Speak to Me in the Middle of the Night

By Lady Chal

Part Four: The Disinherited

25 May, 2003

14:00 EST

Arlington National Cemetery

            As he walked down between the rows of neat white headstones, Mallard took the opportunity to size up the lone man who stood over Lauren Singer's grave. Whoever he was, he hadn't been some military bum, for Mallard had gotten a good look at the expensive looking sports convertible parked on the other side of the road as he'd approached. He wasn't a bad dresser, either. The dark, three piece suit that hung neatly on his slender frame spoke of professional tailoring, and the soft gray trench coat that was draped over his arm was far more reputable than the one Mallard himself wore. He wasn't tall, but of average height at best and possibly an inch or two shy of Mallard's own 5'10 inches. His dark brown hair was neatly trimmed, but fine enough that errant locks waved softly in the warm spring breeze. That alone gave him pause, for the child's hair had been like that: fine and dark with just the slightest tendency to curl.

            Yes, he thought, as much to himself as to Lauren. He's the one, isn't he?

            There was something else about him, though, Mallard realized as he drew a little nearer to the man. He might dress like a bureaucratic twit, but he didn't have the manner of one. Though he was far more comfortable making snap judgments of the dead, his long years with NCIS had taught him a thing or two about the estimation of the living as well. You could put four men before him in identical suits and ties, and he had little trouble in discerning the military man from the fed, the politician or the spook.

            And this one, Mallard decided, is definitely a spook. He might dress like a politician, and he had the bearing of a soldier, but in the end it was his expression –or rather the lack of it—that gave him away. He was standing at the foot of her grave in a pose of intense contemplation, his head slightly bent, his hands thrust into his pockets and the trench coat draped loosely over his left arm. Aside from a slight tension about his thin lips and a small furrow of his brow that caused him to squint slightly, his face betrayed no indication of his thoughts.

            He did not look up as Mallard approached him, but his voice –like his face—betrayed no emotion aside from a quiet, casual interest.

            "How did she die?"

            "She was murdered." Mallard replied. This, at least brought a look of acknowledgement as the man tore his gaze from the headstone to look Mallard squarely in the face.

He was surprised by the intensity of the hazel eyes as the man ground out, "By whom?"

Such correct grammar …he was obviously well-educated. –Probably Ivy League, he thought. It would go with the car and the suit.

Mallard shrugged, "Final judgment has yet to be rendered, but by all appearances it would seem to be a fellow Naval officer that she was attempting to blackmail."

This, to his surprise, elicited a dry, hollow chuckle. "I always knew she had it in her," the man said. "I kept telling her that her talents were wasted in the Navy, but she was stubborn that way."

"Were you close?" Mallard asked, knowing even as he said it that it was the wrong thing to ask.

The smile faded and the spark of amusement left the golden green eyes as the man flicked his gaze back to the tombstone.

"No," he said abruptly and in such a manner as to make Mallard suspect that this man did not ever really allow himself to get close to anyone. "We weren't friends, if that's what you are asking. Lauren didn't have friends," he narrowed his gaze upon Ducky in challenge.

"So I gathered," Ducky murmured, staring down at the headstone. The flowers from the funeral had been removed long ago, and nothing adorned the grave save for a small American flag that had been placed there after the service.

"Now that we've established that," the other man said coolly, "what exactly do you have to do with all of this?"

Mallard drew in a deep breath. "I was her doctor," he said quietly, and hesitated before adding, "…after she died."

A split second of confusion crossed the younger man's face before understanding dawned. "Tell me," he said, his hazel eyes settling steadily on Mallard's face, "—all of it."

"Her body was discovered in a tree on the banks of the Potomac a little over a month ago. She couldn't be identified right away. Most of her body was well preserved. She'd been frozen in the ice, but her face had been exposed and the birds had…" Mallard trailed off as he watched the brown haired man's expression grow even stonier.

He cleared his throat and began again. "At any rate, between the insignia on her uniform and her advanced medical condition, we were soon able to determine that it was likely Lt. Singer."

"Advanced medical condition?" The other man echoed sharply.

