Episode: A Desperate Man, Episode 9.13.
Air Date: January 10, 2012.
The Victim: Lieutenant Commander Maya Burris, USN.
Emotionally Traumatized, But Ultimately Irrelevant, Witness Who Finds the Body: A couple is home shopping a remodel in a gentrifying warehouse district. The wife is really negative, but the man is talking her up.
Oh, and this starter home comes with a dead lady.
Plot Recap: Tony is trying to talk McGee into something. Or get info out of him. McGee offers up Maxine (Kill Screen, Episode 8.16) and it appears that (a) McGee and Maxine have broken up; and (b) the boys are comparing when they last had sex. Charming. Tony gives McGee a hug because it has been ten months, but he fails to provide his own drought statistics.
Ziva interrupts, having her own romantic troubles. She would like McGee to block the phone line of her sometimes boyfriend (depending on the episode) Ray Cruz of the CIA. Ziva is not happy to discuss this with the very nosy Tony. Except it seems like she does want to talk. She gets a call from a private number and doesn’t take it. So, Ray calls Tony and has him ask Ziva if she’s free for a couples massage. Tony says “Later” and hangs up. Ziva doesn’t buy that it’s Ray. Until McGee gets a call. But he ignores it. Tony says Ziva better hope Ray doesn’t call Gibbs.
Gibbs enters and says, “Too late.” Ziva stammers out an apology, but the team has a body, so Gibbs doesn’t care.
At the loft, McGee reports that he did not find shell casings. He did find nine bullet-holes in the wall. But the rounds were scooped out with a knife. Tony says an empty wallet was found dumped nearby and the police think it’s a robbery gone wrong. No witnesses. The realtor has not had any workers in the building in a week or so, but some of the workers have keys.
McGee identifies the witness as Navy Lieutenant Commander Maya Burris, 35, married, no children. She was a Naval attaché overseas. Ducky spies three gunshot wounds, but he says the blood loss is minimal for such a situation.
Ducky calls TOD as 6-7 hours ago. Palmer notes what may be defensive wounds on the victim’s hands, but that will have to wait. Because right now, an angry man storms the crime scene. As a nearby detective points out, the angry distraught man is Detective Nick Burris, the victim husband. I’m gonna take a second to note that the detective probably could have played a role in having the armed husband not find out about his wife’s death in this manner. Or, at the very least, he could have alerted NCIS than angry widower was coming in hot.
Ah well.
At the squad room, the other detective, Detective Flowers, is chatting with Gibbs and Tony. “Do as we say, not as we do,” is in effect as Gibbs would like Flowers to keep Burris away from the investigation involving his close relative. See Sins of the Father, Episode 9.10 for some mild hypocrisy on this front. Flowers makes no promises and calls Burris a bulldog. This prompts Gibbs to ask if Burris was a bulldog with his wife. Flowers backtracks and says Burris is the best homicide detective they have. While Flowers allows that the deceased referred to him as Burris’s second wife, he denies any problems in the marriage. He says Burris is the only cop he knows still married to his first wife. Tony gets Flowers to admit he has had four marriages and Gibbs just quietly sips his coffee.
McGee backgrounds Lt. Cmdr. Burris. As stated, she was an overseas attaché, and came home to visit her husband five days previous. She was, bright, ambitious, outspoken, and skilled at dealing with high level diplomats. She was last stationed in Egypt until her mission ended last month. A colleague thought she had been re-assigned already, but Ziva is still running that down.
Oh goodie. Burris is here, and aggressively resisting Flowers’s efforts to keep him out of Gibbs’s face. This should go well. Burris is disheveled. And hammered. And wants answers. Tony looks at Flowers and rolls his eyes at Flowers’s ineffectiveness with the one simple task of keeping his partner out of the way. Gibbs tells Burris to go home. When Burris refuses, Gibbs shrugs and tells Tony to take him to the conference room. They’re gonna want to talk to him anyway.
In the conference room, Burris stays obstreperous. He’s perfectly at ease with being drunk while the sun is out and says his wife’s death entitles him to a few drinks he absolutely would have taken regardless. Burris last talked to his wife yesterday afternoon. They were supposed to have dinner. He can’t even remember where she was stationed. He never worried because she could handle herself and he’s not aware of any trouble at work. He talks about how she was a good person. He demands that whoever did this pay for it, and says he’ll fix the problem if Gibbs won’t.
