16.21 - "Judge, Jury…”
Written by Christopher J. Waild
Directed by James Whitmore, Jr.
Reviewed by KathM
This week we got to see how some of the $250,000,000 secreted away by the Secretary of Defense is being used, and I can’t say I wholly disapprove. When a horrifyingly creepy-looking man is arrested for poisoning some Klownie Kake ice cream bars back in 1989 which led to one boy’s death (the son of a Navy man), everyone thinks justice is at hand. And is may be, thanks to Kasie and her long weekends of work on a Federal initiative she came up with that runs DNA on cold cases. Which I think CODIS does, but still. The prosecution has creepy guy over a barrel: Stuart Crum drove one of the ice cream trucks, and confessd to Gibbs and Sloane and besides, they have his DNA on a hair they found inside the ice cream wrapper of the victim, Tommy Larson.
It looks like he’s set to be convicted when a bailiff brings a letter to the judge stating that the prosecution shouldn’t have Crum's DNA. At all. Because Crum was arrested for a crime a few weeks ago, and his DNA was taken and entered into the system. He was cleared, so the police should have deleted his DNA from the system. Which they didn’t. If they had, then Crum wouldn’t have come up on law enforcement’s radar in the first place. So, Crum goes free and NCIS can retry the case only if they are able to find evidence that links Crum to the case with no knowledge that he’s guilty, including trying to get his DNA again. Basically, justice fails at getting Tommy and his extremely angry dad any peace.
Gibbs is markedly calmer this episode, I guess I’d call it “appropriately angry”. He wants the team minus McGee, who is taking some family time, to find something to use to convict the guy again. And they got nothin’. Not a thing. Bishop calls McGee to see if he can come in and help, but as I said before, he’s taking some personal days to chill with his family. Or go to visit Splendifida, the company in the Silicon Valley who were headhunting him earlier this season and sent him all those cool toys. He thought he’d check out their generous offer, and who can blame him? He’d be heading up the department that handles requests from government and law enforcement, because Splendifida has access to everything all the time. They even have these scary pink lanyards each employee has to wear. McGee thinks they’re intrusive and possibly spying on him, but Stepford HR woman Clarissa ensures that it’s all above board. Besides, he can use it to get into everything in the building he can access without being employed there.
Which may help answer Clark the CIA guy’s questions about what Leon and Gibbs have been doing with all of the information that he gave them weeks ago about the Secretary of Defense’s secret offshore account. No worries, Leon tells him, he has someone looking for a “back door” to find out more about the money. And who is hacking that information? MCGEE! Rather than really looking for a job at Splendifida , he’s using their insanely large databases to see what he can see about the account. He found that $3 million had been withdrawn and then the account was closed, but he isn’t able to find out any more information as Clarissa and two huge bodyguards arrive to read him the riot act about trying to steal their data.
Leon and Gibbs meet CIA guy at Gibbs’s house (he doesn’t want to keep coming to the Navy Yard because it’s suspicious.). The talk about the monies and how they aren’t sure where the money is and who withdrew the $3 million and for what. Clark grumbles and slumps away, hoping that nobody saw him leave Casa Gibbs.
At a tennis court somewhere, Crum is eating the ice cream treats he poisoned all those years ago and heckling tennis players. He tosses the wrapper on the ground, ambles over to his car, then gets in. Someone rises up from the back seat and kills him. Hurrah!! One less creepy crawler to worry about. In the morning NCIS investigates the Crum case (he’s now a victim) and think he OD’s since there’s loads of pills all over the dashboard. But Jimmy knows that people who OD usually vomit, and Crum didn’t do that. An autopsy confirms it; he was loaded with oxy but also had a broken clavicle which indicates that someone likely held Crum down and force fed him the pills. Kyle Larson, Tommy’s father, is the obvious suspect, but he has an alibi. Who else wanted Crum dead? Well, according to the Mary Beth app Crum used on his computer which did in fact record all kinds of things including an image of the court bailiff looking through the patio door at Crum’s house.
The bailiff is stopped on his way to a private plane that will take him to Germany. Someone got in contact with him (he never met them) and offered him $3 million and a new life abroad if he’d kill Crum. So, he did. I’d do it for a less than that, but $3 million is always appreciated regardless of the exchange rate.
When it looks like the money came from the bank account they’ve been investigating Leon and Gibbs run over to meet Clark at Gibbs’s house. They hear a shot and run inside where Mallory, Leon’s pretend CIA girlfriend, is standing over Clark’s body, gun on the floor in front of him. She turns to the men and tells them, “It’s not what you think.” That’s what they all say.
