This is my twentieth NCIS Mystery and the ninth of my Second Season. The list of stories got so extensive I moved it, with summaries, to my profile.
The usual legal disclaimers apply. I don't own anyone except original Agents and characters.
This story ties to 'Salarium', 'Nosferatu' and 'Autopsy Atrocities', the second through fourth stories of my current Season.
Please Review. I live for reviews.
Rating: T or NCis-17.

Accused
By JMK758
Chapter One
Murder in the Hamptons

At his desk at NCIS Headquarters, Tim McGee keeps his voice as low as possible. The receiver wire of his cell phone hangs an inch from his lips; the ear piece helps to keep this conversation private while he pretends to use his keyboard. "I just wanted to be sure you're all right, that's all."

/A chuisle, I'm fine./ Siobhan O'Mallory's voice is loving rather than chiding. Unlike him, the priest doesn't have to whisper, she's keeping no more secrets from the Church. /I've been settled in for a day. George and Ellen are the only ones who know I didn't spend the past month in Ireland./

Tim had surprised her with a late-night New Year's proposal, one he'd considered too long delayed. After close to two decades, it was all going to work.

Then had come a violent kidnap, days of brutal captivity, assaults and rapes beyond numbering. She'd been rescued but had suffered so brutally that she'd been confined to a hospital. She'd checked herself out too soon but could not endure the trauma and being in the Church so she'd 'fled to Ireland' to be with her family, but had instead come to him with a plea for shelter. In the past month, days into February, the worst of her visible injuries have healed. She'd needed that recovery time, spent in secret seclusion in his apartment, before she was confident to appear in public.

"I miss you already."

x

A glance at the clock shows he needn't endure the separation much longer. It's closing on 1600 and today the team has finished an embezzling case which is now in JAG's lap and they're welcome to it.

The Navy is still reeling from January's Millennium debacle, the fallout of which he and Shav discussed almost as much as their own hopes and plans. The Commandeering of a Navy ship, and the worst attack on U.S. soil since 9/11, are in the hands of the Pentagon, the politicians and - unfortunately if inevitably - the media. Two Admirals, a Marine General and an Army Colonel have already been indicted. Suspicions and accusations rage throughout the country. With charges of treason and murder, heads are rolling faster than during the French Revolution; but that's not his worry any more.

For the moment he and his team mates are free. So many teams are investigating so many allegations that someone has to draw the mundane assignments. For the moment that's Gibbs' team and Tim can't be happier. He just has to complete the report shining on his monitor, transfer it to Gibbs' computer and then he can slip over to Saint Mary the Virgin Church. He and Shav can go out for dinner at–

/Maniac,/ she says without a break. He can almost see her teasing smile. /I thought you'd be glad to see me gone./

"I never wanted you to leave," he tells her, his lips barely moving.

/A woman sharing your bed for a platonic month? You must have been driven half mad./

"It was good preparation for marriage."

/Oh you. Wait 'till next month, I'll show you what our marriage will be like./

"Can't wait."

/Remember, 'cha robh dithis riamh a' fadadh teine nach do las eatarra'./

He tries to work this one out, but finally has to admit: "Okay, I'm lost."

/'Two never kindled a fire but it lit between them.'/

"Can't wait for that either."

/Pervert./

x

Mid-March is close but there's so much to prepare for. Just a handful of people, most of whom are of NCIS, are aware yet that any preparation is in the works. When Siobhan had insisted upon secrecy until they were ready to reveal their plans, it was her congregation that the priest had been concerned about.

"I'm just glad you're feeling better," he tells her softly.

She'd returned to the Rectory yesterday from a publicly announced sabbatical supposedly spent in Ireland. She had left for home and family - and a last minute, unannounced change of mind diverted her to Silver Spring. The month that followed was a period of learning for each of them.

/I'm fine,/ she insists. /The brace comes off next week and that's the last of the problems people can see./ Damage to the tendons of her right wrist has kept her immobilized from forearm to fingers, forcing the simplest things to become a challenge.

