This is my 33rd NCIS Mystery, the Third story of my Fourth Season. 'NCIS' is owned by Belisarius Productions while Dr. Maura Isles hails from 'Rizzoli and Isles', which is owned and produced by Hurdler Productions and by Ostar Productions. As a not too great coincidence, she is portrayed by Sasha Alexander, the former Kate Todd.
The usual legal Disclaimers apply. I only own Rev. Siobhan (O'Mallory) McGee, Apprentice Pathologist Dr. Samantha Sky and original Agents.
You can find all my stories listed in order in my Profile.
This story takes place in the second week of July, four days after the conclusion of 'Who Knows What Evil Lurks?' Mary Waghoff still evades the hunt as depicted there. The team's concern is that she is going to set off the stooges alluded to in 'Ventriloquist Affair' all at once.
Ducky is on a well deserved vacation in Edenborough with Dr. Jordan Hampton; Abby returns from her sojourn to Jefferson Parish, Louisiana and Jimmy and Michelle Palmer have left for a month at the Saint Francis Retreat House in West Virginia.
Rated R or NCis-17
Please Review.
In the Hearts of Men
by JMK758
Chapter One
Fishing
Wednesday oh-one-hundred isn't much different from Tuesday thirteen hundred, Janet Levy decides as she turns the rotating stool seat to swivel her out to face the bar room, extends one high heeled foot to the floor and shifts some weight off the stool. Since her dress' tight hem reaches perhaps an inch long of getting her arrested, it's a long expanse of legs she displays to the dim room.
The clinging dress is so generous in front it took a long time to find a bra that didn't show. She'd been going for slutty but respectable, and to keep up that latter meant she couldn't look like a slut.
This lavender dress is, in fact, from her Undercover wardrobe, an indulgence since she's not on duty, but she'd felt like a challenge. She was in the mood to put out bait, but the only hits she was going to consider were the ones who made eye contact first and had the integrity to hold it. Anyone who looked first at her breasts or long, well displayed legs wasn't going to get his first nibble.
She knew she was, in a fit of frustrated perversity, setting up a nearly impossible challenge, so she knew she had no one to blame but herself when Prince Charming failed to put in an appearance or, if he did appear, that he was unequal to the challenge.
Sitting on the stool, rotated to face the patrons while she rests her back against the bar, which accents her chest, she slowly scans from left to right. Some eyes are on her, some of those men who aren't alone very likely thinking themselves discreet enough for their dates not to notice, but not one pair of eyes is raised as high as her shoulders.
x
Giving up with an exasperated sigh - things would have been so different had Lisa come with her - she steps off the stool, reaches into her small lavender purse, pushes aside leather Badge and ID case and Sig Sauer, takes out her wallet and tosses onto the bar behind her an appropriate number of fives.
She stands and tugs her dress hem down. The lavender material may hug her body like the lover she's going to do without tonight, but while it caresses her butt like a hand, the hem still tends to want to be a waistline. At least the material is stretchy enough so that a downward tug doesn't expose her nipples.
Janet leaves the bar and turns right, but after walking about fifteen yards and before she turns the right corner she looks back, inspects the deserted street. She may have, she reflects, planned her night stupidly, but she's not stupid.
No one has followed her.
x
Her high heels click rhythmically on the quiet and empty street. One o'clock may feel like one in the afternoon - mid-July heat never dissipates enough before sunrise brings the next hot wave to assault the body and exhaust the mind - but this side street is private houses and everyone is trying to sleep beyond softly whirring air conditioners.
Keys in hand, three of the sharpest long since extended between the fingers of her closed fist, she reaches her black Tesla Model S, grateful to find that those in front and back haven't pulled in so affectionately as to allow her no way to leave.
Depositing her bag on the seat beside her, pulling her dress down though it still doesn't protect her from the vinyl - she should have brought a towel - she turns on the car, the first thing coming on being the air conditioner. She reduces it from its 1900 setting and pulls out, heading for home.
