I have to admit that I was slightly stunned watching last weeks episode with the cause of death being "Liver failure because of poison". Talking about coincidences. However in this story you wont find any. Because there aren't any.
Chapter 2: Nauseous
The first victim, Trent Kort, he had known personally. The second, the Rose, he knew only from pictures.
He had seen her back when they had run the operation against the Frog. Blonde, tall, beautiful and Irish. Back then she had still been involved in the international arms trade. Now she was lying dead on the floor in front of him.
Blood, by now dark and crusty, had been coughed up from her lungs, had run from her eyes and dribbled out of her ears. He could still see it, but he also knew it because Kort had looked the same.
This time there was no cell phone, only a notepad on the floor with blood spatters on it. The page that must have been written on was ripped out of it.
He looked around, looked for evidence, but couldn't find any other in the bare shipping container that sat abandoned in the harbor.
"Same killer, Duck?" he asked although he already knew the answer.
"It sure looks that way, Jethro," the medical examiner replied. "But judging by the scratches on her face and the marks on her hands I'd say she put up quite the struggle. Hopefully that will give us DNA," his friend was more hopeful. "Now look at this," he said then and pointed to the stomach of the victim, where her hand lay.
He stepped closer and saw the tiny piece of ... something. He carefully picked it up with his gloved hands and held it up in front of his eyes to see what it was. A piece of a photograph, just barely as long and wide as the fingernail of his pinkie.
Yet, that tiny piece sent his gut into overdrive, punched it, squeezed it, made him dizzy, nauseous and on high alert, all at the same time. Because he knew that picture and he knew that coat and the tiny glimpse of the scarf that gave it away for him.
"They were showing her a picture of Jenny," he said aloud and could have slapped himself for it a second later.
"Jenny? As in Director Sheppard?" DiNozzo followed his train of thought and walked over to him, stepping around the body on the floor. He stood by his side and looked at the piece of the picture, cocking his head to one side, then the other. "Boss, I can't even tell you what that is. A painting? The green, green grass. For all I know this could be a piece of a playboy cover," the agent said, only seeing the piece for what it was: A piece of a photo that showed nothing but something green with a speck of something yellow and brownish on the side.
"That's a picture of Jenny. That's her green winter coat and that's a scarf she bought in Paris," he insisted, knowing he was right. I bought that scarf for her. I'd recognize it everywhere.
"Jenny has been dead for years. Why would someone torture and kill to get information about her?" Ziva asked quietly and something in her eyes made him suspect that she had a feeling about this case. The flicker of recognition was just as fast gone as it had come.
"I don't know Ziva, but we will find out. " He spoke with a confidence that he did not feel, but need.
In the evening he stood in his basement, sanding another boat in slow strokes. His mind kept wandering back to the piece of the photo and the scarf he had seen on it. Finally he put his tools down, since they refused him the usual salvation that day. Instead he walked up to his attic, knowing exactly where he would find the box he needed. The last time he had held it in hands had been when he had fetched the photo of Jenny in front of the house in Serbia.
The box held memories of their past, of their lives as colleagues, lovers and boss and subordinate.
He had never opened it again after she was dead... until this moment. Looking at the pictures was hard and he felt a wave of grief rolling over him and engulfing him. He just wished he'd... There was the picture he was looking for. It had been taken in Paris when they had been sitting in a small café in Montmartre. He remembered taking it while she had held up her cup of coffee, swearing that this was the best coffee she'd ever tasted. The picture that had been meant to be a proof of her love for coffee was proof in a murder investigation now.
"We were really happy back then, Jen'" he said quietly, as if she was standing beside him. So long ago. They had really screwed this up, the both of them, and for that the name 'Jenny' was linked closely to the word 'regret' in his mind.
He closed the box again and took the picture with him. He turned it around so he was only looking at the blank white back of it. Seeing Jenny's smiling face was hurting too much.
"Ah, Jethro, I just wanted to call you," Ducky said the next day when he walked into the autopsy room where the newest victim was propped up on one of the autopsy tables.
"Something new?"
"I found bruises that suggest that she was paralyzed before she was poisoned," Ducky explained. "Look, here you can see the mark." He showed him the spot.
"If the killer knew that spot, it shows that he must have had training," he knew. Paralyzing someone by pressing on a nerve were things that needed training, lots of it, and he knew very few people who could kill and torture with just a few moves and in a way that no one would be able to detect later. Some spies. Some martial arts gods. Assassins. Ziva.
Before his old friend could reply he was hurrying out of the room.
"Abby wants to see you!" he heard him yelling after him and changed directions from the elevator to Abby's lab.
"What have you got Abbs?" he asked her.
"Oh, Gibbs, there you are. Did Ducky tell you or did you know I wanted to see you? Because sometimes I swear you..." He cut her off. "Oh right," she stopped. "I found water, mineral salts, antibodies and lysozym on the paper sheets you brought in," she told him proudly. He looked at her incredulously, not understanding what she was talking about. "Tears Gibbs, someone was crying," she enlightened him.
"Most people cry when you torture them," he remarked dryly.
