This is my 36th NCIS Mystery, the Sixth story of my Fourth Season.
'NCIS' and 'NCIS New Orleans' are owned by Belisarius Productions. 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 begins on Thursday, July 26, a day after the end of 'On the High Seas'.
We all know how Tim likes to base his novels on real life situations and characters, so this time you can read his work 'The Other Locked Room', the continuing adventures of Special Agents L.J. Tibbs, Tommy, Lisa, McGregor, Shelly and Pimmy Jalmer together with Drs. Richard Dodgers and Sabrina Shore and Forensic Scientist Amy Sutton as my episode 'Accused'.
Rated M for Violence and Adult Situations
Please Review.
The Other Other Locked Room
by JMK758
Chapter One
Aspects of Love
Michelle Palmer pulls the rolling suitcase by its telescoping handle off the elevator ahead of her similarly burdened husband, but the moment he's off onto the third floor landing Jimmy pulls the handle from her hand.
"I'll take care of it," he offers, tugs both cases the twenty feet to their door, one of four in this level. They'd gotten an early afternoon flight out of Los Angeles, hadn't been in any particular hurry to end their vacations, so it's evening by the time they return to Orchard Lane off 30th, Georgetown.
Gibbs, Abby, Ziva, Tony and Jeanne had flown back last evening when the ship had docked but she'd wanted to stay through the weekend in LA and enjoy their Suspensions. But after an evening and night of being driven crazy, she'd decided she could be driven crazy more comfortably at home, so they'd joined the McGees on the flight back. Siobhan has to report in to the Parish this evening and Tim spent most of the flight splitting his attention between their conversations and working on 'The Other Locked Room' on his writing computer.
"Of course you will," she breathes below a whisper, follows him and reaches into her shorts pocket for her keys.
"I've got it," he says quickly, settling the two cases so he stands in front of the corner door, pulls his own ring out and unlocks the door, opens it and pulls both cases in. She can do nothing but follow the tall man inside.
He leaves the cases on either side of the door, knows better than to roll them along the carpet into the bedroom. He quickly crosses the room and starts the air conditioner. Washington is 90 degrees; they'd avoided the worst heat of the day with their late arrival but the apartment easily flirts with 100, so shorts and tee shirts are more than plenty. He turns on the unit and though she can't see what he resets the temperature to she hears too many beeps.
Michelle pushes the two handles down and starts to lift the cases but he's right in front of her.
"I've got them, darling." Inserting his hands over her palms, he takes the handles and boosts both pieces of luggage up. "You relax." He turns and carries the set past the couch, right and into the short corridor past bath and closet into the bedroom.
"Of course, dearest," she whispers and follows him.
x
The light blue and white trimmed bedroom's most prominent feature is the Queen size bed extending from the right wall between the two windows, more than they need and frequently not large enough. On her left are their matched dressers, on hers is their small television with cable and VCR boxes on his.
In the far left corner is her mobile Altar, looking quite unlike anything but a small squared CD and Video cabinet until she would roll it out and align it East, open the front to remove from a box her implements and spread upon the top the purple cloth with its large silver circled star that reaches to the ends of the case. The far side of the room contains their closets while immediately to her right near the foot of the bed is her seven foot tall Scrying mirror within a heavily carved mahogany frame which bears arcane symbols he's never asked about and is topped with a Wiccan star.
He's already set the cases by the dressers at the left wall before the television dresser and flashes to the conditioner at the far right corner of the room at the head of her side of the Queen bed. He turns the unit on high, sets it for forty degrees to rapidly cut the temperature in the hot room.
She starts to go to the suitcases but he's already back and intercepts her. She feels like she's watching the Flash in a single player tennis game.
His hands lightly grasp her shoulders and gently guide her backward. "I'll take care of unpacking."
"Well, would you please slow down?" she pleads as he backs her up. "You're making me hot just watching you."
