JJ realized that she had never actually interacted with NCIS before this case. It was a little odd, really, since she had worked with the Army on a regular basis during her stint with the State Department, and you'd think that there would have been more overlap between the DOD law enforcement branches. But she hadn't, which meant that she had never been inside the Navy Yard, nor the NCIS building. If she had to guess, this was probably what she would have described, except that the orange walls were a bit of a surprise.

The guards had barely glanced at her badge, although that was more to do with Agent DiNozzo than anything. He greeted them by name, asked after their families, and they offered him manly pats on the back and manly words of comfort about his partner.

"Sucks, Tony."

"Yeah, fuckin' sucks, man."

"Thanks, guys. No worries, Ducky said she should be back here threatening to kill us all in a few weeks."

They both shivered uncomfortably at that, and JJ got to hear the first real laugh out of DiNozzo yet. He led her inside, to the elevator, and they went up. "Got to trade out some files." He explained, and showed her the way to their bullpen. It had the same government feel in the air of every law enforcement building that she had ever been in, and she could feel herself relaxing. Years of treating her office like a second home meant that she was every bit as comfortable here as she was in her living room, but DiNozzo seemed to be oddly tense for someone on his home turf.

She followed his gaze to a dark stain on the floor near the desk closest to the elevator, and decided not to ask questions. He obviously saw the curiosity in her eyes, though, and didn't seem to mind solving the mystery for her. "My partner's desk." He said, shortly but not rudely. "Puked up enough blood to be a special effect for The Shining." JJ nodded, not sure how to respond to that, but he wasn't paying attention anyway.

He rummaged around in his desk, as well as all of the others, and ended up with a big sheaf of papers that were unceremoniously stuffed into a satchel behind his desk. Once everything was loaded, he led her back to the elevator, this time hitting the down button. "We'll drop off these samples with our forensic scientist and get back to Quantico. She's fast, and I want to be ready to restart the interrogation when the results come in."

"Of course."

The elevator dinged, and as they stepped off, DiNozzo perked up like a hunting dog catching a scent. "Shit."

"What?" JJ asked, her hand moving instinctively closer to her gun.

"It's quiet. Too quiet. Damn it, we've been neglecting Abby."

"…What?"

"Never mind. Come on."

She followed him willingly down the hall, and through the automatic sliding door into the lab. JJ was impressed; NCIS obviously had a great forensics budget, and the lab was decked out with machines and equipment that JJ couldn't begin to name. If their people were as good as their equipment, then it was no wonder Gibbs had wanted the evidence all processed here. It seemed oddly empty, though, especially for a place that should have been running a massive amount of evidence from the Trenton's home. Where were all the techs?

A quiet fart answered her question.

In the corner, sitting on the ground, was the most out-of-place woman JJ had ever seen. Pigtails. Chains. Black lipstick. A skirt that barely covered her thighs. A stuffed gray hippopotamus, clutched tightly to her chest.

And mascara running in little tracks down her cheeks, clear evidence of a recent crying jag.

Tony went to her immediately, scooping her up with ease then sitting down so she was stretched out crossways across his lap. She curled into his chest, and he dropped a kiss in her hair.

Huh.

That didn't look even remotely romantic. It looked… brotherly.

She got that. It was the same way she felt about Morgan, though JJ wasn't really the touchy-feely type, and she hadn't thought that DiNozzo would have been, either. The tech was obviously part of the family.

JJ stood uncomfortably for what seemed like an hour but probably wasn't more than ten minutes. She tried to give them what privacy she could, considering that they were all trapped in the same room together, by looking around at machines she didn't understand and admiring the exposed brick wall under half-arch windows. She could hear quiet murmuring from the corner, and some muffled sniffs, but this wasn't a conversation she felt the need to eavesdrop on. They were trusted, and hurting, and helping, and taking a few minutes to get their heads back on straight wasn't a luxury at this stage in the game, it was a necessity.

Eventually, though, the woman stood up and offered Tony a hand. He smiled at her, and it was like the sun coming out over both of their faces. Despite the distinctly high-school vibe her clothes gave off, there was nothing but professionalism in her handshake as DiNozzo introduced them. "Forensic scientist Abigail Scutio, meet Special Agent Jennifer Jareau."

