Chapter Twelve
A New Nightmare
When the five Investigators arrive in four separate vehicles, Gibbs having picked up Ducky much to the older man's chagrin, they inspect the deceased, regret at the nude, black haired woman's death tinged with the knowledge that they deal now with a gruesome serial murderer.
The woman, perhaps twenty years old, hangs naked, her body on obscene display.
Gibbs notes parenthetically, as he sends McGee to cordon off the end of the block with yellow 'Crime Scene' tape, that though he knew McGee and Ziva had arrived together this morning and had departed in McGee's car, they now arrive separately and, though McGee greets Ziva - who arrived by cab at the far intersection - she says not a word to her partner, doesn't acknowledge his presence, perhaps not even his existence. When he had called them, each had been awake and alert despite the very late hour. It will be something to learn more about - later.
Right now, he's interested in the only witness to the horror before them.
"Tell me about it, Lee," Gibbs directs curtly when he removes her a few feet out of the others' hearing.
"Sir, I rolled up at 0227, 41 minutes ago. The cross was as you see it, except that it was covered with that white sheet." She hadn't touched it after it had fallen to the ground to bunch at the girl's feet. "I looked under it, saw her feet and the sheet fell off. I think it was set up to hang barely secured. The first strong breeze or a touch would have been enough to dislodge it. I saw she was already dead, called you and secured the scene as best I could."
Ropes, little more than string, extend from the gates of the storefronts of each adjoining business to join on the door handle of her car, the only vehicle for yards about before the Agents arrived, to form a protective triangle. "There was no pedestrian or vehicular traffic during the time I waited. I didn't see anyone before I discovered the body."
"Well done, Lee." She'd followed proper procedure, he grants that, neither too much nor too little. He's interested in why she's here, but that can wait. "Where did you touch the cloth?"
"Er, lower middle, sir."
"Okay." He makes a note of this in his pad.
"Sir, may I inquire why?"
"Exclusionary fingerprints. When Abby raises them, we want to exclude your prints from the suspect list."
"Yes, sir," she says, unable not to do her typically bad job of hiding apprehension.
x
"Anything wrong, Lee?"
"No, sir." She forces herself to look high up into his eyes and sees her doom. She already knows her eyes, ever her worst features, have given her away. "Sir, I ..."
"Yes?"
She looks around nervously; the other Agents and Ducky pursue their investigations of the corpse and scene. She pitches her voice very low. "Sir, I'd like to amend my report."
"I expect so. Go ahead."
His words are more than enough to tell her he's caught her. She prays it is not on too many things. "I out on a date tonight when we found this. My... my boyfriend was the one who raised the cloth and saw her feet. I called it in."
He only nods, and not much of that.
She knows his opinion of her has gone down a notch - or several. She doesn't mind, as long as she can get to Abby in time to convince her to withhold the identity of her 'boyfriend'. She hadn't gotten off on a good start with the scientist, their relationship thus far can be described, at the very best, as rocky. But she'll do anything, make any concession - reasonable or not - if Sciuto will just keep her secret. She'll ask her to, she'll even beg her to. With something as important as this, she realizes she's not above a bit of begging.
"Where is he now?" Gibbs' words bring her back to the moment and she wonders what her face has given away while she was worrying.
'Stick to the truth,' she tells herself. 'He sees through lies the way I see through glass.' She knows she hadn't succeeded when she'd told him the biggest lie of her career; his final words to her at the conclusion of that turbulent Michael Kane case had shown her that explicitly. "I sent him away, sir. This was an NCIS Field Investigator matter." There; truth to the letter.
"Call him back here," Gibbs directs.
"Sir?" She can't hide her apprehension and feels her face go white. She wants to scream. Why has she never mastered keeping her emotions, her thoughts, off her face? If she obeys this order, and she must, their secret is destroyed.
"You don't expect Ducky to handle this alone, do you?" he asks her before returning to the team.
Michelle stares at him as he walks away, feeling her world teeter out of control. Her fingers feel numb as she pulls her Blackberry out of her purse.
x
"What can you tell me, Duck?"
"No more late night calls to enter the LeMans," the man says testily, crouching at the woman's right to probe the wide incision in her side. This is the third time Gibbs has tested his nerve.
