They entered to find the church empty.

"Father Mulhanney?" Tony called out.

Silence answered him.

"Maybe he's in the confessional booth." Kate suggested.

She walked over to the booth and listened for a second, then shook her head.

"Doesn't it seem strange to anyone else that the justifications for three murders now have probably come from this booth here?" Kate implored.

Tony cocked his head to the side in what may have been his first real appraisal of Kate's theory. Gibbs however lit up at her words.

"The booth..."

"What is it Boss?"

"Call Abby, tell her to get down here now with equipment to find listening devices."

Tony pulled out his phone and started dialing.

"What are you thinking Gibbs?" Kate asked.

"I'm thinking you're right, that booth could be the cause of these murders, but not necessarily the man in the booth."

Fifteen minutes later Abby was in the booth. It took her all of thirty seconds to discover a small electronic eavesdropping device planted in the booth.

"It's an older model, nothing like what the actual spy agencies use today, unless you're spying for Argentina, or some other country new to the spy game."

"Is there a way to trace it back to its source?" Tony asked.

Kate and Gibbs smiled at that.

"If it is an American made device, it has a registry number, and had to be specifically signed out for a task. First we check with the electronics office here on the base, and if we need to, we head out to Fort Meade or Langley to check NSA and CIA to see if they know its history." Kate answered.

They wasted no time getting to the office on base that held their listening devices and other electronic warfare devices. A female chief petty officer met them at the front desk.

"Agent Gibbs, NCIS, I need to know where this came from." He announced without preamble, handing the listening device across the desk to the woman.

Her eyes went wide for a moment then she grabbed the device from him and peered at it for a moment. Minutes later she was tapping away wildly at her computer.

"This listening device, registry MXF 340320 Alpha, was signed out to an Ensign Alexander Offre, exactly one month ago today at four fifteen in the afternoon. It's designated purpose was to test a new jamming system being developed in the office of electronic warfare on the base." She said.

Gibbs smiled at her. "Thank you Chief Petty Officer."

Away from the office they discussed their new find.

"Well that was the easiest break yet in the case." Tony commented.

"No kidding. But still, a break is a break. Let's go see Ensign Offre."

Offre turned out to be a young man just out of the Naval Academy at Annapolis. Gibbs fairly assailed him with questions, trying to browbeat an answer out of him quickly, and the scared Ensign answered his questions quickly and honestly, painfully honest.

"Agent Gibbs, I told you, I faked the story about the new jamming device so I could get the bug to spy on my girlfriend. I think she's seeing someone else and I wanted to be sure. But it was stolen from my footlocker the day after I got it. Honest!"

For five minutes straight now Gibbs had been using his 'Don't Mess With Me' stare on Ensign Offre, and he appeared to have cracked under it.

"Gibbs, I think he's telling the truth." Kate said.

"Yeah." Gibbs answered.

They left his bunk and headed back to the office. When they got there they found a very excited Ducky.

"Jethro, I have an identity for you on the latest victim."

"Already?" Gibbs asked.

"Yes of course. It's that of a young mechanic, Machinists Mate Third Class Ari Maresh. He fixed planes that came ashore from carriers that needed major structural repairs and couldn't be fixed at sea. He died of poisoning."

"That's fast work Ducky."

"Well when you know what to look for..."

"Great work Ducky."

Gibbs moved past him and headed for his office to relax for a moment but Ducky wasn't done yet.

"I did some more research on the Cult of Osiris. Nothing from ancient times will really help us as far as profiling a present day murderer, but there was a resurgence of the Cult in Britain in the mid 20th century. Profiles were done then to try and ascertain what a potential cultist might be like to try and identify them before it was too late."

"And?" Gibbs prompted.

"The researcher, Dr. Blair found that most Cultists were men, late teens to early twenties, had highly religious backgrounds, parents were killed before they reached puberty, and most actually joined the military at some point in their life to escape the life they were left with as a result of their parents dying."

Gibbs mulled that over for a moment. "Good work Ducky. Can you work with Kate to try and run that information through the base computer, try to find a match?"

"Of course Jethro."

-----

Hours later Gibbs' peace was interrupted by Kate and Ducky bursting into his office.

"This better be good."

"Don't worry Gibbs, you'll like this."

"Well?" Gibbs said with incredible impatience.

"We ran the psychological profile through the base registry. Seventeen names came out that were identical to the profile in every way. Four of them transferred out of the base to Iraq, and one has been bedridden with cancer."

"That's still twelve names. Twelve more potential suspects is good news?"

"One of them is the room mate of Ensign Offre." Kate said as she smiled.

Gibbs smiled too and shook his head. "Alright, let's go."

Kate, Tony and Gibbs arrived back at the room of Ensign Offre soon after. The young Ensign was surprised to see them, and panicked immediately.

"Agent Gibbs! I swear I was telling you the truth!" He said upon their entry.

