CHAPTER FOUR

Dr. Camille Saroiyan had just finished prepping three visitor authorizations. She'd only just gotten the names from Booth who'd gotten them from NCIS. She knew that Booth and Brennan should be arriving any moment, and the folks from NCIS wouldn't be too far behind. She'd worked with the FBI long enough to have heard many of the stories about their interactions with NCIS. She suspected that this case was going to be somewhat less than pleasant.

She got up from her desk and moved toward the receiving bay, where the body would be brought in. She was just in time. The blue and white NCIS medical examiner's van was just pulling in. An older gentleman, probably in his sixties, she was guessing, stepped out of the passenger side. A slender young man in his late twenties, or early thirties, with round wire-rimmed glasses got out of the driver's door.

She stepped forward to greet them, but before she could, the older man looked up at her and said, "Good heavens, you're the spitting image of…"

"Of who?" she couldn't help but ask.

"An associate at NCIS," he said after a slight hesitation. "One of our field agents. A young woman by the name of Yates. That wouldn't by chance be your name as well?"

"No, I'm afraid not," she said. Holding out her hand, she said, "I'm Dr. Saroiyan. Camille, but you can call me Cam. And you are?"

The man seemed genuinely distressed. "Of course. Please forgive my terrible lack of manners. I am Dr. Donald Mallard, Chief Medical Examiner for NCIS, although, most people just call me Ducky." He took Cam's hand and shook it gently, though his grip was firm. "And this is my assistant, Jimmy Palmer."

"A pleasure to meet you Dr. Saroiyan," Palmer said.

"Likewise," Cam said. "Ducky, huh? What an interesting nickname."

She welcomed them both, and a pair of Jeffersonian interns aided Palmer in getting the gurney out of the van. As they began to walk toward the autopsy suite, Ducky started on one of his long-winded asides, but he'd just begun when Cam's phone buzzed.

After a moment of conversation, she said, "If you'll excuse me for a moment, there is a woman at the front desk who is claiming to be part of your team, but security seems to doubt her."

"Because she's goth, is that correct?" Ducky asked.

"That's part of it," Cam said. "Is she part of your team?"

"She's our forensic scientist," he replied with a chuckle, "Abigail Sciuto. Don't let the makeup, or the outfit fool you. She's a brilliant young woman, though she does have her eccentricities. It reminds me of a time in Indonesia. I was there on a relief mission…"

"Excuse me Dr. Mallard," she said, cutting him off. I have to go and handle this." She gestured to one of the interns. "Jeff here will show you to the autopsy suite."

"Of course," Ducky said, but she was already turning away. He looked at Jeff, who appeared clean-cut, and perhaps twenty-four. "I'm certain you'll find this interesting, young man. As I was saying, Iwas in Indonesia…"

Palmer just looked down at the gurney and pushed, a tiny smirk on his face as Dr. Mallard regaled Jeff with his tale.

Cam made her way to the front desk. What an odd man, she couldn't help but think to herself. She rounded the corner to see a bizarre sight. A security officer was standing with a young woman, Miss Sciuto she assumed. She was dressed in a black and white outfit that seemed to something from a futuristic Japanese anime film. He skirt stopped about mid-thigh, and her black boots, with red buckles up the side no less, reached nearly to her knees, and had a good inch and a half platforms on the bottom. She had medium length black hair, in pigtails, and dark makeup, black lipstick with her pale skin. Of all things, she seemed to be clutching a laptop in one hand, and a good-sized stuffed hippopotamus in the other.

"This is way cool," she was saying to the security man. "I've always wanted to see what the inside of this place was like. I couldn't believe my ears when Ducky called and told me Gibbs wanted me to get over here asap." She pronounced it like a single word, asap, instead of an acronym. "At first, I thought I'd misheard him. Andoird Lust was playing in my lab, pretty loud."

Cam stepped forward, "Are you Abigail Sciuto?"

"Just Abby, or Abs," Abby said. "Hey you look just like, Cassie…"

"Yates," Cam finished for her. "Dr. Mallard already told me."

"Cool," Abby said, accepting the visitor's badge Cam handed her.

"If you'll follow me, I'll take you to our lab. You'll be working with Drs. Hodgins and Addy."

"Right on," Abby said, and let out a rather loud expulsion of gas. Cam couldn't help but turn and look at her. "Sorry," Abs said. "It was Burt, I squeezed him a little too hard." She demonstrated by squeezing the stuffed hippo again, and the noise repeated itself.

"Okaaay," Cam said, turning and moving again. This was going to be one very strange case.