Chapter 9: one in one billion

Sometimes the past seems too big for the present to hold. Chuck Palahniuk

"This is an exercise of futility," Ziva said waving the clicker in her hand, exasperated, "We're trying to solve a twenty five year old murder and kidnapping case grasping straws."

Tony looked up from the twenty plus year old employee list of the building where Sergeant Dylan Knox worked and sighed, "Why do you say that?"

"If she is alive - and that's a big if - she's a completely different person from who she was then. She's not even aware of what has happened then, as she will not have any memory of the events of that led to her father's murder. Therefore, she's not a reliable witness."

"But she is still a victim, Ziva. Therefore, we must find her," McGee said, glancing briefly from his screen to look at Joy, who came from the break room with a bottle of water in one hand and a paper napkin wiping her nose. She stopped to look at the picture of the dead marine and his daughter, sipping her water slowly.

"If she is alive. How old was she when he was killed?" Joy asked, studying the picture with irritated eyes, feeling her nose itching for a sneeze that refused to come forth.

" Four."

The agents looked at the faded photograph of a cute chubby toddler in the arms of a laughing man in early eighties Marine's uniform. She hadn't yet lost the baby fat in it and her toothy white smile was charming, her face framed with dark brownish curls which gave her a doll like appearance.

"Ziva is right." She sniffled and folded again her handkerchief, feeling a faint fever burning behind her eyes making her achy all over. "Despite the fact that a four year old has already developed the initial foundation of her adult personality, such the basic abilities to trust, a greater sense of personal identity, a basic vocabulary of more than fifteen hundred words, the core of her self is done, but she still can and will be molded by her environment up until she is seven."

Gibbs chose that moment to arrive at the bullpen and folded his arms, gazing at his agents as they bounced ideas on the case. His gaze landed on Joy who smiled at him and continued profiling their victim.

"If she is alive, she is completely unaware of her past. It's like it has never happened. She was molded and forged by the circumstances after the murder and her mind must have completely erased the tragedy in order to allow her to cope with the new environment she was immersed in, adapting to a new set of rules and situations completely diverse of the ones she was used to. She might not be physically dead, but the Lorelai Christine Knox as we know her died the night her father was murdered."

"So," Gibbs interrupted and pointed to the picture in the plasma, "even if we ran into her in the street and showed her a picture of herself as a baby, she wouldn't have recognized it," Gibbs approached her and studied her reactions.

She shrugged and continued talking, not noticing Gibbs' carefully watching her expressions.

"The probability of that happening is too high even to be calculated. We're talking here about one in billions, Gibbs. And that in the very unlikely chance she is alive."

Gibbs frowned as he studied Joy, who was rubbing her nose and blinking owlishly at him, as her eyes watered with a light fever spiking again.

"Boss, statistically speaking, in child kidnapping cases like this, a parent or family relative is involved in 49% of the cases, while an acquaintance is involved in 27% and finally we have the cases where someone who had no prior contact with either parent or child, which is the last 24%. There are 800.000 juveniles reported missing each year, and of those or every 10,000 missing child reports (including runaways) around one child is killed. But that's in the 1990s statistics. I don't know the current number but I do know that each year a child remains missing the chances of finding her alive and well decrease exponentially."

"So you are saying that we can't find her. At all."

Joy rubbed her nose with the handkerchief again, before finally answering with a shake of her head, "It would be nearly a miracle, Boss. Even then, there's nothing that she could add as she won't have any memories of that time."

He nodded and glanced at the picture, asking out of the blue, "What do you remember of your childhood?"

"My childhood? What's the relevance of it?" Joy looked confused at Gibbs, feeling a light nausea running through her. Her head started pounding, adding to her discomfort, as Gibbs turned his blue eyes towards her and pinned her down with his gaze.

"Just answer the question. What do you remember of the time prior to your adoption by the Buchanan's family."

Joy stared at Gibbs for a moment, trying to gather her thoughts to answer him, unsure of his reasons for asking it.

"Not much; it's just a strange blur of sensations and sounds. Why are you asking me that?"

"So you remember nothing at all? No names? No colors. Maybe a street name or place where you've been before?"

Gibbs stood over her, his gaze studying every reaction on her face, seeing only incredulity and confusion. No hint of lying in her red rimmed eyes. "No, I don't remember. Why are you asking me that? What's that supposed to mean?"

His gaze was locked on her face, studying her facial features and mentally comparing with the one in the plasma. Now that he knew what to look for, he could see the similarities and he was surprised none of the team had picked them up yet. But then, they were looking at a twenty-five-plus-year-old picture. The skin color and hair color were right. The chin had lost its baby fat and had become more pronounced, but the eyes were a dead giveaway.

Gibbs took a step forward, making Joy take a step back, her face finally staying parallel to the plasma, making the other three agents gasp as they looked from the picture on the plasma to their colleague, who was looking at them as if they had lost their minds.

They look at the baby then at her.

The same curly hair.

The same chin, without baby fat.

And - the most important - the same eyes.

"What are you talking about, Gibbs?"

"Boss, are you saying... are you really implying that she is..." Tony froze, his mind making him unable to complete the sentence staring at Joy who finally became pale as a sheet of paper.

"What?" Joy croaked, feeling her throat closing down as her eyes watered like crazy. The nausea came back full force and the headache which had been silently creeping up became a full blown migraine, with a marching band and flying jets roaring in her ears as she tried to keep the little bit that was in her stomach down.

Gibbs' voice took an uncharacteristic gentle tone, as he saw the first signs of distress appearing on his agent's face. "You're the right age. You don't remember your past. Some traumatic event made you completely wipe your memory. It fits."

The room started to spin, at the same time she started to hyperventilate. "Boss, the chance of that happening is …"

"I know. It's staggering high."

"That can't be." McGee's voice shook with denial, seeing the distress she was going through as her mind struggled to wrap around the idea.

"What if it was?" Gibbs turned around and looked at McGee, who had a horrified expression on his face.

"How can you even suggest that? That's not funny!" Joy punched his chest lightly, her fear and pain forcing her to react, her fever weakening her each second that went by.

She punched him again, but before it made contact Gibbs grabbed her by her wrists, forcing her to look into his face. He saw her eyes watering down so he said in a gentle voice, "DNA search found a match in the NCIS employee database."

"No." Her tears were starting to escape.

"It's a match on the parental side."

"That can't be true." She whispered, shaking her head in denial.

"But it is," says Abby, choosing that exact moment to enter the bullpen holding the DNA lab results in her hands. "I've ran the tests four times, afraid of having screwed up the first time."

Joy stared at Abby, frozen, incapable of thinking as her head blew up with pain as her fever chose that exact moment to creep up. Her eyes filled with unshed tears, her hurt became unbearable and reality suddenly seemed a very dark and cold place to be.