Chapter Twelve
The Hidden Yellow Slice
When Gibbs strides into the Autopsy Room after leaving Abby to conclude her work and depart, he finds the two Examiners, clad in blue-green scrubs, faces covered by clear plastic shields, deep inside the open chest of Samuel Richards. The man's ribs had been sliced away and set into a plastic receptacle, Ducky is examining the inner organs while Jimmy holds the liver aside.
"Hello, Jethro. Care to assist?"
"I'll just watch this time," he replies, not caring for the man's macabre sense of humor. He's just left the Mysterious of the Dark, having managed to have a mundane session with her. "What have you got?"
"At the moment, Mr. Richards' left kidney," he glances up and favors Gibbs with a small smile, "but I expect you want answers as to how our unfortunate friend came to be on our table."
"Would be nice."
Ducky releases his grip on the man's inner organs, removes his latex gloves and tosses them into a waste receptacle at the foot of the table.
"Shall I bring these samples up to Abby now?" Jimmy asks. The sticker on the plastic container indicates they're designated for tox screening.
"If you would, my boy."
"Just drop them off. I don't want her doing anything with them today." This makes both men pause. "She's beat, asked to be let off early."
"Indeed?" It's not even 1300. He'd have thought to need to sedate the woman to get her out prior to 1900.
"She's been pushing way too hard. I had to drive her home yesterday, she barely made it up the stairs and into her apartment."
"Then I'd better get these up quick." Jimmy gathers the materials as Ducky leads Gibbs to the lighted panels laden with over a dozen x-ray films.
x
"Doctor Richards was shot three times; the first bullet penetrated his lower back and perforated his left kidney, nicked the spine before coming to rest just short of exiting at the stomach."
"That was when he was trying to get out the window," Gibbs concludes. It's consistent with their theoretical reconstruction.
"The second bullet entered the right side of his body, fractured his fifth rib before being deflected past the heart. It lost much of its momentum in that collision, coming to rest in the upper lobe of the left lung. This did not immediately kill him, he might actually have survived for a short time even wounded as he was, and with medical attention might even have survived. The final bullet, however, penetrated his brain from a distance of less than one foot, exited through the back of the head to where Timothy dug it out, and that one was quite fatal."
"What about Rynager?"
"Well, her death was somewhat more merciful, if you can call the brutal snuffing out of lives in any way merciful." He points to a spot on a representation of the woman's skull. "The bullet that penetrated the temporal lobe behind her left ear obliterated the medulla oblongata, which is that part of the brain which controls autonomic functions such as heartbeat, respiration and so forth, to exit through her neck
"While any wound to the brain is certainly serious, there have been cases of people surviving otherwise cataclysmic head wounds. I recall a case once where a man accidentally had a spike driven with great force through his head and he subsequently recovered. But damage to that portion of the brain - that is a definite kill shot. The poor lady was quite likely dead before she struck the floor."
"What do you think, Duck, are we looking for a professional?"
Mallard considers the question carefully; his evaluation will go a long way in shaping the investigation to come. "You are looking for a killer with a sufficient knowledge of anatomy to know that destroying the medulla is definitely fatal, but who also tracked Doctor Richards across the room, firing at long and at point blank range before completing the job."
"Lee thinks it's a woman."
Ducky pulls the plastic shield back over his face. He is not prepared to speculate on how she had reached that conclusion but "Any fool can pull a trigger."
xxx
As Gibbs walks into the bullpen McGee calls him over to his desk. "Boss, have a look at this." On the screen is a colored pie chart representing a mirror-image of the hard drive from the computer from the Psychiatrist's inner office; the computer itself is presently safe in the Evidence locker.
McGee indicates the image on his monitor, a red pie with a slice a third of the whole a bright blue. There are cryptic labels and numbers all about it.
"Don't make me ask what I'm looking at," Gibbs cautions the younger man after a second of silence.
"Sorry, boss, you're looking at a representation of the used and available space on Richards' hard drive. This is what anyone looking at the usage would see. Now, watch what happens when I set it to account for hidden directories." About ten seconds of rapid mouse-work on other screens that pop up and down too fast for Gibbs to absorb their contents - something he really hates from the expert - and the left edge of the blue slice is replaced by a bright yellow wedge, amounting to about a tenth of the blue surface. The sizes of the other wedges adjust accordingly to this new revelation.
"That is an encrypted section of the hard drive. The files contained there are hidden, password protected and then further encrypted. I ran a decryption algorithm and got deeply enough in to retrieve a list of names of patients.
