A Year of NCIS, Day 155: Double Identity (Episode 7.17)

Episode: Double Identity, Episode 7.17

Air Date: March 9, 2010.

The Victim: Lt. John Mayne, USMC.

Emotionally Traumatized, But Ultimately Irrelevant, Witness Who Finds the Body: More park rangers.  Didn’t we just have park rangers?  Ignition, Episode 7.11.  This ranger is having a meal in his car and getting an earful on his cell phone from his wife about being mean to his mother-in-law.  Then he gets shot at, and it’s probably unrelated.  He is the irrelevant witness, after all.  I doubt he’s super-comforted by that, though, given that a bullet shatters the passenger side window.  He crouches behind the car and pulls his own weapon, and I don’t think I knew rangers carried.  He hears one more shot, and then a man with a wound in his abdomen comes staggering out of the woods.  The ranger tells him to freeze and the guy collapses. 

Plot Recap: Tony is at his desk, ringing out a wet sock into his garbage can.  He was texting Ziva to do her probie duties and get him a latte, didn’t look where he was walking, and stepped in a puddle.  The agents discuss weather with Ducky, who is looking for Gibbs and puts a form on his desk. Ducky says it can wait and leaves.

Ziva asks if Ducky seems different.  The boys think he looks more chipper, but Ziva notes that he has been wearing neckties instead of bowties. 

Gibbs arrives, throws Ducky’s form in a file without looking at it, announces our body, and throws Tony a rolled-up pair of dry socks from his office stash.  See Reveille, Episode 1.23.

At the scene, which we learn is routine NCIS murder locale Rock Creek Park, the FBI is already on-site.  Park Police has performed a canvass, and the agent gives NCIS a .9mm handgun he found.  FBI HRT already removed a slug from the ranger vehicle.  The park agent notes that the mud will make it impossible to lift footprints.  All they found on the victim was what looks like a house key, tied to his shoelaces.  The agent identifies the victim as Lt. Mayne, USMC, based on the readout from a portable fingerprint scanner.  McGee manages to not geek out.  Tony is embarrassed that Parks Services has tech NCIS doesn’t.  McGee tries out the device and turns out he still has a record for breaking into a police impound yard.  The Inside Man, Episode 7.3.  He thought it was supposed to be expunged. 

Sad trombone.

Oh hey, happy trombone!  Our dead guy isn’t dead!  He’s in the hospital.  I guess that explains why Gibbs is not as territorial and tells McGee and Tony that Park Police and the FBI can clean up at the scene.  Before leaving, they use the portable scanner to look up some quick data about the victim, including his wife, Leah Mayne, and…wait…according to his service record, Lt. Mayne is MIA and went missing in Afghanistan six years prior.

At the hospital, Lt. Mayne is still unconscious.  The slug that hit him in the abdomen is too close to his spine to safely remove at this time.  Tony is talking to Leah Mayne, and she was not aware that her husband was still alive.  She assumed he’d been killed after he was MIA for a sufficient period.  Gibbs has a fingerprint match, but wants a visual ID.  Leah complies and says, somewhat uncertainly, that it looks like him, but he’s a lot harrier now.  His birthmark matches up, though and Leah confirms.  She’s understandably curious as to where he has been for the last six years. 

Gibbs tells Tony to stay and notify him if Lt. Mayne wakes up.  He also tells him to get whatever else he can out of Leah.  Tony is pleased that Gibbs appears to be subscribing to the DiNozzo theory of “It’s always the wife.” 

Back in the squad room, Ziva tells Gibbs that Lt. Mayne was part of a 3-man recon team in Afghanistan when he went missing six years ago.  The other team members were Captain Gordon Holcomb and Sgt. Matthew Gontz.  Per McGee, Captain Holcomb is Major Holcomb now, stationed at Quantico. He will come to NCIS the next day.  Gontz was honorably discharged.  The team hasn’t found him, but McGee says he went through a divorce and a series of jobs.  Gibbs suspects that Gontz is having trouble adjusting to civilian life.  McGee will try to find him via the Social Security Administration.

In the lab, Abby has a dog named Mortimer.  She’s fostering him.  Gibbs is not impressed, but lets it go.  Abby gives the ballistic report.  The .9mm is unregistered, and only has Lt. Mayne’s prints on it.  Two shots were fired and there are 13 in the magazine.  The slug from the door is too mangled to match, but definitely not from a .9mm.  Gibbs says Ducky spoke to the doctor and Lt. Mayne’s wounds are not self-inflicted. 