In autopsy, Palmer is empathizing with the new widower and sweating his upcoming nuptials a bit. Ducky tells him to relax and enjoy this time. Gibbs enters and Ducky mutters that he hopes Palmer only has to get married once. Gibbs asks for the latest, and Ducky reports that the COD is multiple gunshot wounds. The fatal shot was through the heart. But there are no prints or hair or fiber traces on the body. They did find traces of bleach on the clothing, which explains the lack of blood at the scene. The killer went to great lengths to clean up Lt. Cmdr. Burris. Which doesn’t track with a robbery. Nor do the abrasions on her wrist or finger. Sure, they look like someone trying to yank off a watch and a wedding ring, but they’re dry and clean, meaning this was done post-mortem. At least an hour after death.
Finally! Somebody tried to make one of these look like a robbery!
Ducky says the killer has a knowledge of police procedure. Which is intended to finger the husband, I guess. But so far, all the killer has displayed is the kind of knowledge one would get from police procedurals. Maybe those don’t exist in this universe. That would be meta. If the most popular TV shows in the NCIS-universe all involved firefighting. Or investigating white collar crime.
In the squad room, we learn Tony’s sex drought has only lasted two weeks. Now he’s having an existential crisis. His endless string of waitresses and veterinarians has started to seem empty. Tony doesn’t want to wind up like Gibbs. Or even Ziva. Who walks up in time to take offense. But Gibbs walks up right after, so that’s all we get.
Tony explains Lt. Cmdr. Burris’s Navy life insurance, with her husband as the beneficiary. Of course, Burris has been spending cash already, including on his very expensive boat. McGee found nothing interesting in the victim’s email and phone logs. Most of the calls are to her husband, including one about three hours before her death. She also has a flight record demonstrating several trips from Cairo to Islamabad. Ziva is still trying to determine if the trips were business or personal.
Gibbs visits Abby in the evidence garage. She has recreated the murder scene. Based on ballistics, the shots that went into the body don’t match the bullet holes in the wall. But, by placing the mannequin representing Lt. Cmdr. Burris elsewhere, Abby has determined that the killer was standing by the window and the body was moved after the shooting. But, given the types of bullets and gun, a shooting that close would have had tighter groupings and torn the body apart. Abby has the shooter on the rooftop across the street. She gives Gibbs an address, and he calls Tony.
Tony and Ziva are up on the rooftop in question. Tony is complaining that Ray keeps calling him. Ziva thinks, not unjustifiably, that Tony should be on her side. Tony just wants to know what Ray did. Ziva says Ray doesn’t appreciate her. Tony can identify with girls telling him that. Ziva is upset, though. They did what they could when he was overseas, but now that he’s back, it’s not working. Also, he stood her up for a fancy meal and left her sitting alone in a restaurant for three hours. No call, no show. His excuse was “work.” And it reminded her of her father, Eli David, and how many times he blew her off.
But this show is NCIS, not Dr. Phil, so Ziva’s daddy issues are interrupted by the realization that someone with a flashlight is across the street at the crime scene.
The agents make their way to the site and bust a guy in a hoodie. He runs. They pursue the perp down some stairs to the lower floor. Then Ziva catches up and tackles him. Unsurprisingly, it’s Detective Burris. Can’t tell if he’s drunk, but Ziva actually rolls her eyes.
Back at HQ, Burris is beating on the interrogation room glass while Ziva and Tony observe from behind it. Gibbs enters and asks the obvious question. Burris says he was solving the crime. He thinks he’ll do a better job than a bunch of Navy cops. And he thinks Gibbs doesn’t have a clue how it feels to lose the one you love. Gibbs says, “You’re wrong.” Then he says, “Sit down,” and shows him the boat. Burris says that Maya bought the boat and surprised him with it last month. Now all he sees as it sits in his driveway are lost dreams. Both Tony and Ziva seem affected by this man’s appreciation for the time he had with his oft-absent wife and the idea that they never took that time for granted. Gibbs get it too. But he’s curious about whether Lt. Cmdr. Burris was ordinarily so free with her spending. Burris says she was not, but also says she wasn’t scared or nervous or worried about anything and she would have told him if it were otherwise. He swears they didn’t keep secrets.
