Chapter 10
There's a lot of piddling work that needs to be done after suspects are apprehended. Most civilians don't realize that. It took, seemingly, several copies of Vance, Gibbs, Ducky, Tony and Ziva to put the surviving tantrists into cells at Holding, to phone Jimmy to come into work and help Ducky, to photograph the scene here and leading back to the Barry (and on the Barry), to start typing up reports, to file an incident report (break-in) with both the SECNAV and the Navy Yard Security, to reopen the closed main entrance door (temporarily nailing a board over the broken glass), to call a door company to come out for an emergency replacement…
Too much to do for people already tired, but it had to be done.
Tim was tucked away in a warm, quiet area; to relax for a bit until one of the others could be spared to take him to the hospital for treatment. He'd offered to start typing up his report, but was told to wait and…rest. It wasn't often that one of the MCRT was told to not work, much less by both Gibbs and Vance simultaneously, so Tim quickly took the hint and gave in.
Gibbs had a hammer and nails in hands well-accustomed to holding both while Vance held a piece of plywood in place over the broken door. February being what it was, they were eager to keep the cold air outside. "Still got to get a guard on this entrance," said Gibbs, speaking over the two nails in his mouth. "You really sent everyone home when you evacuated this place?"
"Oh, good grief," Vance said, suddenly, remembering.
x.x.x.x.x.x.x
In the shelter-in-place room, James' ringing phone broke the quiet. Sleepers woke up, and the few talkers hushed. "Dyer here."
"This is Director Vance. Mr. Dyer, the emergency is over. You people can pack up and go home. I'll see that you all get credited with overtime."
"Thanks, Director! Is, uh…is everything and everyone all right?"
"The situation's improving by the minute. There was a skirmish, but we won out."
"We'll pick up after ourselves and then leave."
"Is Agent McGee still here?" Dallas called out, but James shut his phone, ignoring her.
x.x.x.x.x.x.x
The SIP people streamed out the front entrance as Vance and Gibbs finished nailing the plywood in place. They chorused their goodbyes and thanks to Vance, and nodded to Gibbs, who might have had a role in something, but they didn't know what.
"Oh, I think I left the book I was reading at my desk," Dallas said, turning back.
Maria and Liza each grabbed one of her arms. "It'll still be there on Monday," said Maria. "Come on; Liza's going to give us a ride, remember?"
"Oh, but I—" Dallas sputtered, and was pulled along over her protests.
"Agent McGee okay?" asked Henry, the security guard. "If he is, you might want to protect him from a female on the prowl."
Vance and Gibbs only grinned. Then Vance said, "Henry, would you mind staying on another hour until we can get a replacement guard out here?"
"Was going to suggest that myself, Director," Henry said, tipping his hat. "After yesterday's excitement, a little bit of Ordinary will be refreshing."
x.x.x.x.x.x.x
Tim was waiting for someone to come and tell him everything was over. After all this time by himself, waiting, he was ready to go to a hospital and have someone fuss over him. His thoughts were interrupted by a noisy coughing fit.
Next time I'm sick. I'm staying home.
He ached all over. His chest from coughing...and from the shapes carved there. His feet hurt. He was tired. ...and he still had that small nick on his forehead from...being marked. He was still a bit cold.
Beyond all that, though, Tim was still a bit freaked out by what had happened...and it wasn't even so much about the near-sacrifice itself. It was about...the still-nameless leader of that crazy group. His voice, so confident...so insidious...and he had just...just killed himself without a second thought, confident that he'd return. Tim shuddered.
The door to the conference room opened and Ziva poked her head inside and smiled at him.
"Hello, McGee. How are you feeling?"
"Uh...yeah..." Tim said, lamely, unable to come up with a concise answer to that question.
Ziva's smile faltered slightly.
"Are you all right?"
"Not at the moment. What's up?"
"There is another storm headed this way. Gibbs would like you to get to a hospital before it arrives."
"Another?" Tim sighed...and coughed.
"This is much smaller, but with all the snow that fell in the last one..."
"Right. I'm ready to go anytime."
"No complaints?"
"None."
"How are your feet?"
"Sore...but I'll manage."
"Director Vance said you might appreciate having your regular clothes, now that they have been dried from their time outside."
"Yes," Tim said, bestirring himself enough to stand and limp over to where Ziva was holding out his clothing. "The scrubs aren't really very flattering...or especially comfortable. Ducky's shorter than I am and Jimmy and I...just aren't...shaped the same. I'll change and...and come down."
"Very well. We will be waiting for you."
"Okay."