/Tomorrow I go back to work upstairs./ As Chaplain she spends Tuesdays, though she's missed today, at the Navy Yard. /Unlike you, I don't have to pass any tests to come back to work./

"You'll be back just in time for your interview."

x

There's a moment of silence. /What interview?/

"'We' magazine? Their 'Women of NCIS' feature? Did you forget?"

/Darn, I did./

"So remember, dress sexy."

/I'll wear my uniform,/ she refers to her black slacks, pale blue back-button shirt and inch and a half high wrap-around white collar. /They can take me as they find me./

"That's sexy."

Another moment of silence.

/We really need to talk./

"Pencil me in for a few hours on your couch."

/I'm serious, the last thing I want is more reporters. I hid out for a month to get away from them./

x

First had been this past summer's drama at St. Mary the Virgin, the torture/rape murders of two members of the congregation, following hard on the heels of which was her appointment as NCIS' first woman Chaplain. Then her apartment had been bombed in an attempt to kill Abby, who had sought sanctuary there. The explosion had removed the entire top of the building and left the rest uninhabitable. Then, fortunately unknown to reporters, she had been one of several women targeted for extortion based on some embarrassing photographs from her unrestrained youth. The outrageous litany had climaxed in the devastation Charlie Morley had inflicted upon her on and following New Year's.

As a result of the journalistic onslaught that followed each calamity, she'd felt as though reporters had been camping out under her bed. She'd fled to Ireland as much to get away from them as to recover from the horrible series of assaults.

The media certainly hadn't known, and Rev. George Donaldson and Church Secretary Ellen Meyer weren't going to reveal to anyone, that she hadn't left the country. The cover story had been so good that for a few hours it'd even fooled Jethro.

x

The month hadn't been entirely smooth, however. Though while in his company, in his bed, she'd noticed she no longer tossed about in her sleep, she still could not adjust easily to sharing that bed with a man, not even Timmy.

She'd insisted he not use his sleeping bag, however, and forced herself to shove aside her discomfort. She'd told him she'd focused instead on the many times when, in their teens, they'd very willingly shared beds for far more than sleep.

But over this past month he'd been an utter gentleman, at what personal cost to himself she could only imagine.

She didn't want to add to his burden by implying she'd be interested in more than cuddling and comfort; they both knew better.

That decision had been very dramatically driven home to them on their second night together. She'd awoken in the blackness of the closed bedroom feeling his weight draped across her. In that disoriented instant she wasn't in her own bedroom in the Rectory, she was back in that basement dungeon, being brutalized, being raped.

Her first screech had catapulted Timmy off the bed to a crash upon the floor. It took him quite some time, even with the light on, to quiet her screams.

She'd gone from panic to hysteria, clinging to him, weeping like a baby. It'd taken her a very long time to calm down.

Not long after, there had been knocking on the apartment door. The police had arrived.

A half hour of explanations, assurances and recovery and they were again alone, but never did make it back to sleep.

It had also been the last time they'd gone to bed with the lights dialed all the way off.

x

"I'm just relieved, that's all," he tells her, serious again.

/I'm fine,/ she insists. /I don't even have to wear makeup unless I want to. Not only did Dr. Dongan okay me but Ducky pronounced me fit and he's a demanding healer./

"His patients rarely argue with him."

/And I will be ready for the seventeenth,/ she assures him firmly. /We'll make it a day worthy of parades, just you wait./

"I can't."

/To tell you the truth, I can't wait ei–/

"Gibbs."

/Huh?/

He drops his whisper further. "Have to go. Now. He just came out of the Director's office, crossing the platform and he doesn't look happy."

/Adhraim thú./

"I adore you too."

He pushes the disconnect, pulls the wire from his ear and lets it fall into his lap. He's pretending to complete the finished embezzlement report on his monitor before the supervisor reaches the stairs.

Gibbs comes about at the base of the stairs and enters the enclave. "Grab your gear, we've got a dead DI."

