"I'm sorry, Agent Todd, but I can't recall anyone getting the fiberglass nail treatment in quite some time. It's not exactly the most popular thing we offer here."
Kate bit back a groan. She'd finally gotten a hold of three of the local beauty parlors that offered the service, but none recalled any of their customers ordering it within the past three months. "Thank you anyway," Kate said as she crossed the name off her list. "We'd still like any security footage you have."
"Yes, of course. Our cameras only record for one month, though. Then the tapes are erased and reused."
"That's better than nothing. Thank you." Kate placed the phone into its cradle and looked at the next beauty parlor on her list. Only two left, and one of them wasn't going to be open for another hour.
"How's that coming along, Kate?" Tony asked.
"Slow," she muttered. "I'm beginning to think this is a dead end."
"Well, it's better than I'm doing. This Frankel girl sure is going to great lengths to remain hidden."
"Maybe that's because she has something to hide."
"Do you think she does?"
Kate considered the question for a few second and then simply shrugged. "She's as good a suspect as anyone. I can't imagine there are that many people out there who would want these men dead."
Gibbs had gone down to discuss things with Abby and Ducky, taking Tim with him. They had little to go on at the moment and Gibbs intended to keep a close eye on his probationary agent. He hadn't thought things could get worse, but they steadily did each day and he didn't like the effects this was having on Tim.
"Sure makes you think, doesn't it?" Kate added as she dialed the number of the next salon.
"Makes you think about what?"
"If any of your high school classmates might be plotting to come after you. I'm sure you angered more than a few people during your four years in high school, Tony," she said with a playful gleam in her eye.
"Ha, ha," he replied sarcastically, though there was a small pause of worry. "Believe it or not, Kate, I wasn't quite the bully you like to think I was. I mean, I admit to some harmless hazing," he said, a small smile creeping onto his face as he recalled his high school days and the pranks he'd pulled on a few unsuspecting underclassmen, "but even me and my friends never went that far on someone. It was all in good fun."
"Yeah, fun for you," Kate muttered under her breath.
Tony glanced up. "What was that, Kate?"
She was saved from answering him as her call to Fabulous Nails went through. "Yes, hello, this is Special Agent Todd calling from NCIS…Naval Criminal Investigative Service…"
Tony frowned, but returned to his own work. So far, he'd traced the elusive Ms. Frankel as far as the apartment she'd been living in for the past five years. A month after she was let go from her job, she'd paid half a year's rent in advance and had subleased the place out to a friend, claiming she was taking time off to "find herself." Tony didn't know what that meant, nor did he care. All he cared about was tracking her down.
Her credit cards were dormant, but she had taken a large sum of money out of the bank before pulling her disappearing act, including a bond worth nearly twenty thousand dollars. With that much at her disposal, who knew how long she could hide away?
"Yes, well, thank you for your help. Let me know if anyone remembers anything else." Kate sighed as she placed the phone down once more. "You'd think for such a rare thing, it'd be easy to find our girl. I'd never even heard of fiberglass nail treatments until yesterday."
"That's assuming Ducky's right about the fiberglass nails thing. For all we know the fiberglass was from something else and this whole thing has just been a big waste of time."
"Oh, thanks, Tony, that makes me feel better about spending two hours talking with beauty parlors."
"No need to get snippety, Kate," he muttered. "I'm just trying to be helpful. Anyway, you're not the one who has to track down Houdini."
"Any hits on the car BOLO?" Frankel had been last seen driving off in her white Honda Accord, the back stuffed with as many of her belongings as she could fit.
He glowered at her. "If there were, don't you think I'd be following up on them?"
"No need to get snippety, Tony," she shot back with a smug grin. "I'm just trying to be helpful."
Director Morrow and the Metro Director had spent the better part of the morning negotiating who would take the lead on the case. NCIS had jurisdiction over the first body, but Metro had jurisdiction over the rest of them. Not even the undeniable connection to Tim could make Metro budge on that. They did, however, finally release Wickmar's car to NCIS, the car in which Fitcher's body had been found.