Like the agents, Abby also notes that Ducky is acting uncharacteristically.  Going out for lunch and stuff.  Gibbs blows it off.

McGee and Ziva have run down Gontz at a taxicab garage.  He’s grumpy.  He says he has told the story of the recon mission 100 times.  But he acquiesces.  He says it was just the three of them on the mission.  It was a keyhole mission, defensive weapons only, and classified.  But McGee dispenses with that occasional plot hiccup and says they’ve been read into the program.  The mission was to place and recover remote target sensors.  The mission went as planned until they headed for the exit rendezvous and Lt. Mayne broke his leg in a small village outside of whatever town they were in. He snagged his K-Bar sheath on some barbed wire and fell.  “Just wasn’t his day,” Gontz understates.  His squadmates stashed him in a basement of an abandoned building while they went to commandeer a vehicle.  When they returned, Lt. Mayne wasn’t there, and they assumed he was captured.  Mission protocol required them to leave Lt. Mayne, and Gontz claims he has never forgiven himself for leaving Lt. Mayne behind.  Gontz says the Corps tore the country up looking for Lt. Mayne, but they never found him.  He does ask why it’s all resurfaced.  Not sure whether this is good investigative protocol or not, but McGee tells Gontz about Mayne resurfacing and being shot.  Gontz looks shocked. 

Major Holcomb is equally shocked but tells the same story about Lt. Mayne’s broken leg to Gibbs, McGee, and Ziva in the conference room.  It seems too similar to Gontz’s story, down to the wording.  “Just wasn’t his day.”  McGee and Ziva look at each other. 

Gibbs gets a phone call.  Tony says Lt. Mayne is awake.  Gibbs does not share this with the room but asks the major if he and Gontz have been in contact.  Major Holcomb says the mission shook Gontz badly, but he lost track of him after Gontz’s left the military.  Maj. Holcomb asks if Gontz knows Lt. Mayne is alive, and Gibbs confirms this.

At the hospital, the plot doctor offers up a prescription of not talking to the witness so certain mysteries can remain unsolved for more run time.  Uh, I mean Lt. Mayne’s treating physician tells Gibbs and Tony that Lt. Mayne is incoherent and the worst thing for him right now is to be bombarded with questions.  He will keep Lt. Mayne sedated (and the audience in suspense).

A woman approaches Gibbs and Tony and Leah.  Her name is Rachel Wells.  She’s here about her husband.  He went jogging the day before and never came back.  When she reported his disappearance to the police and showed his picture, they sent her to find Gibbs.

Ruh-roh.  Lt. Mayne has two wives.  Only Rachel thinks his name is Christian Wells.  As one might expect, Leah is not happy about this, and announces that John Mayne is her husband.  Michael Weatherly has no lines as the scene ends, but his look of dread combined with excitement as he glances back and forth at both women is quality acting.

We learn that Rachel met Lt. Mayne on a running track.  They’ve been married just over a year.  Per Rachel, her husband had no family.  Gibbs gives her the 411 on who he really is.  He then asks about Lt. Mayne’s job.  Rachel says he day-trades and manages his portfolio from having inherited a lot of money. 

Gibbs wonders why the happy bigamists didn’t go running together the previous day.  Rachel claims she’s nursing a hamstring and gets uncomfortable and tries to leave.  Gibbs asks Rachel if she knew Lt. Mayne was meeting someone in the park the previous day.  She says no, and wordlessly declines to answer when Gibbs asks if she knew her husband owned a gun.

Back at HQ, Ziva walks through how Lt. Mayne constructed a new life.  It helps that Virginia doesn’t take fingerprints when it hands out drivers’ licenses (I doubt that’s still true).  McGee has found a number of financial accounts in Christian Wells’s name, and his net worth is over $12 million.  McGee does not yet know where the money came from, but he has determined that a Peter Iger of Iger Investigations is also looking into “Wells.”  McGee left a message.  Gibbs tells Ziva to track Iger down and tells McGee to stay on the money.

Tony is badgering the doctor to talk to Lt. Mayne.  And now, so is Rachel.  Poor Dr. Tallridge- I have no damn idea what HIPAA requires he do or not do here.  And now Leah is here, calling Rachel a bimbo and threatening to sue the doctor and the hospital if Rachel is allowed in Lt. Mayne’s room.  Tony may be about to get his dream investigation-related catfight.