McGee's heart falls into his lap with the phone wire. A blessed three minutes to go and he would've been on the elevator.

"What's Mollvaney giving it to us for?" Tony DiNozzo protests, annoyed and not caring who knows it. "It's four o'clock."

"Didn't come from Dispatch. We inherited this one from Metro."

x

Nearly every team in Washington has been dealing with the fallout from the 'Millennium Debacle', but for the moment they're excluded from inquiring into a disaster of almost mythic proportions. However, as the cases grow with appalling rapidity DiNozzo knows they may well be drawn back in and every time quitting time approaches he holds his breath. Today he seems to have done so for the wrong case.

He wants to protest that this should still be passed along, but there is no one left to give it to. He sees Ziva David, across the bullpen, is no more pleased by the aborting of their plans. Self-preservation, however, prevents him from saying anything more. He knows of only one person in Metro Homicide who would call Gibbs directly; Detective Lieutenant Jeffrey Carpenter.

"Call Ducky," Gibbs orders, "get him on the road."

"I already am," Michelle Palmer, at the desk beyond McGee's, replies, her hand covering her phone's mouthpiece. At Gibbs' look, she explains, "I had to tell him why dinner's going to be late."

"Giving Ducky some home cooking?"

"No, sir," she replies with a tiny smile. "Where should I have them meet us?"

"Dupont Circle, Nineteenth Street Northwest between M and N; the Hampton Arms."

She passes on the information, quietly finishing with: "I'll make it up with an extra special dessert. See you there. Bye." She kisses the receiver.

"Now I really hope it's not Ducky," DiNozzo quips.

Preparations made, the team heads for the elevator.

As the doors close, Gibbs asks McGee, "You say 'hi' to O'Mallory for me?"

xxx

Gibbs' blue Charger leads the Major Case Response and ME trucks to the front of the Hampton Arms, a fifteen story apartment building fronted by a crowd of MPDC cruisers. The building and its adjacent parking lot take up half the block. The police Medical Examiner's van is already pulling out; Jimmy Palmer maneuvers NCIS' counterpart into the space just vacated and Tony halts the MCRT truck beside it, double parked so the two groups can converse as they prepare their supplies.

"I'm sorry to miss Tom," Ducky says as he leaves the blue and white truck in his Assistant's care to join the agents and obtain some insight on the case. "I've been trying to get together with him all week."

"Shop talk, Duck?" Gibbs asks as he opens the back of the MCR truck. The agents gather their supplies as Jimmy, with Michelle's aid, pulls out the gurney and other equipment from the truck at the curb. Gibbs will educate him later on the protocol he expects; Palmer should have left the only vacant parking space for the MCRT vehicle.

"Not really, he owes me sixty-two dollars from last week's bridge game."

"In that case, he saw you coming."

"I shall make him regret it next time."

Gibbs can pick up a measure of annoyance in the burr; Scotland is not far from Ducky's voice.

"What about you, Palmer?" Tony DiNozzo baits as the man slings bags out of the back of the ME truck onto the gurney. "You get into the weekly ghoul games?"

"No," Michelle answers faster than her husband can, "he knows what I'll do with Ziva's genital cuffs if he tries."

Though her declaration does halt all activity for a moment, no one dares to pursue this.

x

The seven Investigators walk through glass doors into a lobby that's much wider than deep. To their left is a Security desk at which stands an officer in a black uniform. When he sees five men and women dressed in black badge coats and identifying caps, another pair in open coats and coveralls with stitched 'Medical Examiner' identifications, the shorter man wearing an anachronistic fishing cap, he doesn't bother to reach for the sign-in book. He points to the elevators to his left. "You want the ninth floor. Right as you get off, then left down the hall, Apartment F."

The group waves thanks; the five Investigators take the right car upward, Ducky and Jimmy the left. The gurney takes up most of the space. On nine, they find the directions superfluous. A uniformed MPDC officer stands opposite the car, another posted to their right where he can look down the long corridor before him. The hall in which the elevator deposited them is the base of a U; two corridors extend the length of the building.

