Chapter Three
Double Teaming
Part one of the External Examination on Private Villahaze having revealed its limit on the gym clothes, those were removed for transport to the lab upstairs and the Veteran and Apprentice MEs began work on part two, the external body exam. The clothes were rolled to trap particles invisible to the naked eye, and they were brought up by Sammy to join the body bag, long since delivered upstairs.
X rays were immediately taken from all angles of the stripped body and sent upstairs for developing. Sammy, back from delivering clothes and film, now wields the clipboard, marking wounds and injuries on the forward and backward male image with corresponding marks while adding notes of Maura's observations even though her words are recorded by the microphone hanging over their heads.
Then the body is washed. In this the two women simply take sides. There are many bruises that the brief clothing had still hidden.
"Last guy I washed was a lot bloodier," Sammy muses, using a sterile sponge and cleaning solution that won't interfere with the usual post mortem tests.
"Accident victim?"
"S&M Scene that got way out of hand." She giggles at Maura's expression. "No, seriously, it was a mugging in Arlington."
Actually the first answer had been true, but she decides not to freak out the woman before she knows if she'll be freaked out. Abby, and others, have warned her about the follies of over-sharing, usually after it's too late.
xx
A short while later they stand before the returned X-rays set on the light wall for examination.
"There they are," Sammy says, pointing to the two small bright spots on the film.
"Look like .22s" Sammy says, pointing to the two small bright spots on the film.
"You don't ever want to speculate. Ours is an exact science, and the film can distort. A slight variance in the angle can mean the difference between a .22 and a .45. I've known .45s to look like .22s even after extraction because the outer shell was stripped off, leaving only the cores."
"Yes, ma'am."
"That's one reason why I never give a definitive answer in the field, or before my autopsy is finished... no matter whom that might aggravate. My first private guesses are wrong too many times. If I articulated them prematurely, not only would I send Investigators in the wrong directions but I'd lose my effectiveness."
"I understand."
"You must cultivate an air of wisdom and competence, even if you have to send people away a dozen times until you are sure and you're confident you're sure."
"Yes, doctor," she says, now thoroughly subdued.
"They punched through the sternum, didn't get much further."
"I saw no powder burns on the shirt. How far do you get when shooting someone in a mugging?"
"Closer than this. I suspect we've found more questions than answers for Agent Higgins."
As if in answer to the mystic summons, they hear the pneumatic doors slide open behind them. But when the women turn, it's not to see the man they were anticipating.
x
Leroy Jethro Gibbs steps through the glass and metal doors, already deep in a foul mood and displeased to see two blue scrubs clad women standing before the X-ray board. That this is no different than he'd anticipated does nothing to improve his mood.
The smaller of the two women - aren't scrubs supposed to prevent telling male from female? - hops in a quick turn. "Agent GIBBS!" is her delighted cry. She hurries halfway to him before she halts, sliding a bit in her bootie-covered soft ballet slippers, probably finally seeing his scowl, yet still flings her arms wide in presentation. "I'm baaa-ack," she sings.
"So I see," he answers with as little tone as he can manage. This doesn't save him from a hug even more enthusiastic than her tone.
"Oh, I've missed you."
"Saw you last month."
"I know! But I was just a visitor then," she pulls back enough to look up at him. "Now I'm officially here for a month."
He might as well be civil. It's not that she's bad, maybe she can't help it. "Welcome back. Chicky."
She grins, her arms still about his waist in a far too familiar clinch. "I'm so glad you remember. Actually, you're the only one who ever calls me Chicky."
He remembers why. It had been the result of a fight between them and his acknowledgment of her worth. She'd been alone at a Crime Scene while Ducky was in Court giving testimony in an unrelated case and he'd decided she was too new an apprentice to work the scene without supervision. Wet behind the ears girl trying to be an ME had been his thought. She'd had the courage to stand up to him, to openly fight him since she was Ducky's apprentice, had been assigned to the duty by Ducky and answered to Ducky, not to him. That had earned her his respect.
She'd offered, when they'd made peace, that though she wasn't Ducky if he liked he could call her 'Chicky'.
As the battle had been private, no one else knew the reason for the nickname and his team is collectively too smart to ask.
But this unselfconscious position on her part, leaning out from him, only makes him uncomfortable. He hadn't thought reconnecting with her - for a month - could get worse than the initial prospect.
It is.
x
He looks past her, over her head in fact, to Isles still at the light board. How dare the woman grin at him as though she can read his desire to put distance between himself and Sky, preferably several States?