"Relax Offre, we believe you. We need to ask you some questions about your room mate, Ensign Harold James." Gibbs opened with.

"Harry? What for?"

"Do you know where he is?" Gibbs continued.

Offre cocked his head to the side in thought. "No."

"How about when he's coming back?"

"Nope. Come to think of it, I haven't even seen Harry in a couple days. Maybe you should check with his CO."

"Why is an Ensign bunked with a Machinist's Mate anyway?" Tony piped in.

"More ships in port rearming and repairing than usual, more men than there is space to put them."

Tony nodded and moved over to James' footlocker.

"Masterlock." He commented.

Kate walked up to it and cracked her knuckles. "No problem." She said.

Two minutes later the tamper resistant lock was picked and his footlocker was opened. Gibbs wasn't surprised by what they found.

"Well will you look at that. Shakespeare, Batman comics, and a book of ancient Greek writings."

"Pretty damning evidence." Kate commented.

"Still circumstantial, but I'd say we have our man." Tony said.

Kate gave him a look that almost seemed soft and apologetic, but it lasted for only a moment. Still, Tony caught it, and the palpable tension in the air between them dissipated slightly.

"So we have our lead suspect, but where is he?" Gibbs said.

"Better check with his CO." Kate suggested.

All the while Ensign Offre was quietly sitting on his bunk on the other side of the room holding his breath. He let it out only when the NCIS team was far away from his room.

At the repair yard, they quickly found James' Commanding Officer.

"Who the hell are you?" They were greeted with.

"NCIS. I'm Agent Gibbs."

"Oh." His expression softened. "Captain Willard." He announced.

"Captain, we need to ask you about Machinist's Mate Harold James."

"Oh?" Now he really seemed interested. "Do you know where he is?"

Gibbs was slightly taken aback at that. Used to more aggressive questioning, he was seldom asked the very question he planned to ask just moments before he could ask it.

"No we don't, we were hoping you did." Kate said before Gibbs could say anything.

Willard shrugged.

"He hasn't reported for duty in two days now. I sent the MPs to try and find him yesterday and they came up empty. He's good at what he does, even if he always was a little weird and quiet. But I figured I'd give him one more day until I officially reported him AWOL. What do you want him for?"

"Murder." Gibbs answered gravely.

"Murder? I guess nothing surprises me these days. He always was a funny one, though I guess you never can tell a murderer just by lookin' at em can ya?" Willard replied back.

"If you see him..." Kate trailed off.

"You'll be my second call, after the MPs."

Gibbs smiled. "Thank you Captain.

-----

At the NCIS office the next morning they got what they hoped would be the last call to a crime scene that brought them face to face with this brutal ritual.

"My word." Ducky breathed when they got to the body.

Mutilated as he was, the body of Father Mulhanney was still recognizable.

They were all visibly shaken, perhaps Kate more than the others, visibly racked by her feelings of guilt at having previously so aggressively pegged the man for a murderer.

"Details?" Gibbs said, breaking them out of their reverie.

"The symbols look mostly familiar. The same two that are on all the others, and I recognize one of them as 'dualist,' and the fourth one looks a lot like 'priest' which makes sense. And yes, the last one is 'oath breaker'." Ducky said dispassionately.

"Note?"

"Here Boss."

Tony handed Gibbs another of the cryptic notes.

"'If this is the world we've become, the end is more welcome then another chapter'."

This time no one said a thing at all. They were staring at the ripped up body of Father Mulhanney.

"I don't get it. 'Dualist' in the other murder meant he was gay." Kate said.

"Yeah, I caught that too." Tony agreed.

"One last trip to the church?" Kate asked, looking at Gibbs.

He nodded.

On the way to the church they had the last of their in transit conversations.

"I've been thinking about the listening device. The woman at the base said the bug was checked out exactly one month ago. But the first murder was two months ago. The recent murders okay, I can see how he would have done those, but how did he know about Lieutenant DeHavilland?" Kate asked.

"Maybe he found out by himself then figured he'd bug the booth. We can't exactly ask Father Mulhanney if he knew James or not, but we can search his chambers for notes about him. They had to be connected in some way, otherwise Mulhanney wouldn't be dead right now." Gibbs said in reply.

At the church they immediately made way for the inner chambers of the now deceased Father Mulhanny.

"Is it right to be breaking into the inner chambers of a dead clergyman? Legalities of searching his office without a warrant, isn't there something morally wrong about this?" Tony said.

"When was the last time I ever heard you giving a speech on morality?" Gibbs retorted.

Tony grinned sheepishly and any lingering doubts were washed away. They searched through piles and piles of notes, their trained eyes looking for the name 'Harold James' with laser like accuracy, trained by years of similar work. A half hour later, Kate struck gold.

"Here."

She held up a stack of handwritten notes, but not the handwriting of Father Mulhanney.

