Chapter Eleven
Scrmabeld Gegs
So many pieces, so complex a jigsaw puzzle, and now with Lieutenant Kimberly Almonk's impassioned declaration the pieces fit. "Tell us."
Almonk puts her hands on Gibbs' desk, the better to emphasize her point, but then she withdraws, straightens, forces herself to less passion. "Jubilee is - was - dyslexic. It didn't interfere with her doing her job but she couldn't write or spell a thing. The letters were never in the right spots, and I used to suspect were never in the same places twice."
"How did you two cover for that all this time?" Gibbs asks.
"She hated screens full of red and green underlines, so she and I set her MS Word so it didn't do a spell or grammar check until you hit 'save'. Then she'd send me the document and I'd fix it. In all the years we've worked together I've never gotten one thing from her that wasn't an adventure."
Gibbs is gratified that her answer confirms his theory.
x
"That's why the passwords on her files weren't words, they were finger patterns," McGee concludes, stepping closer.
She turns to him. "Passwords were impossible for her; she'd never be able to open anything without trial and error. And 'endure', 'anymore', 'humiliated', 'discover', and this complex phrasing, these would've turned the screen into something out of 'the Nightmare Before Christmas'."
"Also explains why you worked so closely with her, why she wanted you as her Aide," DiNozzo concludes.
"No one knows she's - was - dyslexic, no one ever had to. She never sent out anything that didn't go through me and I never told a soul."
"I'd said," Gibbs reminds DiNozzo, "that an Aide knows even more than her CO." He also realizes Ducky had given him a vital clue last evening while they were discussing her Journals. If he hadn't kept the team - and himself - working so late to make progress, he might have gotten it.
He shoves a button on the phone and, fortunately for his morning patience, he doesn't have long to wait.
"Abby, you got the fingerprints on that laptop yet?"
/No, I'm still running them. So far no hits./
"Top priority."
/Gibbs, the Director says the forensics on Chris Drakis' place have top priority./
He knows she barely has any by this point, and she created the concept of multi-tasking. "Eastergaard's killer wrote the suicide note."
/Like you said, top priority./
"Where are the bed things from her apartment?"
/Right now in Evidence Hol–/
x
He'll apologize later if he's not busy. "David, Palmer, get down to Evidence Holding, go over that bed stuff and everything else with tweezers and magnifying glasses, find out who was in that apartment. McGee–"
"Downloading the files on everyone who works at MAGTF. I'll pull their prints and have Abby shove those comparisons to the top of the list."
"DiNozzo–"
"Pulling the files on everyone connected with MAGTF - anywhere. I'll get an ID on everyone on that lobby video if I have to crawl into the computer myself."
"Better go on that diet first." He turns to Almonk. "You and I are going to go over the records of everyone in your Command. Rumor had it she killed herself over another rumor that she supplied arms to Saddam Hussein in his attacks on the Kurds."
"What, that shit again?"
"Tell us about it."
Almonk sees all activity has stopped; everyone's staring at her - again. "When Jubilee was up for promotion to XO - she was already Major - it came up that several years before that she was directing arms to So Damn Insane. It wasn't true."
"Who broke the report?" He already knows but
"If anyone found out, they never told me, or Jubilee."
xxx
Abby picks up a pen from her inner office desk and is about to return to the outer when a 'ping' from her monitor's speaker pulls her attention back. There a blue dialogue box on the screen. She doesn't have time for this - until she reads the box. 'VideoChat with Dawn Caldwell. Yes. No.'
"What'da'ya think, you stupid machine," she mutters, snatches the mouse and runs the cursor to her answer. "Sorry, hon," she says, patting the monitor's top with her left hand an instant before her friend's face appears. "Sunshine!"
"Hi, mom!"
Abby adopts an old-lady gravel. "Don't you 'mom' me, you young whipper-snapper."
"Haven't snapped a whip in my life," Dawn insists with a bright grin. In the background Bach's Double Violin Concerto in D minor 2nd movement plays, so Abby uses her remote to turn off 'Brain Matter'. "Oh, not true, I have."
Abby sees a story hidden in the admission in the way Dawn curls a long blonde lock about her right index finger. "And?"
