mentioned in Black Water, Episode 2.11, that he introduced Gibbs to his third ex-wife.  Given his feelings for the wife who left Gibbs during the first investigation of Boone (“a wonderful girl”), that particular wife must be the set-up Ducky engineered.  Per Black Water, she doesn’t take Ducky’s calls anymore.

-Abby calls McGee “Very Special Agent McGee.”  I think that’s the first time the VSA designation is used, although Very Special agent Anthony DiNozzo later co-opts it for himself.

-Talk about hitting Gibbs where he lives.  Kate isn’t even cold in the ground and another psycho makes a run at a female agent under Gibbs’s command.  Which Boone obviously did with premeditated intent, given his knowledge of Kate’s death. 

-That said, as with all Silence of the Lambs clones, Boone’s plan owes a lot of its success to random happenstance.  How could he have known the agents could identify a potential dumping ground from Polaroids?  Was he going to ultimately tell them if they didn’t find it themselves.  And what were the odds that Paula would wander off alone?  Even if you assume Boone and his lawyer targeted Paula as a Hail Mary when they had their talk in the interrogation room, a lot still had to go right for O’Neill to be able to abduct an armed and trained federal agent away from two other armed and trained federal agents.  And what was the back-up plan if Gibbs’s team was all male this week?  Kill McGee and dress him up like a woman?  TV serial killers don’t usually break with their M.O. like that.

-Also, come on.  While the show clearly brought in someone expendable to raise the stakes, there’s no way they were going to kill Paula one episode after burying Kate.  The effect on Tony alone would eat up NCIS’s therapy budget for years.

-Paula won’t be seen again until 2007.

Casting Call: Nobody I recognize.

Man, This Show Is Old: It would be easier to identify victims and, probably, their locations, today given the proliferation of social media, the improvement of facial recognition software, and the increase in satellite data.

According to my wife, birth control used to come packaged like a compact.  She’s not sure if it still does.  Most women don’t carry their birth control in their purse.  Again, per my wife.  But after seeing what Paula did to Tony, I’m not gonna raise the issue with her. 

MVP: Y’all know the rules.  Agent Paula Cassidy for the win.  With an honorable mention to the State of Virginia for presumably serving up Boone extra crispy.

Rating: Serial killer thrillers require a higher level of suspension of disbelief.  Because nobody can be that superhumanly competent, but it spoils the fun if the killer is in any way ordinary.  So, we have to take some things on faith.  In that context, this was a thrilling enough episode with an absolutely fantastic ending.

Seven Palmers.

Next Time: Ziva returns and we try to get back to normal.