Outside the interrogation room, Ziva reports that McGee confirmed that only Lt. Cmdr. Burris’s name was on the boat and she forked over $10k in cash. Gibbs says to find her superior and ask where she got the money.
So, we move to MTAC, where the team chats with US Ambassador James Ealy, who is in Cairo. Gibbs gets right to it. Ealy says Lt. Cmdr. Burris had multiple assignments and worked with coordinating meetings with high level diplomats. She worked with the US Embassy in Islamabad a good bit. Gibbs asks if Lt. Cmdr. Burris was following someone. If she was, Ealy doesn’t know about it. He says all she talked about was getting home to her husband.
That said, in the squad room, McGee reports photos from State taken by security cameras near the US Embassy in Islamabad. Several capture Lt. Cmdr. Burris with a man, taken about two weeks prior. The man appears to be accosting her and she is clearly afraid of him. McGee isolates one of the photos at Gibbs’s request, and McGee sees a wireless headset. He thinks he might be able to trace a signal.
Tony’s phone rings and it’s Burris again. Gibbs wants to put him off, but Tony is ex-cop and thinks he can get through to Burris.
Tony is visiting with Burris at his house. Burris is drinking in the daytime again. Tony empathizes with a guy whose life is his next case. Burris talks about getting justice for the victims, but the backlog of cases you can’t solve causes you to disconnect and get twisted. Tony can empathize with that too. Burris says you stay there until you show up and the body is your wife. Tony says that, being on the other side, Burris has to let himself grieve and let NCIS do the heavy lifting. Burris asks and Tony says he was a cop in Baltimore, and Philly before that. He also responds that he was almost married. Once. Burris suggests that she accused Tony of loving the job more than her. Tony says it was that and the red wine, but doesn’t elaborate further. Tony makes to leave. But Burris stops to hand Tony something. He tore the house apart looking for clues as to what Lt. Cmdr. Burris might have had a hand in. He hands Tony a slip of paper and says he doesn’t recognize the name. Tony recognizes it. The piece of paper says “Ray Cruz, DC Field Office.” Tony thanks him.
Tony calls Ziva and suggests that she check with Ray. Ziva is quiet. But she then says she’ll go. Alone.
Ziva meets Ray at a park. She sidesteps their personal issues. Ray calls Lt. Cmdr. Burris a real asset and describes her job duties with the same generalities that everyone else has employed. She set up meetings, et.al. He says he last spoke with her in Cairo the previous month. He also has no idea what man she was traveling with, and couldn’t tell Ziva if he did. Ziva’s done with Ray at this point and leaves. He follows and asks if she’s going to keep punishing him. She gets angry about the restaurant. He begs forgiveness. She tells him that he doesn’t care. He psychoanalyzes her and passively accuses her of having daddy issues. He promises never to hurt her again if he can just have another chance. She tells him it’s too late. He says he loves her and hits his knee with a ring and a proposal. He says, “Now or never,” which is too ultimatum-y for a proposal. But we go to break before we hear an answer. Or get to see Ziva scissor kick him.
Oh, hey, we’re right back to the proposal. And all the bystanders are looking on expectantly. Because only a fool would subject himself to public ridicule by using a proposal to try to win a fight. Ziva angrily whispers for Ray to get up. But he won’t until she says yes. She drags him to his feet. He claims he was planning on proposing at the dinner, but Ziva wonders what happens the next time he stands her up or vanishes for months on end. He claims he applied for desk duty. Now she asks if something happened, but he says no it’s all he wants: her, a house in Virginia, 2-3 kids, etc. Now she’s melting. But we don’t get to see her answer.
Tony sidles up to Ziva’s desk at work and asks about Ray. She reports on his remarks about Lt. Cmdr. Burris. But Tony wants more than that. Turns out Tony knew Ray was going to propose. Ziva is annoyed, but Tony argues, correctly, that when a man tells you something like that, you keep his secret. Still, Ziva is not wearing a ring because she has to think about it. Tony calls that response the kiss of death. But he calls getting married a leap of faith. And if she loves him, she’ll leap. Ziva mocks Tony for not going through with his own engagement. Tony responds that he nailed the proposal.
