Bishop was in the basement, and she had gotten there the hard way; the floor had suddenly given out, and she'd fallen through with a shriek.
"Oh, ow," she moaned, holding her head. Even her ankle and knee were protesting loudly.
"Bishop!" Langston yelled. A moment later, her flashlight appeared and Bishop looked up.
"Be careful!" Bishop called back.
Langston disappeared and then a moment later, there was a crashing noise as she viciously kicked the basement door open, before coming down the stairs.
"Hey," she said, coming over to Bishop. "I know we were gonna check out th' basement but not like this."
"You don't say," Bishop grumbled, as Langston started checking her legs and ankles for any broken bones. She yelped in pain when Langston examined her ankle.
"Nuthin's broken, but girl, yer gonna be sore," Langston said. "Knee feels like it's starting to swell up, too. Cold compress time, an' less kickin' of Torres' ass in gym fer a while."
"But that's the best part," Bishop said. She shone her light around the area, curious, despite her pain, and noticed part of one wall was crumbling.
She shivered.
"Yeah. Somethin's wrong down here," Langston said, also shining her light around. There was a door off to one side she didn't like the looks of.
"There," Bishop said, spotting a flash of white in the crumbling wall.
Langston went over to it and examined the white more closely. Reaching into her jacket for a pair of black and yellow Mechanix gloves, she tugged them on before digging into the dirt. Grunting, Bishop joined her.
"Oh, hell," Bishop said, her eyes going wide at the sight of a faded green material poking through a blue plastic tarp. "Didn't the kids say there was a Lady in Green here?"
"They did, an' I think we jest found her," Langston said, shining her light on the skull she'd just uncovered.
"You call Gibbs and Ducky, I'll call Kasie and Palmer," Bishop said.
"Think we might need a forensic anthropologist," Langston said.
"Ducky," Bishop said, her phone to her ear. "He's worked his fair share."
Langston nodded. She dialed. "Boss, we found someone. Kids were tellin' us 'bout a Lady in Green haunting th' house; well, we jest found her, buried in th' basement wall. We need Ducky, an' th' truck, an' any gullible agent who don' mind gittin' dirty. Oh, an' tell Ducky t' bring th' gear fer someone who jest fell through th' floor. Bishop. She's fine, 'side from a twisted ankle an' swollen knee. See y'all soon." She ended the call and glanced at Bishop.
"Grab Palmer and any digging gear you can think of. Oh, and some floodlights, as many as you can spare," Bishop told Kasie. "Yup, that bad." She ended the call.
"Think y' can stay put fer a min? There's a door over there I wanna check out," Langston said, shining her light towards said door.
"Not without me, you don't," Bishop said, grunting as she used one of the basement posts to stand up. Lanston gave her a hand, shaking her head in amusement.
"Y'know, yer a good friend, but right now, gurl, I'm startin' t' wonder if y' cracked a few bulbs on yer string."
"If you mean I'm being stubborn, no, I'm not. I'm just decidedly determined," Bishop shot back, causing Lanston to laugh.
The door was locked, but it was with a very badly rusted, large, sliding latch that squealed in protest when Langston pulled it back.
She opened the door, and stale air rushed out of the dark, foreboding room. She shone her light into the room and started swearing. "I'm startin' to really hate th' Wentworths," she grumbled.
"Bad?" Bishop asked, hoping forward to join Langston by the door.
"That's a rope hook, an' those look like leather straps," Langston said, shining her light on a post. Bishop swallowed hard. "An' I think that's blood on the floor."
"What happened in here?" she asked, horrified.
"I dunno, but whatever it was, I doubt it was good," Langston said. Curious, she checked the other side of the door. "Yep. Door's been clawed. My guess, an' this is just a wild, readin' too many history books kinda thing, idea, but those straps, tha' blood, an' tha' body? Kids were thrown in here as punishment, an' left in here for some time." She shone her flashlight towards the ceiling; no light source of any kind.
"And they would claw and scream and fight," Bishop said, nodding. "And that amount of blood? Someone died in here, maybe that girl."