Mallard paused again, wondering how many more bombshells he would have to drop on this man before the day was out. "She was eight months pregnant," he said quietly.

"I see."

The silence fell between them for a moment, and Mallard realized the man was waiting for him to continue. Somewhat nervous under the unwavering gaze, he forced himself to continue.

"An autopsy determined that she suffered a blow to the back of the cranium, causing severe head trauma, however, the cause of death was drowning. A forensics team found traces of her blood on a small foot bridge a few miles up the river. Judging from the height of the railing, we considered it doubtful that she fell on her own. Someone had to have thrown her over."

"Who did it?"

"At first, the evidence seemed to point to one of her colleagues, a Commander Rabb." Mallard saw the flicker of surprise in the other man's eyes. 'So you know the Commander, do you?'

"It wasn't Rabb," the man said dismissively. "He certainly despised her, but he wouldn't have killed her. –Rabb is too much of a Boy Scout."

'Not only do you know him, you know him well…' Ducky filed that tidbit away for future reference and continued. "Fortunately for Commander Rabb, one of the investigators agreed with you. They encouraged the rest of the team to do some further digging into the case and found evidence to exonerate Rabb before he was found guilty at his court martial. It turned out that he'd inadvertently made himself look guilty while trying to protect his brother. Apparently, he thought his brother might have been the father of Lt. Singer's child. He wasn't, of course. The child's blood type was neither a match for Commander Rabb nor his brother."

"Jesus," the man breathed, clearly astonished, and then flashed him an annoyed look. "Rabb and Singer? You really thought that? –He'd have killed himself, first."

"That's essentially what Commander Rabb said."

"So who did kill her?"

"A Commander Lindsey," Mallard replied.

This garnered another disbelieving look. "--As in Commander Theodore Lindsey? --The Aide to the Secretary of the Navy?"

"Not any more," Mallard said lightly. "In fact, not for some time. Apparently the Secretary dismissed Lindsey from his service over three months ago. –Something about an efficiency report Lindsey wrote in an attempt to torpedo Admiral Chegwidden's career. Unfortunately for Lindsey, unbeknownst to him, the Sec Nav had his own informant planted in Chegwidden's office who took a somewhat different view, and Lindsey was finished. As a result, he had more than a few axes to grind with both Chegwidden and his fair haired children at JAG. Likely that was why he chose to frame Rabb for Lt. Singer's murder."

"But why did he kill Lauren in the first place?"

"He cited her frequently in his report on Chegwidden. We believe she may have been his main source for the information he was using against the admiral. We also found indications that they met frequently last summer and that they possibly became quite intimate. We believe that she was blackmailing him, whether with the threat of telling his wife that they'd had an affair, or the revenge he was planning on Chegwidden, we don't know. What we do know was that he withdrew $5,000 in cash from his account the day before her murder, and returned it to his account the day after. –A reasonable sum for a married man trying to make an embarrassing situation go away. --Certainly enough to cover the costs of an abortion."

"So the child was his?"

Mallard sighed heavily. "The truly tragic irony is that it was not. The child's blood type was not compatible with Commander Lindsey, either." He shot the man an assessing look. "We have no idea who the child's father was. We only know who it was not."

"But you have an idea," the man said evenly.

"There is always room for speculation," Mallard agreed. "We found an airline ticket in her pocket, flying into Shannon Airport on the 10th of January. Likely we'll never know what she was intending to do there."

"Likely not," the man mused somewhat absently. He turned back to study the gravestone with renewed interest.

"I think Lauren loved the Navy," he said at last, "but she wasn't meant for it." He smiled grimly. "She was sharp, intelligent, ambitious and absolutely ruthless when it came to achieving her goals. –Too ruthless, I think, for most people's tastes."

"But not yours." Mallard observed quietly.

The younger man shook his head. "No," he agreed. "A man in my line of work has to have an appreciation for that level of ambition. I tried to talk to her once about jumping ship and coming to work for me, but she declined." He raised a knowing eyebrow. "She was also stubborn."

"You cared for her."