"It took two weeks for Bobby-Ray to finally forgive me, but that's another story. Are you ready?"
'She looks anxious enough to climb through the screen,' Abby thinks. "I'm ready. Flight's booked - First Class, I've got to indulge sometime, so why not for my overdue vacation? Bags are packed. I'm ready for two weeks of Mardi Gras." Maybe she can see Cassius, Loretta an the others.
Dawn's fingers halt their hair twirling. "Mardi Gras was months ago, you either missed it or else you're really early."
"It's always Mardi Gras when Abby Sciuto returns to Jefferson Parish."
"Amen."
x
"'sides," Abby says, "I couldn't make it then on account of the wedding."
"Wed- wha- wait! You got married?"
"Not me," Abby assures her old friend who this time almost did jump through the screen, "friend of mine. Remember Tim McGee?"
"The guy you were running a boiling fever over? Only yeah. So he did go and marry his partner after all?"
Dawn had tried to help her over terrible bouts of jealousy when McGee had left her and turned to Ziva. "Nope, he married a priest." She hides her grin when all expression falls off Dawn's face, all tone vanishes from her voice.
"I didn't know he was gay," she says through near-motionless lips. Abby's laughter only disconcerts Dawn more. "Bi?" makes her laugh harder.
"No, the priest's a woman," Abby says when she can get enough breath. "We have them up here."
"So, neither gay nor bi. Good. You almost ruined a whole year's worth of wet dreams." She runs her left hand fingers through her hair, pulls at the ends.
"Pipe down, YoungStar, he's too old for you."
"Not if you could date him, Vamperstein." Though Abby had babysat her two decades ago, she was 12 and Dawn was 6, so twenty years later only six now very short and insignificant years separate the scientist and the kindergarten teacher.
"Seriously, Sunshine, I'll send you some vids of the wedding." Abby ignores a pang of guilt that she hadn't done so already. If she has to catch up from this far back, the summer, she's grown negligent indeed. "But why the call?"
"No, I'm just double-checking," Dawn continues to run her fingers through the straight blonde locks that frame her face and brush the tabletop. "Remember, you're staying with us, room right next to mine's all fixed up. No excuses."
"I'm sleeping with Kevin?" Abby lights her eyes.
"You wish. Kev's in the Air Force, Staff Sergeant."
"No way. Kevin Caldwell couldn't follow an order if it was to collect his salary."
"Times they do change. Love you."
"Love you too, Sunshine."
"June 3rd."
"Be there,"
"or be a squircle," they finish in unison and Dawn cuts the image.
Abby stares at the black screen, her shadowed face half-reflected in it, and wonders how, in less than a year, her oldest and dearest friend could grow to be such a liar.
xxx
Hours later, hours spent in frustration over too many possibilities and no conclusions, the sun is setting for Gibbs and his team on a wasted day. Traces on the staff at the Pentagon yielded no joy, but an hour after dismissing Second Lieutenant Kimberly Almonk back to her Pentagon duties, an unexpected blast of joy bursts into the bullpen.
"Girls and guys," Abby says as she starts a very fast circuit and DiNozzo's desk and hands each of them two cards, one white paper 5 x 7, the other slightly bigger. "These just came Special Delivery, I wanted you to get them right away. Oh, and Dawn Caldwell videoed me, we're all set for June."
Gibbs doesn't care what answer to this case could come by Special Delivery, or about the call from Abby's friend who he recalls too well; he just reads the cards quickly.
"What is this?" he demands, outraged as Abby reaches Ziva's desk. The larger card is an Invitation from George Washington University's College of Medicine to attend its Commencement Exercises.
"Jimmy and Sammy's Graduations from Medical School. On-line scuttlebutt says it'll be one big shin-ding."
"Shing-ding?" Ziva asks, looking at a card in each hand.
"Whoa," Tony protests. "The Gremlin's - sorry, Michelle," he says in a tone that conveys how not-sorry he is, "already a Doctor."
"Only on paper," Abby counters before Michelle can, as though a Medical School Diploma is somehow meaningless.
"He graduated a couple of weeks ago," Michelle reminds her SFA, feeling he shouldn't need a reminder but she'll show a superficial courtesy if only because Gibbs is present, "but he had so many credits from his years here that he was in an accelerated program. The Commencement is now." She holds out her card for Abby to retrieve.