"This wasn't a foster home; it was a horror house," Langston said. "Okay, let's git you upstairs; truck's got some compression bandages fer th' ankle, an' Tylenol if y' need it."
"Oh yeah," Bishop said.
Gibbs arrived a short time later with Torres, McGee, Palmer, Ducky, and Kasie. They had also brought the MCRT truck, and several junior NCIS agents who had volunteered for the job, as well as several portable light towers, as it was getting dark, fast, and it looked like it was going to be a long night.
"Watch the floor," Bishop said. "I've already fallen through once, so just, be careful."
It took a little bit, but the body in the basement was carefully removed.
"Female, and cause of death is looking like a fractured skull," Palmer said, carefully examining the skull. "I'll know more once I clean her up, but I'm seeing multiple fractures in her face, including several missing teeth."
"Any idea how old she was?" Gibbs asked. "How long she's been down here?"
"Judging by the decomposition, it's a fair bet to say a number of years, Jethro," Ducky said. "As for how old she was, judging by certain factors, I'd say this poor dear was no older than eighteen but no younger than sixteen, as she still has her wisdom teeth, and they are showing signs of needing to be removed."
"She also gave birth," Palmer said, pointing to the pelvic bones of the victim. "So far, no sign of the child, so that's a good thing."
In the backyard, one of the junior agents had found something of interest. It was a wooden porch railing post and it had dried blood on it, a lot of it.
"Bag it, tag it, and put it in the truck," Kasie said.
"Murder weapon?" McGee asked.
"Could be. Won't know until I run the tests, but yeah, it could be," Kasie said.
"Hey boss," McGee said as Gibbs joined them. "Check out those drag marks. We found a porch post with a lot of blood on it, so I'm thinking Petty Officer Scotto was murdered here, dragged to a vehicle that wasn't his, and dumped. Check out the size of that blood pool," he said, pointing to a dried dark-colored pool near the base of the porch steps.
"I'll know for sure if it's the petty officer's when I test it," Kasie nodded.
Gibbs noticed Langston near the back of the yard, staring at a barely visible path through the back of the woods. "What is it?" he asked, coming up to her.
"Dunno. Thought I saw a little girl runnin' through there a sec ago," Langston said.
"Go, check it out, but stay in touch. Torres, go with her," Gibbs said.
As Langston and Torres carefully made their way through the woods, sweeping their flashlights around, Torres shivered.
"This place is creepy."
"Somethin' ain't right, tha's fer sure."
"And why are you not creeped out by this? Or is this another game warden thing?"
"Are we talkin' 'bout night time poacher huntin', or tryna find an injured, pissed off black bear, or a missing hiker on a mountain trail?" she asked calmly. "Woulda been fine, 'cept this was Mount Megunticook, home t' the Haunted Maiden's Cliff trail."
"Okay?"
"Wound up havin' t' stay th' night, 'cause of how far deep we were. Woulda been kinda fun, iffin it weren't fer the screams tha' woke us up jest after one a.m. When we checked the area, there was nobody there 'cept us, an' tha' was five of us, including three very experienced search-an'-rescue members. Even my teammate was jumpy, an' he was a warden of twenty years."
"Seriously?"
Langston nodded. "This? This is nuthin'."
"Still creepy," Torres grumbled. Then something caught his attention; the sound of a little girl giggling. "What the hell?"
"I hear her too. Shut up an' listen," Langston said. Torres shut up, they both stopped and went quiet, straining their ears.
A flash of white.
"Hold up!" Langston called, chasing after the flash, which wasn't easy with the woods being so dark. "Wait!"
"Langston, slow down!" Torres called, chasing after her.
Suddenly, they burst into a small clearing in the woods, and the two agents froze.
"Okay, there is something very, very wrong here," Tores said, flashing his light around. He did not like how he was feeling.
"Yeah. There," Langston said, pointing to the ground, where there was a faint, but noticeable, depression in the ground that was roughly two feet wide by three feet long.