Poor Tony.  They both stalk off.  Tony asks the doc if he’s ever been married.  Dr. Tallridge says twice, but never at the same time.

Ziva heads out to meet Iger.  And runs into Ducky.  She compliments his tie and learns its entire provenance.  She’s in a hurry, though, and leaves.  Gibbs and Ducky chat about Ducky’s form, which appears to be a leave form.  Ducky wants a long weekend, Palmer can handle any problems, and Ducky will have his cell phone with him.  Gibbs notes that half the team is worried about him, but Ducky plays it off with a smile.

At the hospital, Tony is looking to sneak his way into a forbidden witness interview.  He takes his shot when the nurse leaves and confronts Lt. Mayne.  He runs with his usual technique, smarmily calling the lieutenant by his old name and approaching from a position of sardonic strength.  Of course, this causes the lieutenant’s vitals to tick up.  Tony likes this because it confirms that he’s getting a reaction, so he takes it to the next level, mentioning both wives.  Me, I go with, “Who shot you?” and try to ease my way to a place of investigatory value before the witness either dies or hospital security kicks my ass.  But Tony likes to live dangerously.  And gets caught by a nurse and evicted.  We see Lt. Mayne looking at Tony through the glass as he talks to both of the man’s wives.

Ziva meets Iger, our investigator, on a private street.  He’s staking out someone and complains that he has been there for days.  She gets in his car and asks about “Wells.”  Iger is evasive.  But, on further questioning, Iger says a client sent him a marathon photo of Wells- he pulls up the photo on his laptop computer- and the client thought it was someone he knew.  Iger tracked the guy’s name with his race number and came up with Christian Wells.  He did a little more checking into “Wells,” but found nothing and since the name didn’t mean anything to his client, he called it a day.  Iger calls it ten minutes of work and the easiest $500 he ever made.

Ziva needs the name of the client.  Iger calls it privileged.  Ziva says someone got shot and the seriousness of the matter moves Iger, who would rather not deal with a subpoena.  He identifies Major Holcomb as his client. 

At the hospital, Lt. Mayne is coding.  Nice work, Tony.  The hospital team moves in to assist and they page Dr. Tallridge. Tony holds Leah back as the hospital team gets to work trying to resuscitate Lt. Mayne.  To no avail.  Lt. Mayne is dead.

At the squad room, the team recaps.  It looks bad.  For the DiNozzo Theory of Wifely Guilt, that is, since Major Holcomb hired a PI to look into a guy he thought was Lt. Mayne and then pretended to be surprised during his NCIS interview that the lieutenant was in the DC area. 

McGee notes that Lt. Mayne was broke when he went missing.  McGee can only trace the “new” money back to an offshore account.  Gibbs tells McGee to freeze the money.

Shit, this is a family law nightmare.  Absent a will, which lady gets that money?  Rachel and Leah are going to be tied up in court for years screaming at each other about this.  But, that’s probably not something the show is going to concern itself with.

Gibbs thinks there’s a connection between the money, the shooting, and whatever happened in Afghanistan six years ago.  He hones in on Gontz and Major Holcomb’s scripted responses and tells Tony to check with agency resources in Kabul to see what they can dig up. 

Iger joins Ziva at HQ.    He’s not sure what he was needed for, but hands her a card.  He was needed so Major Holcomb could see who sold him out.  Ziva smirks as the major, accompanied by McGee, angrily stares at Iger in the hall on the way to interrogation.  Iger says, “You guys are really devious.”

In interrogation, Gibbs asks why the major hired Iger.  And why he didn’t mention it to NCIS.  Or call the police when he thought his squadmate was still alive.  Major Holcomb claims he never came to terms with what happened on the op in Afghanistan.  So, when Iger gave him a different name for the marathon runner, he assumed it was his mistake and didn’t want to dredge it all up with the Corps again. 

In autopsy, Ducky is looking at Lt. Mayne.  Abby visits with her dog.  She says the slug from Lt. Mayne’s body was from a .45, not a .9mm.  But there was definitely a second gun at the crime scene because of the slug in the ranger vehicle.  Ducky has an anomaly too.  Lt. Mayne’s corpse shows no sign of the lieutenant ever having had a broken leg. 

