Sorry this going a bit slow, but creating background before it catches pace! Hope you like it :)
Disclaimer: I do not own NCIS or any of the characters
Dear Ziva….Part 2
Ziva opened the envelope carefully and unfolded the paper inside.
"Dear Ziva, I'm sorry. That's all it says." Ziva read, she looked incredibly uncomfortable, she could feel Tony's arm reach out and touch her shoulder. Her automatic reflexes for some reason had been dimmed as she felt slightly disorientated.
"The cause of death appears to be blunt force trauma to the back of the head, there is bruising on her wrists and ankles suggesting that she'd been tied at some point." Ducky appeared behind Tony making him jump ever so slightly. Everyone looked worried and uncomfortable as they began packing up to head back to headquarters.
They sat silently at their desks while the letter, or rather line, that been written to Ziva were up on the screen for them all to see. Beau stood in the middle of the room reading and re-reading the single line.
"Why would he write it? I mean why handwriting?" she furrowed her eyebrows. "Why give you something you can use to identify him with?" McGee stood up from his desk and strolled over to stand next to Beau. "It's a message he's tell you that he's more intelligent that you are. He can get away with using handwriting." She continued turning to McGee. Again people were wandering about getting on with their work and it seemed almost normal for them to be having this conversation.
"How do you know?" McGee asked.
"This..." she said indicating to the letter "suggests narscrassistic personality disorder. He wants attention. That's why he's written to Ziva, he wants a reaction...sorry it's not my place..." she said when she caught Gibbs eye, as he glared at her.
"Talk" he said in his usual gruff manner while sitting down at his desk.
"The way he's writing, the hand writing is on blank paper, straight lines, evenly, almost exactly spaced out suggests signs on obsessive disorder. Each letter is written carefully making sure he's clear, it's easy to read. He doesn't want anything to be distracting from himself." She explained making eye contact with everyone as she spoke.
"Why is he writing to Ziva?" Tony asked.
"I can't be sure...perhaps she reminds him of her...someone he wants or once had and lost."
Gibbs stood up "Going to see Ducky, you come with me." He indicated to Beau to follow him and they both got into the lift together.
Tony, Ziva and McGee looked at each other with raised eyebrows.
"Think he'll make her cry?" Tony asked. Ziva and McGee pondered the thought a second McGee replied "no" while Ziva replied "yes" at the same time.
The lift seemed to be taking an unusually long time as they both stood in silence. Gibbs watched the ceiling while Beau watched her feet. "So who are you?" he asked bluntly.
"My father is friends with Ducky, I'm a forensic psychologist, I'm doing my dissertation on forensic profiling in federal investigations." She said calmly with a slightly uninterested tone. "If you want me to back off, and observe I can do." She added knowing full well she was walking on thin ice with this man. He had a blank, almost unreadable expression a lot of the time but there was a hint of sadness in his eyes. Beau had to stop herself from beginning to analyse him.
"Just don't get in my way." He didn't know what to say to her. To the relief of them both the lift doors opened. Ducky stood beside the body in wait for Gibb's arrival.
"Ah Gibbs...and Beau...what a nice surprise. There is no question about it but she was raped before she was killed. My initial examinations were right she was killed by a blunt force trauma to the back of the head most likely a block of wood; I've sent the samples I retrieved up to Abby. There doesn't seem to be much more I can tell you the killer did a good job cleaning everything up and removing any traces or evidence."
"Fits a profile, almost perfectly, it's all about control to him, something he's probably not getting in his real life so he's taking it out like this." Beau said quietly. Physically being present in these situations was nothing like a textbook or a lecture and most find out the hard way, she thought to herself.
"Do you have any id Duck?" Gibbs asked.
"I sent the finger prints up to Abby too."
"Thanks Ducky." With that Gibbs moved out. Beau followed throwing Ducky a rather helpless look over her shoulder as she went he just gave her a smile of reassurance in return.
They stopped at the squad room and the team looked up to see if there were any obvious signs of upset but everything seemed to be fine.
Abby's lab was filled with music and the sound of machines at work as always. Gibbs handed her a caf-pow and waited for Abby to start talking.
"Thank you Gibbs, well I ran our victim's finger prints through affis and I got a match, she's Luteniant Stacey Dunham. She went missing two weeks ago. But the weird thing is I've checked her clothes and personal effects but there is nothing, not trace of them having been anywhere before they were wrapped in plastic. But I ran a check on the splinters found in her head wound and found a mix of chemicals and oil, suggesting that the weapon was picked up from an industrial park. My theory is that her body was moved."
"Good work Abs." Gibbs said as he turned around, the team all gravitated after him "McGee find that industrial park, take Ziva with you. Tony track Dunham's last recorded movements before she went missing."
"On it boss." Tony replied while they flooded out of the elevator.
In the squad room Beau was standing in front of a white board with a marker in her hand and a puzzling expression. She was pulling the lid of the pen and replacing it using her thumb and index finger.
"It doesn't make sense." She muttered.
"What?" Ziva asked looking at the white board trying to see what Beau was seeing.
"Well...there is pattern in behaviour of people like this...they want something...something specific, like dominance, power or revenge...this seems to be suggesting a relationship...someone that didn't have a proper attachment as a child and has never had a relationship as an adult...he thinks this is a relationship...why would he kill her?"
"It is Whitehall Industrial Park boss!" McGee called out. Ziva nodded a goodbye and left with McGee.
"McGee, if you'd let me drive we would have gotten here much quicker." Ziva stated as she slammed the passenger seat door shut.
"I'm sorry Ziva but it would have been useless if we'd died on the way here." He said shortly. Neither of them was in the mood to argue today, the events unravelling before them were disturbing making them feel uncomfortable.
They started in the car park, there seemed to be nothing but grey. They walked around the large building which seemed to be surprisingly silent for an industrial building in the middle of the day. There was the eerie silence about that made Ziva shiver. The feeling that something wasn't quite right was consuming both of them as they walked.
"McGee!" Ziva called out having identified another body. The same as before the body was wrapped up in plastic left above a carefully marked X and with a letter addressed to Ziva cello taped near it. Ziva pulled out her phone and ferociously dialled Gibbs's phone number. "We've got another one."