"Did we just find a grave?" Torres asked as they got closer.
"'Bout the right size fer a child," Langston said, examining the ground.
"Amanda?"
"Don't know. Call the others. We're gonna need shoves an' light."
"And a lot of help," Torres said, having spotted something. "Check that out."
It was another depression in the ground, about six feet away, and roughly the same size as the first grave.
Langston swallowed hard at the implications. "What th' hell happened here?"
Gibbs was there quickly, along with Palmer and Kasie, and several other junior agents, all hauling shovels, crime scene tape, tarps, and a portable light tower.
It took an hour of hard, steady digging, before anyone hit anything.
"More tarp," Torres said, breathing hard.
He handed someone his shovel and, with someone taking pictures, carefully removed the dirt around the tattered tarp, before lifting the corner of the tarp.
Underneath, with blonde hair still visible, was a small skull. The skull was oddly shaped, and Palmer studied it with his flashlight. "High forehead, jawline is a little off, nasal bridge is a little flatter than usual, it's very possible this child had Down's syndrome. I'll know more when he, or she, is on my table."
"She," Torres said, lifting up the rest of the tarp to reveal a faded floral nightgown with ruffles. "I hate to say this, but I think we just found Amanda."
"She ain't the only one here," Langston called, where she had been working on the other suspected grave site. "Think I got a young feller here, judgin' by th' size of the skull an' th' clothes."
"What about a baby?" Palmer asked.
"No sign," Langston said. "Why?"
"Because the Lady in Green, her pelvic bones say she gave birth."
"The Wentworths didn't foster any babies, so that's out," Torres said. He had been working through the list of children the Wentworths had fostered around the same time as Petty Officer Scotto, and the list had contained ages as well, when Gibbs had gotten the call. "They did, however, have a daughter named Julia, and she apparently ran away from home when she was seventeen."
"Do you know if she gave birth?" Gibbs asked.
"Didn't get the chance to check," Torres admitted. "Once I get out of here, and get cleaned up, I'll go back and find out."
"Sumthin' stinks worse than a five chicken henhouse holding a dozen chickens, on a hot summer's day," Langston said.
"Colorful, but accurate," Kasie said.
"Palmer, the second body?" Gibbs asked, going over to where Langston was getting out of the waist-deep hole.
Palmer went over to the second grave and looked carefully at the uncovered bones. "Might have a time-frame," he said. "That looks like a He-Man and the Masters of the Universe shirt, and that show was real popular in the 1980's. And ouch, yet again. I'll have to clean him up a bit more, but that looks like a skull fracture. That's one skull fracture too many, as far as I'm concerned. Could be a coincidence, though."
"Rule 39: there's no such thing as a coincidence," Gibbs said, "especially in a murder investigation."
"I'll drink t' that," Langston said. "Age?"
Someone handed Palmer the small skull and he examined it carefully. "I'll have to x-ray this, but it looks like he's still got a lot of his baby teeth, and they don't really start coming out until about six or seven years of age, starting with the central incisors. Plus, it looks like he's got his second molars, and they come in at twenty-three to thirty-one months, which puts him at older than two and a half years, but younger than six years."
"Still jest a baby," Langston said sadly.
"I'll warn you guys right now, it's going to take me a while to figure out what happened, and if you want answers faster, I'm going to need help," Palmer warned them.
"I'll let Vance know. Call in whoever you need to, but get me some answers," Gibbs said.
An hour later, the team was back at NCIS, showered, cleaned, and pouring over files.
"Okay, there were at least six kids with the Wentworths around the time Petty Officer Scotto was with them," McGee said. He threw the names up on the plasma. "Meet Carla Hill, age ten, Joshua Cole, age thirteen, Adam Scotto, age seven, Tyler Strathford, age eight, Tomas "Tommy" Montenegro, age seventeen, and Angela Houston."
"What about Amanda?" Gibbs asked.
"Took a little digging, but I think I found her," McGee said. "Amanda Wilson, age four."