Her knees press the foot of the bed and he eases her down onto the large mattress. "You just sit down and relax. It's much too hot."
"Too hot." She looks over her left shoulder to the hard blowing device in the window. "In fifteen minutes you could bring all the food in here and turn off the fridge."
"I just want you to sit down and be comfortable."
She clamps her teeth to hold back the sigh. "Sweetheart, I sat in the hotel room while you fussed, I sat in the cab, I sat for five hours on the plane except when you let me up to pee, then I sat in the cab out of Reagan. If there's one thing I do not need to do, it's to sit down." She tries to stand up but is intercepted by his restraining hands.
x
"I'm concerned about you," he swears when he has her down again.
"I know you are, sweetheart." She looks up the tower of husbandly solicitousness and, while his attention is wonderful, she wishes he had an 'off' switch.
"In your condition you need plenty of rest." He kneels on one knee and starts unlacing her sneakers, removes each and pushes them under the foot of the bed. "Doesn't that feel better?" he asks as he starts massaging her right foot.
She takes a deep breath of rapidly cooling air, lets it out very slowly rather than in a sigh, looks at him and strives for more patience than she's had in months. "It does," she admits, but she pushes down until he must release her foot, good as this ministrations had felt, and she presses both feet onto the carpet. "Jimmy, I know you love me, but darling, you are really freaking me out."
"Honey–"
She grips his arms, forcing his attention. "I conceived this baby five - days - ago. You're a Doctor, two of our best friends are Doctors and I have a wonderful Gynecologist who doesn't even need to see me yet. My appointment is next Wednesday; you know that because you insisted on my making it from the Hotel. Barbara Copeland took me through everything I need to know when we were aboard the Pacific Princess, so much so that I practically have a Midwife's Degree. I can work through my second Trimester before NCIS mandatorally modifies my duty in January and I even disagree with that. I do not - need - coddling."
"What do you need?" He stands up. "I'll get it, honey."
She shakes her head, this time does sigh out her frustration. He hadn't heard a word. "I need you to stop treating me like I'm a fourteenth Century China Doll."
"I love you."
That takes out so much of the frustration. She's seen constant and continuous displays of his love throughout the past week. "And I love you too, sweetheart."
"I don't want you to strain yourself in your delicate–"
"Jimmy." She fights it back. It's not really his fault that he's acting like a young husband who's just learned his wife is pregnant. Actually, she decides, he's not acting like that, he's acting like Jimmy Palmer, but nine months of this... "I know you love me, darling. Do you believe I love you?"
"Of course."
"Good."
x
Hands on his hips, she shoves hard and he staggers backward nearly to the television. She jumps up and lands before him. Grabbing a double fistful of his tee shirt she falls backward, pulls him and gets her right foot onto his pelvis. She lands on her back, shoves upward hard, keeps hold of his shirt and as he sails over her with a yell she lets go at the last instant so he lands on his back upon the mattress, head clearing the end.
She uses the reverse momentum to roll back up to her feet and hurries around to her side of the bed, jumps up so she comes down straddling his hips, yanks at his tee shirt to pull it out of his shorts.
"'CHELLE?"
She shoves the material up past his head, his arms raised high as the neckline almost dislodges his glasses but she's careful. She traps his upraised arms in the shirt and twists it tight, uses her left hand on the rolled shirt to pin his arms off the bed, her right hand holds his chin in place. "I'll show you how delicate I am!"
She lets go of his chin to cup and support the back of his head, lays on his bare chest and uses her lips to silence him.
xxx
Debbie pulls the full apron that protected her brown dress off, carries the two plates of roast beef with plenty of fixings from the kitchen and places them on the dining room table a well timed second before the front door opens and Jerry enters. He always wants dinner ready when he arrives, rarely taking the time to change from work but, as a creature of habit, he's very easy to predict. Taking up the matchbook, she lights the single taper in the middle of the table, trying to set a romantic mood. She turns and puts her delight not only into her eyes and smile but her whole being. "Welcome home, darling."