Gibbs breaks it up, but Tony tells him to get ready to play father of the bride. Gibbs says he’s happy. Ziva clarifies the situation. Gibbs says if it’s right, it will be official. Tony gasps like a teenager and suggest a Ziva/Palmer double wedding.
Abby arrives, but she doesn’t have rice. She has the report from the exhaustive search that she and McGee did for the wireless headpiece from the Islamabad photo. McGee says it’s called the DX-1200. It’s made by a company that specializes in devices for highly secure government lines. And only 400 of this model are registered in the world. Most are in the Middle East. They haven’t tracked the one in question, but they searched Lt. Cmdr. Burris’s hard drive and she did some internet searches for a group called the Saleh Revolutionary Corps during the last month. But if she was tracking them, she must have better intel than a browser search. But where does she keep it?
Gibbs and the team decide to search Lt. Cmdr. Burris’s new boat. Burris apologizes to Gibbs for his behavior while Tony finds a hidden metal box. It contains news about the SLC. Burris confirms his wife’s handwriting and wonders why she wouldn’t tell him about her investigation. “We protect who we love,” says Gibbs and Ziva seems troubled.
Gibbs visits Abby in the lab. She has reviewed the information in the box and Lt. Cmdr. Burris was working with a colleague to take down the SRC. On her second trip to Islamabad, something happened, and Lt. Cmdr. Burris writes in her journal that she is in danger and shouldn’t have gotten involved. But the threat is not from SRC. It’s from a former colleague. Technobabble ensues, but Abby and McGee have narrowed the headpiece signal form the guy in the photo to one signal. Our perp is Barry Norton, a US citizen and civil engineer stationed in Pakistan in 1998. He began working as a liaison for the Cairo Embassy in 2003. He was recently fired for fraternizing with anti-American terrorists like the SRC. But after that, Norton started working with the SRC to sell them high level secrets, and accessed Lt. Cmdr. Burris’s high level security privileges to do it. And when she found out, she flipped. She told Norton she’d go public, but she got killed first. McGee says he also tracked down the contractor form the loft. He’s Norton’s cousin, meaning Norton had access. Norton’s cell is off, but McGee got a hit on a call registered to him and that received a parking ticket. Gibbs says to BOLO it.
Ziva is on the phone with Ray. Tony asks if she’s jumping in feet first. Ray is chartering a jet so they can go tell his parents in Miami. Tony at least pretends to be supportive but asks what changed her mind. Ziva says that seeing Burris and how much he still loves his wife caused her to not want regrets.
Gibbs walks by and summons both agents to the squad room. McGee says state police tracked Norton’s car. Norton was involved in an accident the previous night. “Bring him in,” says Gibbs.
In the evidence garage, Gibbs is annoyed because he wanted Norton, not Norton’s smashed to shit car. But Gibbs says Norton is in the morgue and died at 11:34 the previous evening.
After a break, Abby reports from under Norton’s car that his brake lines were cut. Someone wanted to make sure he died.
In the squad room, Tony reports that SRC placed a fatwa on Norton. They got in a fight over money and Norton said he’d report their methodology and next target if they didn’t pay. Ziva thinks Norton was the target all along and McGee calls Lt. Cmdr. Burris collateral damage. Gibbs wants Norton’s cell phone history. Gibbs and Ziva look over the numbers and Ziva goes wide-eyed. Then she sprints to the elevator. But not fast enough to escape Gibbs. Still, she tells him not to stop her and he lets the elevator go.
In the lab, Abby is super-excited about Ziva’s wedding. Ziva, less so. She asks Abby to access old voicemails and texts on her phone from a month or two back. Abby is suddenly afraid. But she does it. Ziva picks out a number and tells Abby to cross-reference it with Norton’s logs. It’s a match, meaning the person who called Ziva was in the same place as Norton in Islamabad.
