CHAPTER 4 - SCENE OF THE CRIME

McGee located the deceased woman's phone in the bedroom and accessed her call history. "There are a few recent calls from someone named Hugo and he's texted, too. A lot, actually." He did some finger-tapping on the device's screen and reported, "The number matches up with… Hugo Van Daalen. He's the head of Vitex, the CEO, Boss. And he's Dutch, not German."

"Sounds like everyone at work was in bed with each other," Gibbs said. "We'll interview Van Daalen and anyone else Capt. Boucher worked with."

Tony motioned Gibbs over the fireplace in the living room. "Looks like this is the point of contact," he said, inspecting the mantel over the brick fireplace. There was blood and hair on the corner of the mantel, and a small amount of blood on the carpet nearby.

A single pink satin slipper lay on its side a couple of feet away. "Vintage boudoir look with kitten heels… nice," Tony said, making a meowing sound. He saw McGee looking at him and shrugged. "If Palmer was here, we'd be getting the history of women's sexy shoes, so be glad it's only me." He took photos while McGee placed markers next to the slipper, and on the droplets of blood that led to the kitchen.

McGee looked from the living room to the kitchen. "Why would someone kill her in here and drag her into the kitchen?"

Gibbs inspected the plush carpet. "She wasn't dragged or there'd be marks."

McGee asked, "Someone carried her?"

"She could have stumbled, and fell backwards, hitting her head," Gibbs said. He picked up the slipper with his gloved hand and found the heel was loose.

Tony said, "I'll bet they had a lover's spat. The boyfriend pushed her, she hit her head, and then she told him to get the hell out. He left, thinking she's okay. She limps into the kitchen – on one pretty pink slipper – to get some ice and… collapses and dies." He turned to Gibbs for support. "You know how it when you get a concussion. You're dazed, stagger around a bit and then…"

"Face-plant," Gibbs said.

"Uh…no!"

"That's what you do."

"No, I don't!"

McGee was nodding. "Yeah, you do, Tony. I've seen you. You go sort of blank just before hitting the ground like a sack of potatoes."

Tony protested, "I do not! I fold gracefully, like a swan."

With a snort, Gibbs said, "More like a dying swan, making squawking sounds all the way down."

"Dying swans sing," Tony countered, affronted.

Ducky arrived at that moment, and overheard the end of their discussion. "I am sorry to be the one to break your bubble, Anthony, but swans do not sing as they die, as is commonly believed."

McGee made some squawking sounds until Gibbs delivered a slap to the back of his head. It was hard to keep a straight face when McGee let out a squeak of surprise.

Ton grinned. "Oh, is that how they sound, McSwan-dive?"

Gibbs turned to Ducky and asked, "Could Captain Boucher have been alive after she hit her head? Long enough to make it into the kitchen under her own steam?"

"Do give me time to have a look at the deceased, my dear man," Ducky said as he entered the kitchen.

"Where's Palmer?" asked Gibbs, peering out the front window at the ME's truck. There was a gurney standing on the sidewalk, but no sign of Ducky's assistant.

"Mr. Palmer is on vacation," Ducky replied, sounding as if it were a sin to take any time off work. He asked McGee and Tony to bring in the gurney and his equipment. "I have already loaded it with everything I need." Once they were out of earshot, Ducky turned to Gibbs. "You missed your appointment with me this morning, Jethro."

"Uh, yeah, got called to this scene, Duck."

"Yes, well then, I shall see you by end of day. Do not miss it or I shall be compelled to speak to the director about the uncertainty of your fitness for duty."

Bristling, Gibbs retorted, "As you can see, I'm fine. Everything's in working order." He moved his arms around to demonstrate his point. Tony and McGee came in at that point, so Gibbs turned away from the ME. He wasn't going to quarrel with him in front of his team.

After doing a preliminary inspection of the body, Ducky announced the time of death was around midnight, but held off on whether or not the blow to her head had been the cause of her demise. "And to answer your earlier question, yes, she could have survived for a few minutes, or even an hour before succumbing to her injury. When I have conducted a thorough autopsy, I shall give you a definite cause of death."

When the ME turned Capt. Boucher's body face-up, Tony took the photos he needed, and then squatted beside the dead woman with a puzzled expression. He gently touched her face in a couple of places with his gloved fingers. "Hmmm."

Ducky said, "Hmmm, indeed. That is decidedly peculiar."

