Ch. 2
Ziva, Gibbs, Tony, and McGee were gathered in Abby's lab, partly to make sure she was alright and partially because she had something for them.
"OK, I came up earlier for a reason. The hairs you got from the bodies are from four different samples. Two are our vics', but the other two aren't. And one of them is stumping even me. My baby says it's human but it's got so many weird chemicals that it doesn't look like it is,"
"In other words we're looking for someone who looks like a junkee on a new brand of drug," Probie inserted.
"Or it's Leah's," They all looked at him weird.
"You think her aging defect might affect her DNA?"
"Maybe. But I was thinking more about how her job entails her tesing new medications and vaccines,"
"So she's a human labrat?"
"Pretty much,"
"That would explain the weird chemicals. As for the last sample, it's completely human and female. Virginia's I suspect," Abby sipped a large Caf-Pow.
"By the way Abs, delete the sample for Leah's hair. Government secrets,"
"Sure," She did as she was told immediately.
"But why? We can't match it to confirm that it is hers without those results,"
"Good luck getting a warrant for her DNA," he looked around at the stares.
"She's not allowed to give her DNA away. It holds government secrets,"
"You mean she works for the government?"
"She works for several governments,"
"Sooooo, what should we do now, then?"
"I'll- just go- try calling Virginia again," McGee said as he backed out of the room, buckling under the intense pressure of the room.
"I'll just..." She exited behind him quickly. Tony hung around like a mosquito, just waiting to be smacked.
"That all still doesn't explain how her hair got on them. Or did she actually approach them?"
"Boss, didn't she check for a pulse?"
"No one told me that. That explains it, although it is kinda hinky that she had the most hair on both suspects, more than our other sample,"
"She always did shed as bad as her dogs,"
"You mean those long, thick, dirty blonde and russet brown pigtails were really a wig?"
"No, it grows back fast,"
"You mean fast for someone who doesn't age right," He joked.
"No, fast for a normal human,"
"Eww, I bet there's hair all over her place!" she scrunched her nose as laughed
"She keeps it clean, Abs," She got serious once he flashed her an admonishing look to tell her that he didn't appreciate the little comments. Suddenly, a fingerprint match window popped up and was beeping noisily. Abby exitedly walked over to her desk in short choppy steps.
"Oh! My baby's calling. I got a match on the fingerprint from the knife. Actually I didn't exactly get a match but it's more like-"
"Abby!" he attemted to stop her from digressing.
"Sorry. It matches a print lifted from the scene of a cold case from a few years back,"
"Well, whose is it?"
"I was getting to that. Unfortunately, they never figured out who it belonged to. Hence the term 'cold case'." she reitterated using air quotes. Seeing that Gibbs was not pleased, she continued.
"It was also a religious crime, that time against a muslim man in an all Christian neighborhood. It was found on the knife. the stabbing was in the heart but a blow to the head had knocked him out first so he probably didn't know his assailent. Uh... some similarities... looks like you might be able to solve a cold case, too!"
"I'll- go help Probie..." he said as he split, feeling awkward. They stood in silence for a while afterward. After a while they spoke.
"You sure you're OK, Abs?"
"I'm fine, really, Gibbs. And don't even think about telling me otherwise or that I don't look fine, Cause I am," Gibbs said nothing but simply stood there and gave her that 'do you need a hug, are you really alright' look.
"Oh, who am I kidding!?" she shuffle-ran over to him, practically asking to be embraced. He willingly obliged. "I spent a good part of my life trying to forget the memories of her.." She peered down at her feet with a solemn, despairing look across her tear-stained cheeks.
"I'll be back in a minute," he kissed her on the forehead and sauntered out of the room, in no apparent hurry. Abby felt as if she werea five-year-old lost in the mall; utterly alone. A minute came and went; two minutes; three. Finally, he materialized out of nowhere, scaring her half to death.
"Where did you go!? You lef-" she froze when she saw what he was lugging alongside him. It was a 4 liter keg/bottle of Caf-pow.
"Gibbs..."
