Speak to Me in the Middle of the Night
By Lady Chal
Part Two: Loose Ends
03:28
12 May, 2003
Georgetown, Maryland
Mallard snapped on the bedside lamp and fumbled about the nightstand for his glasses, knocking a book on DNA fingerprinting to the floor as he did so. It was the same dream again. –The same one he'd been having since Lauren Singer's funeral. Grumbling to himself, he rose from the bed and pulled on his robe. He never should have let himself become so involved in the Singer case. –But that's what became of lonely, slightly lascivious old men who spent too much time in morgues talking to dead girls and not enough time talking to live ones.
Raking a hand through his mussed sand colored hair, he looked sourly at the clock. There was little use in going back to bed. He'd only have to get up in another couple hours. It would take him that long to fall asleep again. Stumbling towards the bathroom, he flipped on the light and surveyed his reflection in the mirror above the sink. He looked old, he thought. --Too damned old to be letting such things get to him like this. He was a coroner for Christ's sake, a professional, the old dog who had seen it all… or seen too much.
He splashed some water on his face and looked back into the mirror again. "What the devil has gotten into you, old man?" he muttered, but he already knew the answer. It was her.
He'd tried to explain it to Blackadder once, when she'd asked him why he always insisted upon talking to the dead. He knew his one-sided chatter bothered her. Whatever it was that had been them, the soul, the spirit or what have you was gone. What remained was little more than a shell. He understood this as well as she did, and on a certain level, he agreed with her. And yet, it could not explain the feeling he often had when he worked with the dead, the sensation of a presence other than his own. –Not necessarily a spirit, but rather the echo of one that once had been.
He knew that the others thought his habit eccentric –even unnerving—but he found that talking to the dead was comforting somehow. True, that comfort was more likely for his benefit than theirs, but still he found the need to provide them in death what many of them had so obviously been denied in life: comfort, honesty, respect –and yes, even friendship. He was still a doctor after all, –and as he had remarked once to Vivian, at least they never complained about his bedside manner. So he talked to them. He clucked over their poor, damaged remains, admired the beauty they once had held, he teased them gently and told them jokes, grumbled to them about Gibbs' impatience or Abby's choice of music that inevitably blared from her lab into his and disrupted his concentration. Throughout all the degrading poking, prodding, cutting and scraping that he subjected them to, he kept up a steady stream of conversation, talking to them all the while.
And sometimes, some of them talked back.
He could think of no other way to account for those strange little flashes of intuition, the way he could sometimes put himself in their shoes, imagine the things they must have seen –or felt. It was not something he could consciously do. God knew he'd tried often enough when confronted with a mystery to which his analytical mind had no immediate explanation. But every once in a while, it just …happened.
It had happened a few weeks ago when he'd awakened in the middle of the night after a particularly disorienting dream about being an ice cube floating down a river. Even as he'd stood there, alone in his apartment and miles away from the lab, he'd felt the odd sensation of that faint, silent presence and known that it was her. By the time he'd dressed and driven himself back to the office, he'd even understood what it was she'd been trying to tell him. As he stood before the sink silently regarding his own haggard reflection, he wondered what it was she was trying to tell him now.
The door to the medicine cabinet was slightly ajar and in the slight angle of the mirror he caught a glimpse of his bedroom bureau and the folded flag that lay on top of it. He sighed as he flipped off the bathroom light and walked back into the bedroom to stand before the dresser. He honestly didn't know why he still had it. He had meant to give it to the scout master by now, had even gone so far as to look up the number the other day at work. But he hadn't made the call. Like the mystery that had surrounded the woman whose casket it had once draped, he just couldn't seem to let the bloody thing go.
--Not that there was really anything of a mystery about her any more, he reminded himself. They knew who she was. They knew when and where and how she had died. –And thanks to Gibbs' gut instinct and Dinozzo's persistence, they even knew exactly who killed her and why. By all rights, he should have let this one rest long ago. They knew everything there was to know about Lt. Lauren Singer. –Except for two small –and ultimately unimportant—details: Why had she been going to Ireland? And who was the father of her child?
They had assumed –incorrectly—that the father of the child had been the killer, or someone close to him. But that, as it turned out, was not the case at all. At first the finger of guilt had been pointed toward Rabb, and then his brother, but neither had proven a match for the baby's blood type. Though fingerprints, credit card receipts and eyewitness testimony had finally conclusively pinned the crime upon Commander Lindsey, his medical records had proven that he was not the baby's father either.