Gibbs watched his agent's probing and asked, "There a problem?"

"Not sure, Boss." Tony ordered McGee, "Do the fingerprint scanner thingy on her."

"The correct term is a rapid ID handheld biometric terminal," McGee told him, while scanning one of the deceased woman's fingertips.

"Like I said, the fingerprint scanner thingy," Tony replied with a straight face.

McGee confirmed the identity of the deceased. "Captain Anna Boucher, US Navy, 42 years old, works at the Naval Medical Research Center in Silver Spring." He looked at Tony. "You don't think it's her?"

"Well, she doesn't appear to be 42," Tony said. "I mean, look at her. She looks really good for a dead body, especially one who has been lying face down for about nine hours. Presuming she died around midnight yesterday."

Ducky said, "I must agree with Anthony. This young woman could easily be mistaken for a 20-year old. Plus, there is very little discoloration from blood pooling." He inspected Boucher's face and head carefully, and then opened her robe as discreetly as possible.

Gibbs caught a glimpse of an expanse of milk-white skin, devoid of any wrinkles.

Before McGee could ask what he was doing, Tony explained in a quiet voice, "He's checking for plastic surgery scars."

Ducky cast a puzzled look at the body. "No sign of surgery of any kind. And her skin has not been bleached. Indeed, this young woman's skin is almost flawless." He mused, "This reminds me of Victorian ladies who ate arsenic-imbued wafers in order to attain a beautiful-yet-deadly translucent white skin. Exposure resulted in some exceedingly unpleasant side-effects: kidney damage, hair loss, some ghastly growths… and, of course, an agonizingly slow death."

"You saying she was taking drugs, or arsenic, Duck?" Gibbs asked.

"It is possible, but unlikely, that a scientist of Capt. Boucher's caliber would eat arsenic. She could have been ingesting something to cause this effect, but I have no knowledge of any drug that would give such a youthful appearance to a human. If there were such a thing – a fountain of youth in a bottle, as it were – the inventor would become the wealthiest person on this planet. Acquiring or retaining youth and beauty has been a goal of an untold quantity of people since the dawn of time." Ducky sighed. "Unfortunately, for Capt. Boucher, while she may have attained beauty, she was not spared by the spectre of death."

While Tony helped Ducky pack up the body and get it on the gurney, and Gibbs finished up in the kitchen, McGee went to process the bathroom. He'd only been in there a few minutes when he called out, "Boss?"

Gibbs joined him and was shown dozens of cosmetic jars stacked on shelves in a linen closet. He picked up a jar and inspected it. Through the clear glass, he could see a creamy substance that resembled cold cream, but there was no label to say what the contents were.

Tony, ever curious, came in and looked over his shoulder. "What's written on the label? On the bottom."

Gibbs turned the jar over. There was an ordinary adhesive label stuck to the bottom, with a sequence of letters and numbers typed upon it.

McGee said, "Looks like some kind of lot number. It might track back to Vitex."

"Somehow I don't think these were giveaways from work," Tony said, looking at the stockpile in the closet. "Looks like she was prepping for the apocalypse."

Gibbs retreated from the cramped bathroom, saying, "Take them all back to the Yard. Make sure you tell Abby to treat them as hazardous."

"Yes, Boss," his two agents said at the same time.

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Tony pushed a handcart laden with four boxes of what he and McGee had already nicknamed 'the cream o' death' down to Abby's lab. McGee carried two additional boxes of bagged evidence, which he placed on the metal table in the center of the room.

"What did you bring me?" Abby asked, poking around in one of the evidence boxes. "The entire contents of this woman's medicine cabinet?"

"Yep, every cream, lotion and potion. Plus some guy stuff that may have belonged to one or two gentleman callers." Tony filled her in on the case and finished up saying, "And… she had all these unmarked jars of cosmetics. Might have been concocted in a lab at Vitex."

Gibbs strode in with a Caf-Pow! he handed to Abby. He warned sternly, "Abby, you need to treat those as toxic until proven otherwise."

"Yes, sir," Abby replied, saluting. "You know there's nothing wrong with mixing things up in your own lab or kitchen. I make my own cold cream with almond oil and beeswax."

McGee said, "Abby, you don't keep 96 jars stacked up, just for a rainy day."

Tony pointed out the labels and Abby looked at them with interest. "These look like they're test batches. You think someone took these from Vitex?"