Ziva closed the door and Tim changed into his own clothes, grateful for their thickness, but still shivering a little bit. He put them on as quickly as he could (which was not very quickly at all) and then limped out of the conference room and down to the bullpen. No one was there for the moment and so Tim limped toward his desk.
"Probie!"
Tim turned, mustering up a weak smile. "What?"
"You just missed your most devoted fan."
Tim thought of the woman who had evaluated him so disturbingly.
"Dallas Wright! The Cybercrimes girl! She's really into you, McGee."
Tim let out a weak laugh. "Oh...I'm glad I missed her."
"You all right, McGee?"
"Not really, Tony. How was West Virginia?"
"Dull in comparison, I think...and you'll have to go out there. We stayed at the most amazing bed and breakfast place ever. I think I'll move out there."
Thwack!
"DiNozzo, you were supposed to be helping him to the car!" Gibbs growled.
"On it, Boss. Come, Probie. Your chariot awaits."
Tim coughed a few times and then let Tony support him slightly as they headed out of the building.
"What happened to the doors?" he asked.
"Gibbs couldn't wait for anyone to come and open them."
Tim smiled.
"Thanks for stopping by," he said and shivered in the cold wind.
"No problem, McGee. Let's get you out of the great outdoors."
"Sure. Fine by me."
In the end, Tony, Gibbs and Tim went to the hospital. It took a while to get Tim admitted, and then, when he was, they had to give an abbreviated explanation for why Tim had two Hindu symbols carved into his chest and why his feet were chafed and cut. It was rather difficult to explain it all, but finally, after checking the status of his pneumonia, they decided to admit him overnight to make sure that all his exertions hadn't seriously aggravated his illness. Gibbs sent Tony out to check with Abby, let her know where Tim was so she could fuss over him...and then looked at Tim with a questioning glance.
"I'm okay, Boss. Thanks."
"What happened? Vance said things got weird out there."
"They did...really weird."
"What happened?" Gibbs asked again.
"It was like he...he got control of me. I didn't feel like I could...resist what he was telling me to do. It was really freaky. He just kept talking and talking and he never looked away from me...not once the ceremony started. I couldn't fight him...and then...when Director Vance started...started fighting, it seemed to...to wake me up, but I felt...different." Tim shook his head. "I don't know how to explain it, Boss. It was... This is going to sound crazy."
"Try me."
"He told me that all the power of the Navy would be drained through me, through my life's blood...and when I started to fight back, when Vance was fighting...I felt...kind of...like it was, like I was stronger than I really am. ...and then, in Autopsy. He was so convinced that he'd be born again, reincarnated, that he'd be back. I almost believed him."
Gibbs' expression didn't change, but Tim was sure that he was a bit surprised. He leaned back for a few moments.
"Do you still believe him?"
"Not really...but I can't explain what happened."
"I can't either...but I don't think you have to worry about this guy being reincarnated."
"Maybe not...but there are others. The two you arrested...and who's to say that was all of them? What if there are more?"
"We'll find them if there are, McGee. Don't worry."
Tim rubbed his chest, feeling the stitches through the hospital gown. "Uh...well...I think I'm going to be feeling worried for a little while, actually, Boss."
Gibbs smiled. "That's fine."
"And...you know what?"
"What?"
"I wouldn't mind having a required psychological debriefing this time."
Gibbs laughed. "I'll see what I can do."
x.x.x.x.x.x.x
On Monday, work resumed in Autopsy; Ducky and Jimmy concentrating on the body of Melissa Williamson. The Navy lieutenant who had died twenty years ago might hold the clues to the current case.
Ducky leaned close to the corpse's head and murmured to it. "Now why, my dear, would such a tragedy have happened to an experienced hiker such as yourself? You were extremely fit, young, and capable. You knew these mountains. It seems unlikely that a fall would have happened to you. Yes, of course it's always possible, but the odds were small. Your niece wants the truth. And so do I. Mr. Palmer, clamp here."
"Yes, Doctor." Jimmy then grinned. "Did you ever stop to think that to a scavenger, a bone might look like a Lincoln Log? You know, those toy 'logs' used to build toy houses? Maybe they would take them and—" Under Ducky's disapproving look, he retreated. "Maybe I should keep my thoughts to myself."
"You'll have to forgive him," Ducky said to the corpse as Jimmy was sent off to Abby's lab. "He is, in fact, fairly amusing at times. The rest of the time…" Ducky only sighed.
Gibbs walked in. "Anything?" he asked.
To the layman, the grizzled remains would seem to offer no more clues than a boulder would. Ducky, however, could find life (so to speak) in bodies that had ceased to live decades ago. "What was left behind, after the scavengers and the elements had their opportunity, are marks on the bones. These are cuts that went too deep; penetrating not just the upper layers of flesh."
