Lawyers! Lawyers!
by channelD
written because: I have to do something to purge this execrable character from my mind
rating: K plus for some excessive (but necessary to the story) violence. No jury would convict me, etc.
spoilers for: episode 7.11, Ignition
Warning: Character death (and well-deserved, in my estimation) of a lawyer. (Mind; not all lawyers are bad. But this one was.)
A/N: This is not an episode tag. This is what I would like to see happen next.
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disclaimer: I own nothing of NCIS.
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Attorney Margaret Allison Hart (M. Allison Hart) had become more than a thorn in NCIS' collective side: she was closer in impact to a mortar shell, both in terms of damage and noise.
At one of her subsequent meetings with the team on behalf of her clients, Tony surreptitiously audio taped her. With Abby's help, he then scraped out the words, leaving the yowling, which they superimposed over a nature film of wild beasts attacking. "Although it is an affront to the poor beasts," Abby remarked. She had not met Attorney Hart, but by this time, she had heard plenty of stories.
"Do you know why sharks don't bite lawyers?" Tony asked her.
"No, why?" Abby asked, though she knew a fair number of lawyer jokes.
"Professional courtesy."
"Do you know what they call it when there's a bus full of lawyers, with only one vacant seat, and that bus goes over a cliff?"
"No, what?" asked Tony.
" 'A missed opportunity.' "
"I like that. What do you say when you've got a lawyer buried up to his neck in sand?"
"I don't know. What?"
" 'I need more sand!' "
" 'Bout done with the 5th grade jokes?" Gibbs said, swinging into the lab.
"Gibbs, I was a bright child, but I would not have gotten the nuances of lawyer jokes in the 5th grade," Abby protested.
He ignored that, and only glanced at the looping animal video. "Back to work, DiNozzo. Abbs, do you have that soil analysis done?"
Reluctantly, Tony and Abby exchanged a quick look and then went their ways. They could only make their days bearable by depowering Hart the Shark…why couldn't Gibbs understand that?
- - - - -
Mid afternoon, Vance appeared at Gibbs' desk with an older man in tow. Judging by the man's expensive suit and shoes, he was a well-paid person, or independently wealthy.
Tim's nose crinkled and he felt his hackles rise. He smelled lawyer.
"Agent Gibbs," said Vance, "this is Attorney Buckton Hamilton Wolfram, of the firm Wolfram, Hart and Donewitz."
Ziva had been standing at Tim's desk. "Is that not the firm for which Ms. Hart works?" she murmured to her teammate.
"Mr. Gibbs, I demand that you release Attorney Hart immediately," said Wolfram; his deep voice rumbling out of his beefy chest. The chest was so big that one might be forgiven for thinking that the souls of losing clients were trapped in there.
"We're not holding her," Gibbs said mildly, his hands out in a search me position. "She's not here. I haven't seen her all day."
"You're lying! She left her office five hours ago to come over here. When she didn't appear for our one o'clock meeting and didn't answer her cell phone, we knew you had to be responsible."
"Guilty as charged," said Tony, raising his hands in surrender. "And I also was behind the assassination of the archduke, and the battle of Little Big Horn, and fired the first shot at the battle of Lexington."
"DiNozzo, shut up!" Vance snapped. "Attorney Wolfram, if Agent Gibbs says Attorney Hart hasn't been here today, then she hasn't been here. He is an honest man."
"That's not what Allison has told us," said Wolfram coldly. "If I find out that she was indeed here—"
"—you'll be sure to let us know," Vance filled in. "I'll see you out."
"I'm marking my calendar," said Tim when the two men had left. "A day without Allison Hart! That'll be an occasion to celebrate."
"But it does not answer Wolfram's concern," Ziva said, thinking. "If Hart was on her way here, and did not arrive here…then where is she?"
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Tony hung up the tip line phone, and looked grim. "Boss, anonymous caller; sounded male. Said he's holding quote 'our lawyer lady' for ransom."
"He's holding Allison Hart?" Tim asked in surprise.
"Why would he think we would want to pay a ransom for her?" asked Ziva.
"Got an address for the ransom drop, DiNozzo?"
"Uh, yeah, boss. It's in the center of Rock Creek Park. How do we know this isn't something she's set up herself?"
"We don't," said Gibbs, picking up his desk phone. "But since kidnappings are the FBI's jurisdiction, they can unravel it."
