Once again, I apologize for having to upload this as a separate document. Maybe for my next story the haunt will leave me alone???!!!!

Summer of '46

-8-

Mrs. Matz answered the door on Tim's first knock. She was a plump little woman with short, curly dark hair lightly streaked with gray and a young face. She stood aside and gestured them in. Tony noted 2 suitcases standing near the door.

"Hi, Mrs. Matz, thanks for meeting with us," Tim said. "I'm Special Agent McGee and this is Special Agent DiNozzo. As I said on the phone we're from NCIS, Naval Criminal…"

"Naval Criminal Investigative Service. Yes. I looked you up online right after you called. Don't you just love the Internet?"

"Yes, he does, Mrs. Matz," Tony said, grinning at the dirty look McGee sent his way.

She led them to a comfortable room with easy chairs and a love seat positioned in front of an impressive red brick fireplace. Built-in bookshelves lined two walls and a third wall had 2 large windows looking out over a well-manicured garden. The afternoon sun shone in the windows. Tony liked the room. It felt comfortable. He wouldn't mind having a house with a room like this someday.

"Sit down please," she told them.

Tony took an easy chair and McGee sat on one side of the loveseat. Mrs. Matz picked up a box from the end table next to the empty chair. She carefully handed it to Tim and then sat down beside him.

"I thought you might find this helpful. It's all of the things my grandmother saved about Aunt Anna. Dad kept them after she died. And I've never been able to throw them away even though he passed away a while back. I just couldn't. I don't know why. She's been missing for over 60 years. Not like she's ever coming back."

Her voice got softer. She sniffed and wiped her cheek where a tear had dripped.

"Dad never stopped hoping she'd come back. He said she was the one who actually raised him. He was the baby of three and his mom was already in her 40s when he was born. Anna was 7 years older than him. He said she was his 'little mama.'"

She sniffed again.

"Their older brother, Joshua, died in North Africa during the war. Their father, my grandfather, got cancer and died on V.E. Day so it left grandmama, Aunt Anna and Dad. He went to college right out of high school to avoid the draft. Aunt Anna was in the Navy, a nurse. All she'd ever wanted to be apparently. Dad always wanted to go to Yale Law School, received a scholarship and everything but when he got the call saying Anna was missing he came home and never went back. He stayed with his mom and finished up his law degree at American University. Grandmama spent the rest of her life waiting for Aunt Anna to come home. She rarely left the house and Dad said she kept the outside light on every night. Never turned it off. If the bulb burned out he had to stop whatever he was doing and run home and put a new one in."

She stopped talking and stared out the windows at the sunny yard. Tony and McGee looked at each other, speechless. Usually they didn't know the follow-up stories of the loved ones left behind by the victims in their cases. Here was a second generation crime victim. Lives had been changed. A young man's dream of attending Yale had ended, a grieving mother spent the rest of her life in denial, a girl grew up into a woman who still cried over the family tragedy 65 years later; all because someone had killed a young woman and her unborn baby. Tony thought he saw the shimmer of tears in McGee's eyes. He knew he had been affected by Mrs. Matz' story as well. He took a deep breath.

"Thank you, Mrs. Matz, for telling us the story."

"You really think you've found her, Agent DiNozzo?"

"We're pretty sure, ma'am. The dog tag had her serial number and her name."

He decided to drop the big bomb.

"The body we found, Mrs. Matz, was pregnant. Our medical examiner thinks maybe 5 months or so based on the size of the fetal skull."

She looked at him and he noticed for the first time she had the same eyes as her aunt, dark brown and slightly slanted. Like Ziva's eyes.

"Anna was pregnant? Oh my! I never heard that but dad did say she had been seeing someone for several months before she vanished. What was his name? Ron, Rob? No, wait. It was Ray. Dad called him 'that bastard Rayburn.' I think there are a couple of letters in the box Anna had saved from him."

"Do you remember his full name?" Tim asked.

"No, but I believe he was in the Navy too. The letters, goodness, I haven't looked at them for years; I think the letters were from a naval base, where was it? I don't remember but you'll see from the letters."

A horn sounded outside.

"Oh, there's my cab. I have to catch a plane to Atlanta. My daughter is scheduled to undergo a Caesarean section day after tomorrow and I'm going to babysit my two grandsons. Thank God the new baby is a girl!"

Now she smiled, obviously pleased at the prospect of a granddaughter.

Tony stood up.

"Thanks for talking with us, Mrs. Matz. McGee, take the box. Here, let me help you with your bags."

They all walked out together after Mrs. Matz set her alarm system and locked the door. Tony put the suitcases into the cab's trunk. The woman turned to them before she got into the backseat of the car.

"Will you please let me know if it's Anna? If it is, I'd like to give her and the baby a decent burial in our family plot. She's always had a spot there."

Tony assured her if it was decided the skeleton was indeed Anna Stein she would be able to claim the bodies and put them to rest. Mrs. Matz nodded her thanks and waved to them as she left.

Tony and Tim walked silently to their car. Tony drove as McGee put on gloves and began to sift through the contents of the box.

"Tony," Tim said.

"Yeah?"

"Never mind."

Tony sighed.

"I know, Probie. We need to find out what happened to Anna Stein and not just because of Ziva, right?"

Tim nodded. "Right."