The car had been delivered almost an hour earlier and was currently situated in the garage. Abby, with no more evidence to process at the moment (Metro was dragging their feet on getting her anything from Moore's house), had arrived in her coveralls, ready to go over the vehicle with a fine-toothed comb and, in her own words, "catch whatever those Metro dorks had missed." Tim had been left down there to assist with that, as well as pick up where Tony and Kate had left off with the welder/solder angle. It was a long shot, he knew, but it was mostly busy work.
In the meantime, Gibbs headed down to autopsy where he found Ducky and Jimmy finishing up on Chris' body.
"There is nothing more for this poor young man to tell me, Jethro," Ducky said as Jimmy sewed up the Y-cut on the chest. "As I said yesterday, death was caused by an overdose of sedatives and all the other wounds were inflicted post-mortem."
"Not why I'm down here, Duck. You get in contact with your Metro friend?"
Ducky glanced side-long at Jimmy. His young protégé was doing his best to pretend he wasn't listening in, but it didn't take much to see that his ears had perked. Still new to the NCIS world, Jimmy regarded his job as something out of a movie or TV show and was always ready for something exciting to happen.
"Thomas and I have spoken," Ducky said evenly. "As you were told, the cause of death for Mr. Moore was a broken neck. Snapped cleanly, he says, all the way around."
"Hard to believe a woman could do that," Jimmy said without thinking, "even to a guy as old as him." He looked up and the amused grin fell from his face when he saw the two pairs of eyes on him. "Uh…I…sorry…"
"Actually, Mr. Palmer, when you have been with NCIS for a bit longer, I think you will learn that it is not so hard to believe as you think."
"Breaking the neck is nothing," Gibbs said, somehow managing to sound threatening without even trying. "If you know what you're doing, you don't have to exert much effort at all."
Ducky raised his eyebrows as the words sank in. "Are you suggesting our femme fatale might be trained in such an art?"
"I think she knows a thing or two. She's certainly not squeamish."
"No," Ducky agreed grimly, "of all the things she is, squeamish is not one of them."
"Any word on when you'll be getting the body here?"
"No, but when I do you will know. I'll try my best to keep Timothy from seeing it, though. I don't know that he can handle seeing more ghosts of the past, especially in this condition. Speaking of which, where is he?"
"I left him in the garage with Abby."
"And he is doing well?"
"As well as he can, Duck."
Ducky frowned pensively, but he didn't push. He knew better than to step in when Gibbs was on one of his rampages. Still, he couldn't help but wonder if there would be ramifications because of this case, even once the killer had been caught.
"Thanks, Duck," Gibbs said as he walked out, his mind on a similar train of thought, though he wasn't about to vocalize his concerns.
Upstairs, he found Abby digging through the car while Tim sat by with a laptop. Various evidence jars sat along the table nearby.
"Find anything, Abbs?"
"Ha!" she replied sarcastically. "After Metro has been through it? Fat chance, Gibbs."
"I thought you were supposed to find what they missed."
"Yeah, I thought so too," she grumbled. "They were at least nice enough to send us what they did get from the car."
"And that is?"
"Some fingerprints, hair, that kind of stuff. The hair they found in the trunk was mostly Fitcher's, of course, although they did find a couple strands of blonde hair in there and in the driver's seat, likely belonging to our murderous madam. Also found a few that are probably Wickmar's."
"What about the fingerprints?"
"All are either Fitcher's or Wickmar's, but here's where it gets a little more interesting."
"Only a little more?"
"I don't want to overstate things, Gibbs." She grabbed a sheet from the table and handed it over to him. "Metro found residue on the steering wheel and on the tarp Fitcher was wrapped in. It was—"
"Hydrochloric acid," he finished, reading it from the sheet.
"Our good friend. She was obviously wearing gloves. My guess is that she also uses the gloves while doing metal work."