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"Gibbs; you might want to see this," said Fornell of the FBI, on the phone. "I've just sent you a YouTube link."
With a wave of his hand, Gibbs got Tim to retrieve the link and pull up the video. It was of Allison Hart, tied to a chair in a small, dark room, in some mild distress, snarling and threatening Gibbs, NCIS, the FBI, and everyone else she could think of. "So?" asked Gibbs.
"Her captors let me make phone contact with her, after I saw this video thing."
"And?"
There was a slight pause. "There's 20 bucks in it for you if you'll take the case off my hands."
"She gave you hell, huh? No deal."
"I'll make it 50."
"Nope."
"I'll throw in a bottle of bourbon. The good stuff; not the brown water you drink."
"Goodbye, Tobias."
- - - - -
Other cases came up for Gibbs' team, and Atty. Hart was largely forgotten. Then one day Fornell called Gibbs again. "We've found her. She's dead. And now she's all yours, Gibbs."
"Now how do you figure that?"
"There was a note on her, reading, 'I want Gibbs of NCIS to investigate my murder.' "
"You made that up, Tobias."
"Goodbye, Jethro."
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Reluctantly NCIS took possession of the body. At least M. Allison Hart was beyond being able to verbally abuse them.
One look at the body had Ducky and Jimmy wide-eyed and then smiling. "It's about time you gave us a real puzzle to work with, Jethro," said Ducky. Gibbs only walked out, eyes rolling.
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"You have results of the autopsy, Duck? It's been a week…"
Ducky straightened up. "Yes, Jethro; we do at last. The following damages were inflicted on Ms. Hart, in this order:
"She was first run over with a Zamboni ice clearing machine. Then she was filleted with a fish knife, design cuts made over her body with a cookie cutter, skin over-softened with vast amounts of skin cream, fingernails overly manicured, harpooned like a great white shark, wrist-slapped probably 2,000 or more times with a wooden ruler, submerged in a bathtub of green Jell-O, knitted into a steel wool sweater, painted with flat enamel house paint (over a coat of primer), upholstered like an easy chair, flipped like crepes in a giant crepe pan, served up in a Mickey D's Grumpy Meal, had nail polish applied all over her (except for her nails), tattooed 1,000 times over with yellow smiley faces, buried up to her neck in sand (by which I surmise there wasn't enough sand), had her toes pinched over and over by a herd of hermit crabs, hair curled too tightly with a curling iron, forced to walk on 12 inch high high-heeled shoes, nearly deafened by at least 48 hours straight and incessant ringing of cow bells in her ears, hole-punched, bronzed, defenestrated, smothered in 50 layers of bubble wrap, hurled in a catapult, licked by 100 dogs (the DNA saliva tests were laborious), subjected to swirlies and wedgies, pumped with an air hose, whacked with a ping pong paddle, Greco-Roman wrestled, rocked over rocks, preserved in a vat of preserves, nestled in a hornets' nest, married and divorced 27 times in 24 hours, hung on picture hooks—"
He paused as Jimmy cleared his throat. "This is where Mr. Palmer and I disagree. He feels that the hornets' nest came after the hanging on the pictures hooks. After that she was lubed, rotated, sanded, dry walled, punctured, patched, toes kissed by goldfish, soaked in hot chocolate (with mini-marshmallows and whipped cream), flambéed, held in a bakery and not allowed to eat anything, hit by 75 dodge balls and 36 beach balls—"
"Duck—maybe you can just email me the report."
"You never read your email. Besides, I'm almost done: Hit in the face repeatedly by a cuckoo clock cuckoo; handshaked with a joy buzzer, forced to go outside without make-up, forced to wear white after Labor Day, and finally, shadowed for three days by a three-year-old who kept calling her 'Granny'. Having to admit her real age was the death of her."
Gibbs only stared. "Do you think anyone will believe that?"
"Of course, dear fellow. Judging by her rings, she was 45 years old. Being a grandmother is not all that surprising at that age."
"No, I meant the causes of death."
"Ah. That."
"What will her law firm say?"
"See for yourself!" Ducky pointed to a side table loaded with flowers, champagne, and Belgian chocolates.
"They're thanking you?"
"Well, all of us. She's gone from their lives; now they can get on with more honest work."
And so NCIS was thereafter free of the lawyer-demon, and they lived happily ever after for the rest of their days.
-THE END-