He has set his briefcase on the floor, smooths back his black hair and pulls his shirt loose.
"Take off your clothes."
"Now darling," she says, crossing the room to him, "that can wait. I made your favorite, roast bee–" Debbie never sees the slap that explodes into her left cheek, the crack loud as a gunshot and she staggers to her right.
"I told you to take off your clothes, bitch."
"Dar–" The second slap is harder than the first, followed immediately by a backhand crack that makes her stagger to her left. She holds her cheeks, looks up at him and he raises his hand again. "Wait!" she pleads. "I'll do it."
Fingers trembling, she releases her stinging, heated cheeks and reaches for the first button. Shaking, knowing she has no hope of changing his mind, she opens one button after the other, down to the last at her stomach. Under her dress her breasts are swollen and dark with uncounted bruises. The swelling had prevented their confinement in a bra, but that would have been no protection.
She pulls the dress down her arms, pulls the sleeves free and is about to push the material over her hips when he clutches her breasts, swollen too large for his wide hands to cover completely. Any touch hurts and he squeezes, viciously crushes her.
She covers her own mouth with her left hand lest the neighbors hear and shrieks into her palm.
xxx
Nine pm in Bloomingdale, the Gala Opening of the Restored 18th Century McGregor mansion in the northwestern quarter of DC. The huge house is a monument to a bygone era where a millionaire was today's billionaire and those very few who had such staggering wealth knew how to show it. From the long, tree lined drive that loops around a shade tree that must be a thousand years old to be seen from so many miles away to the double doors, double wide and double high to the gables and peaks that adorn the roof, the elegance of this three story mansion bespeaks a bygone era distant as a dream.
Inside there is nothing, from the Staffordshire Pottery to the Dutch Delft Earthenware, from the Hepplewhite Mahogany Wing Chair in the foyer to the Neoclassical Wall Mirror in the Drawing Room on the left, from the Tiffany Lamps on many of the ornate tables throughout the house to the Antique Church Stained Glass Windows that in daylight color the foyer from either side of the door, that does not predate the most elderly guest.
The French doors which front every room on the first floor are sycamore, aspen and poplar and the natural white of the wood testifies to generations of care. The marble staircase extends from the end of the too large foyer to branch in two directions to the corners of the second floor and the gold inlaid banisters virtually sparkle. The gold touched marble statue of Cupid set in the foyer's center, its ivory arrow drawn toward the right corner door to bring down some unsuspecting victim who might step out of the hallway leading to the east wing with amore, costs more than the year's salary of a Civil Servant and, impressive as it is, Abby Sciuto truly wants to be home in her coffin.
x
All right, she'll never say so to her friend but wandering the museum-like halls of a millionaire's home while wearing the black gown she'd worn on that first night's dinner aboard the Pacific Princess, the one with the low cut décolletage and backless to show her large ornate cross to best advantage, while she holds a crystal glass of champagne by a white silk napkin, ranks quite a distance below sitting at a 'Brain Matter' Concert in the 'pulverize and deafen' row.
She still feels jet lagged from yesterday's flight back from LA and she suspects her stomach is still somewhere over northern Kansas. As she wanders back from the too elegant drawing room to the left of the main door into the too large foyer (is her subconscious moving her to the front door?) she tries to answer for herself why she'd said 'yes'. Wandering among more tuxedoed and gowned strangers than she ever wants to see again, as though the Pacific Princess had not been enough, she considers once again that through the admittedly impressive tribute to 18th Century very conspicuous elegance is lovely, she should have said 'no'.
But Bill Marsters, half owner of one of DC's most elegant Art Galleries, had scored an invitation from a wealthy benefactor who couldn't attend and who thought Bill's girlfriend would be impressed by the lavish opulence. Okay, it is and she is, but he'd invited Sammy, and this is very much their speed. Sammy, who hadn't seen her in a week, had invited her and she made the mistake of not whacking the back of the imp's head.