There was, of course, the matter of the plane ticket. The paper had been so ruined and waterlogged that it had taken them nearly a month to determine the destination as being Shannon, Ireland rather than San Diego. It was the only piece of the puzzle that did not serve to point to the murder and likely Gibbs was right to judge it irrelevant. It probably had nothing to do with the murder. For all they knew she could have been going on vacation, but he liked Vivian's theory that it was somehow connected to the baby's father. Unfortunately, they would never know for sure. They had found their murderer. They had Lindsey's confession. There was no need to pursue the matter any further. The matter of the plane ticket and the father of Lauren Singer's child would be committed to the files as a couple of loose ends.
Mallard hated loose ends.
There was something about it –that plane ticket in particular—that spoke of unfinished business. He knew that he shouldn't let it bother him. There was always unfinished business in the case of a life cut unexpectedly short, but usually there was also someone about to conclude such matters –a parent, a spouse, a sibling, or at the least a friend. But Lauren Singer appeared to have none of these. Perhaps that was why his curiosity had been stirred, he told himself. That and the fact that that odd, compelling sense of a presence had not yet entirely abandoned him, even though she was ten days in the ground.
It was fortunate, Mallard thought, that he did not consider himself to be a particularly superstitious man, or else he'd likely be getting far less sleep than he'd managed thus far. Still, he could not deny the uneasy feeling he had that there was something Lauren Singer had desperately meant to do before she died. --Some thing of no small importance to her that would remain forever unfulfilled unless someone took it upon themselves to seek it out and finish it for her. But there was no one. …Except him.
Feeling more than a little foolish, he picked up the flag and sat down on the edge of the bed with it, smoothing the silky nylon fabric beneath his hands.
"You should be at rest, my dear," he muttered softly, "as should I. –But you're not." He stared down for a long moment at the tightly wrapped blue triangle spangled with white stars.
"What is it you want?" He whispered.
His mind suddenly returned to the image of the dream and he forced himself to study it carefully.
It was cold –winter time—and he was standing at the edge of a footbridge. From the other side he could see the shadowy figure of the man that awaited him and felt the nervous churning begin in his stomach. His anxiety must have disturbed the child, for it stirred restlessly, and he dropped his hand low over his abdomen to soothe it. He was oddly aware of the odd lurch his heart had taken as he made the unconscious movement. Somehow, he had not expected it to matter to him.
He put out his small foot, taking his first step out onto the footbridge, and suddenly his fear became almost overpowering. The churning channel of the river seemed almost as wide as an ocean, and he did not know if he had the courage to cross it. He had done worse things, harder things, and this should seem so simple by comparison …but it wasn't.
Shoving his hands deep into the pockets of his heavy wool coat, his fingers encountered the slick paper of the airline ticket. He gripped it tightly, telling himself that if he could do this, he could do anything. He took another step …and then he was falling …falling into the icy waters. The muddy channel suddenly seemed as wide as an ocean, and he could not seem to get his breath. Instead, he was carried away upon the churning tide for an endless eternity until at last he felt the soft damp clay of the river bank beneath his fingertips.
It was warmer now. Slowly, he opened his eyes. It was springtime. Grass was growing thick and lush along the edge of the water. A thick patch of wild flowers were blooming among the tall grass and insects were buzzing about them. Not far above his head, a large black and gold spider was weaving an intricate web between the heavy stalks of the tall grass. The wind caught it gently, making it billow in the breeze and tearing loose its moorings. The spider worked desperately to secure it, but the wind gusted harder, tearing it free and carrying it away on the brisk spring wind. The spider dropped silently on a gossamer thread until it disappeared into the grass. And then he was alone.
Mallard looked down again at the flag in his hands. Somehow, it was all about the ticket. That ticket was very important to her. It was a meeting that she had been afraid of, but one she had certainly meant to keep. He still didn't understand that bit about the spider. They had found her in a tree, not on the ground, and it was still too early for the insects to be out in force. Perhaps it was something more Freudian?
"Won't you come into my parlor, said the spider to the fly?" He said softly, to the empty room. She had been blackmailing Lindsey. Perhaps he was not the only one?
Suddenly disgusted with himself, he set the flag back down on the dresser and yanked open the drawers, rummaging around for clothing. The best cure for insomnia was paperwork, and there was a mountain of it waiting for him back at the office.
0700 EST
NCIS Headquarters
Washington, D.C.
Gunnery Sgt. Jethro Gibbs was pleasantly surprised by the aroma of freshly brewed coffee as he entered the dark, narrow hallway that led to the warren of offices that comprised his division of NCIS. Usually, he was the first to arrive at the start of shift and as a result, the first pot of coffee often fell to him –supervisor or not. On the other hand, he tended to regard that as a fortunate thing, since Blackadder never drank the stuff anyways and likely didn't know one end of a Mr. Coffee from the other. Dinozzo, by contrast, was known to drink it in quantity, but his Italian heritage deemed it necessary for him to concoct a foul brew that was so strong it was somewhere near the consistency of black crude oil.