Is it Abby's influence since the pair started living together, or has Sky always hugged so unreservedly and he'd just been spared? No, that can't be it. He feels he hasn't been spared anything from Sky.
His glare finally moves the ebullient young woman away, but though she disengages herself she's not the slightest subdued. Looks that have cowed Active Duty Marines seem to be deflected by her ecstasy shields.
He moves her aside by her shoulders, but as he approaches Isles Sky still paces him. For the first time he misses Jimmy Palmer; the man may be annoying, but he's never shown any inclination to hug. Probably has a much better developed sense of survival.
Still, Sky isn't bad - in small and very occasional doses - and she does know her job and is reasonably competent - for a Probie. It's that she reminds him of a perpetually too ecstatic puppy. How she and Abby, both so alike, can live together in the same four room apartment without mutually self-combusting is a mystery he fears solving.
There's a pool, but thus far the women have frustrated any potential winner.
He fixes his glare on Isles, mentally pushing Sky aside. But rather than saying anything useful, she says "You seem somewhat more annoyed than usual."
"Having an Agent get raped and the hell beaten out of her will do that."
x
Both women look at him as though he'd punched them, and this makes him rein it in.
"My God," Isles is the first to recover her voice. "What happened?"
"Still piecing it together. She'll live, but that's the only good part."
"Does she need anything?" As an ME there's little she does for the living, but she and Sky are both MDs and Villahaze is not going anywhere.
"Us to catch the bastard that did it."
"Anything," she says.
"I need an evaluation of Agent Levy's condition, whatever you can learn about the attack."
"Do you have the hospital records?"
"They're being sent." His tone says he's not holding his breath.
"I'll look them over the moment they come in," Maura says, making sure Gibbs catches her glance at Private Villahaze.
xxx
"Just came from Sky and Isles," Gibbs says as he enters Abby's lab, grateful that it's her he sees rather than Ruby Rae. At least some part of NCIS has returned to normal.
"Don't you mean Isles and Sky?" He won't take the bait. "Come on, Gibbs, Maura's not bad." Beyond honey blonde hair, Maura Isles is unnervingly identical to the late Caitlin Todd.
"You screamed the first time you saw her."
"I'm allowed to scream; I'm a girl, not a quasi-macho Federal Agent."
"Who's discussing DiNozzo?"
She gets her hand up in time to cover her sputter. "Good one."
"What've you got, besides an excellent tan."
She smiles at him. "Thanks for noticing. There was this great nude beach Dawn knows outside Ca-"
"Abs."
She mimes a pout. "Tony would've let me tell him."
"DiNozzo would've been on the first flight."
"Then he'd have been disappointed; kittens only and his badge wouldn't've helped even if he had a place to put it. Meanwhile, the CS team did a great job with minutia," she says quickly, derailing any possible reply. "I got enough hairs for a decent mustache, though since the individual hairs average about two inches it'd be on the way to a Fu Manchu, or possibly a Ming the Merciless. I think Janet got at least one good handful of brown hair. Hopefully your guy is sporting a monk's skull cap but I wouldn't count on it."
He's not interested in Fu Manchu or skull caps. "Can you get any DNA?"
"I have dozens of follicles to choose from, and I'm checking now for texture and coloring. There's no dye; that I can tell you right off, and it's straight, no curl. That's about it for now for hairs."
"When will you have the DNA?"
"Tomorrow."
"Abs."
"Gibbs, you can't rush Science. You can glare at it, you can yell at it, you can spank it if you feel so inclined and sometimes I am, but you can't rush it. Believe me, I want to, but unless the Doctor materializes his TARDIS here and is feeling generous, sixteen hours stays sixteen hours."
"What Doctor?"
"Not Doctor What, Doctor Who."
He considers trying to sort through this, decides that either her vacation to New Orleans was too long, his to Mexico was too short and too long ago, but the best choice he can make is to give up. "What else?"
She puts her hands on hips, adopts a faux reprimand manner. "Boy, Gibbs, you're as greedy as ever."
"Because you never disappoint."
This breaks her fake with a smile. "Gee, thanks Gibbs. I aim to please."
"You always do."
"I'm waiting for Tony and the others. He called, they're at the scene and I'm hoping they bring me back plenty of goodies."
"Speaking of goodies, what was it about freaking DiNozzo and McGee out over pregnancies?"
