- A clown kills a Marine corporal; while investigating, Gibbs and company find Fornell, Diane, and her boyfriend, who says that he's someone else, and that he knows the clown. All the pieces come together, and the team bust the main bad guy.
- A clown kills a Marine corporal with two rounds to his chest in Washington, DC; Gibbs and company investigate; McGee finds calls to the victim's second cellphone, and he traces them to a hotel; when Gibbs and Tony enter the room from which the calls originated, they find Fornell and Diane, the mutual ex-wife of Gibbs and Fornell; Diane says that she called Eddie, her recent boyfriend. At Gibbs's pad he finds Emily, the 13-year-old daughter of Fornell and Diane. In Eddie's car McGee and Abby find a clown's nose and minute traces of blood; the gang eventually find Eddie, who says that he's someone else, and that he knows the clown. Eddie and Fornell receive a call from the bad guy in charge, who offers a deal; Ellie makes a swap; Emily rejoins Fornell and Diane and draws them together, then she, saying that her name too is Fornell, arranges for the gang to bust the main bad guy. Fornell and Diane give Gibbs a bottle of booze and make a request of him.—DocRushing
- A Marine leaves someone a message saying they need to talk and he can explain everything. He returns to his apartment and hears an odd squeaky sound from down the hall. A clown steps out -- and shoots him in the chest.
In the office, Ellie Bishop gets her stacks of paperwork to finalize her joint NSA-NCIS assignment from Rhoda, the legendary no-nonsense HR woman. Then after that she has to take another polygraph and survive Gibbs, who arrives with the body of the week: A dead marine in Potomac Heights.
On the scene, the victim is Cpl. Ron Flegman, stationed at Quantico, worked in the motorpool. Ellie and Tony got a sketch of the clown from a neighbor's description. Gibbs orders them to pull all the street performer's weapon's permits.
McGee finds the Marine's second cell phone including dozens of missed calls from the same number before he died. Tony recognizes it as the Adams House, where his dad always stays.
Tony and Gibbs head to the hotel room and use the key to go in. They find Gibbs' ex-wife, Diane Sterling, on the bed. Then Tobias Fornell comes out of the bathroom wearing only a towel.
Gibbs wants an explanation, especially since Diane is married. She says she's getting a divorce from Victor, and they were going to tell Gibbs but were keeping things quiet for their daughter Emily's sake.
Gibbs tells Tobias about the missed calls. Diane confesses she was calling her boyfriend Eddie to break up with him (while Tobias was in the bathroom). She doesn't see what the big deal is with a little "innocent overlap." She's not surprised Eddie's phone was found on a dead guy, since he seemed shady and had no credit history.
Back at NCIS, Tobias joins them for the rundown. Eddie Macklin works at a local climbing gym, but they found nothing on him prior to six months ago.
At the gym, the owner Elijah tells them Eddie missed his personal climbing instruction appointment. He recognizes the client as the victim. He gives them the info on the car Eddie put on his employment application, because they found none registered to him.
Later, Tobias drives Gibbs home. "What the hell am I doing, Gibbs? I feel like I've been swallowed by a python, cut my way out and crawled back inside again," Tobias says. "That's about right," says Gibbs.
Tobias says it's different this time and tries to get Gibbs' to weigh in. He finally settles on "If you're happy...."
Tobias is interrupted by a call from his neighbor who watches Emily. She didn't come home, for the third time this week. He leaves to go search the mall.
Gibbs goes inside his house, glad to be free of their drama, but a teen girl is waiting for him. "No way in hell am I living with either of them if they're back together," Emily says.
The next day in the office, Emily asks Gibbs to let her stay with him another night, but he says her parents want her back. Ellie presents an overly wordy update on the case to Gibbs, and Emily tells her that he thinks she's doing a good job, but needs to relax.
When Diane sees her daughter, she tells her she's in big trouble, but Emily starts arguing back about how terrible her parents are together. Finally, they think to ask her how she even knows. She put a keystroke logger on both their Facebook accounts.
Abby comes up and tells Gibbs that Eddie exchange racy texts with Diane -- then she notices Diane standing there.
Tobias races down to Abby's lab to read the texts, followed by Diane. Abby manages to remove them from her screen remotely, but Tobias wants to know how innocent the overlap was.
The suspect sent texts to a burn phone about a security box. Gibbs takes her to the bank to ID Eddie from the security footage.
When the bank manager leaves Gibbs and Diane alone, she unburdens herself. "Jethro, what am I doing? I feel like I drove my car into a ditch, dug myself out and then drove right back in again," she says.
She says it's his fault for shooting Tobias in the rear and she had to nurse him back to health. She wants to know if they're making a mistake.
The manager interrupts with the security footage and the box. Eddie's been there ten times in the last few weeks, but only stationary is left in the box.
Diane sees Eddie on the footage, kissing a woman.
Ellie drops in on the morgue to familiarize herself more with dead bodies. She looks at Flegman's body and is able to deduce everything before Duckie and Palmer can tell her: that the body wasn't moved and that a bruise on his leg indicates he was diabetic. She read the 600 page autopsy manual over the weekend.