When they reach the intersection and turn, they're looking down a double row of four doors, the second on their left the center of activity. Half a dozen uniformed officers give hint of the numbers they'll find within.

The hall is painted a faded off-white but the apartment doors they pass are deep brown which matches the carpeting. Ducky cannot think of a more depressing shade, and from an analytical point of view, a less helpful one.

Apartment F contains four people, fewer than they'd expected. Seated on the living room couch is a man who appears, for all they can see of him, to be in his late thirties. They can't see his face; he weeps into bloody hands. His disheveled clothes are drenched, and blood stains him from gory hands to knees. The stench of death is a heavy weight in the still air.

A uniformed officer stands nearby the couch, notepad in his hand, as though waiting for some lucid words. There are two non-uniformed men, one seated on the couch beside the weeping man, notebook in hand, but it's the other who catches Gibbs' attention. His dry brown hair has suffered in the winter wind, his uncombed mane at odds with the crisp trench-coat.

x

Gibbs would greet his old friend with 'what've you got, Carp?', but the palpable cloud of grief that fills the apartment smothers any inclination to humor. In turn, Detective Lieutenant Jeffery Carpenter's greeting is a silent tilt of the head to a room in line from the front door.

The room Carpenter indicates is the bathroom. A quick look at the apartment's layout shows it to be four-square, a kitchen and bedroom comprising the right corners. The bathroom encroaches upon the kitchen's space to allow for the larger bedroom.

In the bathroom is a glass doored shower-tub set against the far wall; the glass lies in hundreds of shards on the tiled floor. A woman's body, nude and bloody, lies on its left side, legs bent, feet touching the tub. Blood is smeared on the tiles, the agents have seen that much of it is on the crying man outside. Though the room is spacious, Gibbs signals all but Ducky and Jimmy to remain in the living room to gather information. Carpenter closes the door so their words won't be heard.

"Staff Sergeant Wendy Langley, thirty six," he says over the still wet body. "When we found out she was a Drill Instructor back three weeks from a tour in Afghanistan, I pulled my people out and sent up the Gibbsignal."

Gibbs doesn't need to ask how she died, grateful it hadn't been a slip and fall through the glass door. He can think of few ironies worse than a Marine who survived combat, improvised explosive devices, terrorists and insurgents half a world away only to fall and bleed to death outside her own shower.

There's a neat round hole a little more than a quarter inch wide in the white tile of the shower wall, another in the woman's right side. The significant thing about the hole in the tiled wall is that it shows the bullet burst outward from the wall rather than striking Langley and going in. Tiny fragments of wall and tile have rained into the tub and been carried toward the catch-screen over the drain. Gibbs can see small grit adhered by blood to the woman's side surrounding the wound.

There's a corresponding hole four feet high in the now closed wooden door. Carpenter points out the obvious trajectory. "The round came through the wall, her, door, and buried itself two-thirds of the way crosswise into a box of vinyl 33 rpms in the living room."

"A lot of firepower." Gibbs looks at the hole, not sure yet which of the many types of rifles they'll be looking for, but he knows it will be a powerful one. He gets as close to the shower wall as he can without disturbing Ducky and Jimmy as they crouch beside the still woman. "Any idea what our shooter was aiming at?"

"Not yet, LeeJay. I sent an officer downstairs to the Management office for a key before we determined she was one of yours. I've got it. I wanted to do this together."

x

Ducky looks up to them. "The bullet entered her right side, as you see, between her sixth and seventh ribs, would have penetrated both lungs, hit or missed the heart; I can tell you more when I examine the exit wound under her."

"Fatal?" A layman might consider the question odd, but Gibbs wants to know if the glass both under and beside the body, the source of her many cuts, could have influenced her fate. There's no glass visible on top of her body, just around her, though Gibbs is sure Abby will be able to find plenty of smaller shards in the road map of wounds, mixed in with the blood.