"Just a little fun." He shows her with his silence how well he believes that evasion. "Dawn's a kindergarten teacher."
"I know."
"Well, being around virtually every child she taught over five years when we weren't working on our tans..." She gives ample time for a comment but he's not going to indulge her on this either. "I got to thinking I'm not getting younger, but since my schedule doesn't leave much time for dating the best chance I probably have is to become 'Aunt Abby'."
"You've got plenty of time yet. But don't freak out my people, they have enough to think about on this case."
"Okay. You're right." He walks away. "But it's so much fun..."
xxx
SSA Kevin Lamb and SA Lisa DuBois started their search for evidence and ear/eye witnesses on the sixth floor of Janet Levy's building, while Tony DiNozzo and Ziva David focused upon the elevator and the fifth floor, the two teams converging on the stairwell where the worst of the attack was centered.
When this was an MPDC case, to whom the initial report had been conveyed, Patrol Officers and CSI's had secured the half flight landing and, as far as possible, the already contaminated elevator.
It's amazing and frustrating how many people, presented with a blood spattered elevator, will simply ride it to their destinations and either forget or never have cared enough to notice and report the fact. They'd tracked bits of dried blood through the lobby to the front door in steadily decreasing density, over and over, in depths of disregard that had reduced the agents to silence lest they give voice to thoughts best left contained.
By the time Janet Levy had been discovered at 7:32 am and the stairwell secured, an unknowable number of people had so contaminated the box and expanded that scene that there was virtually no point in isolating and processing it..
Nevertheless, it is now known that the Perp selected the sixth floor, and since most departing people will be focusing on 1 and a fairly few people will select 6 before noon, that is the button on which NCIS' CS team directed their most careful attention. The result was a blurred hodgepodge of overlapping images too convoluted to be of any use.
When the four agents converge upon the yellow tape cordoned landing between the fifth and sixth floors, already after 1:30, the scene resembles, to Tony, a set out of 'Texas Chainsaw Massacre'. There are two points of concentrated blood pooled on the landing, one where Levy's head would have come to rest, the other the aftermath of the horrifically brutal rape. But the walls and steps are covered in low velocity blood spatter, much of which has been compromised by EMTs in the limited space who were, quite properly, more concerned with saving a life than in preserving evidence.
NCIS' CS Team has been thorough. From elevator to hall to steps to landing, every spot Janet's assailant might have touched has been examined by various methods for finger and shoe prints, while every inch has been vacuumed with a filtered vacuum, collecting hairs, fibers and other microscopic evidence, all of which has already been turned over to Abby.
They suspect the woman is going to regret Ruby Rae's immediate return to Edenvale.
x
Fortunately there was a several hour gap between the times Levy's assailant had tracked through the blood and her rescuers had arrived. "Here, these'll be good," Tony says, pointing out to Ziva, who holds the large camera with exchangeable filters, five bloody prints that have the best definition. "Tennis shoes."
"Not a regulation uniform."
"Ya think?" he asks, standing in for the absent Gibbs.
Olympus is clearly distinguishable on several of the dried prints.
When he turns to Lamb and DuBois a few steps down on the steps to five, intending to compare notes on the interviews, such as could be done on both floors - far too few and even fewer being cooperative - he sees in the woman's eyes something he's seen too many times when NCIS agents go down, as in the past year it's happened too many times, on that team in particular.
Theirs had been a four agent team, Kevin Lamb had been Senior Field under Bob DiMarco until he'd gone down, and they're still working at three strong.
"Hey, guys, we've got this. Why don't you canvas the neighborhood?"
"What do you mean 'you've got this'?" Lisa DuBois demands, taking a step upward. "You think we can't do this job?"
"You're standing surrounded by your partner's blood," he reminds her, trying to sound reasonable. He can see in her eyes that it's not working.
"Lisa..."
She ignores her boss, coming up to one step short of the landing, her face a foot below the taller man's. "Why, because she's our partner, we care for her and to you two this is just another Crime Scene?"
He keeps his expression soft, his whisper quiet. "Yeah."
He says no more as she stands on the step below him, seething. After a few seconds Lamb takes her elbow and draws her down the steps. But as he opens the fifth floor door she turns back, looks up the stairs, her eyes blazing. "Damn you, DiNozzo."
x
When the door eases shut, Ziva says "You handled that well."
"You picked up on her too."
"I have known Survivor's Guilt, Tony. She blames herself for what happened to Agent Levy. I do not yet know why, but she does."
