Chapter Nine
The Gladiators

"McGee," Gibbs calls as he and Lamb walk into the bullpen, "you find a link between Kurland and Levy yet?"

"No, boss. Tony and Ziva are still checking out Kurland's place. He grew up in San Francisco. Levy spent almost her whole life in various parts of Virginia. When she was a State Trooper he was in Los Angeles. Since he was assigned to NUWC her case files don't show she went there."

"That's true," Lamb confirms. "Until yesterday I'd only been there twice, and Jan hadn't even finished FLETC until after that."

He knows too little about her. "When did she join your team?"

"Bob brought her aboard three years ago."

"Need to talk to DuBois."

x

In less than a minute the woman enters the Operations Division from the corridor beyond Shepherd's suite. Gibbs fills her in briefly. "We've found no connection between Levy and Kurland."

"Neither have I," DuBois declares. "But there has to be one. She doesn't remember meeting Kurland before Tuesday night."

"He beat the hell out of her," Lamb says, frustration fueling anger. "Broke her jaw, fractured her skull; if he was just going to rape her why the beating?"

"How did he know exactly where she lived, even to her floor?" Gibbs has had this question nagging at him for days.

"Tell us about her dating habits," Lamb orders DuBois.

x

She's not too happy to talk before so large a group, but that ended when Levy had been attacked. Since then, nothing has been private. "Jan liked men. What more can I say? She liked to date. She stepped out of her comfort zone - a lot."

"What does that mean?" When Gibbs sees she'd hesitate he says "She used the word 'flirtfest'."

Lisa is angry as she looks at Kevin. He's the only source of that term. However, she can't be as annoyed as she'd like to be. If this case is to be solved, all of them need the same facts and these must also be shared with two other teams.

"Jan and I both like to go out, particularly if we've had rough or stalled days, the days when you've made no more progress at sixteen than you had at oh eight."

She's glad no one points out that 'we've all had them'.

"Sometimes we'd go out and flirt. Sometimes we might tie a few guys in knots."

"Either of you ever tie Kurland in knots?"

"No. Jan says she never saw the guy before Tuesday night, and I never laid eyes on him until last night."

"And she doesn't remember him from the bar?"

"She says 'no'. He never made a pass at her. In fact, he left before she did according to the staff. That's why it makes no sense. How did he get opposite her building before she did?"

"Did she go there often?"

She tries hard to remember but "I don't think so. She did go, but not often, and I've never been there before this started."

"She ever bring anyone home from there? Someone who might know Kurland?"

"She doesn't bring home strays. If she's going out, she stays out. She has Commendations on her walls, but only her friends know what she does."

xxx

Within a half hour a woman wearing a Marine Colonel's uniform, an NCIS Visitor's pass attached to her pocket beside several rows of quite distinctive medals, is escorted into the bullpen. Gibbs, out of his seat and around his desk, waves the escorting agent off with thanks before greeting her.

She approaches with a smile and outstretched hand. "Well, well, well, Leroy... Jethro...Gibbs."

"How you doing, Mac?"

"Great. Better than you, in fact. Still playing fast and loose with the law, Corporal?"

"Now would I do that, Corporal?"

"In an Afghan minute."

At that moment DiNozzo and David enter the bullpen, he carrying a paper Evidence bag. "Well, well, well," DiNozzo says, unconsciously copying her as he comes up behind the skirted officer, "the Corporals have a history." Gibbs is so often known for being a Gunnery Sergeant it sometimes seems Mike Franks had struck the ground and Gibbs had sprung up full grown in that persona.

She turns to him, examines him from shoes to hair. "You're a bit too young to hear the sordid details, Agent DiNozzo."

He's impressed. "You know me."

"Your reputation precedes you." She turns to McGee, still seated at his desk. "And you are definitely too young."

"What did I do?"

"How much time have you got, Agent McGee?"

x

Gibbs doesn't try to hold back a grin. In less than thirty seconds the formidable woman has devastated both men, and now here comes Lamb to try his luck.

"Hello," she says. "I don't believe we've met."

DiNozzo's and McGee's looks are so easy to read: 'We haven't met either but you hit us with smiling mortars.'

"Supervisory Special Agent Kevin Lamb."

"Ah." All the levity drains from her tone. "Sorry, I thought you were part of the Corporal's team. I'm sorry about your Agent Levy."