Oh six thirty comes way too early these days.
xx
Finding a parking space on her block near 15th Street NW is rarely a challenge since the three six story multi-dwelling buildings have their below ground garages and most of the private houses that line either side of the street have their own private garages. Indeed, there are many spaces available to choose from and after turning onto the block she selects the first available one on her left, quite a few yards short of her building on the right.
Her building is a six story monster, eight units per floor, but before she gets out she inspects the street. The only sign of life is an already parked car with its interior lights lit several cars ahead of her on the same side. In fact, she considers that if she'd been a minute earlier that spot, opposite her door, would have been hers.
Before she gets out, feeling the wave of ennui that has everything to do with her bed being less than five minutes away, she sees the interior lights of that other car go out, the door open and a man cross the street to her own building. She doesn't recognize him but even in the high street lights she's by no means too tired to recognize a Marine Fatigue Uniform shirt.
'Maybe I should know him' she decides as she gets out, wondering if she's totally wasted the evening worse than she'd thought she had if a Marine lives right in her building. He'd certainly committed himself to that building before she'd gotten out of her car so, far from being a potential danger, he's not only 'harmless' but someone she definitely wants to meet.
She hurries across the street, her heels clicking a rapid staccato beat on the asphalt. Okay, maybe one twenty something isn't exactly really late. The next seconds, if she can catch him before he boards the elevator, will determine all.
x
She hurries to the outer door as he's passing the inner. He looks back and holds the door for her to pass through after him and she glances to take in about six feet, one eighty trimmed down lean and probably hard. They exchange quiet, meaningless half-words and go to the elevator across the lobby.
The lobby is a spacious one, with a faux fireplace decorating the left side. There's a marble stepped staircase directly before her, the elevator to the right of that. There are mailbox compartments to her right and then around the corner near the right main floor apartments, and a second marble staircase leading to the west side apartments
He pulls the black metal elevator door open and holds it for her to board first. She doesn't select a floor; she'll let him go all the way to his destination, then select her floor when she's alone. But her heart jumps when he chooses six, the top floor, her floor.
She tries not to allow wonder at her good fortune to show on her face. Must be discreet. The car starts its usually too slow ascent and he doesn't look at her any more than she does him.
Very conscious of her small, quite low dipping lavender dress, high hem displaying her long legs to what had been, at the bar, her best advantage, she stands with her back to the rear wall. He's standing at the right side wall, looking across, she's looking out to the door, not at him on her right. She's catching glimpses of his eyes in profile, he's glancing at her legs and she's not minding a bit. She won't say anything, she'll note what apartment he goes to and then start thinking about how she'll meet him.
Her gaze flickers to the name stitched onto his uniform shirt, KURLAND, and she suddenly remembers she'd been annoyed all night at the eyes that too rarely rose above her shoulders.
She looks up, never sees the hard fist, just the flare in her left eye. The pain in the back of her head from her skull bouncing off the metal wall comes even before that in her eye.
She's stunned. Fighting back is automatic for an Agent, but before she can get a hand up her right eye flares, her head crashes again into the steel wall. Blind, she tries to fight but the fist explodes into her left cheekbone, the right side of her jaw and, teetering on her high heels, she feels herself start to fall as another punch to her left eye slams her head for a fifth time into the steel and the world turns off.
xx
Amy Ellyson locks her door to Apartment F6 at precisely 7:32. She crosses the short hallway to the stair well. A woman of precise habit, she is set to catch the 7:41 bus which will take her to work and the breakfast cart where she'll get her coffee and croissant at exactly 8:51. She'll be at her desk at 8:56 and ready to begin the day on the razor's edge of 9:00.
She doesn't take the elevator, never has, because the machine is never precise. People get on at all, or most, or few floors and throw her time completely off. She only uses the stairs which, taken in her high heels, allows her to reach the lobby in 51 seconds and be on the street at 7:34:11.
She pushes the stair well door open. Nothing can change her rate of descent except the bloody woman's nude body sprawled upon the half flight marble landing before her.