As he passed his desk, he snapped up his stained Marine Corps coffee mug and carried it with him to the office break room. Pausing a moment in front of the coffee maker, he splashed a small sample into the mug and brought it to his lips to test it. It was good, --probably less than half an hour old. He filled the mug and was about to replace the carafe on the hot plate when he glanced out into the darkened outer office and reconsidered. Threading his way through the shadowed hulks of the metal desks, he stopped beside the softly glowing computer monitor and glanced down at the man who sat in front of it.
"You look like shit, Ducky," he observed as he topped off the Medical Examiner's half-empty mug. "How long have you been here?"
"Since your mother was wiping your nose and changing your diapers," Mallard said dryly, indicating that he was not in the best of moods.
Gibbs ignored it and glanced over the older man's shoulder to the computer screen where he quickly recognized the familiar format of a forensics report. He frowned. He had been gone to Naples the last few days finishing up prisoner interrogations, but Dinozzo hadn't said anything about any new homicide cases cropping up.
"Something new?" he asked.
"Something old, actually," the Medical Examiner confessed. "I was watching the Discovery Channel last night. There was a fascinating documentary on the tattoos of the Australian Aboriginals. Apparently, no two are ever the same. –In fact, the same is true of nearly all body art. It gave me an idea for a paper to present at the Forensics conference in Las Vegas later this summer. Catherine's been bothering me to attend, but with the budget what it is, you know the administration won't approve it unless I'm presenting."
"Catherine…" Gibbs searched his memory. He seemed to recall Ducky mentioning her before. "You mean the red-headed stripper?"
"Exotic performance artist, thank you very much," Ducky said dryly. "And I'll have you know she's one of the top forensic investigators from the Las Vegas Police Department Crime Scene Investigation Bureau."
Gibbs squinted at the monitor and frowned. There was something very familiar about that report. He'd written some of that, and not very long ago either. He glanced at Mallard suspiciously.
"That's the Singer case," he said, his voice taking on a grim note. "That hasn't even gone to trial yet. I'd step lightly around that one 'til it gets through the court martial. Those JAG lawyers weren't too happy with us for dabbling in it the last time."
"Last time we had the wrong man," Mallard said dismissively. "This time we don't." He reached for his coffee and took a small swallow. "Relax, Agent Gibbs. I'm merely using it as a bit of reference. The lovely lieutenant had a very remarkable tattoo as you will recall."
"I do recall," Gibbs said. "I heard about the leopardess. –From what I hear, so did everybody at Rabb's court martial on the day you testified."
"Yes, well, it was a splendid example," Ducky said unrepentantly, "--definitely worthy of mention, as far as I was concerned."
Gibbs was silent for a moment as he studied the older man. He hadn't gotten to be the top interrogator for NCIS without recognizing a load of bullshit when he heard it. If all Mallard was really interested in was tattoos, he'd be looking at the photo files, not reading Abby's forensics report.
"This one really got to you, didn't it?" he asked quietly.
Mallard stilled. He said nothing.
Gibbs sighed and set down his cup. "Damn it, Ducky, you know better than this! Hell, --You were the one who taught me! Sometimes you just have to let these things go. We know what happened. We caught Lindsey. The bastard will get 20 to life in Leavenworth. It's a sure thing. I know it's always harder when there are kids involved, but you can't do anything else for her or that baby. You just have to move on."
"That child had a father, somewhere." Mallard said softly. "I think Vivian was right about that plane ticket. She was going to Ireland to meet him and tell him."
Gibbs stared at him in disbelief. "So what? –You want to go track him down and tell him for her? Why?"
"He has a right to know what happened to her." Mallard said.
"He has a right to remain blissfully ignorant, too." Gibbs retorted. He let out a dry chuckle. "Christ! Are you really serious? What good is it going to do to find this guy and tell him now? She's dead. The kid is dead. It'll just cause him unnecessary pain. –Not to mention get you into a shit load of trouble. We've done our job. We've caught her killer and justice will be served. Anything more is an invasion of her privacy and none of our damned business! Don't be stupid, Ducky. Let it lie."
"Yes," Ducky murmured. "I suppose you're right."
"You know I am," Gibbs said quietly, watching with as Mallard closed out the files and shut down the program. He looked thoughtfully at the coroner. "Look, why don't you take a few days off? Go to Vegas? See the performance artist?"
Mallard looked thoughtful. "It does sound like a delightful idea. Maybe I will."
Gibbs nodded and turned on his heel. "I'll put the leave request through for you."
"Thank you," Mallard said.
"No problem," Gibbs returned, heading back towards his office. Mallard watched until he had closed the door behind him, then reached down and ejected the CD he had copied from the hard drive.