First thing: I don't own NCIS or anything associated with it. Even if I DO have a brother named Mark Harmon. (Not nearly as cool as THIS Mark Harmon!)
Second: This is my first fanfic. Be nice but please review!
Third: This story is VERY loosely based on a real case. The names of the innocent (and guilty) have been changed. I happen to love cats, have 5 of them and they are all extremely pampered. Some other people are not as kind.
This story contains depictions of Child Abuse and Animal Cruelty. Eventually TIVA and McAbby. Few, very vague spoilers.
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Hell House
Chapter One
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It was a Thursday afternoon and it was quiet in the bullpen. Apparently, the extremely hot August weather was keeping the Navy crime rate to a minimum. It was just too damn hot out there for anyone to move, never mind commit a crime. There had been no new cases in more than a week. No murders, no thefts, nothing. Abby was so bored she was pulling out evidence from 5 years ago to run tests on. Ducky and Palmer had taken the last 3 days off having nothing to do down in autopsy. McGee was down in Cyber Crimes today, helping them work on some kind of encryption key they were having trouble with. Even Ziva wasn't in the bullpen. She'd been working with the intelligence team translating documents found in Iraq. Gibbs was up in MTAC with Vance making sure they had closed all the leaks regarding Domino. This meant that Anthony Dinozzo was all alone in the bullpen and bored out of his mind.
Tony stared at the pile of cold cases the Boss had dumped on his desk at the beginning of the week with disgust. He hated desk work! He had already checked all the cases. Several times. There wasn't anything new in them and no new evidence to go on. Most of them were burglary cases with the exception of a single murder case. The murder case was the only interesting one: the case of a teenage girl, Jennifer Courtland, daughter of a petty officer who had been raped and killed 10 years ago just off base. The killer had left DNA but there were no suspects. He had sent the old evidence down to Abby yesterday. She had ran the DNA through the computer again but got no hits. None of these cases were going anywhere and had nothing to keep his interest.
Tony had just pulled his game-boy out of his backpack, hoping a game of Tetras would help alleviate the boredom when he saw Gibbs fly out of MTAC and down the stairs.
"Dinozzo! Get David and McGee back here! " Gibbs shouted. Before Tony could even grab the phone to call them, Gibbs tossed a set of keys at Tony's head. "Grab your gear, Gas up the van and be out front in 10 minutes!"
Tony sat up at his desk with a glint of hope in his eyes. "We got a case Boss?"
Gibbs turned and gave Tony one of his signature glares before picking up his own phone and calling Ducky at home. "Ducky, vacations over. I need you and Palmer back here. Meet me at this address..."
As Gibbs gave the information to Ducky, Tony was calling in the rest of the team before racing out to the Van. At least the boredom would be over!
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When the team climbed out of the van at the crime scene, Tony immediately began to think that desk work might not have been so bad after all.
They were standing in waist high weeds in front of a neglected house in a rural area some 20 miles from the Navel Yard.
"This looks like something from that movie we watched Tony, yes?" said Ziva. "The one called "Arrival" I think?"
"Deliverance, Ziva, the movie was Deliverance. I can almost hear banjo's playing." sighed Tony. While he loved correcting Ziva, all the distraction in the world was not going to make this a good day. The house looked like it was still standing more out of habit than construction. There were pigs and chickens wandering around aimlessly in the yard. There was trash of all kinds everywhere. Worse than all of that though was the SMELL.
"What is that stink?" asked Ziva. She looked slightly green. She was at least doing better than McGee, who was standing by a tree a few yards away throwing up. For that matter, Tony wasn't doing too good himself and he was very glad he had skipped lunch. The stench had hit them like a wall as soon as they stepped out of the van.
"That, my crazy ninja chick, is the smell of cats. Lots of cats." Tony replied. "This is not going to be good".
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Gibbs ignored the sight and smell and marched up the the Sheriff standing in the driveway. The Sheriff was doing his best to remain calm in the face of this horror but was already turning green himself. Gibbs flashed his badge at the man. "Special Agent Gibbs, NCIS. What have we got here?"
"Agent Gibbs, I'm Sheriff Mark Walken. We've got a dead Petty Officer in that house. Looks like she was shot in the back in the living room. Name is Michelle Kirste. According to that woman over there" pointing to a woman standing by a grove of pine trees "she was coming to pick up her kids. The woman's husband said he shot her accidently. Thought she was an intruder because she walked in without knocking." Sheriff Walden looked at his notes. "A few things don't make sense though. First, how that guy could think anyone would intrude on a place that smells that bad is beyond me. Second, it wasn't the family that called it in."
Gibbs gave him a hard stare. "Who did call it in?"
"Some guy whose car broke down a mile back. He was looking for a place to make a phone call to the towing company. The woman over there, Karen Michaels, handed him the phone out the door to call. Guess the guy was curious. He looked in the window and saw the body. He didn't mention it, just called for a tow. Soon as he got into town, he called us to report it."
"Where is this guy now?" asked Gibbs.
"In the local hospital. I guess the guy is allergic to cats and had a pretty bad reaction to just setting foot out here." The sheriff paused. "Can't say I blame him. This place is disgusting."
"Any other information you can give us?" asked Gibbs.
"The woman's husband who said he shot her is named Steven Michaels. He's that guy standing next to her. Other residents in the house include her adult son, Kevin Kirste and Michelle Kirste's two kids, Janna and Jason Kirste. We sent the kids to the Bethesda hospital since they are Navy. Never seen two such filthy kids in my life. Covered in bruises, dirt and fleas, if you can believe it. Kevin Kirste isn't home, he works at a factory in town. We're sending out a squad to go find him. From what I got, Michelle Kirste is the woman's daughter in law. She married Karen Michaels other son, Thomas Kirste. Guess he was killed in a car accident a few months ago while Michelle Kirste was out on a ship and Karen Michaels, as the grandparent, inherited the kids until Michelle Kirste got back. As for the guy who called it in, his name is Andrew Belmont. Like I said, he's down at the hospital."
"Great" replied Gibbs. "Anything else?"
"I would advise you wear biohazard gear. The interior of the house is even worse than the outside. Completely covered in cat urine and feces. Rotting trash everywhere. Place is going to have to be condemned. We called Animal Control for you. There has be at least 200 cats in that house, some of them dead. I hope none of your team is allergic." replied the sheriff.
"Anything else?" asked Gibbs.
"Well, we can charge all the adults for endangering the welfare of a child right now, based on the living conditions. We can probably charge them for child abuse and neglect as well from what I saw of the children. We didn't want to step on your toes in the investigation though. Want me to arrest them and bring them downtown?" asked the sheriff.
"No" replied Gibbs. "We'll take care of it. These are Navy kids with a Navy mom. Its our responsibility to take care of them."
"Then I can turn this over to you with no guilty feelings about it?"
"Yep" replied Gibbs. He turned away from the sheriff and walked towards his team.