Chapter Two
"Poor girl," Ducky murmured some fifteen minutes later as he bent over the petty officer's prone form.
"Duck, need I remind you she was our top suspect in a murder investigation?" Jethro told the aged M.E.
"No," the medical examiner said. Carefully he maneuvered the body until it was out of the car. "The body bag if you please, Mr. Palmer. Let's get her home."
"Of course, Doctor," Ducky's assistant said, bringing over the black bag they used to transport bodies. As they lifted the body, the old Scottsman noticed something in the woman's wounds glinting as it caught light. "Is that silver?"
Tony and Ziva exchanged anxious glances. They could heal from any wound unless the weapon was made of silver or they were bitten by another Shifter. (If they were shot in the heart or head, they died, but reverted back to human form in death.) If what had killed the petty officer was made of silver, then, well, it didn't look good.
"Hey!"
Both Tony and Ziva winced as the blow fell. Ziva rubbed the back of her head and demanded, "What was that for?"
Gibbs glared. "I said to head back. Now, are you coming, or should I leave the two of you out here for the wolves?"
Smiling thinly at the irony of that statement, the two Shifters slipped into the black Charger. As they started heading back to the Navy Yard, Ziva said to herself, "She couldn't have been one of us. We would've known."
It was true. When one lycanthrope met another, there was an instant connection. Think of it as like calling to like.
DiNozzo reached over and rested his hand on her thigh, reassuring her. Even though it was only for comfort, he felt her skin growing warm and he felt as if he'd been punched in the gut.
Then Ziva floored the accelerator and Tony was thrown back against the seat. Not even his reflexes could protect him from her driving. "Slow down!"
"Why? I'm only going fifty miles over the speed limit."
"That's exactly why! Ziva, if we get in an accident, God so help me I will personally—"
"I take it that whatever you have in mind will involve the dark, yes?"
"Uh, well . . ."
Ziva smiled triumphantly. "I was right!"
"Shut up," Tony muttered, turning on the radio. His beloved Frank Sinatra floated through the car. The Israeli Shifter hit the gas again, and the black Charger wove its way through traffic to reach the Navy Yard, beating the others by a minute.
When they walked into the squadroom from the elevator, Abby came flying towards them. "I just heard! I'm so sorry, guys. I might have liked her, aside from the fact she was dealing cocaine and probably murdered a captain . . . Did you know Sister Rosita bowled a 750 and McGee's new book came out?"
"What?" For a few heartbeats Tony and Ziva looked blankly at the forensic scientist. Then her words registered and they glowered at the author of Deep Six, wolfish growls emanating from them.
McGee gulped, noticing the sudden change in his teammates. Right then he was positive they could rip him into bite-sized McGemcity pieces and wolf him down. So to speak.
"No, we wouldn't," Tony said.
Tim glanced sharply at him. "Did you just—"
"Oh, no. Your thoughts were written all over your face."
"Do we have a job to do or not?" Gibbs suddenly spoke up, spooking his team. "Tony, background check; Ziva, try to find out who she was last with; McGee, go help Abby with the laptop we found in Petty Officer Madison's cabin. Try to see if what she was working on had any connection to our other case."
"Aren't we all trying to do that?" said Tony dryly as Tim and Abby vanished to Labby.
Gibbs just rubbed his temple. "I need more coffee." He left to refill at Starbucks.
Now it was just the two of them in the bullpen. Ziva leaned against her partner. "Tony, if what killed her was meant for us—"
"Are you saying the killer thought our victim was a Shifter?"
"I'm afraid so."
"Oh, great. This day just gets better and better." Not knowing why he did what he did next, he dipped his head down toward the side of her neck. His nostrils flared as he inhaled her scent. "You smell like the forest at night."
Surprise sparked from Ziva and she stepped away. "Uh, thanks. Shouldn't you be running a background check?" she asked, suddenly aware of curious stares from other agents.
"Oh, right." DiNozzo sat down in his desk chair a few moments before Gibbs walked in with his fresh cup of coffee. Both Shifter's noses twitched at the pungent aroma, wondering how their boss drank the stuff.
...
Down in Labby, Abby was taking a drink of Caf-Pow while she and McGee stared at the image of Petty Officer Madison's hard drive on the monitor. "The Wolf" by Heart blared from the stereo near Bert the Hippo.
McGee threw up his hands in frustration. "I don't believe it! We've tried almost every cipher I can think of and we can't decrypt the email messages or IMs! I even tried Morse code!"
Abby looked at him in confusion. "How does Morse code help us?"
"It doesn't."
"What doesn't help us?" asked the team's leader as he came up behind them.
"Morse code."
"Well, did you find anything that can help us?"
"Yep," said Abby. "There were a few documents on the hard drive about her drug deals—prices, names of customers, things like that. She also had a lot of music—mostly classic rock. Not that I normally listen to that, but I do like some of Heart's songs and Def Leppard—"
Gibbs cleared his throat meaningfully and tilted his head toward the stereo, where "The Wolf" was still playing. Abby's eyes widened as she realized her blooper, but forgot all about it when the silver-haired fox handed her some shiny fragments in an evidence jar and a fresh Caf-Pow.
"Wow, all this evidence and Caf-Pow! Is it my birthday?"
The coffee-loving sniper ignored her. "Duck wants you to identify those. They were in the petty officer's wounds."
"Anything for you, O fearless leader."
Gibbs smiled briefly before leaving Abby's lab and heading down to Autopsy. A few minutes later, the doors hissed open and he walked in to find Jimmy Palmer tap-dancing while Dr. Mallard was working on a meat puzzle.
"Uh, am I interrupting something?"
Palmer froze, taking his earphones out. The Autopsy Gremlin shot a look at Ducky that said, "Help me." Luckily for him, the Duckman came to the rescue.
"Have you seen what Agent Hanson brought me?" he asked Jethro, who took a closer look at the human jigsaw puzzle. "The poor man was found in a vat of alcohol."
"Wasn't that a previous case?"
"Oh, no. This fellow was discovered an hour ago."
"Do you have anything on our case, Duck?"
"Of course I do." The NCIS medical examiner flipped on the X-ray screen and put up the X-ray images of Phoebe Madison's neck, head, torso, and extremities. "The cause of death was the gunshot wound to the head, but the throat wound seemed like overkill to me."
"Well," Gibbs said, "if you just about cut someone's head off you know they're dead."
"Good point. The strange part is we've found no defensive wounds on her hands or arms."
"She was handcuffed, Duck."
"Yes, but that's not the point. She still had enough range of motion to defend herself."
"So you're saying she knew her killer."
"Yes."