Gibbs can judge from the blood smeared over the wet floor that the husband, far from caring about preserving forensic evidence, had been cradling his wife's body. Was she still alive at that point? Something to be determined later. From what they'd seen outside, the husband had been kneeling in the pool of blood, possibly pulled her further out of the tub from where he'd found her. That covers - maybe - the blood on him down to his knees, his clothes still soaked from the possibly still running water. The position of her legs supports this reconstruction, but Gibbs will reach no conclusion now. He'll know more and better later.

"Again, I shall have to let you know," Ducky tells him, "though this much broken glass didn't help her."

x

"I thought bathroom glass wasn't supposed to shatter like this," Jimmy says.

"Quite right. Due to many unfortunate accidents decades ago, most showers that still employ sliding glass doors are equipped, or were replaced long ago, with safety glass. I shall not try to speculate as to why this was not the case or if it was done with substandard materials. This much blood, however, does indicate that the wound was not immediately fatal. I'd say she could have survived for a brief period before succumbing. I shall give you the exact cause and manner of death as soon as I can."

"How long has she been dead?" Gibbs observes that not only does water cover the floor but a great deal of the pooled and smeared blood is still red and wet. Only some of the smaller spots have begun to show signs of either drying or separating into serum.

"Once again, a preliminary estimate is less than two hours. I shall not be more specific than that at this point. This room is quite humid. Since the young lady had been wet and presumably the water was hot - or at least warm - then very likely cooled rapidly - that will all affect the determination of the actual Time of Death. I will not say more definitely until I know for certain." He indicates the liver thermometer he'd just inserted through her side.

x

Gibbs turns to Carpenter, but doesn't have to ask.

"The husband, John Langley, came home and found her, he thinks, about three fifteen or twenty. 911 got the call at three twenty three. He said he opened the front door, could see the light shining through the hole in the door into the darkened living room, came in and found this."

"Was the shower still running?"

"He says he turned it off after he called us."

Gibbs can see that the valve handle, though dripped on by the shower, has visible blood on it. There'd likely been a spray of blood in both directions; the running water dispersed most of it from the wall. Reconstructing the glass fragments will be more telling.

"When the first unit got here," Carpenter continues, "the front door was closed but not locked, he was in here with her, still holding the body and crying."

"Then let's see what's back of that wall." He opens the door, leads the way, gets partway through the living room when John Langley leaps from the couch, blocks his path, his tear-lined face masked with his wife's blood.

"You, NCIS, who killed my wife? Who killed Wendy?"

"I'm going to find out," Gibbs promises before the uniformed officer coaxes the broken man back to his seat. It's obvious that Langley had been talking to the other plain clothes detective seated on the couch. He probably never thought to wash off the blood, the police won't suggest it. Photos, always photos to be taken, documenting everything; grief and pain preserved forever.

DiNozzo is by the stereo at the right wall, photographing the box containing the vinyl records that had stopped the bullet. Ziva and Michelle examine the room, McGee is by the couch, pad in hand, waiting as the uniformed officer returns the distraught man to the interview.

Gibbs will leave them to it, though he'll be certain McGee takes testimony again before collecting what Metro has. "DiNozzo, you're with us."

"On your six, boss," he replies crisply, setting the sketch pad he'd been prepared to use in the bathroom upon an equipment satchel and following them out.

x

In the hall, Gibbs can't shake the grim miasma that has filled the scene. Walking up the corridor, they pass the uniformed officers and turn right across the long walkway past the guarded elevators and then right again down the corresponding walkway. There they see a woman insert her key into the lock of apartment J.

Gibbs is annoyed to see that this tenant had not been challenged. It had already been determined the round had come from that apartment, and he doesn't need to so much as glance at Carpenter beside him to know the man's thoughts.

"Excuse me," Gibbs calls out to the woman, short enough to be a girl, before she can turn the key. He can see little of her, only that she is petite, not much more than five feet tall. Her long blue coat reaches halfway down her calves; short wisps of pale blonde hair poke out from under a large matching hat. "May we have a word with you?"

