The NCIS team had an interesting case this week, although something was definitely missing from it, besides the obvious being our beloved lost Director, Leon Vance. Kasie was out for the episode, so she had help from another forensics specialist, Curtis, who definitely had a different personality that wasn’t as joyful as hers. However, the case was still interesting, even if we kind of guessed who the perpetrator was off the bat.
A father and his daughter were touring the U.S.S. Archer, a museum ship, when the young girl decided to test out a switch that could power on a ship. When her dad looked at her, he noticed blood on her forehead, and they looked up to see a dead body. Luckily, she was too young to realize what it actually was, but her dad was speechless.
The NCIS team is led on treasure hunt to find a killer
The team arrived to figure out the cause of death for retired Navy Captain Miles Griffin, who lived on the ship and primarily dealt in antiques. He was obsessed with the history of artifacts and even had a journal cataloguing his life and the importance of certain trinkets from every year he had been alive.
His grandson, Kevin, told the team that his grandfather was obsessed with artifacts and history, often using clues as a way to send a message to his family. He once had the kids go on a hunt in search of a special gift. When it led back home and he told them the actual gift was family, Kevin was not thrilled.
His assistant, Nora Ankrom, told the team he basically lived on the ship and didn’t have a home anywhere else. They saw that one of his trinkets was missing from his room, with the shapes reminding them of a medal. Said medal was on his body, with the words “Keep it safe” written on it.
Knight’s first idea was that it could be an artifact that was being sold, and someone got greedy, but they still had to find evidence to piece everything together. The journal they found had a secret code Jimmy had to crack while McGee looked through papers from Griffin’s room.
Griffin had letters from another antique dealer, Bethany Lipton, where it had become clear that they had a closer relationship than they had first thought. However, she would eventually tell them that she was not involved in the killing.
They later found that Griffin had been sending payments to someone named Kirby, who was also mentioned in the journals as his former mentor, Major James Kirby, who died decades ago. When they went to an apartment where the checks were made out to, they found an old dinosaur bone hidden inside.
Nora came to the NCIS lab and told them the bone was worth millions. Griffin had been trying to sell the bone and had a buyer in Fabian Druker. The Druker name had been associated with Nazis back during World War II, but the family spent decades working to distance themselves from their past. Fabian claimed he didn’t buy the bone since Griffin never showed it to him so he could not authenticate its origins.
However, even though he did not kill Griffin, Druker did lie about his family’s wealth. They were in poverty, and the bone could have helped get their wealth back. In addition, Curtis eventually determined that the bone they found was fake and that Nora had lied about its authenticity.
While Nora lied to help Griffin on his final mission to take the bone back to its owner, Druker had other ideas. He attempted to steal the bone but abducted Nora so she would tell him where it was. However, she didn’t actually know where on the museum ship it was hidden.
Knight and McGee tried to stall for time, but Knight was shot in the arm, and McGee took Nora down to the engine room, where he was surprised to find the bone. Luckily, Torres and Parker arrived in time to shoot Fabian before he could finish hurting their team.
At first, the bone was going to go to its legal owner, Kevin, but Nora balked. She told them Kevin wouldn’t appreciate it, and Griffin did not consider him worthy. Kevin didn’t understand the value in things, and it looked like Griffin was doing all he could to get the bone where it actually belonged.
Griffin’s friend, Kirby, had actually found the bone in Germany and gave it to him to hold onto. Griffin’s life’s work was an attempt to find the bone’s original owner. He had discovered the bone had been taken from a Jewish family by the Drukers, which is likely why Fabian wanted it. Fabian had actually paid Kevin to try to convince his grandfather to sell the bone, but things got out of hand when Kevin wanted it for himself.
With Kevin arrested, Nora was released and given the origins of the bone so she could find the family it belonged to. This was a case that seemed a bit obvious, but still showed how important history was and how artifacts should be treated with care and respect.
NCIS airs Tuesdays on CBS at 8/7c. New episodes are available to stream on Paramount+.