"Add Julia Wentworth to the list," Bishop said. She sent a picture to the plasma, of a pretty, shyly smiling teenage girl with dark brown hair. "I found the police report. She disappeared about six months before Petty Officer Scotto arrived at the Wentworths house. File said she'd run away, and yes, she was in hospital a month before that; she gave birth to a baby boy, who was put up for adoption."
"Betting not willingly," Torres said, scowling.
"It was her signature on the consent adoption papers, but the handwriting is so bad I have serious doubts she gave the baby up willingly," Bishop admitted, sending a faded consent form to the plasma. In the line where the birth mother's signature was supposed to be, was something that barely resembled a signature. Gibbs spotted something on the paper; water marks.
"Those are tear stains," he said, pointing them out. "What happened to the baby?"
"I'm trying to trace him, but the DC Adoptions site has really tightened their cyber security, so it's going to take me a little while to get in," Bishop said.
"What about Tomas Montenegro?" Gibbs asked.
"He was arrested twice for assault when he was eighteen," Langston said, having taken the name and run with it. "Since then, he's been in an' outta trouble wit' the law fer drugs, disorderly conduct, coupla DUI's, from what I'm seein'. The drug charges were mostly misdemeanors insteada full out felony charges."
"Where is he now?" Gibbs asked.
"Last known address is in Columbia Heights," Langston said, "an' he's got a parole officer."
"Call him in the morning," Gibbs said. "We don't go after him unless we're all together."
"Bad?" Langston asked.
"Columbia Heights is one of the top dangerous places in DC," McGee said. "In 2015, there were over four hundred violent crimes in that area alone, and over two hundred and sixty robberies. And that was just in oh' fifteen. I've been too afraid to check the latest statistics."
"Wow," Langston said. "So flak jackets, rifles, th' works?"
"The works," Torres said. "You said you'd had advanced tactical training?"
"Yup," Langston said.
"Then consider this proof of purchase, because we may not be tangling with just Montenegro, but every other dumbass in the neighbourhood, and they got guns, baby," Torres said.
"What he said," Bishop said.
"Yikes," Langston said.
The next morning brought answers, and a phone call that had Langston yelling loudly enough to be heard through most of the floor.
Langston, in her stubbornness, had been determined to find out what had happened to each and every one of the Wentworth foster kids on their list and had stayed late, later than the rest of the team. When Gibbs came in the next morning, he discovered Langston sound asleep, her back against the dividers, her head on some kind of a pillow, and under her jacket.
Grinning, Gibbs waved his coffee under her nose.
She grunted. He did it again. She cracked one eye open. "Don' tease me like that," she said. She groaned, sitting up, and shoving her hair out of her face. Then, to McGee and Bishop's surprise, she took Gibbs' coffee, removed the lid, and took a healthy swallow. "I'll get y' another one," she said.
Gibbs grinned at her.
"That did not just happen," Bishop said, eyes wide.
"It did," McGee said. "She messed with the boss' coffee and she's still alive."
"Who?" Torres said, joining them.
"Langston. She just woke up, took Gibbs' coffee, popped the lid, and drank it straight, and Gibbs isn't trying to kill her with one of his death stares," Bishop said.
Torres looked at the junior agent with new respect. "Wow."
Then Langston's desk phone rang. Gibbs answered it.
"Langston's desk. Who's calling please?" When the caller answered, Gibbs started laughing. "Hang on." He handed the handset to Langston. "Hey, Langston, you're going to take this."
"Who is it?" Lanston asked, taking the handset.
"It's Johnny."
Langston's eyes went wide and her jaw dropped. "Johnny?"
"Yeah, your brother."
"You're serious?"
"Yes, I'm serious."
Langston put the phone to her ear, her hands shaking. "Johnny?" Then: "Johnny! Oh lawd, Johnny! You got my number!"
Bishop grinned, seeing the puzzled look on McGee's face. "Big Brother just called. Jane's gonna be on Cloud Ten, never mind Cloud Nine, for the next month."