She turns and her face alights in joy. Despite her height, this is no girl. "Agent Gibbs, Agent DiNozzo, hi! Detective Carpenter! Wow!" Samantha Sky's delight fills the hall.

x

She walks quickly to the surprised men and hugs each. DiNozzo is the only one who can let his pleasure at this enthusiastic greeting mask his surprise. Samantha Sky is even more of a hugger than Abby is.

Gibbs glares at DiNozzo over the lovely young woman's head, the look intended to say he's enjoying the hug too much.

"It's so great to see you!" Sammy exclaims when she pulls back from DiNozzo. "I didn't know you were coming. This is wonderful!"

The petite woman, he remembers her to be 22, is the only person Gibbs knows who, when she's excited, speaks the language of emphatics. It often takes some getting used to, as does her uber-jubilant manner. "You live here?" Gibbs doesn't like coincidence and likes even less that disconcertion at seeing Samantha Sky again has made him fall back on so 'Probie' a question. Her key still in the lock behind her would have alerted even DiNozzo.

The medical school student had worked for Ducky last year as an Apprentice Medical Examiner when Jimmy Palmer had been laid up following his having been shot in the incident with the winged women. She'd stayed on when the Palmers got married and went to Hawaii on their honeymoon.

At that time he'd tolerated her boundless enthusiasm as something out of his control and had counted the hours until the Palmers' return. He'd avoided her as much as possible, considering her too consistently and staggeringly happy for anyone's good, and had never cared to ask the ebullient young woman where she lived.

x

"Yeppers, this is me. But wait! If you're not here to see me - after all why would you come?" she asks Carpenter, not pausing for breath, "then you're on a case? Say, if you're here, is Ducky here? I'd so love to see him again. If you're on a case, can I help? I'm not doing anything and I'd so love a chance to work with Ducky again, even for a little while. May I? Not that I didn't see him just New Year's but I can't get enough of him. Please tell me he's here."

"He's here," DiNozzo obliges, earning another glare from Gibbs. This isn't a social call. "Sorry, boss, but–"

"But it's so great to see you again!" Sky exclaims without a perceptible break. "I've had a really shitty day, I can't tell you how much it rots, but seeing you guys just makes–"

"Miss Sky." Sammy Sky is too happy as a rule, and Gibbs hadn't forgotten how the effervescent young woman gets when she's excited; he just hadn't expected to have to deal with it again. Dealing with the ecstatic medical student when she's excited is akin to receiving a thorough beating with a happiness club.

"Come on, 'Chicky', remember? You're the only one I ever let call me that; well, except for Ducky and he doesn't so really you're the only one. Not a lot of people would understand, but that day in the hills above Compton–"

"Miss Sky!" Gibbs commanding tone breaks through her ecstatic enthusiasm.

Her pale blue eyes widen in surprise. She's actually halted in her deluge of ecstasy. "What?"

"May we see your apartment?"

Her delight is back in full force. "Well, sure! Of course, come on in." She returns to the door with them, but then halts. "On second thought, no." She turns back to them, no longer merry, the image of contrition. "No, I'd love to have you, you see, but this isn't a good day. I've been having some problems, you see, and I've been ... Maybe another time? I'll cook you all a marvelous dinner! We can–"

"Miss Sky, I'd really like you to let us in."

His serious tone breaks through her enthusiasm. "Why?"

"Because I asked nicely." Without a Warrant they can't compel her, he must rely on her extremely outgoing nature. He can't recall being grateful for it until now.

"Well, sure, I guess so." Surprise gives way again to bright enthusiasm. "But I can't guarantee the reception you'll get." She turns to and unlocks the door. "Karen and I had a - well, I'm kinda mad at her if you can believe that. This really isn't a good day," she pushes the door open. "Don't say I didn't warn–"

She halts, falls a step back and her shrill shriek slices through the hall.