"I'll pass that along."

The seriousness of the issue removes any further taste for banter and the former Corporal with the history with Corporal Gibbs reverts to Marine Colonel Sarah MacKenzie of the Judge Advocate General's Office.

"Gentlemen, I've reviewed exactly four and one half pages of the case against my client before my drive up here, so before I meet with him to get his details I need to see yours."

It takes twelve minutes to summarize the case against PFC Kurland, with heavy emphasis on the Forensics and how brutally Janet Levy was assaulted. The men would like to characterize it as an 'open-and-shut' case but MacKenzie beats them to it with her assurance that there's no such thing.

"Sure you're up to this?" DiNozzo challenges.

"On Defense assignments I have an 84 percent record."

"That's high," he admits without a trace of pleasure. "Did the Director have to call in such a heavy hitter?"

"You fight the gladiator you're assigned, gentlemen. Now, if someone will escort me to my client, I'll see you in the arena."

"McGee, you do the honors."

x

When they're gone, DiNozzo addresses the two Supervisors. "I come bearing gifts. Well, a gift, since they're a pair." He opens the large paper bag and allows them to look inside. There lay top to top two sneakers and he moves the bag to display the soles, and the red within the grooves of the treads. "We found them right in his bedroom, on the floor by the bed."

"Get them to Abby." Tony hands the bag to Ziva.

"Then you," Gibbs orders the woman, "and Lisa DuBois go to the hospital. Make certain Levy never had any man from one of her 'flirt fest' thingees in her apartment. DuBois thinks no. I want to know how he got to her place first."

The woman nods and departs for the elevator.

"I repeat," DiNozzo says, "did the Director have to call in such a heavy hitter?"

"Director called JAG. Chegwidden assigned the heavy hitter. I wanted you to know what to expect. If you're feeling intimidated–"

"Not me, boss."

"Then lock this down. Make this so tight a jellyfish couldn't slide out."

DiNozzo glances at Lamb, can practically read his mind. 'Tighter.' "Piece of cake, bosses." He returns to his desk, veers off. "I'll see what Duc– What Isles has to say about Kurland."

"Watch out for Sky," Lamb calls.

DiNozzo halts but forces himself to move, hoping neither man saw the hesitation. "How bad can it be? I'll charm the - err."

xx

When DiNozzo steps off the elevator he sees Kate Todd's honey-blonde clone and Abby's happier roommate seated together at Ducky's desk and stops dead, grateful the door sensor hadn't detected him and slid aside the too loud glass and metal pneumatic doors. Pneumatic, as George Orwell used it in 1984, is definitely a word that applies to the women.

Maura Isles, presented in profile seated in the chair, wears a screaming scarlet dress that barely reaches her knees.

Sammy Sky sits perched on the edge of the wooden dress, facing her, but her slowly swinging legs are backed by the dark wood. She's smaller than Isles, five two, and her blue dress is too. In her two inch blue heels she's only going to come to five four, still a good distance below him. If she stood between himself, Gibbs and McGee, they could easily hold a conversation over her pale blonde head.

He takes a deep breath, sighs heavily and that's enough for the traitorous doors to slide apart and betray his presence.

Sammy hops off the edge of the desk, a maneuver he would never dare try in high heels, and the thought makes him want to smack himself back to consciousness.

"Hi, Tony!"

"Hi, Sammy. Doctor Isles." Maura gives him a smile that makes him work harder to remember Jeanne, but for a moment it's a true challenge. The woman is a menace to fidelity. He glances pointedly at the three gleaming silver tables as he passes them, anything to keep on track. Doctor Hospital or Doctor M.E. Why does he have to be assaulted with the choice? "Slow day?"

"Absolutely dead," Sky says with a grin. "I was hoping a body would come for me to practice on."

His mind flashes through a hundred possible responses, each and every one of which could have him facing a 'green-yellow-red light behavior' interview by the end of the day. He'd only thought a moment ago that he was being unfairly tried.

Seeing her broader grin, he's absolutely certain that's why she'd phrased it so.

"I need a psych evaluation." Now both women are far too happy. "On Harold Kurland."

"Oh. Bummer," Sky declares, her mood dropping a hundred fifty points.

"I haven't spoken to him," Isles says.

"I don't want to," Sky declares.

