'NCIS' Season 10, Episode 16: 'Detour' Recap

‘NCIS’, season 10, episode 16, ‘Detour’

Two plumbers arrive at a woman’s house, and a man stumbles towards them, clutching his stomach in pain. He rummages through the back of their van, finds drain cleaner and chugs it. He collapses to the ground and foams at the mouth.

In the office, Palmer gives McGee some cash in exchange for an envelope. Ziva and DiNozzo catch them, and DiNozzo pressures Palmer into telling him what it is. Concert tickets for his anniversary. DiNozzo is hurt that McGee has ticket connections and hasn’t told him about it, despite getting nearly everyone else tickets.

Gibbs walks in and tells them there’s a new case. Dead officer almost 2 hours away.

At the scene, they find Lt. Gordon Roth. He evaded police, resulting in a chase. He ditched his car. Ducky finds he was shot in the stomach, and would have died regardless of the drain cleaner. Ducky and Palmer head back to NCIS, and decide to take the back roads to avoid snow.

As they drive off, a man in a black SUV is on the phone with some woman. He says they are leaving with the body. She tells him to follow them.

In the office, they find that Roth was transferred to the Office of Navy Research after suffering hearing loss while in Iraq. He was incredibly intelligent and an expert on high-end military encryption, but he had no family and left no suicide note. Gibbs sends Tony and McGee to question his CO.

The black SUV still tails Ducky and Palmer. They complain that the van won’t go above 50, causing them to be behind schedule. It starts to snow when their tire has a blowout.

DiNozzo gets McGee to dish about his source of tickets. Lisa Cleveland, Roth’s Commanding Officer, interrupts them. She is shocked to hear that Roth killed himself because he was very stable, mentally. They tell her that he was beaten and shot prior to his killing himself, and she isn’t pleased to hear it. Apparently, Roth oversaw the encryption, and was privy to highly classified information, the kind that people would kill for.

Palmer changes the flat tire. Ducky investigates the tire and spots a bullet. A woman arrives and apologizes for the bullet, she says they only wanted to slow them down. She opens the back of the van, and Ducky is confused. One of her lackeys pulls a gun on them. She searches the body, but doesn’t find what she’s looking for. She says it’s time for plan B, which involves taking Ducky and Palmer.

DiNozzo updates Gibbs as he heads to the morgue, but Ducky isn’t there, much to his surprise.

Ducky and Palmer arrive at their new destination, and the woman ushers them inside. Inside, there’s a big blood stain on the floor. She tells them to tie them up, but Ducky questions who they are.

As they chain them up, the woman asks Ducky to tell them what he knows about the case. He says he was kidnapped before he had a chance to look. She sends her lackeys, Marcus and Lincoln, to grab the body and look for whatever it is they were after. She tells Ducky he’s to perform the autopsy there. He says he won’t, so she threatens to kill Palmer, slowly, if he refuses to cooperate.

Gibbs goes to Abby’s lab, hoping to ask about ducky, but Abby cuts him off, saying she found a GPS-enabled camera in Roth’s car that allows her to see where he was before he killed himself; a park. He wandered in circles, taking pictures of everything. Gibbs finally asks if she’s heard from him, and she hasn’t. She tries calling, but his phone is off. As is Palmer’s. She tries to track the phones, but finds Palmer’s battery has been removed, which concerns her.

In the office, they learn that Palmer called an hour and a half after they left about the flat tire. DiNozzo suggests and accident, but Ziva shoots it down. McGee tracks the location when they got the call, and he pulls up surveillance footage along the highway they were travelling. They spot the black SUV trailing them.

In the cabin, Ducky is hands-deep inside Roth. He explains the damage that the drain cleaner did, and the woman doesn’t care about that. He says that Roth was wearing a hearing aide that he had no use for, and that there were skin cells under his fingernails, which indicated an altercation. Ducky says it was likely a white male, with dark hair, around 6 feet tall who shot him. He cuts open the stomach, and the smell causes the woman and her men to leave the cabin. This allows Ducky and Palmer to plan an escape. Ducky suggests they go on the offensive.

In the office, Ziva and McGee say they found the tired along the highway, and found it was shot out, and that the footprints indicated they were forced to drive under duress. DiNozzo reveals that Roth had an offshore bank account funded by Cuban sources, which is illegal. He pulls up past records, and points out that the signatures don’t match anymore. Sometime in his 20s, Lt. Roth was replaced by someone claiming to be Lt. Roth.

In the cabin, Ducky turns the hearing aide into a microphone devices, and spies on the captors outside of the cabin. Palmer tries to use the gastric acid found in “Lt. Roth” to eat through his lock. Ducky listens as they talk about Roth, saying he was supposed to deliver a package. And that they plan to kill Ducky and Palmer the second they are done.