A harsh look flashed across the other man's features. "I admired her," he corrected. "She knew what she wanted and she went after it, no matter what. She had absolutely no illusions about whom and what she was and she always stayed true to herself, even if it made her unpopular."

"She wasn't always right," he finished softly, "But she was always strong."

"I think that must have made her very alone in the world," Ducky observed gently.

The other man shrugged. "If it did, she never let it get to her."

"It gets to all of us, sooner or later." Ducky argued. "—Even her."

"What would you know of it?" the other man retorted sharply. "You didn't even know her!"

Mallard shot the man an assessing look. Was he wrong, or was there a crack beginning to appear in that armor of indifference? He pulled his eyes back to Singer's grave.

"Did you know that at her funeral there was no one to take her flag? They had to present it to her commanding officer. She had no next of kin. –No one in the world, except perhaps that child. I've often wondered if that wasn't why she finally decided to have it."

From within the folds of his own trench coat which he had also carried over his arm, he withdrew the folded flag he had carried beneath it. Reaching down, he propped it against the edge of her stone, the dark blue fabric standing out brightly against the white marble of her grave.

"I thought you said they gave that to Chegwidden."

"They did," Mallard replied. "The Admiral seemed to be rather at a loss for what to do with it, so I offered to take it off his hands. –Give it to someone who would have an appreciation for it."

Looking up, he caught a glimpse of some brief, intense emotion flickering in the hazel green eyes that watched him, and suddenly, he understood. He knew exactly why it was that Lauren Singer had continued to haunt him. He finally knew what it was that she wanted him to do.

He studied the other man intently for a moment. They were much alike, this man and Singer. Both were intelligent, ambitious, and doggedly determined to achieve their goals no matter what the personal cost. As a result, both of them were very much alone in the world. He wondered if they had even really liked each other. They had respected each other --if the man's earlier words were any indication—perhaps, even recognized in each other a kindred spirit. And he had little doubt that at least on one occasion, they had sought consolation in that shared understanding. But that, he realized, was not why he was here. It might have been her original intent when she had bought that ticket for Ireland, but it was not what she wanted him to do now.

Rising again to his feet, he hooked the collar of his overcoat upon his finger and slung it over his shoulder and stared down at the grave and the flag as he spoke.

"In the end, Lauren Singer belonged to no one, except herself. No one cared for her when she was alive, and no one missed her when she died. --A cautionary tale, really. There is such a thing as being too alone."

The man beside him shot him a searching look. "Why do you care?" he asked quietly.

Mallard shrugged. "Usually, I don't. But this one got to me. The forgotten ones always get to me."

Something hardened in the younger man's features, and when he spoke, his voice carried a note of grim promise. "She won't be forgotten."

Mallard nodded brusquely. "Good," he said, and turned to go.

"What was the child's blood type?"

Mallard paused, but did not look back. "Does it really matter?" he asked softly.

There was a brief silence, and then a harsh exhalation. "No," the other man ground out. "No, it doesn't."

Mallard smiled wryly. Like hell it doesn't. "A-B Negative," he said.

The sharply drawn breath was expelled slowly in a long shudder, and Mallard closed his eyes, regretting his decision. Gibbs was right about that, he thought, perhaps he should have let it lie.

"Was…" the man swallowed convulsively, but could not get the words out. "Was it…?"

"It was a little girl," Ducky said, and then walked away.

He took a long time walking back to his car, long enough that he heard the faint roar of a well-tuned, high powered engine as he was fishing in his pocket for his keys. He turned and looked back in time to see the red Mercedes convertible disappearing around a curve in the road.

Sliding behind the wheel, he started his car and drove slowly up the hillside, stopping briefly as he neared the grave. The flag he had left against the headstone was gone.

It left a hollow feeling in the pit of his stomach and he suddenly felt old and tired and melancholy …and very much alone. Ironically, that last realization made him smile. He was alone. He was free. …And she was at peace. He smiled softly towards the headstone.

"You're welcome, my dear," he said, and drove away.

FIN

--And, yes, for those of you who might still be wondering……

(It is Webb!)