'NCIS' Season 10, Episode 13: 'Hit and Run' Recap

Two old men, excited for their impending dates, happen upon a crashed car, with a male and female victim, Civilian Lila Cutwright and Marine Lance Corporal Chad Dunn.

When the team arrives at the scene, Duckie points out that Lila was bleeding before the accident. They notice there are no skid marks, either, so they believe it could be a murder/suicide. They send the car to Abby for further investigating.

At the lab, Abby sees the impact on the windshield, which triggers a flashback to when she was younger, playing in a junkyard with Luca.

“We’re not playing. We’re investigating.”

Even then, she tried to figure out what caused the accident and the spider web fracture. In the back of the truck, Little Abby finds a teddy bear with a kid’s name written on it. She vows to find the kid to whom it belongs.

“Abby, how are you going to find her when you can’t even read her name?”

“You watch.”

McGee snaps her out of it, and seems concerned. She claims she was remembering her first case, but didn’t want to talk about it.

McGee shares his concerns with DiNozzo and Ziva, but Gibbs interrupts, asking for updates. The female victim was last seen the day before, dropped off at college by her father.

“Working theory is she was beaten, and then driven off the ridge by this guy: Lance Corporal Chad Dunn, 20. Last seen leaving the Marine barracks on weekend liberty.”

The only connection the two shared was that they knew each other as children, but they haven’t been seen together since the fourth grade. However, back in the day, both of their fathers got into a brawl and were charged with disorderly conduct.

In the morgue, Duckie tells Gibbs that Dunn died from blunt force trauma, after being ejected from the vehicle. Cutwright was dead before the crash, likely from a surprise attack with a blunt object.

Abby couldn’t find any DNA in the fingernail scrapings that Duckie sent to her. But she was able to determine that whatever hit Cutwright’s head was made of Chestnut. She also concluded Cutwright must have been looking out the passenger side window when she was struck.

Little Abby, in a flashback, constructs a makeshift magnifying glass in order to read the name on the teddy bear. Ricki Evans.

Ziva brings in Mr. and Mrs. Dunn, who don’t seem too pleased that the Cutwright girl was in their son’s car. Mr. Cutwright happens to arrive shortly after, and accuses the Dunn’s of killing his daughter. A fight ensues.

She splits them up in separate interview rooms, but no one is willing to discuss their past.

McGee scours the families’ phone records and finds that Lila called the local police the week before, but hung up before the call went through. And he found that Dunn called a disposable cell number the night before the crash, and several times the day before that.

Gibbs sends DiNozzo to the crime scene to find the murder weapon, McGee to find the disposable phone, and Ziva to talk to Mr. Cutwright, while he handles Mr. and Mrs. Dunn.

They get to the source of the feud: Mr. Cutwright’s wife died, and Mr. Dunn claims he went crazy and started spreading lies about the Dunn’s.

The “lie”? That Mr. Cutwright and Mrs. Dunn fell in love, that she wanted to leave her husband, but was too scared to tell him. So he told him himself, and got beat up.

Mr. Cutwright said that he sent Mrs. Dunn a letter a year ago, and that she was ready to leave her husband this time. Ziva asks if Chad Dunn knew about the letter.

Abby discovers that Chad didn’t kill Lila out of revenge… Or at all. She believes Chad was unconscious at the time.

The killer struck Lila on the passenger side with the murder weapon, moved to the driver side as Chad was getting out, and struck him, rendering him unconscious. The killer placed Chad back behind the wheel, and guided the car over the ridge, using the murder weapon to press on the gas.

But she made a mistake earlier. The murder weapon was made of aluminum, not Chestnut. She defensively tells Gibbs she’s not perfect.

In another flashback, Little Abby tracks down Ricki Evans to return her teddy bear, however, it was the day of Ricki’s mother’s funeral. A car struck their truck, killing her mother.

But Ricki tells Little Abby she can’t keep the bear. She was only allowed to play with it when she was with her mom and her grandpa, because her dad hated the bear, all because her grandpa gave it to her as a present.