In terms of speed, they're a Sunday drive in the days when people took Sunday drives - probably in the heyday of this place - while she's Indy 500 and it's late Thursday evening and there's a full moon in the sky.
Can you be in the Indy as a third wheel on someone else's date?
x
Sammy - Samantha Sky on paper and playbills - was introduced by Bill to the Butler as a Concert Violinist, quite true though Fifth Violinist doesn't translate in Society Circles to Prima Violinist so he'd left that little detail out.
Sammy, being quicker on the draw, had presented Dr. Abigail Sciuto as a Scientist of great renown who works closely with Drs. Carl Sagan and Stephen Hawking, thereby sealing her fate. She hadn't liked it, feeling she can stand on her own but Sammy had insisted upon the misdirection, telling her that Forensic Scientist just doesn't have the same ommph that Cosmologist has.
She doubts that many here, with their minds filled with either Society or the acquisition of wealth, could tell anyone the difference between a Cosmologist and a Cosmonaut. But as her fame grew, it had resulted in some interesting conversations.
x
Anywho, Sammy had said she'd wanted her and Bill to get to know one another better, though why she needs to get to know her friend's boyfriend better she doesn't know. Sammy's happy (when is Sammy not ecstatic?) and that's all that matters. And if he ever does something to make Tinkerbell unhappy,she'll take action and there'll be no Forensic evidence.
Okay, Sammy said she wants to talk to her tonight. During her Date Night - the girl's racking up the head slaps - but she'll listen (when Sammy finally gets around to telling her) and then she'll take her third wheel and ride it home.
She sees them enter the large Foyer through that right rear door beside the bifurcate marble stairs, Sammy with her hands wrapped about his arm as they walk. His black tuxedo fits him so elegantly that her first thought had been 'yummy', but she'll never let her friend know this thought. She's probably blissfully unaware that Cupid is about to score a completely unnecessary bulls eye, for she's hugging Bill's arm to her like it's the Treasure of the Ancients.
'If I ever get that lovey dovey, somebody shoot me. Please.' True, it looks good on her, and the idea of arm candy in this sense is a good one, but she'll take a Goth Party in a full moonlit cemetery to–
No, strike that, that's how she met Mikel Mahwer.
x
The blue gown Sammy bought for this night - she pulls in Concert Violinist's and Apprentice ME's salaries so she can buy elegant gowns on the spur of the moment, though she can wear it at work - had been topped by a blue silk shawl now threaded through the straps of her purse. Abby had never seen her in such dress as this before and decides she's not missing much, for her friend isn't quite in this one.
Though eight inches separate them in height, Sammy is endowed enough to where they can share bras, so the difference makes a more pronounced statement. But a push up bra is one thing, shove up and offer a taste is, well, pushing it.
In fact, though Abby carries her badge, mostly because she'd learned her lesson by not having it when she'd needed it aboard the Pacific Princess, she wishes she had a set of handcuffs now for that girl truly needs to be arrested.
No, strike that too; she'd probably enjoy the cuffs way too much.
x
Abby watches as the couple pauses at the right wall in front of a fancy bit of wall decoration, grapes on the vine with various flowers, all rendered in full color on royal blue. Sammy reaches into her purse and pulls out a four by six pad and, Heaven help her, a plastic tube used for collecting long swab evidence, from which she takes and presents a #2 pencil.
Bill, ever the artist, starts to work on a sketch and Sammy, spotting her, steps away and crosses the room. They rendezvous at the hunting Cupid. "He'll be good for about twenty minutes," she predicts.
"So, what trouble have you been getting yourself into?"
Her lips say "I beg your pardon," but her eyes say 'Plenty'. "People want to know the life of a Concert Violinist but I didn't tell them much. I'm not sure many of these people, nice as they are, can tell a Stradivarius from a Mackey Fiddle. I told them I apprenticed under Gus Mendelssohn," she finishes with a sly grin.
