Chapter Twelve
Justitia
At 2200, Abby pushes open her apartment door, wants nothing other than to get into her coffin and recover from the worst day of her life - recently - but she knows even before she steps into the living room that sleep is a vain hope.
Sammy Sky sits on the black couch, wrapped and almost lost in her pink fleece blanket. All that Abby can find is Sammy's head, her long blonde hair is paler than it was this afternoon but at least the red splotch is gone from the top of her head. Well before her friend had left Autopsy, Abby had solved the formula to remove the red splotches from their chests, her forehead, Sammy's stomach and scalp. Dye had clearly finished the job for her roommate.
Now she says nothing, just sits down beside her pink friend, the contrast with the black couch and her white-skeleton-on-black outfit sharp.
"When I was dragged into court," Sammy says, her eyes on the turned off television to her left but Abby thinks she doesn't see the black device, "I felt all alone, scared to death and accused of two murders... but this is worse."
"How so?"
x
Sammy turns to her. "When I was in court it made sense. I knew I was innocent but had to plead - or rather Kendra Little did - thank you for getting her."
"Wasn't me. She's Michelle's friend, but you're welcome... again."
"But that time made sense, even if I couldn't understand it. The pieces eventually fit together. This time they're not."
"Actually they are, such pieces as we have." Abby brings her up to the hour on the progress of the investigation; Iceman's assault with the paintball gun, the hit list of the world's religious leaders, the hunt for other assassins and the nearly fatal trap McGee and Palmer had barely escaped.
"Oh my God," is all Sammy can say. "Are they okay?"
Abby's not surprised that, with so outrageous a litany, Sammy focused on her friends. "They're fine." Actually she has no idea how Michelle is, but she has a loving husband tending to her - and probably giving her a very therapeutic physical. Then again, McGee has similar advantages so she has high hopes for both of them.
"It all seems so simple down in Autopsy," Sammy says wistfully.
Despite herself, Abby bursts out laughing, only able to quell it when she sees her friend's expression. "I know it's hard, honey, but that's the life you chose. You wanted NCIS, you have to take the Duck with the Goose." She slips her hand under the enveloping blanket, her illustration of the point makes Sammy yelp.
"Yeah," she says and slaps Abby away, "it's a lot different working on the corpse than being one."
x
"Time for the direct question," Abby announces. "How're you holding up?"
"I'm not sure if it was better not to know, or to know how bad it really is." The world's religious leaders the targets of a madman's revenge, an innocent woman shot down just to force McGee and Palmer into a death trap...
"I always want to know."
"Poor Tim and Michelle."
"I heard," Abby makes it sound really juicy, "when the others broke into the hot box, Tim was lying on top of her - and they were both nekked."
"You're kidding!"
"Scout Mistress' honor," she swears, two fingers held up.
"You were never a Scout Mistress."
"Well..."
Sammy grins. "You think they did it?"
x
Abby stops dead. It's not fun anymore, not when she realizes how fast an empty rumor can turn into the real thing. She and Tim have just resolved the rumor of Siobhan's pregnancy and now she's about to give birth to a more hurtful rumor.
"Stop! No. Let me kill this right now! Nothing happened! They stripped because it was 160 degrees in there, but they passed out while writing 'goodbye' notes to Jimmy and Siobhan."
"Okay," Sammy says, downcast. She'd drawn back at Abby's intensity, and clearly feels suitably reprimanded.
"No, I'm sorry. I just got done getting my ears pinned back over a worse rumor."
"What rumor?"
'Has she already heard it, or am I going to spread it further?' "You ever hear a word about Siobhan being pregnant months before she and Tim got hitched?"
"What? She's a Priest? You're saying she did it 'out of wedlock'?"
"No. She's not. But it got all over NCIS before I found out the truth. If you haven't heard it, forget it. Better yet, if you do hear it, help kill it."
"Okay, but I'm not going back to the Navy Yard for a long time." But this declaration and assurance gets lost in a grin. "But you guys have the best rumors."
"Forget them. You hear anything that sounds hinky, you come to me."
"Screw that; you're the Queen of Hinky. I'm going to start calling you Quinky."
Sammy's head is still the only part of her visible in the mountain of pink fluff, but Abby hits it with a black pillow.
x
"Do you think they'll catch those guys?" Sammy asks after a few moments silence.
"Bite your lingual member!"
"Now that sounds kinky, Quinky."
"Your own fault for bringing me to Sodom and Gomorrah. And Gibbs always gets the bad guy."
"Always?"
Sammy's been involved in all of four NCIS cases excluding this one, but "You ever know him to fail?"
xxx
"DiNozzo," Gibbs snaps at 0659 as he strides into the bullpen. "Arthur Gobrowski." The bastard nearly murdered two of his agents yesterday, did kill Jennifer Neubauer, so he considers his team has had more than enough time to get answers. SSAs Higgins and Arnell's teams have spent the night in the fugitive hunt and they're about to go off extended shifts as soon as they complete their reports.
"Not a lot of progress, boss."
"You've had over 42 man hours devoted to this case last night."
"Considering Agents Arnell, Bourne and Wilson are women," Ziva observes, "I feel slightly put in."