"Gibbs tells us one of the women on his team considers him creepy, though he's done nothing to her. In fact, we can't find anyone he's done anything to before Janet Levy. No record of trouble, no problems, he seems to have no issues except women get 'vibes' from him."

"Eighty three percent of women tested in a Piers-Wescott survey," Isles says, "tested high for awareness of danger when presented with a face-to-face potential threat without overt moves, only the thoughts of the test participant in his relationship with the subject. There was no indication that there was any extra-sensory phenomenon associated with it. It was an amalgam of various non-verbal cues that made the determination, an example of an atavistic awareness of potential danger."

"Well, I'm not an atavist," Sammy says with a broad grin, but seeing the look in Tony's eyes she translates, "a primitive; but sometimes I just won't Scene with someone."

Isles turns to her. "Excuse me?"

x

Her shoulders drop hard. "Darn it." Once again she's overshared. Focused on this issue, she'd gotten careless. Now, trapped under the Doctor's gaze, she won't back down.

"I'm what you'd call a 'Bottom', or a 'Sub' if you prefer. I like to be tied up. I like it when the guy controls me. I like it rough, but there are rules. It's allowed to hurt, but it's not supposed to hurt. You get it?"

Tony knows the bisexual violinist is leaving a lot out, but Maura only says "Your secret is safe with us."

"Well, actually, you were the only one who didn't know. But the point is, there are some guys, when we meet and... negotiate is a nice word... there are some guys I will not Scene with. It might be something in their eyes, in their hands, the way they speak, the way they sit, whatever. Sometimes I can tell this guy's not to be trusted. I like it to hurt, but I don't want to be hurt."

DiNozzo considers risking an idea. "Would you see what vibes you get from–"

"Absolutely not!" She folds her arms across her chest in a gesture of firmness, and for the first time since he'd met her there's no elation in her pale blue eyes. "You've had more than enough warning from his co-worker before he beat the hell out of one of your partners. There is no way he's ever getting even a look at me."

x

Tony decides he can't get around that, and certainly cannot blame her. "Either of you ever hear of a case like this; good upstanding citizen, if we're to believe the Corps which hasn't killed anyone since they were formed, suddenly snaps and does this to a woman?"

"In 2002, in Lubbock, Texas," Maura says, "Alan Rubin assaulted one of his co-workers. No motive was ever ascribed to the act but over the course of several hours he literally broke every bone in her body. The woman died eight hours into the prolonged assault."

Tony tries to get through this, but more than imagining how it can relate to this case he can't move on without learning "How do you happen to know that?"

"I read about it back in 06."

Does she have a photographic memory like Melanie? He looks forward to finding out. "Any idea why Kurland would jump off the deep end?"

"Well, there's no indication yet that he did. I would have to study him far more closely in order to consider that. In the meantime, there really is no such thing as a motiveless crime. You have to find it."

"As simple as that, huh?"

xxx

This morning Janet Levy is more aware and stronger than in Lisa and Ziva's previous visits. She's still encased in gauze about her head but her eyes are clearer and practice has made an improvement in her ability to speak without moving her clamped jaw.

"Jan," Lisa says, bending close so the woman can see her without trying to turn her head, "Kevin brought Kurland in. He was captured and brought back by OSP." She can read gratitude and joyful relief in her partner's eyes.

"He denies everything, of course," Ziva says.

Lisa doesn't want Janet dwelling on this. "Jan, can you remember any more? Is it possible you've seen this guy? Ever?"

"I... still don...t remember."

"But you've been to the Golden Sphinx before?" She's really growing to detest that name.

"Yes," Janet whispers. She can still be understood better when whispering rather than working to frame the words aloud.

"Did you ever take anyone home, someone who might have told someone?" For the entire trip out she'd detested this line of questioning and now, seeing the vague look in her partner's eyes, she sees her doubts bear a bumper crop of rancid fruit.

"I don't bring anyone to my apartment. NCIS." The women know that many Agents do not reveal their professional lives if they can help it, other than to family and friends whom they trust.

"When he was in the elevator with you, did you sense anything?"

"No. Caught me by surprise. Never expected it. He was checking out my legs. I'd hoped he might try to hit on me. I never expected that."

The door behind them opens and Ira and Sarah Levy enter.

The interview, such as it had been, is over.