Tony interrupts with a cupcake to celebrate Ellie's first joint duty BOLO coming in. Eddie's car was found in airport longterm parking. She can't go, she has to take her polygraph.
Tobias joins Abby in the garage, where she's going over Eddie's car with McGee. They found a clown nose in the truck and minute traces of blood in the car from four separate victims. Tobias giggles over the idea that Diane's ex was a serial killer.
Back in the office, they're focusing on Eddie as the main suspect. Diane calls Gibbs for the fifth time to see if they've found Eddie yet. He says no and hangs up. Then Tobais calls and he goes through the same routine. Finally, when it rings again, he dunks his phone in his coffee.
Ellie joins them, after finding her polygraph a breeze compared to NSA. Gibbs tells them to expand the BOLO on Eddie to train and bus stations. "That's a bad idea," Ellie blurts out. Instead, she suggests they put his car back at long term parking and wait for him to come back, then follow him to see where he goes.
Gibbs goes for it, to the shock of McGee and Tony.
Gibbs goes home for some peace and quiet and a sandwich, but he hears noises coming from his basement. He goes to investigate and runs into Diane. She and Tobias had plans with Emily and she didn't show, she thought Emily might be there.
Gibbs ushers her out, then hears a ringing from his closet. He finds Emily. Her Happy Cat Friend Alert watch is going off -- she set it to remind her to record a "Colombo" marathon. She asks him to help her break her parents up. She says all they do is fight, then says it's OK when it's just the three of them, then says she doesn't want to go through them breaking up again. Gibbs is confused about what she wants. So is she. "You suck at this," she tells him, completing the Fornell family trifecta of advice sought and rejected.
Gibbs gets a call from Tony: Eddie returned to his car.
In the morning, Gibbs joins the team. Tony reports Eddie drove all night to lose a tail, then went into the storage locker where they are. Gibbs and Tony open the unit and find what Tony calls "Hannibal Lecter's little hobby center," with a mask and various tools. It's empty, then they see Eddie walking up to it. He takes off running and Tony follows. Eddie hits a dead end into a building, but then he uses his climbing skills to scale the wall and drop to the other side -- where he runs into Tobias' fist.
In interrogation, Eddie says the storage unit isn't his. They found almost $100K in cash hidden in it. Eddie worries that "he" will be angry if he finds his money missing. Eddie gets up to leave, but Abby slides a file under the door. She connected one of the blood spatters to an unsolved quintuple homicide.
Eddie insists he didn't kill anyone, the car is ten years old and is from a police impound. Then his demeanor shifts completely and he says his name isn't Eddie Macklin: It's special agent Edward McKenzie, with the Secret Service. He's in the middle of a highly classified six month operation.
Later, in the conference room, Edward updates them on the money laundering case. They traced one of the sources to the Tower gym, where he went undercover. The cash came from a bank robbery gang, the owner Elijah Banner ran it with his girlfriend. Edward went with her to the bank to rent a safety deposit box to case the joint.
Flegman drove the getaway car, but they haven't been able to tie Elijah to the robberies. He thinks Elijah's girlfriend was probably the one who killed Flegman, she works kid's parties as a clown. McKenzie wants to put the money back before Elijah notices he's gone, but before he can leave, Elijah calls him and asks to talk to Fornell.
He knows McKenzie got picked up and he has Tobias's daughter, Emily.
The team goes into overdrive. McGee reports there was a camera in the storage locker and Elijah must have seen them collect his money.
Tony calls from the climbing gym, where they've found Elijah's girlfriend dead and surveillance photos of Fornell with Emily.
Elijah calls and demands Ellie meet him alone with his cash. Gibbs leaves what to do up to Fornell, who asks Ellie, the analyst, if she thinks Elijah can be trusted. She says yes and goes to the meet.
In a park, Elijah jogs up, takes his money and gives her a phone, saying he'll call with Emily's location.
When Ellie checks in over comm, McGee suggests they can look up the phone to see where it's been, and maybe find out where he's going. Emily tries to look it up, but the phone doesn't work. She realizes something's wrong. Rather than reporting back, she takes her earpiece out and sits down to think in peace.
She doesn't see any upside to killing Emily and she runs through all the possible scenarios, knowing he can't use his white van to get away because they're looking for it. She sees a blue van parked nearby and realizes he painted it. She runs over and opens the door and finds Emily unhurt inside.
Ellie brings her back to NCIS, where she has a happy reunion with both parents. Gibbs tells Ellie good job, but warns her not to ever take her ear piece out again. They worry Elijah got away. "Oh, he didn't get away. My last name is Fornell, after all," Emily says.
Elijah pulls up to a gas station on his motorcycle and is quickly surrounded by Fornell and Gibbs. He asks how they caught him and Gibbs pulls Emily's Happy Cat Friend Alert watch out his backpack. It's Blue tooth enabled, McGee traced it.
Elijah curses Emily and says he shouldn't have let her go. Tobias decks him.
Gibbs comes home after a long day and crashes on his couch. Then he sees Diane and Tobias sitting at his kitchen table with a bottle of liquor. He tries to run, but they stop him. They want his blessing. He thinks about it.
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