Ricki’s dad shows up and sees Abby with the bear, and gets upset, accusing Ricki of lying to him. She told him she got rid of the bear.

McGee traces the disposable cell to Brandon Singer, Chad Dunn’s cousin. He owns an alternative energy company.

Gibbs and McGee pay him a visit. They learn that Chad was supposed to go hiking with him, but he cancelled. He reveals that Chad and Lila were secretly dating for the past 6 months.

Chad and Lila met when Chad discovered the love letters Mr. Cutwright sent to his mother. He went down to his work to confront him. He wasn’t there, but Lila was. And they kept it a secret since.

“Chad was afraid what his father might do if…”

Gibbs questions Mr. Dunn, but he claims he didn’t do it. He was home with his wife during the murder.

Abby called in sick, so the team has to pick up the slack. DiNozzo and Ziva head to the garage and McGee is sent to test some new DNA.

Gibbs gets a coffee with Mrs. Dunn, who confirms that her husband was home with her. And that she no longer loves him.

DiNozzo and Ziva have a hard time in the garage without Abby, due to her complicated system. They find a bank receipt hidden in a notebook for a withdrawal of $15,000.

In the lab, McGee is having a hard time with the testing, so Gibbs sends him to find Abby and make sure she’s okay.

McGee traces her phone and finds her calling Bingo numbers at a community center. He expresses his and the team’s concerns for her. She pulls out a tiny pink heart.

In another flashback, Little Abby tracks down Ricki’s grandpa, who works at a barbershop. She tells him to take Ricki the bear and talk to her dad, but he says he can’t go to the house.

“This is bigger than what you can understand. Go on home.”

Big Abby admits that all she ever wanted to do was help people with the truth… But the bad stuff makes it hard for her to stay happy.

“If the bad outweighs the good, then that means that I’m not enough. And if I’m not enough, then why even try?”

Back at NCIS, they tell Gibbs the 15 grand came from Lila Cutwright’s trust fund account, which she gained access to when she turned 19. They also found job searches around Camp Pendleton, which is where Chad Dunn was being transferred. They believe that Lila was going to move with Chad, and possibly use the money for a down payment on a house. Chad applied for a loan, as well, but was declined.

They bring in the loan officer for questioning, who said she wanted to give them the loan but couldn’t because of Dunn’s lack of credit history and low salary. He told her he was planning on investing the 5 grand on alternative energy, but the paperwork didn’t look right.

Gibbs and Ziva pay the cousin, Brandon Singer, another visit. This time, with a search warrant in tow. He scammed Chad and Lila out of 15 grand. They accuse him of killing them to keep them quiet, and he admits to scamming them, but he denies killing them.

DiNozzo, however, finds an aluminum bat in Brandon’s garbage, which fits the murder weapon.

Back at NCIS, Abby is trying to write McGee an apology note.

In another flashback, Little Abby watches Ricki’s dad load their belongings into a moving van. She left Ricki a stuffed bunny, to replace the bear she wasn’t allowed to keep, and watched as she found it, with a smile on her face.

Gibbs finds Abby and asks her about the tiny pink heart she was holding. She tells him it was from a bear she loved as a kid, and brought it everywhere with her until it fell apart. And the heart was all that was left.

She tells Gibbs she’s trying to figure out a way to be okay with not doing enough good. Gibbs tells her she can’t always be around to see the good she does.

He asks her to remember the first time they met, and she does. He pulls out a fortune from a fortune cookie he kept in his wallet that Abby gave him that first day.

“The things you do mean something to people.”

In another flashback, Little Abby is upset that she wasn’t able to fix things with Ricki. But Luca tells her that Ricki will never forget the rabbit she gave her.

Big Abby opens the fortune that Gibbs kept. “Today’s new friend is tomorrow’s family.”

If you missed the episode, you can watch NCIS: Season 10 Episode 13 here.