"Capt. Boucher might have stolen them, or someone could've made this batch especially for her," McGee said with a slight shrug. "We don't know yet if she was affected by this skin cream, or even that she used it."

Gibbs said, "Ducky seems sure she died from a blow to the head."

"How was she affected by the cream?" Abby inquired.

"Check out the before and after photos." Tony pulled out his smartphone and showed Abby photos of Capt. Boucher's ID photo, and comparative ones he'd taken at the scene.

Abby stared at the images and exclaimed, "Wow, are those both the same woman? Is this House of Wax or what?"

"Exactly, the 1953 version!" Tony replied.

McGee said, "I know that movie. Vincent Price played Professor Jarrod!"

"'Once in his lifetime, every artist feels the hand of God, and creates something that comes alive.'" Tony said, doing his best Vincent Price impression. "Seriously, this woman's white skin was creepy. We might be talking vampires here," he said, and McGee nodded in agreement.

"I'll find out what made her look like that, as soon as Ducky sends me samples from the body," Abby said confidently.

Gibbs headed for the exit. "You two, with me. Let Abby do her job."

Abby rubbed her hands together and jumped up and down. "Don't you just love a mystery?"

◊ • ◊ • ◊ • ◊

Tony hung up his phone and reported, "Boss, security at Vitex says that Randolph Jerome isn't in this morning. He's scheduled to meet a rep from a medical instrument manufacturer and is due back after lunch. They don't have any more details."

Gibbs asked, "The BOLO–"

"–is active, but no sign of him yet," McGee finished up.

"His car–" Gibbs began.

Tony was quick to say, "Maryland tags 7-2405 on a white Dodge Neon – and I've just got to say this: it's a chick car if I've ever seen one – but no sightings so far. Our official version on the BOLO is, 'We are seeking Randolph Jerome for assistance with an ongoing investigation.'"

McGee looked up from his screen. "Can't trace the car; it doesn't have a locator. His phone is turned off, but I'm keeping an eye out for any activity."

Gibbs was pleased, not so much at the content of his agents' statements, but because they were right on the ball with their answers. "Anything on Jerome?"

McGee gave them a rundown. "Jerome has been at Vitex for the past ten years, working as a clinical research coordinator. He is good at cost analysis and negotiating budgets with sponsors, pharmaceutical companies, and ensuring compliance with their clinical trials. Basically a numbers man. Not good with people. Jerome has a clean record at work and in his personal life, nothing unusual with his spending habits or bank accounts. His wife died from cancer four years ago. General opinion is he's a loner and a bit of a sad sack, but Capt. Boucher liked him anyway."

Tony picked up, saying, "It's a total soap opera, Boss. Jerome and Boucher had lunch together on a regular basis, or did so until a few weeks ago, when she started going out for lunch apparently with another man. Nobody knows who she was seeing, or they won't say because it's obvious it was their boss. Security saw her telling Jerome to leave her alone, in a nice way, more than once. He was persistent, so they had a word with him."

Gibbs asked, "What d'you have on Capt. Boucher?"

McGee and Tony stood on either side of Gibbs and reported their findings about the deceased. Capt. Boucher's commanding officer at NMRC, Capt. Drake, said she had a stellar background, was considered top in her field, and was committed to her research to improve care for wounded sailors.

"Her CO sounded pretty shaken when I told him Boucher had been killed," McGee said. "He wants to be kept informed of any developments in the investigation. He said Capt. Boucher was winding up the project she's overseeing at Vitex, and was due to rotate back to the NMRC offices on Monday. He can't think of any reason why anyone would kill her. No unusual activity with her bank accounts, and spending is normal for her income. As far as Vitex goes, the Navy has worked with them for the past five years, and Capt. Drake thinks highly of them. He was positive in his remarks about their CEO, Hugo Van Daalen, and the company owner, Mars Odell."

"Odell?" Gibbs asked.

"He doesn't deal with the day-to-day operation of Vitex. He oversees all his interests from his office in Zurich. Van Daalen is in charge here in the US."

"Ducky's preliminary report is in. And Abby just sent us something," Tony said, accessing the shared files folder. He printed their findings and summarized, "Capt. Boucher has bruising on her upper arms and blunt force trauma to the back of her skull, coinciding with falling – or being pushed – against a pointy wooden object. The blood and hairs we found on the edge of the fireplace mantel are hers, Abby confirmed. Abby also says the slippers she was wearing were poorly made, and the loose heels were an accident waiting to happen – her words. Raymond Jerome's fingerprints are all over the house, which you'd expect as he's Boucher's sort-of-boyfriend. We have yet to match other prints in the house."