"JJ, please."

"Call me Abby. What do you have for me, Tony?"

"Aren't I supposed to be asking you that?"

"No. Gimme the evidence."

"Creepy rapist sperm swabs, coming right up." He handed over the package and she signed off on chain of custody, then immediately snapped on some gloves and started doing… test-tube stuff.

JJ really needed to learn more about forensics.

"But really, do you have any updates on –"

"Shush."

"Abby, c'mon…"

"Shush."

He pouted, but shushed.

I wonder if that would work on Morgan?

They stayed shushed for another few minutes, until Abby finished fiddling with her test tubes and spinney machines and pushing all those buttons.

I bet Reid would know.

Finally, she turned and removed her gloves. "Okay. Now you get updates. You already know that the rodenticide on the cheesecake sticks was an exact match for the one found in Brent Trenton's truck. I also analyzed the nine cheesecakes that were brought back from her fridge, and only found one that was poisoned. We might have actually gotten lucky here, because this one had a much higher dose in it. I mean like, way higher. Ridiculously high. I mean, we're talking Snoop-Dogg and Willie Nelson chilling in Jamaica high."

"Deadly?"

"Absolutely. Using the estimated size of a slice that McGee said he had, I'd say that there's enough anticoagulants in that lemon cheesecake to kill half the building. One or two bites would be plenty."

"Lemon and dark chocolate." JJ noted. "Do you think she was picking flavors that would account for the bitterness?"

"Probably." Abby agreed. "Most dangerous chemicals have additives that make them taste bad so even if a kid gets a hold of them, they won't want to keep eating them. That's part of the reason antifreeze is so dangerous- it's sweet."

"Have you found any leads on what the murder weapons were in our case?" JJ asked.

"Not yet. There's a lot to go through." She gestured to the giant truck-bed style toolbox that was parked in the corner, with half a dozen boxes of standard backyard-shed-looking junk piled in them. "Preliminary luminol testing hasn't showed any signs of blood, but it's definitely going to take me a few more hours to get you an in-depth report."

JJ nodded. "We think that he keeps the murder weapons as trophies, and that he used a different one on each victim. They'll probably be all together, somewhere that's easy for him to access, but doesn't look out of place. He'll want to handle them regularly, but he wouldn't be using them as just ordinary, everyday tools anymore. They're too special to him."

"Well, that's just creepy as shit. Thank you for that."

JJ shot Tony an amused look. "We hunt serial killers for a living. Creepy eventually becomes routine." Then she frowned. "Well, kinda."

"Fair enough. Remind me to tell you about the mummy and the curse sometime."

"I see your mummy and raise you guy who eats women's heads."

"Ooh, we had a cannibal a few years ago, too. Fornell worked it with us."

"Guys!"

They both turned to Abby, who was looking decidedly green around the gills. "Could we please go back to our regularly scheduled murderers?"

JJ shot her an apologetic smile, but DiNozzo didn't seem perturbed. "Yeah, fair enough. We really need to get back to Quantico anyway. Call when you know anything?"

"Of course. Give Gibbs a message for me?"

"Sure."

Abby sketched something in the air with her hands. Sign language? Or just a private joke? JJ didn't know, but Tony nodded like he had caught it, so they headed back out to the elevator. The sliding doors swished shut behind them, and they made their exit to the echoing thump of heavy metal music.

Emily did not like children.

She didn't like, hate them or anything. Jack and Henry were sweet, and reasonably well behaved, and she had watched them both for short durations without incident. She thought, as they all did, that children were something precious. Something to be cherished and protected. The hope for the future, and all that jazz.

But. Well. They were sticky.

And loud. And obnoxious. She had no intention of popping one out herself and finding herself responsible for the moral upbringing of an entire person; it was the kind of life that would interfere with her enjoyment of life, and she wasn't too proud to admit that she selfishly liked her life just as it was. Normally, for the kid cases, she managed to get out in the field or behind the paperwork or hell, even in the morgue, or any other place that wouldn't force her to interact with children more than necessary. She knew she tended to treat them like short adults, and that wasn't really the right approach to take with kids.

At least, not with most kids.

Brent Trenton the Third was different.