"I would have been back sooner but I had to weasle my way into getting one of these, and then the first machine ran out so I had to go to a second," he grinned.
"Will it help?"
"Thank you!" She scuttled over, gave him a breif hug, and attaching herself to it, took an exaggerated, prolonged slurp, the chains hanging fron her unique arm warmers clonking against the reinforced straw. Her eyes bulged from lack of oxygen and semi-brain freeze.
"Don't hurt yourself, Abs," he started to walk away but she pulled herself away from it just fast enough to catch the edge of his coat sleeve.
"Wait!," she stopped for a second, trying to recover what it was she had left out.
"Did McGee see the initials on the knife?"
"He didn't say anything about it," he said, raising a brow.
"The initials BA were ingraved on the little hinge thingy of the pocketknife," she sipped the humongous drink urgently, like an achoholic trying to drink his pain away. Gibbs whipped out his cell phone and dialed Dinozzo.
"Was it something I said?" Abs asked. He nodded in responce.
"Get McGee to get the house address and where Virginia's husband, Barry, works. It's his knife. Take Ziva and find him. I don't care if you have to interrogate him in a broom closet, I want you to squeeze her location out of him," He promptly hung up and paced a bit.
"What's up?"
"He may be able to lead us to her,"
Tony glanced over at Ziva from the driver's seat. Feeling his eyes on her, she slowly turned to face him.
"Why do you keep looking at me, Tony? Do I have something in my teeth or something?" She casually flipped down the visor and gave a cursory glance into the mirror, inspecting her teeth thoughly despite how uncaring it looked to Tony. No matter how calm she seemed on the outside, she was indubitabily freaking out inside.
"You look different today. Can't put my finger on it, though..."
"It is my hair; I had a highlight put in." She pondered over what had triggered her to do this. She had wanted him to notice her. While he constantly frustrated her at work, she had recently found herself being intrigued by him, and she felt miserable when he was all glomy as he had been, resently.
"I went to a formal party last night and it completed my outfit rather well," she fabricated, lying to hide the potentially embarrassing reason she had really put it in for. She had a slight crush on Tony, nothing major. Most definately, she would not follow up. She knew better than to dissobey one of Gibbs's major silent rules. No co-worker relationships. She wasn't going to let him have something to taunt and tease her about.
He couldn't get over how absolutely stunning she was today. He eyed the single blonde highlight curiously in his periferal vision, wondering how he cold have possibly missed it. Tony emersed himself in a fantasy of her in a strapless, blue evening gown; a simple, shimmering diamond necklace; and her rich, wavy, brown hair done up in a formal bun, the highlight weaving in and out, creating an intricate pattern. Who had she been with? Danced with? Had anything happened? She had looked tired this morning when she came in. He found himself thinking asking himself all sorts of questions; quesions which, oddly, worried him greatly. He was, after all, the jealous type. He wondered, though, why he was jealous. This was Ziva, afterall. Sure she was pretty and all (he did love brunettes) but he couldn't like her in that way,...could he?
They pulled up to the Aruss residence. McGee and Gibbs had already been here but to no home had shatter resistant windows, a kick-proof door, everything was locked up tight; it was potentially impenetrable. An electronic number pad was inset into the door above the knob. A code lock.
"So much for simply picking the lock," Ziva sighed.
"We could powder the keys to see the combo,"
"That would give us the digits in the code but it would not really help us crack it, now would it?"
"I suppose not..."
"There could be any number of combinations." Tony looked around.
"Let's try knocking, someone might be home," he stated as he wrapped on the door.
"Tony, there are no cars in the driveway,"
"Maybe they only have one car and Virginia took it to get away. What do you think we should do?" he sneered. She thought for a moment glancing at the windows and door. She would get that lock off one way or another.
"Stand back," she commanded as she unholstered her pistol and aimed at the lock.
"Wait! Wait! We might as well knock a bit more!" He began to knock hurriedly. The door opened just a crack, revealing a man in his early forties. Tony stumbled slightly as the door opened as he had been leaning on the door.