"Hmmm."
"She hates you now, of course."
"Yeah, I know," he says regretfully. "Still, better to hate me for a couple of weeks than hate herself forever."
xx
Out on the street Kevin Lamb waits for his partner to cool down. That the temperature is flirting with a Daily Record doesn't help. "Want to tell me about it?"
She doesn't look at him. "No, I don't."
"DuBois," his tone, rarely employed with either woman, makes her turn, "that was neither a question nor a request."
She takes a deep breath and her sigh seems to reach down to her knees. She turns to him. "Jan wanted to go out last night, hit a bar or two, maybe do some harmless flirting."
"Where?"
"I don't know."
"We'll have to find out. That'll be the first place for us to start."
"You make it sound like a job."
"It is a job. DiNozzo's right. It's a job you know how to do."
"If I'd done my job and backed up my partner instead of blowing her off and going home to bed she wouldn't be laying in a hospital!"
"You can't know that. This didn't happen in a bar or back alley, it happened in her home. You wouldn't have been here."
"Garbage!" she snaps, whirling away.
x
Kevin takes a deep breath, holds it, lets it out very slowly and wonders what he can say to a partner more focused on grief and guilt than -
"Kevin, what time is it?"
Rather than considering the odd tone, he checks his watch. "1:43."
She waves her arm expansively, taking up the entire street. "What's wrong with this picture?"
He scans the street, left and right, seeing a mixture of private homes and two more large multi-unit monstrosities like Levy's, one more on this side to their right, one on the other further away. They're outnumbered by dozens of two or three story private homes with driveways with or without garages. Less than half the curbside spaces on the block are occupied by a variety of widely spaced cars. Brown and light blue plastic trash cans line the sidewalk except for the three large buildings where piles of black or blue bags are the standard.
Most of the three story houses which line the street are cookie cutter jobs, all virtually identical to the private garages to the right of each entrance halving the first levels. There are a few houses where people sit on porches or steps, particularly among the two story, single family homes. Children play in small, widely scattered groups. He can find nothing he can call 'wrong' and tells her so.
"What time do they pick up trash by you?"
"The trucks usually roar and wheeze outside my window around five in the morning."
She's staring to their right up the long end of the street. "I'm usually putting the empties back when I'm trying to make the Red Line at six thirty."
"Jan once bitched she doesn't get service until after twelve..."
She looks back to him, their eyes meet, she goes right, he runs left and they're ripping the lids off plastic containers and using knives on the large bags.
x
Tony and Ziva exit the building in matching grim moods. Special Agent Janet Levy probably felt very safe and secure in her home and castle. For all their search so far, they've done little more than reinforce what Metro Police has already determined.
"Well, time to canvass the neighborhood," Tony says as they step to the sidewalk. "We'll find out where Lamb and DuBois have hit and cov–"
He's interrupted by a high War-whoop from the right and looks to see Lisa DuBois standing beside a garbage pail three houses distant. She gives another Whoop of triumph and hoists aloft something green and brown. An instant later Kevin Lamb dashes across their position toward his ecstatic partner. "I think we'd better join the party," Tony concludes, far more optimistic than when they'd stepped out.
"Indeed."
When they're close enough the indistinct object has been opened to become a USMC Fatigue Uniform shirt, the dark stains covering it are half day old splotches of blood and the breast pocket level name tag reads 'KURLAND'
xxx
Janet Levy tries to keep quiet as the hospital bed is elevated a bare six inches so she can see her mother and father without having to lift her head, but the pain is too intense. When an 'arrgh' forces through her lips the candy-stripe dressed girl releases the button. It had been that or release the shriek clamped behind her teeth as her broken ribs exploded.
"Does it hurt?" the girl asks.
"Of course it hurts," she forces between clenched teeth.
"Here," Sarah Levy says, taking the control from the girl's hand, "we can attend to this. You have done enough. Thank you for your help." She's managed to say it more kindly than she'd thought she could manage; the girl had tried to be helpful.
When the girl leaves, saying 'goodbye' to the two men standing before chairs outside the room, one next to the door and the other across the corridor from it, Sarah reverses the control. Janet clamps her good hand over her mouth, whimpering.
"She means well."
"Stupid girl," Ira says. "If her spine were broken she could have–"
"Hush. Did the Doctor not say we should keep her calm?"