"I can get Van Daalen's prints through the State Department," McGee said. "Looks like it could have been an accident."

"My vote is it's the jealous lover in the living room," Tony said. His desk phone rang and after brief discussion, he announced, "Ducky says he has something interesting 'to impart.'"

◊ • ◊ • ◊ • ◊

"Ah, Jethro, you missed your appointment," Ducky said when Gibbs strode into Autopsy, with his two agents on his heels.

"I'm here to find out what's so interesting about my case," Gibbs countered.

"Jethro…"

"Not now," Gibbs countered.

Ducky frowned at being put off, but he turned to the female body laid out on the metal autopsy table. "As I surmised, Capt. Boucher died from blunt force trauma. Her cranium was cracked, and the bleeding in her brain appears to have been slow enough to give her several more minutes of life."

"So she could have made it into the kitchen under her own power," Tony concluded. Ducky agreed it was likely so Tony asked, "The question now is, did Jerome or someone else shove her hard against the mantel, or did she trip after he left?"

Gibbs reminded them, "The heel on her slipper was broken. Like Abby said, it could have been an accident."

Tony looked doubtful. "I don't know, Boss. Feels like foul play to me."

Ducky raised a finger to get their attention. "What I called you down here for is a discovery about the skin cream Capt. Boucher used, with some regularity, over her entire body." The ME indicated the dead woman's body. Any skin not covered by a sheet was deathly pale. "It is quite remarkable, her youthful appearance. Unfortunately it is only skin deep. The dermis, as you see, is pallid, making me suspect she had anemia. Not so. The skin itself is almost devoid of pigment."

"This was caused by the skin cream and not some other condition?" Gibbs asked.

Ducky nodded. "That is my conclusion. The test results from Abby reveal that the cream contained a powerful derivative of an anti-aging formula called NAD. The formula has been altered to such an extent it appears to be able to reverse decay, although in its present form, I believe extended use would be fatal. The poor woman's organs were showing signs of severe stress and she had advanced osteoporosis. I doubt she would have lived to see Christmas, if that long."

McGee asked, "What's NAD?"

The Autopsy doors whooshed open and Abby entered, saying cheerfully, "Nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide. Not exactly the kind of thing you'd cook up in your kitchen sink."

"Is it possible she didn't know about the cream's effect on her? Or d'you think she was a guinea pig in some experiment?" asked Gibbs.

Ducky shook his head. "I doubt Captain Boucher was taking part in any regulated clinical trials. That would have been unethical, to say the least. And besides, that batch of skin cream she was using never would have made it far enough to be tested on humans. The cell and organ breakdown would be apparent to any scientist, early in their testing stage, and they would have disposed of it."

"Maybe whoever gave it to her didn't know it was a bad batch," Tony suggested. "I mean, there's no way she'd have slathered poison all over herself if she'd known it would kill her, would she?"

Ducky explained, "I cannot say what was going on in this woman's mind, Anthony. But there is a possibility Capt. Boucher did not know the skin cream was toxic."

Abby said, "Let's just say someone didn't know this was a killer cream, and wanted to take some home for personal use, it would be very hard to smuggle all those jars out of a secure lab."

Gibbs spoke up. "Unless you were the boss and had access to the entire place."

McGee was frowning at Capt. Boucher's body, as if he didn't want to believe she would knowingly use the de-aging skin cream if she was aware it could be harmful. "It's possible Van Daalen, or Jerome, or even some other friend, didn't know what he was giving her."

"What if Capt. Boucher got her hands on their secret formula, and planned to sell it?" Tony suggested. "Even if it wasn't usable in this formulation, the research behind it could lead them to the next stage. Someone might have killed her for it. People have killed for less."

Abby didn't agree with that theory. "But you guy brought me cases of the stuff."

"They could have taken just one jar. Or maybe there was another case we don't know about," McGee said.

Gibbs raised a hand. "Enough speculation. Gear up, we're going to Vitex." When he paused to allow Abby to walk ahead of him, he heard Ducky calling his name.

"And I'll see you for your appointment, Agent Gibbs, by end of day."

Gibbs grunted and joined his agents in the elevator, ignoring their poorly hidden smirks.

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