Friday 20th April 2007

21.00–22.00Continuing this evening is the third season of the hit drama series following a team of special agents who investigate Navy and Marine Corps-related crimes. In tonight’s episode, a bust on a garage leads the NCIS to a warehouse full of body parts. The agents burst into a garage where three sailors have been running a chop shop – dismantling stolen cars and selling on the parts. As they make the arrests, however, they are not prepared for what they discover. In the boot of a newly acquired vehicle sits a severed head in a cool-box. When Ducky and Palmer set to work on their ‘body’, they are soon able to reveal a twist in the already unusual case: “Beheading was not the cause of this man’s demise,” Ducky explains. But with just a head to go on, determining the true time and cause of death will be something of a challenge. Thankfully, Abby is on hand to assist. At HQ, Tony is doing his best to find the owner of the stolen car. He manages to trace it to a Mercedes dealership and establishes that it was sold two weeks ago. It is McGee, however, who makes the breakthrough: using his computing skills and some underhand tactics, he hacks into the DMV processing computer and discovers that the car is registered to a company called Epsilon whose address is listed as that of a local law firm. Tony and Ziva head to the law offices to investigate and are soon in conversation with a woman called Sean Oliver – the attractive, self-possessed head of the law firm. Oliver reveals that Epsilon is one of the firm’s clients, but will divulge no more until the agents get hold of a search warrant. Back in her lab, Abby has managed to identify the owner of the head as Parker Wayne, a navy captain who died of a heart attack in hospital some four months ago. It seems that this new information provides more questions than answers. “What is his head doing in the trunk of a stolen car?” asks Abby. “And where is the rest of his body?” adds Ducky. To find the answers, the agents call in Kyle Ross, the navy ME who dealt with the victim’s body when he died. Ross assures Gibbs that Wayne died of a heart attack, but confusingly adds that the body was cremated after he had finished his examination. When Tony and McGee visit the undertaker who dealt with Wayne’s body, it emerges that the man who oversaw the cremation, a Martin Broussard, has not turned up to work today. Broussard lives in a coffin storage room at the crematorium, so Tony and McGee conduct a search. It is not long before they have found evidence pointing towards Broussard’s involvement in the case – behind a curtain at the back of his home is a bizarre shrine decorated with bones, candles and unidentified objects in jars. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking probie?” asks a worried Tony. “Yeah – we just walked into an episode of the X-Files,” responds an equally concerned McGee. Looking for a third opinion, Tony and McGee show photographs of their discovery to Abby, but she does nothing to allay their fears: “I’m not an expert, but I would say that Martin Broussard is into voodoo – big time!” she conjectures. When Broussard’s fingerprints are found on the stolen car, the agents have themselves a prime suspect in the case, but they still have no motive.

The case takes a shocking twist, however, when the search warrant for Epsilon’s files finally arrives. Documents at the law firm point Tony, Ziva and McGee towards a warehouse owned by the company. Once Ziva has picked the lock, the agents enter and discover a room full of refrigerated human remains. It seems someone has been systematically collecting these body parts. Can such a macabre collection belong to one man obsessed with voodoo, or is someone else with a more monetary motivation involved? Only the missing Broussard and Sean Oliver can reveal the truth.


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