"Put out," DiNozzo corrects absently, but sees in the two vacant desks to his right a way out from under Gibbs' searchlight. "Where are–?"
"Sent them to Fort Belvoir."
"Sure those two should be alone together after the way we found them last night?"
"There is no intimacy in nearly dying, Tony," Ziva bites from across the bullpen.
"Better together than anywhere else," Gibbs declares.
"Then while Probie and the Probette play with the Army, you've got the double D's."
Gibbs glares at him, not quite certain he likes this name for the DiNozzo / David team, particularly since this time it sounds like "You comparing me to a brassiere?"
"No, boss. Never."
"They'll work with Colonel Mann to break Gottmann." His use of the usual team split had been dictated by information received from Abby last night; better to keep the two men twenty miles apart until he can spare the time to deal with an upcoming explosion in his ranks over an excessively incredible piece of scuttlebutt.
There's no chance, however, to apply Rule 20, never get personally involved in a case, to this assignment. There's nothing more personal than slow murder, and Gibbs can't consider breaking up teams with such smooth dynamics at this point. It's best to keep the pair together where they can watch out for each other.
He won't even consider if either McGee or Palmer's spouses have a problem with this. That'll be their problem.
x
"David, any chatter on assassins?"
"No chatter my sources have identified since midnight." She's almost blinded by his glare and reaches for her phone. "I shall obtain an update."
"You do that. From here on," he drives into DiNozzo and David, "I want updates every thirty minutes and I don't want to hear 'nothing new'. We have an unknown assassin out there about to kill everyone from the Pope to the Dalai Lama unless we stop him."
"Right, boss," DiNozzo replies crisply.
xx
Fort Belvoir Army base in Virginia is twenty miles south of DC but for Tim McGee, as he enters the Army's version of Interrogation behind Lt. Col. Hollis Mann and Michelle Palmer, it might as well be two hundred. Mann is attired in severe duty uniform evocative of camouflage clothing but Michelle's black blouse and slacks present an even more formidable aspect.
The petite woman's only adornment is a silver circle and five pointed star medallion that hangs from a sliver chain, a basic Wiccan pentagram this time rather than the combined cross within the star she normally wears. It's stark against the close necked blouse and her essence seems charged with thinly capped volcanic fury. She hasn't said a word to him since they met in the parking lot, assigned to this task while just halfway in from Georgetown and Silver Spring.
Tim's tired, the combination of being awake until after two in the morning in intense conversation with Shav on their dual calamities; fiery death and cold betrayal; and now the disturbing waves from his silent partner make him long to return to the simplicities of Ireland.
Has it actually been only a month?
Shav had listened to every detail of his evening and night and had then made him promise to let her 'handle Anthony DiNozzo's revelations'. He's not happy with the promise she'd coerced from him, but he's too mad at Tony to look at any part of this mercifully.
x
Michelle keeps her anger tight in her heart where it burns rather than warms. She'd left home early this morning and without a word to her then half-dressed husband. Jimmy had spent the evening and night swinging from extreme distress over her safety to unreasoned jealousy over what her partner had seen in the sweat box and how they'd been found. She'd appreciated the love and concern, but the less pleasant responses ultimately made her want to scream at him. When Gibbs had called with this early morning assignment she snatched her jacket, taken her own car and was on the road probably before Jimmy'd left the bedroom to find her gone.
She'd ignored the phone in her purse on the seat beside her each of the six times he'd called before her rendezvous with her partner, and the seven times he'd tried before she'd gone through the Army base's main gate. As soon as she'd been sure his calls were ended, that he'd given up for the morning and would let her be, or that Ducky was keeping him busy, she'd deleted all thirteen messages.
'Maybe Siobhan is right - we do need 'Couples Counseling'. I'll try to endure it - if he will.'
x
"Special Agent Gibbs wants me to take this interrogation," Michelle announces as she, Tim and Lt. Col. Mann watch Second Lieutenant Arnold Gottmann through the one-way mirror of the dark Observation room.
She considers a moment later that perhaps the declaration was sharper than it needed to be, but she won't retract or sugar coat the tone. Gibbs tries her, Jimmy tasks her, the Chaplain is...
'Okay, Siobhan is right. I'll try.'
x
"I don't think you should do this," McGee counters. He recalls her last interrogation, an inauspicious first event indeed.
"Process of elimination." She touches the inch wide silver circled star that hangs before her breasts. "Wicca is the only religion he hasn't targeted. I can be objective."
"You're an Episcopalian and you're not objective," he counters, looking over her black on black attire. "More like the Angel of Death."
"This morning I'm invoking Justitia, sans scales and sword."
He's not sure she's sans sword; he can see it in her heart.
"If you two are going to bicker," Mann cuts in, "I'll remind you that neither of you have jurisdiction here and it's only because of the extremities of targets and lack of time that I allow you here at all," she glances pointedly at Michelle, "no matter who you are; Justitia, Maat, Isis, Themis or Dike."
"I'm impressed." Michelle regards her with renewed respect.
"Well read. But remember, you two are on my turf. The SECNAV convinced General McCann to okay this but if you two screw up you'll wish I was as sweet and understanding as Gibbs."
"Understood," Michelle assures her. McGee doesn't want to commit to this but he's overruled on too many fronts.