"Calm sounds good right now," Janet whispers past locked teeth. Her jaw had been dislocated and reset, then clamped shut but still hurts too much. She'd nearly dislodged it holding back the screech as her ribs exploded.
x
She wants to scream from the pain. When the bed started moving unexpectedly she'd gasped and her broken ribs - stupid, stupid girl - had flared like someone had taken a sledgehammer to them. Only the best discipline had allowed her to clamp back a shriek that should've blown the bricks out of the walls.
She has four skull fractures, six broken ribs that stab her with agony every time she breathes wrongly...
She's seen herself in an upheld mirror. Her head is encased in plaster that makes her look like she has an ancient leather football covering under the gauze that encases her head and face, only her eyes and lips visible. She's not sure she wants to see, today, what the doctors have covered.
Her father comes close on the other side of the bed, he'd moved while she was clenching her eyes shut and now he towers over her, his iron grey beard pointing down to her. For an instant she flashes back to when it was black and she was a tiny girl who so much wanted to be grown up. Right at this moment she would wish to be that girl under her towering father's protection.
She wants to reach out to touch his tallis but can't.
"I wish I knew what to do to help you," he tells her and the longing and regret in his tone almost breaks her heart.
"Just be here," she whispers carefully past set teeth, "and keep me safe from Candy Stripers."
"I shall complain about that stupid girl to the Administrators."
"Daddy, please don't." She watches the outrage slowly fade from his towering face.
"Very well, Janaleh."
"I remember so well the last time you called me that, papa," she whispers in long breaths. It's hard to speak clearly, using only lips, but whispering makes it easier and she wants to say this. "When that bastard Trovillot made up those fake nude pictures of me, I thought that was the absolute worst thing that could ever happen to me."
"I am so sorry for not being there for you as you deserved." She hears the depth of regret; he'd been worse than not with her.
"You're here now." She reaches out, feels his strong fingers wrap around her good hand. She's noticed in the past minutes, especially in that long speech, the strained whispers, that she's falling back again into her family's accent, into his accent. She'd worked for a long time to trim it, to disguise her roots - a Federal Agent should sound non-distinguished American - that she's aware of it now, this comfortable return to proper speech.
Maybe she's made a mistake. Maybe she's made a lot of mistakes.
Maybe she's made too many.
She needs not to think of this anymore, or else she's going to cry.
"Please, what is happening at home?"
The conversation turns to trivia, and for a time she can lose herself and forget the loneliness.
She wishes she could forget the pain.
xxx
Abby Sciuto turns from Colonel Centrifuge as two men and two women enter the lab and the Triumph Index in the room ('I really have to design and install a meter') rises. "Hey, gang!" She really hadn't expected Kevin, Tony, Ziva and Lisa at one and the same time, but she'll take what she can get.
She's hugged Tony and Ziva already this morning but has extra reasons to greet Kevin and Lisa with double long greetings. "I feel awful about Janet. How is she?" she asks when she releases Lisa.
"Bad," Lisa tells her. "Very bad."
"Oh. I'm sorry."
"You can make her feel better." Lamb says.
"Anything. How?"
He hands her a large, sealed paper Evidence bag within which, when she spreads it, is folded a Marine Fatigue Uniform shirt covered in dark maroon splotches and spatter.
"Confirm who was wearing that so I can put a bullet in him."
"With Jan's Sig," Lisa declares.
x
Abby feels her blood go cold and wants to wrap her white lab coat close about herself as she closes the paper bag, tries to pretend she hasn't heard the intent. "You're not sure it was who the tag says." She very definitely does not make it a question.
"Every son-of-a-bitch in the country wears Marine worn-outs bought from the Salvation Army for two dollars," Lamb sounds personally offended by the fashion statement.
"Yesterday," Lisa says, sounding equally affronted, "I saw a 20 year old kid with tattoos for eyebrows on the Red Line wearing a white short-sleeve shirt with Commander's epaulets."
They've spent years supporting and protecting the Services, but "I want to be sure I've got the right bastard before I ventilate him."
Abby lowers the bag slowly to her side, but it takes her more than ten seconds before she can force out "All right."
x
DuBois follows Lamb out and still Abby can't move. It takes her another fifteen seconds until she can test the room. "Tony? Ziva?"
"Right here, Abs." Tony says from somewhere to her right rear.
"Am I the only one who just got scared half to death?"
"Nope."
"Where's Gibbs?"
"Last word, with the Director. But Lamb has Point on this case."
"I don't care." She turns to face him. "I'm not telling either of them who was wearing this shirt."