Gibbs just manages to hold his serious expression. Around Ducky, that's sometimes the true challenge. "I mean about the body."
Ducky squints at the first bright camera flash and tries to angle his head to keep it turned from Ziva, but she arcs the hemisphere about the crucified woman. "Well, the cause of the young lady's death, despite the obvious trauma inflicted upon her person which show a savagery and brutality Lt. Dumas had been spared, probably by her early demise, is neither the deep gash in her side, the wounds to her wrists, the scores of bite marks that have all but severed a part of her nor the scourging of her body, intensely painful though all these undoubtedly were. Neither did she die of a heart attack." He stands up, ignoring Gibbs' expression over his massive sentence. Just let him get on a roll. "This wound, which is eight inches deep and four and one quarter inches wide, was definitely made postmortem. There is too little bleeding; her blood had already begun to settle in her legs and feet, as you can see."
"Then how did she die?"
"Why, the way all victims of this morbid form of execution are supposed to die: she suffocated."
"Suffocated?" Looking at the obvious wounds, it would not have been his first conclusion.
The bright flashes of light punctuate the horror.
x
"Oh yes. Until the Emperor Constantine the Great banned this barbaric practice in 337 in reverence for Jesus Christ, the condemned was tied or, in more serious cases, nailed to the cross as this young woman was. Contrary to appearances, it was not exposure or thirst and hunger that killed the victim, it was suffocation." He turns to the young woman; he'll still address Jethro but he'll do the lady the courtesy of looking at her while speaking of her horrid and undoubtedly painful death.
"Pressure from her weight compressed her lungs until she was unable to draw in enough breath to survive. Frequently, the victim's feet were also nailed or tied, either to the upright or to a small platform, ostensibly to provide some relief. The condemned could push him- or herself up to relieve the pressure on the lungs enough to take a few breaths. Actually, that was an additional, rather sadistic form of torture as it only served to prolong the suffering, apparently providing the victim with some mercy but actually drawing out and prolonging his or her death.
"Someone condemned to such a fate could last for hours, or even days depending upon strength, endurance and what had preceded the crucifixion, but it was a sentence with no hope."
"How long do you suppose she lasted?"
"Well, she did not have the opportunity to relieve herself of the pressure that was killing her, but only in the grossest sense could you say that her death was quick. I'd have to get her to Autopsy to determine her lung capacity, but at a guess I would say she survived for approximately an hour, perhaps two."
"Nailed to a 2 by 4 until she suffocated."
"Now you know why this particular form of execution was ultimately banned. It was not unknown for death to take as long as several days and then for the bodies to remain on the cross as a warning to witnesses and a lesson to other potential malefactors, until they decomposed. History recounts one particularly gruesome mass execution where it is said that the stench of over two hundred bodies could be smelled for miles."
x
"I thought," DiNozzo opines, "that the nails would go through the hands. That is, if he's trying to imitate Christ's crucifixion."
"Oh, not at all, my boy, not at all. No, the spikes were driven through the wrists," he points to the painful wounds on the woman's arms, "between the ulna and radius, and the weight of the body born upon the carpal bones. The depiction in the works of the old Masters, who painted the nails in the palms, is inspired by a translation by Biblical scholars of the word 'cheir' into 'hand', the 'hand' in that time referring to everything up to and including the forward part of the forearm, certainly including the wrist. Therefore, when Jesus said to Thomas 'put your finger into the marks in my hand', he really meant what today we would specify as the wrist." He touches the spot on his own wrist for emphasis, not wanting to use the unfortunate young lady as a demonstration model. He also doesn't want to look to Ziva who has again arced behind him, ever closer with each pass until soon he'll have to withdraw.
He does so now.
"This is also born out in a passage of the Acts of the Apostles," he continues the lecture from a safer distance, at least for his vision, "which depicts the escape of Peter from prison, wherein it tells of the chains falling from Peter's hands. They would certainly have been secured to his wrists.
"Were the spikes driven between the phalanges, the long thin bones that extend from metacarpals to fingertips, they would tear through the flesh and the body would fall from the cross. Admittedly, I am sure there were multitudes of people who prayed their executioners had such a poor knowledge of anatomy; a torn hand being preferable to death."
"Ducky?"
"Yes?"