Abby, like Ziva before her, notes Ducky’s necktie.  And wants to know where the bowties went.  Ducky calls it change for the sake of change, but then evasively turns down her lunch invitation.  And a doggie playdate between Mortimer and his mom’s corgis.  Abby continues to think something is up.

We’re in the squad room with the wife, and holy shit, I’ve lost track of which wife this is.  OK, this is Rachel.  The one who married Lt. Mayne after he changed his identity.  Gibbs tries to convince her that she married a fake guy.  Gibbs has fingerprints and DNA.  Rachel has indignation.  So, Rachel changes the subject.  She sees Leah leaving the area and wants to make sure they’re not releasing Lt. Mayne’s body to her.  Gibbs says they’re not releasing the body to anyone.  And she’s off again, now complaining about the freeze on her accounts.  Gibbs continues to explain fraud like he’s talking to a child.  Well, except that he’s really good at talking to children and not so good at talking to angry wives.  He finally loses his patience when Rachel starts talking about family law attorneys (his kryptonite), and tells an agent to escort her out. 

Tony reports back from Kabul that an Afghani drug lord claimed some American stole millions from him and suggests maybe that’s how Lt. Mayne became nouveaux riche.  Given the absence of evidence of a broken leg on their corpse, Gibbs and Tony want to re-visit the lieutenant’s squadmates.  Gibbs thinks Gontz will break first.

In interrogation, Gibbs joins Gontz.  Gontz is aware that Lt. Mayne is now dead for realz.  Gibbs mentions the money.  Gontz plays dumb.  Gibbs identifies the Afghani drug lord and shows Gontz a picture.  The drug lord has been imprisoned at Gitmo for the last six years.  Gontz is initially unresponsive.  Gibbs pushes harder.  Gontz caves.  He says their mission was to plant sensors.  They did.  On the way out of the village, they took fire from the drug lord’s guards.  The guards thought the Marines were after their money.  The Marines killed them, and then found the cash.  Five oil drums filled with US bills.  Gontz and then-Captain Holcomb left Lt. Mayne to guard the money while they went to search for a vehicle.  When they returned, Lt. Mayne was gone.  So, they made up the rest. 

Gontz says he has felt guilty for years.  In his eyes, Lt. Mayne got captured because they wanted the money.  And then he turns up alive.  Gontz is understandably pissed, but it doesn’t look like he shot anyone. 

We cut to a rainy street and Mellencamp playing in the background.  We can’t see who is driving the car and get a POV shot from inside the car of the wipers doing their job.  Somebody gets out and rings a doorbell.  It’s Major Holcomb.  One of the wives (they look the same to me) comes out and hugs him tight.  Then kisses him.  Then invites him in.  All while Ziva takes pictures from a nearby car. 

In interrogation, we see that it’s Leah.  She tells Ziva that Major Holcomb started coming by to talk about Lt. Mayne when he returned from Afghanistan.  Then his own marriage started to fall apart, so they started hooking up.

We also see that Major Holcomb is being interrogated separately, by Gibbs.  It’s hard to tell if Tony is with Ziva or shuttling back and forth between the rooms.  Regardless, Major Holcomb says he was the recipient of Leah’s first call from the hospital.  So Major Holcomb knew Lt. Mayne was alive before NCIS interviewed him.  Gibbs is not happy about being lied to.  Major Holcomb was trying to protect his career and marriage.  Both of which, he admits, are now over.

Leah says the major wanted to stay married for the sake of his children.  Leah kept collecting her husband’s military pay and benefits, but claims she had no idea Lt. Mayne was alive.  So, she’s probably off the hook for benefits fraud.  Not sure if that matters as to whether she has to pay it all back.  But, if she does, I bet it motivates the hell out of her to sue Lt. Mayne’s estate.

OK, Tony is moving back and forth between interrogations.  In any event, both Leah and the major claim they were together at the time of Lt. Mayne’s shooting.  They spent the night together at a hotel in Falls Church.  Major Holcomb also claims he had no idea Lt. Mayne was alive.

In the squad room, McGee can confirm the sexy-time alibis.  The hotel surveillance and cell phone records show two of the many people Lt. Mayne screwed over in Falls Church.  Ziva again jumps on Tony for being wrong about the wife, but Tony responds that he still has a wife in play.  Gibbs figures they can check Rachel’s alibi.  Ziva likes Gontz making a revenge play. 