"But it wasn't the Rose who cried. There was someone else in the room, maybe even the killer. And the DNA says that it was a woman. Same DNA we found under the fingernails, by the way," she went on and showed him the test results on her computer screen. To him this were just colored bars on the screen.
"Any hits?" he asked, motioning with his chin in direction of her other PC.
"No, she's not in our DNA database," Abby replied in the negative.
That was as far as they got on the second day after they had found the second victim. And on the third day. And the fourth. And the fifth. All those days his gut kept him up at night. He felt constantly nauseous, because something was nagging at him. Something, he couldn't quite put his finger on. They had hit a dead end again, at least for now. As in Kort's case there were just too many possible suspects to check out and too many people to interview. Other agencies kept stone walling them, because something just always screamed 'secret op' with these two victims.
He kept twirling the picture between his fingers, still only looking at the white back of it while he sat at his desk and stared blankly ahead. Thinking.
"That the photo, boss?" Tony was being his usual nosy self.
"Yeah," he nodded and stopped twirling it, so his three curious agents could take a look at it.
"I know the picture. Jenny showed it to me when we were running an op in Syria," Ziva smiled wistfully, remembering her friend. That's when it clicked in his head and he could finally make out what his gut had been telling him all along.
"Jenny had a copy of that picture and I do. So, how the hell did the killer get that picture?" he basically yelled at them, angry at himself and them that no one else had thought of that before.
"It's really easy to make a copy of a picture boss," McGee pointed out, but his gut told him that there were no copies. Why would Jenny make copies of a picture where she stuck out her tongue, while a large coffee cup was covering half of her face?
"There are no copies and all of Jenny's stuff should have been lost in the fire," he disagreed forcefully.
"Maybe she gave it to someone," Ziva said.
"Or maybe someone stole it before the fire," Tony had another theory.
He couldn't explain it, but the nausea was back, stronger than before, and he knew he needed answers to get rid of it.
"Tony, Ziva, I want to know what happened to Jenny's stuff. Find me her will, her lawyer, anything. McGee, I need all files about the Rose, about Kort and about Jenny. Everything you can find. GO!"
"Boss, we went over Kort's files a thousand times and her files are just as extensive. It will take us months to go over everything," The former probie said and sighed when he saw his death stare. "I will download everything I can find about director Sheppard," he nodded then and hurried to his PC.
"Boss, what will you be doing?" DiNozzo asked him and earned himself a slap on the back of the head with that question.
"None of your damn business," he growled and left.
The way to her house was longer than he remembered. From the outside it looked intact, except for the black smudges on the facade. It hadn't been renovated or sold and he didn't know why. He hadn't been here since he had burned the place down with Svetlana's body in it.
Carefully he opened the police seal that still locked the front door. He just cut in half with the knife he was carrying. He was a federal agent after all and had every right to do that- at least he kept telling himself that.
The air still smelled of smoke, burned wood, dust and death. Cautiously he looked around, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the semi-darkness. He looked up the black walls, to the place where the wooden stairway had been and to the right into the former living room. Everything was burned to ashes and it struck him at that second that this was all that was left of Jenny and her life: Ruins and ashes.
When the memories of what the place had been flooded his system he felt like weeping for a moment, but then he looked down to the floor and froze.
On autopilot he reached for his gun and turned off the safety. Quietly he followed the footprints on the ash covered ground into the former study. Leaning against the doorframe, so he was still hidden by the door, he remembered the last time he had been in there, remembered when Mike had killed Svetlana, when he had taken Jenny's letter addressed to him that held nothing more than his name, when he had set the place on fire.
He lurked around the corner, trying to see something. He heard a quiet rustling sound and pushed the door open forcefully, his gun drawn. He took another step forward and nearly stumbled over the body on the floor. Glancing down and saw two more bodies lying next to it.
He didn't have the time to process it though because next thing he knew, he saw a shadow to his left and then he ducked for cover because bullets were flying around his head. He felt on striking his shoulder, another one grazing his leg. He made it behind the desk that had miraculously survived the fire, that had started only inches away from it. It was black and burned, but it was good enough as cover. When he lurked out behind it, to take a shot himself he found himself alone in the room with the three bodies. He stared in the face of the burly black male, then looked at the other two while still ducking behind the desk. Headshots, all three. He knew the pattern, knew the wounds. This hadn't been done by a shooter in the room, but by a sniper somewhere outside that window on the left side of the door.
With shaky hands he pulled out his cell phone and called DiNozzo for backup. He knew if he would get out behind the desk and even attempt to flee he would end up like them, with a bullet in the head.
While he waited he looked around, tried to take the details in and see if he wasn't reachable from the windows. He kept listening for a sound, but everything was silent.
When his glance went up to the desk top he saw something familiar. Slowly he reached up and pulled the soft material of Jenny's silk scarf down to him.
He was hit by two realizations. One: It still smelled faintly of her. Two: Whoever had just shot at him, had not only a picture he had taken of her, but also had had the scarf he had given her. The question that remained was : Why?
TBC
Theories as to what's going on are welcome and appreciated!