Trey seemed exactly like a little adult. She had seen that before, too, and she knew it was a common trait in kids that were forced to grow up too fast. The ones that knew damn well that they were on their own, without an adult to turn to. They were intense little guys, self-sufficient by necessity and brave by choice.

It was odd, seeing traces of Hotch in those world-weary eyes.

He had seen his parents loaded into blacked-out SUVs with a hint of resignation on his face, then turned to JJ and politely asked if he could get his backpack before they left. He had homework due this week, he said. Needed to pack some clothes and grab a calculator. Also, could someone make sure that there was food left out for the cat and would they please turn off the lights before they left?

He was already more responsible than half the adults Emily knew, and it made her sad. As much as she didn't want to take care of kids personally, she still believed with all her heart that they deserved to be taken care of, and clearly Melody and Brent had failed.

She couldn't ask the kid any questions until CPS arrived, since the parents obviously weren't in any state to give consent. Then there would be the interview with the caseworker who would decide if Trey was mentally stable enough to talk, and to make sure that the interview didn't cross any legal boundaries, and to start looking for an appropriate guardian for him…

Quite aside from any literal stickiness, the legal stickiness of child care cases was something else Emily didn't particularly enjoy, and the damn camera on the wall meant that she had to be every bit as careful with her words as she was in interrogation.

But there was no reason that Emily couldn't start building rapport with the kid, even if CPS was a bitch to get a hold of at- holy shit, midnight? Already?- well, okay, fine, maybe the rapport could wait.

"Hey, honey." She said, softly. "It's getting late. Let's find you a bed. Did you bring pajamas with you?"

He nodded. "Does it really matter if I go to bed on time?" He asked. His voice sounded hollow. "I'm not going to school tomorrow."

"Well, no. But aren't you tired?"

He shook his head, never looking up at her from his homework. Was that algebra? Geometry? Quantum physics? She honestly didn't have the slightest idea if that was what twelve-year-olds were learning or if she had a potential Spencer on her hands. It looked advanced, whatever it was, and she prayed he didn't ask for help. Still, kids needed boundaries, right? Structure and routine helped them cope.

Probably. It sounded good, anyway.

She gave in, but not entirely. "Alright. Another half hour, since you'll be able to sleep in in the morning. Do you want anything to eat or drink?"

"Can I have a soda? And some chips?"

Was wanting junk food a comfort thing? A sign that he was used to foraging for whatever was available? A tactic to see what he could manipulate her into doing?

Of course, he was twelve. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

"Sure. Be right back."

She went to the vending machine down the hall and got a variety, reasoning that whatever he didn't want she could pass on to her colleagues. He picked his flavors with a polite thank you, and she sat back down to watch him, maintaining her silence. She couldn't ask questions, but he could.

Social anxiety tended to work on everyone, children included.

"Are my mom and dad going to jail?"

She had known the question was coming, and was honestly surprised that it hadn't happened sooner.

"Probably." She agreed.

"So am I going to live with Aunt Beth?"

"I'm not sure yet, honey. A person with Child Protective Services will have to talk to you, and to your family, to see what the best place for you will be."

"Oh."

The silence was back. He did another equation. She needed to get Reid in here to see if the kid was a genius or if Emily was just dumb.

Wait. Scratch that. She really didn't want to know the answer.

"Why aren't you interrogating me?"

Damn. So perceptive. She wasn't going to lie to him, though; he would be getting too much over that over the coming months and years as the truth came out. "I'm not allowed to ask you any questions until your representative from CPS gets here. They made the rule to protect you from being badgered by cops who might not want what's best for you."

"But you think mom and dad both killed people."

"…Yeah. Yeah, sweetheart, we do."

He stared very hard at his homework, but his pencil had stopped moving.

"Dad might have." It was very quiet. Emily held her breath. "He gets mad a lot when he drinks." Emily suspected that "getting mad" was the understatement of the century, but she wasn't so stupid as to say anything. "I don't think mom would have, since she's just sad and scared all the time. But you're probably right about dad."

Jesus, there was a lot of subtext to unpack there. Twelve years of pent-up rage, explosions, alcoholism, fear, and abuse, packed into mad and sad and scared, as though there were any words big enough to encompass the hell that this kid had probably lived through.