"Gustav Mendelssohn?"
"Yeppers."
"Pathetic."
"I know! What about you?"
"Oh, these Richie Riches did recognize two of the Papers I presented. I'm sorry I never wrote them, they sounded good. I had a delightful set of conversations, one with a Dowager who asked me about some of the research I'm doing with Carl Sagan."
"Sagan? They do realize I was kidding, don't they?"
"Nope."
"Good God. Which Papers did they recognize?"
"The first was 'Superluminary Emissions from Quantum Singularities'."
"Faster than light light from a black hole?" She rolls her eyes.
"That wasn't anywhere nearly as good as their reactions to the one I published with Stephen Hawking: 'Dyson Sphere Accumulation of Dark Energy to Energize a Hyper-Temporal Device within a Chronoton Vortex, allowing placement of a Four Dimensional Transportation Unit within a Three Dimensional Cross Section of the Spatial Temporal Continuum'. Several people recognized that."
Sammy had started giving her 'deer-in-the-headlights' eyes after 'Three Dimensional Cross Section'. "Huh?"
"A fan's explanation of how the TARDIS is powered."
"Well of course, everyone knows that."
"I did promise to say hello to Carl Sagan for her."
"Of course."
"When I dig up my Ouija board." She looks up to the ceiling. "Sorry, Carl."
x
She sees Bill Marsters is still busy capturing some of the wall decorations. "So. A swab tube?"
"Gibbsie's Rule 36, I think it is. 'Always be prepared'."
"That's Boy Scouts Number 1. And 'Anticipate every possibility' is 29. 36 is 'If you think you're being played, you probably are'; and in that dress you're going to be played with before the night's over."
"Counting on it," the imp assures her.
"What's with the floor show?"
"I thought that for tonight I'd let the girls out to play."
"Well, they're playing a bit too much." But Sammy's answering grin only shows she has no intention of slowing down and Abby starts to feel like worse than that third wheel. Time to wrap things up before the party gets raided. "So what's the big news?"
Sammy gives her blank face. "I don't know. What is the big news?"
She will smack her yet. "You told me you wanted to talk about something - during your date."
"Oh. Not news." She looks around. "But not here. Come on."
'If this is 'Powder Room' talk, she is going to be so sorry.' But Abby lets herself be tugged away.
x
Samantha leads her back the way she and Bill had come through the right door and down a blue and white hall whose vaulted ceiling could give Michelangelo a fit of envy.
All the elegant halls on this floor are royal blue and bear bas relief decorative reverse arches of strings of pearls which join one marble Corinthian style half column to the next. Illuminated by three gold chandeliers, each wall segment contains a different large scene over the pearls, be it natural, historical or mythological. The floors are white marble and the vaunted ceilings contain equally elaborate art that Bill might have been sketching if he hadn't had his Tinkerbell on his arm.
It's time to rein the girl in. Midway along this long hall she plants her heels and gives Sammy a sharp and very literal yank to bring her about.
"Okay, so what's up?"
"I just–" The hallway beyond them explodes in chaos as a huge hoard of boys, possibly no one of them older than eight, charges around a forward left corner and nearly runs them down. Only by diving backward into the wall beside her, colliding hard enough to shake her eyeballs, does Abby avoid being crushed by the stampede. It's over quickly, the silent monsters here one moment and gone the next, the chaos moving off from the trembling hallway. She hears loud protests come from the Foyer and hopes someone brought a lasso.
"Kids should be on leashes," she gripes, wondering who would be so oblivious as to bring such a mob to a formal opening such as this and then leave them unattended to get into this mischief. "Right, Sammy?"
"Sammy?"
"Sammy?"
x
Samantha Sky tries to look about her but blackness presses upon her eyes. A moment ago she'd hit the blue wall with her back when she'd jumped away to avoid being crushed by a mob at a 99% off Mall Opening. She only knows she hit the wall - and kept on going.