"Mary Joralemon and Sally Callahan MacDiamond are on that list along with fourteen other women. I've cross referenced with AFS and turned up three of them already as being wives of Servicemen, two from the Army and one Air Force."
He's interrupted by a soft 'ping' from his computer. He changes the feed to the monitor. "This makes number four. Catherine Harris is the wife of Coast Guard Lieutenant Sam Harris, stationed at–"
Gibbs doesn't care where Harris is stationed, not yet. "Tony, Ziva, Michelle - Catherine Harris." He leans in over McGee's desk, reads the names on the screen. "Karen Castillo, Amy Foxx and Liza Snyder."
A few seconds of rifling through the stacks of files piled upon each of their desks and Michelle is first on her feet. "Here, sir." She hands Gibbs an open file folder. He looks at the papers, the ten point print upon them, holds the folder as far away as he can, then hands it back sharply.
She doesn't need to be told twice, rapidly skims the file, "Catherine Harris, twenty seven, being treated for depression…. Eight months."
"The other three are also being treated for depression, feelings of alienation, loneliness, general dissatisfaction with their marriages," DiNozzo reports. "But there's no indication in the files that they are getting much better."
Another 'ping' interrupts them. "Number five. Betty Ann Brock, wife of Commander Albert Brock, serving on the USS Mississippi," Tim announces. He cross-references the Armed Forces Service record. "No, make that served. He was wounded in action, recuperating at home, scheduled to be returned to sea within the next two months."
"DiNozzo, seven wives, what do they have in common?"
He considers but doesn't say 'seven brothers. "Aside from seeing the same Shrink for depression, separation anxiety, dissatisfaction in their marriages, feelings of loneliness and abandonment, not a whole lot, boss."
"That's plenty. DiNozzo, Ziva, Lee, look for anything in these women's pasts to link them other than Richards. McGee, keep working on that hidden thingy, let me know the instant you drain it dry." He heads for the stairs.
"Where can we reach you?" DiNozzo calls.
"I'll be with the Director - before she can call me in for another 'debriefing'."
The three, seeing DiNozzo's odd expression, look curiously at him after Gibbs is gone. "Don't ask."
xx
Gibbs' intent, rather than his stated purpose, is to see that his former partner now has something she can lay upon the SecNav's desk and have satisfaction in doing so. With the way these mysterious files seem to be spreading across the entire Service roster, it won't be–.
Getting off the elevator, he stops, pulls his cell phone from his pocket and punches in an unlisted number. After the third ring, a familiar voice acknowledges. /Colonel Mann./
"Hollis. Gibbs. Anything weird happening in your office?"
There is a few seconds of silence; then the voice is cautious. /Define 'weird'./
"Husband/Wife Murder/Suicide - no reason."
The woman's voice is even more cautious; the Army CID Officer is not happy with strange cases but she's talking to one man whose aversion of them exceeds her own. /Yesterday, Lieutenant Barry Nelson from Andrews, his wife Anita comes into the bathroom while he's in the tub, turns on a radio that had been sitting on the shelf across the bathroom and tosses it in with him. While he's thrashing around, she jumps in. Their daughter Jessica, age 11, heard the commotion. By the time she thought of pulling the plug they were both gone. But the weirdness doesn't end there./
"Checking and savings drained minutes before?"
The reason behind his call becomes all too clear. /Credit cards maxed out./
"Money transferred to a numbered account in Switzerland."
/We'd better talk./
"Ya think? I'll call you back in five. Meantime look into her Shrink, see if it's Sam–."
/Richards./
"Yep."
/I'm just on my way out to pay him a visit./
"Bring a Ouija board."
/Damn./
"Talk to you in four."
He turns, re-boarding the elevator. When he does report to Shepherd it will be with a much more complete picture.
x
A brief exchange by phone from his desk confirms everything they have in common. Though Army Criminal Investigation Division is not as far along, word of the 'shocking' end of Barry Nelson and his wife Anita having reached the Army Investigator's office only hours ago. Gibbs turns on his speaker phone so his team can hear and respond.
The coordination takes twenty minutes and yields good directions for Mann to search among her own people.
xxx
"You're gonna like this, boss," DiNozzo announces 45 minutes later. He doesn't wait for Gibbs to cross the bullpen before reporting that "up until the end of 2004 a graph of Sam Richards' bank accounts resembled an avalanche. He'd lost most of his clients, had to lay off his Secretary; not Rynager, a Catherine Walsh who went to work for another Doctor at a 30 percent higher salary, and he was on the verge of closing down.