"Thank you for telling me that." She said instead, trying to keep her voice steady. She didn't know if it was the right thing to say, or if there was any right thing to say in this kind of situation. Most kids she knew still had their parents up on a pedestal, even during these rocky preteen years. To willingly and easily accept that your dad was probably a murderer?

This kid had been in the trenches for a long time, and Emily didn't know whether she wanted to burst into tears or go rip Brent Trenton's head off.

One thing was certain, though: For this, and for everything he put those women through, Brent Trenton was going down.

The plan was not going according to plan.

The DNA samples and Abby had come through, as Gibbs knew they would. The BAU was sitting on that information with Brent, but he thought that there was a good, solid chance that this would be the information that broke Melody and got her to turn on her husband. For fuck's sake, she was a serial killer herself, living in the home of an abusive control freak that raped and murdered women for fun. In Gibbs' opinion, the chance that she didn't know about his murder hobby was exactly zero percent.

But perhaps love made fools of us all.

It seemed like it was going well, at first. She had responded to his rapport and quiet support. She was grateful for the food he brought. She seemed to light up under every one of his carefully-rationed smiles, and was eager to provide him with answers.

Non-murder-based answers, of course, but it was a start.

Between the exhaustion and the emotional toll the night had taken on her, Gibbs judged that she was as close as she was ever going to be to completely vulnerable.

He tried tea and sympathy.

It wasn't his normal mode of interrogation, but that's not to say he was bad at it. Gibbs, when he tried, was great at charm and charisma and sending out the type of strong-but-silent allure that so many women seemed to find irresistible.

He didn't know why that was so surprising. He had managed to snag four very pretty wives, after all, even if three had left him in the end.

When he broke the news to her, he was as gentle as he knew how to be.

"Mrs. Trenton, I'm afraid I have some bad news."

The worried look that never really left her eyes intensified, and he made a show of putting on his readers and sitting next to her with the DNA profile report and a set of pictures. On top was a candid shot of Christina Nguyen, smiling in the sunlight of a park.

"You're aware of the recent murders, right? The five bodies found in the Needwood and Triadelphia reservoirs?"

"Of course. It's been all over the news. But what's that got to do with me?"

"We discovered the last body in time for the medical examiner to get some DNA samples."

He moved the report over so she could see it, and began pointing out the relevant elements. "This bar here shows the gene profile of the man that raped her before she died. This one here is the gene profile from the cheek swabs that we took from your husband when he was booked. This one here…well, you can see for yourself."

This wasn't the scientific, jargon-filled version that the techies used; it was the clear copy they made for the dumb detectives upstairs, with a big, bold font at the bottom and text that read BRENT TRENTON JUNIOR.

DNA MATCH: 100%

The crying he had already expected, and he went with his pre-planned moved of taking her hands gently in his, a gesture she had already reacted well to. What he didn't expect was the fucking pterodactyl screech of rage, nor the hand flying straight at him in a slap. He dodged, mostly, and managed to get out of it with nothing but a thin line across his cheek from her home-manicured nails.

"You fucking liar!" she screamed at him, face bright red and covered in tears and snot.

She hurled a half full coffee cup at him, along with the debris of their evening meal. Pictures and official papers flew as she swept everything off the table.

"You- you LIAR! You think you're going to get me to turn on my husband that easily?!"

"Mrs. Trenton-"

"Don't you talk to me! Brent has done everything for me! All he cares about is our family!"

Woosh. He dodged a handful of cold French fries.

"He's the only one who was there! My husband loves me!"

"Melody!"

"He loves me!"

Gibbs smelled blood in the water, and struck.

"This isn't the first time he's cheated on you, is it Melody?"

She collapsed to the floor, leaned against the wall, and sobbed.

"It took a while, didn't it? For you to find out?"

She didn't answer, but this wasn't Gibbs' first rodeo, and he knew how the story went.

"You might not have even cared if it had just been a one-night stand, because hey, he's a guy, and everybody makes mistakes, right? What matters is that he comes home every night to you, that you're his wife, that you're his family. But it wasn't just a one-time thing, was it? Hell, I bet he carried on with her for months."

The crying intensified.

"Years?"