It starts to rain more, and this leads to seemingly irrelevant weather chatter.  Tony’s pissed because he just got a car wash and now it’s wasted money.  Ziva says she never washes her car in winter because of the weather.  Gibbs calls that a mistake because the de-icing salt on the streets will eat through the undercarriage.  This causes Ziva to pause.  She quickly hands McGee a business card and tells him to trace the whereabouts of the phone number on the card at the time of Lt. Mayne’s shooting.  It’s Iger’s card.  Ziva says that Iger lied and said he’d been on that stakeout for days.  But his car was spotless, which doesn’t account for the weather over that period. 

McGee reports that Iger’s phone was turned off the morning of the shooting, but he could have been trying not to leave a trail as to his whereabouts.  Gibbs asks if Iger’s phone is on now.  McGee traces him to a spot nearby.

Tony and McGee find the car on the street, but not Iger.  McGee calls Ziva and asks her to look at the cell tracker and see if she can point them in the right direction.  Tony has seen a laptop on Iger’s seat and starts talking his crazy warrantless search talk again.  See Masquerade, Episode 7.14.  Ziva reports that Iger is at a nearby restaurant.  Tony would like to break into the car with one of those wire thingies- he calls it a slim jim.  McGee would like to not do that without a warrant, especially given his non-expunged criminal record.  But really, McGee just hates the low-tech approach.  He puts Ziva on hold and uses Iger’s VIN and an app he invented to hack something that gives him the car codes.  It’s no less illegal than a slim jim, but it’s fancier.  McGee has some sense (this episode) and refuses to let Tony use the code he found.  He was just showing off.  Too bad Tony takes the phone from him, activates the app and unlocks the car.  Some lady is watching disapprovingly from a nearby restaurant, which may help Iger’s lawyer at a suppression hearing on down the road.  A fact that McGee seems to be wordlessly contemplating when Tony gets him more aggressively involved.  See, Tony can’t hack into the laptop.  And McGee always gives in to peer pressure.  And now a man is also watching disapprovingly from the restaurant.  McGee opens the laptop and the “Holcomb” directory, and then leaves Tony to do the additional portions of the illegal search.

Weird time to switch to Ducky.  Ducky is carrying flowers.  In a cemetery.  Oh geez, talk about a slow burn subplot.  For most of the season, the characters have made offhanded references to Ducky’s mom and her fading health.  Child’s Play, Episode 7.9; Flesh and Blood, Episode 7.12.  And now we see that Ms. Mallard has died, and Ducky is visiting her new tombstone.  Ducky talks about missing her at the opera the previous evening.  Then Mortimer shows up to interrupt the soliloquy.  That would be a really weird coincidence, except that Abby is there too and I guess she followed the Duck-Man (who is not expected to have good tradecraft so as to pick up a tail).  She hugs his neck and tells him how sorry she is.

Back to Tony and McGee breaking the law on a public street.  Tony finds an email from a lab that matched some prints Iger went to some effort to acquire from Lt. Mayne.  Meaning Iger knew Christian Wells was Lt. Mayne.  Too bad that’s no longer admissible.  McGee gets back on the phone to see if Ziva can find a .45 registered in Iger’s name.  McGee is slow on the uptake and wonders why Iger would withhold this info from his client, Major Holcomb.  Tony spells out the scheme for him:  Iger realized he had located a guy with millions who had a metric shit-ton of incentives to want to stay hidden, and quickly shifted gears from investigation to blackmail.

And here, I should point out that the team has enough that they could probably put the forensics together, get an after-the-fact warrant for the computer, and never write-up the break-in.  If the family inside the restaurant doesn’t come forward, no worries.  Well, no worries for NCIS.  The integrity of the justice system takes yet another hit.  But, Ziva has wandered away from the cell tracker to look into that gun thing, and we now see Iger easing his way back to his car. 

Ziva reports that Iger has a .45.  McGee thanks her.  Then Tony notes that none of this information is usable because McGee broke into the car.  So, I guess he does plan to build the case without the laptop. 

Ziva finally gets back on task and alerts them about Iger.  He comes around the corner and Tony and McGee are leaned on his now-closed car.  McGee brings up the .45.  Iger claims he sold it at a gun show.  And then panics and throws his bag at Tony and runs.  Into traffic.  Where he is almost hit.  And that stops him long enough for Tony and McGee to make the collar.