"He'd hung on quite a long time, but his rep in the psych business was bad and getting worse."
He brings up representations of bank statements onto the plasma screen. "Then, in October 2004 he starts paying off his outstanding debts across the board, by December he's not only free and clear but he starts putting heavy money in the bank. He somehow gets on the Military list of 'Recommended Practitioners' - I'm still working on that one–"
"Lee, now you are."
"Thanks, Boss. He suddenly acquires a whole slew of new patients as a result. He hires LeeAnn Rynager who had originally come to him as a patient for - ya gotta love this - 'Compulsive Nymphomania'. She came to him on December 9, 04. His record shows she was discharged as a patient having made a full recovery on December 26 - same day as the Boxer Day tsunami if that's any significance - and went to work for him on the 29th."
"That alone should have made the Authorities pull his license," Ziva bites.
"I'm reading from his files in that 'Secret pocket'. You'd be amazed how much this doesn't resemble the paperwork."
"No I wouldn't," Gibbs retorts. He had been suspicious of the kind of Doctor Richards was when he'd first met him. He hadn't believed a word that had come out of the man's mouth, which is why he'd asked for the warrant. He turns to McGee, who's working a separate trail within the same hidden portion of Richards' computer. "Where'd that money come from?"
"Same place everyone else's has been going, Switzerland, same numbered account. And from what I can see a lot more has been going in than has been coming out."
"Ziva, any luck breaking the Swiss?"
"I am still working on my InterPol contacts. Unfortunately, at 5,000 miles away, I cannot work contact with their throats." The woman's voice carries only a small measure of her frustration.
"What about your secret source?"
Her 'secret informer' had lasted some time as such to everyone save Gibbs, the one person she had wasted time trying to keep the secret from.
With Shepherd's old contacts from her days as a Field Agent coupled with the connections she had made since and finally with the secrets known only to the Director of NCIS - she'd inherited all of Morrow's plus garnering many of her own - Jennifer Shepherd had amassed a formidable Information Network
"I have not heard back yet."
x
Not long ago Dr. John Carson had sold Top Secret information to an as-yet-unidentified buyer, payments being made through a Swiss bank account. NCIS had caught up with him but he had been commandeered by the US Army under the guise of that same 'Top Secret' provision.
They'd never managed to identify the source, the case had been closed by fiat and the Army had made it quite clear that the deaths in that case had been a 'regrettable inconvenience in the interests of National Security'.
So would the deaths of the NCIS team should they attempt to pry further into that secrecy.
However, they already know that the numbers of the accounts that financed Carson and had supported Richards are sequential. No one even thinks the word coincidence.
Gibbs doesn't want anyone, not even Colonel Mann whom he had worked with before - on several levels - to know about their attempts to break the Army's lock-out on information in light of this unsettling connection with the Swiss. She would be obliged to support her Army superiors and he doesn't want to see where she would stand on divided loyalties.
x
"I want to see what Abby's turned up before she heads home. DiNozzo, McGee, with me."
As the Agents follow him to the elevator McGee, last in line and out of Gibbs sight, checks his watch. It's barely 1445, long before Abby's quitting time. He decides he has better sense than to question this.
They enter the lab and halt, astonished. Abby is seated on the stool in front of her workstation, head down and cradled in her crossed arms, snoring softly. The three men range behind her, none able to credit the sight. Soft, soothing music plays from the speakers on the shelf over her head, a sharp contrast to her usual fare.
Gibbs is outraged. He'd told her she could leave early after she completed her assignment, not that she could sack out at her station. Looking at McGee, he nods sharply.
McGee shakes her shoulder. "Abby? Abby, wake up."
She blinks awake, pushes herself upright and turns to him.
She slaps him hard enough to drive him back several steps. The 'crack' reverberates sharply off the walls.
x
"McGee!" she exclaims, astounded more than any of the men. She leaps from her stool and grasps the hand holding his stinging cheek.
"What did you do that for?" he demands.
"I'm so sorry! I don't know what made me do that!"
"Neither do I," DiNozzo quips, "but I'd hate to have missed it."
Tim is about to respond with a bite equal to the sharpness of the slap when Abby raises her hands peremptorily. "Don't say a word, any of you, just get Michelle and Ziva down here too." She turns to Gibbs. "I've just solved the case!"
She turns back to her workstation, pulls on a pair of large headphones and plugs the jack into a socket on her tabletop. Her manner announces she's shut them all out. Not certain how to respond to the astonishing woman and her warp nine conclusion, Gibbs pulls out his cell phone.