At an airport, Ziva joins Ray near a plane. He asks where her bags are, and she hits him so hard my teeth hurt. “Now you have my answer,” she says. Ray knows what this is about and tries to explain. But Ziva is angry because Ray killed an innocent woman and tried to lie to her about it. Ray says Norton was his target, but Lt. Cmdr. Burris wasn’t supposed to be there. It was a mistake. That he tried to cover up, Ziva notes. Ray talks about how dangerous Norton was and says he was supposed to sanction him in Pakistan, but Norton fled. Ray needed to handle him, and American lives were at stake and he didn’t care that CIA can’t operate on US shores. He also went against his superiors and thinks Ziva of all people should understand that. She shrinks back from his touch. Ray says that Norton is gone and that it’s over. Ziva is horrified that Ray has no regrets over ruining Burris’ life by killing his wife. Ray, sociopath that he is, is acting like this is just another lover’s quarrel and doesn’t want to talk about it anymore. Like he left the milk out or something. He’s cool with going back to being the man he used to be before he went rogue and killed some lady. Ziva says that man is gone, and she walks away.
Ziva gets in the car with Gibbs. Gibbs reports that Ray violated orders with his killing spree. He’s done. He looks at her sadly and asks what he can do. “Just drive,” she says.
Back at the squad room, Ziva is ranting about her phone. Tony tries to help. Ziva says she does not need help. Tony tells her not to beat herself up. She couldn’t have seen it coming. And she’ll find someone. Ziva is no longer sure she wants to. She does not feel children and marriage are for her right now. She’s content. Tony notes that contentment is different from happiness. Ziva asks if he is happy.
Then Detective Burris enters the squad room. He needed to hear them say it in person. And he wants to know who killed his wife. Ziva simply says, “His name is Ray Cruz. And he will never ever hurt anyone again.” Burris thanks them and says Navy cops aren’t all bad. They walk him out. Burris asks how long they’ve been together. They laugh and say they are just co-workers and friends. Burris says for them to hang on to that and cherish each other every day because they’ll never know when they need each other. The episode ends on a still of Tony and Ziva in the elevator gazing at each other.
Quotables: Nothing exciting.
Ziva-propisms: “Zipper it up,” is not a recognized idiom for getting someone to shut up. “Zip it” is.
Tony Awards: We get a reference to Father of the Bride (1950), the Spencer Tracy version, not the Steve Martin version.
Abby Road: Abby really wants to plan a wedding. Alas…
McNicknames: McMonk.
Ducky Tales: Ducky stays on task.
The Rest of the Story:
-Ziva and Ray dated off-screen for most of Season 8. We first met him in Two-Faced, Episode 8.20. Their relationship has been troubled ever since.
-Gibbs has obviously been the grieving widower hell bent on revenge. Hiatus, Part One, Episode 3.23.
-Palmer says, “love is blind.” Which is hilarious given how attractive his fiancée is. See, e.g., Mother’s Day, Episode 7.16.
–Baltimore, Episode 8.22 explored Tony’s last case with the PD there. We also first learned about Wendy, his ex-fiancée, although we have yet to meet her.
-Tony was a cop in Philly before taking the job in Baltimore. High Seas, Episode 1.6.
Casting Call: Yeah, that Steve Urkel actor Jaleel White playing the house-hunting husband in the opening.
Man, This Show Is Old: Nothing caught my eye.
MVP: Ziva, for turning down a proposal with authority.
Rating: I don’t think anybody ever says, “You know who I miss? Ray.” Largely because he sucked from beginning to end. But this was a weak exit even for this character. He’s almost an accidental sociopath. The showrunners were never going to let Ziva get married, of course, but I would have liked to see Ray be a little more of a criminal mastermind and less of a victim of circumstance. But maybe that’s too close to Trent Kort’s role. Either way, put another penny in the “Bad Experience with CIA” jar.
Not a bad episode and filled with little twists. And maybe it suffers from the rest of the season to date being so good. But this episode was sort of purpose-driven, with that purpose being to move the Ray Cruz character off the board. I’ll take it, but I don’t love it.
Six Palmers.
Next Time: NCIS turns 200 and gives us one of the strangest, yet greatest, episodes the show has ever produced. It’s Your Life Leroy Jethro Gibbs! Sort of.
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 or on Twitter at @AlexBarfield1.
A Year of NCIS 