Chapter 4

It was early afternoon and after having returned from the crime scene, the three agents were working at their desk. Of course, Tony and Ziva hadn't told anything about the circumstances they found the body what annoyed McGee even more than the fact that he usually was the last one to find out anything about them. However, he felt like their relationship – or whatever they were or were not having – was intentionally held back from him.

When Gibbs entered the office, with a new paper cup of coffee in his right hand, Tony just put down the phone and approached his boos with a 'I know that you won't like what I'm going to tell you'-look.

"What?" Gibbs asked, already sensing this.

"FBI just called. They want to be part of this investigation."

"Why?"

"They connected these two murders to an incident in Sacramento five years ago. A corpse had been found by the caretaker in an abandoned house. The young, female victim's chest was sliced open, her organs separated from the body and a smiley face drawn to the wall of the room."

"Sounds like someone was imitating Red John from this TV series on CBS," McGee mentioned.

"Yeah, that's what FBI thought as well but they noticed that the woman had a deep cut in their back. Turns out that one and a half year later a man was found dead in New York. He had been killed in Bronx, a Red John smiley was found again, also the cut in the back but parts of heart and stomach missing. These two pieces had been found with a third victim in Germany," Tony said, looking at his notes on a piece of paper.

"Germany?" Ziva asked surprised and raised an eyebrow.

"Yes. Oberhausen, West of Germany. A male victim found in his house. Sliced open, organs extracted, cut in the back, parts of heart and stomach were cut out but lay next to the pieces of the former victim in front of him. Since then FBI and German Kripo declared these cases to be the work of a serial killer. They first weren't sure about the victim we found in that empty house because the cut in the back was missing. Now, they read the preliminary report of Ducky-"

"Who found a deep cut in the back of the victim," Gibbs finished the sentence. "They sent some fibbies here?"

"Yeah, some guys from Serial Killers Department will arrive shortly. They also bring their own forensic scientist. I doubt that Abby will be amused," Tony explained.

"Great," Gibbs commented and stood up. He wanted to bring Abby the bad news himself.

"And this is Mr. Mass spectrograph. Do not touch it without my permission, he gets angry very quickly," Abby instructed and the female forensic scientist in front of her sighed.

"Abby...I don't want to take away any work from you. FBI just sent me to help you, to support you," she answered. Her name was Diana Mathews, she had been working for the FBI's labs for nearly twenty years now and therefore was about fifty years old. Despite her age, she had a confident appearance and seemed to be physically perfectly fit. She had long, blonde hair and wore normal jeans and t-shirt under her lab coat.

Abby smiled and turned back to the computer, sensing the glance of the other woman staring at the monitor and the back of her head. "This is the first victim. She was found in an abandoned house. Although the killer made her body hard to identify, he left her military uniform there."

"What makes you so sure that it's a guy?"

"We found indications for rape at our first crime scene."

"Including semen?"

"No, he probably wore a condone."

"Then what makes you think it was sexual abuse? A woman could have faked it," she said and her black pupils stared down at Abby who was a few inches smaller.

"I don't know. I just assumed...isn't that irrelevant right now? I mean, I can't always say he/she/it when talking about the killer," she said and turned back to the monitor. "However, he/she/it left her uniform there."

"Perhaps he wanted her to be identified. He always liked to show off," Dr. Mathews explained, stressing the word 'he'. "The first crime scene might have been a copy cat murder of a TV show's villain and we first thought that a crazy guy had taken him as his role model."

"But the second murder changed your opinion, why?"

"The second victim had the same smiley face but we left details out when talking to the media. First of all the fact that the killer did an autopsy on the New York-victim. That parts of his body were missing and that fingertips and mouth were vitriolised by 2-molar sulphuric acid."

"Oh my God," Abby muttered silently looking at the desk. She could hardly imagine a human being capable of doing such things. What was wrong with the people? Why did they all turn megalomaniac or insane – or both?

"That made dactyloscopy and dental recognition useless. The woman's ID and driver's licenses were burnt and her face sliced open. But before her death, the killer let her write her name on the walls of the room. That made identification easier. And it showed us another important thing: The killer knew exactly what he was doing. We consulted forensic psychologists and they were sure that it was a serial killer who just started. Everything matched, and the killer seemed to know some things about chemistry and investigations. Either he has been adding some strings to his bones from time to time or he is a either a law enforcement officer or a scientist."

"You think a police man would be able to do so?" Abby asked, her eyes widenend.

"I've worked on some cases. The problem is that the DNA of police men and officers are stored in the databanks. That means when we find a DNA trace and it's one of our men, we assume that he accidentally contaminated the crime scene and we do not take along that he did the crime scene," Doctor Mathews explained.

Abby just nodded. This case was becoming less and less nice. How could a man stand over a woman he just abused and killed...all the blood flowing over his hands and dropping onto the ground. She shook her head. She didn't want to think about it, not at all.

"So what shall we focus on now?" Diana Mathews asked.

"I had started to reconstruct the second murder case," Abby explained and loaded the file into her program. "First, we found a burnt cigarette and thought it might match our killer as the victim was non-smoker. It then seemed that the cigarette had been deliberately placed there to confuse us."

"The killer is not stupid," Diana said and smiled slightly.

"No, he isn't. Toxicological results show that the victim was poisoned with a lead nitrate solution which is, first of all, not easy to obtain, but on the other side it seems that this solution was more or less saturated."

"Which means that the killer offered his victim as drink which had no precipitation."

"Of course not, it would have made the woman suspicious. As I assume he mixed the solution himself, he had to know which amount of salt and water he could use."

"He definitely has a scientific background knowledge," Diana admitted. "This is becoming really interesting."

"Oh, yes," Abby said, not so confidential. "However, this is what I imagined the scene to look like," she added and started the program. A badly programmed person dragged another one out of a door and dumped her on the floor. He kneed down and performed his satanic ritual. Suddenly, Mathews' mobile phone rang.

"I'm so sorry," she said and had a look at the display. "It's my boyfriend. We're planning to get married, I gotta take this call," she excused herself and quickly left the lab.

Abby raised an eyebrow and turned back at the screen. Then you should better hurry at your age, she thought and sadly noticed that she hasn't met Mr. Right either.

It was late tonight when I got home. My boyfriend was cooking spaghetti with my favourite sauce and is nearly finished now that I have changed my clothes.

"Can you set up the table?" he asks and I do so, looking into the fridge what kind of beverages we have left.

"I gotta go shopping tomorrow," I remark when I see that we hardly have coke and whine left.

"How was your work today?" he asks when he decants the noodles onto the plates.

"Well, quite fascinating. FBI is now in contact with NCIS," I explained and transport the plates to the dining table where we both sit down. "And yours?"

"Well, definitely not that interesting. We lost another homicide case to the drug unit. Now, tell me, how exactly does the new cooperation between the two Service look like? Have you been asked to work with that Abby Sciuto yet?"

Any new ideas who our killer might be? :)