"Knife marks?"
"Yes, most certainly. There is a slight difference in depth in, say, just this line here. The blade is pressing deeper as it goes down. There is a similar pattern on this rib, and then on this one."
"What's it all mean?"
"I think you can guess, but I'll say it. I've sent young Palmer to Abby with pictures to analyze. To my eye, there appears to be a pattern in them. Similar to the chakras we've seen on Sergeant James."
"But James' cuts weren't bone-deep."
"No, they weren't. It appears that Lt. Williamson's cuts—if that's what they are—were made by an inexperienced hand."
"The tantrist, as a younger man."
"Quite possibly."
x.x.x.x.x.x.x
It wasn't until Thursday that they managed to solidly identify all the tantrists involved. The surviving members had refused to speak no matter what threats were made. They seemed to have no interest or concern in the world around them. They had reacted with contempt toward any suggestion of a deal, even with perfect understanding of what kind of jail time would be required of them. They had sneered at the shrink engaged to evaluate their sanity.
All that meant that they had to find out who they were using what they could get: DNA, fingerprints, witness statements. Tony had volunteered to go back to Franklin, even to stay overnight if necessary...in order to be thorough, of course.
"Ms. Bradshaw had seen them all off and on for years, Boss," Tony reported. "She said they were regular vacationers in the area. She never associated them with...with all this...stuff."
"And how was the food, Tony?" Ziva asked with a smile.
"Oh, excellent. She said we could all come back anytime."
Tim was home for the week, as ordered by his doctor...bored out of his skull, but finally starting to get beyond all the strangeness that had ruled during the attack by the followers of the left-hand path. He and Vance had given their statements and Ducky had officially related what he himself had seen. The knife was in evidence lockup and the tantrists who had died were in Autopsy.
"Gibbs!" Abby shouted excitedly. "This knife is sooooo cool! I mean, it's not. It's weird and twisted and...and a murder weapon, but it's really neat! This isn't something you can buy at a local store. In fact, I don't think was bought...I think it was...homemade! Crazy, huh? And it's definitely not new. This thing...it's been around for a while...and it's been used...and I'm guessing that it wasn't ever used to cut up people's veggies. It's got a dark aura, Gibbs."
All in all, it was a distinct relief to discover that some of these people had identities.
"These people haven't been on the grid since they were in college," Tony said. "It's crazy the way people can just...disappear."
Two of the tantrists who had died had been identified as Shana Dalling and Allen Oberson, both of whom had gone missing in the late eighties. The surviving man had also been identified as Jeremy Swanson, a college dropout who had decided to abandon his fiancé for some strange group...and then had vanished. The leader and the surviving woman were not in the system at all. Neither of them had fingerprints, DNA or dental records on file anywhere, thus rendering them effectively anonymous.
"It is strange. It is as though they do not exist," Ziva said. "How is that possible? In this world, everyone leaves a trace somewhere...but these people have not. Not ever."
"There is one thing we know about them, now," Abby announced. "You'll never guess."
"What?" Ziva asked.
"Oh, come on...guess!"
Gibbs rolled his eyes. "Abby!"
"Okay, okay. The guy who's the leader? The dead guy? I got the idea to compare the DNA from the people we couldn't identify, and guess what!"
"They're not related," Tony said in surprise.
"Ding! Got it in one, Tony. Half the alleles in common."
"He's her father?"
"Looks like it."
A moment of triumph, quickly dashed.
"And still we know nothing about them," Ziva said, her voice quiet.
The anonymity of some of the players in this strange drama lent an air of mystery to it, a feeling of it not being finished...but it was finished. They had solved not one, but two cases by taking this group down. Abby's analysis of the knife marks on the bones from Lt. Williamson made it patently clear that she had been an early victim of this group, perhaps with different members, but the same group, the same people. Three of the members had disappeared from public life only a year before Williamson had been found in the woods.
"Well, Agent Gibbs?" Vance asked.
"Looks like that's it. JAG has control of the ones who are still alive. We've turned over everything we found."
"But it doesn't feel over, does it."
"No, it doesn't."
"Agent McGee is on the mend?"
"Yes. He'll be back next week."
"On light duty?"
"Of course, but he's insisting...and I think we all need him back here, to be honest."
Vance stood up and looked out at the piles of snow sparkling in the sunlight...and then over at the Barry which stood so staunchly in its place.
"Yes. We need something to close this chapter. Strange as it's been...it needs to be over."
And over it was...more or less.