In Abby’s lab, she runs facial recognition on the photos of Roth, and they aren’t a match. She narrows the date of the switch to be the Naval Induction day 10 years ago, after Roth gained his security clearance. She also determined that “Roth” has been using his CO’s access codes to access and download highly classified files on a monthly basis. They realize that the real Roth was killed 10 years ago. Abby also IDed some secondary blood at the crime scene as Lt. Michael Dunkel.

In the cabin, Ducky reviews the plan with Palmer. They say their goodbyes, just in case it doesn’t work.

Ducky gives the run down to the captors, saying it looked like “Roth” shot himself on accident during a struggle. He says that the attacker’s prints are likely still on the gun. The woman gives her lackeys the go-ahead to kill them, but Ducky says that they didn’t tell them everything, as an insurance of sorts.

Ducky tells them to take them somewhere public, and they’ll talk. The woman pulls her gun on Palmer, and he eyes a teapot on the stove, which cues her in. Ducky isn’t too happy. She opens the teapot and finds a key. She asks where they found it, and Palmer says that “Roth” swallowed it, again, much to Ducky’s frustration.

The woman realizes that Palmer is stalling, and Ducky confirms they are stalling because the gauze in the over is taking longer than they anticipated to ignite. She and her lackeys turn to the oven just in time for it to explode. Marcus is hit directly, and the woman and Lincoln attempt to put out the fire engulfing him. It’s too late as he’s dead. They look up to realize Ducky and Palmer are gone.

In interrogation, Gibbs interviews Lt. Dunkel, with a very obvious black eye. He denies any knowledge of anything. Gibbs loses his patience, with Ducky and Palmer’s lives on the line, and Dunkel says that Roth was sleeping with his wife, Commanding Officer Lisa Cleveland. He says he confronted Roth and they got physical. Roth pulled a gun, and they struggled, and the gun went off, so he ran.

 Palmer and Ducky flee through the woods, trying to find the highway. Palmer stops Ducky, saying he needs to catch his breath, and compliments Ducky’s stamina. They say they need to be stealthy, rather than speedy, and shut off their flashlights and head deeper into the woods.

In the office, DiNozzo was able to confirm the affair, and they realize “Roth” was sleeping with her for the access codes. They conclude that “Roth” had to kill himself because his mission was compromised. He was dead either way. And that his team members were the ones that kidnapped Ducky and Palmer, as well as the body.

In the woods, Ducky and Palmer hear gunshots in the distance. They know the captors aren’t too happy, and are shooting at anything that moves. Palmer asks what they’re supposed to do, because Ducky promised that Gibbs would find the cabin… But Ducky says he left a message for Gibbs to find, but he had no way of knowing -when- Gibbs would find it. Palmer reveals that he grabbed a gun after the explosion, and says that they should take a stand, but Ducky isn’t too keen on getting into a firefight with professional killers.

In the office, McGee gets a hit on his BOLO for the SUV. They track it to the national forest, where it’s been frequenting for over two weeks. The people requested the most isolated hunting cabin. DiNozzo runs the plates and finds it’s registered to the same company that has been funding “Roth”’s account. They found their guys.

In the woods, Palmer panics that he missed his anniversary. Ducky manages to twist his ankle, and they talk about the irony of it. Palmer offers to carry him, but Ducky says Palmer needs to go on without him. Palmer refuses to go without him, and that it’s time for them to take their stand.

Gibbs and the team find the cabin.

In the woods, Ducky and Palmer rest and say they are going to wait for the captors to find them. They argue about who is going to hold the gun and who has the best training. Palmer suggests that it might be a good idea for them to split up.

In the cabin, Gibbs finds the bodies. He also finds “R9” carved into the foot of “Roth”. Gibbs knows it stands for Rule 9: never go anywhere without a knife. He spots a scalpel jammed into a mounted boar’s head, and follows the direction it points.

In the woods, Ducky wanders alone in the dark, calling out for Palmer. Lincoln manages to find him, and draws his gun. Palmer emerges from the woods and unloads the clip into Lincoln. Palmer is in shock that he managed to shoot him. However, Lincoln climbs to his feet and draws his gun again. Ducky tries to get Palmer to run, but he won’t leave him. Lincoln points his gun at them and Gibbs and the crew surround them. They arrest him.

Some other day, the woman who escaped goes to the gym to open the locker with the key they discovered in “Roth”’s stomach. Inside, she finds a jersey with “Palmer” on the back. Gibbs surprises her, dangling the USB she was looking for in front of her face.

She asks how they did it, and they reveal that they found sewage under Roth’s fingernails, which lead them to the USB. And Palmer also mentions that the key was to his locker. It was his key the whole time. She is arrested for espionage, and Ducky informs her she’s been played. They all smile and laugh.