Amy can't move. She knows she should be screaming, fit to make every tenant in the building come running, but try as she does she can't get her body to move an inch or that scream to come.
The woman's long black hair is fanned out about her head like an Aztec goddess' headdress, mingled and matted in a pool of dark red, almost maroon blood. Her face is covered in masses of blood and is barely recognizable as a face. Her light purple dress is torn or cut from neck to hem and laid out to both sides. Her body is thickly covered in over a hundred bruises like an obscene checkerboard.
There's more blood on the marble landing from between her widely spread legs than from her face or behind her head. She's gagged by her white bra wrapped around her head and Amy can see pink material has been stuffed into the still woman's open mouth, held in place by the tightly wound bra.
She manages to break her stunned, fearful paralysis enough to raise her left hand and look at her watch. 'Damfukinhellshitandamn! This is really gonna make me late!'
xxx
Doctor Jeanne Benoit waits by the Main Reception desk near the entrance to Monroe University Hospital. It's 9:35 and she's been waiting since her initial call, knowing from experience with Tony DiNozzo that the wait will be very short.
When her patient had been brought in by MPDC, first concerns in the ER had been to stabilize, then identify. By the time the patient's identity and its significance had filtered to her, the woman's condition had been determined and a prognosis reached. Now, while others could begin less immediate and hurried treatment, she has time to notify 'next-of-kin'.
In this case that term is inaccurate, though Tony has referred many times to his fellow Agents sometimes being as close, or closer, than family, but the rules in Washington regarding Federal Agents are specific.
She sees a familiar red haired woman approaching the door, her face as fiery as her hair. She's known her for quite a few months, spoke to her less than half an hour ago, and though she doesn't know the tall, thin grim man who walks beside NCIS' Director, she can make an informed guess.
She knows, at least, that the grim - no, angry woman approaching the sliding door will not want a lengthy story and so she's composed a succinct enough statement. In this, her time with Tony has been very helpful.
The door between them slides open and Benoit steps forward, hands raised. "She's alive and she'll live."
x
Shepherd and the other man seem to collide, for an instant, against a transparent wall and in that instant tension resets from a million down to about a hundred. Minds reset, they can evidently deal now with lengthy explanations and answers. "How is she?" Shepherd asks, her words clipped.
'Well, maybe not one hundred, maybe five hundred but no longer a million.'
"Serious, not Critical and she is not in danger of death," Jeanne emphasizes again. "She's going to be moved from ER and be Admitted to a room," she checks her watch, "within the next quarter hour."
"When can we see her?" the tall man asks.
"I'm sorry," Director Shepherd says, though it's momentarily uncertain whom she's speaking to. "This is Supervisory Special Agent Kevin Lamb, he's Special Agent Levy's Team Leader."
"Good to meet you. You can't see her until after she's been Admitted. ER is very busy at the moment but as her boss you can assist with the Admittance process, expedite that. We can't sedate her because of probable concussion, but she won't be able to answer many questions.
"How badly hurt is she?"
She's not sure how much Medical knowledge this woman has but she does know she detests being spoken down to as much as she does long-winded answers. She supposes that's why they get along. "Fractured left and right parietal and occipital bones. Broken left zygomatic, left clavicle, six fractured ribs; four left, two right, several others bruised. Middle and ring fingers of her right hand broken in three places, imprint on her hand, looks like he stomped on it. Damage to labia majora and minora, cervix and uterus. He must be a bull."
"That will... be enough, Doctor. Thank you." There can be no answer to this. Shepherd looks up to Lamb. His face is stony and she suspects he's on the edge of erupting in fury. She's about as close.
"When she's in a room," Benoit continues, "I'll have someone take you. In the meantime, would you follow me plea–?"
"You go on with her," Shepherd tells Lamb as she pulls her cell phone from her pocket. "I'll catch up."
"Yes, Director." His voice is as rocky, and as he walks beside her Benoit sees him pull out his own cell phone.