"Makes sense," Gibbs agreed. He glanced over his shoulder and saw that Tim was still sitting in the same position he'd been in when Gibbs had entered the garage. In fact, he hadn't made so much as a sound. "McGee," he said. But Tim didn't respond. "McGee!" he repeated, louder this time.
Tim jumped in his seat. "Uh, boss."
"Any headway?"
He shook his head. "Boss, metal work isn't really an at-home business these days. Most of it is done at plants or mills. It's possible this woman is doing it out of her home, but unless she's registered herself as an actual business or corporation, it'll be impossible to trace."
"Then what have you been doing since I left you here?"
"Well, I was thinking about finding Vicki. I mean, I know you've got Tony tracking her, but I was thinking that, even if she's run off, she may be using something else to keep in touch with things going on. We know she took her laptop, so maybe she's using it."
"That's good thinking. Got anything?"
Tim frowned. "Without an IP address, I can't do much on tracking the actual computer. But then I remembered how my sister has a LiveJournal page."
"A what page?"
"LiveJournal," Tim repeated. "You know."
"No, I don't know, McGee."
"It's a social network," Abby explained. "You put together a profile and friend people. Then you can leave entries, like a journal."
"Why?"
She shrugged. "I don't know. I guess some people just want to publish their thoughts and opinions on the internet."
"So what's the point, McGee?"
Tim turned the laptop to face Gibbs and Abby. On the screen was a LiveJournal profile. The background of the page was a picture of outer space. There was no picture, but the name was Vicki Frankel.
"She's got a LiveJournal, boss," he said, "and she's been updating it while she's been gone."
"Updating it how?"
"Leaving little notes and entries. Things she's seen, people she's encountered, things she's feeling."
Gibbs' eyes scanned the page. "She say where she is?"
"No, but I found a couple of entries that are…well…I guess I should just show you." Tim's fingers flew across the keyboard as he pulled up another entry. "This one is from three months ago."
What a piece of work is a man…
If only we could give them back. They're all the same. They only want one thing. They don't care about your feelings and wants and needs. They just jump in and take what they want with brute force.
He's the same as them. I thought he was different, but now I see that I was blinded by my own girlish fancies. I allowed myself to be taken in by a sweet smile and now look where I'm left.
This is high school all over again. Because life is just high school all over again. There's a food chain, and we women—especially those of us with actual minds, as opposed to those brainless bimbos who giggle incessantly and allow themselves to be painted and primped like Barbie dolls—are pushed firmly into the bottom, practically bound and gagged by the higher-ups who claim they know what's best for us. I'm a bottom feeder in a sea of sharks who smile at you while they devour you whole.
I'm drowning.
Now I must become a hunter if I am to survive; it's up to me to rid the world of these predators. I keep a keen eye open, aware of them and who they are. What they are.
No longer will they be allowed to devour poor, unsuspecting guppies. We will strike back.
"Wow," Abby murmured, "she has got a lot of pent up rage. Sounds like she's angry at the world."
"And then some," Tim agreed. "Most of her entries are in the same vein."
"Any of them more recent?" Gibbs asked.
With a few clicks, Tim brought up her most recent page. "Her last entry was a week ago, boss, and she doesn't seem any happier than before."
These men…so smug and so sure. They think people aren't on to them. They think they can get away with it, with the things they've done and the people they've hurt. But they're wrong. I'm on to them.
You boys have had your fun. But no longer.
Watch your back.
"I want her found," Gibbs said tersely. "And I want her found now."
AN: Thanks to everyone who is reading! I appreciate it :) A couple of you have pointed out the fact that the story is switching back and forth between past and present tense. This was a choice I made early on in the writing process. I felt that by having the killer's scenes told in present tense, it kind of upped the stakes a bit and made those scenes more dramatic. Obviously, not everyone is going to like that choice, and that's fine, but as of now I intend to keep it that way :)
Thank you again!