"You're not going?" DiNozzo can't help but ask.
She gives him a smug yet withering look that pulls a smile to Abby's lips. "I have my Invite."
x
"It's 'Plus One' everybody," Abby points out, "so you bring a date. All but you, McGee; you bring a date and Siobhan will give you Last Rites."
"Got it covered, Abby," he extends the cards to her, "but sorry, I won't be going."
"Awwww, Tim, Sammy would miss you."
"Sorry, same day as my sister's."
"Oh, that's right. How is Sarah?"
"She's goo–"
"Abby, if you're done with the Pompous Circumstances," Gibbs' tone leaves no doubt that she is, "what have you got on the laptop's fingerprints?"
"Nothing," she admits, no longer able to stall reporting the failure. "Metro and I both struck out; nothing in AIFIS or any of their local files that haven't been encoded. If anyone's been to Eastergaard's apartment they didn't touch anything and I've raised nothing on the laptop other than Eastergaard's, Almonk's and X's."
"X's...? Shutting up, Boss," DiNozzo says after catching the full force of Gibbs' glare.
"Not in time."
That X is a potential murderer brings no help; if he's not in the AIFIS system then he's never been arrested, served in the Military, applied for Government Financial Aid like Food Stamps or other benefits, gotten any job that requires fingerprinting or in any other way made it into the system.
Unfortunately, in this country, that still leaves millions of people unaccounted for.
x
McGee and Palmer have pretty much nailed down the fact that, even ignoring the dead Saddam accusation, if there's anything behind the fake cryptic suicide note it didn't involve money. Whatever the woman had supposedly done to spark this degree of implied guilt, she hadn't gotten paid for it.
Now with the discovery that the note was faked, it means that hours of investigation time have been wasted.
"Abby, what about DNA?"
"I found hair and dried bodily fluids but I'm still waiting on CODIS to give me a hit on DNA, but if X isn't in AIFIS how likely is he to be in CODIS?"
"That's what I need you to tell me, Abs."
"Not damned likely."
Gibbs had started to look down to his desktop, that phrase yanks his gaze back up. A quick look, everyone else is staring at the woman with expressions he thinks to be little different from his own.
"Er, maybe I should get back to my lab."
He glances at the clock across the room. "Maybe you should get back to your apartment."
"Maybe you're right."
x
When she's gone, Gibbs considers the rest of his team behind poker eyes. Against the speed of yesterday's apparent 'progress', now wasted effort, this day is maddening. It's already after 1700 and Gibbs doesn't want to send anyone home without a major break in the case. Then his desk phone sounds and he snatches it up halfway through the first ring.
/Gibbs, John from Dispatch. I've got a caller on the line about your Marine Major, but you'll probably need an Interpreter./
Gibbs flashes through his choices: he has Russian, Polish, Greek and Arabic; DiNozzo has Italian and Russian; McGee's got French and Spanish and his bride's breaking him into Gaelic - big help there; Michelle's got Chinese, Korean and Japanese and Ziva has almost everything else. "What language?"
/Weepy./ The line gives a triple click and a woman is on the other end.
/Hello? Is anyone there?/
"Special Agent Gibbs." She doesn't sound like she's crying now but her voice is stuffed with that heavy, shattered quality that says she had been recently. He hopes she doesn't do it again.
/I need to talk to someone,/ she says in a near whine. /About that woman who was murdered and thrown off her balcony. Will someone help me?/
"I will," he says, waving sharply for the attention of the surrounding agents. He won't put this on speaker, might spook the already fragile woman, but if he gets something he intends to be on the road quickly.
Gibbs flashes McGee the 'Trace this' signal and to Tony to get the MCRT truck ready. McGee works quickly to track the call should the connection be broken without the courtesy of an address.
/I saw on the news about it,/ the woman says. /They say she killed herself. They're wrong. He killed her!/
"Who did?"
/I don't know!/ She's losing it rapidly.
"We'll help you. What's your name?"
/Susan./ Big help. /Susan Fordham, I live right across the street./ Bigger help. /Apartment 4502./
"We'll be there soon. Five Agents."
The line goes dead.