The way her crying had suddenly turned into undignified ragged honks implied that yes, it had in fact been going on for years.

"You thought he had changed. Hell, you thought that that was the reason he started beating you, isn't it? It's not the drinking; it's the fact that you made him stop seeing her, and this is the punishment that you deserve for pushing him around."

She still wasn't talking, but the crying was becoming a more reasonable volume. That wasn't reason taking control; that was exhaustion, pure and simple.

He decided to risk another slap, moving towards her in the corner. He laid a hand gently on her shoulder. She swatted at it, but there wasn't the heat of a woman scorned in the gesture, and he knew he had won. He knelt next to her, and was ready for the movement when she turned into him and buried her face in his chest, fists clenching his shirt in a death grip. He wrapped his arm around her shoulders and held her close.

It felt perverse, in a way, holding this woman as he had done for Ziva, but damnit, it had to be done.

"Talk to me, sweetheart." He urged, putting on his best soothing dad-voice. It had worked before, on Kelly and Shannon and Kate and Ziva, and like every pretty woman with a shit-kicker of a home life, it worked on Melody, too.

In the end, she told him everything.

DiNozzo was insufferably smug. It was fun for him, to get to watch all of these fancy FBI profilers see his boss work his magic. Tony knew damn well that the other feds didn't think much of NCIS, when they thought of them at all, but the MCRT was in the top tier of law enforcement agencies in the country, and it was about damn time that the Fibbies saw that.

Tony knew it wasn't a competition, but a little recognition was still nice.

He saw Hotchner and Rossi discussing Gibbs' technique in great detail, and the tones were complementary.

(Granted, Hotchner's was a little grudging, but the fading bruises on his face made that completely understandable.)

The techs in the observation room were frantically transcribing the conversation playing out in interrogation, getting a clean copy ready as fast as possible so that Melody could sign her confession. It wasn't strictly necessary, just as it wasn't strictly necessary for Brent. There was evidence that they could use, and more was being found every hour forensics had to process the scenes, but confessions saved taxpayer money and minimized court time. Besides that, plea deals made it impossible to appeal. It would have been nice to get this family of psychos onto death row, but life without the possibility of parole was a good consolation prize.

He wasn't sure Ziva would agree, but that was a battle they would have to fight later.

Gibbs finally wrapped up with Melody, securing blankets and a camp bed for her to sleep on in interrogation. It wasn't much, but after so many hours in a hard wooden chair, it would seem like a little luxury that would keep her goodwill intact.

"What's next on the list, boss?" Tony asked cheerfully. Truth be told, he was exhausted, but he had enough experience with running on caffeine and adrenaline that it didn't really matter. The job needed to get done, so the job would get done.

Thank God Gibbs felt like their job was done, at least for now.

"Go home. Get some sleep. Meet back here at ten."

Tony nodded gratefully. "You got it, boss." It was now almost two in the morning, which would give him almost four and a half hours of sleep considering the commute. Hell, maybe even five, since there wouldn't be any traffic on the way back home.

Morgan snagged his sleeve as he headed towards the doorway. "Nuh-uh."

"…what?"

"C'mon, man, your place is like an hour and a half away. Mine's fifteen minutes. Come crash on my couch and I'll lend you a clean shirt and slacks for tomorrow. Hell, bring your boss with you. Save yourselves a trip."

DiNozzo and Gibbs traded speaking glances.

"…don't you just have a bed and a couch?"

"I mean, yeah, but I don't mind bunking down so Gibbs can have the couch. You're not a cuddler, are you?"

"That won't be necessary." Hotch broke in. "We've got plenty of space between us. Agent Gibbs, you're more than welcome to stay at my home if you prefer. It's also much closer than yours."

Gibbs took a minute to evaluate SSA Hotchner. The offer appeared to be sincere, and the earlier animosity seemed to be gone. Gibbs didn't know if Hotchner was just trying to help him by maintaining a slight social distance between the command positions and their subordinates by making the offer, or if he was trying to make amends for what had been a decidedly rocky start to their initial introduction.

Either way, the siren song of a warm bed and a short drive was too much to resist, even for a Marine.

"Alright, Hotchner." He agreed. "One slumber party, coming up."