The “NCIS” team reopened a 30-year-old murder case in Part 2 of the “NCIS”https://www.tvline.com/”NCIS: Origins” crossover — and they got some help from a former team member.
Part 2 opens with an older Tommy Mulligan still in prison after he confessed to the murder of Louis Burke back in the ’90s in Part 1. One day, he doesn’t come out of his cell… and the guards see he’s escaped. Parker brings the case to the team, adding that Mulligan’s murder case was one of the first that Gibbs worked at NCIS. Mulligan escaped along with another inmate, Luther Stokes, who was then found dead soon after in a ravine. Plus, Mulligan had actually been granted parole and was due to be released in just a few weeks. So why did he feel the need to escape?
They find that while in prison, Mulligan drew a lot of pictures of a woman named Lainey Sims, and in the old case file, it looks like Gibbs thought Mulligan took the fall for Lainey when he confessed to Burke’s murder. (Burke was shot dead and then thrown in front of a train to make it look like a suicide.) Gibbs’ fellow NCIS team member Franks took it hard, visiting Mulligan in prison often and calling the case “the one that got away.” Their case file contains lots of old relics like VHS tapes of interrogations, and the current NCIS team can’t even find a VCR to play them. They can track Mulligan’s phone, though, and it shows he took an Uber to the home of another blast from the past: Vera Strickland.
Yep, Vera — played once again by Roma Maffia — worked the Mulligan case in the ’90s, and Parker and McGee head over to her house… only to find that Mulligan already escaped on her motorcycle. Vera insists Mulligan is innocent, and the whole team knew it back in the ’90s. Mulligan killed Stokes in self-defense, she says, and he’s determined “to right a wrong.” She wants to help them close this case for good, and she points them towards James Wallace, a local Congressman whose grandfather was beat up by Burke back in the day and later died. Parker agrees to bring in Vera — in “a very limited capacity.”
The Team Digs Up Ghosts From the Past
While Parker and McGee interview Wallace, Torres and Jessica head to the town where the murder took place looking for Lainey. But she moved up north, the local sheriff tells them, and it’s now a ghost town. Up north, they find Lainey’s ex-husband Mac, but he says Lainey died three years ago. He admits Lainey killed Burke, but she was pregnant, and Mulligan took the fall for her. He’s not even sure Burke beat up Wallace’s grandfather in the first place… and he takes his own life with a gunshot. They report all of this back to Parker, with Vera quipping: “Who are they? The new Tony and Ziva?” (Ha!) Vera points them to two guys who worked in forensics back in the ’90s, Woody and Phil, who still have the baseball bat that killed Wallace’s grandfather in their archives — and the DNA on it doesn’t match Burke, so he can’t be the killer.
They finally find a VCR, and McGee watches old interrogation tapes of Gibbs and Franks, with Vera revealing she’s still in touch with Gibbs… and he’s proud of how McGee turned out. Torres and Jessica track down Mulligan, who comes clean: “I’m trying to save my son.” He was having an affair with Lainey for years, and the kid she was pregnant with back then was his. That’s why he took the fall for her. But his son Jason knows who really killed Wallace’s grandfather, and is determined to make them pay. Kasie provides the last piece of the puzzle: Wallace’s grandfather owned very valuable property situated over a large aquifer that could provide water to the town for years to come. A water company tried to get him to sell, but he planned on handing it over to the town. When he died, though, the property passed to his next of kin: his grandson, Congressman James Wallace, who sold it to the water company for big bucks.
The team rushes to Wallace’s campaign event, where they catch Jason ready to assassinate Wallace. Vera talks him into turning himself in, reminding him that his dad spent three decades in prison to protect him: “If you do this now, all that sacrifice is for nothing.” Jason relents and faces the music, but Wallace is arrested, too, since his DNA matches the blood on the bat that killed his grandfather. Plus, Mulligan gets to walk away free. Vera thanks the team for letting her come back for one last case, and Jimmy finds the perfect thing to put in a time capsule for the Navy’s 250th anniversary: a book, “The Stories We Leave Behind,” filled with NCIS stories and old photos of all of them.
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This story originally appeared on TVLine