And that, kids, is how you write your way out of a bad search on your cop show.  Gibbs arrives on the scene just in time to get the confession.  Although, Iger calls it self-defense.  Which is not a defense to felony murder, so, fortunately, Iger also cops to blackmail. 

Ducky makes his way back to autopsy.  Gibbs is sleeping on one of the tables, which I don’t think we’ve seen since maybe Yankee White, Episode 1.1.  He asks Ducky when Ducky was going to tell him about Mrs. Mallard.  Ducky says, “Soon.”  He didn’t have a funeral service because all of Mrs. Mallard’s friends predeceased her, and he was all she had.  He kept it secret at work because he didn’t want to impose.  Ducky says he’s surrounded by death and wanted to deal with the personal loss by himself.  He also says his mother was almost 100, but her dementia had robbed her of herself and it was her time.  Gibbs asks if Ducky will stay in the house.  Ducky says the sale will close next week.  And Ducky found a home for her “wretched little dogs.” 

Ducky starts talking about his plans to buy a brownstone in Georgetown and his efforts to hit on his real estate agent.  We end with Gibbs observing that it must be the real estate agent who doesn’t like the bow ties, and Ducky grinning, but not denying it.

Quotables: Nothing of note.

Ziva-propisms: Ziva spoke good English.

Tony Awards: Weird.  I didn’t catch anything. 

Abby Road: Abby brought a dog to work.  His name is Mortimer.  He’s training to be a seeing eye dog.

McNicknames: None.  You know, the car break-in scene really lent itself to movie references and McNicknames, but we got nothing.

Ducky Tales: Ducky’s tie design is based on the ruins of something or other in Afghanistan. Most people just say, “Thanks,” when someone says, “I like your tie.”

The Rest of the Story:

-Rock Creek Park is a standard crime scene on this show.  I believe it’s first appearance in this role was in The Curse, Episode 1.5.

-McGee doesn’t have a middle name.

-Tony always suspects the wife.  I think the last time it came up was Code of Conduct, Episode 7.5.  The wife was not the perp then either.

-We’ve done double/fake identity on this show before as well.  The most obvious episode that comes to mind is Dead Man Talking, Episode 1.19.

-Nina Foch, the actress who played Ducky’s mom died in 2008.

-I’m not sure who has the high ground between Ducky and Gibbs.  On the one hand, Gibbs kept the death of his family secret from Ducky for years.  On the other hand, Ducky ripped him a new asshole over it and Gibbs not only offered a rare apology but amended his rule about not apologizing to clarify that it doesn’t apply to friends.  Smoked, Episode 4.10.  Still, Mrs. Mallard’s passing is a recent enough event that Gibbs wouldn’t hold a grudge.

-With the sale of Ducky’s house, maybe some of the ghosts of failed NCIS security details can be exorcised.  The Meat Puzzle, Episode 2.13, Child’s Play, Episode 7.9.

-The show never answers how Lt. Mayne got all that money out of the desert by himself.  I get the cash money will get you a long way in a dump like Afghanistan, but he’d have had to work quickly to not attract the notice of an angry drug lord.

Casting Call: Wife #1, Leah, was played by Susan Misner, who has had recurring roles on an impressive number of critically acclaimed shows, including Jack Ryan, Billions, The Americans, The Good Wife, and Person of Interest.  Wife #2, Rachel, is Christine Lakin.  She played the tomboy kid on Step By Step and has done a good bit of voice work on Family Guy.  She has worked a lot, particularly in the last decade, and I’m impressed by her number of roles, even accounting for her child actor work.

Man, This Show Is Old: Tony references The Weakest Link, which was at least an eight-year old reference even in 2010.

MVP: Ziva figured it out.

Rating: Sometimes less is more. I like this one.  It’s fun, it’s interesting, it’s clever, there are five perfectly viable suspects, it’s not overwrought, and the stakes are low.  Textbook episode.  Eight Palmers.

Next Time: Coast Guard investigator, recurring character, and all-around ball-buster Abigail Borin makes her debut.

Alex Barfield is an attorney in Atlanta, Georgia. When not practicing law or writing about NCIS, he chases his children around, volunteers at his church, and looks for other television shows to obsess over. He can be reached at albarfie@gmail.com.