"'I only think of you at work. My CO constantly tells me I'm a hard worker, but that's only because I wish to finish faster so I may leave and get close to you faster.'"

"Love notes to Father Mulhanney? From who?" Gibbs asked.

Kate raised an eyebrow.

"You won't believe this."

"James?" Gibbs asked expectantly.

"You got it."

He snorted in half disbelief half victory. "Kate, start reading all those, we need to see if we can get some clues out of those and find Harold James. Time is critical now. With Mulhanney dead, and James missing, he could be on the run."

"Alright Gibbs."

On the way back to the office, Gibbs' phone went off.

"Gibbs." He said upon opening his phone.

"Jethro, it's Ducky."

"You have something?"

"Yes, that quote from the last murder site struck a chord with me but I couldn't identify it until now. It's a quote from one of Socrates' disciples, though not Plato. Astrates, a lesser known man and far less prolific writer wrote that line when Socrates was forced to drink hemlock as a death sentence. He had a few writings in his day, though compared to Plato I don't see how anyone could really be considered a prolific writer. You should probably know that Astrates killed himself at the site of the first time he met Socrates, a temple in Athens, shortly after his mentor died. It was a peculiar form of death for the age too, suicide back then was far more..."

"Thanks Ducky."

The line went dead.

-----

"I really hate it when they do that." Ducky said to an empty room back at the NCIS office.

-----

"Ducky said the last quote was from a guy who killed himself shortly after his mentor was forced to drink hemlock. He did it at a temple, the place of their first meeting."

"That sounds eerily familiar. Kills himself after the death of his mentor in a church?" Tony said.

"Yeah, maybe too familiar." Gibbs replied.

Gibbs then wrenched the wheel around and spun the car in a 180-degree turn that left them traveling in the other direction on the highway as cars around them honked and slammed on their breaks in protest.

"Get Ducky, Abby, and McGee in a room at the office and put them on speaker phone. I want to know what all these quotes have in common, and I want to know now."

Five minutes later, just a short while away from the base now, the phone conference was ready to go.

"Do any of these other quotes have anything to do with suicide?" Gibbs asked at once.

"Well, Opherion did kill himself with poison after accidentally causing an innocent man to be stoned to death. Come to think of it, Marc Antony, the man Shakespeare was quoting in the first quote, killed himself with Cleopatra after losing a war with the nephew of Julius Ceasar, who was Antony's best friend, assassinated in a way that was partially Antony's fault. All did so with poison" Ducky said.

"McGee, what about the Batman thing?" Kate asked.

"Mr. Freeze does try to kill himself much later on in the series after accidentally causing the death of his wife. I don't remember how."

"Doesn't matter, I think we have ourselves a connection."

The line went dead again and Gibbs pressed down harder on the gas trying to race time to get back to the church.

-----

They arrived at the church moments later to find the front door locked.

"Kate!" Gibbs barked at her.

She kneeled down to try and pick the lock but was having no luck with it.

"It's too rusted."

Gibbs pulled out his sidearm and clipped off two quick shots into the door, then kicked it open. They rushed into the church and saw a man standing on the altar in the darkness at the head of the open hall. Only moonlight shown down upon him, illuminating him enough to be recognized from his service file as Harold James.

"James! You are under arrest for multiple first degree murders." Gibbs shouted across the room, approaching rapidly with his gun drawn and trained forward. Kate and Tony were hot on his heels.

They were only steps away when Tony's gun went off, knocking James from the altar to the ground.

"Tony!" Kate shouted.

"Dinozzo! What the hell is wrong with you?"

When they got to James, he was lying on the ground moaning, grasping his left shoulder with his right hand. Next to his left hand, Gibbs saw a loaded syringe full of an unknown substance.

"Tony?"

He shrugged. "The moonlight shined on it when we got close. I assumed he was about to use it before we got to him. I figured he'd be dead if I didn't do it, so there was a better chance of arresting him if I knocked him down from a distance."

Gibbs glared at him for a moment then softened to a smile. "Good work."

Tony now smiled too, as Kate pulled a cell phone from her pocket to call an ambulance.

-----

In the following days. Harold James awakened and immediately confessed to the murders that had occurred over the past couple months. He had in fact heard about Mark DeHavilland from Father Mulhanney, though it was never proven that Mulhanney himself was gay. With all loose ends tied up, and Harold James now serving a life sentence in an insane asylum, the case was officially closed out from NCIS records.

End.

((All characters from Navy NCIS are the property of CBS and David Bellisario. This is but my hopefully accurate attempt to create a new adventure for them. Let me know if you liked it, I may write another. I'm not a fan of the fanfics where crazy stuff and romances happen with the characters, but I'm good with case files like these. Readers who enjoy Lord of the Rings (also Monty Python and Star Wars), might enjoy my Parody of the Rings: The Fellowship. Feel free to check it out, it's pretty funny))