"I'd rather not be here at rush hour."
Ducky looks to the body hanging behind them. "Indeed."
x
Tony turns back to his investigation, having learned more than he'd really wanted to know, but Gibbs halts him. "Where was Jordan tonight?" he asks, referring to the Saint Mary the Virgin handyman.
"It was about 6:00 when you assigned me, but I didn't manage to track him down at a bar a few blocks from his house until after 8:00. I followed him to his home; he got in at 9:26 and never left until I was pulled off to come here. I left Robins to continue surveillance, but the Jordans seem to have gone to bed at 11:30. Since then, nothing."
"Duck, how long do you figure this thing's been standing here?"
"Well, she has been dead for a considerably longer time, and since there was nothing about this site to draw attention to it until this sheet was removed, I would say at this point it could have been put here anytime after dark."
Gibbs turns to McGee. "Get his DNA records to Abby. Have her put a priority on this."
"Boss, Abby's asleep by n–" He withers under Gibbs' glare. "I can wake her."
"You do that."
x
It's at this moment that Jimmy Palmer walks up from the far corner behind them. Gibbs is the only one who notices that he and Michelle don't look at one another. "I was out when I got the call, Doctor," he reports, joining his mentor. "I took the bus, which let me off a few blocks away."
"That's all right, my boy. We all have lives outside of NCIS."
Jimmy regards the young woman hanging before them. "Wow. You think it's a message?"
"It's a message, all right." Gibbs says, grimly pleased by the man's astuteness. Of course, he's had nearly an hour to consider it. "This guy finishes what he starts."
They have no doubt that this would have also have been the fate of Christina Dumas had her heart not given out before her killer could complete his gory task.
"Don't worry, my dear," Ducky tells the woman softly. "We shall catch the one who did this to you."
x
"Talk to me, Ziva." The woman had been taking scores of pictures, the flash brightening the scene over and over again like a lightning storm.
"Not a lot to say," she turns from the petite nude woman. "No tattoos or distinguishing marks, at least not in front and certainly no ID." She glances about as though to confirm this.
x
Ziva reflects that Abby Sciuto's most impressive 'embellishment' is behind her. The bloody wounds that stripe this woman's body in every direction, as well as the lines of blood upon her face from the incised wounds encircling her head, bear witness to the brutality of her ordeal.
"The bite marks that cover her breasts match those of Dumas' killer," Ziva continues, "at least enough to convince me." There will be precise measurements and comparisons taken later. No one is inclined, considering the vicious damage inflicted on Christina Dumas' genitalia, to check too closely at this time. At least, no one wants to be first.
Gibbs doesn't blame them. He doesn't want to look either.
x
"The wood is dogwood," McGee points out. Ziva returns to her examination on the other side of the body. Gibbs can't fail to notice she walks a wide berth around McGee to do so.
"And that's significant because?"
McGee looks at the diminutive young woman, her long black hair fluttering in the breeze. He judges her height at five feet. "Well, boss, dogwood is a very weak kind of wood, not all that much better than balsa. You or I would have snapped a beam this size in half."
"I know that, McGee. I'm waiting for you to tell me what I don't know"
"Legend says dogwood is so weak because it's the kind that Christ was crucified upon."
"I am sure your friend has filled you in on that," Ziva bites.
McGee glances at her, says nothing and focuses on Gibbs alone. "God supposedly said 'because you have done this, you shall never again be forced to bear such a burden'."
It's obvious to the agents that the choice of wood wasn't random. "Too bad it's only a legend."
x
The Medical Examiner van arrives, driven by Agent Tom Samaren. Then begins the task of removing the woman's body from the cross without disturbing the physical evidence of body, cross or scene. This, a more complex and detailed duty than it seems, takes a half hour to accomplish. It's 4:14 and soon pedestrians will track over the scene. Gibbs pulls out his phone, summons the Gamma shift Agents who, with Samaran, will secure the area. Then he surveys his team, the freshest of whom had started his or her shift over eighteen hours ago. "Go home."
The bleary-eyed looks of surprise that greet this order tell him he's made the right decision. "None of you are going to be at your peaks by morning, let alone ready to put in a full day and not miss anything. Sleep on what you've seen and be ready to work."
He gets no argument.