"You might as well be in formed that I've called the cops and that they're on their way,"
"Yeah, well we kinda trumph the police. We're NCIS," Tony flashed his badge.
"Never heard of it," he said as he began closing the door. Ziva stuck her hand in, blocking the door jamb. Despite the intence throb of pain in her crushed hand, her face showed not a single twinge of said pain. She remained stoic. The man in his boxers and a wifebeater stared down in shock at her hand, then looked up at her and the look on her face, then back to the swelling and now blue-violet colored hand. Her face durned into a slight scowl as she saw that her manicure had been ruined and that she was bleeding. This is why I never have them done. She thought.
"Could I see that again?" Tony showed the badge once more, holding it up untill the man had finished staring at it. Barry assessed it carefully, looking at it for a long while with squinted eye. He finally glanced up at Tony who let out an impatient sigh.
"We need to ask you some questions. You are Barry Aruss, correct?"
"Very well, come in," he grumbled, opening th edoor just enough for them to come in. He folded his arms with hunched sholders, still standing in the small foyer and not inviting them in further to sit or anythng.
"So, what do you want?"
"Do you happen to own a pocket knife with your initials engraved on it?"
"Yes, why?"
"Could you retrieve it for us?"
"Sure.." He led them to the garage and rumaged through the top drawer of a standing tool box. He froze for but a minute before frantically begining to search the rest of the garage. He finally stopped and looked at them.
"I-I'm sorry, I can't seem to find it."
"That's because it's locked up in out evidence locker, covered in the blood of two dead marines."
"What!? You couldn't possibly think... It wasn't me! You can check the security tapes at my work!"
"Boss, do you want us to bring him in?" Dinozzo asked Gibbs over the phone.
"Nope, The epithelial Abs found are female; he didn't do it."
"We'll head over to his company and check out his alibi." He drove as Ziva wrapped her hand in a cloth bandage
Leah crunched down on a Snickers bar, little threads of caramel and nuget sticking to her lower lip and chin. She was now nearly to her house. Trudging up her long, winding driveway, she let her dogs off their leashes to run free on the grounds of her grand mansion. The red brick exterior was like a flame against ther lush green of the surrounding forest. The green ivy and vast vines of intence red roses snaked up the front and sides of the house to make the house a little less dauntingly bright in the green and brown of the backdrop, the two plants somehow co-existing in spite of the dominating, choking tendencies of the country ivy.
The remote location and setting of the estate was perfect for he unusual needs. It was just the right distance for her fifteen mile walk which conveiently lead into the city. It was quiet here, which was good since she had sleep apnea (she had the inconvenience before she began the job of experimental drug tester). She looked around at the trees. She just loved nature; the smell of her fruit trees, the colors of the flowers and trees, the way they moved in the breeze, all of it.
Leah pondered wether or not she had overreacted to her previous situation. Through the descriptions of Abby from the staff and teams, she had come to the assumption that their abby was her friend from her past life. She had fled the building with haste as she wasn't supposed to meet anyone from back then. If they had met and she had been the same girl, it would likely have been chaos.
She reached the green door and proceeded to attempt to breach the was useless; she knew how to pick a lock but wasn't adept enough to get past the so called 'lock-proof' locks. It was useless. She sighed as she backed up, preparing to kick it in. she ran at the door, producing a powerful kung-fu style kick that penetrated the door in one strike. She looked small but she packed a punch. The alarm blared, causing the dogs to go into anarchy. She quickly made her way around the broken door to the
security console and entered the pin to turn it off. Leah lugged the cumbersome dor to the side of the front deck and retrieved the temporoary door made for exactly this purpose from the entry closet. She installed it quickly, used to doing this by now (this was NOT the first time she had forgotten the key). Beginning to clean up the small bits and chunks of door that had broken away by her forcive entry, she wondered if the cops were even going to bother to come this time. this had, after all, happened quite often. The door could be replaced in no time as they had several door waiting to replace it (they had learned to keep them instead of having to go to the hardware store at least once a month). Besides, everything of worth was either locked up or could easily be replaced.