It's quiet, not quite the utter silence of one of her friend's fabled tombs but quiet enough and black enough for that morbid mausoleum. Slowly her eyes adjust to the blackness and she finds it's not as total as it had seemed. There's a very thin glow... no, a faint rectangle of light, wafer thin and barely visible, rather like a double wide door frame.
She steps up to it, can feel a rough wall. She feels the line of light on her right, thinner than a sheet of paper. She can feel nothing, no knob, no handle, nothing to grab; she can't even get her fingernails into the crack.
Sound. Not quite perfect silence but unintelligible murmuring. She presses her ear to the section outlined by the light. The sound is still too soft but she can make out "I'm telling you we were right here. Then the Mongol Hoard descended on us and she was just gone."
"Could she have...? I don't know..."
"BILL? ABBY? I'm in HERE!"
"I don't know. She couldn't've gone anywhere; I looked. It's like a Twilight Zone episode, one second she's here, the next - poof."
'Oh, Abby.' She takes a half step back, draws a deep breath and screams the shrillest shriek she's ever managed.
"Did you hear that?"
'Bill, they heard it in Sweden.' Her ears ring from the reverberation and her throat's already sore. She's a Violinist, not a Scream Queen, so she settles for pounding her fist on the panel.
"Over here," Abby says and a moment later the door is banged in on her right and she must quickly back away. Glorious light invades her prison and Bill is the first one into the room.
"Hold the door!" she commands sharply enough that he and Abby are both startled into clutching it. When she sees the art upon it, she considers the choice apropos; it's Orpheus leading Eurydice out of the Underworld. "There's nothing to open it on this side and I've seen enough Sit-Coms to–"
"Holy SHIT!"
Bill stares wide eyed past her into the room, about twelve wide by eight deep, to where the light spills on the woman's body lying supine upon the floor.
x
Abby and Samantha step closer, ignoring Bill's whispered cries as he clutches the door to allow light to come in and for them to make their escape, but neither woman can consider such a thing. They stand two feet short of the body, careful to move slowly as the dust that had long ago pervaded the air has all settled to blanket the floor and the woman. Her shoes by the wall before them appear to have been thrown into place, one by the rear left corner. A white coat, jacket to anyone other than a Naval Officer, lies crumpled on the floor near her feet as though thrown into the spot, right sleeve across her left calf.
Dust comes in through the open door, visible in the light streaming in from the chandeliers, but this is minimal. Abby decides that the layer that grays everything is smooth enough that, if she can get an accurate measurement in micrometers, she can estimate how long the woman has lain here.
The corpse is desiccated, her wrinkled skin darkened to the color of parchment, shrink wrapped about her bones. Her face is a grotesque mask, prune wrinkled skin pulled tight to the skull, dry lips shrunk to dried gums, teeth displayed in a parody of a smile that chills the heart. The sunken eyelids are closed, sparing them the sight of eyeballs shrunk to the size of peas lost in the orbital bones. Only the hair, a halo of blonde, has been spared the rigors of mummification. Even her hands, one across her stomach, the other at her side, are shrunken tight about the flanges, the thin wrinkled fingers little wider than the small bones and the dust between them testifies to years spent in the still room.
She lays diagonally in the room with dusty white socked feet pointing to the door, head about two feet from the far wall. Both Abby and Sammy know Gibbs, when he sees this, will not be pleased with the conclusion that the woman had been dragged into this chamber but so it seems to them.
x
While Bill holds the door they inspect the mummified corpse in the stream of light. She's dressed in a white shirt with short black tie crossed under her collar and below the knee length white skirt. The soft epaulets on her shoulders each display two gold bars beside an oak leaf topped by an acorn. These and the white on black name tag pinned to the shirt, coupled with a medal bar containing nine awards, reveal all they need for now.
"Lieutenant A. Saunders," Abby says, her tone dead, "United States Naval Medical Corps."
