Chapter 7 : Invisibility cloak
Buchanan entered the bullpen after Temp dropped her off at the Navy Yard before driving to the Hoover Building and smiled as she saw Tony, Ziva and McGee hard at work at their desks. Her arrival was noted by Tony, who smiled at her.
"Hey, shouldn't you be in bed?" He asked, smiling as she put a boiling cup of cappuccino in his hand.
"I find it fascinating how even the most innocent comment coming from your lips can sound like a come-hither line." She said smiling, turning to Ziva and offering a cup with her favorite tea.
"I thought I told you to stay home today." McGee said, staring down at her in a surprisingly accurate imitation of Gibbs' stern tone.
"But I'm feeling fine now. The dizziness is gone and I was able to eat and it hasn't come up again saying hi. I'm fine as long as I stay in desk duty." She said as she offered him his favorite coffee flavored with cream and sugar.
He took the coffee but didn't drink from it; he kept staring down at his wife, studying her face as she waited patiently for him to examine her and find her able to report for duty or not.
He finally sighed and rolled his eyes, making her smile at him as she went to her own desk, booting her computer.
"What do we have today?"
She asked as her computer ran the antivirus, turning to the plasma as they put the pictures on it.
"Staff Sergeant Dylan Knox, 31, widower. He went AWOL as he failed to report to duty one Monday on November 1983. Has never had any complains from his former officers. Model employee. Nobody had anything bad to say about him."
McGee finished his exposition with Knox's enlistment picture.
Ziva stood up, eager to start. "But apparently someone had something against him because he was killed with a bullet in his brain."
"Execution style?"
"Apparently. Ducky is still checking. Of his former work colleagues, only two remain in US soil and alive. Other two are dead, natural causes - one a heart attack and the other of pulmonary embolism, after free diving in Bahamas.
"Local M.E. said he didn't decompress correctly." McGee muttered as he read the autopsy report in his screen.
"Where are the living ones?" Joy asked, going through the files on her desk, trying to put some order on the papers.
"One is in San Diego, California. He's a SEAL trainer. The other is an aide for a Colonel Clive in Pensacola, Florida." Tony said.
"Air Force?"
Ziva nodded as Tony rushed to grab the clicker from McGee's hand, who glared at his friend. Tony smoothed out his jacket and grinned.
"We also have another mystery." An old picture of the sergeant with a young toddler in a red dress appeared on the screen.
Joy stood up to look at the picture. "Who is she?"
"Knox's daughter. He was a widower and she disappeared around the same time her father did."
"Did you find her body?"
McGee shook his head, the same sad look in Ziva's and Tony's faces as they looked at the picture. "We have canvassed the entire crime scene and we left two forensic teams going with a fine comb through the debris in the entire park. The scene has been greatly compromised by the heavy machinery and several people walking around but still no sign of another shallow grave was found."
"Oh." Joy whispered as her mind went through statistics. "That changes things."
"Why?" McGee turned to her, his arms folded as he saw a deep frown appearing in his wife's face. She lifted worried eyes to him.
"If it was just a murder, it would be a kind of investigation. If this is a murder followed by a toddler kidnapping, that's something completely different and... the chances of finding anything now - after so many years gone by - are slim to none."
"Why do you say that?" Ziva asked, noticing a saddened light in Joy's eyes as she looked at the picture in the plasma.
"Because even in the remote chance she is alive, she is what we consider in kidnapping cases invisible."
"What do you mean?"
"She doesn't know she is missing. She grew up in a different environment, home, name, family, unaware of her past. Her only living relative is dead and the trail has gone cold because there was no one out there searching for her. She fell in a crack of the system and there's nothing to do."
"So you're saying that we can't find her." Ziva said, unhappy with the prospect.
"No..." Joy shook her head, looking at her with serious brown eyes. "I'm saying that there is the very real possibility that she doesn't want to be found. She has her own life now. That's ancient history. One that she doesn't remember. And we're saying all that in the faint hypothesis she is alive."
"What are her chances of being alive?" Tony asked, looking at the chubby toddler smiling at the camera.
"Ah... it depends on the type of kidnapping we're talking about. If it is a stereotypical kidnapping, it's a 40% chance she has been killed within the first few weeks of her kidnapping."
"Damn." Tony muttered.
"Of the invisible cases, at least 90 % remain unsolved."
